Ioncinema

Set up in 2023, Marché du Film’s initiative connects private investors with alluring high-end film projects and today they’ve unveiled the eight lucky filmmakers (a drop from previous years that highlighted ten projects) who’ll get to pitch their upcoming projects. Naturally we find some recent Cannes alumni talent in this group of eight.

We find The Settlers / Chilean filmmaker Felipe Gálvez bringing Impunity – a spy thriller set in the late 1990s around the arrest of dictator Augusto Pinochet. Romanian filmmaker Emanuel Pârvu (his Three Kilometres to the End of the World was a surprise competition entry in 2024 (read review) – he shores up with his fourth feature project.… Read the rest

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In what seems to be an exploration of duality, Katarina Zhu steps both in front of and behind the camera to craft a portrait of connections and examines the wafer-thin boundary between online identity and real-life presence. Multi-hyphenated artist, actor, filmmaker and producer Tristan Scott-Behrends has been part of the American indie echo system for some time now Bunnylovr follows in the footsteps of last year’s Tendaberry – promoting new female filmmakers. The film would claim a quartet of prizes at the U.S in Progress and not that much time after – it was selected for U.S. Dramatic competition at Sundance next month.… Read the rest

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A cinema that is lyrical, autobiographical, and deeply attentive to the emotional textures of family and youth, with the landscape allowing for her players to explore moments of transition, Dominga Sotomayor’s cinema is one that drifts and observes intimacy and sensorial storytelling. The Chilean filmmaker first debuted in 2012 with Thursday Till Sunday preeming at Rotterdam (it won the Tiger Award), her sophomore feature Mar was selected for the 2015 Berlinale. 2018’s Too Late to Die Young landed her the Leopard for Best Direction at the Locarno Film Festival, while her first feature in Cannes was a short in the anthology film The Year of the Everlasting Storm (2021).… Read the rest

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We have long admired the cinema of Brazilian filmmaker Gabriel Mascaro. His films amplify the social frictions embedded within systems that quietly erode personal freedom, crafting works that feel both observational and subtly political. Working with themes of freedom and institutional control, aging with dignity in a society that often renders the elderly invisible, and the idea that self-determination and community — even unexpected solidarity — can coexist, in The Blue Trail (O Último Azul), Denise Weinberg plays Tereza, inhabiting a sliver of dystopia as a woman who first confronts, and then begins to navigate her way out of, the rules imposed upon her by society — revealing self-determination in its purest form.… Read the rest

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They say no news is good news, but in this case a little news goes a long way: Chicoutimi-based filmmaker Sébastien Pilote appears to be gearing up for his next project, once again with his muse Gabriel Arcand. In a friendly chat promoting the recent 30th anniversary edition of festival REGARD, Pilote mentioned he is outlining a new film project that feels like the old guard at life’s apogee.

A film that sounds tonally closer to his first pair of films, this is about a theatre critic who loses his job, regresses and has a chip on his shoulder. Pilote’s feature debut Le Vendeur was selected for the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, and his sophomore feature in 2013’s Le Démantèlement was a Cannes Critic’s Week selection.… Read the rest

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It has now been a full two months since Sundance Film Festival closed out its final run in Park City, and so far only four titles from the U.S. Dramatic Competition have secured distribution deals. While Carousel, The Friend’s House Is Here, The Musical, Run Amok, Take Me Home and Union County are still looking for homes, three distributors brought out their chequebooks for 2026 calendar release grabs. Comparatively, the slow sales match the previous years — there has been a bit of a decline in sales since post-pandemic 2022 and as we previously pointed out, films are now reaching the market with different game plans from traditional buys to DIY strategies.… Read the rest

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It what might be considered one of those smart Cannes Film Festival competition pre-buys, Variety reports that the folks at MUBI have landed North America (plus other territories) rights to Andrey Zvyagintsev‘s highly anticipated Palme d’Or buzz title Minotaur – the comeback film from the Russian filmmaker who was so gravely ill that he was hospitalized for almost an entire year post pandemic. As we know, this project bypassed What Happens/Jupiter, and was written alongside Semen Liashenko. Production took place last September and he re-teamed with cinematographer Mikhail Krichman on what is being considered another piece of (music to our ears) bleak cinema.… Read the rest

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Crimes of the Future: Mascaro Envisions Trouble Ahead

“Getting old ain’t no place for sissies,” a quote often attributed to Bette Davis (or similar variations of the sentiment) easily applies to The Blue Trail, Brazilian director Gabriel Mascaro’s fourth feature which depicts a near-future world where the elderly are conscripted against their will to an isolated concentration camp so the country’s youth can more easily focus on working. While darkly comedic in tone, it’s also a life changing odyssey for its central protagonist, a spry seventy-seven-year-old woman who is unwilling to obey these newly imposed orders. Pleasurably mordant in its critique of governmental propaganda disguising violence and inhumanity, Mascaro showcases lead Daniela Weinberg (of Armando Praça’s Greta, 2017) as a witty, resourceful woman who is far from ready to walk gentle into that good night.… Read the rest

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“Tracking Shot” is a top of month featurette here on IONCINEMA.com that looks at the projects that are moments away from lensing. The first wave of titles that’ll move into production this month are gunning for a 2027 Cannes Film Festival drop here we find some likely candidates with just that aim. Continuing in their Cannes trajectories and each launching into their fifth feature films with starry casts, we find Alice Rohrwacher‘s book-to-film project — and adaptation of Audrey Niffenegger’s novel Three Incestuous Sisters which will likely explore notions of revenge while Justine Triet returns to huis clos mode with Fonda – with themes of grief and obsession in the DNA.… Read the rest

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Claire Denis will receive the Carrosse d’Or Award on May 13, 2026, in Cannes, during the Directors’ Fortnight opening ceremony. Established in 2002, this award honors a filmmaker whose freedom of vision and strength of direction have profoundly influenced cinema. Kelly Reichardt and Todd Haynes are some of our recent favorite recipients.

“From Chocolat to Stars at Noon, from Beau Travail to 35 rhums, from Trouble Every Day to High Life, your cinema has continually explored territories – geographic, intimate and political – where relations of domination, desire, memory and exile are played out. Your work is marked by a rare attentiveness to bodies, silences and gestures, to what circulates between beings rather than to what is spoken.… Read the rest

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