Karlovy Vary Review Dailies July 2023

KARLOVY VARY REVIEW DAILY HORIZONS

Kudos to Alexandre O. Philippe

BLACKBIRD BLACKBIRD BLACKBERRY

VERDICT: The deliciously wry, gently unfurling tale of a middle-aged Georgian woman who rejects small-town conformity and experiments with love after a near-death experience.

Carmen Gray, June 28, 2023

The choices of a middle-aged woman unwilling to fit in with the narrow expectations of a small Georgian town are the focus of deliciously wry but reflective comedy-drama Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry, screening in the Horizons section at Karlovy Vary after a world premiere at Cannes Directors’ Fortnight. Director Elene Naveriani again embraces the feminist vein of her previous features And I am Truly a Drop of Sun on Earth (2017) and Wet Sand (2021), bringing us into the

complex inner world of a woman who dares to think and live differently.

Etero (Eka Chavleishvili) runs her own business selling household and beauty items, and has long been single, following a daily routine that is predictable and requires little dependence on anyone. But one day unlike others, she slips while picking blackberries in a ravine. The near-death experience brings the existential questions that have... Full Review

VERDICT: The Geneva-born director is back in Karlovy Vary with his new William Shatner documentary.

Max Borg, June 28, 2023

From Star Wars to Alfred Hitchock to the Alien franchise, Alexandre O. Philippe has been dissecting American pop culture for years. It’s a boyhood passion he has turned into a career, as he explains in the quote that describes him on the streaming service MUBI: “I’ve always been fascinated by pop culture, I’ve always been a huge film geek anyway, ever since I was a kid, and so, to me, this idea that I’m essentially deconstructing moments in cinema that have become cultural moments, is something that in a way I was

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You Can Call Me Bill already doing as a kid, and was passionate about, so it makes complete sense that I would be doing this now as an adult.”

Although he lives and works in the United States, the Geneva-born Philippe remains proudly Swiss. “I still have my Swiss passport, and I feel as connected to Switzerland as I do to the States”, he tells The Film Verdict in between trips around the world. Now he returns to Karlovy Vary with his new film You Can Call Me Bill, a portrait of Star Trek icon William Shatner, a year after visiting the Czech festival with Lynch/Oz, in which six interviewees – one critic and five filmmakers, including John Waters and the directing duo Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead – discuss the links between David Lynch’s filmography and the 1939 film version of The Wizard of Oz

How did Philippe construct that film’s different voiceovers, a necessary substitute for oncamera interviews in pandemic times? “I spent a few hours talking

You Can Call Me Bill Screenings

30 June 10:00

Lazne III Cinema

5 July 10:30

Congress Hall

7 July 20:00

Husovka Theatre

to each person on the phone, and I recorded the conversations. From that low-quality recording I produced a script for each segment, and once they had approved it and done any necessary revisions, I got them to re-record their contributions in higher quality.”

What sets Philippe apart from most documentarians making films about cinema is that each time, he chooses a different angle for his projects: 78/52 deals with Psycho by analyzing only one sequence, the shower murder (the title refers to the sequence having 78 cuts and lasting 52 seconds); Memory: The Origins of Alien explores the mythologies that influenced the creation of the xenomorph; and Leap of Faith is a single conversation with William Friedkin about his horror masterpiece The Exorcist, with typically candid insights about what he perceives as the movie’s flaws (by his own admission, he’s still on the fence about the ending, which was a source of contention with screenwriter William Peter Blatty). Full Article

HORIZONS SORCERY

VERDICT: A 13-year-old girl on a Chilean island reckons with colonial brutality in an ominous, supernatural tale of historical oppression and indigenous resistance.

Carmen Gray, June 28, 2023

A 13-year-old girl is subjected to an abrupt education in the brutality of colonial power abuses and in arcane tools of resistance in Chilean director Christopher Murray’s fifth feature Sorcery, screening in the Horizons section at Karlovy Vary after its world premiere at Sundance. Rosa (Valentina Veliz Caleo) is a Huilliche, whose people had long inhabited Chiloe Island off the coast of Chile before the encroachment of Europeans. It’s 1880, and she has cast aside her own culture to take on Christian beliefs and rituals, in an effort to adapt to life as a servant in a household of German settlers. But, when ruthless farmer Stefan (Sebastian Hulk) blames her people for a blight of illness killing the family’s sheep, and sets dogs on her father to maul him to pieces… Full Review

Amjad Al Rasheed On Directing Inshallah a Boy

Inshallah a Boy Screenings

1 July 22:00

Pupp Cinema

7 July 15:00

Small Hall

8 July 13:00

KV Municipal Theatre

(Jordan), joined by Yousef Abed Alnabi from Bayt Al shawareb (also in Jordan), and Raphaël Alexandre and Nicolas Leprêtre from Georges Films (France).

While in Cannes, the film won the Critics’ Week GAN Foundation Award for Distribution, which will help Pyramide Films, their international sales agent, to distribute this gem -- particularly in Europe.

by E. Nina Rothe

For those who believe in the power of cinema as a social change-maker,Amjad Al Rasheed’s Inshallah a Boy, a winner in the Critics’ Week in Cannes where it world premiered, is an important example. In this Jordanian film, a thirty-something woman, wife and mother finds herself suddenly a widow. Grief-stricken and trying to survive for the sake of her young daughter Nawal (played by the phenomenal Mouna Hawa), she discovers she has to fight for her part of the inheritance in order to save her daughter and home in a society where having a son would be a game-changer.

The recent Egyptian series Under Guardianship also tackled the outdated inheritance laws in that country and was featured in The Guardian as a change maker. It would not be surprising if Inshallah a Boy managed to perform the same feat in Jordan, where the story takes place.

Inshallah a Boy was on everyone’s radar coming into Cannes, as the film had participated and won top prizes in several workshops around the MENA region (including Cairo and Marrakesh) but also at the Venice Final Cut.

The film is produced by Rula Nasser (who co-wrote the script along with Al Rasheed and Delphile Agut) and Aseel Abu Ayyash from The Imaginarium Films

The Film Verdict Middle East’s E. Nina Rothe caught up with Al Rasheed to talk about his groundbreaking film -- the first Jordanian film ever to screen in the Cannes Film Festival.

What was the genesis of the idea for you?

Amjad Al Rasheed: Usually I get a story idea from a question. I like to ask questions about life -- “what if?” I asked this question in a situation involving a close relative, who was almost in the same situation as my main character. She was a woman who dedicated her life to the service of her family. She had three daughters with her husband and when she bought her house with her own money, Continues next page

“Cinema is there to tell a story. My only agenda is my love of cinema and a love of storytelling. I don’t believe that a story has a gender, or a sexuality.” -- Amjad Al Rasheed

her husband insisted that she transfer the house deed into his name.When he passed away, the men of her family came and told her they had a share in her house, according to the law But they told her “we will allow you to live in the house ” Allowing her to live in her own house raised many questions in my own mind. And I thought, what if they don’t? And what if she says no? And is it possible that we are living in a modern world that is ruled by laws created one thousand and four hundred years ago?

I started to do research and met some actual cases around Jordan and I always heard someone say, each time I told this story idea, “Oh this is my sister’s story, this is my friend’s story.” It’s all over.

Is it your intention to help change this outdated law system?

Al Rasheed: I don’t believe art should have a message, to be honest. Especially cinema, which is there to tell a story. I’m telling a human story, Nawal’s story, this strong female character.What I wanted was to raise questions, moral questions: even if a man has the option to benefit from this law, would he do it? He has the option to say no. But again it’s more questions that I’m trying to raise in this film and to open a conversation.

So you don’t have an agenda?

Al Rasheed: My only agenda is my love of cinema and a love of storytelling.And I hope that the film continues after people leave the theater, they begin a conversation that helps people to think.

I believe we are in a very critical moment in the Arab world, and around the world in general.

Rula is also a friend since 2005. They, along with Delphine, both added this sense of feminism to it -- for example, Rula had a huge input on the mother-daughter relationship because she herself is a mother! As much as I could try to discover this role, Rula brought these small details here and there which enriched the situation. And helped me to portray the situa situation in a more authentic, more sincere way.

These days, you must also be careful as a man telling a woman’s story...

We need to think more and rethink what has been normalized long ago. We need to reassess these things and we could have a better society as a result.

You collaborated with two women on the script. Why did you bring them into the project?

Al Rasheed: Rula Nasser is also my producer, and along with Delphine Agut we wrote the script. When I started writing the script, I was going through more of a dark comedic tone because of the absurdity of the situation, I wanted to tackle it with a dark comedy tone. Then I collaborated with Rula because I didn’t feel that working in telling the story I wanted to tell and Rula had ideas on how to make the script more realistic, to go to a social realism tone instead.

I liked it and that was what I wanted from the beginning, and

Al Rasheed: To be honest, I never thought about that. I’m a man who grew up in a family surrounded by women. Since I was a kid I listened to the stories of my aunts, my nieces, my cousins and these stories stayed in my mind. Most of them are not happy stories and they always struggled with male figures in their lives. I have this in me, I don’t feel that my story is a feminist film. I don’t believe that a story has a gender, or a sexuality.We need to start looking at stories differently.This is a human story and I’m human. And women are human.

I see Iranian influences in the tones of the film. What are your influences when making cinema?

Al Rasheed: I love cinema with different genres, different tones and different voices. Definitely one of them is the Iranian cinema.

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TRANSILVANIA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

TFV’s Matt Micucci takes you on a journey through the 22nd edition of the Transilvania Film Festival in the charming city of Cluj-Napoca, Romania, through a conversation with the festival’s artistic director Mihai Chirilov. From June 9 – 18, the festival showcased a dynamic program celebrating the past, present and future of cinema, and testified to the rebellious spirit of the annual film event, one of the most important for the region.

Namesti Svobody, Zatec, Czech Republic

Jojo Rabbit (2019)

Namesti Svobody is the town square or Freedom Square of Zatec, Czech Republic, home to the Church o the Assumption of theVirgin Mary and the Holy Trinity column in commemoration of a terrible plague that affected the area in the 18th century.

Jojo Rabbit, released by Fox searchlight and directed by Taiki Waiti premiered at the 44th Toronto Film Festival where it won the Grolsh People’s Choice Award.

In this scene, rosie Betzler (Scarlett Johansson) stands looking at several people that were hung in the town square for their resistance to the Nazi occupation of the city

THE APP THAT LETS YOU FIND AND SHARE FILM LOCATIONS AROUND THE WORLD

photo (C) Fox Searchlight

Sudanese Festival Hit Goodbye Julia Sells Worldwide

Goodbye Julia Screenings

30 June 16:00 Congress Hall

3 July 13:00 KV Municipal Theatre

4 July 18:00 Drahomira Cinema

Market watch

Before it even screened in Cannes this past May, Mohamed “Mo” Kordofani’s feature debut Goodbye Julia had made history as the first-ever Sudanese title in competition at the festival. Goodbye Julia screened in the section Un Certain Regard and is produced by maverick Sudanese filmmaker Amjad Abu Alala, who won theVenice Lion of the Future award with his 2019 feature film debut You Will Die at Twenty.

The film follows the story of two women who represent the complicated relationship, and the differences, between the northern and southern Sudanese communities. It takes place in Khartoum in the year 2011, right before the secession of South Sudan from what was then a united Sudan. Mona, an uppermiddle-class former popular singer from the North living with her husband Akram, seeks to at-tenuate her feelings of guilt for causing the death of a

southern Sudanese man by employing Julia, his unsuspecting widow, as her maid. From there, the two women embark on a complex journey of attempted reconciliation, perhaps a metaphor for South and North Sudan coming together once again, one day Inshallah. Goodbye Julia deservedly won Un Certain Regard’s Prix de Liberté (Freedom Prize) and has since secured quite a few sales in international territories. The French distributor is ARP Sélection, in Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands it will be Sep-tember Film, in Italy Satine Film, in Sweden it will be released by Folkets Bio, in Germany,Austria, Swit-zerland and Liechtenstein by Trigon Film, in Taiwan by Swallow Wings and in Australia and New Zealand by Potential Films.Worldwide sales are handled by MAD Solutions, while Creative Artists Agency (CAA) and Ambient Light are handling sales of the film in the U.S. and Canada.

--E. Nina Rothe,TFV Middle East

Karlovy Vary IFF Screenings

June 30

8:00

If Only I Could Hibernate

Directed by Zoljargal Purevdash Congress Hall (Mongolia, France, Switzerland, Qatar) Horizons

9:00 Tótem

Directed by Lila Avilés Small Hall (Mexico, Denmark, France) Horizons

Luxembourg, Luxembourg Directed by Antonio Lukich Cinema B (Ukraine) Horizons

Orlando, My Political Biography

Directed by Paul B. Preciado Cas Cinema (France) Horizons

22:00 Congress Hall Firebrand

Directed by Karim Aïnouz (United Kingdom) Tribute to Alicia Vikander

10:00

On The Adamant

Directed by Nicolas Philibert KV Municpal Theatre (France, Japan) Horizons

You Can Call Me Bill

Directed by Alexandre O. Philippe Lazne III Cinema (USA) Out of the Past

The Nature of Love

Directed by Monia Chokri Pupp Cinema (Canada, France) Horizons

10:30

Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell

Directed by Thien An Pham

Drahomíra Cinema (Singapore, Vietnam, France, Spain) Horizons

Kidnapped

Directed by Marco Bellocchio Congress Hall (Italy, France, Germany) Horizons

Allensworth

Directed by James Benning Husovka Cinema (USA) Imagina

11:30

Dead Girls Dancing

Directed by Anna Roller Cinema B (Germany, France) Horizons

12:00

The Edge of the Blade

Directed by Vincent Perez Cas Cinema (France) Horizons

12:30

Contempt

Directed by Jean-Luc Godard

Drahomíra Cinema (France, Italy) Out of the Past

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If Only I Could Hibernate

Karlovy Vary IFF Screenings

June 30

Screening Guide continued

Allensworth

13:00

The Quiet Migration

Directed by Malene Choi KV Municipal Theatre (Denmark) Horizons

The Sweet East

Directed by Sean Price Williams Congress Hall (USA) Horizons

A Stolen Meeting

Directed by Leida Laius

Lazne III Cinema (Estonia) Out of the Past

Fallen Leaves

Directed by Aki Kaurismäki

Pupp Cinema (Finland, Germany) Horizons

13:30

Human Flowers of Flesh

Directed by Helena Wittmann Husovka Theatre (Germany, France) Imagina

15:00

Passages

Directed by Ira Sachs Cas Cinema (France) Horizons

And the King Said, What a Fantastic Machine

Directed by Axel Danielson, Maximilien Van Aertryck Drahomíra Cinema (Sweden, Denmark) Horizons

16:00

Goodbye Julia Directed by Mohamed Kordofani Congress Hall (Sudan, Egypt, German, France, Saudi Arabia, Sweden) Horizons

Limbo

Directed by Ivan Sen KV Municipal Theatre (Australia) Horizons)

Kisses

Directed by Yasuzô Masumura Lazne III Cinema (Japan)

Tribute to Yasuzô Masumura

Monster

Directed by Hirokazu Koreeda Pupp Cinema (Japan) Horizons

16:30

The Echo

Directed by Tatiana Huezo Husovka Theatre (Mexico, Germany) Horizons

17:00

The Survival of Kindness

Directed by Rolf de Heer Cinema B (Australia) Horizons

18:00

Here

Directed by Bas Devos Cas Cinema (Belgium) Imagina

About Dry Grasses

Directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan Drahomíra Cinema (Turkey, France, Germany, Sweden) Horizons

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Animalia

Totem

The Echo

Karlovy Vary IFF Screeenings July 30

Screening Guide continued

19:00

Midwives

Directed by Léa Fehner Congress Hall (France) Horizons

When the Waves Are Gone

Directed by Lav Diaz Cinema B (Philippines, France, Denmark Portugal) Horizons

The Mother and the Whore

Directed by Jean Eustache KV Municpal Theatre (France) Out of the Past

Animalia

Directed by Sofia Alaoui Lazne III Cinema (France, Morocco, Qatar) Horizons

The Adults

Directed by Dustin Guy Defa Pupp Cinema (USA) Horizons

19:30

Omen

Directed by Baloji Tshiani Husovka Theatre (Belgium, Netherlands, Democratic Republic of The Congo, France, South Africa) Horizons

22:00

Autobiography

Directed by Makbul Mubarak Lazne III Cinema (Indonesia, France, Singapore, Poland, Phillippines, Germany, Qatar) Horizons

Opponent

Directed by Milad Alami Pupp Cinema (Sweden) Horizons

22:30

Perpetrator

Directed by Jennifer Reeder Cinema B (USA) Horizons

Mammalia

Directed by Sebastian Mihailescu Husovka Theatre (Romania, Poland, Germany)

Imagina

24:00

In My Mother’s Skin

Directed by Kenneth Dagatan Cas Cinema (Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan) Midnight Screenings

For more screening information, please click here

The Nature of Love

About Dry Grasses

KARLOVY VARY REVIEW DAILY Wild Nights in Karlovy Vary

The festival’s Midnight Screenings confirm its commitment to versatile global genre cinema.

Max Borg, June 29, 2023

Karlovy Vary has had a Midnight Screenings section since 2006, a popular sidebar highlighting the latest trends in horror, action and pitch-black comedy. While the first line-up was more like a retrospective, with extended tributes to the likes of Kenneth Anger and George A. Romero, the 2007 edition set the tone for what this lively section is today. Its international selection of genre fare casts a flickering torchlight on both emerging directors and established filmmakers, featuring the works of, among others, Quentin Tarantino, Eli Roth, Takashi Miike, Bong Joon-ho, Tommy Wirkola and Joe Cornish.

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HORIZONS

THE MOTHER OF ALL LIES

VERDICT: Moroccan documentary maker Asmae El Moudir blends the personal with the political in her formally impressive, puppet-driven, prize-winning family memoir.

Stephen Dalton, June 30, 2023

An unorthodox hybrid documentary about excavating painful memories on both a private and national scale, The Mother of All Lies is the prize-winning sophomore feature of Moroccan film-maker Asmae El Moudir. Using several generations of her own family as cast, crew and unreliable narrators, the young director revisits some prickly home truths by literally reconstructing her former Casablanca neighbourhood in scale model form, complete with heavily stylised, slightly creepy, doll-like puppet versions of herself and her relations.

Interweaving personal memoir with wider social and political commentary, The Mother of All Lies joins a growing trend of formally inventive, semiautobiographical documentaries including Rithy Pahn’s The Missing Picture (2013), Firouzeh Khosrovani’s Radiograph of a Family (2020) and Natasa Urban’s The Eclipse (2022). As a piece of investigative journalism it feels a little too fuzzy, but as an imaginative exercise in non-fiction cinema, it is consistently interesting and often hauntingly beautiful. Full Review

MIDNIGHT SCREENINGS

In My Mother’s Skinl

Occasionally there’s a dominant theme (the 2010 edition had an Australian bent: “Ozploitation”), but overall the idea is to glimpse what’s going on at the movies after dark.

In 2023, such an overview is also a test to see how far a filmmaker can go in the eyes of the censors. Such is the case for Brandon Cronenberg’s Infinity Pool, which has played in Sundance and Berlin and has made a name for itself for having two different versions (similar to the director’s previous opus, Possessor). One is for festivals and one, slightly shortened (a masturbation scene lacks its climax, pun intended), for theaters. Perhaps there is no higher compliment for the young Canadian director, whose instincts are not that dissimilar to those of his father David. Sundance was also the initial platform for the Filipino horror In My Mother’s Skin, described as an Asian variation of Pan’s Labyrinth, mixing World War II with local folk tales.

Another hit on the festival circuit, starting with a triumphant debut at Toronto last September, Sisu is the brainchild of Jalmari Helander (Rare Exports). Pitched as a cross between First Blood and Mad Max: Fury Road, the Nordic actioner tells the story of Aatami Korppi, a lone, taciturn Finnish soldier who has left the war behind. But when he crosses paths with a group of Nazis attempting to enter Norway via Lapland, he basically becomes a more violent version of Gandalf in the mines of Moria: They shall not pass!

Similarly brutal and inventive, and another TIFF discovery, is the South Korean horror thriller Project Wolf Hunting, where a prison ship becomes the stage for an increasingly gory and insane battle between inmates, correction officers and something far from human.

Coming from Rotterdam, the German entry Captain Faggotron Saves the Universe (yes, that is the actual title, in all its rude glory) promises to be the most joyously irreverent film of the section, mixing super-heroics with religious imagery. The IMDb plot summary mentions, among other things, “an orgy of gay demons”, and that’s what they felt comfortable revealing before one sees the movie.

Full Article

MIDNIGHT SCREENINGS

Captain Faggotron Saves

the Universe

1 July 23:59 Small Hall

3 July 23:59 Cas Cinema

5 July 23:59 Cas Cinema

8 July 23:59 Small Hall

Way of the Dragon

1 July 23:59 Cas Cinema

6 July 23:59 Small Hall

Sisu

2 July 23:59 Small Hall

6 July 23:00 Grand Hall

8 July 23:59 Cas Cinema

Infinity Pool

2 July 23:59 Cas Cinema

6 July 23:59 Cas Cinema

In My Mother's Skin

3 July 23:59 Small Hall

4 July 23:59 Cas Cinema

7 July 23:59 Cas Cinema

Project Wolf Hunting

4 July 23:59 Small Hall

7 July 23:59 Small Hall

Asmae El Moudir talks about her Cannes-winning doc The Mother of All Lies

The Mother of All Lies Screenings

2 July 18:00

Small Hall

3 July 21:00

Drahomíra Cinema

7 July 22:30

Husovka Theatre

by E. Nina Rothe

The Moroccan filmmakers touches on her influences, why she constructed her film this way, and what she did when she got the news she was accepted in Un Certain Regard, where the film ended up winning her the Best Directing award, as well as the Cannes Best Documentary prize.

While we all can easily recall the Arab Spring revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, which then spread to most of the Arab world and added fuel to the fire that Western allies had already lit, most of us don’t know much about the 1981 Bread Riots in Morocco. Little visual testimony is left as the legacy of this bloody revolt, an event often referred to as the “Black Saturday ” of King Hassan II’s reign. The revolt was driven by increases in food prices, paralleling the demands of the Arab Spring. After all was said

and done, between 65 and 600 (depending on who gave the numbers) youths were left dead in Casablanca and 2,000 were arrested by police cracking down on the insurgents. It is important to remember that in the early 80’s more than half the city’s population was under the age of 15.

This is the Casablanca that filmmaker Asmae El Moudir once called home. She was born in a neighborhood deeply affected by the riots, yet never knew about their existence until one day when she questioned her family about the presence of only one photograph bearing her likeness. A photograph which the young El Moudir didn’t even think was of her.

In her sophomore feature, which had its world premiere in Un Certain Regard at Cannes, El Moudir rebuilds her neighborhood and reinvents a way to tell her story,

along with that of her family and the tragedy of her city. As she explains in her director’s statement, “during one of my visits, I saw on TV, news of the inauguration of a cemetery not far from our place, dedicated to the 1981 Bread Riots victims. I was already 25 years old when I discovered this completely forgotten event of my country’s history. The violent Bread Riots had taken place 38 years before, not only in my city, but in the middle of my family’s neighborhood.”

The result is an unconventional, complex but simply told film, a hybrid documentary titled The Mother of All Lies which won -along with Kaouther Ben Hania’s Four Daughters -- the Golden Eye for Best Documentary in Cannes. It is a very personal film, approached in a very particular way, a new way of making cinema which uses a documentary technique but done through the use of a reconstructed neighborhood and personal retelling by El Moudir and her family.

“I have been developing the film for the past 15 years but I didn’t work every day on this project,” El Moudir admits, when I sit down to interview her in Cannes. “For me, my characters are my father, my mother, my grandmother, my neighbors, and these people were

Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget

in these dark ages, if we can call it like that.” She explains further why she chose to use a miniature homemade model of her neighborhood to set her film in, because “asking them the questions about this period was not easy -- to get something cinematic out of it. I tried a lot of ways, to put microphones in the house, to ask questions and to forget them and then ask them again, but I didn’t get anything — about my personal story also. Because there is a personal story and a national story which are mixed.”

The national story, one would think, could be a problematic one to tell, yet here we are with El Moudir sitting inside the Moroccan Pavilion in Cannes. “I think it’s okay today to talk about the past, because it’s a good thing. I’m coming from the 90’s generation so we are reconciled with this past,” she admits. She also explains that she “wasn’t looking for guilty people, I just wanted to understand. How did the story go, if we don’t have any visual or concrete proof of what happened…” Which is where the reconstructed neighborhood comes in, courtesy of the filmmaker’s dad, who is also in the film. Much of the spirit of The Mother of All Lies feels to me like the Pirandello play Six Characters in Search of an Author. Instead of the actors crashing the performance to search for their lives’ meaning, here it is El Moudir’s mother, father, friends, neighbors and fiery grandmother Zahra, wielding her tiny, long stick, who do the crashing. And clashing of course, as a way to explain the future, through understanding our past. As the Father in Pirandello’s play says, “We all have a world of things inside ourselves and each one of us has his own private world. How can we understand each other if the words I use have the sense and the value that I expect them to have, but whoever is listening to me inevitably thinks that those same words have a

different sense and value, because of the private world he has inside himself, too.” El Moudir has found a way to help us understand, and for her and her family to reconcile as well.

One of El Moudir’s lead characters is definitely the reconstructed neighborhood, built by her father, Mohammed El Moudir who, as the press kit points out was “the most popular tiler/mason in the Medina of Casablanca in the ‘60s.” She took the family away with her to Marrakech, and through this miniature set of houses, lit and inhabited by mini versions of themselves, the family opened up -- to us, on the big screen, for all to see. “That ‘dispositive’ was my invention,”

El Moudir tells me, explaining further “also because I couldn’t film in some locations. Or it was not easy to get permission.” It also gave them all, “just a moment of talk, after years of silence -we just wanted to talk.” Within those moments of talking, as the petite, soft spoken yet fast-talking filmmaker admits, “we have some miracles -- like Abdullah, who started talking about what happened to him, and I lost control of my character then. This is all real life. As a filmmaker I take the real facts, but I change the way I will tell that reality.”

For complete story, click here

MIDNIGHT SCREENINGS

Pool proved divisive at its Sundance premiere last month, earning rave reviews for its stylish excess but also criticism for its loathsome characters, lurid plot and fetishistic violence. To fans of vintage cult cinema, of course, these are all plus points. Cronenberg’s third feature makes its European debut in Berlin this week ahead of wider international release in March and April.

INFINITY POOL

VERDICT: Brandon Cronenberg's darkly satirical scifi horror thriller about sun-seeking tourists on a clonekilling crime spree is a deliriously debauched joyride into Hell.

Stephen Dalton, February 21, 2023

The latest sci-fi horror fable from Canadian writerdirector Brandon Cronenberg is his most deliciously dark, richly allegorical nightmare vision to date. A bleakly satirical, sexually graphic, hallucinatory thriller about wealthy tourists resorting to debauched savagery in a fictional foreign country, Infinity

Mostly filmed on the picturesque coast of Croatia, Infinity Pool takes place in a luxury resort in the imaginary country of Li Tolqa, a sun-soaked magnet for moneyed westerners, who are insulated from the poverty, violence and religiously strict laws outside by the razor-wire fences of their hotel compound. The story initially seems to riff on familiar class-war themes, joining the current flood of caustic eat-the-rich screen dramas about decadent First Worlders suffering karmic calamity during hellish holidays, from The White Lotus to Triangle of Sadness to Speak No Evil. But while acid social commentary is clearly woven into Cronenberg’s screenplay, there are deeper, stranger libidinal forces at work here. This depraved deep dive into the lawless regions of the human psyche is more personal than political, more Triangle of Madness than Triangle of Sadness.

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INFINITY POOL (Continued)

Sullen author James Foster (Alexander Skarsgård) is in Li Tolqa desperately seeking inspiration for the belated sequel to his debut novel, accompanied and funded by his glamorous, long-suffering girlfriend Em (Cleopatra Coleman). Both appear catatonically bored until seductive, solicitous Gabi (Mia Goth on blazing good form) take an interest in James, shamelessly flattering his fragile writer’s ego. Their flirtation becomes more explicitly sexual when Gabi and her husband Alban (Jalil Lespert) invite their fellow guests on an illicit excursion away from the resort. But this boozy day out ends in tragedy when James accidentally knocks down a local farmer, killing him instantly. Gabi insists that nobody call the police, who are notoriously corrupt and violent, but James is quickly arrested and charged anyway.

Under Li Tolqa’s strict laws, ruled by honour killings and blood feuds, James now faces the prospect of execution by the dead man’s eldest son, who is just nine years old. Alternatively, in an inspired plot twist, he also has the chance to pay the state a hefty sum to create an exact clone of himself, complete with the same memories and emotions, to be killed in his place. This privileged option, as explained by

menacingly deadpan detective Thresh (Thomas Kretschmann), is part of country’s special “tourist initiative”, open only to foreigners and diplomats but not ordinary citizens. James agrees to this surreal doubling process, depicted here in one of the film’s most enticingly weird scenes, the science of which Cronenberg rightly leaves teasingly opaque.

Full Review

LOCATION FLASHBACK: St. Giles Church, Prague Czech Republic

Amadeus (2002)

The church of Saint Giles in Prague, is a monument three-aisled church built on the foundations of a Romanesque church and was consecrated on 4 May 1371.

Amadeus, released by Orion Pictures, and directed by Milos Foreman, was nomintated for over 50 film awards and won 40 including 8 Oscars and 4 Baftas.

In this scene, the wedding takes place between Wolfgang Amadeus Morzart (Tom Hulce) and his beloved Constance(Elizabeth Berridge.

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photo (c) Orion Productions

Kino Lorber Acquires US Rights to Award Winning Documentary Four Daughters

Market watch

Kino Lorber has acquired U.S. rights to Academy Award-nominee Kaouther Ben Hania’s Four Daughters, winner of the L’Oeil d’Or Award for best documentary at the Cannes Film Festival.The film will screen on the international festival circuit and open theatrically via Kino Lorber this fall, followed by a digital and home video release on all major platforms.

“…An enthralling ‘fictional documentary’ by Kaouther Ben Hania exploring the psychological states of a strong-headed Tunisian mother and her four daughters, two of whom joined Islamic State, through staged recreations and interactions with actors playing their roles...”

---JayWeissberg, The FilmVerdict

The sole Arab film in Main Competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Four Daughters is written and directed by Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania, whose 2020 film The Man Who Sold His Skin was nominated for the Academy Award for Best International Feature.

The deal for Four Daughters was brokered by Kino Lorber Senior Vice President Wendy Lidell and Samuel Blanc for The Party Film Sales. In addition to the deals previously announced during Cannes, Four Daughters has also been sold to Canada (Mongrel / Metropole), Iceland (Bio Paradis), Baltic Countries (Estofilm), Portugal (Nitrato Filmes), Romania (Bad Unicorn), and Hungary (Vertigo Media). The German release will be handled by Rapid Eye Movies.

“We were immediately captivated by Kaouther Ben Hania’s powerful documentary Four Daughters, a riveting piece of filmmaking that takes an innovative and provocative approach to nonfiction storytelling,” said Wendy Lidell, SVP of Theatrical Distribution and Acquisitions for Kino Lorber. “Ben Hania casts accomplished actors to perform alongside her real-life documentary subjects, adding a layer of complexity that gives agency to her collaborators and mines truth from the space it occupies between fact and memory. We couldn’t be more thrilled to bring this groundbreaking documentary to U.S. audiences this fall.”

Four Daughters is produced by Tanit Films in association with Cinetelefilms and Twenty Twenty in co-production with Red Sea Film Festival Foundation, ZDF/Arte, and Jour2Fête. The film is produced by Nadim Cheikhrouha in association with Habib Attia and Thanassis Karathanos.

FEST clips

Shayda selected as Closing film @ Locarno76

The San Sebastián Festival is devoting its latest classic film cycle, (co-organised with the Basque Film Archive in collaboration with the Japan Foundation and the Etxepare Basque Institute in the framework of the Euskadi-Japan 2023 program) to director Hiroshi Teshigahara (1927-2001), a key figure in Japanese cinema in the 1960s thanks to a series of experimental poetic films and his extensive collaboration with the writer Kobo Abe. The only one of his films to be distributed in Spain, the acclaimed Suna no onna / Woman in the Dunes (1964), sums up that period and Teshigahara’s style really well.

All of this relatively unknown director’s films will be screened. The cycle will be complemented by the publication of the book by Inuhiko Yomota, Avant-garde chronicles. Conversations with Hiroshi Teshigahara, translated from Japanese by Daniel Aguilar.

San Sebastian Festival takes place Sept. 22 - 30

SAVE THE DATE: #docsgetreal 2024

The 2024 edition of #docsgetreal will take place as a hybrid conference from Monday, April 15, through Thursday, April 18 in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles!

Getting Real is a biennial conference unlike any other event on the documentary calendar. Now in its fifth edition, this gathering brings documentary

filmmakers and industry professionals together in a communal space where they can build lasting relationships, encounter inspiring ideas, and host constructive conversations about the many challenges facing our growing community.

For more information, click here

On August 12, on the Piazza Grande, Locarno will screen Shayda, the powerful debut film from Iranian-Australian Director Noora Niasari, starring Zar Amir Ebrahimi (Best Actress at Cannes Film Festival in 2022) and winner of the Audience Award at Sundance this year. Actress Cate Blanchett, who is Executive Producer will also join the director and the actress on the Piazza Grande stage.

At 5:15 that same day at the Gran Rex, Noora Niasari and Zar Amir Ebrahimi will have a conversation on the theme of “Iranian women and Iranian Cinema” moderated by Cate Blanchett.

Locarno Film Festival takes place August 2 - 12

IDFA Accreditations Now Open

IDFA offers a variety of accreditations providing access to the festival, markets, industry and talent development program.

IDFA takes place Nov. 8 - 19

For more details click here

KARLOVY VARY REVIEW DAILY

Genre Films, Nonconformist Docs & More

CRYSTAL GLOBE

As the festival kicks off in the Bohemian region of the Czech Republic, we visit the Arab titles and an Iranian gem, along with film programmer Joseph Fahim.

E. Nina Rothe, June 29, 2023

The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF) kicks off this Friday, June 30th, and we wanted to put a few Arab titles on everyone's radar, but also catch up with the festival's Arab film programmer Joseph Fahim, a critic and journalist. As cinema from the Region becomes more and more popular around the world, there are still definitely hurdles it must overcome.

One of these hurdles lies with the programmers themselves, Fahim is an exception, who tend to favor narratives and themes that will appeal to the "white audience gaze" as London based T.A.P.E. Collective founder Isra Al Kassi

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WE HAVE NEVER BEEN MODERN

VERDICT: A fresh, humanistic period drama that satirises the modernist project of a Czechoslovak factory town, and its sinister demands of conformity on the eve of World War Two.

Carmen Gray, July 1, 2023

The construction of a new Czechoslovak state as a glorious example of industrialised progress is critiqued with fierce satirical aim and deep humanism (for those whose existence this nationalist project was designed to ignore) in We Have Never Been Modern. Premiering in the Crystal Globe Competition in Karlovy Vary, this highly ambitious and immaculately produced historical thriller with very up-to-date sensibilities around gender and fear of difference is the second

feature of young director Matej the worst consequences of fascism across Europe

Examining the stigmatisation and invisibility of intersex people through a frame of suspense that evokes the sinister atmosphere of a repressive surveillance state geared toward stamping out any ideological nonconformity, the film’s studied, stagey aestheticism offers its actors little air, but it’s all in keeping with a vision of rigidly imposed modernist order Full Review

MENA REGION SCREENINGS

Animalia

4 July 11:00 Grand Hall

5 July 19:00 Pupp Cinema

The Mother of All Lies

2 July 18:00 Small Hall

3 July 21:00 Drahomíra Cinema

7 July 22:30 Husovka Theatre

Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano

3 July 20:00 Grand Hall

4 July 13:00 Pupp Cinema

5 July 19:00 Lazne III Cinema

6 July 16:00 Congress Hall

Inshallah a Boy

7 July 15:00 Small Hall

8 July 13:00 KV Municipal Theatre

Goodbye Julia

3 July 13:00 KV Municipal Theatre

4 July 18:00Drahomíra Cine-ma

No Bears

3 July 16:30 Husovka Theatre

7 July 22:00 Congress Hall

said in passing during a casual conversation with yours truly, last evening. It's a fair point, because most festival audiences, including critics and fellow programmers, along with industry insiders all tend to be from very specific socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds. It's the way the industry is run and will probably take years to change for the better.

Yet this continuously shortchanges iconoclastic filmmakers and those who dare to create stories that don't belong to a certain acceptable narrative. I know of at least one beautiful film which should be in competition in Venice and will probably get overlooked because the filmmaker, the first woman to make a feature film from Bahrain, doesn't fit into the box of the "woe is me, I'm an Arab woman with all the heavy weight that carries" stereotype. Her stories are cool, her actors are international and her settings don't look anything like a refugee

camp, a poor suburb or a disheveled city in need of a white savior country to lift it out of its misery.

But steps are being made and among the titles picked for this year's Karlovy Vary by Fahim are some groundbreaking stories that push the envelope on the themes above, and little by little, are helping to erode the stereotypes.

Animalia by French-Moroccan filmmaker Sofia Alaoui is one of those titles. The sci-fi story features Itto, a young woman from a modest rural background, who is slowly adapting to the Moroccan privileged codes of her husband’s family. As she travels to meet her husband, supernatural events begin to put the country in a state of emergency, and Itto finds herself separated from her husband and new family. Alone, pregnant and looking for her way back, she finds emancipation.

Full article

NO BEARS

THE LOST CHILDREN

VERDICT: The reverie of an adult-free summer quickly becomes a monstrous nightmare in Michèle Jacob’s disconcerting portrait of childhood trauma.

Ben Nicholson, July 1, 2023

At its outset, you could be forgiven for thinking that Michèle Jacob’s The Lost Children is going to be a tale of interpersonal strife amongst a group of kids when left to their own devices. Or a fairytale story about four siblings discovering some enchanted land through a wardrobe in their sprawling, tumbledown home. Both of these elements are present, but they are in service to a far darker drama about the potential traumas of childhood and the long-lasting effects that they can have on the psyche. Playing in the Proxima competition at Karlovy Vary, the festival’s recently established home for bolder more experimental work, this is a film operating in several registers and manages to balance them all; switching from heart-pounding to tear-jerking with aplomb.

When Audrey (Iris Mirzabekaintz) and her siblings awake one summer’s morning to find that their father has disappeared, the news is treated matterof-factly, with a roll of the eyes and a shrug of the shoulders. The morning sun illuminates the leaves and the ramshackle old redbrick house, in which the siblings find themselves, feels idyllic as they bicker and play. However, it soon becomes evident that something strange is afoot and their children’s games are interrupted by strange goings-on witnessed, initially, by Audrey. First, she hears a little girl’s voice in the wall while sequestered during a game of hideand-seek and then when she’s forced to stand alone in the dark yard for a dare, glowing eyes appear on the edge of the forest and pounding footsteps begin to encroach.

Full Review

LOCATION FLASHBACK: Blahnikova

&Kostniche Intersection, Prague, Czech Republich The Gray Man (2002)

The intersection is located in the Zizkov neighborhood in Prague, known for its numerous pubs for students and tony bar with a panoramic backdrop in the commuist-era Zizkov TV Tower.

The Gray Man stars Ryan Gosling, and with a $200 million budget, it is one of the most expensive Netflix project. It opened in limited theatrical release prior to streaming.

Note that the round window and the entrance are both CGI so physical location is a little different from the film.

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THE MOST FEARED CRITIC IN SPAIN

Join TFV's Matt Micucci as he dives into the depth of El Crítico, screened within the Larger Than Life section of the 2022 Transilvania International Film Festival, in a conversation with its directors Juan Zavala and Javier Morales Pérez. The film is a documentary on Carlos Boyero, one of Spanish cinema's most revered and feared critics. The conversation also touches on the state and influence of film criticism today.

photo (c) Orion Productions

HORIZONS

PAST LIVES

VERDICT: A remarkably delicate, moving romance destined to be a major indie hit, boasting superb dialogue, terrific performances and an insightful understanding of how the what-ifs of life so often dangle around the perimeters of our lives.

Jay Weissberg, February 19, 2023

There’s a scene about threequarters of the way through Past Lives when a married couple talk in bed, he touching on his insecurities and she trying to make him comprehend that their relationship is more inviolate than he’s able to believe. The writing is superb, surprising us by how much it matches what we’re thinking while being so true to these characters. Listening to Celine Song’s dialogue, we’re reminded by just how rare it is to hear honest adult conversations like this in film, ones that don’t shout or grandstand but burrow into the emotions in the subtlest of ways. Past Lives is a remarkably delicate debut, a romance that plays on the borders of standard love stories but brings a rich understanding of how love shifts over time, and how the what-ifs in life so often dangle around the perimeters of our lives. The exceptional buzz generated in Sundance will only keep building, resulting in a well-deserved indie hit.

Much of playwright Song’s own life is here, which makes sense given the acuity with which she writes these characters, but it’s not only her avatar who gets such insightful treatment. She’s beautifully captured the middle class immigrant experience and that perception of being part of two cultures, exacerbated by the ways our child and adult selves process a sense of self. Yet she gives equal weight to the one who remains at home, whose present life is less fulfilled and for whom what could have been remains a driving force throughout his life. Song demonstrably relishes the way cinema can transcend certain limitations of the stage, and while her ear for dialogue is unerring, she’s not made a talky theater piece. The film is divided into multiple periods, briefly opening in the present and then jumping back 24 years, when twelve-yearold Na Young (Seung Ah Moon) is crying because for the first time Hae Sung (Seung Min Yim) got better grades.

Full Review

A Year of European Support

2 July 22:00

4 July 09:00

7 July17:00

FSS INCLUSION

Market watch

In the past year, 179 European films received Film Sales Support (FSS) from Hamburg-based EFP (European Film Promotion) accomplishing its core mission to facilitate sales to countries outside of Europe.

FSS plays a crucial role in facilitating investment in additional promotional activities which makes a difference for the international perception of European cinema. Financial support in overlapping years was available for EFP-affiliated world sales companies to bolster campaigns of altogether 143 finished and 36 unfinished European fiction films, animations and documentaries.

The mainly digital marketing campaigns were developed to target buyers at the festivals of Toronto, Tokyo, Sundance, SXSW and Tribeca in the US, Hot Docs in Canada and San Sebastián as well as at the prominent international film markets, AFM in the US, FILMART in Hong Kong, Asian Contents & Film Market in South Korea, the EFM in Berlin and the Marché du Film in Cannes.

Below are some of the titles, listed by Genre. For a complete list of titles and and upcoming festivals they opportunities, click here:

Animation

White Plastic Sky (Films Boutique)

The Siren (Bac Films Distribution)

Rosa and The Stone Troll (LevelK)

Argonuts (Kinology)

Documetaries

Four Daughters (The Party Film Sales)

Lynx Man (Rise and Shine World Sales)

Female Directors

Club Zero (Coproduction Office)

When It Melts (The Party Film Sales)

Smoke Sauna Sisterhood (Autlook Film Sales)

Ama Gloria (Pyramide)

(covers the promotion of films depicting gender balance, equity and inclusion)

Great YarmouthProvisional Figures (LevelK)

Rapture (Best Friends Forever)

Lala (Slingshot films)

FSS FOR FILMS FROM SWITZERLAND

(Thanks to funding from Swiss Films, promotional campaigns from Switzerland received a push form FSS)

Blackbird, Blackbird, Blackberry (Totem Films)

Let Me Go (M-Appea World Salesl)

Happy Pills (Lightdox / Sweet Spot Docs)

2

Club Zero

KARLOVY VARY REVIEW DAILY Kudos to Jalmari Helander

The Finnish director is the creative force behind 'Sisu', one of the action cinema highlights of the year.

Max Borg, July 2, 2023

Though he won’t be in Karlovy Vary, Finnish filmmaker Jalmari Helander is still a keenly felt presence in the selection of his third feature film, Sisu, in the Midnight section. A huge hit on the festival circuit starting with its Toronto premiere last September, the film has proven so popular in its native Finland, where it opened on January 27, that at the time of writing it still boasts three screenings a day in the Helsinki region alone. And American distributor Lionsgate also believed in its potential, releasing it in

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PROXIMA

IN CAMERA

VERDICT: Naqqash Khalid delivers a blistering feature debut with this fragmentary portrait of an actor that delves into questions of performance and identity.

Ben Nicholson, July 2, 2023

What does it take to make it in showbiz? It’s a question that’s been addressed in all manner of cinema since the medium’s inception, but there are relatively few examples of this familiar scenario that have been taken in quite such a bold direction as that of In Camera. Receiving its world premiere in the Proxima competition in Karlovy Vary, the film is the feature debut of exciting British talent Naqqash Khalid, who is ably supported by a strong cast and team of collaborators. A shifting portrait of

a young man in search of his big break, this drama is filled with experimental flourishes and seems indicative of the kind of uncompromising vision that the Proxima competition was formed to champion.

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ERRATA CORRIGE

The author of the opening story yesterday “Genre Films, Nonconformist Docs & More” was incorrectly attributed. It was written by E. Nina Rothe, Editor of The Film Verdict Middle East.

Aden (Nabhaan Rizwan) is an aspiring actor; “I’m auditioning,” he perennially tells people when they ask whether they’d have seen him in anything. That process of looking for work is effectively the context – or perhaps more accurately, the milieu – within which In Camera takes place. The audience is introduced to Aden in a world of demoralising screen tests, method workshops, and awkward conversations about late rent payments with his doctor flatmate, Bo (Rory Fleck Byrne). The film opens on the set of a buzzy cop drama in which Aden has been cast as a cadaver, soon revealed to have been caked in Kensington Gore in his own clothes and subsequently ejected from set to walk home covered in blood spatter with the promise of a dry-cleaning refund.

Khalid is not overly interested in typical narrative structures, instead, the story (for want of a better word) is assembled from an array of splintered moments. The director, who also wrote the film, described the project as being like a concept album, where sequences are placed in concert, like songs on a record.

Full Review

1,006 theaters on opening weekend in April. It ultimately grossed over $7 million in the U.S., a respectable number for a Nordic film with no recognizable stars in the cast (although Norwegian actor Aksel Hennie, who plays the German commander, has popped up in several Hollywood productions). The film’s appeal lies in a very simple yet brutal story: Nazis are on their way to Norway via Lapland, until during their march they cross paths with a lone, not particularly talkative, Finn. It turns out he’s a former soldier who, much like that other Lionsgate icon John Wick, has a reputation for being able to kill anyone who gets in his way, by any means necessary. And while he may be a man of few words, his fists and pickaxe do the talking for him. He’s the literal embodiment of the word sisu, a Finnish idiom that is not easy to translate (although the opening title card does try to provide a definition). “That’s why

I made the movie”, Helander quipped back in September, when the Midnight Madness crowd in Toronto got to witness the unveiling of the main character Aatami Korppi and his Nazi killing spree.

The role of Korppi was written specifically for actor Jorma Tommila, Helander’s frequent collaborator and brother-in-law. They first worked together on the Rare Exports film series, consisting of two shorts and one feature, a gorily funny anticonsumerist satire rooted in the Finnish Santa Claus tradition. Instead of the nice old man made famous by Coca-Cola adverts, he’s a goat-faced demon (his Finnish name, Joulupukki, literally translates as “Christmas Goat”) who enjoys eating children. The film was also a coming-of-age story, with Onni Tommila (Jorma’s son and the director’s nephew) playing the young protagonist.

Full article

Sisu

ARSENIE. AN AMAZING AFTERLIFE

VERDICT: Alexandru Solomon leads an offbeat, high-stakes pilgrimage that connects dark history past and present, interrogating the idolisation of Romanian mystic Arsenie Boca through re-enactment and activist exploits.

Carmen Gray, July 2, 2023

Arsenie Boca was a Romanian priest and mystic who claimed to have paranormal healing powers. He was imprisoned under Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and died in 1989, just weeks before the ruler’s overthrow and execution. Today, his picture hangs in taxis and stores all over the country, while his cult popularity resurges among Orthodox believers and conspiracy theorists, amid calls for his canonisation.

The dramatic screen potential of the life of Boca, a handsome monk with an intense gaze who comes off like a more pinupfriendly version of Rasputin, is obvious. But in the hands of filmmaker Alexandru Solomon, a rigorous chronicler of history, hubris and state-sanctioned power abuses (his past documentaries include Tarzan’s Testicles (2017), on a failed Soviet experiment in Abkhazia), this was never going to be simply an entertaining, reductive biography of a colourful character. What Solomon presents us with instead

in Arsenie. An Amazing Afterlife,which had its world premiere in Transilvania and screens in the Proxima competition in Karlovy Vary, is an indirect portrait of a contemporary Romania hijacked by charlatans and brutes. It bristles with frustration and futility, as the director, taking on the responsibilities of narrator, concerned citizen, and tour guide through decades of national atrocities, fails (by his own admission) to get to the bottom of Boca’s deep allure, or to resolve his own alienation over the exclusionary violence he detects at the heart of the phenomenon.

It is a lot to bite off, in a film dense with historical allusions and complex associations, one that uses the political performance art of pilgrims in dress-up re-enacting events to coax breakthroughs in understanding. This offbeat, cerebral approach will limit its mainstream accessibility (think Radu Jude’s 2018 I Do Not Care If We Go Down In History As Barbarians Full Review

LOCATION FLASHBACK: Ministry

of Transport of the Czech Republic Casino Royale (2006)

The Ministry of Transport is located in New Town, a busy commercial hub centered on Wenceslas Square.

Casino Royale is the 21st in the Eon Productions, James Bond series. The film premiered at the Odeon Leicester Square on 14 November 2006, going on to gross $616 Million wordwide, the 4th highest in the series.

In this scene, James Bond (Daniel Craig) follows Alex Dimitrios (Simon Abkarian) to Miami knowing he is up to something, but what?

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photo (C) Columbia Pictures

HORIZONS

THE DELINQUENTS

VERDICT: A delicious reverie on escaping capitalism’s numbing daily drudge and finding the true meaning of freedom, “The Delinquents” is a rare three-hour charmer sure to be scooped up in multiple territories.

Jay Weissberg, May 18, 2023

In almost every Cannes there are one or two Un certain regard titles that make everyone wonder why they’re not in competition rather than some of the mediocre entries from established auteurs. Rodrigo Moreno’s The Delinquents, like last year’s Godland by Hlynur Pálmason, is that film, guaranteed to be talked about and celebrated far more than many in the splashier section. Putting a big ole’ bullseye on capitalism yet doing so with a great deal of understated humor, The Delinquents wears its cleverness so lightly you barely realize how expertly Moreno (A Mysterious World, El Custodio) is weaving together characters and themes, sensationally accompanied by musical selections as compelling as life outside the rat race. Paralleling a couple of bank employees who seek to escape the suffocating grip of daily clock-punching, the film backpedals the heist element to draw out an awakening to broader concepts of freedom and fulfilment. The only delinquents here will be hesitant buyers who should be nabbing this long but marvelously rewarding gem. Everything about Morán (Daniel Elías) says nondescript, from the dull earth colors of his suit and nascent comb-over to his job as treasurer in a downtown Buenos Aires bank whose bland wood décor hasn’t changed since the early 1970s. When colleague Isnardi (Lalo Rotavería) fills in for teller Román (Esteban Bigliardi) after the latter leaves work early to have a neck brace removed, Morán sees the opportunity he’s been waiting for: he enters the vaults ostensibly to safely store the day’s cash intake, Full Review

HORIZONS

LOS DELINCUENTES

CINE VERDICT: Una deliciosa ensoñación sobre cómo escapar de la adormecedora esclavitud diaria del capitalismo y encontrar el verdadero significado de la libertad. Los delincuentes es increíble hechizo de tres horas que seguramente será captado por múltiples territorios

Jay Weissberg, May 19, 2023 (Traducido por Lucy Virgen)

En casi todos los Cannes hay uno o dos títulos de Una cierta mirada que hacen que todos se pregunten por qué no están en competencia en lugar de alguna de las participaciones mediocres de autores establecidos. Los delincuentes de Rodrigo Moreno, como Godland de Hlynur Pálmason el año pasado, es esa película; está garantizado que será comentada y celebrada mucho más que varias en la sección más llamativa. Poniendo un gran centro de diana en el viejo y conocido capitalismo, pero haciéndolo con una gran cantidad de humor sutil, Los delincuentes usa su ingenio tan a la ligera que apenas nos damos cuenta de cuán expertamente Moreno (Un mundo misterioso, El Custodio) está entretejiendo personajes y temas, sensacionalmente acompañado por selecciones musicales tan atractivas como la vida fuera de la carrera de ratas. Paralelamente a un par de empleados bancarios que buscan escapar de las garras sofocantes del reloj checador, la película da marcha atrás al tema del atraco para provocar un despertar a conceptos más amplios de libertad y auto realización. Los únicos delincuentes aquí serán los compradores dudosos que deberían atrapar esta joya, larga pero maravillosamente gratificante.

Todo sobre Morán (Daniel Elías) es anodino, desde los apagados colores tierra de su traje y su peinado para tapar la naciente calvicie, hasta su trabajo como tesorero en un banco del centro de Buenos Aires cuya sosa decoración de madera no ha cambiado desde principios de la década de 1970. Full Review

Locations clips USA

When Bensaid met the employees of the filming location, he affirmed that “the Ministry will continue to back this type of production and contribute to film and cultural industry projects,” noting that “this incident will not affect Ouarzazate as an international film destination.”

Kualoa Ranch, Hawaii celebrates Jurassic Park’s 30th Anniversary

Earlier this month, Kualoa Ranch, which is a film location, tourist attraction, nature reserve and working cattle ranch, created an awareness promotion on Instagram offering free LEGO® sets from the 30th anniversary collection. LEGO® Jurassic World kits feature scenery that is unmistakable to anyone who’s ever been to Kualoa Ranch in Windward Oahu.

Known as “the Backlot of Hawaii,” Kualoah as maintained, for decades, its dominance among top film and TV production locations that offers the rich beauty of Hawaii in a quiet and secluded setting. Only 45 minutes from Honolulu Airport and harbor shipping facilities, Kualoa is easily accessible.

Kualoa is a 4,000 acre Private Nature Reserve as well as a working cattle ranch with more than 600 head of cattle, 120 horses and 200 sheep, stretching from the steep mountain cliffs to the sparkling waters of Kaneohe Bay Located on the eastern shores of Oahu, Kualoa is just 24 miles

from the hustle and bustle of Waikiki.The reserve terrain varies from waonahele … dense Hawaiian rainforest … to waokanaka… broad open valleys.

Since the filming of the original Jurassic Park, Kualoah Ranch has been host to over 200 individual films, television shows, music videos, & fashion shoots.

For more, click here

Morocco

Morocco’s Minister of Youth, Culture and Communication, Mohamed Mehdi Bensaid, visited the filming location of Gladiator2in Ouarzazate, following a recent minor fire at the studio.The small fire that broke out was quickly contained by members of the film crew.

Bensaid also met with British director and producer Ridley Scott and his team, stating that “Ouarzazate and Morocco are considered an international film destination offering considerable potential for the shooting of the world’s biggest film productions,” according to a press release by the Ministry ofYouth, Culture and Communication.

For more, click here

Budapest

Day of The Jackal Production to Begin

New espionage thriller, The Day of the Jackal, starring Eddie Redmayne, is a contemporary reimagining of Frederick Forsyth’s classic novel and is set to start filming in Budapest. The series follows a professional assassin who is contracted by a French paramilitary dissident to kill French President Charles de Gaulle.

Shooting should last for seven months, and take place in at least 3 other European countries: Austria, Croatia and London. For more, click here

The Film Distribution Innovation Hub Returns to KVIFF

Europa Distribution returns to the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival for a new edition of the Film Distribution Innovation Hub where 30 independent distributors, coming from all over Europe and beyond, are participating,

The Film Distribution Innovation Hub launched last year to create a dedicated space during the festival’s Industry Days Program, for distributors to discuss the innovation needed to support the promotion and release of their films. On Tuesday 4 July, Europa Distribution members will take part in a closed workshop, reviewing the best strategies for digital marketing, data analytics, rights management, and other aspects of distribution and publishing. Distributors will split into working groups to discuss the innovation they need, covering context, current options and future design. They will also have an opportunity to share best practices and examples of tools they are already using.

Later in the day distributors will share their conclusions, ideas and next steps with the rest of the participants in wrap up discussions. These conclusions will then be presented at an open panel, entitled ‘The Missing: The Innovations Innovators Need’, by distributors: Daan Vermeulen (Cinema Delicatessen, the Netherlands), Gianluca Buttari (Teodora Film, Italy)

and Samantha Faccio (Tucker Film, Italy).The panel and workshop will be moderated by Michael Gubbins (SampoMedia, UK).

Europa Distribution is the international association of independent film publishers and distributors, created in 2006. With more than 115 leading independent film distributors representing 31 countries in Europe and beyond – acting as a network and think tank, and serving as the voice of the sector.

For over 15 years, Europa Distribution has been creating new bridges for its members to share knowledge, experience and ideas.

Europa Distribution will be organising many more networking events for distributors and other film professionals in 2023, to discuss the unique challenges of promoting and publishing European independent films, including at:

New Nordic Films in Haugesund on 22-25 Venice Production Bridge on 1-6 September San Sebastian Film Festival on 24-28 September IDFA in Amsterdam on 12-14 November.

Europa Distribution has also launched the most recent editions of their EDMentorShe Programme and their Distributors on the Move Programme.

KARLOVY VARY REVIEW DAILY CRYSTAL GLOBE

Death Becomes Him Jan Soldat on Christopher Lee, death scenes and manipulating emotions

EMPTY NETS

VERDICT: Behrooz Karamizade’s handsomely mounted drama is a compelling allegorical tale about the tragic loss of innocence at the hands of the powerful.

Ben Nicholson, July 3, 2023

What it means to succeed in a culture designed to curb that possibility lies at the heart of Behrooz Karamizade’s wellappointed drama, Empty Nets Premiering as part of the main Crystal Globe Competition at this year’s Karlovy Vary, the film follows a familiar trajectory, but a layered screenplay, pristine cinematography and strong performances across the board make this a gripping, emblematic story of hardship and the overwhelming force of social power structures. Anchored by a fine performance from relative

newcomer, Hamid Reza Abbasi, it feels destined for a long festival life.

German-Iranian filmmaker Karamizade taps into a vein of morality play that has been made famous over the past several years by the work of Asghar Farhadi. Here, the quandary is less about the relative ethics of a complex situation, and more a parable about the pressures placed on people – especially when they come from less affluent backgrounds – in systems of oppression. The director has Continues next page

By Max Borg, July 3, 2023

As a way to combat lockdown ennui, German documentarian Jan Soldat started researching death scenes in cinema, and actors with a particularly high amount of them. Based on this research, he put together short montages featuring Keanu Reeves, Lance Henriksen, Udo Kier and Christopher Lee and even Nicolas Cage “That one’s a bit boring”, the director concedes.

The Kier short, Staging Death, premiered at the Quinzaine in Cannes in May 2022, while the Lee film, Faces of Death, is part of the Imagina lineup at Karlovy Vary Continues next page

spoken about wanting to offer a perspective that speaks about the struggles of young people in Iran today. Through different elements of this story, he addresses the long fingers of traditional, patriarchal values, presents a microcosm of dictatorial regimes, and highlights the long-standing structural inequalities that serve to crush hope.

The story follows star-crossed lovers, Amir (Hamid Reza Abbasi) and Narges (Sadaf Asgari), a young couple who live in a town near the Caspian Sea. Amir is from a humbler background than Narges, and while she is keen for him to speak to her parents about their potential marriage, he wants to make sure he’s in a better financial position first. This leads Amir to take a job at a fishery an hour or so up the coast, where he quickly becomes involved in lessthan-savoury activity, aiding in poaching and couriering illegal caviar into town.

Hamid Reza Abbasi is perfectly cast in the lead role, convincing both as the young romantic hero whose charm and ideals have swept Narges off her feet, but also when the eyes are hollowed out and the cheeks sunken by what he is forced to do to thrive.

Full Review

Faces of Death

film festival this week. Amusingly, despite the topic, Soldat doesn’t have a favorite Christopher Lee death scene, or even a favorite film starring the late British horror icon. “I loved doing the research, as a documentarian I’m very nerdy about compiling lists and whatnot, but I’m not really a fan of Lee’s roles”, he tells TFV. Still, it made sense for him to explore the subject via the erstwhile portrayer of Dracula, Count Dooku and Saruman. “There’s a sense of film history through the evolution of his career, and his death scenes, same as with Udo Kier who’s had a similarly rich filmography.” As suggested by the title, the short is more about Lee’s performance rather than the death scene itself, as opposed to the Kier version. “Yes, indeed”, says Soldat, adding “It’s also a reference to the amount of monsters and villains he played.”

The two films follow a similar structure, in that the scenes are not edited chronologically, but according to themes. In Lee’s case,

that means multiple scenes in a row where he gets burned, for example, followed by others where he’s stabbed. There’s also another reasoning behind this, explains the director: “I wanted to separate the black-and-white films from the ones in color, and there was a time when he alternated between them.”

The major difference in methodology? Soldat didn’t watch all the films all the way through this time. “I did it for the other actors, and with Udo Kier, who has more than 200 films on his CV, it took an entire year, because for some of his work I had to travel to Düsseldorf or Amsterdam for private viewings, and one film he made is only viewable on a VHS copy in Toronto, and I couldn’t afford to fly to Canada just for that. So with Lee, even though I had all the films quite easily, either on Blu-Ray or via legal digital platforms, I fast-forwarded a lot, because I no longer had the time to sit through all of it.”

Full article

HORIZONS

PURE UNKNOWN

VERDICT: A forensic anthropologist works to return names to the unidentified dead that EU states have forsaken in this sensitive yet urgent and persuasive observational documentary.

Carmen Gray, July 3, 2023

Two tragedies at sea made global headlines in June: the sinking off Greece’s coast of a fishing boat smuggling migrants, killing at least 82 and leaving hundreds missing, and the implosion of the submersible Titan while transporting five high-paying

passengers to tour the Titanic’s wreck. The difference in rescue responses and allocated resources was vast: we soon knew a lot of biographical information about the Titan crew of businessmen and explorers, but the refugees remained faceless, anonymous numbers, leading some to ask whether states consider some lives more valuable than others. Pure Unknown, the feature debut of writer and editor Valentina Cicogna in co-direction with Mattia Colombo (whose previous documentaries include Il Posto (2022), on economic desperation among Italian nurses) was made before these latest catastrophes. But the film, which screens in the Horizons section at Karlovy Vary after premiering at Visions du Reel, could not be more poignant in contextualising what is at stake in state responses to such disasters. Politically engaged festivals should snap up this observational doc, which is as sensitive as it is urgent and timely in calling out the failure of nations of the European Union to act together to ensure the right of the deceased to a name.

We follow the day-to-day work of Milan-based professor Cristina Cattaneo, who runs Italy’s first forensic anthropology lab, using science to help solve crimes and missing person cases. Full Review

LOCATION FLASHBACK:

Trojan Mill, Unetice, Czech Repulic Bourne Identity (2002)

Trojan Mill is located in the territory of Prague 6 in the Suchdol District only 15 min from the city center, yet in the middle of theTiche udoli nature reserve.

Bourne Identity is the first of the series based on Robert Ludlum’s 1980 novel. It was directed and coproduced by Doug Liman and written by Tony Gilroy and William Blake Herron.

Bourne (Matt Damon) and Marie (Franka Potente) seek shelter at Eamon’s (Tim Dutton) farm, but the peace and quiet does not last.

THE

photo (C) Universal Pictures

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HORIZONS

PERFECT DAYS

VERDICT: In this low-key but charming Cannes competition contender, German art-house veteran Wim Wenders delivers a poetic paean to Zen and the art of toilet maintenance.

Stephen Dalton, May 25, 2023

Veteran German New Wave pioneer Wim Wenders takes us on a tour of Tokyo’s public toilets for his first dramatic feature in six years. This might sounds like the punchline to a joke about how far the director of Paris, Texas (1984) and Wings of Desire (1987) has slipped in critical standing since his revered, prizewinning career peak. But Perfect Days turns out to be a surprisingly charming, haunting, moving work with deliberate echoes of Japanese cinema legend Yasujiro Ozu.

With Wenders shifting focus to documentaries in his later career, this Cannes competition contender is only his third fiction feature in the last 15 years. With its meditative mood and wistful, personal tone, Perfect Days is likely to meet a warmer welcome than the poorly received flops Every Thing Will Be Fine (2015) and Submergence (2017), reconnecting the 77-year-old auteur with his arthouse roots.

Perfect Days began as a proposal from a Japanese company inviting Wenders to shoot a series of short fictional films centred around a recently installed array of architecturally striking public toilets in Tokyo’s Shibuya district, rooted in the idea of promoting Japan’s omotenashi culture of hospitality and public service. Instead of the shorts, Wenders suggested making a full dramatic feature on the same subject, all linked by a single protagonist. Working from a screenplay co-written with Takuma Takasaki, with dialogue entirely in Japanese, he shot the film in just 17 days in a window during post-production for his other Cannes entry this year, the 3D artist-profile documentary Anselm Full Review

FEST clips

Taipei Film Festival International New Talent Competition Winners

The award ceremony of the 25th Taipei Film Festival International New Talent was held on June 27, awarding the Grand Prize plus a cash award of NT$ 600,000 to the Tunisian film Under the Fig Trees and the Special Jury Prize to theYemeni film The Burdened.The Japanese film Amikoreceived the Taiwanese Film Critics Society Award while the Audience Choice Award went to the Taiwanese film APlaceCalledSilence.

The International New Talent Competition is one of the two competitions at Taipei Film Festival Deputy Mayor of Taipei City LinYi-hua and Taipei Film Festival PresidentYee Chih-yen award the certificate of selection to the twelve selected films.

Many representatives of the films attended the ceremony, sucn as Kai Ko (director of BadEducation), Sam Quah (director of APlaceCalledSilence), Aleksandra Kostina (producer of Pamfir), Kattia G. Zúñiga (director of Sister&Sister),Amr Gamal and Chen Ming-chang (director and music composer of TheBurdened). Host George Hu demonstrates his great hosting skills and fluency in English.

This year, the jury consisted of the President Chen Shiang-chyi, a Taiwanese actress and the four members, including the Korean producer Oh Jung-wan, the Hong Kong director Samson Chiu Li-ang Ching, the Taiwanese director LouYi-an and the Berlinale Head of Programming Mark Peranson. Chen Shiang-chyi expresses,‘This time I feel so happy to be the judge. I discover many inter-national co-productions and films directed by bril-liant female directors or made in the Middle East. I really want to award them all. ’

Jury of the Competition Program (Features) at 29th Sarajevo Film Festival

Actress and director Mia Wasikowska was named jury president. Actor Zlatko Burić, actress Danica Ćurcić, Director and Actor Juraj Lerotić along with curator of MoMA’s Department of Film Josh Siegel will also serve on the Jury.

Sarajevo Film Festival takes place Aug 11 - 18

Cairo Film Fest to honor Yousry Nasrallah

He wil recieve the Golden Pyramid Honorary Award for Lifetime Achievement at the 45th edtion of CIFF

CIFF president, actor Hussien Fahmy stated,“I’m really glad because the Egyptian directorYousry Nasrallah is taking part in this edition. I appreciate this honor. He is a unique director and his works are unforgettable.These works are so prominent in the history of Egyptian cinema. He is a cherished friend and colleague ”

Cairo Film Festival takes place Nov 15 - 24

FEST clips

LOS ANGELES LATINO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ANNOUNCES 2023 AWARD WINNERS

Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival (LALIFF), one of the most prestigious events in Latino cinema,announced its winners last week.Academy Award®nominated actor Edward James Olmos, founder of the Latino Film Institute, made the announcement the LALIFF award winners. “This year’s LALIFF winners perfectly encapsulate the brilliance and diversity within our community,” said Olmos. “I’d like to express our sincerest gratitude to the filmmakers for sharing their exceptional films, vision, and talent with us.You have made this festival truly remarkable.”The jury included well regarded industry professionals who meticulously evaluated each entry across various categories considering artistic merit, originality, directorial vision and technical excellence.

The 2023 Spark Animation Grant Sponsored by

Netflix

The Spark Animation Grant awarded $20,000 USD to three US-based Latino animation filmmakers

Alec Castillo, Danna Galeano, Sandra Suarez

Best Animated Short Film Award

Presented by LatinX in Animation (LXiA)

The jury included Natasha Kline, Octavio Rodriguez and KarissaValencia.This award comes with a $2,000 USD cash prize granted to the filmmaker by Ad Astra Media, a Cintiq by Wacom, and animation software by Toon Boom

BLANKET OF WORDS

directed by Carlos Zerpa, Jacobo Albán and Beltrán

Pérez

Best Episodic Short Award

Presented by FX

The jury included Rossana Baumeister, Jorge Alfaro, Summer Joy “SJ” Main Muñoz, Sofia Davila and Jenny Rabago.The award comes with a $2,000 USD cash prize granted to the creator

ASTROPACKERS

created by LuisaVelasquez and Felipe Rodriguez

LALIFF Works in Progress

Sponsored by Amazon Studios

The winners will receive funds that will be divided based on each feature film’s post-production needs SISTERS

written, produced and performed by Marta Cross, Valeria Maldonado andVirginia Novello

PAPÁ MELISSA

directed by Sophia Stieglitz and produced by Constanza Castro and Doménica Castro.

OMNI LOOP

directed by Bernardo Britto

Best US Latino Live Action Short Award

Presented by Comcast NBCUniversal Telemundo

The jury included Aitch Alberto, LindaYvette Chavez and Kevin Shih.The award comes with a $4,000 USD cash prize to be shared by the director and producer (based on the “Produced By” credit)

DEAD ENDERS

directed by Fidel Ruiz-Healy and Tyler Walker

For Complete list, click here

KARLOVY VARY REVIEW DAILY SPECIAL SCREENING

Shorts That Impressed Us at KVIFF 57

RESTORE POINT

VERDICT: Death is not the end in Czech director Robert Hloz's stylish and ambitious future-noir Euro-thriller debut.

Stephen Dalton, July 4, 2023

A lightly philosophical sci-fi crime thriller set in a near-future Europe, Restore Point is one of the more hotly anticipated local premieres unveiled this week at Karlovy Vary film festival. Glossy and gripping, Czech director Robert Hloz’s ambitious and impressively polished debut feature boasts high-calibre production design and a dense, twist-heavy, technodystopian plot that feels at times like an extended episode of the cult Netflix series Black Mirror.

A Czech co-production with Poland, Slovakia and Serbia,

Restore Point also launches this week at two other genre-focussed festivals, Neuchatel in Switzerland and Bucheon in Korea. Czech language dialogue may prove a limiting factor internationally, but the loyal global audience for smart sci-fi cinema should boost its prospects. Domestic cinema release is set for September.

Restore Point takes place in 2041 around an unnamed Central European metropolis. The location is never specified but everybody speaks Czech, which may be a Continues next page

From heart-breaking performances to queasy satire, from Pedro Costa to Christopher Lee, there was something for everyone in this year's shorts. By Ben Nicholson, July 4, 2023

As ever, the 57th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival included a number of short films across several sections of its program, most notably in Pragueshorts and Imagina. The former includes films screened at the Pragueshorts festival, a sister event to Karlovy Vary arranged by the same organisers, while Imagina surveys the more experimental and poetic sides of cinema. This year, three themed programmes comprised the Continues next page

subtle clue. In this quasi-utopian society, medical and computer technology have both progressed to the point where they can virtually cheat death, since anyone who dies in an unnatural or untimely manner can be resurrected by digitally rebooting back to their former self. The catch is this system is only legally permitted using information backed up during the last 48 hours, as earlier copies are unstable and dangerous. Not everybody supports this human reset system. River of Life, an underground terrorist group led by Toffer (Milan Ondrik), fight for a more “natural” kind of life and death by kidnapping victims, waiting for their back-up window to expire, then murdering them. Like an extreme version of vaccine deniers, these anti-immortality hacktivists are also targeting the state-owned Institute of Restoration, led by slippery tycoon Rohan (Václav Neužil), in a bid to erase millions of personal files. Amplifying this threat, the Institute’s chief computer scientist David (Matej Hádek) has just been murdered in a roadside ambush alongside his wife. Oddly, neither seems to have made recent backup files, so they cannot legally be revived. Full Review

SHORTS (Continued)

Fairplay

Pragueshorts section, including a selection of shorts for kids, one screening dedicated to past awardwinners, and some newer Czech films.

From Caroline Taillet’s heartbreaking performance in Maïa Deschamps Oysters to the atavistic striving of Zoel Aschbacher’s stomach-churning satire Fairplay, the programme of award-winners included some stirring moments. Several films, like Rakan Myasi’s Trumpets in the Sky and Hylnur Pálmason’s Nest, will be familiar to festival goers across the past couple of years. Indeed, Pálmason’s film and Ramzi Bashour’s The Trees played at this very festival just last summer. As such, this line-up and the collection of films aimed at younger viewers have undoubtedly gone down well with audiences but brought little of fresh interest to those keen to see new work in the short format.

The third Pragueshorts screening, of newer Czech films, was a little more intriguing, with two pieces in particular warranting extra attention. Both films deal with individuals who become involved in less-than-savoury practices and are forced to come to terms with the decisions they’ve made. In the case of Damián Vondrášek’s Rites, two boys on the social margins have decided to make a bid to join a street gang. Both must decide how far they’re willing to go for acceptance, in this coming-of-age story with the aesthetic of a summer afternoon’s adventure, but far darker possibilities. An even more dangerous gang preside over Martin Kuba’s Vinland, in which a Georgian immigrant labours for Russian mobsters in Prague. An educated man, he has his boss’s trust, but an altruistic act in the name of justice might jeopardise everything.

Oysters

Arguably, though, the main draw for shorts at Karlovy Vary this year was the selection in the Imagina section, where perhaps the most notable inclusion was a new film by revered auteur Pedro Costa. A strange but compelling piece, The Daughters of Fire concerns three sisters separated by the eruption of the Pico do Fogo on Cape Verde. Full article

Prosinecki

THE HYPNOSIS

VERDICT: An apparently well-put-together couple begin to come loose at the seams after a hypnotherapy session in Ernst De Geer’s awkward and offbeat satire.

Ben Nicholson, July 4, 2023

A couple who has founded a women’s health start-up find their relationship unravelling during a pitching retreat in Ernst De Geer’s sly satire on individualism and conformity, The Hypnosis. The film recently made its bow in Karlovy Vary as part of the Crystal Globe competition and its blend of awkward and goofy comedy paired with its multivalent commentaries on the social dynamics at play throughout would suggest its likely to find admirers at festivals and beyond, particularly those with a weakness for uncomfortable situation comedy.

The duo at the film’s centre are Vera (Asta Kamma August) and André (Herbert Nordrum), partners in business and life who are the co-founders of a new app designed to raise awareness of women’s health issues. They’re a fairly affluent pair, who work well together albeit that André has a habit of speaking over, or making decisions for, his other half.

They’re progressive types, whose relatively privileged background comes to bear when Vera’s mother pulls some strings to get them into a selective pitching workshop called Shake Up where they’ll be amongst several startups being coached by the influential Julian (David Fukamachi Regnfors) before being introduced to potential investors. Before they leave, Vera visits a psychotherapist for help kicking her smoking habit, but comes away with an additional sense of selfempowerment which manifests as a thorough lack of social inhibitions.

Kamma August manages the transition well; her Vera goes from a wallflower who is principled but lacks the confidence to stand up for herself, to someone with scarce regard for the impression she is casting on others. Although there are a few scenes that begin to hint at the change – she’s slightly more assertive with her mother, Full Review

HORIZONS EL ECO

CINEVERDICT: La directora mexicana-salvadoreña Tatiana Huezo regresa a su primer amor cinematográfico con este documental conmovedor y bellamente fotografiado sobre adolescentes en una comunidad de Puebla, participante en la sección Encuentros en el Festival de Berlin.

Lucy Virgen, February 17, 2023

La productora, directora y co-editora Tatiana Huezo observa sin aparente intervención la vida de la comunidad El Eco; después nos la presenta con una edición meticulosa . El eco es -al igual que su película anterior Noche de Fuego, la historia de tres

HORIZONS

adolescentes; como en El lugar más pequeño es una pequeña comunidad rural: Pero a diferencia de cualquier obra de la directora no hay violencia física ni se habla de ella. Huezo parece haberse cansado de tanta dureza y quiere explorar una vida más pacífica. Por fortuna, en la guerra y en la paz , sigue teniendo una excelente mirada para retratar la vida cotidiana y la sensibilidad para acercarse sin que las personas parezcan actores.

En la primera escena del documental vemos como una jovencita Luz Ma sacar a una oveja perdida de un arroyo. En la siguiente otra adolescente Montse ayuda a su madre a bañar a su abuela; la madre avisa a la chica que esa será su obligación, ella lo cumple con esmero y devoción. El eco está a sólo 400 kilómetros de la ciudad de México, pero podría estar en otro continente por su forma de vida. Sus habitantes no tienen electricidad ni agua corriente; viven de la agricultura, el pastoreo de borregos y la silvicultura.

Pero no tenga lástima de estos chicos que son la resilencia misma. Además de ayudar en las labores domésticas, trabajan en el campo, montan caballos a pelo, cuidan a los animales de su propiedad. Además de eso van a la escuela en la que estudian y sirven de tutores para los alumnos más pequeños. Full Review

editing. As in The Tiniest Place, this is a small rural community. But unlike any of the director’s previous works, there is no physical violence or even talk about it. Huezo seems to have grown tired of such harshness and she wants to explore a more nonviolent life. Fortunately, both in war and in peace, she has an excellent eye for portraying everyday life and the sensibility to get up close, without making regular people look like actors.

THE ECHO

VERDICT: Mexican-Salvadoran director Tatiana Huezo returns to her first cinematographic love in this moving and beautifully photographed documentary about teenagers in a Puebla community.

Lucy Virgen, February 17, 2023

Like producer-director Tatiana Huezo’s previous film Prayers for the Stolen, The Echo (El eco) is the story of three teenagers. Here, she observes the life of the El Eco community without apparent intervention, then presents it to us with meticulous

In the first scene of the documentary, we see how a young woman, Luz Ma, recovers a lost sheep from of a stream. In the next one, another teenager, Montse, helps her mother bathe her grandmother. The mother tells the girl that this will be her duty, and she complies with care and devotion. El Eco is only 400 kilometers away from Mexico City, but it could be on another continent because of the way life is lived there. Its inhabitants have no electricity or running water; they eke out a living on agriculture, sheep herding, and forestry.

Do not feel sorry for these kids who are the embodiment of resilience itself. Besides helping with the housework, they labor in the fields, ride bareback, and take care of the animals on their property. Full Review

LOCATION FLASHBACK:

Chili Hostel, Prague, Czech Republic Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011)

Chili Hostel is a 44 room hostel located in the heart of Prague and just a few minutes walk from the main hotpots of New Town.

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol premiered in Dubai on December 7, 2011 and was released in IMAX and select large-format theaters on December 16, before being theatrically released in the United States. It was the highest grossing film of the franchise and for Tom Cruise at the time.

In this scene, following the explosion at the Kremlin, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruis) is arrestd and taken to a locat Moscow hospital. But using a paperclip, he escapes to the window ledge.

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photo (C) Universal Pictures

UK-Ireland rights for Opponent acquired by MetFilm

Market watch

MetFilm Distribution has acquired UK-Ireland rights to Milad Alami’s Opponent, selected for the main Crystal Globe competition this week at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF).

This is Alami’ss second feature, having directed The Charmer, which debuted at San Sebastian in 2017. Opponent premiered at this years Berlin Film Festival Panorama section, and won a Special Jury Prize at the Seatle International Film Festival.

The psychological thriller follows Iman and his family as they flee Iran, ending up in a hotel in Northern Sweden. There Iman breaks his promise to his wife and joins the local wrestling club. As rumours spread, Iman’s fear and desperation begin to take hold. He is a man caught between suppressed desires and his duty to his family. The film takes explores aquestions of uprootedness, freedom, and tolerance

Opponent is produced by Annika Rogell for Tangy film production. Indie Sales is handling worldwide sales.

KARLOVY VARY REVIEW DAILY CRYSTAL GLOBE

Celine Song on Directing her First Film and Working with Producer Christine Vachon

RED ROOMS

VERDICT: A young woman becomes obsessed with a man accused of being a brutal serial killer in Pascal Plante’s slickly constructed and brilliantly unsettling thriller.

Ben Nicholson, July 5, 2023

The dangerous and disquieting allure of evil lies at the centre of Pascal Plante’s cool and deliberate new thriller, Red Rooms. The film debuted as part of the Crystal Globe Competition at this year’s Karlovy Vary International Film Festival and should find itself going on to unnerve audiences elsewhere with its depiction of a young woman who is apparently infatuated with a man accused of a series of grisly murders of young girls. Potentially one that will be divisive both for the general subject matter and its ambiguous finale,

it is nonetheless an excellent stomach-churner that burrows deep beneath the skin.

The film begins with the first morning of an already infamous murder trial, where Ludovic Chevalier (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos) stands accused of the torture and murder of three young women, all of which were recorded and broadcast on the dark web in the ‘red rooms’ of the title. In attendance in the courtroom, sitting in the public gallery, is KellyAnne (Juliette Gariépy).

Continues next page

The Korean-Canadian filmmaker is taking her directorial debut 'Past Lives' around the world.

By Max Borg, July 5, 2023

Some filmmakers are not too fond of press tours and the festival circuit, and just grin and bear it as part of their promotional duties once their film has been put out into the world. Celine Song is not one of them. When we meet in Karlovy Vary, where her feature debut Past Lives is screening in the Horizons section, she’s enthusiastic about the long journey this U.S. indie first embarked on back in January, when it premiered at Sundance. “I love hearing people’s reactions in different countries”, she explains. “It first hit me at the Continues next page

As the opening remarks are made and we hear the extent of the alleged crimes, the camera gradually creeps in on KellyAnne’s face, as she stares fixedly and emotionlessly at Chevaliler. Returning to the courtroom every day – Kelly-Anne’s income derives from sporadic modelling gigs and a penchant for online poker – she soon becomes acquainted with another young woman in regular attendance, Clementine (Laurie Babin). Where Clementine is clearly an ardent believer in Chevalier’s innocence, Kelly-Anne seems to be less convinced, and thus question persists as to why she is there.

Actually reading Kelly-Anne’s motivations is nigh on impossible. Apart from in a few key scenes, she remains inscrutable – a character onto whom the audience, and other people within the world of the film, project their own visions and assumptions. Gariépy does a fine job of handling this task, making sure that Kelly-Anne’s fascination is never in doubt – the subtle flicker as her eyes widen in some intangible form of excitement is a recurring visual beat – but the impulses behind it remind obscured. Full Review

Berlinale: this is not just an American movie getting released in the U.S., it’s playing everywhere.” In fact, the movie opened domestically in the States on June 23, a few days before its Czech debut, and is likely to show up at other events for the rest of the year.

Being in Karlovy Vary is especially emotional since the festival also honored the film’s main producer Christine Vachon, a true legend in the field who has worked with Todd Haynes, John Cameron Mitchell, Mary Harron and Paul Schrader, among others. Song agrees with that description: “She’s an amazing legend!” she exclaims joyfully. “It’s been a privilege and an honor to work with her. I knew that as a first-time director I needed a strong producer to provide guidance throughout the process, and Christine has decades of experience working in

independent film in New York City. So whenever I had a problem that seemed huge, she would know exactly what to say to make it look tiny.”

Not that there were many problems on the set to begin with. Coming from a theater background, Song was well versed in areas such as blocking and working with actors. She elaborates: “The key thing was talking to everyone, making sure we were all on the same page in terms of what each scene was about: the characters, or an object, or a location.” The latter proved vital when scouting the perfect location to use as the apartment where the female protagonist Nora lives with her husband Arthur. “I didn’t want it to look perfect, because in real life the most romantic conversations take place in shitty bedrooms”, she says, Full Interview

Celine Song, Teo Yoo, John Magaro, and Greta Lee at an event for Past Lives

SPECIAL SCREENINGS

a chronicle of the New York-based band’s 25 year history, but it is framed by the singer’s recent poignant return to his war-torn homeland, where he performs for military personnel and refugees displaced by Russian shelling.

SCREAM OF MY BLOOD: A GOGOL BORDELLO STORY

VERDICT: This lively rock-doc chronicles the riotous career of "gypsy punk" band Gogol Bordello, including singer Eugene Hütz's family roots in wartorn Ukraine.

Stephen Dalton, July 5, 2023

Russia’s barbaric ongoing invasion of Ukraine lends extra newsworthy bite to Scream of My Blood, a lively cinematic portrait of the “gypsy punk” rock group Gogol Bordello and their charismatic Ukrainian-born frontman, Eugene Hütz. Directed by Nate Pommer

Hütz is the revved-up emotional engine of Scream of My Blood. He mostly comes across as a frank and passionate character, bursting with energy and humour, clearly sharing a warm bond with his ragtag army of band members. Punk godfather Iggy Pop also makes a brief cameo, as does cult record producer Steve Albini, famed for his work with Pixies and Nirvana. Backed by troubled media company Vice News, this fast-paced rockumentary premiered at Tribeca film festival last month, where it earned a special jury mention, and makes its international debut in Karlovy Vary this week. Although Hütz is only a cult-level rock star, his lusty party-punk music, boosted by that timely Ukraine angle, should help secure sales interest and further festival slots.

Pommer and Weinrib build a rich collage of personal photos, archive footage, recent interviews and live performance clips. They begin by rewinding to Hütz’s childhood in Soviet-era Kyiv.

Full Review

HORIZONS

PAST LIVES

VERDICT: A remarkably delicate, moving romance destined to be a major indie hit, boasting superb dialogue, terrific performances and an insightful understanding of how the what-ifs of life so often dangle around the perimeters of our lives.

Jay Weissberg, February 19, 2023

There’s a scene about three-quarters of the way through Past Lives when a married couple talk in bed, he touching on his insecurities and she trying to make him comprehend that their relationship is more inviolate than he’s able to believe. The writing is

superb, surprising us by how much it matches what we’re thinking while being so true to these characters. Listening to Celine Song’s dialogue, we’re reminded by just how rare it is to hear honest adult conversations like this in film, ones that don’t shout or grandstand but burrow into the emotions in the subtlest of ways. Past Lives is a remarkably delicate debut, a romance that plays on the borders of standard love stories but brings a rich understanding of how love shifts over time, and how the what-ifs in life so often dangle around the perimeters of our lives. The exceptional buzz generated in Sundance will only keep building, resulting in a well-deserved indie hit.

Much of playwright Song’s own life is here, which makes sense given the acuity with which she writes these characters, but it’s not only her avatar who gets such insightful treatment. She’s beautifully captured the middle class immigrant experience and that perception of being part of two cultures, exacerbated by the ways our child and adult selves process a sense of self. Yet she gives equal weight to the one who remains at home, whose present life is less fulfilled and for whom what could have been remains a driving force throughout his life.

Full Review

KARLOVY VARY REVIEW DAILY

Karlovy Vary: A “Russian spa town" no more?

CRYSTAL GLOBE

Amid political turmoil in Europe and a push to overhaul Karlovy Vary’s identity for tourists, Russia plays a lesser festival role.

By Carmen Gray, July 6,

2023

A few years back, the Russian language could be heard by festival visitors to Karlovy Vary throughout the streets and establishments of the Czech resort town. This has changed since 2020, and now there is a very noticeable pivot to German in addition to Czech and English, amid political turmoil in Europe and a push to remake the city’s identity.

“This used to be a spa centre focused on rich clients, mostly from Russia,” said Josef Dlohoš, director of the Information Centre Karlovy Vary, a tourism centre. Hotels and treatment centres depended on them for business especially as they did not scrimp

Continues next page

CITIZEN SAINT

VERDICT: A flesh-and-blood saint causes chaos for a superstitious mountain community in Georgian director Tinatin Kajrishvili's darkly satirical, bleakly beautiful fable.

Stephen Dalton, July 6, 2023

An apparently miraculous resurrection sends shockwaves through a superstitious mining community in Citizen Saint, the hauntingly beautiful third feature from Georgian writer-director Tintan Kajrishvili. Blending elements of dark fairy tale, social realism and bitterly absurd satire, this Karlovy Vary competition contender is firmly pitched at oldschool art-house connoisseurs with its layered, allegorical plot and ravishing Tarkosvky-level visuals. Even so, this is Kajrishvili’s strongest work to date, with

pleasing echoes of Pasolini’s Theoreom (1968) and Wenders’ Wings of Desire (1987). It should enjoy healthy festival traction and niche audience interest, building on Georgia’s recent rebirth as a quality cinema powerhouse.

Kajrishvili’s two previous features, Brides (2014) and Horizon (2018), earned positive reviews and festival prizes. Both were essentially small-scale domestic dramas with a naturalistic tone, though the latter unfolded in a remote Continues next page

lakeside location with a dreamlike, off-the-map aura. That fable-like otherness is foregrounded much more in Citizen Saint, which takes place in a mountainous milieu that looks almost post-apocalyptic at times. Kajrishvili filmed around the city of Chiatura in western Georgia, whose stark landscape is a major visual asset. Shot in timeless monochrome, this purgatorial wasteland of rusting cable cars, pockmarked roads, crumbling bridges, lunar valleys and rugged rocky vistas has a bleakly elemental beauty. Some luminously lovely scenes were even shot deep underground, inside the mine.

A locally revered “saint” watches over this remote community from a hillside perch, a Christ-like figure on a giant wooden crucifix, believed to be petrified body of a former miner with supernatural powers. When town museum officals take the statue down for restoration, the residents become uneasy, especially the miners, who fear their guardian angel will no longer protect them during risky underground work.

Full Review

on paying for a wide range of facilities. “As Russians, they needed to have everything, 150 per cent,” he said.

Now, Russian tourists are all but banned from Karlovy Vary. During the Covid pandemic, after Russia’s Sputnik vaccine was not recognised as valid proof of immunity, their presence declined sharply. And when Putin’s regime launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Czech government joined Finland, the Baltic states and Poland in restricting visas for Russians wanting to visit. Ukrainian refugees, on the other hand, have been welcomed.

“Russians would spend a huge amount of money here, and from this point of view it’s a pity, but from all other sides, and our history of 1968 [when troops led by the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia], it’s good for the future if Karlovy Vary will not be a Russian town,” said Mr. Dlohoš.

The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, the city’s most important cultural event, is now reckoning with its legacy of close links to the Soviet Union. It would alternate yearly with Moscow between 1959 and 1993, when it was the only A-list festival for socialist countries. Last year’s retitling of the East of the West competition to Proxima, with geographical origin no longer considered, is an effort to move with the times and away from defining nations by their past grouping in a Bloc under the control of Russia.

The war in Ukraine was very present in this year’s programme, from Ukrainian director Roman Liubyi’s documentary Iron Butterflies (2023), about the 2014 shooting down of a passenger airliner over territory controlled by Russian separatist forces, to Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki’s Cannes hit Fallen Leaves (2023), a droll, Full Article

CRYSTAL GLOBE

BLAGA’S LESSONS

VERDICT: There’s no dignity in a market economy, as a scammed pensioner turns scammer in this caustic Bulgarian tragifarce and thriller. Carmen Gray, July 5, 2023

The market economy is both a waking nightmare and an excuse for much shady behaviour in Bulgarian director Stephan Komanderev’s sardonic drama of societal breakdown, which worldpremiered in the Crystal Globe competition at Karlovy Vary. Blaga’s Lessons portrays a Bulgaria that has lost all scruples and sense of community in its punishing transition to capitalism, in keeping with a director who has for decades made films exploring his country’s tumultuous history and struggle to find its feet.

Former literature teacher Blaga (Eli Skorcheva) is already unmoored by grief over the recent death of her husband, a policeman, when she is duped by Romanian phone scammers and their local mules out of her savings. Posing as law enforcement and insisting she’s in danger in a shock avalanche of phone calls, the practiced criminals convince her to throw her valuables off the balcony. She had earmarked part of the money to pay for a cemetery plot before the forty

days are up that, according to religious belief, her spouse’s soul stays on Earth (in a dark joke, we’re initially cued to think she’s shopping for real estate for herself not a great stretch, in a nation of condemned citizens walking.) With no collateral for a bank loan, and a recklessness at odds with her usual self, the pensioner resorts to risky measures to make quick cash and potentially turn the tables on her tormenters, in a caustic vision of contemporary Bulgaria that teeters between tragifarce and suspense thriller.

The gargantuan monument honoring the Communist-era Founders of the Bulgarian State towers over Blaga’s home city of Shumen. When she makes the laborious trek up the stairs to the cubist bulk, she appears even more tiny and inconsequential against its unyielding concrete than she usually does in the engulfing vastness of the urban landscape (lensed in dour browns and greens by Vesselin Hristov).

Full Review

HORIZONS

IRON BUTTERFLIES

VERDICT: The downing of Malaysian Airlines’ passenger flight MH17 in 2014 over Russian-occupied territory in Ukraine becomes a prophetic and highly symbolic event portending the current war and its methods in Roman Liubyi’s doc, whose poetry can seem forced but is still capable of shocking.

Deborah Young, February 15, 2023

A lot has happened since a Malaysian passenger jet disappeared over the skies in Ukraine in July 2014 –over the lands of Luhansk and Donetsk that Russia had recently occupied, to be precise – and Roman Liubyi’s fraught but sensitive doc, Iron Butterflies, draws a straight line from that terrible event to the all-out warfare of the present-day invasion. While largely sidestepping the morbid fascination of plane crashes (this one killed all 298 people on board), the filmmaker doggedly circles around the tragedy’s political and military implications and its aftermath, dominated by a Russian disinformation campaign designed to cast blame elsewhere.

The film recreates the drama from multiple viewpoints, including clips of the Russian special forces who were ultimately shown to have shot down the plane after mistaking it for a Ukrainian military transport. This shocking error leads straight into a Russian cover-up accompanied by blaming the Ukrainians for the disaster via a concerted media effort packed with every form of fake news, a familiar scenario in the ongoing Ukraine-Russian war.

It’s a timely topic for another reason as well, because just last November investigators at the District Court of The Hague returned their verdict that in all probability the plane was deliberately shot down by a Russian-made surface-to-air missile called a BUK. Iron Butterflies is at its most intriguing, and infuriating, when it supplies corroborating evidence: an intercepted exchange of terse comments by Russian military intelligence; Full Review

Scoring ‘The Unknown’: Music for the Silent Screen

Matt Micucci from TFV talks with renowned music artists Stephen Horne and Martin Pyne, who hold esteemed positions in the realm of live performances accompanying silent films. Their collaborative efforts infuse a fresh vitality into Tod Browning's evocative 1927 masterpiece, 'The Unknown,' which was screened at the esteemed Transilvania International Film Festival in 2022. This remarkable event sparks a thought-provoking dialogue on the art of composing scores for silent cinema, tailored to resonate with modern audiences, while also revealing intriguing insights into the intricacies of performing at these immersive cinematic experiences

FEST clips

76 Locarno Official Selection

76 Locarno offers 11 sections, 3 competitions and 20 awards, highlighting both quality and variety. This is the framework of a Festival that explores cinema from every perspective, to discover in the present the filmmakers and films destined to have a future. Screening times will be announced mid-June.

Locarno Film Festival runs Aug 2 - 12

Concorso internazionale

Animal

Directed by Soria Exarchou

Home

Directed by Leonor Teles

The Human Surge 3

Directed by Eduardo Williams

Essential Truths of the Lake

Directed by Lav Diaz

The Permanent Picture

Directed by Laura Ferrés

British actor Riz Ahmed named recipient of the Excellence Award Davide Campari, which will be awarded on the opening night

Lousy Carter

Directed by Bob Byington

Manga D’Terra

Directed by Basil Da Cunha

Critical Zone

Directed by Ali Ahmadzadeh

Do Not Expect Too Much of the End of the World

Directed by Radu Jude

Obscure Night – Goodbye Here, Anywhere

Sylvain George

Patagonia

Directed by Simone Bozzelli

©Photo by Matt Petit/A.M.P.A.S. via Getty Images

Pataagonia, ©Claudia Sicuranza

The Invisible Fight

Directed by Rainer Sarnet

Patagonia

Directed by Simone Bozzelli

Stepne

Directed by Maryna Vroda

Rossosperanza

Directed by Annarita Zambrano

Antartica Calling

Directed by Luc Jacquet

Guardian of the Formula

Directed by Dragan

Dammi

Directed by Yann Mounir Demange

Falling Stars

Directed by Richard Karpala, Gabriel Bienczycki

The

Sweet Dreams

Directed by Ena Sendijarević

The Vanishing Soldier

Directed by Dani Rosenberg

Yannick

Directed by Quentin Dupieux

Piazza Grande

Anatomy of a Fall

Directed by Justine Triet

The Path of Excellence

Directed by Frederic Mermoud

Smugglers

Directed by RYOO Seung-wan

Theatre Camp

Directed by Molly Gordon, Nick Lieberman

The Old Oak

Directed by Ken Loach

For full line up, click here

Invisible Fight, ©Homeless Bob Production

Sweet Dreams, ©EmoWeemhoff/LemmingFilm

Antartica Calling, ©Paprika Films – Luc Jacquet

Theatre Camp, © Searchlight Pictures

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – DEAD RECKONING PART ONE

VERDICT: Hits all the marks of an adrenaline-packed summer spy thriller, with pacing that makes 163 minutes zip right by. Alonso Duralde, July 5, 2023

Tom Cruise and his creative team have the Mission: Impossible moviemaking process down to a science, but Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One never feels clinical or by the numbers. A throwback to an era when “summer movies” represented something distinct from what studios produced for the other nine months of the year, Dead Reckoning offers 163 minutes’ worth of adrenaline and excitement that never overstays its welcome.

No one’s going to confuse the proceedings here for the cerebral geopolitics of a John Le Carré novel, but in terms of international hijinks, breathtaking chases, and heart-in-the-throat stunts with more laughs than one might expect along the way the seventh big-screen outing for the Impossible Mission Force (the third in a row with Christopher McQuarrie in the director’s chair) raises the bar for Summer 2023 popcorn entertainment.

Amidst the latex masks and trademark “Tom Cruise runs” scenes, Dead Reckoning throws in character development, offering some of the first hints about why Ethan Hunt (Cruise) joined the IMF and who he was before doing so. We get glimpses at a life of nefarious activity, a mysterious woman who mattered to him, and her death at the hands of Gabriel (Esai Morales), a shadowy figure suddenly back on the scene

The MacGuffin created by McQuarrie and co-writer Erik Jendresen (Ithaca) ranks among the better fictional technodoodads in recent movies – a program known as “the Entity.” Every country on Earth is duking it out to get their hands on a key (made of two separate pieces) that can control this newly selfaware AI; the Entity not only can make its way into any digital system, but it can also send phony texts and voice messages, and even literal “fake news” to social media. Full Review

DOK Industry Podcast about the situation of documentary filmmakers in Hong Kong

Three years ago, China introduced its controversial “National Security Law” for Hong Kong, severely restricting freedom of the press and freedom of expression. In the latest episode of the DOK Industry Podcast, filmmakers Tze Woon Chan, Kanas Liu and Dr Anson Hoi Shan Mak discuss the impact the law has had on documentary filmmaking in Hong Kong. The episode is hosted and moderated by film curator Karen Cheung.

Given the recent news that content from several short films of the Fresh Wave International Short Film Festival was censored by the Office for Film, Newspaper & Article Administration, our guests talk about the 2021 revision of the policy on film censorship in Hong Kong and share their own experience with (self-)censorship.

Another topic is how challenging it is for documentary filmmakers to find people in Hong Kong who are willing to speak openly about their experiences in front of the camera – and to

protect these respondents from reprisals. How can an artist’s aim of documenting reality be fulfilled without endangering the protagonists? The filmmakers also discuss the current difficulty to obtain funding at a national level for making or distributing independent documentaries. Nonetheless, the tightening restrictions are not stopping many filmmakers from documenting life in Hong Kong and the stories of local people, but are instead inspiring them to find creative ways of realising their projects.

The DOK Industry podcasts are produced in collaboration with What’s Up with Docs and the Programmers of Colour Collective, with the support of Docs-in-Orbit and funding from Creative Europe, BKM, MDM and the City of Leipzig.

Listen to the podcast episode: DOK Industry Podcasts

Karen Cheung (t.l.), Tze Woon Chan (t.r.), Dr. Anson Hoi Shan Mak (b.l.) and Kanas Liu (b.r.)

FEST clips

The Winners of KVIFF Eastern Promises 2023

KVIFF Eastern Promises, the festival’s Industry section and film market, has the exciting mission of bridging the gap between talented filmmakers and their potential partners, festivals and audiences. “Just like every year, we’ve tried to curate a nice mix of projects from around the regions, a solid mix of documentary and feature films, and we now hope that they’ll be able to find new partners to complete their films and start on the festival circuit.” Hugo Rosák, the Head of the KVIFF Film Industry Office, commented.

A total of 27 film projects were screened within the festival’s three established programs: Works in Progress, Works in Development – Feature Launch, and First Cut+, competing for awards with a total value of 115,000 EUR.

Works in Progress Karlovy Vary IFF Award

The jury has chosen the film Bikechess (Kazakhstan, France, Norway), directed by Assel Aushakimova and produced by Antoine Simkine, Almagul Tleukhanova, and Christian Fredrik Martin as the winning project. The project will receive a cash prize of 5,000 EUR, sponsored by Barrandov Studio.

Works in Development – Feature Launch

Works in Development Award Jury: Danijel Hocevar, Producer at Vertigo, Producer Mentor at MIDPOINT Feature Launch

Joseph Fahim, Film Critic, Programmer, Lecturer

Works in Progress Jury:

Esra Demirkiran, Festival Coordinator, TRT Sinema

Petr Tichý, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors, Baranov Studio

Oscar Alonso, Festival Manager, Latido Films

Nadia Ben Rachid, Film Editor

Agustina Chiarino, Producer, Bocacha Films

Works in Progress encompasses both fiction and documentary films under one program, as both of these categories, despite their differences, possess the same artistic value. In this year’s showcase, a total of eleven feature and documentary projects from countries in Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the former Soviet Union, the Middle East and North Africa were presented.

Works in Progress Post-production Development Award

The jury has chosen the film I’m Not Everything I Want to Be (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria) directed by Klára Tasovská and produced by Lukáš Kokeš. The award consists of post-production services in UPP and Soundsquare.

Simone Baumann, Producer, Managing Director of German Films

For this award, KVIFF has partnered with the MIDPOINT script and project development program, the When East Meets West co-production market and Trieste Film Festival. Together they have showcased eight projects that have gone through development and mentoring within the Feature Launch program.

The jury has decided to award the 10,000 EUR cash prize for further development, jointly sponsored by MIDPOINT, Barrandov Studio and KVIFF, to Flight from Kabul (Slovakia), directed and written by Sahraa Karimi and produced by Wanda Adamík Hrycová.

For complete list of winners and jury statements, click here

KARLOVY VARY REVIEW DAILY

Thomas Imbach on his Pilgrimage to See Jean-Luc Godard

The Swiss filmmaker talks about his new documentary 'Say God Bye', which screens in the Proxima competition.

By Max Borg, July

7, 2023

If Thomas Imbach’s parents are to be believed, the Lucerne-born director was conceived during a screening of Breathless (A bout de souffle). Thus began a lifelong connection to the work of Jean-Luc Godard, who is at the center of Imbach’s new film Say God Bye, which premiered in Karlovy Vary’s Proxima competition. The trigger for the new documentary was one of Godard’s increasingly rare public appearances in 2021. “I saw him on a Zoom call with the Kerala Film Festival, and he looked so frail”, explains Imbach. “It felt like Continues next page

IMAGO

VERDICT: Actor and screenwriter Lena Góra portrays her own bohemian rock singer mother in this baggy but compelling post-punk period piece from Polish director Olga Chajdas.

Stephen Dalton, July 7, 2023

Set on the noisy fringes of Poland’s 1980s post-punk music scene, when new freedoms were emerging just as Communist rule collapses, Imago is a compelling story of bohemian rhapsodies and personal agonies. For writerdirector Olga Chajdas, it began as a discussion with her star and cowriter Lena Góra about fraught mother-daughter relationships, but it developed into a far more personal passion project with the Polish-born, LA-based actor playing her own mother on screen. Ela Góra, aka Malwina,

was a feted rock singer until the birth of her daughter in 1990 sidelined her nascent pop career. Fresh from its world premiere in Karlovy Vary, this hot-blooded coming-of-age bio-drama should play further festival encores, with the music angle a potential promotional hook in the right hands.

Imago takes place in the Baltic shipbuilding city of Gdansk during the volatile late 1980s, with mass rallies on the streets, Solidarity challenging a sclerotic Soviet Continues next page

a wake-up call from my early days as a filmmaker, the last chance to meet him, so I set out on this pilgrimage.” Accompanied only by his frequent collaborator David Charap, the director determined he would walk from Zurich to Godard’s home in the Swiss town of Rolle, a journey on foot that took two weeks.

The endpoint was clear, but everything else was spontaneous – something that is pointed out in the film when, on multiple occasions, the travelers are told they can’t just show up unannounced due to Covid regulations. And even the ending, or rather the part of it that didn’t make it into the film, went off the beaten track. “The film was not meant as a goodbye, it’s a hello”, says Imbach. “The idea was to do a second trip later on. And then came the news that he had died.” What remains is this tribute, which combines footage of the pilgrimage with various Godard

clips – film snippets and interviews alike – as well as material from Imbach’s own back catalogue.Perhaps most poignantly, we see a clip from his 2013 film Mary, Queen of Scots, which sort of parallels the journey from Zurich to Rolle in that, much like with Godard, we’re never quite sure if Queen Elizabeth I will ever appear in the movie. Imbach recognizes the connection, with an anecdote: “There’s a scene I did not put in the documentary, where I wonder if Godard will be more gracious to me than Elizabeth was to Mary, who ended up decapitated.”

Besides the divine implications in the title, which are also a running joke in the film itself, the walk to Rolle also served a more cinephile purpose. “This was my way of making him Swiss,” Imbach explains. “When I first started out as a filmmaker, it was not considered a good thing to bring up Godard, Full Article

Ojga Chajdas, Director of Imago puppet regime, and Poland cautiously embracing free elections for the first time in over 40 years. But Ela (Gora) is too consumed by her own bipolar mood swings to take much interest in politics. A mentally fragile young woman from a large working-class family, Ela is a hot mess, bouncing between psychiatric wards, arty parties and rowdy rock concerts. One day, she spontaneously climbs onstage to perform with a local band, rivetting the audience with her banshee wails and stream-ofconscious poetry. A natural born diva with strong artistic impulses, she has found not just a cathartic creative outlet but also a welcoming alternative family. Ela’s chain-smoking ice-queen charisma bring all the boys to the yard, including unwelcome sexual harassment from strangers on the street. Torn between two lovers, earnest Tomek (Mateusz Wieclawek) and glamorous badboy painter Stach (Michal Balicki), her life becomes a boho whirl of sex and drugs, rock shows and gallery openings, wild swimming and naked sunbathing. Full Review

Watch the trailer for Say God Bye, directed by Thomas Imbach, featuring the late “God of Cinema” Jean-Luc Goddard.

CRYSTAL GLOBE

country and was heard hundreds of miles away. In the aftermath of such a cataclysm, the team behind the forthcoming film shoot of Mounia Akl’s Costa Brava, Lebanon had a host of difficult decisions to make and hurdles to overcome. Cyril Aris’ new documentary Dancing on the Edge of the Volcano charts their journey, which transforms the typically ancillary behind-the-scenes doc into a vital and moving depiction of collective endeavour and a reflection on the artistic process.

DANCING ON THE EDGE OF A VOLCANO

VERDICT: A behind-the-scenes look at the making of Mounia Akl’s 'Costa Brava, Lebanon' becomes a moving portrait of place and the healing power of artistic endeavour.

Ben Nicholson, July 7, 2023

On 4 August 2020, an explosion rocked the city of Beirut. A vast cache of ammonium nitrate being stored at the port of the Lebanese capital caught fire and erupted in devastating fashion, killing hundreds, injuring thousands, and causing billions of dollars of damage. It was a catastrophe that literally shook the

Although Akl’s film was not actually being shot in Beirut, but up in the mountains, the city becomes the focal point for much of Aris’ film as everyone involved in the proposed shoot ruminates on what it means to make art, and how possible it is to do so, in the wake of such a tragedy. Dancing on the Edge of the Volcano opens right in the midst of things, cutting from a mournful clip of a bombed-out Beirut in 1980 in Maroun Baghdadi’s Whispers straight to audio and video footage from directly after the explosion: “Everything is destroyed,” cries one voice. “Did anyone talk to Mom? She’s not picking up,” worries another. It’s a visceral opening that is only made more impactful by the following voiceover from news reports that speak of the corruption that led to the explosion. Full Review

The Cinephile Splendor of Karlovy Vary

Matt Micucci sits down with none other than Karel Och, Artistic Director of the 57th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. KVIFF holds a special place in the hearts of film professionals and enthusiasts worldwide, and the conversation delves into its rich history and significance. In addition, we have the opportunity of knowing Och better by taking a fascinating journey into the birth of his own cinephilia, discovering the sparks that ignited his passion for the big screen, and the enduring connection he has forged with the festival, including as its longstanding artistic director.

HORIZONS TÓTEM

CINE VERDICT: Mexican director Lila Avilés shows sensibility and a strong hand in 'Totem', her second feature.

Lucy Virgen, February 20, 2023

Lila Avilés debutó en el panorama internacional en 2018 con inusitada fuerza. La camarista, su ópera prima ganó premios desde La Habana hasta Minsk. Lo cual causó muchas expectativas por la presentación de Tótem, su segunda película en competencia en el Festival de Berlín. Esperanzas compensadas con una película íntima con una dirección impecable.

Tótem sigue una tarde en la vida de Sol una niña de 7 años. Sol pasa el día en casa de su abuelo mientras su madre trabaja; sus tíos preparan una fiesta de cumpleaños para su padre enfermo.

Pronto resulta evidente que hay algo serio en la familia tan sólo por el trato que le dan a Sol. No son solo amables y cariñosos; son untuosos y a momentos apabullantes. Pero como suele ocurrir con los adultos del mundo entero, después de un rato se olvidan cuando hay niños de una edad que no necesita atención constante y tampoco pueden ayudar mucho. Toda la película está bien dirigida, pero es en esos momentos cuando Lila Avilés muestra su talento. Las horas que Sol pasa sola, paseando por la casa, tienen su propio ritmo, son fluidas, naturales, se sienten muy cercanas. La audiencia acompaña a Sol y comparte sus experiencias cuando está viendo insectos; oyendo conversaciones y hasta sesiones de terapia; tomando vino y haciendo preguntas al asistente del teléfono inteligente. La película tiene ecos de Cría cuervos (Carlos Saura) y El espíritu de la colmena (Victor Erice) -inadvertidos porque Lila Avilés contó en la conferencia de prensa que no había visto estas películas Full Review

HORIZONS

TOTEM

VERDICT: Mexican director Lila Avilés shows sensibility and a strong hand in 'Totem', her second feature.

Lucy Virgen, February 20, 2023

Lila Avilés’ directing debut made a lot of noise on the international scene in 2018. The Chambermaid, her first feature, won awards from Havana to Minsk. This raised a lot of expectations for the screening of Totem, her second film, which bowed as part of Berlin competition. Expectations were rewarded with an intimate film and impeccable direction.

Totem follows an afternoon in the life of Sol, a sevenyear-old girl. She spends the day at her grandfather’s house while her mother works; meanwhile, her aunts, uncles and grandfather prepare a birthday party for her sick father.

It soon becomes clear that something serious is going on in the family, just from the way the Sol is treated. The relatives are not just kind and loving; they are obsequious and at times overwhelming. But as is often the case with adults all over the world, after a while they tend to ignore children of an age where they don’t need constant attention and their help is not required. These children, left to their own devices, spend their time wandering about.

The entire film is well directed, but it is in these moments that Lila Avilés shows her talent. The hours that Sol spends alone, walking around the house, have their own rhythm: they are fluid, natural, and very intimate. The audience accompanies Sol and shares her experiences when she is watching insects; listening to conversations that include therapy sessions; drinking wine and asking questions at the phone´s virtual assistant. The film has echoes of Carlos Saura’s Cría cuervos and Victor Erice’s The Spirit of the Beehive – inadvertently so, Full Review

KARLOVY VARY REVIEW DAILY

The 57th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival

The Awards

Punk rockers, kick-ass senior citizens and fresh new cinematic voices from Iran to India made for a strong edition of the long-running Czech fest.

By Stephen Dalton, July 8, 2023

The hills around Karlovy Vary have been alive with music for the past 10 days, from Australian movie heavyweights with weekend rockstar aspirations to Ukrainian gypsy punks, locally brewed oompahfolk bands, and the relentless earthumping Eurodisco DJ sets that keep this chocolate-box Czech spa resort raving deep into the small hours. After last year’s solid return from Covid limbo, central Europe’s premiere film festival felt more breathlessly busy than ever, with packed houses for even

obscure art-house screenings, plus an ever-expanding party zone of bars, food stalls and outdoor dance clubs fanning out across the parks and plazas that surround Hotel Thermal, the man-made mountain of gloriously ugly-sexy concrete brutalism which serves as the main festival hub.

The 57th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival opened with a blast of international glamour as Alicia Vikander and Russell Crowe swept into town to

Continues next page

Juries at the 57th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival showered awards on the caustic Bulgarian tragifarce ‘Blaga’s Lessons’ and Sweden's off-beat relationship satire ‘The Hypnosis’.

CRYSTAL GLOBE COMPETITION

GRAND PRIX – CRYSTAL GLOBE

Blaga’s Lessons / Urotcite na Blaga

Directed by: Stephan Komandarev Bulgaria, Germany, 2023

SPECIAL JURY PRIZE

Empty Nets / Toorhaye khali

Directed by: Behrooz Karamizade Germany, Iran, 2023

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KVIFF WRAP (Continued) AWARDS (Continued)

BEST ACTOR AWARD

Herbert Nordrum for The Hypnosis / Hypnosen

Sweden, Norway, France, 2023

SPECIAL JURY MENTION

Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano

Directed by: Cyril Aris

Germany, Lebanon, 2023

PRÁVO AUDIENCE AWARD

The Edge of the Blade / Une affaire d’honneur

Directed by: Vincent Perez France, 2023

PROXIMA COMPETITION

receive honorary Crystal Globe awards for their screen careers so far. KVIFF prides itself on its selfeffacing humour and lack of pomposity, in stark contrast to bigger and more glitzy Eurofestivals. That said, Crowe perhaps pushed the joke too far in his speech by confessing he was unaware the festival even existed until recently, adding that his main motive for attending was to play with his hobby band, Indoor Garden Party. Later, when they did play, the joke was on all of us.

Serious-minded social dramas dominated the main competition prizes. The big winner, taking home the top Crystal Globe statue (plus a handsome $25,000 paycheck) was Stephan Komandarev’s tragicomic Bulgarian thriller Blaga’s Lessons, about a struggling pensioner who fights back against criminal scammers and a rotten, rigged

financial system. Eli Skorcheva also won the festival’s Best Actress award for her flinty performance as the film’s eponymous 70-yearold bad-ass heroine.

Meanwhile, the Special Jury Prize (worth $15,000) went to GermanIranian director Behrooz Karamizade’s elegantly crafted Empty Nets, about the romantic and financial friction between a socially mismatched couple, with a subtext of sly political critique against the current regime in Tehran. Another Iranian based in Europe, Babak Jalali, also picked up the Best Director prize for his lyrical immigrant drama Fremont, building on a very rich Iranian presence at Karlovy Vary this year, from Jafar Panahi’s latest metamovie No Bears to more experimental low-budget fare. Full Article

PROXIMA GRAND PRIX

Birth

Directed by: Yoo Ji-young

South Korea, 2022

PROXIMA SPECIAL JURY PRIZE Guras

Directed by: Saurav Rai

India, Nepal, 2023

SPECIAL JURY MENTION

Brutal Heat / Brutální vedro

Directed by: Albert Hospodárský

Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, 2023

OTHER AWARDS

GRAND PRIZE OF THE ECUMENICAL JURY

Blaga’s Lessons / Urotcite na Blaga

Directed by: Stephan Komandarev

Bulgaria, Germany, 2023

Full Awards List

SPECIAL SCREENINGS

prevent a democratically mandated break-up of the former Yugoslavia following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Serbian troops surrounded and blockaded the Bosnian capital

from April 1992 to February 1996, targeting the city with indiscriminate shelling and sniper fire. The siege claimed 13,952 lives, including 5,434 civilians, though the Serbs ultimately failed in their genocidal ethnic cleansing campaign.

FACING DARKNESS

VERDICT: In his latest forensic documentary, French director Jean-Gabriel Périot digs into the rich archive of amateur film footage shot in war-torn Sarajevo.

Stephen Dalton, July 8, 2023

Weighing up the political and psychological impact of amateur film-making during the siege of Sarajevo, the longest in modern warfare, French director JeanGabriel Périot’s documentary Facing Darkness is one of the more sobering world premieres to screen at Karlovy Vary film festival this last week. Seeking to

As in Périot’s previous films, notably Our Defeats (2019), this formally precise documentary is methodically structured as a dialogue between past and present, archive footage and recent interview material. Seeing these vintage clips of bombed-out apartment blocks and defiant Bosnian citizens today, comparisons with Russia’s current war crimes in Ukraine are hard to avoid, though the director does not overplay these parallels. Facing Darkness has a lot to say about both the ethics and aesthetics of filming war: not exactly a fun topic but this is an instructive and fresh take on grimly familiar events, made with intelligence and integrity. Further festival interest is assured, with a potential audience spanning academics to amateur historians to casual documentary fans. Full Review

PROXIMA

visceral and intimate portrait of her half-sister. Now the director turns her unflinching gaze on her own mother Meaud, a fearsome force of nature with a fondness for salty language and explosive “drag queen” tantrums.

KEEPING MUM

VERDICT: Director Émilie Brisavoine goes from fear to maternity in this emotionally raw but generally compelling documentary about the mother who abandoned her in childhood.

Stephen Dalton, July 8, 2023

A dysfunctional family memoir that turns into a confrontational therapy session, Keeping Mum is French actor and documentary maker Émilie Brisavoine’s long-gestating second feature. In style and theme, it feels like a loose sequel to her wellreceived Cannes debut, Oh La La Pauline! (2015), a

There are decades of unresolved tensions simmering away between mother and daughter in Keeping Mum, which make this Karlovy Vary world premiere almost uncomfortably voyeuristic and a little too selfindulgent in places. All the same, a compelling mix of real-life soap-opera melodrama, universally relatable emotions and eye-catching collage visuals should help secure further festival bookings and potential wider audience interest.

Brisavoine began work on Keeping Mum after becoming a mother herself, claiming the experience churned up decades of buried resentment towards the woman who gave birth to her but rejected her soon afterwards. The eccentric but kindly grandmother seen on screen here, the director warns us, is far from the whole picture. Meaud was a punky bohemian party animal in her youth, and remains a charismatic presence on screen today, though her thin-skinned narcissism and short fuse are abundantly evident too. Full Review

HORIZONS

THE POT AU FEU

VERDICT: The pièce de résistance of unabashed culinary cinema, Tran Anh Hung’s ‘The Pot au Feu’ serves up a French country idyll in romantic 19th century sauce for audiences whose tastes run to the fine wines and 12-course meals.

Deborah Young, May 24, 2023

The popularity of movies that revolve around the pleasures of the table is nothing new. It has long been consecrated in Culinary Cinema sidebars at festivals from Berlin to San Sebastian, where the genre has found a home. Now Cannes brings a whopper directly to competition with the agreeable gourmet fable The Pot au Feu (La Passion de Dodin Bouffant). But as to why, one can only speculate. Apart from being almost unbearably French (the cuisine, the wines, the whole culture of describing cooking as an art form), it stars Juliette Binoche who launched the art house hit Chocolat back in 2000 and who, along with co-star Benoit Magimel and the film’s inspired, painterly settings, seem likely to enchant wider audiences than most festival entries can only hope for.

Though it sounds like an odd match at first, the Gaumont release could mark a comeback for muchdecorated French-Vietnamese director Tran Anh Hung, whose first feature The Scent of Green Papaya (1993) won the Golden Camera in Cannes and whose second film, the tough, Saigon-set Cyclo (1995), won the Golden Lion in Venice. Having worked in a variety of genres, he seems very much at ease here in a French historical setting with its cultured hedonism and old-world sentiments, all delicately framed, lit and acted.

The setting is the glorious Loire Valley circa 1885, where the gentleman gourmet Dodin (Magimel) studies his menus while his cook of many years, Eugénie (Binoche), gathers herbs and vegetables from the chateau gardens. Full Review

JOY RIDE

VERDICT: Raucous Asian-American road-trip comedy serves up bawdy laughs and star-making performances.

Alonso Duralde, July 7, 2023

The scarcity of R-rated comedies from a woman’s perspective, let alone an Asian-American perspective, makes the very existence of Joy Ride a kind of small miracle. That it’s also outrageously hilarious (without being undone by occasional waves of friend-bonding sweetness) makes its emergence on the scene all the more exciting.

It’s a film that fully delivers both cultural specificity (an older relative is referred to as being “has-aplastic-bag-full-of-other-plastic-bags Chinese”) and raunchy R-rated comedy, as its cast asserts confident, witty, sexual agency throughout.

We open with a flashback to 25 years ago, when Audrey and Lolo meet on a playground, the only two Chinese girls in the very Caucasian Seattle suburb of White Hills. Audrey, who’s been adopted by white parents (Annie Mumolo and David Denman) meekly cowers before a racist playground bully while Lolo, the child of immigrants, punches the little jerk in the throat, and a lifelong friendship is born.

Currently, however, it’s a relationship with some strains. Audrey (Ashley Park, Emily in Paris), always an over-achiever, is a successful lawyer with a big firm that’s sending her to Beijing to close a deal, even though she’s never visited China. Lolo (Sherry Cola) lives in Audrey’s garage and creates sexually-explicit art; Audrey’s taking Lolo on this trip only because she needs a Mandarin interpreter. At the airport, Audrey learns that Lolo’s socially-awkward cousin Deadeye (Sabrina Wu) will be tagging along, while Lolo discovers that, once they arrive in China, they’re meeting up with Audrey’s college roommate Kat (Stephanie Hsu), now a Chinese soap star. Full Review

FEST clips

71st San Sebastian Festival first Competition selections

María Alché and Benjamín Naishtat, Robin Campillo, Joachim Lafosse, Noah Pritzker, Cristi Puiu and Martín Rejtman will be presenting their latest films in the Official Selection of the 71st San Sebastián Festival, plus newcomer Raven Jackson, whose film was developed in the Ikusmira Berriak programme

Festival takes place Sept 22 - 30

ALL DIRT ROADS TASTE OF SALT

Directed by Raven Jackson USA

EX-HUSBANDS

Directed by Noah Pritzker USA

RED ISLAND

Directed by Robin Campillo France - Belgium

MMXX

Directed by Cristi Puiu Romania

PUAN

Directed by María Alché and BENJAMÍN NAISHTAT Argentina - ItalyGermany - France -Brazil

A SILENCE

Directed by Jaochim Lafosse

Belgium - France - Luxembourg

THE PRACTICE

Directed by Martin Rejtman Argentina - Chile - Portugal

For film synopsis and more information, click here

All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt

Puan

Ex-Husbands

The Practice