Author: World Cinema Reports' Editors

Opinions about Indian cinema’s latest trilingual social drama, Kaala (2018), directed by Pa. Ranjith, India’s Spike Lee, have congested media feeds recently. These coterminous appraisals are dominated by speculations about subversive mythopoeia, national cataclysms, or sub-national identities audio-visually asserted through an aggregation of starpower, symbols, and speech. Yet, for all the vivid autochthony saturating the film, it is neither parochial nor insular. Kaala’s protreptic narrative has an au courant global appeal. The preamble animation, an innovation inaugurated by Kollywood films like Anand Shankar’s Iru Mugan (2016) and Pushkar and Gayatri’s Vikram Vedha (2017), prologues the struggle for territorial control and land authority as the sine qua non of civilization. Thereby establishing Kaala’s narrative…

Filmmakers Laura Collado and Jim Loomis’ Constructing Albert, a release from Juno Films,follows Albert Adrià as he brazenly launches five different restaurants in Barcelona from 2013 to the end of 2016, hoping to forge his own food empire and get out of the shadow of big brother Ferran, the wunderkind behind Spain’s world-class eating mecca elBulli. While this culinary-themed doc offers a little kitchen sizzle and artistically plated tastings (a delicious shrimp dish sautéed, a daring soy sorbet, etc.), the film has more of a scattershot, look-at-me Facebook feel. We experience Adrià onscreen or via voiceover as he nonstop shares—whether with journalists,…

Nollywood is on my mind and it’s for a heartwarming reason. This Made-in-Lagos industry caught the attention of the world last week in a very significant way. First, two of its illustrious stakeholders – Femi Odugbemi, cerebral filmmaker; arrowhead of IRep International Documentary Film Festival and the man that will drive Multichoice’s Talent Factory as well as star actor Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde were invited into the new set of cineastes from across the globe to join the Academy of Motion Picture Association as voting members. In other words, Femi and Omotola now have voting rights in determining which films and filmmakers…

The Arab Cinema Center (ACC) is set to launch a new festival MAD 3ARABI (Arab Flow) focused on Arab cinema and high-end TV in the Czech Republic this autumn, the umbrella body announced at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival. “MAD 3ARABI (Arab Flow) will be a festival for cinema, culture and Arabic content,” said Arab cinema expert Alaa Karkouti, CEO of Cairo-based Arab cinema promotional agency MAD Solutions which set up the ACC in 2015. “It is a new development for the ACC’s initiatives, which are aimed at promoting Arab culture around the world through different activities.” The first edition of MAD 3ARABI will take…

Filmmakers from all over the world were honored at the 13th Cyprus International Film Festival (Cyiff) awards ceremony held at Palia Ilektriki in Paphos on Sunday evening. Short and feature films of all genres competed in main categories including, ‘Cyiff got talent’ for first and second time filmmakers and a veteran’s category for more experienced filmmakers. Cyiff actively supports new and emerging filmmakers and women in film. Véronique Mériadec with her film ‘A Thousand Pieces’ (France) won numerous categories in the ‘Golden Aphrodite Awards’ for film makers competing with their first feature film, including the golden Aphrodite for the best…

In the wake of global turmoil and Hollywood’s re-examination of its codes of conduct, the launch of Artists for Change, Artists4Change.org, the non-profit that is committed to playing a critical role in stimulating social change through film and digital content, arrives at a critical time. Founder Julia Verdin, an accomplished producer and award-winning director, brought together a group of like-minded film industry individuals in her belief that the power of collective voice can make a change. Verdin says, “Those of us who work in the film and TV industries carry an incredible responsibility in these troubled times”. Artists for Change…

Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda is a must see documentary directed by Stephen Nomura Schible. One of the most important artists of our era, Ryuichi Sakamoto has had a prolific career spanning over four decades, from techno-pop stardom to Oscar- winning film composer. The evolution of his music has coincided with his life journeys. Following Fukushima, Sakamoto became an iconic figure in Japan’s social movement against nuclear power. As Sakamoto returns to music following cancer, his haunting awareness of life crisis leads to a resounding new masterpiece. Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda is an intimate portrait of both the artist and the man. https://youtu.be/Fl-pKw5n0mI Stephen…

Two-time Oscar-winning director Asghar Farhadi was selected as an Honorary Patron of the Film Academy Foundation (De la Fundación Academia de Cine), the foundation announced on Thursday. The Film Academy Foundation is a Spanish professional organization dedicated to the promotion and development of Spanish cinema with headquarters based in Madrid and Barcelona. Antonio Banderas, Alejandro Amenabar, Almudena Grandes, Mario Vargas Llosa, Vittorio Storaro and Inma Shara are among those who have received the honor from the academy. In a statement published by the academy, Farhadi said that the decision to honor him by the title has given him “a very…

A Thousand Girls Like Me a film directed by Sahra Mosawi-Mani is scheduled to screen today, June 20, 2018 at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival in New York and it will be coming to MUBI in 4 days. We had the opportunity of interviewing  Sahra Mosawi-Mani and we asked her to present her film to our audience. https://vimeo.com/276049308 A Thousand Girls Like Me begins in 2014 when, appearing on a national television show, Khatera publicly accuses her father: for more than 13 years, Khatera suffered physical abuse and repeated rape at the hands of her father, resulting in numerous pregnancies. Most of Khatera’s…

Max Angely’s (Jean-Paul Bacri) birthday is not going well. Having spent the morning with “complicated clients” attempting to downsize their luxury downtown Paris reception for about the fourth time, the wedding planner has now relocated to the 17th Century Chateau setting of some seriously lavish nuptials, only to find virtually everything in disarray. Down a wait-staff member, he’s had to replace the original band, is stuck with the photographer (Jean-Paul Rouve) nobody else will hire and is having to bite his tongue while the early-arriving pretentious groom (Benjamin Lavernhe) informs him that they will have adjust the evening’s schedule to accommodate…