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Named “The Netflix for Indie Film” by The Wall Street Journal, Fandor’s goal is to preserve film art and culture.

I love blockbusters as much as the next guy (probably more!), but sometimes it’s nice to break out of the mainstream and watch something a little more elevated. If you’re a cinephile who seeks substance over blockbusters, Fandor might be just what you’re looking for.

Specializing in indie films, international cinema, documentaries, and classic movies, Fandor gives viewers a curated experience for film buffs who appreciate the artistry and diversity most larger platforms don’t offer. With films from acclaimed directors and hidden gems from around the world, it differentiates itself from services like The Criterion Channel and Kanopy by offering a broader range of indie-focused content. Whether you’re into arthouse films or hard-to-find international flicks, Fandor promises a unique viewing experience you won’t find anywhere else.

Werner Herzog And Peter Zeitlinger Set For Camerimage Honors

Camerimage’s special award for cinematographer-director duos will be handed to Werner Herzog and Peter Zeitlinger. Both filmmakers will receive the award in person at Camerimage’s upcoming 31st edition, where they will meet with the festival audience in Toruń, Poland, and present a retrospective review of their films, including both feature and documentary productions. Zeitlinger and Herzog have collaborated for 30 years. Alongside their first joint venture, Death for Five Voices (1995), their productions include the documentaries Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997), My Best Fiend (1999), Wheel of Time (2003), Grizzly Man (2005), Encounters at the End of the World (2007), Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010), Into the Abyss (2011), From One Second to the Next (2013), Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World (2016), Into the Inferno (2016), Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds (2020), Theatre of Thought (2022), and the feature films Invincible (2001), Rescue Dawn (2006), Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009), My Son,...

Claudia Squitieri with her mother Claudia Cardinale on Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo: “it’s one of her most adventurous experiences.” Photo: courtesy of Claudia Squitieri

In the second instalment with Claudia Squitieri we discuss more of the films her mother, Claudia Cardinale, starred in. Werner Herzog, Klaus Kinski, Mick Jagger, Jason Robards, Thomas Mauch, My Best Fiend, and filming Fitzcarraldo; encountering Fernando Trueba (The Artist And Model) in Deauville and reconnecting with Jean Rochefort; Manoel de Oliveira and an “atmosphere of mysticality” during the making of Gebo and the Shadow with Jeanne Moreau and Michael Lonsdale, shot by Renato Berta; Blake Edwards and The Pink Panther, the problem with sequels and playing Roberto Benigni’s mother in Son Of The Pink Panther all came up in our conversation.

Claudia Squitieri from Paris on Roberto Benigni with Claudia Cardinale: “He was going “Claudia!!!!” Jumping around every time he saw my mother.

There sure aren't many stories about actor Klaus Kinski (1926 - 1991) detailing how calm, studious, and judicious he was. Werner Herzog, who made five films with Kinski, once described him as "one of the greatest actors of the century, but also a monster and a great pestilence." He was known for tantrums and violent outbursts, often badgering studio heads for higher and higher salaries. Reading his autobiography, "Kinski Uncut," is a dizzying experience, hacking through page after page of alleged sexual conquests and barely-controlled wrath. In the 1999 documentary "My Best Fiend," Herzog's film about his tempestuous...

The post Klaus Kinski's Aguirre, the Wrath of God Casting Was More Than a Little Risky appeared first on /Film.

Writer, producer, director Lee Daniels discusses some of his favorite films with Josh & Joe.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Infested (2002)

Shadowboxer (2005)

The United States Vs. Billie Holiday (2021)

A Star Is Born (1937)

Lee Daniels’ The Butler (2013)

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)

Lady Sings The Blues (1972)

Island In The Sun (1957)

Carmen Jones (1954)

Claudine (1974)

Mandingo (1975)

Drum (1976)

Caligula (1979)

Gloria (1980)

The Exorcist (1973)

Abby (1974)

Blacula (1972)

Scream Blacula Scream (1973)

Cabaret (1972)

Lenny (1974)

Sounder (1972)

All That Jazz (1979)

I Am A Camera (1955)

Travels With My Aunt (1972)

The Emigrants (1971)

Star 80 (1983)

Harold And Maude (1971)

The Godfather (1972)

The Godfather Part II (1974)

Pickup On South Street (1953)

In The Mood For Love (2000)

Leave Her To Heaven (1945)

Laura (1944)

Dragonwyck (1946)

The Baron of Arizona (1950)

His Kind of Woman (1951)

Explorers (1985)

Innerspace (1987)

Jack Reacher (2012)

Them (1954)

Revenge of the Creature (1955)

Tarantula! (1955)

Coogan’s Bluff (1968)

Going In Style (1979)

Going In Style (2017)

Judas And The Black Messiah (2021)

Stroszek (1977)

Fitzcarraldo (1982)

Land of Silence and Darkness (1971)

Cave Of Forgotten Dreams...

Another new streaming service has launched, this one a niche platform called Documentary+ dedicated solely to nonfiction films.

The free, ad-supported streaming platform is available on Thursday and was launched as a joint venture between the nonfiction studio Xtr and the late former Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh.

Documentary+ currently has a library of over 200 feature-length and short documentary films, including classics, cult favorites, true crime stories, sports films and rock docs. Some of the films in the initial catalog include “The Imposter,” “Life, Animated,” “Born Into Brothels,” “Cartel Land” and more. The service also features docs by filmmakers such as Spike Jonze, Kathryn Bigelow, Terrence Malick, Brett Morgen, Roger Ross Williams, Davis Guggenheim and Werner Herzog, including his “My Best Fiend” and “Little Dieter Learns to Fly.”

Other up-and-coming filmmakers with movies on the platform include Lana Wilson, Ramona S. Diaz, Nanfu Wang, Clay Tweel, Kareem Tabsch and Laura Gabbert.

Celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, the Film Festival Cologne will be one of the first major festivals in Europe to take place entirely physically as the coronavirus continues to wane in Germany. It runs Oct. 1-8.

Launched in 1991 as the Cologne Conference, as it was known until 2016, the international film and television festival celebrates some of the year’s best feature films, series and documentaries.

This year’s Best of Cinema Fiction selections include Todd Haynes’ environmental drama “Dark Waters,” starring Mark Ruffalo, and Josephine Decker’s biopic “Shirley,” featuring Elisabeth Moss as novelist Shirley Jackson. Thomas Vinterberg’s “Another Round” (pictured) is also among the films making its way to Cologne via the festival circuit.

Among the works being presented in Top Ten TV are the BBC series “Trigonometry,” which follows a young married couple in London whose life takes a turn for the better when they take in a flatmate; and “Parlement,...

The American Society of Cinematographers said Thursday that it will give this year’s Board of Governors Award to Werner Herzog. The prolific writer-director and occasional actor (Disney+’s The Mandalorian) will be honored January 25 at the 34th annual Asc Awards for Outstanding Achievement at Hollywood & Highland’s Ray Dolby Ballroom.

The Asc Board of Governors Award is given to industry stalwarts whose body of work has made significant and indelible contributions to cinema. It is reserved for filmmakers who have been champions for directors of photography and the visual art form.

The German-born Herzog has produced, written, and directed more than 70 feature and documentary films, with Oscar nominations for his documentary Encounters at the End of the World (2009) and an Emmy nom for Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997).

His credits at the vanguard of German cinema along with fellow filmmakers Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Volker Schlöndorff include Aguirre, the Wrath of God...

Netflix may get most of the attention, but it’s hardly a one-stop shop for cinephiles who are looking to stream essential classic and contemporary films. Each of the prominent streaming platforms — and there are more of them all the time — caters to its own niche of film obsessives.

From chilling horror fare on Shudder, to the boundless wonders of the Criterion Channel, and esoteric (but unmissable) festival hits on Film Movement Plus and Ovid.tv, IndieWire’s monthly guide will highlight the best of what’s coming to every major streaming site, with an eye towards exclusive titles that may help readers decide which of these services is right for them.

Here’s the best of the best for August 2019.

Amazon Prime

There are some big new movies coming to Amazon Prime this month, but most of these recent Hollywood titles will also be available to stream on Hulu and/or Netflix.

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.

Amazing Grace (Sydney Pollack)

A time capsule that’s as fresh and powerful an experience as it must have been when recorded live in Watts in 1972, Amazing Grace is arguably one of the year’s most-anticipated films arriving after years of litigation and a fetal technical glitch that was resolved thanks to digital workflows. The film that exists, finished by producer Alan Elliot, bursts with intimacy and immediacy capturing a captivating and sublime performance by Aretha Franklin. In between the incredible artistry we discover and are introduced to several influences of Franklin’s including her father the minister and civil rights activist Cl Franklin who provides...

Tommy Wiseau and Greg Sestero’s 20-year-old friendship survived making “the ‘Citizen Kane’ of bad movies” (“The Room”) and the Academy Award-nominated film based on its painful production (“The Disaster Artist”). However, the duo doesn’t quite agree on how to pronounce the title of their latest collaboration, “Best F(r)iends,” a two-volume drama directed by Justin MacGregor.

“It’s not ‘Best Fiends,’ it’s ‘Friends,'” Wiseau repeatedly insisted at Hollywood’s Egyptian Theatre last night during a Q&A. Sestero — the project’s screenwriter, co-producer, and lead actor, opposite Wiseau — demurred, conceding that Werner Herzog’s 1999 documentary “My Best Fiend” was “a big inspiration.”

Sestero explained the origins for the title’s ambiguous punctuation: “I had an edible and I was trying to figure out what the title should be. And Tommy said, ‘You know what? I like this style,’ and I thought, All right.”

The film stars Wiseau as Harvey,...

Tommy Wiseau and Greg Sestero are sort of like the outsider-cinema equivalent of Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski—with the roles reversed, of course—so it seems appropriate that Wiseau would riff on the title of Herzog’s 1999 documentary on his tumultuous relationship with Kinski, My Best Fiend, for his big reunion with his The Room star. According to The Hollywood Reporter, which debuted the trailer today, Best F(r)iends was filmed “quietly” over the past two months in L.A. and Canada, and has been kept largely under wraps until now:

Directed by former wedding photographer Gary Fong, Best F(r)iends is based on a story by Sestero inspired by a road trip he and Wiseau took back in 2003. Sestero stars as a man who, after his entire family is killed in a car crash (note the bloodstained shirt), gets picked up off the side ...

The Internet is all around us, connecting humans with each other and providing the world with more information than ever before, but what is its existential impact? How has it changed our worldviews? Director Werner Herzog chronicles the virtual world from its origins to its outermost reaches in his new documentary “Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World.” Containing interviews with such luminaries as Bob Kahn, Elon Musk, and Sebastian Thrun, Herzog explores the digital landscape with his trademark curiosity and sparks a number of provocative conversations about how the online world has immeasurably transformed our real world, from business to education, space travel to healthcare, and even our personal relationships. Watch an exclusive promo for the film below.

Read More: Sundance Review: Werner Herzog’s ‘Lo and Behold’ Will Make You Experience the Internet in New Ways

Werner Herzog is one of the more acclaimed film directors of the 20th century.

Werner Herzog: Ecstatic Fictions, a retrospective dedicated to Werner Herzog's fiction filmmaking, will be running on Mubi in the United States from May 28 - July 29, 2016.My Best Fiend: A metaphor for...something "It’s a great metaphor,” Werner Herzog declares proudly towards the end of My Best Fiend, his autobiographical reflection on fifteen years of cinematic collaboration with actor Klaus Kinski. The metaphor in question is visual. Herzog and film set photographer Beat Presser are looking at a black and white photo hanging in Presser’s apartment. It’s a striking tableau and gripping enough that it would become the poster image for Herzog's 1982 collaboration with Kinski, Fitzcarraldo. The titular character stands in the foreground, yet with his back to the camera. His emotions are unavailable, but he is undoubtedly preoccupied with the 300 ton steamboat high above him at an impossible 90 degree angle, as it disappears up...

Herzog: Ecstatic Truths, a retrospective dedicated to Werner Herzog's documentary work, will be running on Mubi in the United States from March 31 - May 20, 2016. It will be followed by Herzog: Ecstatic Fictions, devoted to the director's fictional features.“The collapse of the stellar universe will occur – like creation – in grandiose splendor." In white letters sharply defined against a black screen, Blaise Pascal’s famous quote fittingly opens Lessons of Darkness (1992), Werner Herzog’s spectacular documentary about ecological disaster and the Gulf War. I say fittingly because the quote is fake (it was fabricated by Herzog to direct his audience to engage on a very “high level” before the movie even properly begins) and because Lessons of Darkness, for all its profundity, isn’t exactly a true documentary, either. It is, however, exemplary of Herzog's nonfiction style.Werner Herzog’s fame has been focused on his feature-length fiction films since...

At a loss for what to watch this week? From new DVDs and Blu-rays, to what's streaming on Netflix, we've got you covered.

New on DVD and Blu-ray

"Neighbors"

Rose Byrne and Seth Rogen star as a married couple living in a nice suburban neighborhood with their new baby. When a fraternity moves in next door, the Radners struggle with feeling terrible uncool and also having their lives wrecked by a bunch of hard-partying bros. Zac Efron co-stars as Teddy, the head of the frat, with Dave Franco as his right-hand man.

"Halloween: The Complete Collection"

Do you need this 15-disc Blu-ray box set comprised of all of the "Halloween" movies, including the producer's cut of "Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers," Rob Zombie's 2007 and 2009 versions, audio commentary, and lots more? "Need" is such a childish word. You won't literally die if you didn't manage to order...

If you gaze into Werner Herzog talking about Werner Herzog for long enough, does Werner Herzog gaze back into you? I pondered that question in late June as the 71-year-old director sat across from me at a conference table in the Santa Monica offices of Shout! Factory, the production house behind the newly released Herzog: The Collection, a Blu-ray retrospective featuring 16 of his early art-house films, including the masterpieces Stroszek (1977) and Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1979), hits like Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), and self-reflective meta-documentaries like My Best Fiend (1999) and Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997). Leading up to the interview, I had immersed myself in so many Herzog movies, so many documentaries, and so many mini-featurettes — and then re-watched the films to hear Herzog’s commentary tracks — that by the time I was in his presence asking him questions and listening to him respond in his famously...

The new box set “Herzog: the Collection,” released by Shout Factory, collects 16 of Herzog's films, presented on Blu-ray for the first time, from his 1970 debut "Even Dwarves Started Small" to 1999's “My Best Fiend." Herzog has 57 films to his name, of course—and counting—but these early works pulse with energy and strangeness, charm and power, gigantic ideals somehow being borne out of small budgets and limited resources by seemingly limitless passion and sheer force of will. Meeting Herzog to talk about the collection, the 71-year old director is in a back room at Shout Factory, in a less-than-starry part of Los Angeles, where industrial parks contain secret creations and creators; with his reading glasses at hand, Herzog is passing the time between interviews autographing a number of the box sets or special orders. Talking with Herzog about his early work can't help connect to his later work, his current...

Herzog: The Collection I've been reviewing Werner Herzog movies for the last 13 weeks or whatever it is and all in anticipation of this new 16-film collection from Shout Factory, which finally releases today and includes Even Dwarfs Started Small, Land of Silence and Darkness, Fata Morgana, Aguirre, the Wrath of God, The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, Heart of Glass, Stroszek, Woyzeck, Nosferatu the Vampyre, Fitzcarraldo, Ballad of the Little Soldier, Where the Green Ants Dream, Cobra Verde, Lessons of Darkness, Little Dieter Needs to Fly and My Best Fiend. Of the bunch I can tell you flat out Aguirre, the Wrath of God, The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, Stroszek, Nosferatu the Vampyre and Fitzcarraldo are great films and that's without the special features this set contains, which are: English Audio Commentaries: Even Dwarfs Started Small, Fata Morgana, Aguirre, the Wrath of God, The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, Heart of Glass,...

This contest is so good it speaks for itself. ShoutFactory is putting out a massive, limited edition Werner Hezog box set titled “Herzog: The Collection.” Limited to 5,000 copies, the 13-disc set features 16 acclaimed films and documentaries from the German iconoclast, 15 of which are making their Blu-ray debuts. "The Collection" also features a 40 page booklet that includes photos, an essay by award-winning author Stephen J. Smith, and in-depth film synopses by Herzog scholars Brad Prager and Chris Wahl. Herzog: The Collection includes: Even Dwarfs Started Small Land of Silence and Darkness Fata Morgana Aguirre, the Wrath of God The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser Heart of Glass Stroszek Woyzeck Nosferatu the Vampyre Fitzcarraldo Ballad of the Little Soldier Where the Green Ants Dream Cobra Verde Lessons of Darkness Little Dieter Needs to Fly My Best Fiend · English Audio Commentaries: Even Dwarfs Started Small, Fata Morgana,...

Cinema Retro has received the following press release from Shout! Factory:

A visionary creator unlike any other, with a passion for unveiling truths about nature and existence by blurring the line between reality and fiction, Werner Herzog is undoubtedly one of cinema’s most controversial and enigmatic figures. Audiences the world over have marveled at his uniquely moving, often disturbing, but always awe-inspiring stories, and his ever-growing body of work has inspired an untold number of filmmakers. He is, and continues to be, the most daring filmmaker of our time.

In celebration of this cinematic vanguard, Shout! Factory will release Herzog: The Collection on July 29th, 2014. Limited to 5,000 copies, the 13-disc box set features 16 acclaimed films and documentaries, 15 of which are making their Blu-ray debuts. Herzog: The Collection also features a 40 page booklet that includes photos, an essay by award-winning author Stephen J. Smith, and in-depth film synopses by Herzog...

(This review pertains to the limited edition Region 2 UK release from the BFI)

By Paul Risker

As well as asking the question “Is cinema more important than life?” Francois Truffaut showed a flair for statement when he declared Werner Herzog to be “The most important filmmaker alive.”

If the BFI have the final word this summer, it will be remembered as the summer of Herzog, as they align themselves with the German filmmaker and journey headlong into his cinematic world. This rendezvous starts with a descent into the past with two distinct forms of horror - the hallucinatory horror of human obsession in Aguirre, Wrath of God and the genre horror Nosferatu.

Aguirre, Wrath of God represents an important entry in Herzog's career, and by coupling it with his 1971 feature documentary Fata Morgana, this release highlights the spatial thread that runs through his cinema. From the jungle, the desert, Antarctica...

★★★★★The extremities of the human psyche have for decades fascinated Bavarian auteur Werner Herzog; from the gleeful revolt of Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970) right through to the drug-fuelled excesses of Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans (2009). More than one of the crowning achievements of his fiction filmography centres on the wild-eyed Klaus Kinski, who appeared in five of Herzog films as well as being the subject of the documentary, My Best Fiend (1999). The first and arguably the best of these collaborations was on a trek into the veritable heart of darkness in the exquisite Aguirre, The Wrath of God (1972), which now arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of the BFI.

I absolutely need to watch more films starring German actor Klaus Kinski. Outside of his Werner Herzog appearances I've only seen him in Sergio Leone's For a Few Dollars More, David Lean's Doctor Zhivago and Sergio Corbucci's The Great Silence and with IMDb crediting him in over 130 films, I've clearly missed a few. Kinski had a raw intensity Herzog clearly knew how to exploit, most notably in Aguirre, The Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo, films where the production was as harrowing if not more so than the stories they were telling making it hard to tell where Kinski the actor ends and his character begins. Within the confines of Herzog's 1999 documentary My Best Fiend - Klaus Kinski, we get a small glimpse of the man Herzog met when he was only a child as he returns to the now-renovated apartment where he first met Kinski. He takes us on a walking tour,...

This week wasn't as busy in terms of number of movies watched as last week. I caught two movies in theaters -- The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and Locke -- and at home I watched Burden of Dreams, Les Blank's documentary on the making of Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo, and just last night I watched Herzog's Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht. As I've already said, I'm revisiting 16 of Werner Herzog's movies and reviewing each of them over the course of the next several weeks, this week I'm hoping to have reviews of both Fitzcarraldo and My Best Fiend, but I don't want to review either until I've finished reading Herzog's "Conquest of the Useless: Reflections from the Making of Fitzcarraldo", but I'm finding it hard to fit in enough time to do just that. This coming week is going to be busy for me as screenings for the Seattle Film Festival get underway,...

When you begin exploring the work of director Werner Herzog some (if not most) will argue Aguirre, the Wrath of God is likely the best place to start. Though I don't think you get the full picture of this portion of Herzog's career without including Fitzcarraldo or the documentary My Best Fiend, which came another 12 years later, detailing Herzog's work with Aguirre star Klaus Kinski. Without Kinski, Aguirre, Fitzcarraldo and, most likely, Herzog would not be the same. With that in mind, know this is the first review in a coming triptych, meant to build off one another to the point an entire picture begins to form. History, in this case, cannot be ignored. Considered an entry in the West German New Wave, Aguirre is very loosely based on the accounts of Spanish Dominican monk Gaspar de Carvajal (played in the film by Del Negro) as well as the life...

It was a very busy week for me as I saw three movies in theaters and watched another five at home. As for the theatrical trips, they included two I've already reviewed -- The Other Woman (read the review here) and Brick Mansions (read the review here) -- and Jon Favreau's Chef (5/9), which I already wrote a little about, but I'll say it again here, I enjoyed it... review coming in a couple weeks. At home I watched a screener for Last Passenger (review here) and I also watched Blue Ruin On Demand and I'll have a review of that this coming week, but I did post this on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ropeofsilicon/status/459850214036078592 Then, last week I mentioned how I was digging into Werner Herzog's catalog courtesy of Fandor.com as they are releasing 16 of Herzog's titles, one a week, in advance of Shout Factory's release...

This week involved a lot of movies at home, including the new Blu-ray for Double Indemnity, the new Blu-ray for William Friedkin's Sorcerer (read my review here) and, last night, I watched Werner Herzog's Aguirre, the Wrath of God on Fandor.com as I'll be reviewing 16 of Herzog's upcoming movies leading up to Shout Factory's release of Herzog: The Collection Limited Edition on July 29. The set includes Even Dwarfs Started Small, Nosferatu The Vampyre, Land Of Silence And Darkness, Fitzcarraldo, Fata Morgana, Ballad Of Little Soldier, Aguirre, The Wrath Of God, Where The Green Ants Dream, The Enigma Of Kaspar Hauser, Cobra Verde, Heart Of Glass, Lessons Of Darkness, Stroszek, Little Dieter Needs To Fly, Woyzeck and My Best Fiend and Fandor will be releasing one new title each week leading up to the release, each in HD. Of that lot, I've only seen Aguirre and Fitzcarraldo before,...

Herzog fans, rejoice. Fandor has attained exclusive streaming rights for no less than 16 (!) of the German auteur's films. "Aguirre the Wrath of God" has its bow on April 10, with one new title launching each week through July 2014. Fandor's recent CEO and Toh! contributor Ted Hope helped to negotiate the deal for the site. So, which Herzog films are part of this new collection? The titles span three decades, incorporating both narrative and documentary, and include all the director's work with his stormy muse Klaus Kinski (as well as the documentary on their insanely tempestuous relationship, "My Best Fiend"). Meanwhile, the 71-year-old Herzog is still as active and marvelously unpredictable as ever: He's finishing up filming in Morocco on Gertrude Bell/T.E. Lawrence biopic "Queen of the Desert," starring Nicole Kidman and Robert Pattinson, and has school shooting dark comedy "Vernon God Little" up next, with the unlikely names of Pamela Anderson,...

Kino Lorber has acquired Us rights to Mohammad Rasoulof’s Iranian drama about state censorship, Manuscripts Don’t Burn.

Rasoulof’s latest film marks a return to filmmaking after the Iranian Revolutionary Court sentenced him in 2010 to six years in jail and a 20-year filmmaking ban.

The prison term was subsequently reduced to one year. After flying to Iran in September 2013 with the intent to return to Hamburg later that month, Rasoulof’s passport was confiscated by Iranian authorities. He remains unable to leave Iran.

Rasoulof filmed Manuscripts Don’t Burn without federal permission and in order to maintain the safety of the film’s crew, their names have been removed from the film’s final credits. The story centres on an Iranian author secretly writing his memoirs that the authorities want to destroy.

The drama screened in Un Certain Regard in Cannes last year where it won the Fipresci Prize. It also screened...

Kino Lorber has acquired Us rights to Mohammad Rasoulof’s Iranian drama about state censorship, Manuscripts Don’t Burn.

Rasoulof’s latest film marks a return to filmmaking after the Iranian Revolutionary Court sentenced him in 2010 to six years in jail and a 20-year filmmaking ban.

The prison term was subsequently reduced to one year. After flying to Iran in September 2013 with the intent to return to Hamburg later that month, Rasoulof’s passport was confiscated by Iranian authorities. He remains unable to leave Iran.

Rasoulof filmed Manuscripts Don’t Burn without federal permission and in order to maintain the safety of the film’s crew, their names have been removed from the film’s final credits. The story centres on an Iranian author secretly writing his memoirs that the authorities want to destroy.

The drama screened in Un Certain Regard in Cannes last year where it won the Fipresci Prize. It also screened...

Blue Is the Warmest Colour, the award-winning French film, is already notorious for its fisticuffs between stars and director. It's the latest in an unhappy tradition of histrionics and control-freakery. Here are some vintage feuds

Directors and actors being what they are, they like a good argument. On one side are obsessive perfectionists, on the other self-involved exhibitionists – or so the theory goes. It's often proved a combustible mix in the past, with what is euphemistically termed "creative tension" often adding to the dynamic of the final film.

The media, obviously, is the silent third partner in all this; though you, the reader, ought to be equally ashamed, gleefully drinking in all the foul-mouthed resentment and high-decibel score-settling. You don't have to look far: actors Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopolous turned on Blue Is the Warmest Colour director Abdellatif Kechiche, accusing him of traumatising them during the extended periods shooting sex and fight scenes.

Following are some supplemental sections featuring notable director & actor teams that did not meet the criteria for the main body of the article. Some will argue that a number of these should have been included in the primary section but keep in mind that film writing on any level, from the casual to the academic, is a game of knowledge and perception filtered through personal taste.

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Other Notable Director & Actor Teams

This section is devoted to pairings where the duo worked together at least 3 times with the actor in a major role in each feature film, resulting in 1 must-see film.

Terence Young & Sean Connery

Must-See Collaboration: From Russia with Love (1962).

Other Collaborations: Action of the Tiger (1957), Dr. No (1962), Thunderball (1965).

Director Young and actor Connery teamed up to create one of the very best Connery-era James Bond films with From Russia with Love which features a great villainous performance by Robert Shaw...

Sheffield International Documentary Festival, or – if you’re into the whole brevity thing – DocFest, is 20 years old.

To mark the anniversary of one of the most dynamic and interesting festivals in the world, the organisers have pulled out all the stops. Kicking things off this year are 3 stunning opening night events; The Big Melt – a film celebrating the Sheffield Steel Industry with a live score written by the Steel City’s favourite son Jarvis Cocker and performed by Cocker, Richard Hawley and The Sheffield Brass Band (among others) promises to be quite something; The Summit – a film about the perils of climbing K2 is being screened deep underground in the Peak District’s most evocatively named cave, The Devil’s Arse and finally, a screening of Sundance World Cinema Documentary Award Winner Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer, which – tantalisingly – features a Q&A with the non-incarcerated band members.

side from that trio of events,...

Werner Herzog's 1972 film starring Klaus Kinski as a 16th-century Spanish conquistador looks more magnificent and mad than ever

Werner Herzog's Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972) was last rereleased here more than 10 years ago; now, with a new restoration, the sound of gobs being smacked will resound in British cinemas once again. It looks more magnificent and mad than ever, one of the great folies de grandeur of 1970s cinema, an expeditionary Conradian nightmare like Coppola's Apocalypse Now. Just as for that film, the agonies of its production history have entered into legend, almost equivalent to the movie fiction itself. (Herzog's 1999 documentary My Best Fiend, about his leading man Klaus Kinski, tells the incredible story of the insanely dangerous shooting conditions and near-murderous rows between director and star.) It is based loosely on the true story of 16th-century conquistador Lupe De Aguirre (Kinski), the second-in-command of a Spanish force...

German director and voiceover enthusiast Werner Herzog will receive this year's Locarno International Film Festival's Pardo d'onore, the festival announced Wednesday. Herzog, an eclectic director, writer, producer and actor, is best known for his many documentaries, including "My Best Fiend," "Grizzly Man" and "Encounters at the End of the World," which was nominated for an Oscar in 2009.  His documentary films often feature a steady stream of meditative and sometimes tangential narration recorded by the director himself. In a press release, the festival's artistic director, Carlo Chatrian, praised Herzog's versatility of genre and production value: "Over the course of his long career, Herzog has proved adept at moving between fiction and documentary, low-budget productions and films featuring major stars but without ever losing a clear sense of identity. If awards are not only recognitions but also a way of signaling the future, I think that Werner Herzog is the most appropriate.

Of all the hedonistic madmen the cinema has produced, Klaus Kinski may be among the wildest. Kinski's notorious mania and unstable emotional state on film sets is the stuff of legend. His persona even inspired his frequent collaborator, Werner Herzog, to compose a documentary about their relationship titled My Best Fiend. In his later years, the passion to drove his performances to artistic heights unseen by most actors, became a hindrance to his ability to work for anyone, and so was born Kinski's final film, Paganini, more commonly known as Kinski/Paganini.Paganini was Kinski's passion project. A biography of an infamous violin prodigy who is generally regarded as one of the finest musicians who ever lived. Nicolo Paganini's life was full of controversy, and his performances...

Reviewer: Philip Tatler IV

Rating (out of five): * 1/2

Anyone familiar with Werner Herzog’s 1999 docuhomage My Best Fiend knows that Klaus Kinski – whatever his merits as a performer – was a prone to deranged lunacy. Herzog’s film posited Kinski as a demon-possessed megalomaniac nearly incapable of taking direction. His (allegedly fabricated) autobiography is full of abuses hurled at the “idiot” directors who Kinski felt mismanaged their films and, above all, his performances.

Kinski’s single directorial effort – 1989’s Paganini – was his chance for him to vindicate himself from all the meddling hacks he’d endured throughout his career. Kinski finally had control of everything – from pre- to post-production – and could deliver the Klaus Kinski performance that he’d longed for audiences to see.

He was born Nikolaus Günther Karl Nakszynski in Zoppot, near Danzig, on October 18, 1926. In 1930, his family moved to Berlin. Drafted in 1944, he was taken prisoner by the British and transported to Camp 186 near Colchester, where he'd take on his first theatrical roles. By 1946, he was performing in the Schlosspark-Theater in Berlin and, in 1947, he scored his first film role as a Dutch prisoner in Eugen York's Morituri.

In 1960, he took his one-man show on the road: Kinski spricht Villon, Rimbaud, Wilde, Majakowskij und Schiller. That same year, he landed his first role in an Edgar Wallace adaptation: Lorenz Voss in Karl Anton's The Avenger. He'd appear in several international productions, but of course, it wasn't until Klaus Kinski and Werner Herzog found each other that cinema was jolted by one of those rare alchemical bonds of director and actor in which — like Scorsese and De Niro, Kurosawa and Mifune,...

"Apples and oranges" was my off-the-cuff reply to a critic I admire as we rose from our seats following a screening of Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams. He'd just muttered something to the effect of "sure beats Pina" and, while comparisons will be nearly impossible to resist — two giants of the New German Cinema have each made their first films in 3D, both of them documentaries, and, on that day in February, the Berlinale had just screened them back to back — I'm sticking with my initial verdict: apples and oranges.

Now Wim Wenders's Pina is playing in the UK and a few European countries, while Places, strange and quiet, an exhibition of nearly 40 large-scale photographs taken between 1983 and the present, is on view at Haunch of Venison in London through May 14 — the cover of the current issue of Sight & Sound, by the way, reads "The Third Coming...

Incited by yet another viewing of Shutter Island this weekend, I began to think about how Leonardo DiCaprio has well and truly become director Martin Scorsese’s current muse. Actor/director collaborations have been a constant feature in the film industry, right back to filmmakers such as Howard Hawks and their relationships with stars like Cary Grant in the 1930s/40s. The films produced by a director and their muse are credited to the strong creative bond between two talents and this generally transfers extremely effectively on to the screen, and the best of these partnerships are usually when a director finds an actor to play a heightened, ‘film star’ version of himself on screen, his vessel into portraying the character birthed in a director’s mind and based somewhat on himself.

Consider for example, Christopher Nolan’s use of Leonardo DiCaprio in Inception.

For audiences, the familiarity of a...

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

(Rob’s Berlin review re-posted as the film is released in the U.K. today)

There is a long version and a short version of this review. The pithy one goes something like this: if you liked Encounters at the End of the World and Grizzly Man, you’ll love Cave of Forgotten Dreams. That does the job and you know exactly what I mean: people who aren’t Werner Herzog documentary fans won’t care/get it/enjoy it whereas people who are will lap it up. But, seeing as it’s hardly acceptable to turn that review in and call it a night, I’ll fight the urge to go to sleep and give you the longer version too.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams is a documentary film about the Chauvet caves in Southern France which are home to the oldest and best preserved record of ancient human art,...

Perhaps the human link is missing, but Werner Herzog's 3D documentary about prehistoric cave art asks new things of film

A few hours after Wim Wenders's somewhat unforgiving film about Pina Bausch unspooled in Berlin, so too did another 3D documentary – this one directed by Wenders's contemporary and sometime rival in the New German Cinema movement of the 1970s, Werner Herzog. Though all his work tends to blur the line between fiction and reality, Herzog has been focusing on making documentaries for the last two decades – roughly parallelling the collapse in quality of his "acted" films (though the recent Bad Lieutenant and My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done may have arrested the decline). Cave of Forgotten Dreams is fully worthy to stand alongside Herzog's non-fiction masterworks, such as Grizzly Man, My Best Fiend and Little Dieter Needs to Fly.

Its ostensible subject is the recently discovered Chauvet cave paintings,...

We’ve been sent over some new production stills by the folks at Thinkjam taken from Werner Herzog’s ace new documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams, which the German film-making legend shot in 3D. We know it’s ace because we’ve seen it. The film is released in UK cinemas from 25th March, so expect our review in good time!

If you haven’t seen the trailer yet, click on the link here and check out the stills below after the detailed synopsis.

Synopsis:

Positively received at its Toronto Festival Premiere, Cave Of Forgotten Dreams shows the dramatic results of Herzog’s exclusive access to the recently discovered Chauvet caves in the South of France, and their truly extraordinary cave paintings, dating back 32,000 years. Herzog’s use of 3D really brings these beautiful works of art and the breath-taking cathedral like cave with its towering stalagmites to life. Herzog...

It’s awards season which means, among other things, that those in the movie industry must smile and make nice with their enemies and competitors while cameras are rolling. We all saw the nominees’ thin, tight-lipped smiles as host Ricky Gervais roasted them at this year’s Golden Globes ceremony. What else can they do? The world is watching.

However, on the movie set, it’s a different ballgame. Actors and directors may say everyone was a joy to work with during interviews. However, tensions run high on-set and creative types can be explosive by nature. The film set is where bridges are burned and arch-nemeses are made. As proof, we look at the 10 most-explosive on-set fights (that we know about).

Warning: Videos Nsfw.

Sarah Jessica Parker vs. Kim Cattrall

After a dozen years of working together on the HBO series and first movie, Parker and Cattrall finally became fed...

It says something when somebody as maverick and individual as Werner Herzog goes and makes a 3D film. If you’ve ever seen a Herzog documentary you’ll know well they’re probably better than much of his fiction work. And that’s saying something! He’s made a new one now called Cave of Forgotten Dreams.

A new UK Trailer for the film – opening in the UK from 25th March – has been sent over to us and a pretty detailed synopsis, too. I’m still unconvinced by 3D but Herzog is a legendary film-maker and will no doubt do something great with the format. The subject matter alone – ancient cave-drawings and artwork – is most interesting.

Synopsis:

Positively received at its Toronto Festival Premiere, Cave Of Forgotten Dreams shows the dramatic results of Herzog’s exclusive access to the recently discovered Chauvet caves in the South of France, and their truly extraordinary cave paintings,...

Picturehouse Entertainment have just sent us the brand new trailer for their new 3d movie, Cave of Forgotten Dreams which is directed by the legendary Werner Herzog. The documentary is released 25th March 2011.

I’ll let the synopsis do the talking and scroll down to view the trailer which Jon first placed last week.

Positively received at its Toronto Festival Premiere, Cave of Forgotten Dreams shows the dramatic results of Herzog’s exclusive access to the recently discovered Chauvet caves in the South of France, and their truly extraordinary cave paintings, dating back 32,000 years. Herzog’s use of 3D really brings these beautiful works of art and the breath-taking cathedral like cave with its towering stalagmites to life. Herzog uses his unique access to this treasure trove of Palaeolithic masterpieces to muse on the immensity and fragility of man’s progress.

Herzog combines his gifts as a conjurer of unforgettable images,...

Have you ever wondered what are the films that inspire the next generation of visionary filmmakers? As part of our monthly Ioncinephile profile (read here), we ask the filmmaker the incredibly arduous task of identifying their top ten list of favorite films. We cap off the year with Ry Russo-Young, whose Sundance Film Festival selected and Gotham Award winner You Wont Miss Me finally receives a December 10th release followed by a nationwide roll out. Here are Ry's Top 10 Films. Close-Up - Abbas Kiarostami (1990) "This film articulates the complex dialogue between art and life. Part documentary, part staged re-enactment with real subjects, it’s about the trial of a man who impersonates the filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf." The Conversation - Francis Ford Coppola (1974) "The way sound is used, the paranoia and the incredible use of Gene Hackman’s grey raincoat." Days of Heaven - Terrence Malick (1978) "I know a lot of...

TORONTO -- The Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival said Tuesday that German director Werner Herzog will receive an outstanding achievement award at the festival, which runs April 28-May 7 in Toronto. North America's largest documentary festival also said that Canadian French-language filmmaker Serge Giguere will be the subject of this year's Focus On ..., a sidebar that provides a mid-career retrospective of work by a Canadian docu maker. Hot Docs said Herzog will take part in an informal discussion of his work and receive a retrospective of his documentaries, which include Land of Silence and Darkness (1971), The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner (1973) and My Best Fiend (1999).