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After years of holding back Booker-winning author Salman Rushdie finally consented to let his dear friend Deepa Mehta film his most celebrated work Midnight’s Children. As the film turns 16 on February 1, we recall an interview with Mr Rushdie on the film.

How effectively and deeply has the film Midnight’s Children managed to convey the spirit and essence of your novel?

I’m happy that so many people who have seen the film have felt that it did justice to the original. Various Indian writers have seen it already, including Anita Desai, Kiran Desai, Suketu Mehta, and I’ve been much heartened by their approval.

Which of the actors in Midnight’s Children, in your opinion, have nailed their characters most effectively?

We are incredibly lucky in our cast. The performances throughout the film are outstanding, and it would be hard to pick out one or two names. But if you twist my arm,...

“It’s also getting hot in here, so I think I’ll get more serious and roll my sleeves up by taking the jacket off.”

When it comes to the Criterion Closet, “Nickel Boys” writer/director RaMell Ross didn’t come to mess around. Trying to emulate the feeling of what it was like when he first discovered cinema in the library of the Rhode Island School of Design where he earned his Mfa degree, Ross let his focus turn towards the many shelves of titles for him to choose from. After grabbing Volker Schlöndorff’s 1979 adaptation of “The Tin Drum,” Ross was drawn to the work of Wong Kar-Wai, as both an admirer and a student interested in learning more.

“I know his work, but I haven’t digested it,” said Ross. “I think people should digest work, not encounter it. You need to bring it in. You need to eat it.

It would be easy to call 1979 a red letter Cannes for New Hollywood: Apocalypse Now got Francis Ford Coppola his second Palme d’Or (split with Volker Schlöndorff for The Tin Drum), Terrence Malick received Best Director for Days of Heaven. Outside of the spotlight of official competition, another American film playing in the International Critics’ Week walked away with the second ever Camera d’Or for best first feature. Directed by John Hanson and Rob Nilsson, Northern Lights returned the pair to their North Dakota roots by documenting 94 year-old Henry Martinson, a socialist organizer instrumental in the victory of […]

The post “North Dakota is Trump Country Today”: John Hanson and Rob Nilsson on the 4K Restoration of Northern Lights first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

It would be easy to call 1979 a red letter Cannes for New Hollywood: Apocalypse Now got Francis Ford Coppola his second Palme d’Or (split with Volker Schlöndorff for The Tin Drum), Terrence Malick received Best Director for Days of Heaven. Outside of the spotlight of official competition, another American film playing in the International Critics’ Week walked away with the second ever Camera d’Or for best first feature. Directed by John Hanson and Rob Nilsson, Northern Lights returned the pair to their North Dakota roots by documenting 94 year-old Henry Martinson, a socialist organizer instrumental in the victory of […]

The post “North Dakota is Trump Country Today”: John Hanson and Rob Nilsson on the 4K Restoration of Northern Lights first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Election season is in the air and Turner Classic Movies is here to celebrate. Starting on September 6 and continuing every Friday up until this year’s general election, TCM will be running a nine-week limited series entitled “Making Change: The Most Significant Political Films of All Time.” This cinematic showcase is inspired by The New Republic rankings released in June 2023 and includes selections such as “All the King’s Men,” “Germany, Year Zero,” and “High and Low.”

To introduce the upcoming series, TCM host Ben Mankiewicz took to Washington D.C. for a trailer highlighting some of the films featured, as well as special guests like Stacey Abrams, Steven Spielberg, Spike Lee, and John Turturro.

“I grew up here in Washington D.C.,” Mankiewicz said, the Capitol Building behind him. “My father’s life was politics — capital P politics. Though I went in a different direction, I understood at an early age,...

In the run-up to Election Day, TCM is going after the movie lovers’ popular vote by showing 50 films over nine successive Fridays under the banner Making Change: The Most Significant Political Films of All Time.

The series runs Sept. 6 to Nov. 1 — four days before America votes for its next president — and features TCM host Ben Mankiewicz in conversation with the likes of Steven Spielberg, Spike Lee, Lee Grant, Sally Field, Andy Garcia, Melissa Etheridge, John Turturro, Bill Maher, Alexander Payne, Diane Lane, Josh Mankiewicz, Barry Levinson, Maureen Dowd, Stacey Abrams and former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.

Watch the trailer here.

Making Change showcases half of the movies unveiled by The New Republic in the rankings it released in June 2023. The films on TCM span the years 1915 to 2016 (from D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation to Raoul Peck’s I Am Not Your Negro); the whole thing kicks off with the No.

The TV series that reimagines Angela Merkel as a small-town detective has found a U.S. home.

Kino Lorber’s MHz Choice streamer has picked up Miss Merkel from Fremantle, two 90-minute tongue-in-cheek mysteries, with a third planned.

Starring vet German actress Katharina Thalbach (The Tin Drum), the Rtl series, which has sold to a number of European networks, is based on the books by writer, humorist and actor David Safier. It imagines the former German chancellor moving to a small town with her husband and her pug, Helmut, as she discovers a new calling as an amateur detective. Safier pens the adaptations with Stefan Cantz, with Christoph Schnee directing.

Lance Schwulst, EVP Content Strategy, MHz Choice, said he had “committed to the series before my sales agent had finished her pitch.”

“It’s such an idiosyncratic premise that I knew it had to be right,...

“Contempt returns to the sender, and that is how it is,” Catherine Breillat wrote in her essay on Ingmar Bergman’s Sawdust And Tinsel.

Frauke Finsterwalder’s razor-sharp and exquisitely stylish Sisi & I (with Tanja Hausner’s eminently tempting and chronology defying costumes), stars the glorious combination of Susanne Wolff (Wolfgang Fischer’s Styx) as Empress Elisabeth of Austria-Hungary, with Sandra Hüller as Irma Countess of Sztáray, her lady-in-waiting. The extraordinary supporting cast includes the two protagonists’ mothers, Sibylle Canonica as Marie Countess of Sztáray and Angela Winkler (Volker Schlöndorff’s Oscar-winning The Tin Drum) as Ludovika of Bavaria, plus Georg Friedrich (Ulrich Seidl’s Rimini) as Sisi’s playful cousin, Archduke Viktor of Austria. Tom Rhys...

Between May 14th and 25th, the 77th annual Cannes Film Festival will take place in the south of France, with Greta Gerwig serving as the jury president for the main competition. This year's festival will award Meryl Streep, Studio Ghibli, and George Lucas with Honorary Palme d'Ors for their lifetime achievements in the film industry. Notable films screening in the festival's main competition include Jia Zhangke's Caught by the Tides, Yorgos Lanthimos' Kinds of Kindness, Mohammad Rasoulof's The Seed of the Scared Fig, and Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis.

The Cannes Film Festival's highest prize, the Palme d'Or, is one of the most prestigious awards given in all of cinema. Over the years, many winners of the Palme d'Or have been among the most controversial films of their respective eras. Palme d'Or winners have been controversial for a myriad of reasons, pushing the limits of cinema regarding violence, sexuality,...

Cannes Film Festival president Iris Knobloch said she learned about the “power of cinema to carry messages, liberate speech and accomplish a duty of remembrance” from her parents, who are Holocaust survivors.

Speaking at the Kering Women in Motion Talks at the Cannes Film Festival on Tuesday, the Munich-born Knobloch said her parents took her to the movie theater several times a week. “For them, going to the cinemas was about reclaiming the youth they had lost.”

She cited Volker Schlöndorff’s “The Tin Drum” as the one movie that marked her the most, alongside French movies by Claude Sautet, Claude Lelouch. “I would see the Cannes Film Festival from afar, and it seems a bit like a fairy tale to be here today,” said Knobloch, a trained lawyer who became Cannes’ first female president in 2023 after spending 25 years at Warner Bros. where she led the studio in France and Germany.

One of only nine directors to win the Palme d’Or twice, Francis Ford Coppola took home his first 50 years ago — back when the award was still called the Grand Prix — for The Conversation.

A psychological thriller starring Gene Hackman as a morally conflicted surveillance expert in San Francisco, The Conversation couldn’t have been released at a more appropriate time. Hitting U.S. theaters on April 7, 1974, the movie asked pointed questions about power, responsibility and technology — subjects that had been top of the American mind for two years as a result of the Watergate scandal. It was pure serendipity; Coppola had started writing the screenplay in the 1960s. Just four months after the film’s release, Richard Nixon would resign the presidency for his role in the infamous cover-up.

In the intervening years, the film has only seen its cultural resonance increase. In 1995, it was chosen for preservation by...

The tagline for the 2024 Cannes Film Festival should probably be “Back to the Future.” Indeed, four Hollywood legends who first established themselves in the 1970s as part of the “New Hollywood,” and haven’t been back to festival in decades, are front and center on the Croisette this year.

At the fest’s opening ceremony on Tuesday night, three-time Oscar winner Meryl Streep was presented with an honorary Palme d’Or, 35 years after her only prior visit to the fest. In 1989, she came with Fred Schepisi’s A Cry in the Dark, which had opened in the U.S. in late 1988, landing her a best actress Oscar nom, but bombing at the box office. Streep’s presence at the fest was strategic: She reportedly only came because she wanted to try to boost the film’s profile ahead of its European release, and the fest reportedly only accepted the film...

It’ll soon be time to pack your tuxes and/or high heels and wonder “why the heck does it get so hot at 6:30 pm, just when I’m lining up for the 7:15 pm screening?” The eyes of the entertainment world will once again turn toward the French Riviera for the 77th Annual Cannes Film Festival.

The main slate announcement was made early Thursday morning, confirming many suspicions, and offering much excitement for hardcore cinephiles. For those with more mainstream tastes—and an eye toward what will still be in play come next year’s Oscars—here are some highlights.

Certainly, the biggest event screening will be the public’s first look at Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis,” a self-financed behemoth that he’s been dreaming about for decades. The director/vintner is a two-time winner of Cannes’s Palme D’Or—for “The Conversation” in 1974 and “Apocalypse Now...

Wajda takes three young entrepreneurs and follows their greed and ambition to toxic capitalism’s logical conclusion in this queasily disturbing satire

Andrzej Wajda’s queasily compelling film from 1975, adapted by him from a novel by Wladysław Reymont, is an expressionist comic opera of toxic capitalism and bad faith, carried out by jittery entrepreneurs whose skills include insider trading, worker-exploitation and burning down failing businesses for the insurance. It is set in late 19th-century Łódź, a supposed promised land of free enterprise, whose night skies are shown by Wajda as more or less permanently red with factories set ablaze.

Our three gruesome heroes are Karol (Daniel Olbrychski) who is a Pole, Maks (Andrzej Seweryn) who is German, and Moryc (Wojciech Pszoniak) who is Jewish; this last being considered in these times effectively a separate nationality, and in fact the uneasy suspicion between these identities creates something a little like the mood in Danzig,...

German director Volker Schlöndorff, who won the Cannes’ Palme d’Or and an Oscar for his 1979 drama “The Tin Drum,” is set to direct a film about how Antonio Vivaldi — the 18th-century Italian composer of “The Four Seasons” — formed what is touted as the world’s first all-female orchestra.

Schlöndorff’s still-untitled depiction of this lesser-known aspect of Vivaldi’s career is based on a book by German writer Peter Schneider, which has been adapted for the big screen by Italian scribe Francesco Piccolo (“My Brilliant Friend”) along with the director.

The plan is for cameras to start rolling later this year on the film, which will mark the first foray into Italian-language cinema by Schlöndorff, who is a fluent speaker. It will be shot entirely in Italy. Casting is still being decided, and sales are likely to be launched at the Cannes market in May.

Schlöndorff’s new project...

Do you need a tagline for a film when you can simply slap “banned in X countries” on the trailer? The allure of forbidden movies and music speaks for itself, more so today in an age of “industry plants” and faked social media stunts. You’ve probably heard of the Streisand Effect, irrespective if you cannot remember how this sociological phenomenon got the name or who the hell Barbra Streisand is. In its simplest form, the Streisand Effect is where you accidentally amplify an event, fact, or piece of media you were trying to brush under the carpet, giving it free press.

People want to partake in the stuff they are not allowed to see, especially when it comes to movies. The vast majority of movies, regardless of quality, come and go. You’ve heard of the Oscar bump, but that pales in comparison to the recognition of having your film banned from theaters.

Venice film festival: Luna Carmoon’s deeply strange and compelling study of hysteria shows the ways in which childhood trauma can bloom in adult life

A social realist psychodrama of amour fou here in this fiercely intense and often macabre tale from feature first-timer Luna Carmoon, showing how suppressed childhood trauma blossoms into a secret theatre of adult dysfunction and delusion, but it’s also a story in which Carmoon finds the possibility of redemption and escape. Hoard is all the more intriguing for being a very personal project for Carmoon, something made clear in what appears to be an analogue-video home movie clip over the closing credits.

In its study of loneliness and a kind of marooned and thwarted sexuality, Hoard is in some ways like early Ian McEwan such as The Cement Garden – although the lead character has conceived a bizarre obsession with Volker Schlöndorff’s movie The Tin Drum,...

Ever since the Best International Feature Film award was officially introduced, in 1956, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Science has given the prize to 66 movies from 28 countries. Over 300 more, hailing from 62 countries all over the world, have been nominated. In 2023, All Quiet on the Western Front became the most recent film in this long list to be honored with an Oscar. The anti-war movie directed by Edward Berger earned Germany its third trophy as a unified country. Before the '90s, West Germany won the Best International Feature Film - or, at the time, Best Foreign Language Film - trophy once more, in 1979, with Volker Schlöndorff’s The Tin Drum. With four victorious movies under its belt, Germany has a pretty decent track record at the Oscars. However, it doesn’t even come close to the top 3 countries with the most wins. And, when compared to the all-time champ,...

The 76th edition of the Cannes Film Festival came to a close on Saturday, May 27 after two weeks of films, celebrities, parties and interviews in the small city on the French Riviera. Now that the prizes have been given out, we can start looking at what could be top contenders for next year’s Oscars. Let’s analyze the results from this year’s festival and see this history that each category has when it comes to the Academy Awards.

Over the past several years the festival has been a springboard for major players in the Oscar derby. We’ve really seen it be an influence in the International Feature category where in-competition films have been nominated a regular basis. Recent Cannes films that ended up being top awards contenders in above the line categories include “Triangle of Sadness,” “Drive My Car,” “Parasite,” “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” and “BlacKkKlansman.

Volker Schlöndorff, director of the Oscar and Palme d’Or winning The Tin Drum (adapted from Günter Grass’s novel Die Blechtrommel) with Anne-Katrin Titze on Jonathan Coe’s research on a Billy Wilder film for Mr. Wilder And Me: “I told him everything I knew about Fedora and the shooting of Fedora in Munich.” Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Jonathan Coe’s imaginative and savvy novel, Mr. Wilder & Me, which centres on the making of Billy Wilder’s penultimate movie, Fedora, seen through the lens of a fictional Greek composer named Calista, credits Volker Schlöndorff as an important source.

Jonathan Coe’s Mr. Wilder And Me (Europa Editions), collection Anne-Katrin Titze Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

I met Volker at the Austrian Cultural Forum’s Hedy Lamarr: Actress. Inventor. Viennese exhibition to discuss his role in the research for the novel, which led us into a wide-ranging conversation that included his documentary series Billy,...

The Teachers’ Lounge, İlker Çatak’s unsettling look at a teacher at the end of her rope, beat our multi-Oscar winner All Quiet on the Western Front to win the top prize for best film at the 2023 German Film Awards, known as the Lolas.

Çatak won the best director Lola and his drama also picked up prizes for best screenplay and best editing, as well as the best actress nod for star Leonie Benesch.

But All Quiet did not go home empty-handed. The first German-language adaptation of the Erich Maria Remarque classic 1929 anti-war novel won nine Lolas, including the runner-up silver Lola for best film.

Holy Spider, Ali Abbasi’s Iranian serial killer movie, which premiered in Cannes last year and was largely financed out of Germany, won the third prize Lola in bronze.

This year’s Lolas were held amid an atmosphere of turbulence and soul-searching. Recent revelations about the behavior of Till Schweiger,...

A sickly picaresque guilt trip that stretches a single Jewish man’s swollen neuroses into a three-hour nightmare so queasy and personal that sitting through it feels like being a guest at your own bris (in a fun way!), Ari Aster’s seriocomic “Beau Is Afraid” may not fit the horror mold as neatly as his “Hereditary” or “Midsommar,” but .

Mileage will vary on that score — the scares are typically less oh shit Toni Collette is spidering across the ceiling and more oy gevalt, Joaquin Phoenix’s enormous prosthetic testicles are causing me to squirm under the weight of my own emotional baggage — but anyone who would sooner die for their mom than answer the phone when she calls should probably mix a few Zoloft into their popcorn just to be safe. Those people should brace for a movie that triggers the same cognitive dissonance from the moment it starts,...

It’s not a coincidence that Volker Schlöndorff’s latest film The Forest Maker, the environmental essay documentary about Australian agronomist Tony Rinaudo, who found a way to grow trees in the most barren areas of Africa, is opening the 27th Sofia International Film Festival kicking off Thursday in the Bulgarian capital.

One of the major film festivals in Eastern Europe is going green, and the veteran German filmmaker, winner of the Palme d’Or and what was then called the best foreign language Oscar for The Tin Drum (1979), will plant the first tree of the future Sofia Film Festival Forest.

“We wanted to remind ourselves of our deep connection to the land and our power to be agents of change together. We wish to engage the public in the global vision of sustainable development of society and a responsible attitude towards nature”, the festival organizers said about the green...

Updated with complete list of winners: A24’s Everything Everywhere All at Once won Best Picture tonight at the 95th annual Oscars.

The Daniels — Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert — also won the Best Director and Original Screenplay Oscars for Everything Everywhere All at Once, which topped all films with seven trophies after coming into the ceremony with a leading 11 nominations. They are only the third duo to win Best Director, following Joel and Ethan Coen for 2008’s No Country for Old Men and Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise in 1962 for West Side Story.

Related: Best Picture Oscar Winners Through The Years – Photo Gallery

Everything Everywhere’s Oscar haul comes after it pulled off a clean sweep of the four biggest guild awards: PGA, DGA, SAG and WGA. It also had major wins at the Critics’ Choice Awards, Golden Globes and Spirit Awards.

Netflix’s All Quiet on the Western Front took home four Oscars,...

Edward Berger’s antiwar epic All Quiet on the Western Front has won the Oscar for best international feature for Germany at the 2023 Oscars.

The drama, the first German adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s World War I novel, was the frontrunner in the category after the film picked up nine Oscar nominations, including for best picture.

Lewis Milestone’s 1930 adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front was also an Oscar champ, winning Academy Awards for best picture and best director.

When taking the stage, Berger gave credit to the “many new friends” he made while working on the film including the cinematographer, costume designer, the hair and makeup designer and the production designer. “I owe everything to you and the rest of my crew,” he said.

He later mentioned how he recently connected with Tár cinematographer Florian Hoffmeister: “We’re from the same town … we made our...

Germany’s anti-war epic “All Quiet on the Western Front” based on Erich Maria Remarque’s 1929 classic World War I novel made a lot of noise at the 95th annual Oscar nominations January 24th. The Netflix production earned nine nominations just two behind the “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and tying with “The Banshees of Inisherin.”

The Oscar nominations for “All Quiet” come a week after the war drama dominated the BAFTA nominations earning 14. Only two other foreign language films have earned more Oscar nominations: both Ang Lee’s exhilarating “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” from 2000 and 2018’s “Roma” received 10 nominations with “Tiger” winning four Academy Awards while “Roma” picked up three including Best Director for Alfonso Cuaron.

As predicted, “All Quiet” was nominated for Best International Feature, and it has made history by becoming the first German-language movie to be nominated for Best Picture. Its nine nominations topped the six...

The Forest Maker (Der Waldmacher) director Volker Schlöndorff on meeting Alternative Nobel Prize winner Tony Rinaudo in Berlin, 2018: “Six weeks later I was already meeting him again in Bamako, Mali …”

The Forest Maker (Der Waldmacher) from director Volker Schlöndorff is an evermore important film essay on the decades-long work of Australian agronomist Tony Rinaudo with African farmers and the community at-large. Idriss Diabaté from Ivory Coast, Senegal’s Alassane Diago, and Laurene Manaa Abdallah from Ghana are credited as co-directors and provide us with vital insights in their own individual sections.

“Nothing is lost” Rinaudo says and everything can be regrown again. Angela Winkler, star of Volker’s Oscar-winning adaptation of Günter Grass’s The Tin Drum, lends her enchanting voice to the prologue, which recounts an old African legend about the cradle of mankind, as collected by Carl Einstein.

Volker Schlöndorff with Anne-Katrin Titze on Sebastião Salgado:...

It had been nearly three decades since a film was last screened in Ciné Apollon, an open-air theater in the resort town of Edipsos on the north shore of the Greek island of Evia. But the arrival of several hundred moviegoers on June 15 for a screening of French filmmaker Coline Serreau’s “La Belle Verte” (The Green Planet) offered a much-needed sense of rebirth: for the cinema, and for an island that was devastated by catastrophic wildfires last summer.

As part of wide-ranging efforts to revitalize struggling communities and give a boost to the local economy, the organizers of the Thessaloniki Film Festival this year launched the Evia Film Project, a five-day event that underscores the perils of climate change and offers the film industry a chance to explore the possibilities of green film production.

When the audience gathered at the Apollon for the opening of the festival, which ran...

After two years of cancellations and delays, the Cannes Film Festival finally returned to the south of France during the month of May. The winners of this year’s festivities were announced on Saturday, May 25. How many of these will become major players in this year’s Oscar derby? Below let’s review the results from the 75th installment of the international festival and examine the history each serves as a forecaster for the Academy Awards.

In recent years, Cannes has served as a launching pad for films that have become major contenders in awards season. This is particularly true in the International Feature category which, for the past several years, has had several nominees that were screened in competition. It’s also been true in other categories, including several above the line races, with films like “Drive My Car,” “Parasite,” “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” and “BlacKkKlansman” having their premieres on the Croissette.

“Goya, Carrière and the Ghost of Buñuel,” which plays Cannes Classics this Saturday, begins with French film great Jean-Claude Carrière in a train, singing an ancient song in Occitan, the language of Provence, where he came from.

Visiting Goya’s birthplace, he’ spies a cauldron and comments that there was one like that in his own family home.

Towards the end of the film, surveying “The Colossus,” Goya’s painting of a giant dominating tiny people in a valley below who flee in all directions, Carrière observes that the painting capture a sense of immigration. Unlike so many of his friends, and indeed his wife, Nahal Tajadod, Carrière notes, he will have the privilege of being buried in the same place where he was born.

Directed by José Luis López Linares, (“Bosch: The Garden of Dreams”), ”Goya, Carriére and the Ghost of Buñuel” pictures Carrière coming to Spain to revisit...

“El agua,” (Elena López Riera)

A Directors’ Fortnight title, the feature debut of Locarno winning López Riera (“Los Que Desean”), a fantasy-laced village-set critique of gender violence. S.A. Elle Driver

“Alcarràs,” (Carla Simón)

The 2022 Berlin Golden Bear winner, Simón’s follow-up to “Summer 1993” and the flagship title for Catalonia and Spain’s newest filmmaking generation. S.A. MK2 Films

“Amazing Elisa,” (Sádrac González-Perellón)

The next from 2017 BiFan Grand Jury Prize winner González-Perellón (“Black Hollow Cage”), once more mixing fantasy and family dynamics as Elisa, 12, plans revenge after her mother’s tragic death. S.A. Filmax

“The Beasts,” (Rodrigo Sorogoyen)

One of 2022’s most awaited Spanish titles, playing Cannes Premiere, a Galicia-set thriller from Oscar-nominee Sorogoyen (“Mother”), produced by Arcadia, Caballo Films and Le Pacte. S.A. Latido Films

“The Communion Girl,” (Víctor García)

A revenge thriller involving an urban legend about a girl in a communion dress. S.

José Luis López Linares’ “Goya, Carrière and the Ghost of Buñuel,” a portrait of French film great Jean-Claude Carrière, captured breaking down the paintings and personality of painter Francisco de Goya, has been acquired for international sales by Reservoir Docs.

In its earliest sales, the doc feature has closed the two biggest markets in Europe with reputed distributors, licensing France to Epicentre and Germany and Austria to Weltkino. Syldavia Cinema will distribute in Spain, Version Digital in Italy and Outsider Films in Portugal.

Launched in 2020 by Anais Clanet, Reservoir Docs will bring the documentary feature onto the market at next month’s Cannes Festival.

“Reservoir Docs has always been a key sales agent for theatrical art & culture docs and Jose Luis’ work fits perfectly,” said Clanet. “To me, Goya painted European conflicts in the late 18th and early 19th centuries but he didn’t only chronicle his times: Somehow, he was a visionary,...

A family road trip movie in which we never quite know where the film is heading (and are often lied to about why), “Hit the Road” may be set amid the winding desert highways and gorgeous emerald valleys of northwestern Iran, but Panah Panahi’s miraculous debut is fueled by the growing suspicion that its characters have taken a major detour away from our mortal coil at some point along the way. “Where are we?” the gray-haired mom (Pantea Panahiha) asks into the camera upon waking up from a restless catnap inside the SUV in which so much of this film takes place. “We’re dead,” squeaks the youngest of her two sons (Rayan Sarlak) from the back seat, the six-year-old boy already exuding some of the most anarchic movie kid energy this side of “The Tin Drum.”

They aren’t dead — at least not literally, even if the adorable...

Land of Dreams directors Shoja Azari and Shirin Neshat with Isabella Rossellini and cinematographer Ghasem Ebrahimian Photo: Giulia Theodoli

Shirin Neshat and Shoja Azari’s highly imaginative Land Of Dreams, based on a story by Shirin Neshat, screenplay by Jean-Claude Carrière and Shoja Azari, shot by Ghasem Ebrahimian, stars Sheila Vand, Matt Dillon, and William Moseley with Isabella Rossellini, Christopher McDonald, Anna Gunn, Joaquim de Almeida, Gaius Charles, Robin Bartlett, James Cady, Nicole Ansari-Cox, Luce Rains, and Rebecca Comerford.

Shirin Neshat with Anne-Katrin Titze on Land of Dreams: “We started with Jean-Claude Carrière and it was a very complex, unusual script.”

Land Of Dreams is dedicated to Jean-Claude Carrière. It is his last feature film screenplay credit. Jean-Claude Carrière has three Screenplay Oscar nominations. Carrière also co-wrote Volker Schlöndorff’s Oscar winner The Tin Drum and in 2015, received an honorary Oscar. Jean-Claude Carrière died on February 8, 2021 at the...

Variety has been given exclusive access to the trailer for Shirin Neshat and Shoja Azari’s satirical, surrealistic film “Land of Dreams,” which opens the Horizons Extra section of the Venice Film Festival. The filmmakers won the Silver Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival for their first feature film, “Women Without Men.”

“Land of Dreams” stars Sheila Vand, Matt Dillon, William Moseley and Isabella Rossellini. Beta Cinema has sales rights worldwide, except for the U.S., which is being handled by UTA.

The screenplay is by the late Jean-Claude Carrière and Azari. Carrière, who died earlier this year, was Luis Buñuel’s screenwriting partner on six of Buñuel’s films. Carrière won an Oscar for the short film “The Anniversary,” and was Oscar nominated for Buñuel’s “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” and “That Obscure Object of Desire,” as well as Philip Kaufman’s “The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

After going virtual last year and not handing out any prizes due to the Covid pandemic, the 2021 Cannes Film Festival returned to form by announcing its winners on July 17. How many of these will figure in the upcoming Oscar race? We recap the results from the 74th edition of this foremost of film festivals and review its history as a forecaster of the Academy Awards.

The top award at Cannes is the Palme d’Or. Over the years, 40 winners of this prize have amassed 135 Academy Award nominations. Seventeen of these have claimed a combined 32 Oscars. This year, the Palme d’Or went to French filmmaker Julia Ducournau‘s “Titane.” Her dramatic thriller centers on a father reunited with his son who was missing for a decade during which several unexplained crimes were committed. Ducournau is the second woman to take this top prize following Jane Campion‘s breakthrough in 1993 with “The Piano.

Severin continues to impress with their incredible box set releases and their latest announcement was an instant pre-order for me: a collection of five remastered Christopher Lee movies and a rarely seen, Christopher Lee-hosted, anthology horror TV series:

(Los Angeles, CA) On May 25th, Severin Films is releasing a box set of buried gems from one of cinema’s most seminal figures - Sir Christopher Lee. He remains one of the most beloved horror/fantasy icons in US/UK pop culture history, but Christopher Lee delivered several of the most compelling, acclaimed and bizarre performances of his entire career in 1960s Europe. The Eurocrypt Of Christopher Lee brings together five of these Lee classics - the 1964 gothic shocker Crypt Of The Vampire; the 1964 cult hit Castle Of The Living Dead co-starring an unknown Donald Sutherland; 1962's celebrated Sherlock Holmes And The Deadly Necklace; 1967's lurid favorite The Torture Chamber Of Dr.

Frank Moreno, who was known for screening films at Cannes for Roger Corman’s New World Pictures to purchase and distribute in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s, died Wednesday in Florida. He was 82 and died after a brief battle with cancer, according to his daughter.

Moreno was a promoter for such Art films as Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers and Federico Fellini’s Amarcord, both the biggest US grossing pictures of the directors’ careers up to that point.

He also touted Volker Scholondorff’s The Tin Drum, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 1980; Bruce Beresford’s Breaker Morant; Fantastic Planet, the winner of numerous animated awards; and Bergman’s The Magic Flute.

In addition, Moreno acquired and distributed many mainstream commercial pictures, including The Private Eyes, starring Tim Conway and Don Knotts; managed theater circuits, including one out of Florida; and was a consultant to movie producers,...

Hailed as France’s finest screenwriter, Carrière won many awards in a six-decade movie career – and for the stage penned a memorable Mahabharata for Peter Brook

Celebrated French screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière, who penned some of the most memorable movies of the past half-century, including The Tin Drum and Cyrano de Bergerac, has died at the age of 89. Carrière, best known for his work with Luis Buñuel and Miloš Forman, died in his sleep late Monday at his home in Paris, his daughter, Kiara Carrière, told Afp.

Related: Jean-Claude Carrière: 'If you want fame, don't be a screenwriter'...

Jean-Claude Carriere, the prolific French screenwriter and novelist who was Oscar-nominated for “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” “That Obscure Object of Desire” and “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie,” died Monday at his home in Paris. He was 89.

His family confirmed his death, of natural causes, to Afp.

Carriere was a frequent collaborator with Luis Bunuel, writing the screenplays for “Diary of a Chambermaid,” in which he also played the village priest, ” “Belle de Jour,” “The Milky Way” and “The Phantom of Liberty” as well as the international arthouse hits and Oscar nominees “That Obscure Object of Desire” and “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeousie.”

In an interview for “The Storytellers,” Carriere talked about how close his relationship became with Bunuel, “It was a very close relationship. We were always alone in some remote place, often in Mexico or Spain, talking French and Spanish, without friends, without women, without wives.

Leading producer-distributor Studiocanal, which boasts one of the biggest film libraries in the world with more than 5,500 movies, is gearing up for a slew of major theatrical and DVD releases sure to titillate fans of classic cinema, among them Jean-Luc Godard’s beloved 1960 film “Breathless.”

The company has enjoyed recent successes with re-releases of such classics as David Lynch’s 1980 Victorian drama “The Elephant Man,” Volker Schlöndorff’s 1979 Oscar-winning “The Tin Drum” and Mike Hodges’ 1980 sci-fi extravaganza “Flash Gordon.”

Studiocanal is expecting similar success with its newly restored reissues.

“Breathless” is “one of our biggest upcoming catalog releases,” said Juliette Hochart, Studiocanal’s executive VP of library.

The film will be released in theaters in France on Oct. 28, in Germany the following day and in the U.K. on Nov. 13. It will also be reissued in other territories, such as Italy and Japan, in 2021.

A new Uhd collector’s edition...

If all goes as planned, the Lumière Film Festival will kick off this month in Lyon, France, to again celebrate classic cinema and fete such guests as Viggo Mortensen and Oliver Stone.

This year’s edition, which runs Oct. 10-18, is taking place under strict health and safety measures, including limiting public gatherings to a maximum of 1,000 people. Due to recent spikes in cases and hospitalizations, restrictions have been changing around the country, making the festival’s organization more complicated.

While Covid-19 continues to cast its shadow over industry gatherings, growing opportunities for heritage film under the pandemic is sure to be a major topic of discussion at the fest’s Intl.

Classic Film Market (Mifc).

Headed by Bertrand Tavernier, Institut Lumière president, and Cannes topper Thierry Frémaux, Institut Lumière director, the fest is one of the world’s premier events showcasing heritage cinema and film restoration.

This year the...

Sipping his morning coffee, Sam Rockwell joined Venice Film Festival and Mastercard’s “Life Through a Different Lens: Contactless Connections” virtual talk on Wednesday. The Oscar winner for “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” talked about his early cinematic influences – including the first film he ever saw. “It was the 1933 version of ‘King Kong’ with Fay Wray. That movie blew me away. I started watching very sophisticated films as a child: ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,’ ‘Sophie’s Choice’ or ‘The Deer Hunter.’ I was maybe too young for that! One that had a great effect on me was ‘The Tin Drum’ and that mix of comedy and drama became a part of my education as an actor.”

Born to actor parents, Rockwell wanted the same adventure. “I romanticized it. It seemed fun! I wasn’t even concerned about the money. I wanted it, obviously, but when you are young it...

Much has been made of the extreme and unrelenting violence that penetrates almost every scene of Václav Marhoul’s 169-minute “The Painted Bird,” in the grand tradition of “Come and See,” “The Tin Drum,” and “The Wrong Missy.” Following a young boy as he silently bears witness to a series of unspeakable horrors while drifting through the Slavic world at the height of World War II, this steely adaptation of Jerzy Kosiński’s allegorical horror novel (née memoir) of the same name opens with a warning shot to anyone who hit the wrong button on their way to rent “Palm Springs.”

Our unnamed protagonist is introduced as he clutches a small animal — a dog that could pass for a ferret — and sprints away from the group of children nipping at his heels. The kids catch up to him and set the animal on fire for their own amusement. This may...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and an archive of past round-ups here.

Alice (Josephine Mackerras)

It makes no sense. The night before saw Alice Ferrand’s (Emilie Piponnier) husband François (Martin Swabey) going out of his way to passionately make-out with her in front of their friends at a dinner party and now he won’t answer her calls. Despite his running out of the house earlier than usual without any explanation, however, there’s nothing to make her think something is wrong until a trip to the drugstore exposes a freeze on their finances. One credit card won’t work. Then another. The Atm won’t accept her sign-in and François still isn’t picking up his phone.

In today’s film news roundup, MGM beefs up its executive ranks, “Sea Fever” gets a live-streaming premiere, “Pigeon Kings” finds a home and The 92nd Street Y has started an online film course.

Executive Hires

Metro Goldwyn Mayer’s Film Group Chairman Michael De Luca has hired Elishia Holmes and Johnny Pariseau — both who were executives at De Luca’s eponymous production company.

De Luca joined MGM earlier this year. Holmes will serve as an executive vice president at MGM and Pariseau joins the studio as senior vice president. Both are already underway in their new roles.

Holmes joined Michael De Luca productions in 2015 overseeing projects including “Reminiscence,” starring Hugh Jackman and Rebecca Ferguson, and Rachel Morrison’s “Flint Strong,” written by Barry Jenkins and starring Ice Cube. Holmes previously worked for Ridley Scott as a producer at Scott Free and worked on “Exodus: Gods and Kings,” “Alien Covenant,...

If you’re looking to take a break from binge-watching garbage television and exercise your brain during quarantine, film historian Annette Insdorf and 92Y might have a perfect solution for you. Beginning Sunday, March 29, you can take the online film course “Reel Pieces Remote: Classic Films with Annette Insdorf,” for five weeks every Sunday at 8 p.m.

The five films she has selected — all of them indisputable masterpieces — can be streamed on The Criterion Channel. You can view the film any time before the Sunday night class, along with a prerecorded introduction from Insdorf, followed by the weekly lecture that will also engage live group discussion. Signing up for the 92Y class includes a free Criterion Channel trial membership good for 45 days. The cost for the five courses altogether is $150 — not free by any means, if you’re in the position to enroll.

More from IndieWireThe Show Must Go On:...

We shared a list of new to streaming titles and then polled you on which  new-to-streaming titles that Nathaniel had never seen did he have to watch and write about? The winner by a considerable margin was Voyage of the Damned (1976). This all star WW II era drama about a ship carrying German Jewish refugees away from Nazi Germany was nominated for 3 Oscars (including Supporting Actress) and 6 Golden Globes (including Best Picture Drama) and is now streaming on HBO. So watch it this week and we'll discuss on Monday February 24th. 

The vote totals if you're interested:

Voyage of the Damned (1976) - 40% of the votes The Tin Drum (1979) - 14% of the votes Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1987) -14% of the votes The Island (2005) - 13% of the votes Footlight Parade (1933), Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter (1974), Dirty Harry (1971), and Gate of Hell (1953) divvied up the remaining votes with under 5% each.

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and an archive of past round-ups here.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (Marielle Heller)

It sounds almost too perfect: Tom Hanks as Mr. Rogers, the beloved children’s entertainer. Of course, who else could it be, really? It is so seemingly predestined, in fact, that Hanks’s first onscreen appearance as Fred Rogers elicits knowing laughter from the audience. Yes, Tom Hanks playing Mr. Rogers looks and sounds exactly how you would imagine. Marielle Heller’s A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, however, is much more than an obvious biopic. It’s not really a biopic at all. Nor is it a rehash of 2018’s much-heralded documentary profile of Fred Rogers, Won’t You Be MyNeighbor?...

With the six Oscar nominations Bong Joon Ho‘s “Parasite” scored on Monday morning, the film became the latest to have won the prestigious Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and score an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. Only one film has actually succeeded in winning both of those honors: Delbert Mann‘s “Marty,” which prevailed in 1955.

Since the Palme d’Or was established, 15 other films have managed to take the top prize at Cannes and make it into the Best Picture race: “Marty” (1955), “Friendly Persuasion” (1957), “M*A*S*H” (1970), “The Conversation” (1974), “Taxi Driver” (1976), “Apocalypse Now” (1979), “All That Jazz” (1979), “Missing” (1982), “The Mission” (1986), “The Piano” (1993), “Pulp Fiction” (1994), “Secrets & Lies” (1996), “The Pianist” (2002), “The Tree of Life” (2011) and “Amour” (2012).

See 2020 Oscar nominations: Full list of Academy Awards nominees in all 24 categories

The top prize from the French film festival is not always a reliable barometer for what will get in at the Oscars.