The Clooney Foundation for Justice, the human rights campaign group established by George and Amal Clooney, has petitioned the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention over the death in custody of Thai activist Netiporn “Bung” Sanesangkhom.
Sanesangkhom died on May 14 following a 65-day hunger strike after repeatedly being denied bail while facing charges of insulting the monarchy (lèse majesté). She was 28.
The Clooney Foundation’s TrialWatch unit says that it is “seeking remedies for violations of Netiporn’s rights, including reparations for her family and, more broadly, an opinion from the Working Group urging Thailand to stop misusing detention to stifle criticism of the monarchy.”
Sanesangkhom had been in and out of prison following charges relating to her involvement in an informal opinion poll in February 2022, which sought the public’s views on whether the royal family’s motorcades were an inconvenience to the public. Thai authorities allege this...
Sanesangkhom died on May 14 following a 65-day hunger strike after repeatedly being denied bail while facing charges of insulting the monarchy (lèse majesté). She was 28.
The Clooney Foundation’s TrialWatch unit says that it is “seeking remedies for violations of Netiporn’s rights, including reparations for her family and, more broadly, an opinion from the Working Group urging Thailand to stop misusing detention to stifle criticism of the monarchy.”
Sanesangkhom had been in and out of prison following charges relating to her involvement in an informal opinion poll in February 2022, which sought the public’s views on whether the royal family’s motorcades were an inconvenience to the public. Thai authorities allege this...
- 6/3/2024
- by Patrick Frater
- Variety Film + TV
Launched last year by Wes Anderson’s producing partners at Indian Paintbrush, Galerie has emerged as a well-curated film club publishing unique selections of films from artists with their personal annotations. With past lists from the likes of James Gray, Ed Lachman, Mike Mills, Karyn Kusama, Ethan Hawke, and more, today we’re pleased to exclusively share a sneak peek from the lists of two celebrated Chilean filmmakers, Pablo Larraín and Sebastián Lelio, which have recently landed on the site.
Both filmmakers are currently working on their latest projects: Larraín is helming the Angelina Jolie-led Maria Callas drama, while Lelio is handling the musical The Wave, inspired by Chile’s “feminist May” movement in 2018. While in post-production on the projects, they’ve shared their curated collections.
The Spencer and El Conde director features Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Cemetery of Splendor and Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing on his list,...
Both filmmakers are currently working on their latest projects: Larraín is helming the Angelina Jolie-led Maria Callas drama, while Lelio is handling the musical The Wave, inspired by Chile’s “feminist May” movement in 2018. While in post-production on the projects, they’ve shared their curated collections.
The Spencer and El Conde director features Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Cemetery of Splendor and Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing on his list,...
- 5/17/2024
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
When California State University Northridge’s head of film production Nate Thomas came to visit one of his first students, Paul Hunter, on the set of the new David Oyelowo-starring Apple TV Plus series “Government Cheese,” the Northridge alum and show co-creator could be heard boasting about his time in the program.
After learning to tell stories at Csun, Hunter spun a renowned career directing music videos for Beyonce and U2, among others, into helming Bacardi spots with Michael B. Jordan and Cannes Golden Lion-winning campaigns for Nike. Much of that has been through PrettyBird, a Hollywood commercial house he co-founded and uses in part to help foster and launch the careers of other underrepresented voices. “It all started at Northridge,” Thomas says. “We do filmmaking not just for the privileged. We make it for all people who have a story to tell.”
Since 2016, the Hispanic-serving institution’s film...
After learning to tell stories at Csun, Hunter spun a renowned career directing music videos for Beyonce and U2, among others, into helming Bacardi spots with Michael B. Jordan and Cannes Golden Lion-winning campaigns for Nike. Much of that has been through PrettyBird, a Hollywood commercial house he co-founded and uses in part to help foster and launch the careers of other underrepresented voices. “It all started at Northridge,” Thomas says. “We do filmmaking not just for the privileged. We make it for all people who have a story to tell.”
Since 2016, the Hispanic-serving institution’s film...
- 4/25/2024
- by Abbey White
- Variety Film + TV
On quite a Hitchcockian-meets Twilight Zone streak with the one-two punch of Old and Knock and the Cabin, expectations are high for M. Night Shyamalan to deliver once again with his upcoming thriller Trap.
Featuring a much-deserved lead role for Josh Hartnett, starring alongside the filmmaker’s daughter Saleka Shyamalan, the film follows a father and daughter who realize the concert they are attending is set up as a sting operation by the police.
One may want to avoid the below trailer if they want to skip spoilers, but perhaps among the most intriguing elements of Shyamalan’s latest is the gorgeous cinematography by Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, collaborator of Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Luca Guadagnino.
Trap opens August 9.
The post Josh Hartnett is Caught in M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap in First Trailer for Concert-Set Thriller first appeared on The Film Stage.
Featuring a much-deserved lead role for Josh Hartnett, starring alongside the filmmaker’s daughter Saleka Shyamalan, the film follows a father and daughter who realize the concert they are attending is set up as a sting operation by the police.
One may want to avoid the below trailer if they want to skip spoilers, but perhaps among the most intriguing elements of Shyamalan’s latest is the gorgeous cinematography by Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, collaborator of Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Luca Guadagnino.
Trap opens August 9.
The post Josh Hartnett is Caught in M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap in First Trailer for Concert-Set Thriller first appeared on The Film Stage.
- 4/18/2024
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Sovereign is proud to announce that award-winning Mexican director Amat Escalante’s powerful thriller Lost In The Night received its UK premiere at the 2023 BFI London Film Festival, as part of the ‘Thrill’ section, and now the film is available to rent/buy on Amazon Prime Video in the UK.
From acclaimed Mexican director Amat Escalante, following Heli, for which he won Best Director at Cannes in 2013, and The Untamed, which won him the Best Director prize at Venice in 2016, comes Lost In The Night, a taut, engrossing thriller that blends traditional elements of Latin American cinema with astute social commentary on Mexican society and contemporary influencer culture.
The film, which premiered at Cannes this year, stars Juan Daniel García Treviño (Narcos México), and Latin American influencer superstar Ester Expósito, who has 27 million followers, and features a superb score by Stranger Things composers Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein.
The film...
From acclaimed Mexican director Amat Escalante, following Heli, for which he won Best Director at Cannes in 2013, and The Untamed, which won him the Best Director prize at Venice in 2016, comes Lost In The Night, a taut, engrossing thriller that blends traditional elements of Latin American cinema with astute social commentary on Mexican society and contemporary influencer culture.
The film, which premiered at Cannes this year, stars Juan Daniel García Treviño (Narcos México), and Latin American influencer superstar Ester Expósito, who has 27 million followers, and features a superb score by Stranger Things composers Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein.
The film...
- 4/11/2024
- by Peter 'Witchfinder' Hopkins
- Horror Asylum
Thai cinema has a long history of misrepresenting the Lgbtqia+ community. Early films, such as “It's All Because of Katoey” (1954) contributed to the assignation of homosexuality as a social deviance. Today, Thai media have made significant progress in presenting nuanced experiences of Lgbtqia+ individuals in modern Thai society. This article presents a chronological list of 12 Thai fiction films that help understanding this evolution.
1. The Last Song (1985) by Pisan Akaraseranee
“The Last Song” tells the bittersweet story of Somying (Somying Daorai), a beautiful and successful showgirl working in a famous transvestite cabaret in Pattaya. Through her thwarted love affair with a handsome male singer, the film highlights the difficulties of being trans in Thai society. It is one of the first films to cast a transgender woman in a leading role. The film's release was a revolutionary moment, not only for the Thai entertainment industry, but also for the Lgbtqia+ community.
1. The Last Song (1985) by Pisan Akaraseranee
“The Last Song” tells the bittersweet story of Somying (Somying Daorai), a beautiful and successful showgirl working in a famous transvestite cabaret in Pattaya. Through her thwarted love affair with a handsome male singer, the film highlights the difficulties of being trans in Thai society. It is one of the first films to cast a transgender woman in a leading role. The film's release was a revolutionary moment, not only for the Thai entertainment industry, but also for the Lgbtqia+ community.
- 3/19/2024
- by Hugo Hamon
- AsianMoviePulse
Indie streamer Mubi has acquired worldwide streaming rights to South African artist William Kentridge’s prestige series “Self-Portrait As a Coffee Pot” which explores how art is made in the digital age.
The nine-episode series by Kentridge – who is celebrated around the world for his influential works comprising animation, installations, theater, opera and films – first previewed as a rough cut at the 2022 Toronto Film Festival.
Kentridge lays bare his creative process in the nine 30-minute videos produced in the artist’s Johannesburg studio during the pandemic and its aftermath, between 2020 and 2023. In “Self-Portrait As a Coffee Pot,” Kentridge also invites audiences to reflect on the same philosophical questions that he poses to himself across the episodes, including how do our memories work, what makes us ourselves, and why does history always go wrong.
“Playfully deconstructing and assembling the pressing concerns of our time as works of art,” Kentridge uses “hand-drawn animations,...
The nine-episode series by Kentridge – who is celebrated around the world for his influential works comprising animation, installations, theater, opera and films – first previewed as a rough cut at the 2022 Toronto Film Festival.
Kentridge lays bare his creative process in the nine 30-minute videos produced in the artist’s Johannesburg studio during the pandemic and its aftermath, between 2020 and 2023. In “Self-Portrait As a Coffee Pot,” Kentridge also invites audiences to reflect on the same philosophical questions that he poses to himself across the episodes, including how do our memories work, what makes us ourselves, and why does history always go wrong.
“Playfully deconstructing and assembling the pressing concerns of our time as works of art,” Kentridge uses “hand-drawn animations,...
- 3/18/2024
- by Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
Veteran Thai filmmaker Pantham Thongsang has rejoined Tifa Studios to spearhead international co-productions as Thai authorities gear up to enhance the country’s global competitiveness through soft power.
Pantham, who has 30 years of producing and directing experience, is a pioneer of international co-productions for Thailand, having produced through Tifa 2004’s Cannes award-winner Tropical Malady and 2006’s Syndromes And A Century. Both films were directed by Thai auteur Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
Pantham was most recently HBO’s country lead for original productions in Thailand and a senior executive at Thailand’s The One Enterprise public limited company, responsible for the launch of...
Pantham, who has 30 years of producing and directing experience, is a pioneer of international co-productions for Thailand, having produced through Tifa 2004’s Cannes award-winner Tropical Malady and 2006’s Syndromes And A Century. Both films were directed by Thai auteur Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
Pantham was most recently HBO’s country lead for original productions in Thailand and a senior executive at Thailand’s The One Enterprise public limited company, responsible for the launch of...
- 3/13/2024
- ScreenDaily
In a remote region of Thailand, on the banks of the Mekong River, a group of soldiers haves been struck by a mysterious illness that causes them to fall into an endless sleep. As she takes care of one of them, Jen (Jenjira Pongpas) delves into his dream, revealing haunting visions of past conflicts. In the final scene, she sits on a bench and observes a wasteland where children play while excavators turn over the ground. She displays a strange expression of terror, and… end of movie.
Apichatpong Weerasethakul leaves us pondering Jen's gaze. Is she merely observing the scene or glimpsing something beyond reality? Does she see the shocking cycle of military violence that has taken place since Ayutthaya and the 1960s-70s? Is she about to fall into the strange sleeping sickness? Does she see a form of the future that terrifies her? Certainly a bit of all.
Apichatpong Weerasethakul leaves us pondering Jen's gaze. Is she merely observing the scene or glimpsing something beyond reality? Does she see the shocking cycle of military violence that has taken place since Ayutthaya and the 1960s-70s? Is she about to fall into the strange sleeping sickness? Does she see a form of the future that terrifies her? Certainly a bit of all.
- 3/10/2024
- by Hugo Hamon
- AsianMoviePulse
The title of Girish Kasaravalli's 1977 film "Ghatashraddha" is directly translated as "The Ritual," although the on-screen English title is "Ritual of Excommunication." Both titles reflect the bleak circumstances of the film's protagonist, even though "The Ritual" implies that women are abused and discarded as a matter of course. "Ghatashraddha" is a bleak tragedy about a woman named Yamuna (Meena Kuttappa) who lives with her religious schoolteacher father (Ramaswamy Iyengar) and who is already a widow at a young age. Yamuna is already seeing another man, also a schoolteacher, although their affair is secret ... as is her pregnancy. The only person who treats Yamuna with any friendliness is a young boy named Naani (Ajith Kumar), who serves as a witness to the story.
When her father goes out of town to raise money for his school, everything falls apart. The school deteriorates, gossip begins to spread, and Yamuna becomes an outcast.
When her father goes out of town to raise money for his school, everything falls apart. The school deteriorates, gossip begins to spread, and Yamuna becomes an outcast.
- 2/28/2024
- by Witney Seibold
- Slash Film
Prior to embarking on the writing journey for La Otra Orilla, a project supported by the Cnc folks, Peruvian filmmaker Francesca Canepa premiered her short film “El silencio del río” at the Berlinale. This short film intertwined mythology and dreamscape with isolated reality, drawing parallels to the works of Apichatpong Weerasethakul and thematic explorations akin to Beatriz Seigner’s Los silencios. It was shortly after that Canepa connected with Argentina-based co-writer Miguel Ángel Papalini. Sharing similar sensibilities regarding subject matter and aesthetics, Papalini’s involvement in projects like feature film Packing Heavy, which also features a child’s point of view, solidified their collaboration.…...
- 2/20/2024
- by Eric Lavallée
- IONCINEMA.com
Five years after the remarkable success of “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” that won the Palme D'Or at Cannes in 2010 and many more festival awards, director and eclectic Thai video artist Apichatpong Weerasethakul presented “Cemetery of Splendour”, another imaginative and enigmatic work that elaborates on the author's fascination with the act of sleeping as a means of accessing deeper layers of consciousness and understanding.
Cemetery of Splendour is screening at Metrograph
In order to be enchanted by the director's imaginative and hypnotic world you need to unlock a certain receptiveness towards a non-traditional narrative, a storytelling that is more stratified than linear. The film takes place in the town of Khon Kaen, Isan province, Northwest of Thailand where the director grew up, and more than a story, there are many places and many stories. There is a former school transformed into a small country hospital in a...
Cemetery of Splendour is screening at Metrograph
In order to be enchanted by the director's imaginative and hypnotic world you need to unlock a certain receptiveness towards a non-traditional narrative, a storytelling that is more stratified than linear. The film takes place in the town of Khon Kaen, Isan province, Northwest of Thailand where the director grew up, and more than a story, there are many places and many stories. There is a former school transformed into a small country hospital in a...
- 2/14/2024
- by Adriana Rosati
- AsianMoviePulse
Beware, spoilers! You may witness the most astonishingly beautiful allegory of death in a movie. The kind of long takes that flashed your mind and remains diffused long after the details of the plot are forgotten. But Shh… these few words should be enough to convince you to watch “Tomorrow is a long time”, the first feature-length film of Singapore's brilliant new formalist, Jow Zhi Wei.
Tomorrow is a Long Time is screening at Black Movie
In a fantasized Singapore, as an archetype of any tropical Asian modern city, the 17 years old Meng is raised alone by an austere hard-working father after his mother has left home, seemingly without an address. Meng's narrative has been clearly devised upon two distinct movements. The first part immerses us in the day-to-day life of this dysfunctional family surviving in a cold and harsh society. While the silent Meng is struggling to exist among...
Tomorrow is a Long Time is screening at Black Movie
In a fantasized Singapore, as an archetype of any tropical Asian modern city, the 17 years old Meng is raised alone by an austere hard-working father after his mother has left home, seemingly without an address. Meng's narrative has been clearly devised upon two distinct movements. The first part immerses us in the day-to-day life of this dysfunctional family surviving in a cold and harsh society. While the silent Meng is struggling to exist among...
- 2/6/2024
- by Jean Claude
- AsianMoviePulse
Possathorn Watcharapanit's contemplative slow-burner “Rivulet of Universe” opens with verses by the Vietnamese Thiền Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh who wrote about himself not been restricted whether by the present or future. For a film that doesn't stay in one time and space, but wanders from the past to the now and back again in form of dreams, poetic thoughts, tales and historic facts that overlap, this introduction measures up.
Borrowed Time is screening at International Film Festival Rotterdam
Time travel doesn't happen in a physical sense. It's the information about Thailand's mythology, history and its recent development that people are either telling each other- or being informed about through cultural institutions, that does it. There is a clear influence of Apichatpong Weerasethakul in the loose treatment of time and space, very long takes and long shots, but crucial differences between the two filmmakers is in their approach to the narrative.
Borrowed Time is screening at International Film Festival Rotterdam
Time travel doesn't happen in a physical sense. It's the information about Thailand's mythology, history and its recent development that people are either telling each other- or being informed about through cultural institutions, that does it. There is a clear influence of Apichatpong Weerasethakul in the loose treatment of time and space, very long takes and long shots, but crucial differences between the two filmmakers is in their approach to the narrative.
- 2/2/2024
- by Marina D. Richter
- AsianMoviePulse
The Berlin International Film Festival has confirmed its full juries for the 2024 edition (February 16-24), with Italian actress Jasmine Trinca and German filmmaker Christian Petzold among those joining president Lupita Nyong’o on the main international jury.
Also on the jury are filmmakers Ann Hui (Hong Kong) and Albert Serra (Spain) alongside Ukrainian novelist and poet Oksana Zabuzhko.
The international jury will select the winners of the Golden and Silver Bears from the 20 films playing in Competition.
The three-member jury for the Encounters strand comprises filmmakers Lisandro Alonso (Argentina), Denis Côté (Canada) and Tizza Covi (Italy).
The Encounters jury will choose the winners of best film,...
Also on the jury are filmmakers Ann Hui (Hong Kong) and Albert Serra (Spain) alongside Ukrainian novelist and poet Oksana Zabuzhko.
The international jury will select the winners of the Golden and Silver Bears from the 20 films playing in Competition.
The three-member jury for the Encounters strand comprises filmmakers Lisandro Alonso (Argentina), Denis Côté (Canada) and Tizza Covi (Italy).
The Encounters jury will choose the winners of best film,...
- 2/1/2024
- ScreenDaily
Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell.All too frequently, the reception of recent Asian arthouse films at international festivals showcases an ambiguous predicament. When encountering new films—usually in the sidebars of Cannes, Venice, or the Berlinale—Western critics tend to resort to a repetitious discourse, conveniently labeling the films and making easy comparisons to the canon of the 1990s and 2000s. The pattern goes like this: meditative sonic sequences or notions of reincarnation become instant echoes of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s work, any neon extravaganza immediately points to Wong Kar Wai, and Tsai Ming-liang is a recurring reference whenever a film abounds in still long shots. In a sense, these touchstones and comparisons are all valid—these older filmmakers conceived cinematic miracles and attempted to redefine the boundaries of film art, and therefore have influenced many artists of the next generation.However, it isn’t difficult to find this labeling tendency to be ectypal Orientalization.
- 1/30/2024
- MUBI
Exclusive: Tilda Swinton, the Academy Award- and BAFTA Award-winning actress most recently seen in yet another indelible role in David Fincher’s Netflix hitman pic The Killer, has signed with CAA.
One of the most esteemed screen talents currently working, Swinton has, in her nearly four-decade career, established ongoing relationships with such renowned filmmakers as Bong Joon Ho, Wes Anderson, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Luca Guadagnino, Jim Jarmusch, Fincher, and Joanna Hogg, having made eight films at the start of her career with director Derek Jarman.
Best known for roles in such films as Michael Clayton, for which she won an Academy Award and BAFTA for Best Supporting Actress, and We Need to Talk About Kevin, for which she received a BAFTA Award nomination, she also boasts credits including Orlando, I Am Love, Okja and The Chronicles of Narnia franchise, to name a few.
Swinton won the Venice Film Festival’s Best...
One of the most esteemed screen talents currently working, Swinton has, in her nearly four-decade career, established ongoing relationships with such renowned filmmakers as Bong Joon Ho, Wes Anderson, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Luca Guadagnino, Jim Jarmusch, Fincher, and Joanna Hogg, having made eight films at the start of her career with director Derek Jarman.
Best known for roles in such films as Michael Clayton, for which she won an Academy Award and BAFTA for Best Supporting Actress, and We Need to Talk About Kevin, for which she received a BAFTA Award nomination, she also boasts credits including Orlando, I Am Love, Okja and The Chronicles of Narnia franchise, to name a few.
Swinton won the Venice Film Festival’s Best...
- 1/26/2024
- by Matt Grobar
- Deadline Film + TV
Tamara Tatishvili is going full steam into her first edition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam, which runs Jan. 25 – Feb. 4, following her appointment as the head of the festival’s funding arm, the Hubert Bals Fund. She started full-time in early January.
“I will use the festival to connect to professionals outside of IFFR, hosting informal think tank meetings with industry professionals, producers and sales agents within a close environment to see what their observations and ideas are, and how this could feed into the future thinking strategies of Hubert Bals Fund,” she tells Variety.
She went on to emphasize the importance of festivals from a funder’s point of view. “Festivals are key platforms to connect the stories funds help create to audiences. Audience engagement is a key topic. Funders and producers believe films need to be made to reach audiences. It’s how you create impact and how...
“I will use the festival to connect to professionals outside of IFFR, hosting informal think tank meetings with industry professionals, producers and sales agents within a close environment to see what their observations and ideas are, and how this could feed into the future thinking strategies of Hubert Bals Fund,” she tells Variety.
She went on to emphasize the importance of festivals from a funder’s point of view. “Festivals are key platforms to connect the stories funds help create to audiences. Audience engagement is a key topic. Funders and producers believe films need to be made to reach audiences. It’s how you create impact and how...
- 1/25/2024
- by Rafa Sales Ross
- Variety Film + TV
U.K.-based film production and distribution company Sovereign is expanding across the Atlantic with the launch of a distribution arm in the U.S.
With a plan to release two to three titles a year theatrically and across VOD platforms, the first film slated for release from the new entity is Laurent Nègre’s World War II thriller “A Forgotten Man,” which Sovereign also produced. Set in 1945 after the surrender of Nazi Germany, the story follows the Swiss ambassador (played by Michael Neuenschwander) after he leaves Berlin, but finds himself haunted by his past.
The film, which recently had its U.S. premiere at the Miami Jewish Film Festival and first bowed in Zurich, was released in the U.K. by Sovereign with support from the Swiss Confederation and Swiss Films. Its U.S. release is now slated for April.
Andreas Roald, who first founded Sovereign in 2008, and the head of U.
With a plan to release two to three titles a year theatrically and across VOD platforms, the first film slated for release from the new entity is Laurent Nègre’s World War II thriller “A Forgotten Man,” which Sovereign also produced. Set in 1945 after the surrender of Nazi Germany, the story follows the Swiss ambassador (played by Michael Neuenschwander) after he leaves Berlin, but finds himself haunted by his past.
The film, which recently had its U.S. premiere at the Miami Jewish Film Festival and first bowed in Zurich, was released in the U.K. by Sovereign with support from the Swiss Confederation and Swiss Films. Its U.S. release is now slated for April.
Andreas Roald, who first founded Sovereign in 2008, and the head of U.
- 1/25/2024
- by Alex Ritman
- Variety Film + TV
Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s influence can be traced in Spanish film-maker Lois Patiño’s whimsical meditation on the Buddhist cycle of life
Lois Patiño’s film is a delicate, exotic contrivance, a docu-realist diptych spectacle using nonprofessional actors, about the Buddhist concept of “Samsara”, the cycle of birth, death and life, and the transmigration of souls. Set in Laos and Zanzibar, it is mysterious and quietist, but flavoured with something whimsical and even playful; it is one of those ostensibly serious films best appreciated with the sense of humour, which Graham Greene said was the only thing that allowed him to believe in God. An agnostic might find something a little preposterous, even condescending in it: is it addressed to actual audiences in Laos and Zanzibar, or is this a film by and for western cinephiles? Well, there is charm and ingenuous directness here, and perhaps the influence of Thai film-maker Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
Lois Patiño’s film is a delicate, exotic contrivance, a docu-realist diptych spectacle using nonprofessional actors, about the Buddhist concept of “Samsara”, the cycle of birth, death and life, and the transmigration of souls. Set in Laos and Zanzibar, it is mysterious and quietist, but flavoured with something whimsical and even playful; it is one of those ostensibly serious films best appreciated with the sense of humour, which Graham Greene said was the only thing that allowed him to believe in God. An agnostic might find something a little preposterous, even condescending in it: is it addressed to actual audiences in Laos and Zanzibar, or is this a film by and for western cinephiles? Well, there is charm and ingenuous directness here, and perhaps the influence of Thai film-maker Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
- 1/24/2024
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Recently honored as one of Unifrance’s 10 to Watch, Franco-Moroccan filmmaker Sofia Alaoui will build on the rugged eeriness of her 2023 Sundance jury prize winner “Animalia” with “Tarfaya” – a slow-burn thriller that mines Morocco’s sweeping landscapes for ambient unease.
Named for (and inspired by) a remote, coastal town on the country’s Saharan border, “Tarfaya” imagines a not-too-distant world of extreme atmospheric swings, of severe heat giving way to more intense storms, all while daily life trudges on. The film will follow Meryam, a forty-something nurse working at a secluded hospital beset by a mysterious new plague linked to the destabilizing environment.
“At first, the patients become delirious, falling into delusions,” Alaoui explains. “Later they fall into a deep sleep, as if they’re disconnecting from the world in which they live. The film builds from this wistful tone where the characters become accustomed to a form of apocalypse.
Named for (and inspired by) a remote, coastal town on the country’s Saharan border, “Tarfaya” imagines a not-too-distant world of extreme atmospheric swings, of severe heat giving way to more intense storms, all while daily life trudges on. The film will follow Meryam, a forty-something nurse working at a secluded hospital beset by a mysterious new plague linked to the destabilizing environment.
“At first, the patients become delirious, falling into delusions,” Alaoui explains. “Later they fall into a deep sleep, as if they’re disconnecting from the world in which they live. The film builds from this wistful tone where the characters become accustomed to a form of apocalypse.
- 1/20/2024
- by Ben Croll
- Variety Film + TV
Vietnamese director Pham Thien An’s debut feature Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell juxtaposes moments of great importance with the moment-by-moment stasis of everyday life. An has a terrific eye: the film’s colors are bright and vivid, popping off the screen. Using very long takes, he reframes the image so that a character can appear both in close-up and long shot.
In its opening scene, Thien (Le Phang Vu) watches a soccer game with two friends while debating the meaning of life. As costumed mascots and women selling beer walk by, the stakes seem pretty low, but the scene ends with a sudden motorbike crash. Thien’s sister-in-law is killed, while her 5-year-old daughter survives. (All of this is filmed in one take, with the camera moving to take in the street where this accident happens.) He’s tasked with taking care of the girl, returning from Saigon to...
In its opening scene, Thien (Le Phang Vu) watches a soccer game with two friends while debating the meaning of life. As costumed mascots and women selling beer walk by, the stakes seem pretty low, but the scene ends with a sudden motorbike crash. Thien’s sister-in-law is killed, while her 5-year-old daughter survives. (All of this is filmed in one take, with the camera moving to take in the street where this accident happens.) He’s tasked with taking care of the girl, returning from Saigon to...
- 1/18/2024
- by Steve Erickson
- The Film Stage
Early into Pham Thien An’s sprawling, stupefying Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell, there’s a shot that manifests Caravaggio inside a shack in rural Vietnam. Having traveled from Saigon to his home village to attend the funeral of his sister-in-law, Thien (Le Phong Vu) is visiting a local elder who sowed a shroud for the departed. The twenty-something wants to pay for the service; the old man doesn’t take money from neighbors. He does accept the company, though, and very generously spills a whole cascade of memories from the Vietnam War, laying bare an old bullet scar on his ribcage. And as Thien bends to graze the bruised skin under the warm, caliginous light, Pham frames the moment as one of reverential awe, an image modeled off of Caravaggio’s “The Incredulity of Saint Thomas.” It’s a beautiful shot in a film full of them. That it...
- 1/17/2024
- by Leonardo Goi
- The Film Stage
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For regular updates, sign up for our weekly email newsletter and follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSDry Leaf.On Criterion’s Daily, David Hudson has shared a useful roundup of films that might be expected to premiere during 2024. Among the inclusions are: Mickey 17, Bong Joon-ho’s first film since Parasite (2019); It’s Not Me, Leos Carax’s latest collaboration with Denis Lavant; and Dry Leaf, the enticing-sounding new film by Alexandre Koberidze (What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? [2021]), which is said to be about “a photographer who shoots soccer stadiums [who] goes missing.”A list of international filmmakers including Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Pedro Costa, Radu Jude, Ira Sachs, Claire Denis, and Abderrahmane Sissako have signed a letter, published during the holiday season in the French newspaper Libération, demanding (as translated by the Film Stage) “an immediate end to the bombings on Gaza,...
- 1/10/2024
- MUBI
KimiKat Productions Presents Onlookers, a film by Kimi Takesue
Opens Friday, Feb. 16th, 2024 in U.S. theatres
Metrograph (New York exclusive) U.S. theatrical premiere
“Onlookers” will screen as part of the series Fire Over Water: Films of Transcendence January 26 – February 25, 2024 at Metrograph featuring films by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Kim Ki-duk, Kimi Takesue and more.
Official Selection:
World Premiere – Slamdance Film Festival 2023, Breakouts Feature Honorable Mention Winner
International Premiere – Cinéma du Réel 2023
Ridm: Montreal International Documentary Film Festival 2023
Dmz International Documentary Film Festival 2023
San Diego Asian American Film Festival 2023
Krakow International Film Festival 2023
Prismatic Ground 2023
Cinéma du Réel 2023
Onlookers, a film by Kimi Takesue
USA | 2023 | 72 minutes
Official site: www.onlookersfilm.com
Onlookers offers a visually striking, immersive meditation on travel and tourism in Laos, reflecting on how we all live as observers. Unfolding in painterly tableaux, Onlookers explores the paradox of travel: Why do people fly thousands of miles from home...
Opens Friday, Feb. 16th, 2024 in U.S. theatres
Metrograph (New York exclusive) U.S. theatrical premiere
“Onlookers” will screen as part of the series Fire Over Water: Films of Transcendence January 26 – February 25, 2024 at Metrograph featuring films by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Kim Ki-duk, Kimi Takesue and more.
Official Selection:
World Premiere – Slamdance Film Festival 2023, Breakouts Feature Honorable Mention Winner
International Premiere – Cinéma du Réel 2023
Ridm: Montreal International Documentary Film Festival 2023
Dmz International Documentary Film Festival 2023
San Diego Asian American Film Festival 2023
Krakow International Film Festival 2023
Prismatic Ground 2023
Cinéma du Réel 2023
Onlookers, a film by Kimi Takesue
USA | 2023 | 72 minutes
Official site: www.onlookersfilm.com
Onlookers offers a visually striking, immersive meditation on travel and tourism in Laos, reflecting on how we all live as observers. Unfolding in painterly tableaux, Onlookers explores the paradox of travel: Why do people fly thousands of miles from home...
- 1/6/2024
- by Rhythm Zaveri
- AsianMoviePulse
Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.
All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt (Raven Jackson)
A film that feels uprooted from deep beneath the earth, Raven Jackson’s poetic, patient debut is a distillation of cinema to its purest form, a stunning patchwork of experience and memory. Tethered around the life of Mack, a Black woman from Mississippi, as we witness glimpses of her childhood, teenage years, and beyond, All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt becomes a sensory experience unlike anything else this year. Shot in beautiful 35mm by Jomo Fray and edited by Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s collaborator Lee Chatametikool, there’s a reverence for nature and joy for human connection that seems all too rarified in today’s landscape of American filmmaking. – Jordan R.
Where to Stream: VOD...
All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt (Raven Jackson)
A film that feels uprooted from deep beneath the earth, Raven Jackson’s poetic, patient debut is a distillation of cinema to its purest form, a stunning patchwork of experience and memory. Tethered around the life of Mack, a Black woman from Mississippi, as we witness glimpses of her childhood, teenage years, and beyond, All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt becomes a sensory experience unlike anything else this year. Shot in beautiful 35mm by Jomo Fray and edited by Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s collaborator Lee Chatametikool, there’s a reverence for nature and joy for human connection that seems all too rarified in today’s landscape of American filmmaking. – Jordan R.
Where to Stream: VOD...
- 1/5/2024
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
No reasonably intelligent person imagines an artist’s statement about the horrors in Gaza would, in fact, end those horrors, but there are always limits to what one can take and hopes for what one could do. It might even be said that, as observers of the world and human behavior, filmmakers are especially inclined to recoil. When I interviewed Pedro Costa last month he spoke, unprompted, of a situation that’s only grown worse: “It’s very clear that we cannot stand images anymore. I can’t. I can’t. The images of the world for me [Exhales] I can’t. I turn my eyes, and I’m sure you do the same. It’s unbearable.” When I spoke with Anthony Dod Mantle a couple of weeks later it, again, emerged––vis-a-vis The Zone of Interest, whose own cinematographer alluded to it the next day. It’s difficult being a person in the world,...
- 12/29/2023
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
by Vedant Srinivas
Epic in both length and scope, “Inside The Yellow Cocoon Shell”, Vietnamese writer-director Thien An Pham's debut feature, and the winner of this year's Camera d'Or prize at Cannes, offers a striking meditation on faith, love, and the beguiling nature of earthly existence.
Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell is screening at Qcinema
The very first scene in “Yellow Cocoon”' sets up the encounter between spiritual and corporeal existence: sandwiched between a believer and an atheist, Thien voices his agnostic thoughts about the existence of a higher power (“I want to believe but I can't”). As if on cue, a sudden gust of wind blows across, and their discussion is interrupted by the sound of a motorcycle collision. Later, it will turn out that the person who died in the freak accident was none other than Thien's sister-in-law Hanh, while his five-old nephew, Dhao, remained miraculously unharmed.
Epic in both length and scope, “Inside The Yellow Cocoon Shell”, Vietnamese writer-director Thien An Pham's debut feature, and the winner of this year's Camera d'Or prize at Cannes, offers a striking meditation on faith, love, and the beguiling nature of earthly existence.
Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell is screening at Qcinema
The very first scene in “Yellow Cocoon”' sets up the encounter between spiritual and corporeal existence: sandwiched between a believer and an atheist, Thien voices his agnostic thoughts about the existence of a higher power (“I want to believe but I can't”). As if on cue, a sudden gust of wind blows across, and their discussion is interrupted by the sound of a motorcycle collision. Later, it will turn out that the person who died in the freak accident was none other than Thien's sister-in-law Hanh, while his five-old nephew, Dhao, remained miraculously unharmed.
- 12/23/2023
- by Guest Writer
- AsianMoviePulse
No working actor better articulates acting an act of authorship than Tilda Swinton. Beyond her work with Lynne Ramsay, Wes Anderson, and a constellation of distinctive artists, her presence is a kind co-writing; to watch her work––or better, to watch her work at work via any making-of footage––in the films of Luca Guadagnino, Joanna Hogg, and Derek Jarman is to witness a kind of live discovery function of acting. “It’s like working with my Dp,” Guadagnino told Screen Daily. “It’s like working with someone who is actually contributing to the movie itself, not just adding her voice as a performer only, but adding her voice as a filmmaker.”
Swinton confirmed this spirit (as well as a few future projects) via Les Inrockuptibles: “The Eternal Daughter is the beginning of a new era for me, yes. And my next films, those with Julio [Torres] and Joshua [Oppenheimer], but...
Swinton confirmed this spirit (as well as a few future projects) via Les Inrockuptibles: “The Eternal Daughter is the beginning of a new era for me, yes. And my next films, those with Julio [Torres] and Joshua [Oppenheimer], but...
- 12/15/2023
- by Frank Falisi
- The Film Stage
"The world opens to those who open up to it." Curzon in the UK has unveiled a trailer for an acclaimed film called Samsara, described as a "highly immersive and meditative film by artist and director Lois Patiño." Not to be confused with Ron Fricke's meditative globe-spanning documentary also called Samsara (2012). The term "saṃsāra" is actually a Pali/Sanskrit word that means "wandering" as well as "world," wherein the term connotes "cyclic change" or, less formally, "running around in circles." In the temples of Laos, teenage monks accompany a soul in transit from one body to another through the bardo. A luminous and sonorous journey leads to reincarnate on the beaches of Zanzibar, where groups of women work in seaweed farms. Berlinale adds: "In this conversation held on the border between life, death & meditation, Patiño continues his exploration of the image as an immersive experience. [As with films] by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, the cycle of birth,...
- 12/12/2023
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
Everyone associates the Cannes Film Festival with its top prize, the Palme d’Or, arguably the most prestigious award on the annual festival circuit. But Cannes’ Un Certain Regard prize is just as sought after by young filmmakers: a prize that provides a daring and innovative film the chance for distribution in French cinemas and a sign of a director to watch on the international front. Past winners include Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Yorgos Lanthimos, and Hong Sang-soo, among others.
Continue reading ‘How To Have Sex’ Trailer: Molly Manning Walker’s Un Certain Regard Winner From Cannes 2023 Hits Theaters On February 2, 2024 at The Playlist.
Continue reading ‘How To Have Sex’ Trailer: Molly Manning Walker’s Un Certain Regard Winner From Cannes 2023 Hits Theaters On February 2, 2024 at The Playlist.
- 12/7/2023
- by Ned Booth
- The Playlist
Welcome to Global Breakouts, Deadline’s fortnightly strand in which we shine a spotlight on the TV shows and films killing it in their local territories. The industry is as globalized as it’s ever been, but breakout hits are appearing in pockets of the world all the time and it can be hard to keep track… So, we’re going to do the hard work for you.
This week we’re featuring Taweewat Wantha’s Thai horror pic Tee Yod (aka Death Whisperer). A smash in its home market, it set an opening day record for the year in late October and has the distinction of being the first Thai film ever released in IMAX.
Name: Tee Yod (Death Whisperer)
Country: Thailand
Producers: Major Join Film, Bec World, M Studio
Distributor: M Pictures
For fans of: Shutter, Pee Mak, supernatural horror
Following quickly in the footsteps of another 2023 Thai horror hit,...
This week we’re featuring Taweewat Wantha’s Thai horror pic Tee Yod (aka Death Whisperer). A smash in its home market, it set an opening day record for the year in late October and has the distinction of being the first Thai film ever released in IMAX.
Name: Tee Yod (Death Whisperer)
Country: Thailand
Producers: Major Join Film, Bec World, M Studio
Distributor: M Pictures
For fans of: Shutter, Pee Mak, supernatural horror
Following quickly in the footsteps of another 2023 Thai horror hit,...
- 12/6/2023
- by Nancy Tartaglione
- Deadline Film + TV
Tran Anh Hung’s The Taste of Things is almost halfway done before it even hints that there’s something going on within its fin-de-siècle setting besides the creation and consumption of beautiful meals. The film’s first half hour is in fact just that, with Eugénie (Juliette Binoche), a veteran cook in the manor home of Dodin (Benoît Magimel), the epicure for whom she’s been working for over 20 years, making an extravagant, multi-course meal for him and his friends. The men eat the food, then compliment Eugénie on her cooking.
Given the close yet unfussy attention paid to the choreography of cooking, with Jonathan Ricquebourg’s camera flowing sinuously through the kitchen and peeking into pots as ingredients are added and steam billows out, it would have been satisfying if Hung had just concluded the film with well-fed Frenchmen chatting over a digestif. Fortunately, he’s interested not...
Given the close yet unfussy attention paid to the choreography of cooking, with Jonathan Ricquebourg’s camera flowing sinuously through the kitchen and peeking into pots as ingredients are added and steam billows out, it would have been satisfying if Hung had just concluded the film with well-fed Frenchmen chatting over a digestif. Fortunately, he’s interested not...
- 11/29/2023
- by Chris Barsanti
- Slant Magazine
Though we aim to discuss a wide breadth of films each year, few things give us more pleasure than the arrival of bold, new voices. It’s why we venture to festivals and pore over a variety of different features that might bring to light some emerging talent. This year was an especially notable time for new directors making their stamp, and we’re highlighting the handful of 2023 debuts that most impressed us.
Below one can check out a list spanning a variety of different genres, and many are available to stream here. In years to come, take note as these helmers (hopefully) ascend.
All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt (Raven Jackson)
Raven Jackson’s directorial debut All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt is a distillation of cinema to its purest form, a stunning patchwork of experience and memory. Daring in its formal gambits but universal for how it explores humanity’s connection with nature,...
Below one can check out a list spanning a variety of different genres, and many are available to stream here. In years to come, take note as these helmers (hopefully) ascend.
All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt (Raven Jackson)
Raven Jackson’s directorial debut All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt is a distillation of cinema to its purest form, a stunning patchwork of experience and memory. Daring in its formal gambits but universal for how it explores humanity’s connection with nature,...
- 11/29/2023
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
Tilda Swinton famously cut her acting teeth on the experimental films of late director Derek Jarman such as Caravaggio and The Garden as well as life-long friend Joanna Hogg’s debut short Caprice and Sally Potter’s Orlando.
Nearly 50 years later, she has continued to work with Hogg as well as in the experimental cinema arena, finding a new Jarman-esque kindred spirit in Thai artist and filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
Speaking in an in-conversation event at the Marrakech Film Festival on Monday, the actress revealed how some of the big commercial studio pictures she has worked on across her career have felt personally more experimental to her than her avant-garde work.
“I’ve been really fortunate to have some adventures in worlds of filmmaking that I never thought I would be able to go into,” she said.
“When Derek died [in 1994], I was a bit high and dry… slowly… invitations came...
Nearly 50 years later, she has continued to work with Hogg as well as in the experimental cinema arena, finding a new Jarman-esque kindred spirit in Thai artist and filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
Speaking in an in-conversation event at the Marrakech Film Festival on Monday, the actress revealed how some of the big commercial studio pictures she has worked on across her career have felt personally more experimental to her than her avant-garde work.
“I’ve been really fortunate to have some adventures in worlds of filmmaking that I never thought I would be able to go into,” she said.
“When Derek died [in 1994], I was a bit high and dry… slowly… invitations came...
- 11/27/2023
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- Deadline Film + TV
A film enamored with stories and with the art of telling them, Éléonore Saintagnan’s Camping du Lac opens with the director addressing the audience the way a raconteur might start a campfire yarn: “I’d like to tell you about an odd thing that happened…” Many things will indeed be told over the seventy minutes that follow—some odd, some improbable, some outright incredible. An artist and a documentarian, Saintagnan has a way of seamlessly dancing between truth and fiction, and her feature debut unspools like a tale passed on through generations. Yet her bewitching film does something more than capture the anachronistic pleasures of storytelling; it also understands the practice as a moral duty, one of the last means at our disposal to find meaning and solace in each other.
Here in triple duty as writer, director, and actor, Saintagnan plays a filmmaker whose Renault breaks down near the shores of Lake Guerlédan,...
Here in triple duty as writer, director, and actor, Saintagnan plays a filmmaker whose Renault breaks down near the shores of Lake Guerlédan,...
- 11/21/2023
- by Leonardo Goi
- The Film Stage
Ichiyama Shozo assumed control of the program of the Tokyo International Film Festival after a long programming career that included Tokyo and the slightly more indie Tokyo Filmex events. He is also a regular producing partner of Chinese art-house darling Jai Zhangke. These influences have shaped his approach to this year’s Tokyo Iff lineup, he told Variety.
The 2023 autumn festivals all seem to have strong line-ups. And Tokyo is no exception. What is your understanding of the reasons for that?
This year we received many more entries than previous years. I don’t know the reason, but I feel the film production situation worldwide has come back to the level before the pandemic.
What were your guidelines and criteria for selection this time around?
I feel many talented filmmakers are struggling with various social problems surrounding their countries. Most of the competition films are dealing with such subjects.
Which...
The 2023 autumn festivals all seem to have strong line-ups. And Tokyo is no exception. What is your understanding of the reasons for that?
This year we received many more entries than previous years. I don’t know the reason, but I feel the film production situation worldwide has come back to the level before the pandemic.
What were your guidelines and criteria for selection this time around?
I feel many talented filmmakers are struggling with various social problems surrounding their countries. Most of the competition films are dealing with such subjects.
Which...
- 10/25/2023
- by Patrick Frater
- Variety Film + TV
Seth Gabrielsson was one of 50 emerging filmmakers who ventured into the jungles of Yucatan, Mexico in August for an 11-day directors’ intensive led Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Here, he shares what he learnt from the Palme d'Or-winning director - or more correctly, didn't learn.
The post Four things I didn’t learn from Apichatpong Weerasethakul in the Mexican jungle appeared first on If Magazine.
The post Four things I didn’t learn from Apichatpong Weerasethakul in the Mexican jungle appeared first on If Magazine.
- 10/18/2023
- by jkeast
- IF.com.au
Unexpected, filled with erotic tension and discovering the spiritual dimension of existence. The cinema of Chihiro Ito seems to belong to an alternate reality. The audiences of Five Flavours will have a chance to see two films of the artist whose cinema is a breath of fresh air in recent Japanese independent cinema. The director herself will be the Festival guest.
Chihiro Ito may not yet be a household name in the world of film, but the Japanese director has already proven she has a lot of talent and sensitivity. She may be just beginning her career as film director, but her artistic output has been recognized for years – she has been a successful writer, screenwriter, and playwirght. Before turning to the camera, she wrote a few novels and film scripts (including one for Isao Yukisada).
Both in literature and cinema, her main interest is the body. The strength of...
Chihiro Ito may not yet be a household name in the world of film, but the Japanese director has already proven she has a lot of talent and sensitivity. She may be just beginning her career as film director, but her artistic output has been recognized for years – she has been a successful writer, screenwriter, and playwirght. Before turning to the camera, she wrote a few novels and film scripts (including one for Isao Yukisada).
Both in literature and cinema, her main interest is the body. The strength of...
- 10/7/2023
- by Adam Symchuk
- AsianMoviePulse
The first image in writer-director Raven Jackson’s All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt—a close-up of a hand squeezing a freshly caught fish, its reflective scales mirrored by the twinkling, gauzy light captured on 35mm by cinematographer Jomo Fray—quickly immerses us in the film’s world. The relationship between bodies and the natural world that surrounds them, mediated by the physical properties of film, is central to Jackson’s work. As the scene progresses, the camera’s focus remains resolutely on what may seem like its incidental textures, tracking the interplay of skin, earth, and water as if they were brushstrokes on a canvas.
The elemental poeticism of these images is clear evidence of Jackson’s promise as a filmmaker, and yet this opening sequence also points to why All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt amounts to a limited showcase for her talents. Essentially all of the film’s aesthetic,...
The elemental poeticism of these images is clear evidence of Jackson’s promise as a filmmaker, and yet this opening sequence also points to why All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt amounts to a limited showcase for her talents. Essentially all of the film’s aesthetic,...
- 10/6/2023
- by Brad Hanford
- Slant Magazine
Exclusive: It’s just another day in Manila’s Riverbanks Center studios and a stand-in actor is beating off a group of gangsters with an outsized prosthetic penis – thankfully one that is wrapped in a tasteful chiffon scarf.
The actor he’s standing in for, Enrique Gil, is one of the biggest heartthrobs in the Philippines’ film and TV industries and it’s safe to say he’s taking a slight departure with his most recent project, I Am Not Big Bird, which was mostly filmed in Thailand with some interiors in Manila.
Produced by Anima Studios and Abs-cbn’s Black Sheep, the film is about a 30-something virgin (Gil) who, dejected after his girlfriend turns down his marriage proposal, heads off on holiday to Thailand with a bunch of friends. Once there, a peculiar chain of events ensues when Gil’s character is mistaken for a famous Thai porn star,...
The actor he’s standing in for, Enrique Gil, is one of the biggest heartthrobs in the Philippines’ film and TV industries and it’s safe to say he’s taking a slight departure with his most recent project, I Am Not Big Bird, which was mostly filmed in Thailand with some interiors in Manila.
Produced by Anima Studios and Abs-cbn’s Black Sheep, the film is about a 30-something virgin (Gil) who, dejected after his girlfriend turns down his marriage proposal, heads off on holiday to Thailand with a bunch of friends. Once there, a peculiar chain of events ensues when Gil’s character is mistaken for a famous Thai porn star,...
- 10/5/2023
- by Liz Shackleton
- Deadline Film + TV
If there’s something you’d love to ask the daring and versatile actor, about to take on two roles in Joanna Hogg’s The Eternal Daughter, now is your chance
Activist, writer, model, performance artist: Tilda Swinton has so many strings to her bow that calling her an actor feels insufficient. Perhaps more successfully than any actor working today, she has straddled the boundary between arthouse and mainstream cinema, equally at home in a billion-dollar franchise like The Chronicles of Narnia as she is in films by Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
Born in London in 1960 to an aristocratic military family of Scottish descent, Swinton later rejected her conservative upbringing, embracing leftwing politics, poetry and experimental theatre. On graduating from Cambridge the filmmaker Derek Jarman became her friend and mentor, casting her in numerous films and leading to her breakout role in Sally Potter’s Orlando.
Activist, writer, model, performance artist: Tilda Swinton has so many strings to her bow that calling her an actor feels insufficient. Perhaps more successfully than any actor working today, she has straddled the boundary between arthouse and mainstream cinema, equally at home in a billion-dollar franchise like The Chronicles of Narnia as she is in films by Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
Born in London in 1960 to an aristocratic military family of Scottish descent, Swinton later rejected her conservative upbringing, embracing leftwing politics, poetry and experimental theatre. On graduating from Cambridge the filmmaker Derek Jarman became her friend and mentor, casting her in numerous films and leading to her breakout role in Sally Potter’s Orlando.
- 9/29/2023
- The Guardian - Film News
Shrooms.This year’s edition of TIFF Wavelengths opened with an unannounced extra. It was a 1967 film called Standard Time, an eight-minute series of circular pans around an apartment. The camera speeds up and slows down; it pans right, then left, then right again. Later, the film describes a truncated arc, showing one small section of the flat. Then, the camera pans up and down. Living beings can be glimpsed along the way, most notably a cat perched in a window, artist Joyce Wieland, and a surprise visitor at the end. But they are given the same relative attention as the objects in the space: a TV, a stereo, a cooktop, a blender, and a hutch full of china. Which is to say that all things in the field of the camera’s vision are abstracted, turned into pure painterly velocity.Of course, Standard Time is by Michael Snow, a...
- 9/12/2023
- MUBI
Film at Lincoln Center has revealed the poster and poster artist for the 61st New York Film Festival, tapping Jim Jarmusch for the honor. The acclaimed filmmaker’s films have been selected by NYFF seven times in the past, with Down by Law opening the 24th edition of the festival in 1986.
As a poster artist for NYFF, Jarmusch joins the ranks of Andy Warhol, Richard Avedon, David Hockney, Diane Arbus, Martin Scorsese, Julian Schnabel, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Pedro Almodóvar, and John Waters. Jarmusch said in an official statement that “since arriving in New York City decades ago, attending the NYFF has been my version of going to church.”
The image for the poster, he continued…
“was pulled from the files of several thousand useless photographs I’ve taken since getting my hands on a camera as a teenager. I consider them to be useless not necessarily in a negative way, but...
As a poster artist for NYFF, Jarmusch joins the ranks of Andy Warhol, Richard Avedon, David Hockney, Diane Arbus, Martin Scorsese, Julian Schnabel, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Pedro Almodóvar, and John Waters. Jarmusch said in an official statement that “since arriving in New York City decades ago, attending the NYFF has been my version of going to church.”
The image for the poster, he continued…
“was pulled from the files of several thousand useless photographs I’ve taken since getting my hands on a camera as a teenager. I consider them to be useless not necessarily in a negative way, but...
- 8/10/2023
- by Liz Shannon Miller
- Consequence - Film News
Three years after purchasing it, Netflix will reopen New York City’s historic Paris Theater on Sept. 1, featuring new 70mm projectors and Dolby Atmos sound, the streamer said Wednesday.
To show off this new technology, the Paris Theater will present a weeklong classic film program called “Big & Loud,” including 70mm prints of two films synonymous with the format, “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “Lawrence of Arabia.” Modern-day classics like Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood” and Alfonso Cuaron’s “Roma” will also be presented in the format.
On the Dolby Digital program, the Paris will show the “final cuts” of Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” and Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner,” as well as “The Matrix” and “Mad Max: Fury Road.” The theater will also show Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Cannes Jury Prize-winning film “Memoria” for the first time in Dolby.
Originally opened in 1948 as an arthouse theater to show French films,...
To show off this new technology, the Paris Theater will present a weeklong classic film program called “Big & Loud,” including 70mm prints of two films synonymous with the format, “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “Lawrence of Arabia.” Modern-day classics like Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood” and Alfonso Cuaron’s “Roma” will also be presented in the format.
On the Dolby Digital program, the Paris will show the “final cuts” of Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” and Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner,” as well as “The Matrix” and “Mad Max: Fury Road.” The theater will also show Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Cannes Jury Prize-winning film “Memoria” for the first time in Dolby.
Originally opened in 1948 as an arthouse theater to show French films,...
- 8/9/2023
- by Jeremy Fuster
- The Wrap
Far and away the best film to premiere at Sundance Film Festival this year was Raven Jackson’s directorial debut All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt. Produced by Barry Jenkins and edited by Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s collaborator Lee Chatametikool, the film takes a beautifully poetic decades-spanning look at a woman’s life in Mississippi. Nine months after its Sundance premiere, the film will finally resurface as part of New York Film Festival’s just-announced Main Slate followed by an A24 release later this fall. Ahead of the release, the first trailer and poster have arrived.
I said in my review, “Raven Jackson’s directorial debut All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt is a distillation of cinema to its purest form, a stunning patchwork of experience and memory. Daring in its formal gambits but universal for how it explores humanity’s connection with nature, loss, and love, it’s among few...
I said in my review, “Raven Jackson’s directorial debut All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt is a distillation of cinema to its purest form, a stunning patchwork of experience and memory. Daring in its formal gambits but universal for how it explores humanity’s connection with nature, loss, and love, it’s among few...
- 8/9/2023
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
"Why is it that guilt always follows women?" Film Movement has unveiled their official US trailer for the acclaimed indie film from Indonesia titled Before, Now & Then, made by Indonesian filmmaker Kamila Andini. This first premiered at the 2022 Berlin Film Festival last year, and it also played at the Vancouver, Busan, and Philadelphia Film Fests. The story follows Raden Nana Suhani, as played by Happy Salma, a Sundanese woman in the 1960s, who lost a father & son to the war in West Java. She remarried as a second wife to a Sundanese man to start a new life with a man who was rich but always looked down on her. Nana suffers in silence... Until one day, she became friends with one of her husband's mistresses and everything changes. Together, these two women seek hope for independence. Framed by elegant cinematography and a lush score, Before, Now & Then is a lyrical,...
- 8/4/2023
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
Casting
Casting for the beloved “Famous Five” stories of Enid Blyton, which are being reimagined for the BBC and Zdf by Nicolas Winding Refn, has been revealed.
Diaana Babnicova is playing the role of George, alongside Elliott Rose as Julian, Kit Rakusen as Dick, Flora Jacoby Richardson as Anne, playing George’s cousins who come to stay at Kirrin Cottage.
Making up the fifth member of the “Famous Five” is Kip, the Bearded Collie Cross playing Timmy the dog. The cast also includes Jack Gleeson (“Game of Thrones”), Ann Akinjirin (“Moon Knight”), James Lance (“Ted Lasso”) and Diana Quick (“Father Brown”).
The 3 x 90′ series is based on the 21 “Famous Five” novels and short stories Blyton wrote between 1942 and 1963. The series follows five daring young explorers as they encounter treacherous, action-packed adventures, remarkable mysteries, unparalleled danger and astounding secrets. It is created for television and executive produced by Winding Refn (byNWR...
Casting for the beloved “Famous Five” stories of Enid Blyton, which are being reimagined for the BBC and Zdf by Nicolas Winding Refn, has been revealed.
Diaana Babnicova is playing the role of George, alongside Elliott Rose as Julian, Kit Rakusen as Dick, Flora Jacoby Richardson as Anne, playing George’s cousins who come to stay at Kirrin Cottage.
Making up the fifth member of the “Famous Five” is Kip, the Bearded Collie Cross playing Timmy the dog. The cast also includes Jack Gleeson (“Game of Thrones”), Ann Akinjirin (“Moon Knight”), James Lance (“Ted Lasso”) and Diana Quick (“Father Brown”).
The 3 x 90′ series is based on the 21 “Famous Five” novels and short stories Blyton wrote between 1942 and 1963. The series follows five daring young explorers as they encounter treacherous, action-packed adventures, remarkable mysteries, unparalleled danger and astounding secrets. It is created for television and executive produced by Winding Refn (byNWR...
- 7/26/2023
- by Naman Ramachandran
- Variety Film + TV
It’s as David Bowie sang: revolution comes in the strangest ways. When Apichatpong Weerasethakul curated a series for New York’s Film at Lincoln Center this spring, the 35mm screening of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s The Puppetmaster––a 30-year-old Taiwanese feature with 1/15th the Letterboxd logs of the Mission: Impossible movie that opened yesterday––constituted the biggest (local) cinephile event I’ve seen in… well, who could count so far? Scarcity’s to thank, of course: last screened in New York seven years back, it’s (supposedly) the sole English-subtitled print in the United States and was accordingly treated like a brittle object––cinema essentially on the edge of oblivion.
So this news comes like a salve for the medium itself. Italy’s Far East Film Festival announced that next year’s edition, running April 24 to May 2, 2024, will host restorations of Hou’s The Puppetmaster and A City of Sadness,...
So this news comes like a salve for the medium itself. Italy’s Far East Film Festival announced that next year’s edition, running April 24 to May 2, 2024, will host restorations of Hou’s The Puppetmaster and A City of Sadness,...
- 7/13/2023
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Christian Petzold, the director of the well-timed summer movie Afire with Anne-Katrin Titze: “I’m really sure that we don’t have summer movies. The Americans have summer movies, the French have summer movies.”
Christian Petzold’s slow-burning Afire, shot by Hans Fromm, stars Paula Beer, Thomas Schubert, Langston Uibel, Enno Trebs, and Matthias Brandt.
Nadja (Paula Beer) with Devid (Enno Trebs), Felix (Langston Uibel), and Leon (Thomas Schubert) in Afire
A scene in Leo McCarey’s An Affair To Remember (with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr); Sophie Calle’s Voir La Mer and Hiroshi Sugimoto’s photographs; Astrid Lindgren; a Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre touch; Uwe Johnson’s Mutmassungen über Jakob and Margarethe von Trotta’s Jahrestage series; Johan Wolfgang von Goethe; a Nanni Moretti quote; meeting Paul Dano’s Wildlife cinematographer Diego García (Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Cemetery Of Splendor) in Tel Aviv; Billy Wilder, Fred Zinnemann, Curt Siodmak, Robert Siodmak,...
Christian Petzold’s slow-burning Afire, shot by Hans Fromm, stars Paula Beer, Thomas Schubert, Langston Uibel, Enno Trebs, and Matthias Brandt.
Nadja (Paula Beer) with Devid (Enno Trebs), Felix (Langston Uibel), and Leon (Thomas Schubert) in Afire
A scene in Leo McCarey’s An Affair To Remember (with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr); Sophie Calle’s Voir La Mer and Hiroshi Sugimoto’s photographs; Astrid Lindgren; a Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre touch; Uwe Johnson’s Mutmassungen über Jakob and Margarethe von Trotta’s Jahrestage series; Johan Wolfgang von Goethe; a Nanni Moretti quote; meeting Paul Dano’s Wildlife cinematographer Diego García (Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Cemetery Of Splendor) in Tel Aviv; Billy Wilder, Fred Zinnemann, Curt Siodmak, Robert Siodmak,...
- 7/2/2023
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
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