Author: CWB News Department

The 20th annual South East European Film Festival #SEEfest (seefilmla.org), co-presented by ELMA, foundation for European Languages and Movies in America, is bringing to Los Angeles U.S. premieres, European talent and an Industry Accelerator with panels and workshops from April 30 – May 7. The festival will showcase over 50 movies from the culturally rich area of East and South-East Europe. Opening the festival on April 30th with a red carpet gala at the Writers Guild Theater in Beverly Hills (135 S. Doheny Dr, in Beverly Hills) will be the Los Angeles premiere of Bogdan Mureșanu’s Romanian tour-de-force, “THE NEW…

In a recent success for Vietnamese media, Skyline Media’s box-office hit and family dramedey, The Ancestral Home, has been set for a May 9 release date in North American theaters via Eastern Edge Films, per Variety. The Ancestral Home has already risen to become Vietnam’s highest-grossing spiritual film with a $10 million box office, and has received 3 million admissions since it’s February 21 premiere. It will be dropping strategically during Asian American and Pacific Islander heritage month as part of a global rollout. https://youtu.be/ARd5H7XFFVM?si=ODw6TUCvdT-Tuek9 Aside from box-office success, the film has created a massive social and cultural impact, garnering 3.8 million social…

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences President Janet Yang used her keynote at the Beijing International Film Festival to emphasize the importance of cultural exchange between the world’s two largest film markets, sharing her unique perspective as an American-born Chinese film producer who has worked extensively in both industries and spent decades connecting them. “My personal and professional experiences tell me that film has a unique power to bring people together, and that is why I remain perpetually optimistic about cultural exchange between not only our two nations, but amongst everyone, everywhere in the world,” Yang told attendees. She was speaking at the…

There are few things left to achieve in the entertainment industry once one arrives at EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony) status. Viola Davis (United States, 59 years old) is one of the few people who have achieved this milestone. Specifically, the 18th person in history. And after filming The Woman King in Cape Town, South Africa, she returned at the beginning of 2024 to complete G20. The film, directed by Patricia Riggen, debuted on Amazon Prime Video on April 10 and doesn’t hide its inspiration from 1990s action blockbusters, specifically Bruce Willis’s Die Hard and Harrison Ford’s Air Force One. https://youtu.be/PbGRcClyBLc?si=OLSBvs1tOGTXHVO1 When an armed group attacks a…

The Glasgow Short Film Festival came to a close last night with its annual award ceremony. Seventeen films competed for the Scottish Short Film Award which was won by Lisa Clarkson for Paternal Advice. The jury said, ‘In this outstanding short film, absurdist elements intrude on the edge of reality, language breaks down to its most elemental functions and the city’s ancient divisions take on a timeless, dream-like quality. ‘Through the brilliant lead performance and striking sound design, the audience’s expectations are subtly undermined throughout. The final punchline is delivered with swagger, an old joke with a punchline we see coming…

The highly anticipated biographical drama Phule has just released its official trailer, and fans are eagerly waiting for the film’s theatrical release on 11 April 2025, which coincides with the birth anniversary of the legendary social reformer Mahatma Jyotirao Phule. The film stars Pratik Gandhi in the titular role of Mahatma Phule, with Patralekhaa portraying his wife, Savitribai Phule, a pioneering educator and social activist. https://youtu.be/-HfTlM6r4CU?si=gmGAEv1jFxPBSmcF Directed by the National Award-winning filmmaker Ananth Narayan Mahadevan, Phule aims to shed light on the incredible contributions of Mahatma Phule, a visionary who fought for the rights of women and marginalized communities in…

Here is a strangely exhausting movie, quaintly imagining the frenzied atmosphere of a New York restaurant kitchen as a microcosm of exploited migrant workers, full of macho shouting and self-conscious acting, with every speech a drama school audition piece. The Mexican film-maker Alonso Ruizpalacios has given us some terrific work in the past, such as his debut Güeros, his drama-thriller Museum and his rather amazing docudrama A Cop Movie, but I couldn’t make friends with this strained and histrionic picture. It is in English and Spanish, shot in black-and-white, but sometimes shifting to different colour filters, and inspired by The Kitchen, the 1957 stage…

Alain Guiraudie’s Misericordia is an existential drama masquerading as a comedy masquerading as a thriller. The French director, whose best-known film Stateside remains 2014’s sunny, rambling queer mystery Stranger by the Lake, specializes in these kinds of slippery genre hybrids, movies that start off as one thing and eventually become other things, all without ever betraying their essence. Misericordia was a major critical hit in France, where it was nominated for mountains of awards and was named the best film of the year by Cahiers du Cinéma. The director’s shape-shifting narratives, forever flirting with the metaphysical, are obviously a known quantity there. It’ll be interesting to…

A B.C. film focusing on Indigenous food sovereignty has received the most nominations at a social-justice film fest in Surrey. Tea Creek is a finalist for Rogers Group of Funds Best Canadian Documentary, Best Environmental Film, and Best British Columbia Feature Film at the Sundar Prize Film Festival 2025. Ryan Dickie, a Fort Nelson resident of Dene descent, directed Tea Creek. It tells the story of an agricultural-training centre for Indigenous people in northwestern B.C. Tea Creek owner Jacob Beaton, a mixed-race member of the Tsimshian Nation, offers mentorship on his family farm in Kitwanga to aspiring Indigenous food producers. “Jacob and his wife,…

The first feature-length documentary by Irish director Gar O’Rourke, Sanatorium , which is world-premiering at CPH:DOX, in the DOX:AWARD competition, is set in the imposing Kuyalnyk Sanatorium in Odesa. Over the course of one summer, it follows the lives of staff and guests as the war encroaches in the background. We chatted with O’Rourke about the film and his playful approach. Cineuropa: How did you discover this sanatorium? Gar O’Rourke: I first went to Kyiv in 2018, when I was developing the short documentary Kachalka, and since then, I’ve had a strong love of, and interest in, Ukrainian culture. But the origins of Sanatorium started during the…