Author: World Cinema Reports' Editors

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announces shortlists in consideration for the 91st Oscars in nine categories: Documentary Feature, Documentary Short Subject, Foreign Language Film, Makeup and Hair styling, Music (Original Score), Music (Original Song), Animated Short Film, Live Action Short Film and Visual Effects. FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILMNine films will advance to the next round of voting in the Foreign Language Film category for the 91st Academy Awards. Eighty-seven films had originally been considered in the category. Los Angeles-based Academy members from all branches screened the original submissions in the category between mid-October and December 10. The group’s…

Veteran Iranian director Ali Rafiei has staged an adaptation of Spanish dramatist Federico García Lorca’s “The House of Bernarda Alba” in the Iranian capital Tehran. Commentators have often grouped the House of Bernarda Alba with “Blood Wedding” and “Yerma” as a rural trilogy. Rafiei has directed these two works as well and now is working on the third one. Mohammad Charmshir has helped Rafiei as the dramaturge of the play, which is being performed in Tehran’s Vahdat Hall in December 2018 and January 2019. Among the actors of this dramatic work are Roya Teymourian, Maryam Sa’adat, Maedeh Tahmasebi, Nasrin Derakhshanzadeh,…

A thriller about corrupt politicians and a feel-good comedy about special-needs basketball players will face off at the 33rd annual edition of Spain’s top film honors, the Goya Awards, taking place in Seville on Feb. 2. With 13 nods, political thriller The Realm led the nominations to the Goya Awards unveiled Wednesday in Madrid, followed closely by Spain’s foreign-language Oscar nominee Champions, which got 11 nods. Both will compete for best film against Asghar Farhadi’s Everybody Knows, San Sebastian International Film Festival Golden Shell winner Between Two Waters, and Carmen & Lola, the Madrid-set love story between two gypsy women…

The 12th edition of Iran International Documentary Film Festival, known as Cinema Verite, is underway in the Iranian capital of Tehran. Kicked off on December 9, the seven-day event is organized by the Iran Documentary and Experimental Film Centre affiliated with the Iranian Ministry of Culture. The festival has three sections – National, International and Avini Award – in which the competing films are categorized in qualitative and thematic terms. This year, 634 films were presented to the Secretariat of the festival out of which the committee in charge of selecting the films picked up 71 films for the national…

MUBI announced today its December release slate of films and curated series from both emerging talent and acclaimed directors from across the globe. Next month, MUBI gets up close and personal with celebrated international directors Jia Zhang-ke, Béla Tarr and Hou Hsiao-Hsien, pairing their films with documentaries about the filmmakers themselves as part of MUBI’s Behind the Viewfinder series. The introspection continues with a spotlight on emerging Colombian-Canadian filmmaker Lina Rodríguez, whose commitment to intimacy sees her cast her own mother in leading roles in both of her feature films. And a winter warmer comes in the form of Reminiscences…

Nominees for the Best Motion Picture – Foreign Language at 76th annual Golden Globe Awards were announced today. The five nominated films are: “Capernaum”, “Girl”, “Never Look Away”, “Roma” and “Shoplifters” Capernaum (Arabic: کفرناحوم‎), also known as Capharnaüm, is a 2018 Lebanese drama film written and directed by Nadine Labaki. It was selected to compete for the Palme d’Or at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival,where it won the Jury Prize. The film received a 15-minute standing ovation following its premiere at Cannes on 17 May 2018. https://youtu.be/UrgWHfGEsbE Sony Pictures Classics, which had previously distributed Labaki’s Where Do We Go Now?, bought…

ICEBOX, a HBO film, written and directed by Daniel Sawka will be aired on Friday December 7th at HBO. ICEBOX tells the story of Óscar, played by Anthony Gonzalez (“Coco”), a 12-year-old Honduran boy who is forced to flee his home and seek asylum in the United States, only to find himself trapped in the U.S. immigration system. At Cinema Without Borders, we had the opportunity of interviewing Daniel Sawka on camera about making of the ICEBOX. https://vimeo.com/304885244 “I have seldom seen a movie so of the moment – it’s almost reportage,” said Amato. “ICEBOX gives viewers not only an opportunity…

Give or take, it’s been about five to six years since #BlackLivesMatter became a thing on social media. By most accounts, the use of that hashtag began after the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of African-American teenager Trayvon Martin. The deaths of Michael Brown (which led to protests and unrest in Ferguson) and Eric Garner in New York City and the street demonstrations that followed made the movement known all over the US and of course around the globe as well. Surely it’s an extension or a new mutation/update of the Civil Rights movement, with a little bit…

Making Waves: New Romanian Cinema opens today at BAM, running through December 5. The festival is presented by The Romanian Film Initiative, The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), and the Jacob Burns Film Center. The critically-acclaimed survey of new Romanian cinema has been hailed by the Wall Street Journal as having “helped define and establish the southeastern European country as a stronghold of socially incisive, independently minded personal cinema.” Mihai Chirilov, Artistic Director of Making Waves: New Romanian Cinema, states, “Following last year’s focus on Anca Damian, who returns this year with her latest mystery puzzle Moon Hotel Kabul, the 13th edition of Making Waves gives space to the brand new wave of female directors in Romanian cinema, with…

Science fiction (sci-fi) has served as both an ethical and moral gauge of human scientific endeavors since at least Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in literature and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis in film. A number of books have looked at how science is portrayed in the movies with all of them bringing a unique perspective to the issue (in fact, IEEE Spectrum’s own Stephen Cass coauthored such a book just last year). Now, a new book written by one of the preeminent experts on how to recognize and prevent risks in emerging technologies brings a new perspective to the topic, and asks: Can we use sci-fi films as a road…