IMIȘOARA: The Mediaș European Film Festival (MECEFF) relocates to Timișoara and runs in competition 13 films from CEE from 3 to 9 September 2017. The films come from Austria, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Greece and Albania. An international jury will choose the winners. The programme also includes concerts, exhibitions and workshops. After the death of its initiator, Romanian director and producer Radu Gabrea, the festival is now headed by Victoria Cociaș. The Timișoara Central European Film Festival (CEFFTm) is organised by the Euro Fest Association with the support of the…
Author: World Cinema Reports' Editors
These days, it seems as though life in the Trump era could easily deteriorate into a nerve-racking thriller or an apocalyptic horror movie. But do leaders have any influence on films made during their time in office? Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump – the leader of the free world, as the holder of the office is usually called – taught us there’s no difference between good and evil, or between the good guys and the bad guys. That happened when Trump reacted to events in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 12, when the Ku Klux Klan and other racist right-wing…
Several hundred Gazans went to the cinema on Saturday for the first time in more than 30 years, albeit for one night only. The long-abandoned Samer cinema in Gaza City, the oldest in the strip but closed for decades, hosted a special screening of a film about Palestinians in Israeli prisons. About 300 people of both sexes attended, with men and women not segregated by gender and despite the lack of air conditioning on a hot and humid evening. The Islamist Hamas group has ruled Gaza for 10 years and there are currently no functioning cinemas in the Palestinian territory where two…
A dying sheikh must be taken to the medieval Moroccan city of Sijilmasa, despite the decidedly rocky route. When the sheikh dies prematurely, rogues Ahmed (Ahmed Hammoud) and Said (Said Aagli) offer to transport the deceased for a fee – running into Shakib Ben Omar’s guardian angel along the way. Plot is not the takeaway https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=132&v=yn9eBMjjPcc from Mimosas, which reminded me of Abbas Kiarostami’s Taste of Cherry, another slow-winding ramble through the mountains. The pleasure is in the crunchy, wind-bitten soundscapes and the texture of Oliver Laxe’s compositions; landscapes that encompass tiny figurines dwarfed by mountains. Source: The Guardian
‘Parting’, the first film of Navid Mahmoudi as a director, is to vie at the 8th Afghan Film Festival of Stockholm and the 5th Persian Film Festival of Sydney. Navid Mahmoudi and Jamshid Mahoudi, Iranian Afghan-born brothers whose first feature film won global praise, are now enjoying the sound rippled by their second feature to be screened in Sweden and Australia. Their first film, A Few Cubic Meters of Love, swept the world of cinema out and their second film, Parting, is going to be screened in Sweden where the first was shown to public at 7th Afghan Film Festival…
Pakistan has sought the help of neighbouring Iran to set up its National Broadcasting and Film Commission in order to revive films in Pakistan, where there has been a struggle over many decades to produce quality material that can attract global audiences. In a recent meeting with the Iranian ambassador to Pakistan, Information Minister Marriyam Aurangzeb discussed possible collaboration and assistance from Iran. Certainly, Iran sets an outstanding example of what can be achieved through film and how it is possible to produce material at the highest quality, with strong social and political messages even in trying political times and…
Kranti Kanade’s CRD is one of the most eccentric, deliberately random and baffling films one has seen of late. One that in tenor swings between the intense and the flippant. One that talks as much about the tyranny in a supposedly liberal world of arts as it plays with the larger notion of the real and the pretend. One that tries to break away from linearity and realism in storytelling even as it speaks of real issues — from Narendra Dabholkar to the idea of a ‘bahujan ka Shivaji’, from the fascism of language and of Bollywood, to the politics…
The British film production boom, from blockbusters including the new Star Wars trilogy to smaller domestic flicks and European co-productions, has played a role in propping up growth in the UK economy following the Brexit vote. However, producers – including the backer of a film about that most British of figures, Winston Churchill – have warned that severing links with Brussels will endanger the industry. Lionsgate, which released Churchill in June, worries that Brexit will impede the already complex process of funding, filming and releasing a multimillion-pound product. One Lionsgate-backed film that might have struggled post-Brexit is Rupert Everett’s directorial debut about Oscar Wilde’s last days, The…
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The program of the fifth edition of the Duhok International Film Festival (Duhok IFF) “is inspired by hope,” said the festival’s artistic director Shamal Sabri announcing the opening selection of the festival, Zer. Zer, a film by Kurdish director Kazim Oz, follows a young man raised in New York as he traces his routes to find the song his grandmother sang to him on her deathbed. His grandmother was a survivor of the Dersim massacre, where thousands were killed in a Turkish military campaign to suppress a rebellion in 1937 and 1938. The festival is held…
Saudi independent filmmakers are making their mark in Dubai this week with the Saudi Shorts film series at Cinema Akil in Al Serkal Avenue. Film enthusiasts in Dubai will get an intimate peek into the rapidly evolving Saudi cinema scene, which is also being championed by Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and Saudi Vision 2030. As the kingdom boosts its entertainment industry, opportunities are opening up and Saudi filmmakers from the collective Telfaz 11 have stepped up to the plate. From Saturday (August 26) until Wednesday (August 30), the Saudi-based talent company and film production house will feature comedy drama…