Eminem has ventured back into the world of film, and he may have another hit on his hands. Bodied is an Eminem-produced satire that tells the story of a white graduate student who uses battle rap as a thesis subject and becomes obsessed with the competitive culture. The film, directed by music director Joseph Kahn, features cameos from Calum Worthy, Charlamagne Tha God, Jackie Long, and various King of the Dot, URL and FreshCoast battle rappers like Dizaster, Loaded Lux and Dumbfounded. The two-hour film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival Thursday (September 7) and was a huge hit, packing…
Author: World Cinema Reports' Editors
A year after being released at South African box offices‚ South African film Dora’s Peace continues to wow international audiences‚ scoring a prestigious invitation to screen at the international Orlando Film Festival in America next month. The film’s screening was announced this week and follows screenings in Dubai‚ Beijing and Boston previously. The film‚ which tells the story of a Hillbrow prostitute who sets out to save a gifted young boy from the violent clutches of organised crime‚ has won several international and local film awards over the last year. The film’s director Kosta Kalarytis told TshisaLIVE that he was…
“Parting”, a joint production of Iran and Afghanistan by Navid Mahmudi, won the Golden Gazelle Award for Best Feature Film at the 6th Persian International Film Festival in the Australian city of Sydney, the organizers announced on Sunday. The film is about teenage lovers Nabi and Fereshteh who are separated by her family’s flight from Afghanistan. After years apart, Nabi decides to find Fereshteh and risk the hardship of flight and resettlement in Europe with a hope of a better life. “Breath” by Narges Abyar received an honorable mention from a jury of the Australian cineastes Rebecca Barry, Ben Ferris,…
The filmmaking duo Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani have gone about in some kind of relative obscurity since their first feature Amer in 2009. While that striking debut perhaps should’ve garnered them more attention, as well as the subsequent The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears, it feels safe to say they’re not out to get that crossover hit. If anything, they seem content kind of just doing the same thing over and over again. To those not in the know, their whole deal is doing riffs on genre that cut out virtually all the connective tissue, leaving simply a…
I, Tonya, a biographical film of the infamous figure skater Tonya Harding was a weird mix of hilarity and tragedy – which was probably the right tone considering how crazy her life seemed to be. One minute the film has you bending over laughing but in the next minute you feel sick to your stomach after witnessing Harding (Margot Robbie) take another beating from her mum LaVona (Allison Janney) or her ex-husband Jeff Gillooly (Sebastian Stan), but somehow the film works as a black comedy because the true life events that culminated in Gillooly hiring a man to injure Harding’s…
Back in early fall 2014, I was shown my first virtual reality experience on a Samsung Gear VR developer kit. I was so overwhelmed and excited by the possibilities of what I just seen that I basically dropped everything I was doing in the film business (pretty much on the spot) and launched UNLTD VR, an immersive content and technology company. As a 20+ year film and TV content producer and distributor, my goal was simple: create ground-breaking cinematic immersive content that would compete with anything a Hollywood blockbuster has to offer. What I’ve learned along the way is that…
The feature debut from Northern Ireland’s Aoife McArdle, begins in a dream sequence. As the film’s writer and director, the opening establishes McArdle’s clear fluency in the language of film. The filmmaker uses lighting to convey emotion; uses camera movement to guide the viewer’s eyes; and the flinch of an arm or the glance of an eye act as substitutes for words. Of course, immense credit is to be paid to the film’s excellent cinematographer Steve Annis, editor Dan Sherwen, and lead actress Ann Skelly. However, it’s the way every element of filmmaking comes together that solidifies McArdle’s talent. Following the eponymous…
Overreaching, particularly following success, can be the kiss of death for sales and distribution companies. German arthouse kingpin The Match Factory has avoided this fate by making an art of building and understanding its audience. Founded in 2006 by former Bavaria Film Group executive Michael Weber and Pandora Film’s Reinhard Brundig and Karl Baumgartner, the Cologne-based sales outfit has built an enviable roster of regular collaborators such as directors Aki Kaurismaki, Fatih Akin and Christian Petzold. The company has handled a steady stream of festival winners over the past decade including Palme d’Or winner Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past…
While the Vancouver International Film Festival always offers opportunities for both intellectual stimulation and emotional engagement with works from around the world, the international offerings will be balanced with some local titles at this year’s edition that will have particularly significant meaning for Vancouverites. That includes a film that looks and sounds like it’ll be quite the tearjerker. At VIFF’s annual media launch on September 7 at Vancity Theatre, VIFF associate programming director Curtis Woloschuk advised audience members to bring tissues to Vancouver filmmaker Melanie Wood’s documentary Shut Up and Say Something, which will screen on October 4 and 8, as…
Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz are having a blast with Farhadi. And they talk about language differences. The Iranian filmmaker is notorious for taking on challenges in tongues he does not speak. He’s currently working with two translators on set who Cruz says “are amazing, it’s like they become him.” Bardem adds of Farhadi, “He sees everything. He may not understand a word, but he knows what you’re saying. He only wants honesty to its deepest level so you are really obliged to take the mask off and go there completely naked. I believe in giving it all, but the…