‘The Kings Of The World’ Review: Laura Mora’s Colombian Oscar Entry

Second generation Hollywood royalty. Jane Fonda comes from a family of actors, but she quickly made a name for herself and became an icon in her own right.

For director Gina Prince-Bythewood, making the historical epic The Woman King was a dream come true. Despite dealing with a seven-year-long development process, Prince-Bythewood was determined to prove that Hollywood stories centering on powerful Black women deserve to be seen. Based on a real all-female faction of West African soldiers known as the Agojie, the film follows its leader Nanisca (Viola Davis), and her fierce tribe of warriors as they defend the kingdom of Dahomey from a violent neighboring empire and Europeans capitalizing on the slave trade. Here, Prince-Bythewood talks about creating a sisterhood of warriors, world-building, and the importance of seeing yourself on screen.

Best Documentary Feature front runners All That Breathes, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, Fire of Love, and The Territory are safely through to the next round after the Academy’s Documentary Branch whittled the list of remaining contenders to a shortlist of 15 films.

Finding his happiness. In addition to embarking on new creative career endeavors over the years, Jonah Hill has been on a journey of self-discovery in order to find personal and professional happiness.

EXCLUSIVE: In October, Breaking Glass Pictures acquired Mario Martone’s Nostalgia, Italy’s entry for the Best International Feature Oscar for North America, and today we have a first look at the official trailer (check it out above). 

From Bergen to Malta, Liverpool, New York and Halifax: Norwegian merchant seamen Alfred (Kristoffer Joner) and Sigbjorn (Pal Sverre Hagen) sometimes seem to be competing for screen time with datelines in Gunnar Vikene’s epic War Sailor, Norway’s Oscar submission. Sprawling, packed with anecdote and surging from one dramatic peak to the next, War Sailor sets out to tell the stories of the ordinary but unsung heroes who helped defeat Germany in 1945. It has the best of intentions.

Philip Yung delivers an ambitious decade-spanning true crime thriller with Where The Wind Blows, Hong Kong’s entry for the International Feature Oscar. Previously known as Theory of Ambitions, it’s a technically impressive feat with an equally impressive cast lead by Aaron Kwok and Tony Leung Chiu-wai. Fast-paced and dense with detail, it challenges the audience to keep up with its complex story of two cops rising up the ranks in Hong Kong in the 1960s and beyond.

EXCLUSIVE: UTA has signed Nkechi Okoro Carroll and her production company, Rock My Soul Productions, for representation in all areas.

Cáit runs back home, we see a crying baby, and her mother upbraids her for coming into the house with mud on her shoes.Bairéad and director of photography Kate McCullough (Hulu’s “Normal People”) emphasize Cáit’s alienation from her surroundings in their compositions, but they also strive to give the images a very soft look, with ghostly light on Cáit’s serious face. Cáit is always looking down and then looking up apprehensively, as if she expects some calamity at any moment, which is justified when boys knock some milk into her lap at school; other kids call her “a weirdo” because she keeps so much to herself.The effects with light that McCullough gets in these early scenes can be entrancing, as when she catches the way that a white neon light above a bar molds the head of Cáit’s father in profile, or the pink light from a television set as it is reflected on a wall.

In 2018, the Fox News host Laura Ingraham—irritated over political comments made by LeBron James—told the NBA star to just “shut up and dribble.”

A trio of teens navigates relationships in contemporary Helsinki in Girl Picture, Finland’s entry for the Best International Feature Oscar. Directed by Alli Haapasalo (Love and Fury), it’s an engaging portrait of young women that’s as refreshing as it is entertaining. To call this a “Finnish Booksmart” would be doing its originality a disservice, but there are coincidental similarities as a quick-witted lesbian and her straight girl friend try to help each other with their love lives over a series of parties and amusing encounters. 

Love and compassion don’t require grand gestures. Often, the subtlest actions forge the deepest, most meaningful connections — a patient ear, a shared space, a gentle hand.

Why do we have children? Cait’s Mam and Da would be hard-pressed to answer that, with a house full of sour teenage daughters, a toddler barely walking, another baby about to land and not enough money to pay a day laborer to bring in the hay. These are the kind of kids who go to school with no lunch. 

It’s 2002 and raining brains in Riyadh, at least from the gormless Nasser’s wonky perspective. Nasser’s doctor is firmly convinced he has a brain tumour, which is his explanation for the protracted hallucinations Nasser experiences and that he, Dr Ahmed, is all too ready to excise. Nasser isn’t so sure: his dreams, fantasies and visions are more fun than the rest of his life, yoked beneath the twin tyrannies of his fanatical father and his boss at the thinly patronized Dove Hotel. Why get rid of the good stuff? Especially once those visions start to include the mysterious young woman who arrived unannounced one day to ask for the key to room 227. She’s welcome to walk the corridors of his mind any old time.

An Afro-European woman connects with her roots in Bantú Mama, the Dominican Republic’s entry for the Best International Feature Film Oscar. Co-written and directed by Ivan Herrera, it’s was picked up by Ava DuVernay’s Array Releasing. It’s a compelling drama featuring a strong performance from Clarisse Albrecht, who also co-wrote the screenplay.

Jordanian director Darin J. Sallam and producers Deema Azar and Ayeh Jadaneh have accused Israel of mounting a disinformation campaign against their film Farha and also rebuked the country for attempting to get it removed from theatres and Netflix.

Over the course of 144 minutes, Philip Yung’s true-crime drama Where the Wind Blows covers an awful lot of ground. An epic in the style Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time in New York, it pairs Asian superstars Tony Leung and Aaron Kwok in a story spanning several decades of police corruption in Hong Kong during its time as a British colony. The detail is sometimes dense, but the tone turns playful and refreshingly light at times, and there’s even a memorable musical routine for “The God of Dance” Kwok.