‘TransMexico,’ ‘Edge of Everything,’ ‘Andragogy’ Among Santa Barbara Film Festival Winners

Anna Marie de la Fuente The #MeToo movement has claimed another casualty. Spain’s Málaga Film Festival, unspooling March 1-10, has canceled the participation of U.S.-born director Julio Hernandez Cordon’s vampire drama “The Day is Long and Dark” (“El día es largo y oscuro”) at the festival, citing “complaints regarding acts of gender violence.” In a press release issued on Feb.

Christopher Vourlias The sixth edition of the Joburg Film Festival wraps Sunday, putting a bow on a week that saw many in the host nation reflecting on South Africa’s long journey in the three decades since the end of apartheid. But among the filmmakers and executives taking part in the second JBX content market the focus was squarely on the future, as Africa’s streaming wars and an eye toward global dealmaking highlighted how the tide has begun to shift in how the world perceives the continent.

Naman Ramachandran Warner Bros. Discovery and Room to Read have partnered on “She Creates Change,” an animation and live-action film project to promote gender equality through the stories of young women around the world. Room to Read is a global education nonprofit aiming to creating a world free from illiteracy and gender inequality.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The Berlin Film Festival said Monday that it has filed criminal charges following the hacking of its Panorama section’s Instagram social media site, which was used to post anti-Semitic messages. After a politically charged edition, festival organizers also attempted to distance the Berlinale management from the stances taken by some of the awards winners at Saturday’s closing ceremony. The organizers said that on Sunday, the day after the festival concluded, “The Instagram channel of the Berlinale Panorama section was briefly hacked and anti-Semitic image-text posts about the Middle East war with the Berlinale logo were posted on the channel.

Don’t get too hot and bothered over the title of the new Norwegian film Sex. The act itself in this first entry in a new trilogy from writer-director Dag Johan Haugerud is really only just talked about in this intriguing movie mostly dependent on leaning into its main characters’ words and descriptions, not a whole lot of visual information. Winner of the Europa Cinemas Label as Best European Film in the Panorama section of the current Berlin Film Festival, where it had its world premiere this week, Haugerud has announced this as this first of three films — Sex, Dreams, and then Love — featuring the same cast and dealing overall with themes of desire, identity and freedom, not to mention sexuality and the place of gender in our lives and society. This first stand-alone film also leans heavily into masculinity in ways it is not normally discussed by guys, but they do here in profound ways in this thought-provoking movie that also puts a spotlight on Norway’s signature city, Oslo.

Lunar New Year is a key box office period in several Asian territories, but nowhere was it more hotly contested this year than in Vietnam, where several local, Japanese and Hollywood movies were slugging it over the week-long holidays (February 9-15).

It’s not often that a doc about the transformative power of cinema will deliberately use bad clips of the movies it’s talking about, but that’s part of the point of this insightful, sprawling film, corralled by director David Hinton. Though the masterpieces made by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger at the height of their big-screen, Technicolor powers were visually impeccable, their subversive emotional power could still pack a punch through a 16-inch TV screen, even from the most scratched, butchered, and washed-out black-and-white prints.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent As the European Film Market starts to unwind, the verdict is already in: Even if global economics are rocky, buyers are back and on the lookout. This week, dealmaking has been happening on both star-driven packages as well as arthouse and foreign-language movies.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent The Locarno Film Festival has formed an advisory board for its industry side and recruited a roster of top indie industry figures including former Amazon Studios film executive Ted Hope, Bobby Allen, who is senior VP of content at Mubi, and former European Film Market chief Beki Probst as members. Locarno’s industry advisory board will be headed by Nadia Dresti, the former head of the prominent Swiss indie cinema event’s market side who has been with Locarno intermittently for roughly 30 years with an interlude for a few years as head of marketing for Fox Switzerland.

The Bafta Film Awards celebrates some of the best British and international films released over the past year.

EXCLUSIVE: Singapore’s Momo Film Co has boarded Indonesian filmmaker Wregas Bhanuteja‘s third feature film, Levitating (working title).

Claudia Sanchez’s documentary Transmexico took the Audience Choice Award on Saturday at the Santa Barbara Film Festival, which revealed winners in its juried categories as it wraps its 39th edition.

Carole Horst Highland Film Group shared a first look at “London Calling,” an action-comedy that reunites director Allan Ungar with star Josh Duhamel after the success of the action heist thriller “Bandit.” Film also stars Jeremy Ray Taylor (“It,” “and “It: Chapter Two”), Rick Hoffman (“Billions,” “Suits”) and Aidan Gillen (“Game of Thrones”) Written by Omer Levin Menekse and Quinn Wolfe, “London Calling” sees mediocre hit man Tommy Ward (Duhamel) go on the run and get stuck in L.A. after mistakenly killing a relative of London’s biggest crime boss (Gillen).

Alex Ritman Saban Films has acquired North American rights to the British thriller “Kill,” starring Paul Higgins (“Slow Horses,” “Line of Duty”), Brian Vernel (“Star Wars: Episode VII – the Force Awakens,” “Dunkirk”), Daniel Portman (“Game of Thrones, The Angel’s Share”), Calum Ross (“Wednesday”), Anita Vettesse (“Outlander,” “Guilt”), James Harkness (“Darkest Hour,” “Phantom Thread”) and Joanne Thomson (“The Victim”). The film, which explores the history of violence, the power of family and the dangers of revenge, marks the feature directorial debut of Rodger Griffiths, who devised the story and co-wrote the screenplay with Rob Drummond. “Kill” follows a hunting trip that turns deadly when three brothers plot to murder their violent, abusive father.

Christopher Vourlias MetFilm Sales has secured international rights to “The Battle for Laikipia,” Daphne Matziaraki and Peter Murimi’s multi-layered portrait of the conflict between Indigenous pastoralists and white landowners in Kenya. The film had its world premiere as part of the World Cinema Documentary section at the Sundance Film Festival. Submarine Entertainment Sales negotiated the deal with MetFilm on behalf of the filmmakers and is handling North American sales.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent U.S. specialty distributor Shadow Distribution has taken North American rights to Italian director Giorgio Diritti’s ethnic cleansing drama “Lubo,” toplining Franz Rogowski, from Italy’s True Colours.

Sundance dealmaking was buoyant, the awards season is coming to a head with a number of critically acclaimed movies having done well at the box office, and apparently peak TV is over. Whisper it quietly, but after years of movies being almost a dirty word compared to the lustre of TV, is independent theatrical film staging a comeback?

Christopher Vourlias Gordon Main’s apartheid-era documentary “London Recruits” has been tapped as the opening film at the sixth Joburg Film Festival, which takes place Feb. 27 – March 3 in Johannesburg, South Africa. The film sheds light on a pivotal moment in South Africa‘s history, when the struggle against the apartheid government in South Africa developed a new secret weapon.

Oppenheimer‘s Ludwig Göransson won the marquee film prize at the Society of Composers & Lyricists Awards, which were handed out Tuesday night in Los Angeles. The Black Panther Academy Award winner took Outstanding Original Score for a Studio Film and also is nominated for the Original Score Oscar next month.

New York’s Museum of the Moving Image has revealed the full lineup for First Look 2024, the 13th edition of the festival that showcases “new and innovative international cinema,” both fiction and nonfiction.