Ioncinema

Yorgos Lanthimos was rumored to be circling the project, but we now learn that Rose Glass will be directing My Year of Rest and Relaxation – Ottessa Moshfegh’s novel on emotional numbness, privilege and self-destruction set just before 9/11 in the Upper East Side. This would be Rose Glass’s third feature film after 2019’s Saint Maud (preemed at TIFF) and 2024’s Love Lies Bleeding (preemed at Sundance Film Festival). No word yet on the producers or casting but we imagine we’ll be hearing more shortly.

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If the movie-going month where we are seeking refuge in an air-conditioned multiplex this July, beyond the usual mix of film festival duds and major event films like The Odyssey, there are also a handful of genuinely offbeat independent gems. Three particularly strange, singular and worthwhile titles stand out from the crowd. Barrio Triste from Stillz announces a whole other kind of found footage fiction auteurism, The Kidnapping of Arabella by Carolina Cavalli offers an offbeat and absurd recipe for nations of identity while firs time filmmaker Georgia Bernstein assures we’ll come close to unexpected climaxing with her kooky Night Nurse.… Read the rest

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Costa Brava, Lebanon‘s Mounia Akl, Everybody Loves Jeanne‘s Celine Devaux and The Mysterious Gaze Of The Flamingo‘s Diego Céspedes are among the baker’s dozen projects selected for the upcoming Oxbelly writers’ lab retreat. From a whopping 2000 plus submissions, and a Greece backdrop, this year’s retreat will include advisors Richard Linklater, Barry Jenkins, Lulu Wang, Annemarie Jacir, Charlie Kaufman, Pawel Pawlikowski, and Radu Jude. Mounia Akl will be there with Hold Me (If You Want) — we discussed the project with here at the Atlas Labs at the Marrakech Film Festival. Diego Céspedes just completed jury duty in Cannes and is now set to develop what will certainly be a queer friendly project in The Case Of The Boy Who Lost His Heart.… Read the rest

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Qatar’s Doha Film Institute has announced the recipients of its 2026 Spring Grants — as usual we focus on fiction feature film projects in three groupings – MENA – Feature Narrative – Development, MENA – Feature Narrative – Production and Non-MENA – Feature Narrative – Post-Production which awards several Cannes Film Festival offerings. Of the projects that have caught our attention we find that Jessy Moussallem‘s short to feature project Faux Bijoux is picking up steam, while Àlex Lora Cercós with The Rift and Seemab Gul with Haven of Hope are likely being readied for autumn prestige film fest circuit.… Read the rest

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With a trio of shorts under her belt in Bea, Seriously (2021), Merci, Poppy (2024) and F*ck That Guy (2024) tri-state area now NYC based filmmaker Hanna Gray Organschi continues working with themes surrounding stubborn female protagonists with a feature film debut — a rare project that was invited to three major Sundance Institute labs. Here is everything we know so far (American Indie Edition) for … Hanna Gray Organschi’s Rubber Hut.

2024 was a massive lift-off moment for the project with early development support from Sundance participating at the Screenwriters, Directors and Producers Labs, with additional aid from Gotham Week and being selected for The Gotham/Rotterdam Producing Lab.… Read the rest

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In his three film filmography, Hungarian filmmaker Gábor Reisz has offered a social commentary mostly irony over deadpan, to explore folks who are often adrift in a confusing world, where social tensions mount and auds are offered insight thru different perspectives. 2014’s For Some Inexplicable Reason (Karlovy Vary International Film Festival selection) was followed by 2018’s Bad Poems and his 2023 breakout Explanation for Everything – the top prize winner from the Orizzonti section at the Venice Film Festival. His highly anticipated fourth feature just wrapped up this year. Here is everything we know so far for … Gabor Reisz’s Ember végez.… Read the rest

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Fresh off the acclaimed Berlinale premiere of his third feature, Rose (hands down was among read our glowing review), Austrian filmmaker Markus Schleinzer is now piecing together what could be quite an avant-garde biographic treatment of a singular artist’s rise within New York’s East Village art scene of the 1970s. Klaus Nomi will be the subject of his fourth feature film with Christian Friedel (who is also a musician in his own right) taking on the cult icon figure. Screen Daily reports Schubert’s Johannes Schubert will be producing the project which received a good chunk of change from the Vienna Film Fund.… Read the rest

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Following its Un Certain Regard premiere at Cannes, Manuela Martelli’s sophomore feature The Meltdown (El Deshielo) has landed at Kino Lorber, marking a renewed collaboration between the distributor and the Chilean filmmaker. The idea will be to showcase the film at some fests, before a 2027 drop. At this point it’s too early to determine whether this will be Chile’s Oscar pick. Maya O’Rourke, Maia Rae Domagala, Saskia Rosendahl, Jakub Gierszal, Paulina Urrutia and Mauricio Pešutić star. The film was produced by Alejandra García for Ronda Cine, Alex C. Lo for Cinema Inutile and Andrés Wood for Wood Producciones. We were at the world premiere – you can see the intro below.… Read the rest

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Ordeal by Innocence: Loznitsa Mines the Terrors of Naïveté

A good man is hard to find, and if one were to be found, he’s likely wet behind the ears. So begins a retrospective parable in Two Prosecutors, the first narrative feature from perennial documentarian Sergei Loznitsa since 2018’s galvanizing Donbass (read review). His latest is an adaptation of a short story by Russian writer Georgy Demidov, a physicist who later served his own lengthy stint as a political prisoner only a year after this narrative’s setting. In comparison to Loznitsa’s previous narrative films, his latest happens to be his most straightforward, arguably simple.… Read the rest

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Some Cannes Film Festival alumni in Kira Kovalenko, Monia Chokri and Camille Vidal-Naquet have landed important coin for their upcoming feature film projects via Eurimages. This round has supported 33 co-productions, including three documentaries and four animations, for a total amount of €10.2m. Kovalenko premiered her feature debut Unclenching The Fists at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard section where it won the top prize. She had been working on an English language project in ‘Holy Fools,’ but has now put her focus on Heavens Don’t Care – a France-Belgium and Armenia co-production. After significant amount of time away from feature films, Vidal-Naquet’s sophomore follow up is titled Aref.… Read the rest

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