Author: CWB News Department

The Italian writer-director Saverio Constanzo has offered the Venice film festival some unpretentious calorific fun with this enjoyable film: a tasty, showbizzy crowd-pleaser and romantic melodrama with a vivid streak of surreal absurdity in the tradition of Federico Fellini’s The White Sheik or Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo. It is the tale of an unconventionally beautiful duckling who becomes more of a swan than the glamorous people she idolises; her dreams come true – or sort of true – in 1950s Rome in the heyday of the giant Cinecittà film studio. There are seductive performances from Lily James as the…

Based on French journalist Florence Aubenas’s bestselling non-fiction book, The Night Cleaner, in which she investigated the rising disparity and disconnect within French society through her experiences in the port city of Caen, Between Two Worlds casts Juliette Binoche in the role of a famed author named Marianne, who goes undercover as a professional cleaner to explore the exploitation of the working class in Northern France. She starts out cleaning homes and offices while making friends with other cleaners, most especially Chrystèle (Hélène Lambert), a single mother who opens up her life to Marianne and gives her real insight into the role that…

This year’s Woodstock Film Festival comes at a pivotal moment. From the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes to a global reckoning with equity and accessibility, the film community is in a self-examining mood. Accordingly, the 2023 Woodstock Film Festival’s programming seeks to deepen our engagement with these thorny conversations. The festival runs September 27 to October 1. However, Meira Blaustein, co-founder and executive and artistic director of the festival, emphasizes: “We are very much a 365 organization.” Through year-round programming, it creates opportunities for members of underrepresented groups, including an artist-in-residency program and a youth filmmaking workshop. The festival will screen about 120…

Jeymes Samuel’s sophomore feature The Book of Clarence, Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, and The Boy and the Heron by Hayao Miyazaki are among the titles that have been announced within the full lineup of the British Film Institute’s (BFI) 67th London Film Festival. Scroll down for the full list. The Book of Clarence, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, LaKeith Stanfield, and David Oyelowo will screen at London as a World Premiere. Running October 4-15, LFF will feature 29 World Premieres (14 features, two series, and 13 shorts), seven International Premieres (six features and one short), and 30 European Premieres (22 features, one series, and seven shorts).…

This year’s Telluride Film Festival will be missing its beloved co-founder, Tom Luddy, who died this year. Thus, the 2023 festival is dedicated to Luddy (1943-2023), as well as co-founders Bill Pence (1940-2022), James Card (1915-2000), and Stella Pence. Executive Director Julie Huntsinger, whose role expanded in the years since she joined the festival as managing director in 2007, is running the show solo for the first time. Per usual, the 50th anniversary TFF edition covers a range of over eighty feature films, new features, shorts, and classic programs representing twenty-nine countries, along with filmmaker tributes, conversations, seminars, and student programs. Huntsinger is carrying on the…

Through martial arts cinema Fighting Spirit Film Festival aims to entertain and inspire people, promote martial arts culture, and support those who have chosen it as a career. The Festival is back in London this year with a two day action packed program, including films, two free seminars, demonstrations, and more. FEATURE FILMS LINE UP: LAYERS OF LIES Ramin Sohrab | 2022 | Finnish, Persian, English | Cert 18 | 90 mins For the team at Fighting Spirit it is always an exciting time to see short film makers making the transition into shooting feature films. ‘Layer of Lies’ is the debut…

The fourth edition of the Amman International Film Festival (AIFF) was held from 15 to 23 August, highlighting Jordan’s and the wider region’s filmmaking endeavors through a cinematic extravaganza that celebrated diversity, artistic expression, and intercultural dialogue. AIFF brought together filmmakers, cinephiles, and industry professionals to explore the artistic medium. With an impressive program of 56 narrative features, documentaries, and short films from 19 countries, Jordan presented a mosaic of perspectives and narratives. Eleven films made their Arab world debut, while five had their world premiere. The AIFF saw films from Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Morocco, Tunisia, and Egypt secure several awards.…

Few have had a film debut quite like Anaita Wali Zada in Fremont. The independent movie that debuted at this year’s Sundance Film Festival follows the extremely mundane goings-on of its protagonist, Donya, an Afghan refugee living in Fremont, Calif. Just five months before agreeing to be in the film, Zada, who had never acted before, had fled Afghanistan when the Taliban returned to power. While the role was not written for Zada, her life and that of the lead character share a lot in common. In fact, the only thing weirder than “coming to America and starring in an…

Whether you’re into music, film, broadcast or content creation, Sound Devices produce something for each industry’s own set of nuances and technical considerations that require slightly different tact at both the workflow and device level. The logistics of recording music in a traditional studio often requires expansive, heavy, hulking equipment by virtue of the stationary nature of the environment that studios inhabit; the kind of channel counts and open microphones required to accurately capture a band playing in a room. Recording for film and Television on the other hand, is a much more nimble affair, with recordists often employing on…

With his fourth feature directing, mop-haired actor-director Louis Garrel puts a French stamp on the Hollywood heist movie. The Innocent is a screwball romcom-caper starring Garrel himself as a guy who gets caught up in a plot to pilfer a job lot of caviar (you don’t get more Gallic than that). It’s a broad, enjoyable, lighthearted movie with a fair few not-insignificant plot holes, but a genuinely surprising storyline that keeps you guessing to the end. https://youtu.be/P5gQ7pp_kdc?si=ySTMZ50_FuPehzNf Garrel plays Abel, a young widower, just 32, who’s been emotionally dormant since his wife died. Though he is is close to his…