Titles include films by Sergei Loznitsa and Barbet Schroeder.Scroll Down For Full List
The European Film Academy has unveiled the 15 documentaries that have been recommended for nomination for the 2017 European Film Awards.
They include Austerlitz from Palme d’Or nominated director Sergei Loznitsa, which premiered at Venice; Sonia Kronlund’s Cannes Directors’ Fortnight title Nothingwood; and Barbet Schroeder’s The Venerable W, which played out of competition at Cannes.
Also nominated is Ziad Kalthoum Taste Of Cement, winner of the Best Feature-Length Film in the international competition at Switzerland’s Visions du Réel, and Andreas Dalsgaard & Obaidah Zytoon’s The War Show, which won best film in the Venice Days section at last year’s Venice Film Festival.
Efa Members will now vote for five documentary nominations ahead of an awards ceremony on December 9 in Berlin, Germany.
Ten documentary festivals each put forward one film, which received its world premiere at the respective festival’s latest...
The European Film Academy has unveiled the 15 documentaries that have been recommended for nomination for the 2017 European Film Awards.
They include Austerlitz from Palme d’Or nominated director Sergei Loznitsa, which premiered at Venice; Sonia Kronlund’s Cannes Directors’ Fortnight title Nothingwood; and Barbet Schroeder’s The Venerable W, which played out of competition at Cannes.
Also nominated is Ziad Kalthoum Taste Of Cement, winner of the Best Feature-Length Film in the international competition at Switzerland’s Visions du Réel, and Andreas Dalsgaard & Obaidah Zytoon’s The War Show, which won best film in the Venice Days section at last year’s Venice Film Festival.
Efa Members will now vote for five documentary nominations ahead of an awards ceremony on December 9 in Berlin, Germany.
Ten documentary festivals each put forward one film, which received its world premiere at the respective festival’s latest...
- 8/15/2017
- by orlando.parfitt@screendaily.com (Orlando Parfitt)
- ScreenDaily
Sergei Loznitsa's The Event (2015), which is receiving an exclusive global online premiere on Mubi, is showing from August 4 - September 3, 2017 as a Special Discovery. “Questions are only dangerous when you answer them.”—Toby Esterhase, Smiley’s People“Resign! Resign! Resign!”—St. Petersburg crowd, 19 August 199119 August 1991. Sergei Loznitsa is packing his bags in Kiev: having recently left his job at the city’s Institute of Cybernetics, he is about to enroll at Moscow Film School. The phone rings; it’s a friend. Loznitsa, at his pal’s suggestion, turns on the television. All four state channels, interspersed with news flashes, are broadcasting the same thing: Swan Lake—on repeat. Updates come through haphazardly. In Moscow, there are tanks in the streets. By noon, there is something resembling a clearer picture: Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, on vacation in the Crimea, has taken ill. A state of emergency is declared. Loznitsa walks...
- 8/4/2017
- MUBI
Deftly weaving between politically ambitious documentary projects and brooding, chunky dramas exploring the malignant side of Russian society, Ukraianian director Sergei Loznitsa follows Austerlitz, last year’s documentary on concentration camp tourism, with the fictional A Gentle Creature, an impressively morose, dense, and totalizing immersion into the dehumanizing absurdity of the Russian prison system. But in fact we don’t see anything of the inside of a prison in A Gentle Creature, for while the goal of the unnamed, middle-aged heroine (Vasilina Makovtseva) is to visit her incarcerated husband—a visit inspired mainly because a care package was sent back to her with no explanation as to its rejection—her fruitless journey to the prison town is a Hogarthian roundelay of indifferent, dismissive or abusive personnel and exploitative locals. Makovtseva’s maze-like path through a social microcosm (and ecosystem) of functionaries, leeches and profiteers is an ordeal that begins about...
- 5/29/2017
- MUBI
“Man is a wolf to his fellow man,” quotes a character early in Sergei Loznitsa’s A Gentle Creature. The ordeal suffered by its protagonist will indeed be solitary, poor, nasty, and brutish – it won’t be short, however. Powerful though bloated, A Gentle Creature is a companion to Loznitsa’s phenomenal first narrative feature, My Joy, once again following a person’s nightmarish odyssey through an allegorical rendition of post-Communist Russia. Though not as successful as its predecessor, Loznitsa’s latest nonetheless confirms the director’s place of honor amongst cinema’s most vociferous critics of Putin’s kingdom.
A Gentle Creature might borrow its title from a short story by Dostoevsky, but the relation between the two is even less apparent than between Loznitsa’s last outing, Austerlitz, and the W.G. Sebald novel of the same name. A much more obvious literary influence is Kafka. In lieu of an impenetrable castle,...
A Gentle Creature might borrow its title from a short story by Dostoevsky, but the relation between the two is even less apparent than between Loznitsa’s last outing, Austerlitz, and the W.G. Sebald novel of the same name. A much more obvious literary influence is Kafka. In lieu of an impenetrable castle,...
- 5/25/2017
- by Giovanni Marchini Camia
- The Film Stage
Although there’s no shortage of regional film festivals throughout the year, few — if any — are better curated than the Maryland Film Festival. With a slate organized by Director of Programming Eric Allen Hatch, the downtown Baltimore festival, which takes place from May 3-7, offers the finest in independent and international cinema of the past year, as well as some of our most-anticipated world premieres.
Now in its 19th year, we’re pleased to debut the full line-up for the 6-screen festival, and can exclusively reveal that Brett Haley‘s The Hero (one of our favorite films from Sundance) will be the Closing Night film. World premiering at the festival is Stephen Cone‘s Princess Cyd, his follow-up to one of last year’s finest films, Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party, along with Josh Crockett‘s Dr. Brinks & Dr. Brinks.
We can also exclusively reveal the Opening Night Shorts — 5 short...
Now in its 19th year, we’re pleased to debut the full line-up for the 6-screen festival, and can exclusively reveal that Brett Haley‘s The Hero (one of our favorite films from Sundance) will be the Closing Night film. World premiering at the festival is Stephen Cone‘s Princess Cyd, his follow-up to one of last year’s finest films, Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party, along with Josh Crockett‘s Dr. Brinks & Dr. Brinks.
We can also exclusively reveal the Opening Night Shorts — 5 short...
- 4/21/2017
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Exclusive: Tel Aviv-based festival will open with world premiere of Before My Feet Touch the Ground.
Docaviv, Israel’s top documentary festival, has finalised the selection for its 19th edition (May 11-20).
The Tel Aviv-based event will kick off with the world premiere of Daphni Leef’s Israeli documentary Before My Feet Touch The Ground (pictured), about a film student who became the leader of a popular protest movement.
13 Israeli films have been selected to compete in the Docaviv Isreali film competition, 11 of which are world premieres.
They are competing for the best Israeli film award worth $19,000 (Nis 70,000), the largest prize for documentary filmmaking offered anywhere in Israel.
For the first time, a Fipresci jury will also award a best director award.
The competition will feature work by David Deri, Doron Galezer and Ruth Yuval (The Ancestral Sin), Daniel Sivan (The Patriot), and Rina Castelnuovo-Hollander and Tamir Elterman (Muhi).
International competition
11 films have been selected for the...
Docaviv, Israel’s top documentary festival, has finalised the selection for its 19th edition (May 11-20).
The Tel Aviv-based event will kick off with the world premiere of Daphni Leef’s Israeli documentary Before My Feet Touch The Ground (pictured), about a film student who became the leader of a popular protest movement.
13 Israeli films have been selected to compete in the Docaviv Isreali film competition, 11 of which are world premieres.
They are competing for the best Israeli film award worth $19,000 (Nis 70,000), the largest prize for documentary filmmaking offered anywhere in Israel.
For the first time, a Fipresci jury will also award a best director award.
The competition will feature work by David Deri, Doron Galezer and Ruth Yuval (The Ancestral Sin), Daniel Sivan (The Patriot), and Rina Castelnuovo-Hollander and Tamir Elterman (Muhi).
International competition
11 films have been selected for the...
- 4/19/2017
- by orlando.parfitt@screendaily.com (Orlando Parfitt)
- ScreenDaily
The Young Pope production designer Ludovica Ferrario also slated to attend film and TV forum.
Documentary filmmaker Sergey Loznitsa (My Joy), special effects creator Colin Arthur, and HBO executive Steve Matthews are among guests set to attend the sixth Visegrad Film Forum in Slovakia.
Loznitsa’s latest film Austerlitz premiered at Venice last year. Arthur is known for his decades of work in special effects and makeup, with his credits including Class Of The Titans, Conan The Barbarian and The NeverEnding Story.
Matthews is HBO Europe’s vice president and executive producer for drama development, Central Europe, Nordic and Spain; his credits include drama series The Borgias.
Further guests at the forum will include The Young Pope and Youth production designer Ludovica Ferrario, and Pavla Janoušková Kubečková, Tomáš Hrubý and Štěpán Hulík, who collorated on Burning Bush and Wasteland for HBO Europe.
The Visegrad Film Forum will take place at the Faculty of Film and Television in Bratislava...
Documentary filmmaker Sergey Loznitsa (My Joy), special effects creator Colin Arthur, and HBO executive Steve Matthews are among guests set to attend the sixth Visegrad Film Forum in Slovakia.
Loznitsa’s latest film Austerlitz premiered at Venice last year. Arthur is known for his decades of work in special effects and makeup, with his credits including Class Of The Titans, Conan The Barbarian and The NeverEnding Story.
Matthews is HBO Europe’s vice president and executive producer for drama development, Central Europe, Nordic and Spain; his credits include drama series The Borgias.
Further guests at the forum will include The Young Pope and Youth production designer Ludovica Ferrario, and Pavla Janoušková Kubečková, Tomáš Hrubý and Štěpán Hulík, who collorated on Burning Bush and Wasteland for HBO Europe.
The Visegrad Film Forum will take place at the Faculty of Film and Television in Bratislava...
- 4/7/2017
- ScreenDaily
Kosovo on track to join Creative Europe; Lgbt road movie scores Us, UK deals.
Polish filmmaker Jan Matuszynski’s The Last Family has continued its successful festival run by being named best film in the New Europe - New Names competition at the Vilnius International Film Festival (23 March - 6 April).
Matuszynski’s feature debut - which is being handled internationally by New Europe Film Sales - had its world premiere at last year’s Locarno Film Festival and received the special jury award at the Sofia International Film Festival as well as four prizes at the national Polish Film Awards last month.
The competition’s international jury of Gothenburg Film Festival’s programmer Freddy Olsson, Russian film critic and programmer Boris Nelep and Fipresci president Alin Tasciyan presented its best director prize to the Bulgarian directorial duo Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valcahnov for their second feature Glory which also picked up the Cicae Art Cinema Award.
Moreover...
Polish filmmaker Jan Matuszynski’s The Last Family has continued its successful festival run by being named best film in the New Europe - New Names competition at the Vilnius International Film Festival (23 March - 6 April).
Matuszynski’s feature debut - which is being handled internationally by New Europe Film Sales - had its world premiere at last year’s Locarno Film Festival and received the special jury award at the Sofia International Film Festival as well as four prizes at the national Polish Film Awards last month.
The competition’s international jury of Gothenburg Film Festival’s programmer Freddy Olsson, Russian film critic and programmer Boris Nelep and Fipresci president Alin Tasciyan presented its best director prize to the Bulgarian directorial duo Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valcahnov for their second feature Glory which also picked up the Cicae Art Cinema Award.
Moreover...
- 4/7/2017
- by screen.berlin@googlemail.com (Martin Blaney)
- ScreenDaily
Chicago – From March 3rd to the 30th, the 20th Chicago European Union Film Festival (Ceuff) of 2017 will unfurl at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago. The Opening Night Film is from Malta – and their emerging film industry – and it’s entitled “20,000 Reasons,” directed by Jameson Cucciardi. For more information, including a complete schedule of films, click here.
This is the largest festival in the nation showcasing films of the European Union nations, and this edition of Ceuff presents Chicago premieres of 62 new feature films, representing all 28 European Union nations. Included in the festival are new and daring work by some of Europe’s most renowned directors, including: Olivier Assayas (“Personal Shopper”); the Dardennes brothers (“The Unknown Girl”); Doris Dörrie (“Greetings from Fukushima”); Bruno Dumont (“Slack Bay”); Eugène Green (“The Son of Joseph”); Szabolcs Hajdu (“It’s Not the Time of My Life”); Joachim Lafosse (“After Love”); Sergei Loznitsa (“Austerlitz...
This is the largest festival in the nation showcasing films of the European Union nations, and this edition of Ceuff presents Chicago premieres of 62 new feature films, representing all 28 European Union nations. Included in the festival are new and daring work by some of Europe’s most renowned directors, including: Olivier Assayas (“Personal Shopper”); the Dardennes brothers (“The Unknown Girl”); Doris Dörrie (“Greetings from Fukushima”); Bruno Dumont (“Slack Bay”); Eugène Green (“The Son of Joseph”); Szabolcs Hajdu (“It’s Not the Time of My Life”); Joachim Lafosse (“After Love”); Sergei Loznitsa (“Austerlitz...
- 3/3/2017
- by adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)
- HollywoodChicago.com
Mubi's retrospective Film Is a Theorem: The Documentaries of Sergei Loznitsa is showing January 16 - March 15, 2017 in the United Kingdom and many other countries around the world.Landscape“Film is a theorem that has to arrive at a final point.”—Sergei Loznitsa It’s something of a critical cliché to say that a film or filmmaker is fixated on the notion of time; but there aren’t many contemporary filmmakers who fulfill that description as well as Belarus-born director Sergei Loznitsa. Although best known for his recent work—a trio of documentaries, Maidan (2014), The Event (2015) and Austerlitz (2016)—and a brief foray into fiction—My Joy (2010) and In the Fog (2012)—Loznitsa first started out with a string of documentary features and shorts, five of which are part of Mubi’s ongoing retrospective: “Film is a Theorem: The Documentaries of Sergei Loznitsa.” With a methodical, almost scientific rigor (indicative of Loznitsa’s...
- 2/26/2017
- MUBI
Throughout the year, film festivals pop up across the country highlighting everything from future Oscar nominees like Sundance or Toronto, to avant garde works that will likely make waves on the art scene, like Ann Arbor or Locarno. And that’s no different for non-fiction cinema.
One of the most intriguing festivals looking at documentary cinema is now nearing its conclusion, and has brought to light some truly superlative pieces of work. At NYC’s Museum of Modern Art, the museum’s latest installment of their Doc Fortnight series is about to conclude, and has included some great documentaries both new and old.
Opening the festival is one of its greatest discoveries. Entitled Machines, the film marks its New York premiere as part of this series, and is the debut film from documentarian Rahul Jain. An Indian/German/Finnish co-production, Machines centers around a large textile factory in Gujarat, India...
One of the most intriguing festivals looking at documentary cinema is now nearing its conclusion, and has brought to light some truly superlative pieces of work. At NYC’s Museum of Modern Art, the museum’s latest installment of their Doc Fortnight series is about to conclude, and has included some great documentaries both new and old.
Opening the festival is one of its greatest discoveries. Entitled Machines, the film marks its New York premiere as part of this series, and is the debut film from documentarian Rahul Jain. An Indian/German/Finnish co-production, Machines centers around a large textile factory in Gujarat, India...
- 2/22/2017
- by Joshua Brunsting
- CriterionCast
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) kicks off its 16th annual Doc Fortnight on Thursday, a 10-day festival that includes 20 feature-length non-fiction films and 10 documentary shorts. This year’s lineup includes four world premieres and a number of North American and U.S. premieres.
Read More: 2017 New Directors/New Films Announces Full Lineup, Including ‘Patti Cake$,’ ‘Beach Rats,’ ‘Menashe’ and More
The festival is far from the only major North American showcase for non-fiction cinema. Festivals ranging from Hot Docs to True/False have played key roles in the expanding documentary festival circuit. However, Doc Fortnight has maintained its own niche on the scene, by aiming to expose undiscovered stories and filmmakers, screening a range of documentaries from around the world and capturing the ways in which artists are pushing the boundaries of non-fiction filmmaking.
“It’s not an industry festival, there aren’t awards, and distributors aren’t all coming looking to buy,...
Read More: 2017 New Directors/New Films Announces Full Lineup, Including ‘Patti Cake$,’ ‘Beach Rats,’ ‘Menashe’ and More
The festival is far from the only major North American showcase for non-fiction cinema. Festivals ranging from Hot Docs to True/False have played key roles in the expanding documentary festival circuit. However, Doc Fortnight has maintained its own niche on the scene, by aiming to expose undiscovered stories and filmmakers, screening a range of documentaries from around the world and capturing the ways in which artists are pushing the boundaries of non-fiction filmmaking.
“It’s not an industry festival, there aren’t awards, and distributors aren’t all coming looking to buy,...
- 2/15/2017
- by Chris O'Falt and Graham Winfrey
- Indiewire
In some ways, 2016 looked good on the distribution front. Netflix and Amazon finally made a big splash, snatching up titles at major film festivals and causing bidding wars that resulted in things like Nate Parker’s The Birth of a Nation getting acquired for $17.5 million — and we all know the rest of the story. On the smaller side of things, Grasshopper Film launched this year with an impressive slate of titles that keeps growing, and we saw at least three films with 5-hour-plus runtimes get a theatrical run of some sort. And I haven’t even mentioned how Mubi is entering the distribution game, giving short-, medium-, and feature-length titles from the festival circuit a new life via their streaming platform.
But distribution is still in a transitional phase, and the influx of new buyers and options to get a film seen doesn’t guarantee that everything will be available outside of a festival screening.
But distribution is still in a transitional phase, and the influx of new buyers and options to get a film seen doesn’t guarantee that everything will be available outside of a festival screening.
- 12/28/2016
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
The Masked MonkeysThe cutting edge of cinema culture at this moment is not what’s premiering in competition at Cannes or picking up the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. Rather, it is at the quietly flourishing but deeply influential genre of film festival focusing on new and adventurous work in documentary filmmaking. More than any red carpet extravaganza, this type of festival is consistently challenging audiences to expand their understanding of how the art of cinema explores reality and how reality complicates moviemaking. Whether big, like Copenhagen’s Cph:dox, or smaller, like Missouri’s True/False Film Fest, these events go further than the traditional and staid vision of festivals devoted to documentary film, whose emphasis is above all on the camera as a bland tool to invisibly tell a nonfiction story, and instead present more closely curated programs that showcase the infinite nuance and complexity—not to mention shades...
- 11/29/2016
- MUBI
Sergei Loznitsa sets up his cameras at the sites of the Nazi death camps, to watch the behaviour of the visitors and ask how best to remember history
The title of Sergei Loznitsa’s mysterious, challenging, disturbing film is said by the director to be inspired by the 2001 novel by Wg Sebald, in which a character called Austerlitz, after an upbringing in Britain as a Kindertransport refugee, sees a Nazi propaganda film about the Theresienstadt camp and thinks that he recognises his mother. It is a book partly about the petrification and nullification of history created by official memorials. Of course, it has another meaning: the title looks in the first fraction of a second like “Auschwitz”. It is a linguistic trompe l’oeil. The horrors of the 20th century are receding into the dusty tomb of history, joining the battles of the 19th century: Auschwitz is a word that...
The title of Sergei Loznitsa’s mysterious, challenging, disturbing film is said by the director to be inspired by the 2001 novel by Wg Sebald, in which a character called Austerlitz, after an upbringing in Britain as a Kindertransport refugee, sees a Nazi propaganda film about the Theresienstadt camp and thinks that he recognises his mother. It is a book partly about the petrification and nullification of history created by official memorials. Of course, it has another meaning: the title looks in the first fraction of a second like “Auschwitz”. It is a linguistic trompe l’oeil. The horrors of the 20th century are receding into the dusty tomb of history, joining the battles of the 19th century: Auschwitz is a word that...
- 11/21/2016
- by Peter Bradshaw at the International Documentary film festival Amsterdam
- The Guardian - Film News
Heartstone and Norwegian film-makers win big in Lübeck; Austerlitz takes home Golden Dove at Leipzig.
Lübeck’s 58th Nordic Film Days (Nov 2-6) has become the latest successful stop for Icelandic filmmaker Gudmundur Arnar Gudmundsson’s Heartstone after premiering in the Venice Days in September and picking up three awards at Warsaw Film Festival last month.
Gudmundsson’s debut was awarded the €12,500 Ndr Film Prize by a jury including Swedish actress Inger Nilsson (who played the title role of Pippi Longstocking in the classic children’s films when she was nine years old), Munich-based producer Jörg Bundschuh (The Fencer) and film director Marc Brummund (Sanctuary), for a “feature film of special artistic quality”.
The intensely moving coming of age tale, which takes place over one summer at a remote fishing village in Iceland, is being handled by Berlin-based sales agent Films Boutique.
Three nods for Norway
Elsewhere, Norwegian filmmakers took home three awards from the largest Nordic...
Lübeck’s 58th Nordic Film Days (Nov 2-6) has become the latest successful stop for Icelandic filmmaker Gudmundur Arnar Gudmundsson’s Heartstone after premiering in the Venice Days in September and picking up three awards at Warsaw Film Festival last month.
Gudmundsson’s debut was awarded the €12,500 Ndr Film Prize by a jury including Swedish actress Inger Nilsson (who played the title role of Pippi Longstocking in the classic children’s films when she was nine years old), Munich-based producer Jörg Bundschuh (The Fencer) and film director Marc Brummund (Sanctuary), for a “feature film of special artistic quality”.
The intensely moving coming of age tale, which takes place over one summer at a remote fishing village in Iceland, is being handled by Berlin-based sales agent Films Boutique.
Three nods for Norway
Elsewhere, Norwegian filmmakers took home three awards from the largest Nordic...
- 11/7/2016
- by screen.berlin@googlemail.com (Martin Blaney)
- ScreenDaily
Heartstone and Norwegian film-makers win big in Lübeck; Austerlitz takes home Golden Dove at Leipzig.
Lübeck’s 58th Nordic Film Days (Nov 2-6) has become the latest successful stop for Icelandic filmmaker Gudmundur Arnar Gudmundsson’s Heartstone after premiering in the Venice Days in September and picking up three awards at Warsaw Film Festival last month.
Gudmundsson’s debut was awarded the €12,500 Ndr Film Prize by a jury including Swedish actress Inger Nilsson (who played the title role of Pippi Longstocking in the classic children’s films when she was nine years old), Munich-based producer Jörg Bundschuh (The Fencer) and film director Marc Brummund (Sanctuary), for a “feature film of special artistic quality”.
The intensely moving coming of age tale, which takes place over one summer at a remote fishing village in Iceland, is being handled by Berlin-based sales agent Films Boutique.
Three nods for Norway
Elsewhere, Norwegian filmmakers took home three awards from the largest Nordic...
Lübeck’s 58th Nordic Film Days (Nov 2-6) has become the latest successful stop for Icelandic filmmaker Gudmundur Arnar Gudmundsson’s Heartstone after premiering in the Venice Days in September and picking up three awards at Warsaw Film Festival last month.
Gudmundsson’s debut was awarded the €12,500 Ndr Film Prize by a jury including Swedish actress Inger Nilsson (who played the title role of Pippi Longstocking in the classic children’s films when she was nine years old), Munich-based producer Jörg Bundschuh (The Fencer) and film director Marc Brummund (Sanctuary), for a “feature film of special artistic quality”.
The intensely moving coming of age tale, which takes place over one summer at a remote fishing village in Iceland, is being handled by Berlin-based sales agent Films Boutique.
Three nods for Norway
Elsewhere, Norwegian filmmakers took home three awards from the largest Nordic...
- 11/7/2016
- by screen.berlin@googlemail.com (Martin Blaney)
- ScreenDaily
Below you will find our favorite films of the 41st Toronto International Film Festival, as well as an index of our coverage.Top Picksfernando F. Crocei.Toni Erdmann, A Quiet Passion, Elle, (re)Assignment, Justin Timberlake + The Tennessee KidsII.Voyage of Time, Moonlight, I, Daniel Blake; Austerrlitz, J: Beyond FlamencoIII.Salt and Fire, Hello Destroyer, Land of the GodsDANIEL Kasmani.As Without So Within, Certain Women, NocturamaII.Cilaos, Yourself and Yours, Incantati, Children of Lir, Justin Timberlake + The Tennessee KidsIII.Into the Inferno, Untitled, Daguerrotype, Venus Delta, Safari, The HedonistsIV.The Dreamed Path, Manchester by the Sea, 350 Mya, Hema Hema: Sing Me a Song While I Wait, Kékszakállú, Foyer, The Dreamed OnesV.Ember, Salt and Fire, (re)AssignmentMICHAEL Sicinskii.SingularityII.Aquarius, AusterlitzIII.025 Red Sunset, Cilaos, Indefinite Pitch, Luna e Santur, Mimosas, Nocturama, SieranevadaBLAKE Williamsi.Nocturama, As Without So Withinii.The Dreamed Path, Yourself and Yours, Burning mountains that spew flame,...
- 9/28/2016
- MUBI
This was a busy year at Tiff, where I was a juror for Fipresci, helping to award a prize for best premiere in the Discovery section. Not only did this mean that some other films had to take a back burner—sadly, I did not see Eduardo Williams’ The Human Surge—but my writing time was a bit compromised as well. Better late than never? That is for you, Gentle Reader, to decide.Austerlitz (Sergei Loznitsa, Germany)So basic in the telling—a record of several days’ worth of visitors mostly to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienberg, Germany—Austerlitz is a film that in many ways exemplifies the critical theory of Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin. What is the net effect for humanity when, faced with the drive to remember the unfathomable, we employ the grossly inadequate tools at our disposal?Austerlitz takes its name from W. G. Sebald’s final novel.
- 9/20/2016
- MUBI
Hema Hema: Sing Me a Song While I WaitDear Fern,I'm so glad we could share the sheer exuberant pleasure of Justin Timberlake + The Tennessee Kids on an IMAX screen that gave J.T. the 30 foot high stature of a god: eat your heart out, Leni Riefenstahl! As you note, this infectious concert documentary by Jonathan Demme resoundingly describes Timberlake's appeal in thundering audio-visual terms: boyish charisma, guileless performing pleasure, and a remarkable sharing of his musical credit (so much of it studio-finessed, optimized of appropriation of other music and styles) with a veritable community of producers, musicians, backing vocalists, dancers and more. There's one incredible shot (among many) in this beautiful film of the entire collection of performers playing a song that's frankly mediocre—but the camera tracks along the whole band on stage, Timberlake one of many, all of whose smiles are genuine, all who sing along...
- 9/19/2016
- MUBI
MoonlightDear Danny,As I type this final entry in a state of literal suspension—aboard my flight home, between a rainy Canadian morning and a muggy Californian afternoon—I begin to wonder whether my festival choices were too safe. I read your takes on experimental works with pleasure, as well as a hint of envy toward your adventurousness. My sole excursion this year into Wavelengths territory was Sergei Loznitsa’s Austerlitz, which I admired more than you. Concentration-camp tourism understandably dismays the sober director of My Joy, yet there’s a mordant edge to his unbroken views of visitors, including teeming long-shots that resemble Jacques Tati frames. People amble through these zones of unspeakable suffering as if at a particularly prosaic mall, guides barely hang on to their groups’ attention (“Folks, could you not eat in here, please?”), knowledge is shaky and selfie-sticks are ubiquitous. Still, I thought Loznitsa’s...
- 9/19/2016
- MUBI
With the jury winners announced this past weekend (see at the bottom), the 73rd Venice International Film Festival has now come to an end. As always, it was a strong kick-off to the fall festivals, with some premieres of dramas that we’ll see over the next few months, as well as a great many that won’t arrive until next year (or perhaps later, pending distribution). We’ve wrapped up the festival by selecting our 9 favorite films, followed by our complete coverage. Check out everything below and let us know what you’re most looking forward to.
Austerlitz (Sergei Loznitsa)
Having experimented with feature-length fiction films, shorts, and archival-footage documentaries in the course of his career, Sergei Loznitsa’s output since his 2014 Ukrainian crisis documentary Maidan has both garnered him greater acclaim than before and zeroed in on cinema as a collectively generated form. – Tommaso T. (full review)
Hacksaw Ridge...
Austerlitz (Sergei Loznitsa)
Having experimented with feature-length fiction films, shorts, and archival-footage documentaries in the course of his career, Sergei Loznitsa’s output since his 2014 Ukrainian crisis documentary Maidan has both garnered him greater acclaim than before and zeroed in on cinema as a collectively generated form. – Tommaso T. (full review)
Hacksaw Ridge...
- 9/12/2016
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
Exclusive: Deals in Germany, Latin American, more for Austerlitz director’s next film; producers secure France deal.
Wild Bunch has concluded a string of pre-sales on Sergei Loznitsa’s new drama A Gentle Creature, which recently wrapped shoot in Eastern Europe and is set for a 2017 release.
The feature — loosely inspired by a Fyodor Dostoyevsky 1876 short story (which has already prompted films by Alexander Borisov, Robert Bresson, Mani Kaul and Raphael Nadjari) - charts the story of a woman who travels from the outskirts of Russia to a mysterious prison in order to find out what has happened to her incarcerated husband.
Grand Film, which previously bought the director’s documentaries Maidan and The Event, will release in Germany, Palmera International will distribute in Latin and Central America, Fabula in Turkey, Against Gravity in Poland, Seven in Greece, Alambique in Portugal, McF in former Yugoslavia, Vertigo in Hungary, Film Europe in Czech Republic and Encore for Airlines...
Wild Bunch has concluded a string of pre-sales on Sergei Loznitsa’s new drama A Gentle Creature, which recently wrapped shoot in Eastern Europe and is set for a 2017 release.
The feature — loosely inspired by a Fyodor Dostoyevsky 1876 short story (which has already prompted films by Alexander Borisov, Robert Bresson, Mani Kaul and Raphael Nadjari) - charts the story of a woman who travels from the outskirts of Russia to a mysterious prison in order to find out what has happened to her incarcerated husband.
Grand Film, which previously bought the director’s documentaries Maidan and The Event, will release in Germany, Palmera International will distribute in Latin and Central America, Fabula in Turkey, Against Gravity in Poland, Seven in Greece, Alambique in Portugal, McF in former Yugoslavia, Vertigo in Hungary, Film Europe in Czech Republic and Encore for Airlines...
- 9/12/2016
- by andreas.wiseman@screendaily.com (Andreas Wiseman)
- ScreenDaily
Sergei Loznitsa’s Austerlitz, a record of tourists visiting the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, could be loglined as a movie about why it’s a transparently bad idea to take selfies at Holocaust sites, but that would be reductive and far too banal a point to need making at feature length. The film is in low-contrast black-and-white, and how could it be in color? The visual language of extant Holocaust footage is B&W, so Loznitsa maintains visual and historical continuity. The opening movement is not that far off from, of all things, In the City of Sylvia, with long shots of tourists milling about in multiple compressed planes the […]...
- 9/11/2016
- by Vadim Rizov
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
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