News

“Honour of Persia,” the directorial debut of Cannes best actress winner Zar Amir Ebrahimi (“Holy Spider”), is one of five features at financing stage to be pitched at the Göteborg Film Festival’s first-ever Nordic Gateway curated program.

The five international titles – hailing from Germany, Macedonia, Canada and Kosovo – will vie for the Tint Post-Production Award worth Sek 400,000 to be handed out Jan. 30, 2025 during the Göteborg fest industry sidebar Nordic Film Market running Jan. 29-31.

“With Nordic Gateway, we’re introducing an exciting new layer to the Nordic Film Market, creating a space where international projects can connect with Nordic professionals. In today’s challenging financing climate, building meaningful connections and partnerships is more vital than ever to bring strong stories to the screen,” said Josef Kullengård, Head of Industry at the Göteborg Film Festival.

Each project was carefully picked in conjunction with a national organisation or fund, based on its unique artistic value,...

Cinema Management Group (Cmg) has licensed 4 Cats Pictures’ Spanish box office hit Buffalo Kids to Arp Selection in France.

The animation co-directed by Jesus Garcia Galocha and Pedro Solis opened in Spain on August 14 through Warner Bros. It shot up the charts to rank as the second-highest Spanish film of the year to date on $5.4m and over 775,000 admissions and counting.

Buffalo Kids premiered in the inaugural non-competitive Annecy Presents strand in June and follows two Irish orphans who arrive in New York City by ocean liner in 1886. Gemma Arterton, Alisha Weir, Stephen Graham, and Sean Bean lead the voice cast.

Interested in independent Asian animation, but not sure where to start? Well, we could give you a list of anime, but we've already got (three parts!) to an anime tribute already. Instead, here's a list of 15 animated indies from the last few years that fall outside of mainstream animation studios like Disney, Pixar and Ghibli.

This list is in no way prescriptive nor comprehensive, and is merely organized by date of release. Some of these filmmakers are more established; others are just beginning their careers. Some of these are shorts, others are features, a few are even series. Regardless, with each of these animated indies, prepare to laugh, cry, and have your mind blown by the unbridled joy of animation.

1. Your Name (2016) by Makoto Shinkai (Japan)

While Makoto Shinkai had been churning out his own shorts and mid-length films for almost a decade preceding “Your Name,” he doesn't really nail...

“Tehran Taboo” doesn't hold anything back, save for the fact that it is animated. In Ali Soozandeh's wild rotoscoped debut feature, he depicts the increasingly entangled stories of three people in Tehran. Pari (Elmira Rafizadeh), a street-savvy but jaded sex worker demands a divorce and an education for her mute son. Sara (Zar Amir Ebrahimi), a soft-spoken pregnant woman seeks work despite her husband's strict orders to stay at home “for the baby's sake.” Finally, Babak (Arash Marandi), a struggling musician, is flung into an absurd search to replicate an unbroken hymen for his one-night stand. In the trio's search for propriety in Tehran's underbelly, the three find that their worlds, strangely, overlap more than they initially thought.

Their growing kinship is made clear at the turning point of the film, when Sara joins her neighbor, Pari, at her veranda. Perhaps, in a different world, they wouldn't have met at all.

Exclusive: United Talent Agency (UTA) has signed up Iranian-French actress, director, producer, and casting director Zar Amir.

Amir, best known for her breakout turn in Ali Abbasi’s 2022 Cannes competition title Holy Spider, has signed with UTA for representation in all areas and will continue to be represented by Untitled Entertainment, Das Imperium in Berlin, Adequat in Paris, and Alh PR.

With Holy Spider, Amir picked up the best actress award at Cannes. She also served as an associate producer and casting director on the pic, which was Denmark’s submission for the Academy Awards. As an actor, she can next be seen in the Cate Blanchett-produced Shayda, which debuted at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. The pic, directed by Noora Niasari, took the audience award in the World Cinema competition at Sundance and has since been chosen as Australia’s submission for the best international feature race at this year’s Oscars.

The actor will share centre stage with Zar Amir Ebrahimi in Guillaume Renusson’s first feature film, a Baxter Films and Les Films Velvet production set to be sold by WTFilms. Halted after a week of shooting back in March on account of the strict lockdown implemented across France, filming on Guillaume Renusson’s first full-length work Les Survivants finally resumed on Monday 11 January. Shining bright in the cast are Denis Ménochet (recently nominated for the 2020 Best Supporting Role César for By The Grace of God; also well-received in Only The Animals) and French-Iranian actress Zar Amir Ebrahimi who are joined by Victoire Du Bois, Oscar Copp and Italy’s Luca Terracciano. Written by Guillaume Renusson and Clément Peny, the story (which won the Audience Award for Best Screenplay for a First Feature Film at Angers’ European First Film Festival) revolves around Samuel who, in...

Germany has selected Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s Venice-premiere title “Never Look Away” as its entry for best foreign language film at this year’s 91st Academy Awards. German Films, the local body for the promotion of German cinema worldwide, announced the choice Thursday.

It is the second time the director has had a film chosen as German’s Oscar submission following his Oscar-winning 2006 film “The Lives of Others.” “Never Look Away” has its world premiere in competition at the Venice Film Festival on Sept. 4 and will see its North American premiere in the special presentations section of the Toronto Intl. Film Festival on Sept. 8.

“My actors, producers and I asked ourselves in the making of ‘Never Look Away’: What movie would we like to see on the screen? The result is a love story, a family drama, a biography of Germany in the 20th century, and a stroll through modern art,...

Chicago – In the last seven years, the work of Iranian director Asghar Farhadi has emerged internationally. His Oscar-winning film “A Separation” (2011) and “The Salesman” (2016) has launched his set-in-Iran films to a wider audience. The Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago has been highlighting the country’s cinema for years, and they present the 28th Festival of Films from Iran through March 1st, 2018.

Eight films will be shown throughout the month-long program, including “Ava,” “24 Frames,” “Disappearance,” “Negar,” “Tehran Taboo,” and ‘Waiting for Kiarostami.” For more information about the festival and the films, including tickets, click here.

’Ava’ is Part of the 28th Festival of Films from Iran at the Gene Siskel Film Center

Photo credit: SiskelFilmCenter.org

The Gene Siskel Film Center is part of the School of the Art Institute in Chicago, and presents film festival celebrations (including the Black Harvest Film Festival every August), restorations, cutting edge new...

With this weekend’s launch in Hollywood of the Animation Is Film Festival at the Tcl Chinese 6 Theater, there’s an opportunity to expand industry tastes while influencing the Oscar race. “It’s for film people to find a highly curated selection of the best feature filmmaking from around the world [for that particular year] in one place,” said Aif founder Eric Beckman, the co-founder and president of GKids, which organized the festival in collaboration with the Annecy International Animation Festival, Variety, and Acifa-Hollywood.

After 20 years of success with the New York International Children’s Film Festival, Beckman thought it was time to broaden the appeal in Hollywood with an emphasis on global production and distribution.

Read More:2018 Oscar Predictions: Best Animated Feature

Why launch a new festival?

The timing couldn’t be better: New Academy rules now allow all eligible members to vote for animated features, using preferential voting. However, it remains to...

Blunt, angry and eye-opening, Tehran Taboo offers a scathing portrait of Iran’s largest city. Think of it as Short Cuts meets Persepolis, although that facile shorthand does not begin to get at just how much is going on, plot and character wise, in Ali Soozandeh’s brisk animated feature. This is instantly clear from the first scene where a woman is trying to administer a blow job to a cabbie who cannot get it up, and crashes his car in a fit of rage upon spotting his daughter holding hands in public. The woman's young son is in the back of the cab, bored, while all of this is going on with the implaction that this grotesque farce has happend often enough to become part...

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

Aiming to make an impact this Oscar season, the inaugural Animation Is Film Festival from GKids, the Annecy International Animation Festival, Variety, and Acifa-Hollywood launches October 20-22 at the Tcl Chinese 6 Theater.

The festival will present a selection of new animated feature films from Asia, Europe, South America, and North America, with juried and audience prizes and filmmakers attending most screenings. Additionally, the festival will feature studio events, special screenings, short film programs, and a Vr lounge.

Aif seems well timed: The Academy now allows all members to vote for animated features, using preferential voting. However, it remains to be seen what the dynamic will be in terms of mainstream versus indie nominees.

GKids, which has nine Oscar nominations (including this year’s “My Life as a Zucchini”), has seven movies in contention this season; four showcase in competition at Aif. The highlight is “The Breadwinner” (October 20), a coproduction of Ireland,...

Argentinian filmmaker and Us actor honoured in Poland.

Argentinian filmmaker Lucrecia Martel and Us actor Edward Norton were the guests of honour at the seventh edition of the Transatlantyk Festival which comes to a close in the Polish city of Lodz on Friday evening (July 21).

Martel became the second woman director - after Germany’s Margarethe von Trotta - and the 11th filmmaker overall, to be awarded the Fipresci 90+ statuette in celebration of the International Federation of Film Critics’ ten decades of activities.

Fipresci general secretary Klaus Eder travelled to Lodz to present the award along with Transatlantyk’s director Jan A.P. Kaczmarek to Martel at a gala ceremony last night (Thursday) before a screening of her 2008 film The Headless Woman.

Previous recipients include Jean-Jacques Annaud, Edgar Reitz, Bela Tarr and the late Andrzej Wajda, while the choice of Martel this year was particularly fitting since the Polish festival had the Power of Woman as an overlying...

Argentinean filmmaker and Us actor honoured in Poland.

Argentinean filmmaker Lucrecia Martel and Us actor Edward Norton were the guests of honour at the seventh edition of the Transatlantyk Festival which comes to a close in the Polish city of Lodz on Friday evening (July 21).

Martel became the second woman director - after Germany’s Margarethe von Trotta - and the 11th filmmaker overall, to be awarded the Fipresci 90+ statuette in celebration of the International Federation of Film Critics’ ten decades of activities.

Fipresci general secretary Klaus Eder travelled to Lodz to present the award along with Transatlantyk’s director Jan A.P. Kaczmarek to Martel at a gala ceremony last night (Thursday) before a screening of her 2008 film The Headless Woman.

Previous recipients include Jean-Jacques Annaud, Edgar Reitz, Bela Tarr and the late Andrzej Wajda, while the choice of Martel this year was particularly fitting since the Polish festival had the Power of Woman as an overlying...

Festival reveals the award winners from its 34th edition.

Scaffolding has won the best Israeli feature film prize at the 34th edition of the Jerusalem Film Festival.

The debut feature from director Matan Yair – produced by rising Israeli production outfit Green Productions – takes home a prize worth $28,000 (100,000 Ils).

Scaffolding also scooped the best actor prize for debutant Asher Lax and an honorary mention in the best cinematography category for DoP Bartosz Bieniek.

A jury consisting of Elle producer Saïd Ben Saïd, artist Yael Bartana, cinematographer Agnès Godard and Cíntia Gíl, director of film festival Doclisboa, said of the film: “For a film that combines the reality of a group of teenagers and the will of questioning cinema and the role of filmmaking. For its capacity of capturing the tenderness sometimes behind these kids’ violence, their capacity for love, their surprising imagination, in a society that places them in a marginal role forever.”

The festival...

Animation proves a cunning technical choice in the German-Austrian production Tehran Taboo, a first feature written and directed by Ali Soozandeh. Like Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud's 2007 Persepolis, it offers just enough distance to explore the highly charged theme of sexual and personal freedom in Iran without salaciousness. Women are the main victims here, whether married, divorced or single, and their lives are depicted as pure tragedy.

Every scene makes a political point about the religious and political repression of personal life in Iran so that at times it feels that the screenplay is built around opportunities to tick off...

The secret life of young people in Iran struggling to express their sexuality and embrace life while living under the country's oppressive, theocratic regime is the focus of Tehran Taboo, the directorial debut of German-based Iranian filmmaker Ali Soozandeh.

But the film, which premieres in Cannes' Critics' Week sidebar on Saturday, is also attracting attention for its visual style, created by a unique combination of rotoscoping and motion capture with hand-drawn and computer animation.

Celluloid Dreams is selling the film worldwide.

Check out an exclusive trailer for Tehran Taboo below.

<img...

It started during a subway ride in Cologne.

"I overheard two guys talking, Iranians, like me," recalls Ali Soozandeh, a filmmaker who came to Germany as a 25-year-old immigrant in 1985. "They were talking about their sex lives back home. One mentioned a prostitute turning tricks on the streets of Tehran with her child beside her. That got me thinking, and I started writing."

The result was the script to Tehran Taboo, Soozandeh's directorial debut. It's the story of three women and one man living in modern-day Tehran, a schizophrenic society where, despite strict and oppressive theocratic rule, sex, adultery,...

Exclusive: Emmanuelle Bercot also cast; Celluloid Dreams, Avenue B pact for feature.

Paris-based Celluloid Dreams has boarded French director Sebastien Marnier’s high-school-set thriller School’s Out, featuring Laurent Lafitte and Emmanuelle Bercot in the cast (pictured).

Caroline Bonmarchand of Avenue B is producing. She previously collaborated with Marnier on his well-received debut thriller Faultless (Irréprochable), starring Marina Foïs as a down-on-her-luck estate agent who is hell-bent on getting her old job back at an agency in her provincial home-town, whatever it takes.

For School’s Out, Elle co-star Laurent Lafitte is set to play protagonist Pierre Hoffman, a substitute form tutor, brought in after his predecessor commits suicide by throwing himself out of the classroom window in front of his teenage students.

Actress and film-maker Emmanuelle Bercot will play another teacher in the school. Other cast members will include French rapper Gringe, Pascal Greggory, Greg Montel, Thomas Scimeca and Véronique Ruggia.

Lafitte’s character...

The lineup for the 2017 Cannes Critics’ Week (La Semaine de la Critique) has been announced.Opening FILMSicilian Ghost Story (Fabio Grassadonia & Antonio Piazza)COMPETITIONLa familia (Gustavo Rondón Córdova)Los perros (Marcela Said)Oh Lucy! (Atsuko Hirayagani)Gabriel e a montanha (Felipe Gamarano Barbosa)Ava (Léa Mysius)Tehran Taboo (Ali Soozandeh)Makala (Emmanuel Gras)Special Feature SCREENINGSBloody Milk (Hubert Charuel)Une vie violente (Thierry de Peretti)Special Short SCREENINGSAfter School Knife Fight (Caroline Poggi & Jonathan Vinel)Coelho Mau (Carlos Conceição)Les îles (Yann Gonzales)Short & Medium-LENGTHSelva (Sofía Quirós Ubeda)Möbius (Sam Khun)Real Gods Require Blood (Moin Hussain)Jodilerks dela Cruz, Employee of the Month (Carlo Francisco Manatad)Los desheredados (Laura Ferrés)Ela - szkice na pożegnanie (Oliver Adam Kusio)Najpiękniejsze fajerwerki ever (Aleksandra Terpinska)Tesla: Lumière mondiale (Matthew Rankin)Les enfants partent à l'aube (Manon Coubia)Le visage (Salvatore Lista)Closing FILMBrigsby Bear (Dave McCary)...

Zombillenium announced as opener; China named as guest country, Guillermo del Toro to return.

French animator and illustrator Arthur de Pin’s child-friendly comedy-horror tale Zombillenium (pictured) - set against the backdrop of an amusement-terror park were the staff are a motley crew of vampires, zombies and werewolves - will open this year’s edition of the Annecy International Animated Film Festival, running June 12-17 this year.

It is among nine special event screenings including Pixar’s Cars 3, which will be proceeded by a presentation of footage from Mexico-set, Day of the Dead-inspired drama Coco in the presence of director Lee Unkrich, producer Darla K. Anderson and co-director Adrian Molina; Despicable Me 3 and The Big Bad Fox And Other Animals.

Zombillenium will also compete in the 10-title feature film competition.

Other contenders for Annecy’s Cristal for best feature film include Iranian director Ali Soozandeh’s Tehran Taboo, exploring sexuality...

The 56th edition of the Cannes Critics’ Week sidebar has announced its main program, including seven films screening in competition. The sidebar is dedicated to films coming from first- and second-time filmmakers, and always promises a fertile ground for discovering new and emerging talent. Last year’s breakout title was Julia Ducournau’s horror film “Raw,” which sold to Focus World.

Read More: Cannes 2017 Announces Directors Fortnight Lineup, Including Sean Baker’s ‘The Florida Project’ and ‘Patti Cake$’

The section will open with Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza’s latest feature, “Sicilian Ghost Story,” which combines the myths of Romeo and Juliet with the present day Sicilian mafia. Dave McCary’s debut “Brigsby Bear,” the Sundance comedy that sold to Sony Pictures Classics, will close out the section.

For the first time in its history, both a documentary and an animated film will screen in competition. Ali Soozandeh’s animated...

The lineup for the Cannes Film Festival’s International Critics’ Week section was announced on Friday, with Dave McCrary’s Sundance hit “Brigsby Bear” due to close the competition and a documentary and animated film making it into the section for the first time. “Brigsby Bear” stars Claire Danes, Mark Hamill and Greg Kinnear and “SNL” regular Kyle Mooney as the host of an unusual children’s television show. The animated film is Ali Soozandeh’s “Tehran Taboo,” while the documentary is Emmanuel Gras’ “Makala.” Critics’ Week is an independent section that runs concurrently with the main Cannes festival. It...

Mafia tale Sicilian Ghost Story to open sidebar, Sundance hit Brigsby Bear selected as closer.

Cannes Critics’ Week, devoted to first and second features as well as shorts, has unveiled the line-up of its 56th edition, running May 18-26.

Italian directors Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza will open the selection with their second feature Sicilian Ghost Story, a genre-mixing work following a teenage girl as she searches for the boy she loves after he is kidnapped by the Mafia.

It is inspired by the real-life tale of Giuseppe Di Matteo, the son of a former Mafia hitman-turned-informant, who was abducted in 1993.

Critics’ Week artistic director Charles Tesson described it as a “staggering crossover between cinema genres, combining politics, fantasy and terrible teen love.”

The directorial duo premiered their debut feature Salvo in competition in Critics’ Week in 2013, winning the €15,000 Nespresso Grand Prize.

The screenplay for Sicilian Ghost Story was developed at the Sundance Screenwriting Lab and went...

After featuring such discoveries as Raw, Mimosas, It Follows, The Tribe, and more in recent years, the Cannes sidebar Critics’ Week have now unveiled their 2017 line-up. Now in their 56th year, the Jury President is Kleber Mendonça Filho, who came to Cannes last year with Aquarius, and he’ll be joined by Niels Schneider, Diana Bustamante Escobar, Hania Mroué and Eric Kohn.

After receiving 1,700 short films and 1,250 feature films, 11 features have been selected, with 6 being first films and 5 being second features, including the closing night film Brigsby Bear, which we reviewed at Sundance. Running from May 18-26, check out the line-up below with a hat tip to Mubi and see more about the films here.

Opening Film

Sicilian Ghost Story (Fabio Grassadonia & Antonio Piazza)

Competition

La familia (Gustavo Rondon)

Los perros (Marcela Said)

Oh Lucy! (Atsuko Hirayagani)

Gabriel e a montanha (Felipe Gamarano Barbosa)

Ava (Lea Mysius)

Tehran Taboo (Ali Soozandeh...

Screen investigates which films from around the world could launch on the Croisette, including on opening night.

With just over a month to go before the line-up for this year’s Cannes Film Festival is unveiled in Paris, Croisette predictions and wish lists are hitting the web thick and fast.

Screen’s network of correspondents and contributors around the world have been putting out feelers to get a sense of what might or might not make it to the Palais du Cinéma or one of the parallel sections.

Just like the Oscars, this year’s festival is likely to unfold amid a politically-charged atmosphere. Beyond Trump and the rise of populism across the globe, France will be digesting the result of its own presidential election on May 7. Against this background, the festival will be feting its 70th edition.

Below, Screen reveals which titles might - and might not - be in the running for a place at the...

Exclusive: Celluloid sets down at Efm with biggest slate in years, adding two new Italian productions.

Paris-based sales agent Celluloid Dreams, at the European Film Market (Efm) this week with one of its biggest slates in recent years, has boarded sales on two high-profile Italian titles, Silvio Soldini’s [pictured] Emma and Marco Tullio Giordana’s Nome Di Donna.

Soldini’s Emma stars Adriano Giannini as a womanising creative director at a trendy ad agency who falls under the spell of a beautiful, married and blind osteopath. It is now in post-production. Videa has acquired Italian rights.

Tullio Giordana’s Nome Di Donne stars Cristiana Capotondi as a single mother who works at an old people’s home, where she discovers that the manager is sexually abusing the staff and she sets out to bring him to justice.

Celluloid Dreams president and head of acquisitions Hengameh Panahi acquired the films through her long-time contact, Lionello Cerri at Lumière...