As a freelance film critic looking to get involved with film festivals, I feared that talks at the International Film Festival Summit might be too specialised for me. True, I was one of only two film critics in a room of about 40 people, many of whom had vast experience in founding, financing, organising and [...]
Writer-director Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life,” the year’s most anticipated and buzzed about film, won the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or Sunday night. The award is the festival’s highest honor. “He remains infamously and notoriously shy and humble,” said producer William Pohlad, who accepted in Malick’s stead with producer DeDe Gardner. “But he is [...]
The Cannes Film Festival declared Danish filmmaker Lars Von Trier a “persona non grata” and banned him from the festival Wednesday for saying he sympathizes with Hitler. The remarks came as the filmmaker told an awkward, rambling joke during a news conference to promote his film “Melancholia.” “What can I say? I understand Hitler, but [...]
More than 50 years after “Breathless” Cannes finally gave Jean-Paul Belmondo a Palme d’Or. Belmondo, one the biggest stars of The French New Wave was awarded the Cannes Film Festival’s highest honor Tuesday during a special evening devoted to his legacy, which included a screening of “Belmondo, The Career,” a documentary by Vincent Perrot and [...]
Self promotion and unfettered egotism have served director Lars Von Trier well. After he proclaimed himself “the greatest film director in the world” at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival premier of his controversial “Antichrist,” he enjoyed loads of press and a significant spike in interest in the film. Now, two years later, the Danish filmmaker’s [...]
LONDON – Terrence Malick’s long-awaited feature “The Tree of Life,” starring Sean Penn and Brad Pitt, has hit a snag in its effort to secure distribution in the UK. Ostensible UK distributor Icon and producers River Road Entertainment are in arbitration just weeks away from the film’s screening at the Festival de Cannes. Points of [...]
The third annual Pan-Asia Film Festival took place in London this month (March 2nd-13th). The event is organised by Asia House, a cultural centre that hosts a variety of events throughout the year, designed to promote understanding and exchange between Europe and Asia. Although the Pan-Asia Film Festival presented just one film per day, with [...]
Amid today’s limp ’80s remakes and contrived, 3-D popcorn movies, a less-recognized genre is experiencing what some critics dub a “new wave.” Two Romanian documentaries made their world premieres at Cannes this year, including the well-received “Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu,” a documentary about the late Communist dictator. Director Andrei Ujica, who fled to Germany in [...]
“Dogtooth,” also known as “Kynodontas,” the much-heralded Greek film from Yorgos Lanthimos (“My Best Friend,” “Kinetta”) has become something of a phenomenon since winning the top prize in its category, the Un Certain Regards, at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. Synopsis: A hyper-stylized mixture of physical violence and verbal comedy, Dogtooth is a darkly funny [...]
Terry Gilliam’s fittingly Quixotic quest to make a movie set against the backdrop of Miguel de Cervantes’ 17th century magnum opus “Don Quixote” may finally be coming to a head. Empire bumped into the auteur recently at a party in Cannes for the Doha Film Institute, and revealed that Ewan McGregor has joined the cast [...]
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