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After the success of horror film “Deleter,” actor Nadine Lustre and filmmaker Mikhail Red have teamed again on genre film “Nokturno.”

“Nokturno” revolves around a curse brought on by Filipino folklore characters known as Kumakatok, who are tall, thin and have long, pale fingers. They wear veils that obscure their faces and come knocking in the dead of the night. Those who answer the door are cursed to die or lose a loved one in three days.

Lustre plays Jamie, an overseas Filipina worker who returns to her isolated home province when rumors of mysterious killings brought about by a primal curse begin to circulate. She must reunite with her estranged mother Lilet, played by Eula Valdez (the lead in Red’s 2018 Rotterdam title “Neomanila”), and face her family’s troubled past in order to survive the curse of the Kumakatok.

The cast also includes Bea Binene, Wilbert Ross, J.J. Quilantang...

Leo Katigbak began his career as a freelance writer, editor, producer and director for television in the mid-1980s. He established the Abs-cbn Film Archives in 1994 and later took on roles in content acquisition and programming for the broadcast channels of Abs-cbn and Studio 23. He was chief of staff in the president's office when he launched Abs-cbn Film Restoration. Now a consultant, he oversees the defense operations of Sagip Pelikula (Rescuing Film) and the restoration efforts of Abs-cbn.

Rica Leticia I. Arevalo is currently the Head/Project Development Officer of the Film Education Division of the Film Development Council of the Philippines. She has also shot features, shorts, and animation, and was the recipient of the 2005 Cinemalaya Best Direction Award for “ICU Bed #7.” She has also worked as executive producer and script writer in various movies, while her activities also include article writing and teaching.

Mikhail Red is an...

Born on December 11, 1991, Mikhail Red is an independent Filipino filmmaker based in Manila, the Philippines. Growing up under the guidance of his father Filipino filmmaker and Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or winner Raymond Red, Mikhail was exposed to the cinema at an early age. He wrote and directed his first short film at 15 and immediately earned recognition in local and international film festivals. As a young up-and-coming filmmaker, he continued making short films throughout his teenage years, screening his works at film festivals in Hong Kong, New York, Berlin, Seoul, Austria, and Canada among others. At 21, he wrote and directed his first full-length feature film entitled “Recorder”, which had its international premiere at the 2013 Tokyo International Film Festival. Since 2016 and the success of “Birdshot”, he has been shooting a film a year, most of which were box office successes.

On the occasion of his presence in the International Jury if Fica Vesoul,...

Top Filipino director Mikhail Red (“Deleter”) will commence esports based film “Friendly Fire” imminently.

Red is currently serving on the international jury at the Vesoul International Film Festival of Asian Cinema and will commence the film as soon as he returns to the Philippines from France.

“Friendly Fire” stars Loisa Andalio (“The Goodbye Girl”) and Coleen Garcia (“Kaluskos”). The film will follow Sonya (Garcia), a visionary female CEO who wants to put Philippine esports on the map. She scouts a young female player Hazel (Andalio) from a random internet cafe, sees the potential in her and trains her.

“It’s not your usual crime thriller that most of my films are, it’s something fresh for me and exciting. I like to think of it as my most wholesome project, because it’s more inspirational and it’s a genre I’ve always wanted to try – the sports movie and the underdog sports story,...

Top Filipino film director Mikhail Red is set as series director of “Dreamwalker,” a live-action book-to-series adaptation of a story about a monster-slaying vlogger. The project is being set up by London- and Singapore-based 108 Media.

The show is an adaptation of the “Dreamwalker” action-fantasy graphic novel by Filipino-American pop culture blogger Mikey Sutton and artist Noel Layon Flores. The novel topped the comics charts in The Philippines and was auctioned for TV adaptation. 108 Media envisages the show as a multi-season universe which will begin to find its way to regional audiences in Asia from early 2024.

Season one will focus on the origin story of the Filipino-American protagonist Kat who returns to the Philippines under mysterious circumstances. She survives a bus crash and finds herself gifted with the ability to enter dreams of others and being able to extract weapons temporarily to wield against supernatural beings from Filipino folklore as...

Fast-rising Philippines-based director Mikhail Red has gained a dedicated following after delivering a succession of powerful films in just a few years.

In addition to establishing Red on the festival circuit – he has been consistently programmed by the Tokyo International Film Festival – his pictures have been acquired by Netflix. And Red is filming part of HBO series “Halfworlds.”

The title of his latest effort is taken from the name of a WWII-era Japanese bolt-action rifle. And while the narrative of “Arisaka” is more contemporary, the references to the brutal past are clear enough. The protagonist, a woman police officer is on the run and escapes capture by straying into the wilderness that was the scene of the infamous Bataan Death March. In Red’s thinking, history has a nasty habit of repeating itself.

But “Arisaka” nearly didn’t happen, as the production was hit by Covid and natural disasters.

Variety:...

Rae Red has made a name for herself through her script-writing work in Mikhail Red’s films like “Eerie“, “Neomanila” and “Birdshot“. Since 2016, she has also started directing films, with “The Girl and the Gun” being her second feature and the third overall.

On the occasion of “The Girl and the Gun” screening at New York Asian Film Festival, we speak with her on the story of the film, the non-linear narrative, violence in Quezon City, the various issues poor people in the Philippines face, and many other topics.

How did the story for “The Girl and The Gun” come about? It seems very grounded in reality. Is it based on any true incidents?

A lot of the characters from the movie are based on real people. There’s Kian Delos Santos, an Ejk victim back in 2017. The character of Jun played by Elijah Canlas was inspired by him. Lean Alejandro,...

Born on December 11, 1991, Mikhail Red is an independent Filipino filmmaker based in Manila, the Philippines. Growing up under the guidance of his father Filipino filmmaker and Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or winner Raymond Red, Mikhail was exposed to the cinema at an early age. He wrote and directed his first short film at 15 and immediately earned recognition in local and international film festivals. As a young up-and-coming filmmaker, he continued making short films throughout his teenage years, screening his works at film festivals in Hong Kong, New York, Berlin, Seoul, Austria, and Canada among others. At 21, he wrote and directed his first full-length feature film entitled “Recorder”, which had its international premiere at the 2013 Tokyo International Film Festival. The film continued its successful run throughout the international circuit, screening and competing in more than ten international film festivals and winning five international awards including the Best New Director prize...

Following its plan to upload more and more local content alongside the more predictable blockbusters, streaming giant Netflix is about to give us the opportunity to binge on good Filipino movies.

After choosing to stream Mikhail Red’s Academy Award-nominated “Birdshot” in March, Netflix has just announced a new list of films, including bombastic action thriller “BuyBust” by Erik Matti.

Here is the list of Filipino movies coming soon to Netflix:

“Heneral Luna” (2015) by Jerrold Tarog (Release date on Netflix: November 1)

Set during the Philippine-American war, a short-tempered Filipino general faces an enemy more formidable than the American army: his own treacherous countrymen. (IMDb)

“BuyBust” (2018) by Erik Matti (Release Date on Netflix: November 15)

New recruit of an elite anti-narcotic squad Nina Manigan and a group of the best men and women of the team find themselves fighting for their lives in the slums of Manila after a botched buybust.

“Kita Kita” (2017) by Sigrid Andrea P.

“In the Philippines, you have very low-budget films, so most films tend to be a certain style. Either you see cinema verité or very contemplative [filmmaking],” Birdshot director Mikhail Red told Deadline’s Dominic Patten after an Awardsline screening of the film, reflecting on the Filipino Oscar entry this year, which is more stylistically heightened by comparison. “Making Birdshot, I wanted a Western set in the Philippines, so it had to have this more dynamic approach…...

The final deadline for submitting each country’s film for consideration for the foreign-language Oscar was October 2. Last year 85 were finally deemed eligible by the Academy; this year the number is a record 92. Haiti, Honduras, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Mozambique, Senegal and Syria are first-time entrants. These films are vying for the initial shortlist of 9, and final five nominations to be announced on January 23. See the final list below.

Read More:Oscar Announces Changes for Foreign-Film Voting: Now Simpler! (Sort Of.)

The frontrunners include Sweden selected Ruben Östlund’s hilarious Palme d’Or-winner “The Square” (October 27, Magnolia Pictures), an art-world satire shot in majority Swedish with some English from stars Claes Bang, Elisabeth Moss, and Dominic West, thus giving Östlund another shot after “Force Majeure” was a surprise 2015 Oscar omission.

Germany’s choice, Fatih Akin’s “In the Fade” (December 27, Magnolia Pictures), won Best Actress for Diane Kruger at Cannes.

The final deadline for submitting each country’s film for consideration for the foreign-language Oscar was October 2. Last year 85 were finally deemed eligible by the Academy; this year the number is a record 92. Haiti, Honduras, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Mozambique, Senegal and Syria are first-time entrants. These films are vying for the initial shortlist of 9, and final five nominations to be announced on January 23. See the final list below.

Read More:Oscar Announces Changes for Foreign-Film Voting: Now Simpler! (Sort Of.)

The frontrunners include Sweden selected Ruben Östlund’s hilarious Palme d’Or-winner “The Square” (October 27, Magnolia Pictures), an art-world satire shot in majority Swedish with some English from stars Claes Bang, Elisabeth Moss, and Dominic West, thus giving Östlund another shot after “Force Majeure” was a surprise 2015 Oscar omission.

Germany’s choice, Fatih Akin’s “In the Fade” (December 27, Magnolia Pictures), won Best Actress for Diane Kruger at Cannes.

The Philippines has chosen 24-year-old filmmaker Mikhail Red's Birdshot as its contender for consideration in the best foreign-language film category at the 2018 Oscars.

Equal parts coming-of-age drama and thriller, the film follows the story of young girl who accidentally shoots an endangered Philippine eagle. The film premiered last year at the Tokyo International Film Festival, where it won best film in the Asian Future section. It was later selected for the Ingmar Bergman International Debut Award at the Goteborg Film Festival.

The Film Academy of the Philippines' official Oscar selection committee announced its choice Tuesday. The organization said its...

Hot on the heels of an award-winning festival run for his last film Birdshot, Filipino director Mikhail Red is already hard at work on his third feature, Neomanila. Set in the deadly world of the drug war raging through contemporary Manila, the film follows Toto, a teenage orphan, as he is recruited into a notorious death squad. The gang's matriarch, Irma, becomes a surrogate mother figure to the boy, but when their next target is revealed to be a familiar face, loyalties will be put to the test. Fast becoming one of the most exciting young voices in Filipino cinema, Red's work, including his 2013 debut Rekorder, fuses genre elements with bold social commentary, and Neomanila looks to be continuing that trend. Check out the...

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The Network of Asian Fantastic (Naff) Films brought its tenth anniversary project market to a close earlier this week, and gave its top prize to the Finish horror project The Twin by director Taneli Mustonen. Mustonen's Lake Bodom also screened in BiFan during the week. Among the 24 projects presented, 16 It Projects, four in Project Spotlight 2017: Vietnam, three from Nordic Genre Invasion (The Twin was the first Nordic Genre Invasion project to win a prize in Bucheon), and the first Blood Window project to come to Bucheon, several other prizes were awarded. The Naff Award went to Eerie by Mikhail Red, whose Birdshot is part of the 2017 BiFan selection. Bu Wei's Man of Sin earned the Signal Pictures Award, while the Aurora...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Japan’s Close-Knit wins audience award.

Thai high school thriller Bad Genius starring the Screen International Rising Star Asia Award winner Chutimon ‘Aokbab’ Chuengcharoensukying was named best feature as the 16th New York Asian Film Festival (Nyaff) came to a close.

Director Nattawut “Baz” Poonpiriya attended the awards ceremony on July 15. His film received its international premiere and opened the 17-day festival on June 30, when Chuengcharoensukying collected her award on stage at the Walter Reade Theater. Nyaff concluded on July 16 with the Us premiere of The Villainess.

Bad Genius was among seven features nominated in the new main competition, which was restricted to films by first- and second-time directors. The inaugural three-person jury comprised actress Jennifer Kim, VOD acquisitions executive George Schmaltz, and festival super fan Kristina Winters.

The competition’s special mention award went to Yoshiyuki Kishi’s A Double Life from Japan, and an honourable mention for most promising director went to Le Binh Giang for Vietnam...

Japan’s Close-Knit wins audience award.

Thai high school thriller Bad Genius starring the Screen International Rising Star Asia Award winner Chutimon ‘Aokbab’ Chuengcharoensukying was named best feature as the 16th New York Asian Film Festival (Nyaff) came to a close.

Director Nattawut “Baz” Poonpiriya attended the awards ceremony on July 15. His film received its international premiere and opened the 17-day festival on June 30, when Chuengcharoensukying collected her award on stage at the Walter Reade Theater.

Director Nattawut “Baz” Poonpiriya attended the awards ceremony on July 15 and Nyaff concluded on July 16 with the Us premiere of The Villainess.

Bad Genius was among seven features nominated in the new main competition, which was restricted to films by first- and second-time directors. The inaugural three-person jury comprised actress Jennifer Kim, VOD acquisitions executive George Schmaltz, and festival super fan Kristina Winters.

The competition’s special mention award went to Yoshiyuki Kishi’s A Double Life from Japan, and an honourable...

Mikhail Red triumphed at Tokyo Film Festival at the back end of 2016 when he picked up the Asian Future Award for his sophmore effort, Birdshot. Mikhail, along with producing partner Pamela Reyes, has now returned to Japan, bringing his film to Osaka Asian Film Festival as part of the New Action! Southeast Asia Special Program. Birdshot is a mystery-thriller centered around two violent events. In one, Maya, a young girl raised by her elderly father on an isolated farm shoots and kills an endangered and protected Filipino eagle. In the other, rookie cop Domingo investigates the disappearance of a group of farmers who had protested the stealing of their land by corrupt government officials. As Domingo is increasingly compromised by the corruption and police...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

World premieres include Fanny Ardant’s Stalin’s Couch [pictured], Elisabeth E. Schuch’s The Book Of Birdie, Erlingur Ottar Thoroddsen’s Rift, and Manuel Concha’s Blind Alley.

Goteborg Film Festival has announced its programme of nearly 450 films from 84 countries to screen during the festival’s 40th anniversary edition (Jan 27-Feb 6).

As reported earlier, the festival will kick off with Dome Karukoski’s Tom Of Finland.

The eight films (all world premieres) competing for the Dragon Award for Best Nordic Film – with a prize of $110,500 (Sek 1m) — are as follows:

Tom Of Finland by Dome Karukoski (Finland/Sweden/Denmark/Germany/Us)Beyond Dreams by Rojda Sekersöz (Sweden)The Ex-wife by Katja Wik (Sweden)Heartstone by Gudmundur A. Gudmundsson (Iceland/Denmark)Sámi Blood by Amanda Kernell (Sweden/Denmark/Norway)Little Wing bySelma Vilhunen (Finland)The Man by Charlotte Sieling (Denmark)Handle With Care by Arild Andresen (Norway)

The Nordic documentary competition includes:

Citizen Schein by Maud Nycander, [link...

Filipino director Mikhail Red recently took home the Best Film prize in the Asian Future competition at the Tokyo International Film Festival with his new thriller Birdshot and based on the gripping trailer for the film it's not at all hard to see why Red is considered one of the brightest young talents in the region. A farm girl mistakenly shoots and kills an endangered Philippine Eagle. When authorities begin a manhunt to track down the eagle’s killer, they stumble upon an even more horrific discovery. We shared the first teaser for this one a little while back and that has now been followed by a full trailer. Hopefully audiences around the globe will have a chance to see this one soon but in the...

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