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Exclusive: The women and gender-expansive-focused training initiative Circle has unveiled the line-up for the second edition of its Circle Fiction Orbit in Montenegro, with mentors including award-winning directors Jasmila Žbanić and Pia Marais this year.

The event – unfolding in the Montenegrin resort coastal resort town of Herceg Novi from November 24 to December 1 – is supporting a diverse line-up of six fiction projects with strong international potential.

They include historic drama Tethys Ocean by Polish director Anna Jadowska, who made waves with 2022 bank robbery drama Woman On The Roof, and award-winning Slovenian director Barbara Zemljič’s It Will Fade Away, following a woman who discovers her daughter is being sexually harassed by a child at her kindergarten. (scroll down for full list of projects).

Oscar nominated Romanian producer Bianca Oana, whose credits include Berlinale Golden Bear winner Touch Me Not and Oscar-nominated doc Collective, has returned as head of studies for a second year.

Teodora Ana Mihai’s “Traffic” was named the winner of the 40th Warsaw Film Festival on Saturday. The film was written by Cristian Mungiu, who won the Palme d’Or at Cannes with “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” and stars “Happening” lead actor Anamaria Vartolomei.

“Traffic” focuses on Romanian immigrants in Belgium, who go from unwanted second-class citizens to very much wanted criminals, as they decide to stage a heist that will change their lives forever.

You can watch the trailer here:

“I was excited about the opportunity to work closely with Cristian Mungiu, as he was also co-producing the project. I anticipated it would be an intense and challenging experience, but I don’t shy away from challenges, as I demonstrated with [previous film] ‘La Civil,’” Mihai told Variety.

“I believe Cristian and I have always shared a similar understanding of the themes explored in this film, which camouflages...

Belgian-Romanian director Teodora Ana Mihai, who made a spectacular fiction feature debut with “La Civil,” continues to blend genres in her next film “Traffic,” where politically charged social drama meets heist movie. “Traffic” makes its world premiere as the closing film of the Warsaw Film Festival and has its Asian premiere at the Tokyo International Film Festival.

The film’s screenplay was written by Cristian Mungiu, Palme d’Or winner for “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” and stars “Happening” breakout Anamaria Vartolomei, who starred recently in Cannes entry “Being Maria.”

While “La Civil” fused investigative thriller and social realism, focusing on a mother’s search for her kidnapped daughter, now it’s all about Romanian immigrants in Belgium, tired of being treated as second-class citizens.

Referring to Mungiu’s involvement, Mihai tells Variety: “For me, it’s an ‘auteur’ film. I was asked to carry someone’s brainchild into existence,...

Goran Stolevski is the rare rising filmmaker who is three-for-three with his movies “You Won’t Be Alone,” “Of an Age,” and “Housekeeping for Beginners,” all set up at Focus Features. For Venice premiere “Housekeeping for Beginners” (out April 5), a chaotic portrait of a patched-together found family, the Australian director returns to his birthplace, North Macedonia, using a rowdy household as a microcosm for the country’s politically fraught melting pot of Macedonians and Roma people.

For this true cinéma vérité tale — true in the sense that it shot on real locations, without rehearsals, and with many unknown actors — Stolevski had a lucky stroke of dream casting led by “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” star Anamaria Marinca, who worked with him on “You Won’t Be Alone.” She plays healthcare worker Dita, living in modern-day North Macedonia in its capital of Skopje with her Roma girlfriend Suada’s (Alina Serban) children and their friends.

Palme d’Or winner Cristian Mungiu and his Bucharest-based company Mobra Films will join forces with Poland’s Kijora Films on “Tales of the Golden Age – The Warsaw Pact,” a follow up to his 2009 sketch comedy referencing urban legends from the Ceausescu regime.

Expanding to accommodate stories from different ex-communist Eastern European countries, including Poland, it will be written by Mungiu and directed by Ioana Uricaru. France’s Les Films du Worso is also on board.

“Perhaps the most important function of comedy is to help us confront negative emotions and terrible events, and give us a way to talk about them that makes them less frightening. The most effective comedies are set in tragic situations,” Mungiu and Uricaru said in a statement.

“The stories presented in the script take place at a dark moment in history and talk about very grim issues in that comical and absurd way – one...

“Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World,” from Romania’s Radu Jude, added to its ever larger silverware collection, winning the top Albar Award at Spain’s Gijón Festival.

Gijón’s big win join not only a Special Jury Prize at August’s Locarno Film Festival, where the film was the most talked about – one of Jude’s aims– and lauded of competition titles among reviewers, plus a Chicago Silver Hugo best performance nod (Ilinca Manolache) in October and a Lisbon Fest Jury Prize late last month.

Over 61 editions, and most especially when José Luis Cienfuegos, now Valladolid chief, took over its reins in 1995, the Gijón-Xijón Film Festival (Ficx) has carved out an identity as highlighting edgier international auteurs and indie fare, moving into promoting often more singular movies from a burgeoning new generation of Spanish filmmakers, greeted with enthusiasm by discerning and predominantly YA audiences...

Exclusive: Female and non-binary filmmaker-focused international training initiative Circle has kicked off its inaugural Circle Fiction Orbit initiative at a meeting in Montenegro and unveiled the participants.

The new program extends Circle’s activities beyond its founding Woman Doc Accelerator program, which has supported some 50 non-fiction projects since its launch five years ago.

Employing the same methodology as the Doc Accelerator, the inaugural fiction initiative is supporting five fiction projects in development.

They include Greenlandic birthday party-set drama Kaffemi, from director Pipaluk Jørgensen, whose short film Ivalu was Oscar nominated this year, and screenwriter-actress Nukâka Coster Waldau.

Italian director Irene Dionisio participates with Idda about two childhood friends who reconnect as they scale the perilous slopes of Mount Etna. Dionisio previously made waves with Pawn Streets which played in Venice Critics’ Week.

Finnish director Laura Hyppönen and producer Merja Ritola (Greenlit Productions) are attending with Lex Julia, exploring the dynamics...

Unorthodox family structures yield correspondingly unpredictable drama in “Housekeeping for Beginners,” a vital, febrile multi-character study that further confirms writer-director Goran Stolevski as a talent to be reckoned with. Departing radically from the poise of his folk-horror debut “You Won’t Be Alone” and the gentle intimacy of its swift follow-up “Of an Age,” this study of domestic, romantic and generational conflicts in a crowded queer household instead embraces a spirit of antic chaos, both in subject matter and jagged, hit-the-ground-running execution. Selected as North Macedonia’s international Oscar submission shortly after its premiere in Venice’s Horizons strand, the film has already been picked up by Focus Features for its Stateside release, which speaks to the crossover appeal of its offbeat but energizing storytelling.

Following the Melbourne-set “Of an Age,” “Housekeeping for Beginners” sees the Macedonian-born, Australia-based Stolevski returning to the motherland — not the historical back country of “You Won’t Be Alone,...

When “Avatar 2: Way of the Water” surged to the top of the Romanian box office earlier this year to become the highest-grossing film of all time, it marked an auspicious sign for a theatrical business still looking to recover from the doldrums of the coronavirus pandemic.

Yet local industry-watchers were even more encouraged to see a historic first in 2022, with two Romanian films cracking the top 10 at the year-end box office — a striking achievement for an industry that hasn’t historically been known for cranking out crowd-pleasing hits.

Topping the list was “Teambuilding,” a satirical workplace comedy from directors Matei Dima, Alex Coteț and Cosmin Nedelcu, which briefly reigned as the top-grossing film ever in Romania before being knocked from its perch by James Cameron’s blockbuster, which has raked in more than $8.3 million to date.

Meanwhile, first-time filmmaker Cristian Ilișuan’s “Mirciulică,” a comedy about a 30-year-old forced...

A new Cristian Mungiu film is always cause for celebration. “R.M.N.,” his first film since 2016’s “Graduation” won Best Director at Cannes, once again immerses us in the casual brutalities of Eastern Europe.

Here, the Romanian “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” filmmaker turns his camera back on Transylvania, here an ethnic melting pot of a Transylvanian village to which Matthias (Marin Grigore) returns from Germany looking for work and to possibly reconnect with his ex, Csilla (Judith State). Csilla, meanwhile, is met by town-wide derision after hiring three Sri Lankan men to work at the bread factory she’s second-in-command of, setting off a tripwire of prejudices throughout the village.

“Xenophobia is everywhere, but this was interesting because it was in a community of people living as a small minority in the middle of a majority, having a different language, traditions, culture and religions, and normally you would...

Last fall, five days before Italy announced its official Oscar submission, filmmakers Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch were nervous. The Belgian couple, who co-directed the intimate Cannes winner “The Eight Mountains” in the Italian Alps and learned the language for the project, hoped that their commitment was enough to convince the committee tasked with selecting the submission that it fulfilled their requirements.

“We want to make the Italians proud of this film, so we pray that they will feel proud enough to send it,” Vandermeersch told IndieWire at the time. “If our nationality diminishes that pride or that sense of ownership, we can’t help that, but we do think that it’s less and less important in the world of today.”

The following week, the country snubbed “The Eight Mountains” in favor of another Cannes selection, Italian director Mario Matone’s crime drama “Nostalgia;” one month later, it...

Xenophobia is a contagion in Cristian Mungiu’s tense and often mind-blowing “R.M.N.,” the Cannes-anointed Romanian filmmaker’s latest social thriller. His first film in the eight years since “Graduation,” “R.M.N.” premiered on the Croisette in competition last year but finally makes its way to U.S. theaters via IFC Films on April 28. Watch the trailer below.

“R.M.N.” takes us back to “Beyond the Hills” territory in immersing us in the casual brutalities of a remote corner of Eastern Europe, here an ethnic melting pot of a Transylvanian village to which Matthias (Marin Grigore) returns from Germany looking for work and to possibly reconnect with his ex, Csilla. Played by Judith State, she’s the second in command at the town’s local bread factory, which is already struggling to feed mouths that outnumber the supply. When she’s not toiling by day, by night she’s downing wine in...

Cristian Mungiu likes to take his time.

In terms of his craft, the Romanian filmmaker behind the Palme d’Or-winning “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” opts for long, unbroken takes, building out tension as his camera stubbornly refuses to cut away. In terms of his career, he works at a measured clip, delivering a new project on average every five years.

And in terms of his latest effort, the dense and foreboding “R.M.N.,” which premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival on Saturday, that means putting his pieces on the board at an unhurried pace, weaving a tapestry that takes nearly half a runtime to reveal the full intricacy and artistry of its construction.

Also Read:

Cristian Mungiu’s ‘R.M.N.’ Acquired by IFC Films Ahead of Cannes Premiere

At first we struggle with the pieces of this puzzle: Who is this man in...

IFC Films has acquired the North American rights to “R.M.N.,” the latest film from Romanian auteur Cristian Mungiu ahead of its Cannes debut.

Mungiu is the director of the sensational Palme D’Or winner “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” and “R.M.N.” now marks the fifth collaboration between Mungiu and IFC Films. IFC plans to release “R.M.N.” in theaters later this year.

“R.M.N.” is playing in the main competition at Cannes and stars Marin Grigore and Judith State.

A few days before Christmas, having quit his job in Germany, Matthias (Grigore) returns to his multi-ethnic Transylvanian village. He wishes to involve himself more in the education of his son, Rudi, left for too long in the care of his mother, Ana, and to rid the boy of the unresolved fears that have taken hold of him. He’s preoccupied with his old father,...

IFC Films has acquired North American rights to “R.M.N.,” the new film from acclaimed writer, director and producer Cristian Mungiu, ahead of its world premiere in Cannes this week.

It’s a grand reunion for the indie studio and the director, marking their fifth distribution collaboration. IFC Films will release “R.M.N.” theatrically in 2022. It may have been a wise preemptive buy. The director’s films tend to get an award-winning reception in the South of France. Mungiu previously won the Palme d’Or in 2007 for “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” a drama about abortion that was set in waning days of the Nicolae Ceaușescu era in Romania.

Here’s the official description of “R.M.N.”: “A few days before Christmas, having quit his job in Germany, Matthias (Marin Grigore) returns to his multi-ethnic Transylvanian village. He wishes to involve himself more in the education of his son,...

This review of “You Won’t Be Alone” was first published on Jan. 22 after its premiere at Sundance.

The dismal arthouse horror-drama “You Won’t Be Alone” will surely test the patience of viewers who expect a straightforward, character-driven, or even generic period chiller. Set in 19th century Macedonia, writer-director Goran Stolevski’s debut feature presents a disorienting narrative about Nevena (mostly played by Noomi Rapace), a shape-shifting teenage witch who’s kidnapped and then haunted by the malicious “wolf-eateress” conjurer Maria.

The movie’s heavy-handed and often distracting impressionistic style — lots of too-tight extreme close-ups, wobbly hand-held camerawork, whispery stream-of-conscious voiceover narration, and over-edited montages — will understandably frustrate some viewers and draw comparisons to recent dramas directed by Terrence Malick as well as Robert Eggers’ “elevated horror” movies “The Witch” and “The Lighthouse.”

Stolevski’s pretentious and mindlessly alienating style also smothers his ensemble cast’s performances and his crew’s diligent contributions,...

Since winning the prestigious Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival just over a month ago, French-Lebanese filmmaker Audrey Diwan has emerged as one of the most exciting and relevant new voices of contemporary world cinema with her sophomore outing, “Happening.”

Working with a tight budget, a fairly unknown lead actress (Anamaria Vartolomei) and a polarizing topic, Diwan was able to deliver a nuanced and relatable portrayal of Anne, a bright young female student determined to rise above her social upbringing who faces an unwanted pregnancy in 1960’s France — at a time when abortion was considered a crime.

“Happening,” based on Annie Emaux’s semi-autobiographical novel, is now one of the three movies pre-selected by France’s Oscar committee to vie for an international feature film nomination, along with Julia Ducournau’s Cannes’ Palme d’Or winning “Titane” and Cedric Jimenez’s “Bac Nord” (co-written by Diwan). In any other year,...

On a strong night for female filmmakers and Netflix releases, the Venice Film Festival has come to a close with a curveball, as breakout French director Audrey Diwan’s powerful abortion drama “Happening” beat big-name competition to the Golden Lion for best film. Diwan received the award from a jury presided over by Oscar-winning filmmaker Bong Joon-ho.

Also on the jury, significantly, was last year’s Golden Lion champ, “Nomadland” director Chloé Zhao. Diwan is only the sixth woman ever to take the festival’s top award; never before has the prize gone to female directors two years in a row. Coming on the heels of her compatriot Julia Ducournau’s groundbreaking Palme d’Or win at Cannes for “Titane,” Diwan’s triumph further points to an exciting new generation of female auteurs seizing the spotlight.

Among the films Diwan’s film beat to the punch were Netflix’s three big hopefuls from the competition,...

The white-hot moment of the Romanian new-wave film renaissance is long in the past. “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu” came out in 2005, “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” in 2007. Other landmarks of Romanian cinema also now go back quite a ways, like “Police, Adjective” (2009), “If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle” (2010), and “Graduation” (2016). That’s not to say there haven’t been good Romanian films of late — earlier this year, I championed Two Lottery Tickets, a kind of droll Romanian Jim Jarmusch film. The bitter truth, though, is that over the last decade the profile of international impact and acclaim that Romanian cinema once held has radically diminished.

It might jump-start again with the appearance of “Miracle,” one of the best films I’ve seen at the Venice Film Festival. It’s the third feature written and directed by Bogdan George Apetri, and it shares many of the classic qualities of Romanian cinema.

Omar El Zohairy’s comedy-drama “Feathers” has won the Nespresso Grand Prize at Critics’ Week, the Cannes Film Festival’s strand dedicated to first and second films.

Set in contemporary Egypt, “Feathers” follows the journey of a woman with three children whose idealist husband is turned into a chicken by a magician in a magic-trick gone awry. El Zohairy used over 30 real chickens in the production with the assistance of an animal trainer. It was produced by Still Moving (France), and co-produced by Film Clinic (Egypt), Lagoonie Film Production (Egypt), Kepler Film (The Netherlands) and Heretic (Greece).

Meanwhile, the Louis Roederer Foundation Rising Star Award went to Sandra Melissa Torres for her performance in Simón Mesa Soto’s “Amparo,” about a working-class mother desperately attempting to save her son from military conscription in Colombia.

The Grand Prize and Rising Star awards were given by the jury which was presided over...

“We are all brothers in Islam. Anyone with a problem can come to talk.” With these words, a local imam offers supposed comfort and counsel to troubled single mother Amina (Achouackh Abakar Souleymane), not considering that addressing her as his “brother” might not be the most welcoming invitation. Least of all for the problem Amina is nursing: Her 15-year-old daughter, Maria (Rihane Khalil Alio), is pregnant, and has no desire to bear the child. When, later on, a kindly midwife declares that Amina is “like my sister now,” that simple term of address is like a fresh supply of oxygen. In “Lingui,” a brief, quietly forceful new film from veteran Chadian director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, Amina and Maria are faced with a man’s world at every turn; how they carve a woman’s one out of it makes for startling viewing.

For Haroun, “Lingui” is a bracing return to form...

Palme d’Or-winning filmmaker Jacques Audiard and rising director Léa Mysius reminisce about presenting their respective debut features, “See How They Fall” and “Ava,” at Cannes’ Critics’ Week in an exclusive video celebrating the 60th anniversary of the sidebar.

Under the helm of Charles Tesson since 2011, Critics’ Week, which is dedicated to first and second films, has showcased more dozens of emerging filmmakers over the years. Some of them will have their latest movies unspool in competition at the festival. These include Audiard with “Paris, 13th District” which was co-written with Mysius and Celine Sciamma, as well as Julia Ducournau (“Raw”) with “Titane,” and Nadav Lapid (“The Kindergarten Teacher”) with “Ahed’s Knee.”

Audiard and Mysius are two of the 60 talents and artists who have shared testimonies about Critics’ Week brought to their lives and careers through videos and letters. Critics’ Week is unveiling these tributes throughout the month of June.

The Cannes Film Festival’s parallel Critics’ Week section is celebrating its 60th anniversary in 2021 with a lineup that is heavy on French talent and nonexistent when it comes to U.S. filmmakers. This year’s Critics’ Week selection includes 13 world premieres, seven of them in competition. As always, Critics’ Week is made of up first and-second time directorial efforts. The selection committee says it received 1,620 short films and watched 1,000 features in 2021. The lineup was selected by Critics’ Week artistic director Charles Tesson and his committee. Each section of the Critics’ Week lineup is made up of about 30 percent of films directed by women.

“The competition is very international and showcases films with many different styles and topics,” Tesson said in a statement (via Variety). “Many films tackle relationships, friendships, family bonds — especially mothers with their children, loved ones we lost, or fighting to get back into our lives.”

Critics...

A version of this story about “Collective” first appeared in the Down to the Wire issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine.

The Oscar category of Best Documentary was once a reliable safe haven for homegrown American films, but in recent years it has gone international. Since 2015, there have been at least one, and often two, non-English-language titles among the nominees. Films like Italy’s “Fire at Sea,” France’s “Faces Places,” and Brazil’s “The Edge of Democracy” have told stories not with an outsider’s eye, but from within the counties and cultures in which they take place.

But no film had ever been nominated for Best Documentary and Best International Feature Film (formerly known as Best Foreign Language Film) until North Macedonia’s “Honeyland” turned that trick last year. This year the doubleheader occurred again with Alexander Nanau’s “Collective,” an accomplishment that was even more notable considering...

Alexander Nanau’s sobering film “Collective” is only the second movie ever nominated for Oscars in both the Best Documentary Feature and Best International Feature Film categories, but that’s not the film’s biggest Oscar landmark. Instead, “Collective” made history because it’s the first Romanian film ever nominated in the international category.

Just don’t expect Nanau to be bursting with nationalistic pride over being the guy to bring an Oscar nom to his home country. “I don’t really have these patriotic feelings,” he told TheWrap on Monday. “We live in an international community, and I think stories have to travel. The pride is more that this story is so crucial for Romanian society, and it was a turning point that changes the perception of investigative journalism and the courage of singular whistleblowers who can really change society.

“That’s something we really need now, when so...

Pascual Sisto completed his cut of “John and the Hole” for the Cannes deadline in the spring, and after submitting it, he took some time off. “And, of course, that time off became a pandemic,” Sisto says.

Though Cannes was canceled, the festival announced its lineup anyway, and “John and the Hole” made the cut. “It’s unbelievable how much support they have just by picking some films without even having a festival,” he says.

“John and the Hole” eventually premiered at Sundance. It’s a collaboration between Sisto and Nicolás Giacobone, the Oscar-winning “Birdman” screenwriter whom Sisto met in the late ’90s.

Sisto, who is from Spain, moved to the United States in 1995 to attend Pasadena’s ArtCenter College of Design as a film student. After graduating, he tried to launch a film career in Los Angeles, but soon began “working on my own sort of visual experiments,” and...

The last time the Oscars let its general voters determine the entire shortlist in the Best International Feature Film category, it was 2007 and so many quality films were snubbed that the Academy changed the rules in what was then called Best Foreign Language Film.

But this year, with the shortlist expanded to 15 entries and entrusted to the general body of voters for the first time since then, the usual suspects all made it to the shortlist and the outcry over what didn’t make the cut is likely to be muted though not entirely absent.

Denmark’s “Another Round,” Romania’s “Collective,” Mexico’s “I’m No Longer Here,” the Ivory Coast’s “Night of the Kings” and Taiwan’s “A Sun” were among the critical favorites from the record 93 films that qualified in the category, along with crowd-pleasing films like Chile’s “The Mole Agent,” the Czech Republic’s “Charlatan...

The Oscars have made some adjustments for the best international feature category.

The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has provided many challenges, both in viewing the films up for awards and voting. To ensure that the process’ integrity remains intact, the international feature film preliminary committee will vote via a secret ballot that will produce a shortlist of 15 films from different countries, up from the previous 10. In previous years, the preliminary voting would occur in person. This year, the process would need to be conducted in a virtual setting, which brought forth security concerns. As a result, the International Executive Committee will not meet to augment the voting with additional selections. The Board approved this change of Governors at a recent meeting.

Since 2008, the international feature branch’s voting system would occur in Los Angeles with representatives from PricewaterhouseCoopers revealing the films that received the most votes in a closed-door meeting to the International Executive Committee.

“The Bike Thief,” “Hello Again – a Wedding a Day” and “Karnawal” are among the hottest titles on Beta Cinema’s sales slate for the virtual version of the American Film Market, which starts Monday.

The Munich-based sales company will give Matt Chambers’ “The Bike Thief” its market premiere at AFM, following its world premiere this week in competition at the Tokyo Film Festival. Beta recently showed the film to select British buyers in a private screening in London and is now negotiating the U.K./Ireland deal.

The movie, starring Alec Secareanu (“God’s Own Country”) and Anamaria Marinca, explores the question of how far a father would go in present-day London to support his family when his only means to provide, his bike, is stolen.

“Hello Again – a Wedding a Day,” another completed title, is attracting strong interest too, Beta Cinema tells Variety. Hot on the heels of its appearance at Rome’s Mia market,...

In an effort to help independently-owned movie theaters recover from the coronavirus pandemic, IFC Films announced on Tuesday that it will offer over 200 of its films to those theaters without any rental fees. This will help give those theaters some classic films to screen when they reopen while they wait for new films to be released.

“Independent theaters across the country have been essential partners for us at IFC Films, and we would not be where we are today without their support,” the distributor announced in a statement. “We wanted to take the first step and let theaters know that we are committed to helping them reopen their doors by providing a selection of films to program while the new release landscape gets back to normal.”

Dubbed “The Indie Revival Project,” the program will offer selections from IFC’s catalog in various curated packs, including a “Yes We Cannes!” program...

IFC Films is offering embattled indie theaters hundreds of films from its library to screen when they re-open from their mass Covid-19 related shutdown.

The movies, which include such IFC classics as “Y Tu Mama Tambien” and “Boyhood,” will be made available to cinemas without any rental fees. The retrospective program boasts roughly 200 films. Theaters will not be charged any film rental.

“We are honoring the partnership we’ve had with theaters over the last 20 years and we’re sending them a message of solidarity and gratefulness,” said Lisa Schwartz, co-president of IFC Films. “They’ve been with us since beginning and when they come back, we want to be there with them.”

The indie studio is currently celebrating its 20th anniversary and had been putting together programming to honor the occasion. After coronavirus closed most theaters in March, IFC began to rethink its plans.

“This was a positive way...

Over the span of just a couple weeks, more than 300 new movies are launched into the world via the Venice, Telluride and Toronto film festivals — a trio of events that collectively kick off award season and tease what moviegoers can expect to discover in theaters over the year ahead. To help make sense of all those new offerings, Variety sends a dozen critics to the three events, sifting through the overwhelming lineups, looking for the proverbial wheat among so much chaff. Here, chief critics Owen Gleiberman and Peter Debruge identify the 15 films that impressed them most.

Bad Education (Toronto)

Hugh Jackman has become an audacious actor, and he brings an enticing real-world sneakiness to this fact-based drama built around the figure of Frank Tassone — the superintendent of the Roslyn, Long Island, school district, who gets ensnared in a singular scandal. The year is 2002, and Tassone’s assistant, played with uncaricatured moxie by Allison Janney,...

Makoto Shinkai’s hit anime Weathering With You has been selected to represent Japan in the International Feature Film category at the 92nd Oscars. The movie, which will have its North American premiere in Toronto, is about a runaway boy who befriends a girl who can manipulate the weather. It has been a runaway success at home as it nears $100 million after six weeks in release. Gkids took U.S. distribution rights out of Cannes and will set a U.S. theatrical release for early 2020.

Shinkai is known for 2016’s anime smash Your Name, which did nearly $360M globally including resonating strongly in China. Weathering With You is the first anime Oscar submission from Japan since Hayao Miyazaki’s Prihncess Mononoke in 1997.

Japan last won the category with 2008’s Departures. It was nominated last year with Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Shoplifters.

Also joining the International Feature Film Oscar race today is...

Corneliu Porumboiu’s “The Whistlers,” which premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, has been selected as Romania’s official Oscar entry in the international feature film category.

Magnolia Pictures has U.S. distribution rights to the film. The distributor has had much success in the category, having distributed nominees in five of the last seven years, including back-to-back Palme d’Or-winners “The Square” (2017) and “Shoplifters” (2018).

In “The Whistlers,” not everything is as it seems for Cristi, a police inspector in Bucharest who plays both sides of the law. Embarking with the beautiful Gilda (Catrinel Marlon) on a high-stakes heist, both will have to navigate the twists and turns of corruption, treachery and deception. A trip to the Canary Islands to learn a secret whistling language might just be what they need to pull it off.

“The Whistlers” is the second of Porumboiu’s features to be Romania’s Oscar entry,...

It’s probably a stretch to call any of the Romanian New Wave filmmakers household names, exactly, but for over a decade now they’ve been making some of the most interesting cinema of anywhere in the world. And while the films of Corneliu Poromboiu haven’t quite yet picked up the prizes and plaudits of compatriots like Cristian Mungiu or Cristi Puiu (whose “The Death Of Mr.

Continue reading Learn A New Language With An Exclusive Clip From Corneliu Poromboiu’s Cannes Noir Comedy ‘The Whistlers’ at The Playlist.

Jan Naszewski’s Warsaw-based sales outlet New Europe Film Sales has picked up world sales rights for the upcoming drama “Fools,” by Berlinale Silver Bear winner Tomasz Wasilewski (“United States of Love”), produced by Ewa Puszczynska, the producer behind Pawel Pawlikowski’s Oscar-winner “Ida” and nominee “Cold War.”

Leading Polish actors Dorota Kolak and Lukasz Simlat star in a film about the difficult relationship between a mother and son, and how their choices have dramatic consequences.

Puszczynska is producing for her company Extreme Emotions, in co-production with Ada Solomon at Romania’s Hi-Film and Jamila Wenske of Germany’s One Two Films, and in association with Nem Corp. Romanian DoP Oleg Mutu returns after his previous collaboration with Wasilewski on “United States of Love,” which New Europe sold to over 30 territories.

New Europe’s Cannes line-up includes the Critics’ Week selection “A White, White Day,” by Hlynur Palmason, which sold...

László Nemes‬ (looking at Martin Scorsese) on the stiff collar worn by Írisz in Sunset, costumes by Györgyi Szakács: "And it goes down with the film." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Sunset (Napszállta) is cinema at its astute and enchanting finest. Max Ophüls and Jean Renoir may come to mind and the scene in the shoe department of Romanze in Moll, Helmut Käutner's take on Guy De Maupassant. In a similar mode to the way László Nemes chained us to the back of the neck of Géza Röhrig's Saul Ausländer in his groundbreaking, Oscar-winning Son Of Saul (also shot by Mátyás Erdély), he attaches us firmly to his Sunset heroine Írisz Leiter (Juli Jakab), a young woman who returns, after years of apprenticeship in Trieste, to her native Budapest in hopes of working as a milliner at the famous Leiter department store her deceased parents used to own.

László...

Touch Me Not director Adina Pintilie: "Einstürzende Neubauten and Blixa Bargeld it's very important. It has always been. In particular the piece that you hear in the film. Melancholia speaks about the subconscious of the city." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

At the 68th Berlin Film Festival, the jury, led by Tom Tykwer, with Cécile de France, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Stephanie Zacharek, Chema Prado, and Oscar-winning producer Adele Romanski of Barry Jenkins' Moonlight and Independent Spirit winner If Beale Street Could Talk, gave the Golden Bear to Adina Pintilie's Touch Me Not, produced by Philippe Avril, and Bianca Oana.

Adina Pintilie: "I think you can find an emotional mirror of what happens within the characters." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Pintilie's début feature, shot by George Chiper, bested such films as Wes Anderson's Isle of Dogs, David Zellner and Nathan Zellner's Damsel, Christian Petzold's Transit, Benoît Jacquot's Eva, Cédric Kahn...

Project is the directing debut of Matt Chambers.

Munich-based powerhouse Beta Cinema has boarded international sales on The Bike Thief, Matt Chambers’ feature directing debut starring God’s Own Country actor Alec Secareanu and 4 Months, 3 Weeks And 2 Days actress Anamaria Marinca.

UK producers Ellipsis Pictures and Ugly Duckling Films have also released a first look at Secareanu in the film, which sees the actor clad in motorcycle gear.

Based on an original idea by director Chambers, the screenplay, which was on the 2018 Brit List, follows a Romanian family living in London. The father (Secareanu) delivers pizzas for a living,...

A collective sigh by critics greeted Monday’s announcement of the nine films shortlisted for this year’s foreign-language film Oscar. For once, though, it was a sigh of relief rather than exasperation, with few complaints arising over the chosen titles, which were broadly acclaimed.

Controversy over prominent omissions is practically an annual tradition. Last year, critics castigated the Academy for leaving out France’s celebrated AIDS drama “120 Beats Per Minute,” while the year before that, they lambasted the snubbing of Pedro Almodovar’s “Julieta” and Paul Verhoeven’s “Elle” (which went on to nab a nomination for Isabelle Huppert). From “Gomorrah” to “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia” to “Two Days, One Night,” the roll call of recent critics’ darlings to fall at this first hurdle is a distinguished one.

The Academy addressed the outcry that followed the sidelining of 2007 Palme d’Or winner “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days...

Cable company HBO Europe has started to shoot cyber-crime thriller series “Hackerville” in Transilvania, a region of Romania, as its first international co-production, building on a string of locally shot productions, including Romania-set detective series “Umbre” (pictured).

“It will put Romania on the map of the international TV drama scene,” says co-creator and executive producer Joerg Winger (“Deutschland 83”), adding he was won over by the location “as a dynamic and colorful place with a vastly unexplored history and present.”

The project was “created in a truly multi-cultural process, with great Romanian talent attached,” Winger adds, with music a key component, as it was in “Deutschland 83,” the Cold War-set spy series for AMC Networks’ SundanceTV and Rtl Television.

The original six-part “Hackerville,” about a network of hackers and the investigators tasked with tracking them down, co-produced with TNT Serie, was created by Ralph Martin and Winger for Ufa Fiction,...

Tim Roth and Christina Hendricks are set to return for a second season of Sky’s original crime drama “Tin Star,” the satcaster has confirmed. The cast for the 10-part second series, which will air in 2019, will also include Irish actor John Lynch, Romanian actress Anamaria Marinca and Canadian actress Jenessa Grant.

Created by Rowan Joffe, “Tin Star” proved a hit for Sky when it premiered on Sky Atlantic in Britain last September. Amazon has the show in the U.S.

Sky had already announced a second season was planned, but no casting was confirmed. Genevieve O’Reilly and Abigail Lawrie will also return for the second season, which is currently filming in Calgary, Canada.

“The Fall” actor Lynch most recently featured in AMC’s “The Terror.” Marinca saw her breakout out role in Cannes Palme d’Or winner “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” in 2007 and recently starred...

The Berlin Film Festival’s Panorama sidebar is now complete, bursting with 47 titles from 40 countries, and mixing documentary and features. Among the new additions today is Idris Elba’s directorial debut Yardie which just premiered at Sundance. Other selections announced include the Pedro Almodovar-produced Franco regime doc The Silence Of Others and Lemonade, produced by Romania’s Cristian Mungiu.

Also on deck are new works from Korea’s Kim Ki-duk, Human, Space, Time And Human; and Ursula Meier’s Shock Waves – Diary Of My Mind.

Wolfgang Fischer’s Styx will open Panorama Special on February 16. The nearly dialogue-free film film tells the story of a female doctor on a sailing holiday gone unexpectedly sour somewhere between Europe and Africa. The main program will open on the evening before with the previously announced River’s Edge from Isao Yukisada.

Below is the full...

Wild Bunch began in the late 1990s as the sales arm of Studiocanal, before spinning off in 2002. Led by founding partners Vincent Maraval, Vincent Grimond, Brahim Chioua and Alain de la Mata, the mavericks have financed, produced, co-produced or distributed such films as City Of God; March Of The Penguins; Pan’s Labyrinth; Fahrenheit 9/11; Che; The Wrestler; The Artist; Spirited Away; The Orphanage; 4 Months, 3 Weeks And 2 Days; Only God Forgives; and Enter The Void. A supreme force in Cannes, it has five films in competition this year.

Wild Bunch parties here are also the stuff of legend. Mixing its disruptive nature with shock value, Wild Bunch in 2014 screened Abel Ferrara’s sex drenched Welcome To New York on a Cannes beach just before midnight, when it also released the Gerard Depardieu-starrer on VOD, much to the chagrin the French establishment. The party that followed provided guests...

Toronto -- Asian films, led by Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul's "Syndromes and a Century," dominated the Toronto International Film Festival's best-of-the-decade poll results released Monday.

Weerasethakul's 2006 two-part drama captured the top spot with 53 votes in a poll of 60 film curators, historians and programmers conducted by the festival.

In second place with 49 votes was Jia Zhangke's "Platform," who also grabbed third place for his Venice award winner "Still Life" and its 48 votes.

French filmmaker Claire Denis earned fourth place for "Beau Travail" with 46 votes, followed by Wong Kar-wai's "In the Mood For Love" with 43 votes.

Weerasethakul also earned sixth place for "Tropical Malady," which garnered 38 votes in the TIFF poll.

Romanian director Cristi Puiu was next with "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu" and its 35 votes, the same tally for "Werckmeister Harmonies" from Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr.

Rounding out the best-of-the-decade competition was Jean-Luc Godard's "Eloge de l'amour" in...

Cannes -- IFC is again heading to Romania, acquiring U.S. rights to "Tales From the Golden Age," a feature collection of shorts set in the country's Communist period.

"4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days" writer-director Cristian Mungiu penned all the shorts while he, and fellow Romanian helmers Ioana Uricaru, Hanno Hofer, Razvan Marculescu and Constantin Popescu each took a turn directing one.

The pic, which premieres Tuesday in Un Certain Regard at the Festival de Cannes, examines urban legends in the former Eastern bloc nation, examining life in those dark days through the experiences of ordinary people. The stories are not related but are united "by mood, narrative pattern and the details of the historical period," IFC said.

At Cannes two years ago, IFC bought Mungiu's "4 Months," a hard-bitten tale of a young girl's attempted abortion in Ceausescu's Romania; the film took the Palme d'Or and became a critics' darling when...

Benicio Del Toro and Penelope Cruz were the toast of the Spanish film industry on Sunday night - with the pair both landing nods at the country's prestigious Goya Awards. Puerto Rican star Del Toro triumphed in the Best Actor category at the ceremony in Madrid, Spain, for his performance as Cuban revolutionary leader Che Guevara, in the biopic Che.

Cruz also picked up a gong, landing the Best Supporting Actress prize for her turn in Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona and thanked the director in her acceptance speech, telling the crowd, "I've always been a great fan of Woody Allen. Thank you Woody for believing in me."

The other big winner of the night was new movie Camino, which tells the story of the Opus Dei religious order.

The picture garnered six awards, including Best Film, Best Director for Javier Fesser and Best Actress for Carme Elias.

The Cannes Palme d'Or winner, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days - about illegal abortion in Romania - was handed the best European film prize, while director Jesus Franco was honoured with the Lifetime Achievement award.

Biopic Milk is the cream of the crop of Hollywood hits among New York movie experts after claiming three big honours at the 2008 Film Critics Circle Awards.

The movie, about assassinated gay San Francisco, California city supervisor Harvey Milk, has been named Best Film.

Sean Penn picked up a Best Actor prize for his performance in the title role and Josh Brolin was named Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of the politician's killer.

British film Happy-Go-Lucky was named a two-award winner - Mike Leigh for Best Director and his star Sally Hawkins (Best Actress).

The full list of New York Critics Circle Awards winners is:

Best Picture: Milk

Best Director: Mike Leigh (Happy-Go-Lucky)

Best Actor: Sean Penn (Milk)

Best Actress: Sally Hawkins (Happy-Go-Lucky)

Best Supporting Actor: Josh Brolin (Milk)

Best Supporting Actress: Penelope Cruz (Vicky Cristina Barcelona)

Best Screenplay: Jenny Lumet (Rachel Getting Married)

Best Cinematographer: Anthony Dod Mantle (Slumdog Millionaire)

Best Animated Film: Wall-e

Best Foreign Film: 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days

Best Documentary: Man on Wire

Best First Film: Courtney Hunt (Frozen River).

Best Picture - Milk

Best Director - Mike Leigh (Happy-Go-Lucky)

Best Actor - Sean Penn (Milk)

Best Actress - Sally Hawkins (Happy-Go-Lucky)

Best Supporting Actor - Josh Brolin (Milk)

Best Supporting Actress - Penelope Cruz (Vicky Cristina Barcelona)

Best Screenplay - Jenny Lumet (Rachel Getting Married)

Best Cinematographer - Anthony Dod Mantle (Slumdog Millionaire)

Best Foreign Film - 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days

Best Animated Film - WALL-E

Best First Film - Courtney Hunt (Frozen River)

Best Documentary - Man on Wire...

We shared with you Roger Ebert's list of the 20 best films of 2008, and we're going to see a lot more of these between now and the end of the year. Our own list will be announced on Friday, December 19th.

But I'm going to do something I seldom do here at The Big Picture and refrain from commenting on these lists as we present them to you. And with the collection assembled by Time's Richard Corliss, that's probably best. Here's a look at Corliss' list of the best of 2008:

1 - Wall-e

2 - Synecdoche, New York

3 - My Winnipeg

4 - 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days

5 - Milk

6 - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

7 - Slumdog Millionaire

8 - Iron Man

9 - Speed Racer

10 - Encounters at the End of the World...