Author: World Cinema Reports' Editors

The world probably would be a better place if we all kept our mouths shut. Or, at least that’s the takeaway from “The Insult,” (Winner of Cinema Without Borders’ Bridging The Borders Award) the Oscar-nominated courtroom drama from former Quentin Tarantino sidekick Ziad Doueiri. In it, the Lebanon native takes a harsh look at his homeland and the uneasy alliance between the ruling Christians and the ever-expanding Muslim population, many of whom are exiled Palestinians. Their distrust for each other reaches back decades to a brutal civil war that lasted 15 years and frustratingly ended without closure or reprimands for…

BERLIN (Reuters) – Organizers of the Berlin International Film Festival on Wednesday declined a call to have movie stars walk a black, rather than red, carpet as a symbol of support for the campaign against sexual harassment in the industry. After January’s Golden Globes ceremony where people wore black on the red carpet to express solidarity with the movement, more than 21,000 people signed a petition calling for the carpet itself to change color at this year’s “Berlinale”. But one day before the festival opened, its director, Dieter Kosslick, said he understood the reasons for the campaign but had decided…

Controversial government practices are preventing several filmmakers behind an Oscar-nominated title from attending the Academy Awards. Per The Hollywood Reporter, the producer (Kareem Abeed) and subject (White Helmets founder Mahmoud Al-Hattar) of Feras Fayyad’s Last Men in Aleppo — the first Syrian-produced and -directed title to be recognized by the Academy — will not attend the March 4 ceremony. They claim Syrian officials refused to expedite their travel visa process — made more complicated by President Donald Trump’s recently-implemented travel ban — as their film competes for the best documentary feature Academy Award. The film chronicles the real-life recovery missions…

The annual Fajr Film Festival (FFF) came to an end on Sunday at Tehran’s Milad Tower after presenting awards to the best of cinematic productions in the past year. The event was attended by Iran’s First Vice President Es’haq Jahangiri, Culture Minister Abbas Salehi, Director of the 36th Fajr Film Festival Ebrahim Darougheh-Zadeh and Director of Cinema Organization of Iran Mohammad-Mahdi Heidarian. The full list of winners are: Best Film Crystal Simorgh was granted to ‘The Lost Strait’ by Saeed Malekan. The other nominees for the award were ‘Bomb: A Love Story’, ‘In the Levant Time’, ‘The Woodpecker’, ‘Underwater Cypress’,…

The Indy’s Gordon Glasgow is in Germany for the fest and will be providing regular coverage. Here’s the lay of the land. And it’s as if not enough photographs have been taken, red carpets walked, cocktail parties thrown. The film industry’s capacity to celebrate itself cannot be underestimated. So it goes that the 68th Berlin Film Festival, one of international cinema’s marquee events, will begin Thursday, Feb. 15. I’ll be in Berlin providing regular coverage of the festival’s films, press conferences, events, atmosphere and so on. This year’s jury is led by acclaimed West-German filmmaker Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run,…

Kiyoshi Kurosawa is either a genius or a wackadoodle. In his new movie, Before We Vanish, a trio of alien invaders land on Earth, possess a human host apiece and set about readying the planet for both their species’ arrival and our subsequent extinction. Kurosawa’s basic conceit establishes an identity crisis narrative, and by happy accident that’s exactly what the film goes through: a struggle between two completely different storytelling modes. In the first, Kurosawa stages a melancholic domestic love story. In the second, he plays around with formulaic genre elements. Neither of these threads tie together well—if they tie…

Taiwanese cinema is undergoing a resurgence, both at awards ceremonies and at the box office. Media outlets hailed the recent edition of the prestigious Golden Horse Awards in November a triumphant comeback for Taiwanese film, after The Great Buddha+ and The Bold, The Corrupt And The Beautiful swept prizes in most of the major categories. This was on the heels of a relatively dry spell at the awards in recent years. China’s The Summer Is Gone was 2016’s Best Feature Film; the Chinese- French co-production Blind Massage had the winning touch in 2014; Singapore’s Ilo Ilo triumphed in 2013; and…

The arts are an expressive way to share and communicate culture, especially the art of cinema. The nature of film allows it to educate using entertainment, storytelling and visual creativity, allowing viewers glimpses into lives and worlds far different from their own. It is this kind of education that the University of Arizona Center for Middle Eastern Studies aims to provide with its Spring 2018 Film Series. Each semester, the Center compiles a program of films that exemplify Middle Eastern cinema, and has featured countless documentaries and fiction features created by and starring people from the Middle East. The free…

Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh is usually known for making slick Hollywood fare like Erin Brockovich and Ocean’s Eleven, but for his latest movie, the horror-thriller Unsane, the acclaimed filmmaker has opted to shoot the entire thing using iPhones. Now, the first official trailer for Unsane has arrived — and it looks just as professional as the director’s other recent films, like Side Effects and Haywire. Having recently come out of retirement with comedic heist film Logan Lucky, Soderbergh’s experience making Unsane on iPhones seems to have reinvigorated the director. Speaking at the Berlin International Film Festival last week for the…

Istanbul Modern Cinema is presenting the fifth installment of “Rendezvous with Directors,” a program hosting a series of meetings featuring directors who stand out for their artistic identities and unique approaches in Turkey’s contemporary film culture. This year’s guest of the series is Ümit Ünal, a director who initially entered the world of cinema through Yeşilçam and wrote screenplays of renowned films that left their mark on the 1980s. Among Ünal’s prominent screenplays from the time are “My Aunt” (Teyzem, 1986) directed by Halit Refiğ, which once won the grand prize of the Milliyet Newspaper Screenplay Competition, Atıf Yılmaz’s “My…