Venice 2020 Showbiz and Celebrity Breaking News

Japanese filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa is a directorial polyglot, no doubt about it, but he’s more fluent in some cinematic languages than others.

How would you pick up the pieces if you lost all concept of who you are? In “Apples,” the directorial debut of the Greek filmmaker, Christos Nikou, an amnesiac pandemic sweeps the globe and forces those afflicted with the disease to a recovery program involving cassette tapes and cameras. But is that enough to recover one’s identity? READ MORE: Jessie Buckley & Riz Ahmed To Lead Christos Nikou’s Sci-Fi Romance ‘Fingernails’ Here’s the film’s official synopsis: As an unpredictable, sweeping pandemic causes people to develop sudden amnesia, a man finds himself enrolled in a recovery program designed to help him build a new life.

How would you pick up the pieces if you lost all concept of who you are? In “Apples,” the directorial debut of the Greek filmmaker, Christos Nikou, an amnesiac pandemic sweeps the globe and forces those afflicted with the disease to a recovery program involving cassette tapes and cameras. But is that enough to recover one’s identity? READ MORE: Jessie Buckley & Riz Ahmed To Lead Christos Nikou’s Sci-Fi Romance ‘Fingernails’ Here’s the film’s official synopsis: As an unpredictable, sweeping pandemic causes people to develop sudden amnesia, a man finds himself enrolled in a recovery program designed to help him build a new life.

Composed of a series of striking tableaux, Gianfranco Rosi’s contemplative documentary, “Notturno,” mines the intergenerational conflict on the borders between Iraq, Kurdistan, Syria, and Lebanon.

Unfurling an entire life of failed artistic ambitions in the span of a two-hour film, Chaitanya Tamhane’s remarkable sophomore feature “The Disciple” is decidedly leisurely in its approach. Executive produced by Alfonso Cuarón, Tamhane’s film centralizes the world of Hindustani classical music, in which singers perform an improvised raga, modulating their voices depending on the singer’s emotional state.

In almost no way does Chloé Zhao‘s quiet, enormous, deep breath of a movie, “Nomadland,” resemble “Blade Runner.” Except there’s this one moment: an outstanding speech in a film as attuned to vast wild silences as to conversation. Fern (Frances McDormand) is talking to her friend and fellow nomad Swankie (played, like many of the other roles by the real person on whom she is based).

“In Between Dying” is a dreamlike story of personal transformation from rising Azerbaijani director Hilal Beydarov. With a fast-growing body of work that blends fiction and documentary, Beydarov is singlehandedly raising the profile of Azerbaijan at film festivals.

Serious discussions on the perpetuated correlation between race and class in Mexico have dominated the country’s collective consciousness over the last few years. Cinema has actively participated in such reckoning, but never before as boldly as in Michel Franco’s “New Order (Nuevo Orden).” Bound to be contentious at home for its brutal depiction of a not-so-implausible and not-so-distant dystopia, the auteur’s latest shocks with blistering purpose.

So somebody somewhere one day had a thought: “What if ‘Die Hard’ except a school shooting?” and not only didn’t they immediately check themselves for other symptoms of lead poisoning but thought, “Yep, that’s a winner” and went on to make the movie.

Mining the well-worn tropes of the crusading journalist, Jing Wang’s “The Best is Yet to Come” is an investigatory look at Beijing in the aftermath of the SARS epidemic.

The term “predator” can mean a number of different things. Obviously, there’s the definition that relates to animals in nature, the hunter after the prey.

For a lot of Americans, words like “West Bank,” “Palestine,” and “Israel” exist more as political ideas rather than actual places, denoting a struggle that transcends a particular location. To understand this region and the reasons people live the way they do there (behind walls, passing through checkpoints, in the midst of one’s fiercest enemies) takes a nuanced understanding of history spanning World War II, conflicts in 1948 and 1967, and a series of accords over the last 20+ years.

The indie drama “Topside” opens with a startling image: a five-year-old girl sleeping on the ground with a beam of light shining on her from above. She’s underground living in the tunnels of New York beneath the subway system and she’s awoken by workers with flashlights.

The early-2000s was an interesting time in the world of journalism. With the internet becoming more and more ubiquitous by the day, that era saw the beginning of the shift from traditional newspaper/magazine journalism to a younger generation of hungry writers looking to use technology to their advantage.

June 1962: Novocherkassk, the USSR. The halcyon days of Stalin’s premiership, where meat rations were plentiful and cigarettes easy to come by, are over.

There are many kinds of documentaries one might want to see from “I Am Greta,” a Hulu portrait about famous teenage Climate Change activist and eco-warrior Greta Thunberg. One might hope for something akin to “The Inconvenient Truth,” with tons of sobering statistics and easy-to-understand graphs and charts led by the passionate teenager (you won’t find that here).

For a lot of Americans, words like “West Bank,” “Palestine,” and “Israel” exist more as political ideas rather than actual places, denoting a struggle that transcends a particular location. To understand this region and the reasons people live the way they do there (behind walls, passing through checkpoints, in the midst of one’s fiercest enemies) takes a nuanced understanding of history spanning World War II, conflicts in 1948 and 1967, and a series of accords over the last 20+ years.

The human voice is Tilda Swinton‘s, but the directorial voice is all Pedro Almodóvar in the Spanish legend’s half-hour, English-language “The Human Voice.” Freely adapting – read: ruthlessly modernizing and thoroughly Almodovarizing – the play by Jean Cocteau (material the director has circled around before, most evidently in “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” and “Law of Desire“), despite its brevity, his new film is deceptively roomy, allowing us to pace through the superbly

It’s a proper shame we’re not allowed physical contact at the moment, because Quentin Dupieux‘s “Mandibles,” among its many other silly pleasures, offers up a modified fist-bump-style handshake that could easily have swept the Venice Film Festival campus as the greeting du jour any other year.

Multiple faiths believe in its concept. And frankly, people should be hopeful that it happens sooner rather than later.

You could dine on nothing but lard for twenty years and still not develop the hardness of heart necessary to avoid being won over by Roger Michell‘s “The Duke,” a ridiculously charming British comedy that dunks a gamely accented prestige cast into an appealingly milky true story like so many digestives into a warm, well-earned, early evening cuppa.

When Pedro Lemebel’s novel “My Tender Matador” debuted in 2001, it was instantly hailed as an insightful exploration of passion amid revolution, weaving broader political observations into a trans love story. The film adaptation by director Rodrigo Sepúlveda keeps the core romance at the center of the story intact, yet it seems to have come at the expense of the novel’s broader social, political, and historical context: all of them M.I.A.

“The documentary on the act of making documentaries.” Filmmaker Abel Ferrara perfectly sums up the crux of his new film in the opening seconds of the trailer for “Sportin’ Life.” His succinct description would only be better if he was able to somehow weave in that Willem Dafoe is featured throughout.

Whenever you hear about a famous meeting of the minds, many people will say they wish they were a fly on the wall to listen in to what was being said.

This week, we saw the kick-off of the Venice Film Festival. And even though the event is a big deal every year, in 2020 the launch of an in-person film festival in the pandemic era makes Venice a much more interesting affair.

In a post-COVID-19 world, ruminating upon memories seems like an everyday occasion—reflecting on the ways that that civilization functioned before the impact of an unforeseen global pandemic that robbed the globe of its perceived normality.

Embargo 1645 Venice/ 1045 NY The human voice is Tilda Swinton‘s, but the directorial voice is all Pedro Almodóvar in the Spanish legend’s half-hour, English-language “The Human Voice.” Freely adapting – read: ruthlessly modernizing and thoroughly Almodovarizing – the play by Jean Cocteau (material the director has circled around before, most evidently in “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” and “Law of Desire“), despite its brevity, his new film is deceptively roomy, allowing us to pace

If you’re a fan of films (and you’re reading this website, so that probably means you are), then you are likely someone that supports the theatrical experience and wants to see cinemas thrive. Unfortunately, no matter how many of us really support theaters and the big screen experience, there is no denying that streaming platforms have become more and more ubiquitous and powerful.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the piss-poor American response to the virus has really hurt movies in 2020. Not just the industry, but film festivals where everyone gathers in close quarters.

Fall Film Festival Season is upon us! Though the size and scope of the events being presented this season are a bit smaller due to the pandemic. However, beginning with Venice, the film festival industry, which has largely been canceled due to COVID-19 is expected to restart with in-person screenings and fanfare that we normally expect this time of year.

What would you do if you woke up and couldn’t remember a thing? Not just that, but you’re not the only one with this sudden amnesia, as it spreads like an illness to other people. In the film “Apples,” the main character decides that maybe now is the time for a new beginning.

Two years ago, Orson Welles’ unfinished film, “The Other Side of the Wind,” made its debut during the fall film festival circuit. The feature was accompanied by an entire documentary about the making of the film.

We are less than a month away from the opening night of the Venice Film Festival. Not only is this one of the biggest film festivals of any year, but Venice has even more significance in 2020 after the film festival circuit has been decimated by the pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has left the 2020 film festival schedule in shambles. Basically every festival from March until now has been either canceled or drastically altered with digital screenings.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and how it has wreaked havoc across the globe, we’ve seen damn near every film festival from this spring and summer canceled, or at least, drastically altered. However, according to Venice Film Festival director, Alberto Barbera, this year’s Italian film event will be the first one since the pandemic shut everything down to closely adhere to the structure of previous editions.

Even though 2020 is destined to be an unprecedented year in terms of film festivals, with the spring and summer events largely canceled due to the pandemic, it appears that the fall lineup of film events is going to move forward uninterrupted, though perhaps a bit smaller than usual. And in the case of the Venice Film Festival, which kicks off in September, the physical aspect of the event will look pretty similar to years prior, complete with a red carpet and everything.