Ioncinema

Currently in production in Toronto, we now know the identity of who will play Mrs. Greenwood in the longest gestating feature film adaptation for Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar directed by Sarah Polley. Variety reports that Carey Mulligan joins Billie Eilish in what will be a weighty award-friendly project for the Focus Features (who have had several films with Mulligan at the forefront) folks in autumn of 2027. Also worthy of note is that Connor Storrie looks to have secured a smaller role in the film. As far back as Henry Jaglom in the 70s, the likes of Julia Stiles and Kirsten Dunst kicked the tires on the project.… Read the rest

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Projects from Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Ecuador, Lebanon, Malaysia, Philippines, Senegal, and Turkey and up-and-comers Ana Cristina Barragán, Amanda Nell Eu and Lara Zeidan are part of the fortunate filmmakers to receive coin for their feature film projects via the Berlinale World Cinema Fund (now in its 43rd session). Of the nine projects highlights include Ecuador’s Barragán’s Amapola – which was part of the 2025 Venice Gap-Financing Market and may premiere at the upcoming Venice Film Festival. The Malaysia filmmaker behind Tiger Stripes has been lining up Lotus Feet for what will likely be a 2026 shoot. Set in 1938, Eu’s sophomore feature is about a second wife who struggles to adapt to life within a powerful family on a remote rubber estate, ultimately turning to violence to reclaim autonomy over her own body.… Read the rest

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Meet the next generation of American indie producers in fiction and the docu field. Today the Sundance Institute announced the producers selected for the upcoming Producers Labs (narrative it actually began today until the 19th) and the documentary producers then have their time in the sun from July 20th to the 25th. Advisors heading off to Clearmont, Wyoming to join the cohorts are Feature Film Producers Lab people Allison Rose Carter (I Love Boosters), Deniese Davis (One of Them Days), Eugene Pikulin (Bruns Brennan Berry Pikulin & Jacobs PC), Lucas Joaquin (Death of a Unicorn), and Peter Saraf (The Farewell). The Documentary Producers Lab advisors are Andrea Meditch (Grizzly Man), Gema Juárez Allen (The Castle), Rémi Grellety (Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat), Darcy McKinnon (Natchez), and Lance Kramer (Holding Liat).… Read the rest

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Known as Paulie Bleeker in Juno, Nick Twisp in Youth in Revolt and Scott Pilgrim in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, for two decades plus, we’ve had minimalist deadpan delivery and anxious naturalism in Michael Cera cinema with notable turns in films by Sebastián Silva and Ruben Fleischer. Cera now moves behind the camera for his directorial debut. Here is everything we know so far (American Indie Edition) for … Michael Cera‘s Love Is Not The Answer.

Casting announcement was first made back in May of last year with production set for November moving into December back in Ottawa, Canada.… Read the rest

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A provocative new voice in British cinema, Luna Carmoon moved into feature films with a bang via Hoard (read review), her audacious debut starring Joseph Quinn and Hayley Squires premiered in the International Critics’ Week section of the 2023 Venice Film Festival. Not wasting much time putting her sophomore feature together, her latest was flying low on the radar. Including her short films of the past decade, her cinema is about the lingering scars of inherited trauma, memory and loss, working-class lives shaped by exclusion, and the marriage between desire and decay in sensory storytelling. Here is everything we know so far for … Luna Carmoon‘s To Make Ends Meat.… Read the rest

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What will surely be a flurry of festival announcements in the coming week ahead, we now shift our attention to the 2026 fall festival season. With Toronto serving as the primary focus, we’ve assembled fifty titles that could potentially make their world premieres at TIFF, though the list naturally overlaps with films likely to surface at the 83rd Venice Film Festival, the 52nd Telluride Film Festival, and the 74th San Sebastián International Film Festival.

As always, the fall corridor has anticipated titles migrating between Venice, Telluride, Toronto and San Sebastián before ultimately finding their place on the awards-season calendar. We’ve avoided discussing films that we firmly believe are Lido competition selections first (e.g.… Read the rest

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The Venice Film Festival have announced the short films that will be part of the competition section and we find Italian illustrator Virginia Mori, Columbia Film program grad and Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film profiled Annie Ning, American-born Irish actress Saoirse Ronan first foray into filmmaking and Between the Temples‘ Nathan Silver offers (out of competition) an eight minute docu titled Sounds From Home. Here are the selected films:

ANGELO AZZURRO
by TOMMASO ACQUARONE
with Thomas Di Federico, Pietro Paolo Marziani, Vida Tunguz / Italy / 20’

TESZTPÁLYA (TEST TRACK)
by LYDIA CORNETT
with Hunor Zsédely and the Zsédely family / Hungary, UK, USA / 15’

MOTHMAMA
by JESSICA DI COSTA
with Gabriella Hirschson, Audley Anderson / Australia / 12’

UNA FORTALEZA (A FORTRESS)
by ALBA GAVIRAGHI
with Antonia Pereira, Francisca Gavilán, Catalina Huerta, Daniela López, Luciana Sobarzo / Chile / 14’

LOS PODERES
by SALIM JALLER
with Daniel Ochoa, Victoria Escobar / Colombia, France / 20’

HEAD OF A CAMEL
by SHANNON LEE
Animation / USA / 4’

ΤΡΟΠΙΚΌΣ ΤΟΥ ΘΡΗΝΟΎΤΟΣ ΓΚΈΚΟ (THE TROPIC OF THE MOURNING GECKO)
by STAVROS MARKOULAKIS
with Dimitris Lagoutis, Amaury Foucher, Anastasia Galerou Vlassi / Greece, France, Netherlands / 19’

SASSO, CARTA, FORBICI (ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS)
by VIRGINIA MORI
Animation / Italy, France / 9’

BLEU AU LOIN (DISTANT BLUE)
by AMIR HOUSHANG MOEIN
Animation / France / 10’

MAN MADE LAKE
by ANNIE NING
with Lou Justine Moua Nédellec, Cao Ciong Zhang, Jing Ji Liu, Nola Kalata / USA, China / 17’

QUELQUES INSTANTS DE BONHEUR (A FEW MOMENTS OF HAPPINESS)
by SHADEN SAFIEDDINE TAZI
Documentary / France, UK / 18’

ТИША (SILENCE)
by PAVLO SHPEGUN
with Hryhoriy Naumov, Iolanta Bohdiun / Ukraine / 14’

PAPER PLANE
by SAOIRSE RONAN
with Martha Malone, Clare Dunne, Tim Creed / UK, Ireland / 15’

OUT OF COMPETITION

IL SENSO DELLA TERRA (THE SENSE OF EARTH)
by ALESSANDRO INGARIA, SIMONE MASSI
with Valentina Carnelutti, Sebastiano Kiniger, Beatrice Elena Festi, Shukuru Zanon / Italy / 14’

SOUNDS FROM HOME
by NATHAN SILVER
Documentary / France, USA / 8’

 … Read the rest

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Making more and more inroads into auteur world cinema with the likes of Fernando Eimbcke, Michel Franco and Lance Hammer, Greenwich Entertainment have now completed some post-Cannes shopping landing the remarkable feature debut and Cannes Critics’ Week winner in Zou Jing‘s A Girl Unknown. Winner of the FIPRESCI Prize and the Gan Foundation Award, this just won the CineVision competition prize for Best International Film by an Emerging Director. This could play at TIFF, NYFF and several regional film fests before it’s eventual theatrical release. We had the chance to speak to the filmmaker while in Cannes – you can find that interview below.… Read the rest

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Fighting off the selection committees for Venice, Toronto and San Sebastian, artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro unveiled the line-up for the 79th edition of Locarno Film Festival — which opens with Gagarine tandem Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh’s magical realist drama Les Yeux Verts which stars Anamaria Vartolomei and Sayyid El Alami (Block Pass).

Among the seventeen films selected to compete for the Golden Leopard, after premiering A Traveler’s Needs at the Berlinale the always prolific Hong Sang-soo returns to Switzerland with Nowhere to Lay My Eyes which stars Kim Minhee, Choi Myeonggil, Kwon Haehyo, Shin Seokho and Park Miso.… Read the rest

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After Ira Sachs brought the Croisette The Man I Love, the story of a gay stage actor navigating 1980s New York while confronting an AIDS diagnosis, Simon Stone explored similar territory with a biographical drama centered on actor Ian Charleson, who privately battled the disease at the height of his career. Variety reports that the filmmaker behind The Dig and The Woman in Cabin 10 is expected to unveil Elsinore during the upcoming fall festival season with Focus Features grabbing the film for what will be an awards run. Telluride, Venice and Toronto might all be in the cards. The project is toplined by Andrew Scott and Olivia Colman.… Read the rest

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