Ioncinema

As expected there was going to be a larger Cannes (including Quinzaine) cross-over than a Venice presence at this year’s NYFF. While the Palme d’Or winner will be headed to Telluride and TIFF only, gems such as The Diary of a Chambermaid (Radu Jude), The Dreamed Adventure (Valeska Grisebach), Everytime (Sandra Wollner) and La Gradiva (Marine Atlan) are sticking their flagpole in NYC. The Main Slate selections confirm the items heading (and not heading) to Telluride such as Markus Schleinzer’s Rose hitting Colorado and Lee Chang-dong‘s Possible Love sticking to a Venice-TIFF-NYFF showcase. We have a double dose of Hong Sangsoo — he’ll naturally be holding his North American premieres in NYC, while A24 Chris Rock‘s Misty Green is a legit must watch according to Artistic Director Dennis Lim.… Read the rest

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As expected there was going to be a larger Cannes (including Quinzaine) cross-over than a Venice presence at this year’s NYFF. While the Palme d’Or winner will be headed to Telluride and TIFF only, gems such as The Diary of a Chambermaid (Radu Jude), The Dreamed Adventure (Valeska Grisebach), Everytime (Sandra Wollner) and La Gradiva (Marine Atlan) are sticking their flagpole in NYC. The Main Slate selections confirm the items heading (and not heading) to Telluride such as Markus Schleinzer’s Rose hitting Colorado and Lee Chang-dong‘s Possible Love sticking to a Venice-TIFF-NYFF showcase. We have a double dose of Hong Sangsoo — he’ll naturally be holding his North American premieres in NYC, while A24 Chris Rock‘s Misty Green is a legit must watch according to Artistic Director Dennis Lim.… Read the rest

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Programming-wise, we expected a bit more of a copy-and-paste approach from Venice to Toronto this year. Instead, documentary programmer Thom Powers largely prioritized world premieres and Canuck female filmmakers, passing over several filmmakers whose latest works are headed to the Lido. TIFF won’t be seeing alluring docu titles by Michael Dweck & Gregory Kershaw, Victor Kossakovsky, Julia Loktev, Luke Lorentzen, Dylan Southern & Will Lovelace, and Wim Wenders. What we do have is a trio of North American premieres of Alex Gibney, Sophie Fiennes and Barbara Kopple being complimented by the likes of Ashley Duong (Ba’s Book), Carol Nguyen (Still Night, Burning House) and Sophie Deraspe (The Final Act) with the welcomed return of Rebeca Huntt who slayed the market with Beba back in 2021 who arrives with Rapinoe – about the star punk attitude U.S.… Read the rest

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The International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR)’s Hubert Bals Fund (HBF) has unveiled the 20 projects to receive a little coin help to develop their next feature film projects and among the filmmakers we find Dominican filmmaker Nelson Carlo de los Santos Arias, Mongolia filmmaker Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir and Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy among the recipients. Formerly titled Radioactive when we reported on the project in June, after multiple different project attempts and a full scale war, Slaboshpytskiy is indeed on course toward his long-awaited sophomore feature film with Deus Ex Machina. Nelson Carlo de los Santos Arias who saw his Berlinale preemed Pepe break out in 2024 (read ★★★★ review) is now working on Te Vienen a Quitar Tus Congos – an odyssey about modernity that traces a line between the Spanish Empire across the Caribbean.… Read the rest

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A sprinkling of Cannes, Locarno and Venice with a major awards contender from Sundance (and Directors’ Fornight) in Once Upon a Time in Harlem are among the eleven feature film selections in the Wavelengths programme, Curated by Andréa Picard, we find Quinzaine selected items by Lisandro Alonso and Radu Jude coming with La libertad doble and The Diary of a Chambermaid. Denis Côté showcases his Locarno selected Nobody’s Violence. Mariano Llinás nears the five hour mark with Lido selected Life of Jorge Luis Borges. Here are the selections:

Wavelengths Features
At Night | Beatrice Gibson | United Kingdom, France – North American Premiere
La libertad doble | Lisandro Alonso | Chile, Argentina, Luxembourg, Germany, United Kingdom – North American Premiere
Everything Else is Noise (Lo demás es ruido) | Nicolás Pereda | Germany, Canada, Mexico – North American Premiere
Life of Jorge Luis Borges (Biografía de Jorge Luis Borges) | Mariano Llinás | Argentina – North American Premiere
London | Sebastian Brameshuber | Austria – North American Premiere
My Wife Cries (Meine Frau Weint) | Angela Schanelec | Germany, France – North American Premiere
Nobody’s Violence (Violence du corps de l’autre) | Denis Côté | Canada – North American Premiere
Once Upon a Time in Harlem | William Greaves, David Greaves | USA – Canadian Premiere
The Black Box is Orange | Yuula Benivolski | Canada – World Premiere
The Diary of a Chambermaid (Le journal d’une femme de chambre) | Radu Jude | France, Romania -North American Premiere
The Remotes | John Torres | Philippines – World Premiere

… Read the rest

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Loads of savoury Cannes Film Festival titles, two dozen world premiere items, with some Venice Film Festival notables from Muayad Alayan, Rami Kodeih, Yonfan, May el-Toukhy, Manuel Wetscher and Rubaiyat Hossain are part of the line-up for the Centerpiece TIFF selections. Cannes award winners in Zou Jing‘s A Girl Unknown, Marie-Clementine Dusabejambo‘s Ben’Imana, Abinash Bikram Shah‘s Elephants in the Fog, Sandra Wollner‘s Everytime, Louis Clichy‘s Iron Boy, Marine Atlan‘s La Gradiva and Valeska Grisebach‘s The Dreamed Adventure will have North American premieres. Several of these will be headed NYFF shortly after.… Read the rest

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Some Monday sleuthing from the folks at World of Reel again pin points to a totally under tha radar project mounted by David Lowery — who might be returning to his distinctly micro-indie independent filmmaking roots with a more intimate, small-scale production a la A Ghost Story. Filmed in Italy, Euro-flavored cast headlined by Noémie Merlant, Isabella Rossellini, and Mark Strong appear to be the main trio in Poor Clare. A 2027 drop date is in the cards – — we currently await for the synopsis and producers that (most likely includes Toby Halbrooks and James M. Johnston) boarded the project.… Read the rest

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Every so often, cinema offers a glimpse into the experience of living with a speech impediment—one of my favorite portrayals being the chaotic struggle of Steve Buscemi’s character in Fargo. Part of a Los Angeles based collective Video Expert, in Sabrina Greco‘s feature debut, the micro-indie and mostly nocturnal Lockjaw, Rayna (Blu Hunt) embarks on a public comeback. Her journey is complicated not just by having her jaw wired shut, but by the mechanisms and mannerisms she exhibits in social settings. I had the chance to speak to Sabrina Greco in Wroclaw. [Update: Magenta Edge Films are releasing Lockjaw on August 8th.… Read the rest

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A Pulitzer Prize winner and MacArthur Fellowship winner before she decided to move behind the camera, after Kelly Reichardt and Eliza Hittman, we add American playwright turned filmmaker Annie Baker to the list of filmmakers find hidden drama in ordinary life. Only one film into her filmography, Janet Planet premiered at Telluride Film Festival ands NYFF and showcased that she has a penchant for connection, observation and loneliness. A New York Film Critics Circle’s award winner for Best First Film, the debut also received noms for Best First Feature, Best First Screenplay, and Best Cinematography at the Indie Spirit Awards. We look forward to her sophomore feature.… Read the rest

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Known for working in themes of emotional or physical isolation featuring pockets of people (sometimes ordinary Austrians) with his fiction and docu film POVs looking at hidden obsessions, hypocrisies, religious extremism, and sexual desires — there is a beautiful ick factor to the cinema of master filmmaker Ulrich Seidl. He began in the 90s with docu cinema until his 2001 break out film Dog Days won the Grand Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival – he would revisit the Lido several times over. 2017’s Import Export brought him to the Cannes Film Festival for the first of his two trips, and so after the Paradise trilogy he would then offer more docu cinema until returning to the world of fiction with Wicked Games being split up into two films in the same year with the 2022 Berlinale preemed Rimini (read review) and then the San Sebastián showcased Sparta.… Read the rest

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