Author: CWB News Department

Cinema Without Borders has announced its jury members to decide on the winner of 2023 MOZAIK Bridging The Borders Award at the LUCAS International Festival for Young Film Lover in Germany. LUCAS programmers have also announced the nominees for the Cinema Without Borders’ Bridging The Borders Award sponsored by MOZAIK Philanthropy. A jury of six, formed by CWB will decide on the winning films at the closing night of the festival. Keely Badger, Executive Director of MOZAIK, the sponsor of the Bridging The Borders Award, will announce the winning film in a video message that will be played at the awards ceremony of the…

Despite an industry-wide strike that’s made the promotion of films feel impossible, the Venice Film Festival has given a chance for some stars of independent features to shine a light on their upcoming projects — with a few of those artists taking home prizes from the fest. The 80th Venice International Film Festival awards gala on Saturday evening celebrated the films competing for various categories, including the Golden and Silver Lion, voted on by the jury, which includes directors Jane Campion and Martin McDonagh. Taking home the grand prize of the Golden Lion was The Favorite’s Yorgos Lanthimos for his follow-up film, Poor Things, starring Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, and…

The Toronto Film Festival began September 7 in Ontario with opening-night movie The Boy and the Heron, from Oscar-winning filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki. It kicks off a lineup for the fest’s 48th edition that includes world premieres of GameStop pic Dumb Money, Netflix’s Pain Hustlers, Taika Waititi’s Next Goal Wins, Kristin Scott Thomas’ Scarlett Johansson pic North Star, Chris Pine’s Poolman, Michael Keaton-directed Knox Goes Away, Anna Kendrick’s Woman of the Hour, Atom Egoyan’s Seven Veils, Michael Winterbottom’s Shoshana, Grant Singer’s Reptile, Viggo Mortensen’s The Dead Don’t Hurt, Lee Tamahori’s The Convert and Alex Gibney’s doc In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon. The fest also features new films from such celebrated directors as Alexander Payne, Kore-eda Hirokazu, Alice…

“I hope for a day when I would have no subjects left to make movies about,” she said during a 2015 ceremony honoring her for her charitable work. Chances are that, contrary to her wishes, she will not run out of subjects anytime soon. Rakhshan Bani-Etemad is often referred to as Iran’s premier female director. She has the rare honor of being loved by the Iranian public and acclaimed internationally. Her films focus on intractable social problems in Iran, from poverty to the situation of women. She has pushed against the limits of censorship and the Iranian authorities have often…

The 2023 Sundance Film Festival Asia officially opened at the SPOT Huashan Cinema in Taipei City on August 18, 2023, and announced the winner of the Sundance Film Festival Asia Short Film Competition. The award went to “Tuo Tuo” directed by An Chu. Many Hollywood and local celebrities walked the red carpet including Justin Lin (Director of the “Fast and Furious” franchise), Todd Makurath (Executive Producer of “Everything Everywhere All At Once”), Joachim Zell (Color Scientist from “Blade Runner 2049”), Dan Lin (Producer of “The Lego Movie”), Tzi Ma (Actor from “Rush Hour” series), Caitlin Fang (Actress from “American Girl”), Patty Lee (Actress from…

“Clannish” is one of the first words uttered by the protagonist of Enea [+], the second feature from director-screenwriter-actor Pietro Catellitto in competition at the 80th Venice Film Festival, to define the relationship imposing itself between his family and his close circle of friends. Clannish from clan, a word that ethno-anthropologists had borrowed from Gaelic. Defined by the director of the festival Alberto Barbera as “a kind of The Great Ugliness”, Enea arrives as the natural consequence of Catellitto’s surprising debut, The Predators [+], winner of Best Screenplay in the Orizzonti section in 2020 and of the Best Debut Director David di Donatello award. In The Predators, two irreconcilable family clans confronted each…

Tehran Times: Iranian cinematography director Morteza Pursamadi died on Saturday while working on a project. He was 70. The artist was in the midst of filming “Angelic Sin” directed by Hamed Anqa when he began experiencing symptoms consistent with a stroke, leading to his hospitalization and eventual passing on Saturday morning, Honaronline reported on Sunday. Pursamadi was the cinematography director of several cinema and television projects such as “Gilaneh” by Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, “Tambourine” by Parisa Bakhtavar, “Hush! Girls Don’t Scream” by Puran Derakhshandeh as well as the TV series “Zero Degree Orbit” by Hassan Fat’hi. He was also one of…

We’ve already shared some news in our favourite non-acting Oscar category. The most exciting thing at the moment is the Danish finalists which include a film called either Promised Land or Bastard (depending on where its playing). Elisa tells us that its going to be a major contender and could even bag Mads Mikkelsen the Best Actor win in Venice. Other recent Oscar updates for this category involved submissions from Estonia, South Korea and Uruguay and a finalist list from Netherlands, and news from Switzerland, Chile, and Tajikstan. We now have 13 submissions. The charts have been updated. The latest exciting news is the finalist lists from two important…

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…