Notícias

Exclusive: Paris-based The Party Film Sales has acquired international sales rights for Dutch director Sven Bresser’s first feature Reedland ahead of its premiere in competition in Cannes Critics’ Week in May.

The film tells the story of reed cutter Johan who discovers the lifeless body of a girl on his land and is overcome by an ambiguous sense of guilt. While he takes care of his granddaughter, he sets out on a quest to track down evil. But darkness can thrive in unexpected places.

Non-professional actor Gerrit Knobbe makes his big screen debut as Johan, alongside young newcomer Loïs Reinders.

The drama is among 11 first and second feature films, seven in competition, selected out of 1,000 submitted films for the upcoming edition of Cannes Critics’ Week, running from May 14 to 22.

Reedland is the first feature by a Dutch director to premiere in Critics’ Week since Karim Traïdia’s The Polish...

Belgian director Laura Wandel’s child custody drama Adam’s Interest, starring Anamaria Vartolomei and Léa Drucker, will open the 64th Cannes Critics’ Week, which unveiled its 2025 selection today.

The second feature from Wandal after gritty childhood bullying drama Playground, the handheld camera-shot feature follows three characters in a paediatric ward: a helpless mother (Vartolomei), her malnourished son, and a nurse (Drucker).

The film, which premieres out of competition, is one of 11 first and second feature films, seven in competition, selected out of 1,000 submitted film for the upcoming edition running from May 14 to 22.

Another 13 short films selected from 2,340 submissions will be announced on April 17.

Competition

Competition seven titles include Taiwanese director Shih-Ching Tsou’s Taipei-set urban melodrama Left-Handed Girl. It marks a first solo feature for Tsou, a long-time collaborator of Sean Baker, who co-wrote and edited the work.

The tragicomedy follows the odyssey of a single mother and her...

A conspiracy thriller focusing on Gandhi’s final days is hampered by questionable casting, comical back projections and terrible visual effects

Released to mark the anniversary of Gandhi’s assassination, this is frankly a bit eggy – indeed, we may not witness an eggier film all year. Karim Traïdia, the veteran Algerian director who earned a Golden Globe nomination for The Polish Bride (1998), has reappeared in India (or Sri Lanka passing for India) with a conspiracy thriller based on Mahatma’s final days (co-directed by Pankaj Sehgal).

It bears some resemblance to the UK’s own tuppenny-ha’penny costume-and-crime dramas, not least in the casting of Vinnie Jones as the senior British diplomat overseeing partition. (No wonder it all kicked off.) Still, it transpires that Jones – who barely features, and who gives his usual performance when he does – is only the film’s fifth or sixth unlikeliest element.

FilmFinders was among the invited guests to The Mannheim Meetings, the market component of the Mannheim-Heidelberg International Film Festival, which held discussions about 50 projects from Europe, Canada, Latin America, and Africa in the co-production market for arthouse films, which runs from November 12 to 16. Some projects included UK filmmaker David Andrew Ward's thriller 'New Instruction', 'The Polish Bride' director Karim Traidia's new film 'Identite Zero', and 'Aladdin - Escape To Paradise' a Platonic story based on fact by Switzerland's Simon Bischoff. 13 projects from Central and Eastern Europeand five Canadian projects were also invited along with two projects apiece from Argentina, Brazil and Chile and single projects from Ecuador, Burkina Faso, Morocco and South Africa. Support comes from the European Union's MEDIA Programme.