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From Cineuropa.org by Tina Poglajen

The Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival (October 24–29, 2017) is the largest event of its kind in Central and Eastern Europe. The festival retains a distinctive and progressive programming approach and has built a remarkable Industry section, featuring projects such as Emerging Producers and Inspiration Forum. The festival is also famous for its informal atmosphere, discussion character and full screening venues.

On 26 October, the flagship industry project of the Ji.hlava Idff publicly presented 18 talented producers from 16 European countries plus Morocco.

Bringing together talented European documentary film producers, Emerging Producers, the promotional and educational project of the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival, is becoming more highly acclaimed and well known each year. In its six years of existence, it has enrolled over 100 alumni, many of whom have subsequently become successful producers.

Divided into three main parts — promotion, networking and navigation — the aim of the...

As summer cools down, we’re entering perhaps the best time of year for cinephiles, with a variety of festivals — some of which will hold premieres of our most-anticipated 2017 features — gearing up. As we do each year, after highlighting the best films offered thus far, we’ve set out to provide a comprehensive preview of the fall titles that should be on your radar, and we’ll first take a look at selections whose quality we can attest to. These acclaimed 25 films from Sundance, Cannes, Berlinale and more will arrive between September and December (in the U.S.) and are all well worth seeking out.

Kill Me Please (Anita Rocha da Silveira; Sept. 1)

Following in a wave of cerebral psychological horror films such as The Witch, It Follows, and The Babadook, Anita Rocha da Silveira’s debut Kill Me Please is the latest art-horror film that’s concerned with the internal repercussions of trauma.

Lack of diversity in Hollywood has been well documented thanks to #OscarSoWhite, but lack of diversity in the documentary world is less talked about. While the documentary community is way ahead of Hollywood, it is still nowhere near where it needs to be. Filmmakers of color rarely get hired by the powerful production companies, and they are not getting supported enough by broadcasters and funders to tell their own stories. All too often, white documentary filmmakers are the ones telling the stories of people of color.

Full Frame has taken this topic on in a big way with their #DocSoWhite Speakeasy panels. But they are not just citing the problem; they are coming up with solutions. One of these solutions is a high school program called “School of Doc,” which is helping to build a diverse community of filmmakers by reaching them early.

As in most public schools across the country,...

Dave McCary and Kyle Mooney’s Sundance charmer “Brigsby Bear” chronicles the kind of nostalgia for a long-forgotten era of television that plenty of viewers can relate to, culminating in a final sequence that sees its stars translating their love into one big, beautiful creative act. It’s basically the perfect film for kids who grew up on Saturday morning TV and wish that they were able to turn that affection into something more tangible in their older years. It’s also heartbreakingly funny.

Read More:‘Brigsby Bear’: How Two Childhood Best Friends Sold Their Love Letter to Cinema to Sony Pictures Classics

When we first meet Mooney’s character James, he’s defined by his adoration for the long-running children’s show “Brigsby Bear,” a mash-up of kiddo TV classics that’s part detective show, part life lesson-delivery service, and just quirky enough to feel like something you...

"Luxuriously alluring." Kino Lorber has debuted an official trailer for a stunning documentary called The Challenge, which has been playing at film festivals all over the world picking up all kinds of prizes. The film examines the world of wealthy Qatari sheikhs with a passion for amateur falconry, who collect and train their prized pet falcons, flying them in private jets around the world, and taking them for rides in their fancy cars. If, like me, your first thought is wait I've never heard of this before and it sounds totally amazing and I want to learn more about this, then this doc is for you. There's some really stunning footage in this, and it looks like it's more of a visual essay than just a simple doc, which makes me even more intrigued to see this. Here's the official trailer (+ poster) for Yuri Ancarani's documentary The Challenge, from...

There’s no shortage of sports for the upper class, but few are as absurd as falconry, especially when it comes to wealthy Qatari sheikhs. The Challenge, a winner at last year’s Locarno International Film Festival, finds director Yuri Ancarani capturing this extracurricular activity in a surreal fashion, unfolding in visually extravagant tableau fit for a museum projection. That’s not to take away from the cinematic quality of the film, however, which is one of the more transporting experiences one can have at a theater this year.

Ahead of a release this September, the first trailer has now landed courtesy of Kino Lorber. “While The Challenge is about high-class falconry in Qatar, this holds true for any sport indulged primarily by the rich, like the British fox hunt,” we said in our review. “This is a sports documentary concerned not at all with the competition at hand, but...

It’s an overplayed trope, but here it is: Yuri Ancarani’s feature documentary debut has everything. Wealthy Qatari sheikhs, secret falconry competitions, souped-up Ferraris, cheetahs driving in those same Ferarris, private jets, sand dunes, and more money than you can believe exists in one place at one time.

Ancarani’s ambitious “The Challenge” follows a group of rich sheikhs who share a passion for the finer things in life: not just money, or cars, or big cats, but also amateur falconry. The film debuted at last year’s Locarno Film Festival, and went on to play a number of festival around the world, including Torino, Dubai, SXSW, Sarasota, and Edinburgh.

Read More‘Trophy’ Trailer: Sundance Documentary Traverses the Dark World of Big-Game Hunting — Watch

Per its official synopsis: “Italian visual artist Yuri Ancarani’s exquisite documentary enters the surreal world of wealthy Qatari sheikhs with a passion for amateur falconry.

Just start planting the pot jokes now. Weed out all the bad ones. Hash it out with your friends.

You could make these jokes all day and apparently, so can “Disjointed,” the latest Netflix multicam comedy premiering later this month. Kathy Bates stars as the proprietor of “Ruth’s Alternative Caring,” an L.A.-area pot dispensary, a woman who runs the store along with a handful of ragtag employees. She partakes in her own supply, as do most of the other characters on the show, from the looks of the first full trailer.

Read More7 New Netflix Shows to Binge in August 2017, and The Best Episodes of Each

Even after stints on ‘The Office” and as the ghost of Charlie Sheen’s character on “Two and a Half Men,” this is Bates’ first starring role in a TV comedy. In addition to her film work, she’s also a...

For the twenty-first summer in a row, Rooftop Films will be screening some of the best in independent and documentary film in unique outdoor setting all across the New York City. In that time, they have been the first to identify some of the best filmmaking talent in the world, and through their Filmmakers Fund they’ve backed these filmmakers breakout projects.

Past grantees have included Ana Lily Amirpour’s “The Bad Batch,” David Lowery’s “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints,” Benh Zeitlin’s “Glory at Sea,” Lucy Walker’s “The Tsunami” and many more.

Rooftop digs up gems and shorts that haven’t been getting a ton of word of mouth and shares them – along with popular festival titles like “The Big Sick”– with their dedicated and artistically curious audience who have come to trust their curation.

IndieWire recently checked in with Rooftop program director Dan Nuxoll to find out what films and filmmakers we should have on our radar for 2017.

What film has fallen through the festival cracks this year?

Certainly “The Genius and the Opera Singer” hasn’t yet gotten nearly the love it deserves, but I hope that changes soon. It’s a powerful dark comic documentary that certainly goes to some emotionally difficult places, but watching it is an undeniably unique experience. We showed it this past Saturday and the audience reaction was even more positive than I anticipated. The crowd loved it, despite some heavy moments. It’s a very well-crafted and expertly-edited film and it’s much more entertaining than one might expect. It’s Vanessa Stockley’s first film and it’s a revelation.

I’m also a big fan of Jeff Unay’s “The Cage Fighter,” which is a beautifully shot and very intimate and personal film that premiered at San Francisco a couple of months ago – it’s a gorgeous doc. Plus Morten Traavik and Ugis Olte’s “Liberation Day” is a boisterous and fascinating film about Laibach, who are a very strange strange but wonderful cult Slovenian band who have a very fascist aesthetic and who somehow convince the North Korean government to allow them to perform there. It’s a very enjoyable provocation.

You were the first one to tip me off to Ana Lily Amirpour and Jonas Carpignano. What up and coming filmmaker should we paying to, but we aren’t?

Dave McCary. His film “Brigsby Bear” premiered at Sundance and got very strong reviews but I don’t think it has yet gotten nearly the attention it deserves. McCary and star Kyle Mooney had a successful sketch comedy group and later joined SNL, so going into the premiere I assumed the film would be funny, but I will admit I didn’t have particularly high expectations otherwise. But I definitely underestimate them–it’s strikingly well executed and the comic and emotional components of the film are expertly balanced.

And beyond that, McCary has a unique touch that you rarely see in comedy films–an ability to dance around the character arcs and emotional trajectory of the characters without ever slipping into maudlin sentimentality and never losing the absurd comic energy. Whenever it seems that the film is about to head someplace conventional, McCary injects a perfectly timed comic turnabout that propels the film forward, but never quite in the direction you expect.

There have been a lot of really good dark indie comedies this year, but “Brigsby” is as funny as any of them while also being full of light and warmth and emotional generosity. It’s a special film and I hope that enough people see it so that it becomes a classic and not just a cult classic.

What’s one film in your lineup that does something new and exciting with the medium?

I was blown away by Amman Abbassi’s “Dayveon.” There have been a lot of independent coming of age films over the years, but few of them manage to balance realism and lyrical artistry quite as wonderfully as this debut feature. Capturing the warmth of an Arkansas summer and the emotional confusion of a thirteen year old struggling after the murder of his older brother, Abbassi establishes himself as a sensitive filmmaker with the ability to evoke a delicate subjective experience.

And on the doc side?

I knew the filmmaker Maple Rasza back in college but hadn’t caught up with him in a while and a few months back a mutual friend tipped me off to his latest project, a really exceptional interactive film he has made with Milton Guillen called “The Maribor Uprising: A Live Participatory Film.” He and Milton shot footage from a series of massive protests in Slovenia following some incidents involving comically flagrant government corruption, and instead of turning it into a traditional documentary they created an interactive project in which Maple leads the audience through the footage. The audience can choose to follow different protestors, decide whether to follow the law or follow the less peaceful demonstrators, and much more. We have long been a champion of live cinema events, like those created by Brent and Sam Green, but this film is an interesting variation on the form. Plus it just happens to be a very timely project. I’m really excited for that show.

Also, Dmitri Kalashnikov’s “The Road Movie” is a very fun comic documentary composed entirely of wild footage captured by hundreds of Russian automobile dash cams. It’s a very weird way to experience the Russian road. I loved every minute of it.

What film introduced you to a world you didn’t know anything about?

We showed Yuri Ancarani’s stunning short film “il Capo” a few years back and ever since I have been excited to see what he would do with a feature film. Sure enough, his new documentary “The Challenge” did not disappoint. He somehow managed to convince secretive Qatari sheikhs to let him film their bizarre and decadent lives as they prepare for the massive falconry competitions they hold deep in the desert. The footage he captured is arresting, hilarious and profound. There is barely a word spoken in the entire film but you will never want to look away. I have never seen anything like it.

You always put shorts front and center at Rooftop and dig into the best international short films. I remember two years ago you talking about how there was an inordinate amount of great shorts coming out of Sweden, what you find this year?

Yeah, a lot of those great Swedish short filmmakers are now doing pretty well. Ruben Ostlund just won Cannes after all, and he was one of the talented Swedes I was talking about back then. And there are some truly wonderful new Swedish shorts this year as well – I am particularly fond of “I Will Always Love You Conny,” by Amanda Kernell. It’s a heartbreaking short.

But my favorite short of the year is a Swedish animation that we gave a grant to called “The Burden” by Niki LIndroth Von Behr. It won Gothenburg, and it’s part of a trend that I have noticed lately of a surge in very, very talented young female animators. Ten years ago an animated shorts program would be packed with films by men, and that is definitely not the case anymore. It’s exciting to see women animators from all over the world coming to the fore. We opened the summer with an animated film by a woman and we will end the summer with one, too, and that isn’t a coincidence.

Rooftop Films Summer Festival runs through August 19th. You can find more information here.

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Documentary premiered in Locarno and screened at True/False and SXSW.

Kino Lorber has acquired all North American rights to The Challenge, Yuri Ancarani’s documentary focused on a group of super-wealthy, Qatari sheikhs who moonlight as amateur falconers.

The Challenge offers a rare window into a group of ultra-privileged men who spare no expense in the pursuit of their idiosyncratic wishes.

The film will screen in New York on September 8, followed by a nationwide roll-out in the autumn. VOD and home video releases are scheduled for 2018.

“Yuri Ancarani is the type of visionary and ambitious filmmaker that we love to introduce to American audiences,” Kino Lorber CEO Richard Lorber said. “And his feature debut The Challenge is an unforgettable cinematic experience that’s going to both charm and astound audiences everywhere.”

“We are excited to work with Kino Lorber on the North American release of The Challenge,” Slingshot Films’ Manuela Buono said. “We always...

April 21 to 23 will see an unprecedented collaboration between Acropolis Cinema, the Locarno Festival, and the Swiss Consulate General of Los Angeles at the Downtown Independent cinema. Curated by Acropolis founder Jordan Cronk and co-artistic director Robert Koehler, the festival’s main program is comprised of a hand-selected group of films from the 69th Locarno Festival’s Competition, Signs of Life, and Filmmakers of the Present programs, with ten features, all Los Angeles premieres, representing no less than nine different countries.Locarno in Los Angeles

Co-organized with the Swiss Consulate General in Los Angeles, the festival will also host two daytime panel discussions featuring a variety of local critics, programmers, and representatives from Acropolis and the Locarno Festival. Along with three evening receptions featuring a selection of Ticino wine and beer, the first Locarno in Los Angeles promises to bring a tantalizing taste of one of the world’s best film...

All the Cities of the NorthSundance has the clout, Cannes the razzle-dazzle. Toronto’s epic film selection is world class. But ask any serious cinephile which of the world’s grand festival institutions deserves your undivided attention, their answer more often than not would be Locarno. Since its inception in 1946, the annual Swiss film festival is a haven for innovative new works by veteran and freshman auteurs alike. The Golden Leopard, Locarno’s equivalent of the Palme D’or, has gone to a diverse group of winners that includes both Otto Preminger’s Carmen Jones and Hong Sang-soo’s Right Now, Wrong Then. Sensing an egregious lack of this progressive programing spirit in their Southern California megalopolis, film critics Jordan Cronk and Robert Koehler have masterminded a curatorial anecdote: Locarno in Los Angeles. Running April 21 through April 23, the event will showcase 10 features and a number of shorts that screened at...

Now in its 46th iteration, Film Society Of Lincoln Center and The Museum Of Modern Art’s annual New Directors/New Films series has routinely introduced the film world to some of the most interesting and singular young voices within cinema. Be it their first lineup in 1972 which included Wim Wenders’ The Goalie’s Anxiety At The Penalty Kick or last year’s selection that included this writer’s favorite film of 2016, Neon Bull, Nd/Nf has become one of the great film series on any year’s calendar.

And 2017 is no different.

Three films lead the way for this year’s slate, all of which are Sundance-approved entries into the greater American Independent Cinema canon. Opening the festival is Geremy Jasper’s Patti Cake$, with Eliza Hittman’s latest Beach Rats and Dustin Guy Defa’s New York-set Person to Person, all of which garnered solid notices out of Park City this January,...

The Summer Is GoneOne of the greater pleasures of New Directors/New Films, the yearly collaboration in New York between the Film Society of Lincoln Center and Museum of Modern Art, is reveling in the mystery of emerging directors. Of course, many and most festivals have offerings from first (and second and third time) directors, but at none is this explicitly the point. When a minimum of information is offered, save for a brief bio, relinquished is the burden of pre-viewing research and any expectations that may arise from it. More prominent titles have been covered by the Notebook already, but here are highlights from around the globe, from directors not-yet-known, though hopefully for not much longer. The Summer Is Gone echoes the ghosts of Edward Yang by locating drama in a particular moment in history, wedding personal histories to political ones. Set in inner Mongolia, the film throws back to the ever-receding 90s,...

One of the best festivals during the first half of the year is The Museum of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s New Directors/New Films, which kicks off its 46th year this March, running from the 15th to the 26th. With last year’s line-up including some of the year’s best films, including Cameraperson, The Fits, Kaili Blues, Neon Bull, Weiner, and more, we can expect many more discoveries this year.

Opening with Patti Cake$ and closing with Person to Person, in between will be one of our favorite films from Sundance as the centerpiece, Beach Rats. Also among the line-up is a handful of other festival favorites, including The Dreamed Path, The Giant, Menashe, and Lady Macbeth.

“Authenticity is an elusive thing these days, and without it we risk ruin. This is particularly true in cinema,” says Rajendra Roy, the Celeste Bartos Chief...

The Museum of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln Center has today announces their complete lineup for the 46th annual New Directors/New Films (Nd/Nf), running March 15 – 26. Dedicated to the discovery of new works by emerging and dynamic filmmaking talent, this year’s festival will screen 29 features and nine short films. This year’s lineup boasts nine North American premieres, seven U.S. premieres, and two world premieres, with features and shorts from 32 countries across five continents.

The opening, centerpiece, and closing night selections showcase three exciting new voices in American independent cinema that all recently debuted at Sundance: Geremy Jasper’s “Patti Cake$” is the opening night pick, while Eliza Hittman’s “Beach Rats” is the centerpiece selection and Dustin Guy Defa will close the festival with “Person to Person.” Other standouts include “Menashe,” “My Happy Family,” “Quest” and “The Wound.”

Read More: The Sundance Rebel:...

Swiss Consul General Emil Wyss has the complaisant good cheer one would expect of a diplomat. At a press conference in his Los Angeles home, he notes that the city and Locarno have more in common than people may expect. “They both have palm trees!” he says with a grin. The lakeside city in the south of Switzerland is better-known to cinephiles as the home of one of the oldest, most venerated film festivals in the world. Now, a joint venture between the Locarno Festival and La’s Acropolis Cinema is bringing some of the festival’s choice programming to Southern California.

The inaugural iteration of Locarno in Los Angeles will take place over the weekend of April 21-23 at the Downtown Independent cinema. The program consists of 10 films that played at last year’s festival, curated by Acropolis founder Jordan Cronk and La critic Robert Koehler. Eight of those films remain without U.

The 69th annual Locarno Film Festival finally concluded after eleven days and screenings of 279 films, and awarded its Palmarès. The Golden Leopard went to “Godless,” a first feature from Bulgaria’s Ralitza Petrova. The film portrait of the criminal underbelly of Bulgaria also took home Best Actress for Irena Ivanova.

The fest jury awarded João Pedro Rodrigues Best Director for “O Ornitólogo.” Romanian director Radu Jude won the Special Jury Prize for his film “Inimi Cicatrizate” (Scarred Hearts), which was inspired by the 1937 Max Blecher novel.

Read More: João Pedro Rodrigues’ ‘The Ornithologist’ Will Blow Your Mind — Locarno Review

The public favorite, Ken Loach’s “I, Daniel Blake,” about a UK retiree struggling to obtain medical assistance from the state, won the Audience Award; at Cannes, Indiewire’s Eric Kohn dubbed the film “Loach’s best movie in years.”

Read More: Cannes Review: Why ‘I, Daniel Blake’ is Ken Loach...

Bulgarian drama won the Golden Leopard as well as Best Actress for star Irena Ivanova.

Bulgarian director Ralitza Petrova’s debut feature Godless has won the top prize, the Golden Leopard, at the 69th Locarno Film Festival.

The drama also took the Best Actress award for Irena Ivanova’s performance as a nurse looking after elderly patients with dementia in a remote Bulgarian town.

In addition, the production by Klas Film’s Rossitsa Valkanova with Denmark’s Snowglobe and France’s Alcatraz Films and Film Factory, received the Ecumenical Jury’s Prize, which comes with a cash award of $20,500 (CHF20,000).

The screenplay for Godless - which is being handled internationally by Greek-based Heretic Outreach - had been supported by Torino FilmLab’s FrameWork, Sarajevo’s CineLink and the Women in Film Finishing Fund in Los Angeles.

“This prize was unusual among juries because it was a unanimous decision between all the members of our team,” the International...