Locarno Film Festival Rejects Calls to Ban Leon Prudovsky’s ‘My Neighbor, Adolf’

BAFTA-Winning ‘The Missing Children’ Producer Nevision Promotes Anne Morrison

Compton-based filmmaker Victor Gabriel is among a select group of filmmakers to punch their ticket for the Oscar race, after scoring wins at the HollyShorts Film Festival.

Christopher Vourlias Croatian writer-director Juraj Lerotić’s “Safe Place,” an emotional story of a family reeling in the wake of a suicide attempt, took the top prize at the Sarajevo Film Festival, which wrapped a record-setting 2022 edition in the Bosnian capital on Friday night.The Heart of Sarajevo Award for best feature film was given by a jury headed by Austrian filmmaker Sebastian Meise (“The Great Freedom”), which included French filmmaker Lucile Hadžihalilović (“Earwig”), Croatian writer-director Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović (“Murina”), Serbian actor Milan Marić (“Dovlatov”) and Israeli producer and consultant Katriel Schory.“Safe Place” plays on Lerotić’s own pained family history, with the Croatian multihyphenate taking on the lead role in his deeply personal story — a performance that also earned him the award for best actor in Sarajevo. Fresh off a triumphant world premiere in Locarno, where the film won three awards including best first feature, “Safe Place” was described by Variety’s Guy Lodge as a “supremely poised and moving first feature” and a “shattering” debut, “with a long trail of further festival bookings surely ahead.”Ukrainian director Maryina Er Gorbach was named best director for “Klondike,” which portrays the brutal realities of the war unfolding in Ukraine’s Donbass region through the lens of a pregnant farmstead owner whose life and home fall apart.

Eight films battled it out in competition at the 28th Sarajevo Film Festival, but Austrian director Sebastian Meise’s jury—including French director Lucile Hadžihalilović , Croatian director Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović, Serbian actor Milan Marić and Israeli producer Katriel Schory—spread the love quite widely.

A pair of Scottish animators struggle to make a film in A Cat Called Dom, world premiering as part of the Edinburgh International Film Festival’s feature strand. Chiefly a live-action documentary, it shows friends and collaborators Will Anderson and Ainslie Henderson (The Making Of Longbird) trying to shoot a semi-scripted film for Will’s mother, who has been diagnosed with cancer.

Brazilian filmmaker Julia Murat clinched the Golden Leopard prize in the main international competition of the 75th Locarno Film Festival with her latest feature Rule 34.

Guy Lodge Film Critic“Rule 34,” a challenging and sexually explicit film from Brazilian director Julia Murat, has emerged as the surprise winner of the Golden Leopard award at this year’s Locarno Film Festival — an edition where typically audacious and formally ambitious work dominated the program.

“Empire of Light,” the latest feature film from Oscar winner Sam Mendes, has locked its European premiere with a gala screening at the 66th annual BFI London Film Festival. Starring Olivia Colman, Michael Ward, Colin Firth, Toby Jones and others, the 1980s–set film “is a powerful and poignant story about human connection and the magic of cinema,” distributor Searchlight Pictures said in a statement. The film’s stars – including Colman, Firth, and on-the-rise BAFTA winner Ward – are expected to be in attendance at the festival’s American Express Gala screening on Oct.

Naman Ramachandran The Indian government has approved an audiovisual co-production treaty with Australia, designed to promote joint production of films between the two countries.While details are currently scarce, producer contributions from the two countries can vary from 20% to 80% of the final total cost of the jointly produced work.“Australia has emerged as a preferred destination for shooting of Indian films. India is fast emerging as a major content hub for filmmakers looking for new projects.

EXCLUSIVE: Paris-based company Indie Sales has sold Angry Annie, French director Blandine Lenoir’s latest feature, to a host of key territories ahead of the film’s world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival on Thursday.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent10 Swiss film festivals with international standing are joining forces on a symbolically significant screening series to be held in Locarno’s PalaCinema multipurpose venue which is also known as the Swiss lakeside town’s house of cinema.The innovative initiative – which is being launched with a press conference on Saturday at the Locarno Film Festival – is the brainchild of Nadia Dresti, the Locarno fest’s grand dame, who recently joined the PalaCinema board.The PalaCinema (pictured) houses the Locarno film festival offices, its film academy, the CISA film school, the Ticino Film Commission, Swiss pubcaster RSI, as well as several commercial cinemas and other screening venues.

Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticIn “My Neighbor Adolf,” a Polish Holocaust survivor living in South America suspects that the belligerent German who’s just moved in next door could be none other than der Führer himself. How could that be? Hitler committed suicide in his bunker at the end of the war. Or did he? Director Leon Prudovsky’s middling mind game pits David Hayman and prolific German character actor Udo Kier against one another in what could have been a sly, “Sleuth”-style two-hander.

Daisy Edgar-Jones adds some chic fringe to her look while being honored at the 2022 Locarno Film Festival on Friday (August 5) in Locarno, Switzerland.

It may be Maša Marković’s first year as head of industry at the Sarajevo Film Festival, but for the long-time festival staffer, it’s business as usual.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorThe Match Factory will launch sales on the debut film by Ehab Tarabieh, “The Taste of Apples Is Red,” at the Toronto Film Festival, where the film will be premiering in the Discovery section. Tarabieh’s previous short films have won several prizes, including Best Short Film at Doha Tribeca Festival for “The Forgotten” (2012) and a nomination for a European Academy Award for “Smile and the World Will Smile Back” (2015).

Aaron Taylor-Johnson has the support of his wife on his big night!

It’s been a rough and challenging week for the DC Universe, and more upheavals are coming and expected. In a telltale sign that Discovery’s mid-2022 acquisition of Warner Bros.

Israel has announced a total $13m (45m shekels) tax rebate aimed at incoming film and TV productions.

Shirley Halperin Executive Editor, MusicThe estimated $55 million music market in Israel, like the Middle Eastern country’s comparatively small size, would quantify as the equivalent of a rounding error for a global music company. But its recorded music revenue growth was up 10.2% in 2021, per the IFPI, and the majors are taking notice.In 2021, UMG opened a Tel Aviv office housing a recorded music division and an arm of Universal Music Publishing Group (headed by managing director Yoram Mokady and general manager Itamar Shafrir, respectively).