‘La Llorona’ Director Jayro Bustamante Embraces Genre Elements To Frame Impact Of Guatemalan Genocide – Contenders International

Irish actress Clare Dunne stars in Herself, a harrowing drama about a single mother who, after escaping an abusive partner, aims to rebuild her life in a unique manner. After months of struggling with the welfare and housing systems, she comes upon the idea of self-building an affordable home and, with the help of friends and neighbors, rebuilds her life and theirs from the ground up.

I was lucky enough to be among the very first people, particularly among journalists, to see The Assistant, even before its world premiere at the 2019 Telluride Film Festival which was before it had been sold to a distributor. I did the first interview with its writer and director Kitty Green, previously best known for her work in the nonfiction field.

The idea for Emerald Fennell’s debut movie Promising Young Woman came to her in a single image: while a seemingly drunk woman is being bothered by a man, she turns the tables by suddenly sitting up, stone-cold sober, and asking, “What are you doing?” This happens quite a few times in her film, which sees college dropout Cassie (Carey Mulligan) taking revenge on the kind of men that sexually abused her best friend in college, leading to her suicide.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent“Parasite” director Bong Joon Ho will preside over the main jury of the 78th Venice Film Festival in September, marking the first time a South Korean director has been picked as the Lido’s top juror.Bong, who does not have a previous rapport with Venice, made history in 2020 when “Parasite” became the first foreign-language film to win best picture in the nearly 100-year history of the Academy Awards — and three other Oscars on top of that –– after

Deadline on Monday launched streaming sites for its first two Contenders awards-season events that took place over the weekend: Contenders International and Contenders Documentary.

Politics and Covid-19 have been intertwined ever since the novel coronavirus emerged in Wuhan, China a year ago. But when director Hao Wu made 76 Days, his harrowing film documenting hospital workers and Covid patients in Wuhan as the city went through lockdown, he left political questions aside.

In I’m No Longer Here (Ya no estoy aquí), filmmaker Fernando Frias puts the spotlight on Kolombia counterculture in the region of Northern Mexico. Following the story of 17-year-old Ulises (played by breakout Juan Daniel Garcia Treviño), the film, Mexico’s submission in the International Feature Oscar race, uses his journey to present a different kind of immigrant narrative.

Director and co-writer Edoardo Ponti brought along his mother for my conversation about his movie, Netflix’s The Life Ahead, as part of Deadline’s Contenders International awards-season event. That mother happens to be a true screen legend, Sophia Loren, who has been directed by her son (their third collaboration) in her first major leading role in a movie in several years.

“I wanted to do this project for a long time, I had this story in mind for years and years,” says director Filippo Meneghetti about Two of Us, France’s Oscar entry this year, adding that he also spent an additional five years writing the screenplay with his co-writer Malysone Bovorasmy.

Dea Kulumbegashvili’s feature directorial debut Beginning was a part of the official selection of the Cannes Film Festival’s 2020 edition, even receiving a special in-person screening during the event’s abridged celebration in October. The drama further was invited to the Toronto, San Sebastian, New York and Busan festivals and is also Georgia’s submission for the International Feature Film Oscar.

Romanian director Alexander Nanau joined Deadline’s Contenders International awards-season event to talk about his searing documentary Collective, one of the year’s most acclaimed films as winner of the European Film Award for documentary. It is also Romania’s official entry to the International Feature Film Oscar race, as well as a strong contender in the Documentary Feature competition too.

Finnish author Tove Jansson is most known for creating the enduringly popular children’s characters the Moomins, which have spanned comics, books and TV series since she first came up with them in the 1940s. She is now the subject of a biopic, Tove, which is Finland’s submission for the International Feature Oscar this year.

Preparations to be Together for an Unknown Period of Time, Hungary’s contender this year for the International Feature Film Oscar, hinges on a moment around seven minutes into the movie.

Scary stories and urban legends are always fun and at times can haunt you for the rest of your life. For filmmaker Joko Anwar, it was a scary story that was the inspirational seed that would bloom into Impetigore, Indonesia’s official entry for the Oscar International Feature race.

This year’s International Oscar entry for Switzerland, My Little Sister, follows a woman who has largely given up on her ambition to be a playwright and returns to Berlin to look after her twin brother, a famous actor with a terminal illness. It is directed by long-term collaborators and co-directors Stéphanie Chuat and Véronique Reymond.

Drawing attention to the colorful and challenging lives of the elderly, genre-bending The Mole Agent is a film that changed completely from initial concept to final product.

Never Gonna Snow Again co-directors and co-writers Malgorzata Szumowska and Michal Englert’s professional collaboration is an unusual one — the pair are ex-husband and wife. But Szumowska says their enduring partnership shows “collaboration is possible.”

KilI It And Leave This Town is a deeply personal, unconventional and moving hand-drawn animation from artist-turned-animator Mariusz Wilczynski, who explores subjects including grief and childhood in his feature debut.

Colombia’s International Feature Oscar submission El ovido que seremos (English title: Memories of My Father) hails from Oscar-winning Spanish director Fernando Trueba and stars Spanish legend Javier Cámara. It’s based on the memoir by Héctor Abad Faciolince about his father who was a doctor, professor and an activist for social justice who was murdered in 1987 by Colombian paramilitaries.

“I think this story should be told all the time, especially now,” director Vadim Perelman says of his historical drama Persian Lessons. The film, set during the Holocaust, chronicles how a young Belgian man avoids execution in a concentration camp by pretending he can speak Persian, teaching a made-up language to a camp prison officer.