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Exclusive: The veteran executive will head to Toronto next week with the Covert team in his new role as senior vice-president of international sales.

Harvey reports to president of international Liz Kim Schwan and will handle Covert’s production slate and lead sales on the newly launched Lexica Films label.

“Covert have established themselves as one of the go-to places for star-driven material,” said Harvey. “I’m very impressed by their slate of films and I look forward to working with Liz and Paul [Hanson, CEO] and the entire Covert team.”

“I’m thrilled to have such a well loved executive like Jim on board,” said Kim Schwan. “Jim’s experience and knowledge make him a critical member of our growing team as we expand our slate.”

Lexica launched last week with disaster title Earthquake starring Cannes 2007 best actor winner Konstantin Lavronenko and the team has boarded sales on a second title.

Russian-language fantasy...

Close-Up is a column that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Hard to Be a God is playing on Mubi in the Us through January 2.Hard to Be a GodRussian director Aleksei German spent the final 15 years of his life working on Hard To Be A God (2013), a brutal medieval epic adapted from a 1964 novel of the same name by Arkady and Boris Strutgatsky, dying just before he could complete the job in February 2013. Happily, his son and widow were able to oversee the final sound mix. The result is one of the most immersive and harrowing cinematic experiences going, three hours of being put to the sword and mired in the mud, blood and viscera of a nightmare alternate reality.Although German's characters are dressed in the clanking armour, chainmail and robes of the European Middle Ages, Hard To Be A God is in fact set on a distant planet,...

Stars: Leonid Yarmolnik, Gali Abaydulov, Yuriy Ashikhmin, Remigijus Bilinskas, Aleksandr Chutko, Valeriy Boltyshev, Evgeniy Gerchakov, Yuriy Tsurilo | Written by Aleksei German, Svetlana Karmalita | Directed by Aleksei German

Cinema is often described as an experience; it can be emotionally draining and even an endurance. Hard to be a God (Trudno byt bogom) is one such film, and at three hours long it takes some watching; but for fans of cinema, it is worth every minute of it…

A group of scientists are sent to the planet Arkanar to aid it though the medieval phase of its history. Not permitted to interfere violently they are forbidden from killing. When one of the Scientists Rumata (Leonid Yarmolnik) tries to save the local intellectuals from being executed, he is finally pushed into action. Put into the position of a God, Rumata ponders what he can do, knowing the whole time that his actions are...

★★★★☆ Aleksei German's epic Dark Ages sci-fi Hard to Be a God (2013) took over a decade to make its way onto DVD and Blu-ray this week. Shot on-and-off for more than six years, the revered filmmaker regretfully passed away before the lengthy edit could be completed, but thanks to his wife and co-writer, Svetlana Karmalita, and son Aleksei German Jr, audiences now have the opportunity to wallow in his final picture in all its repugnant glory. For Hard to Be a God is a three-hour wade through shit, mud and blood - in the best possible way. Plot is of secondary importance to German, and the majority of its transmission to the viewer comes in croaking introduction laid over monochrome images of a medieval township.

Snow gently drifts down as a static and beautifully composed establishing shot sets the scene, but it this is the last moment of such serenity. Marauding...

A slo-mo kaleidoscope of medieval squalor, fear and pandemonium, Alexei German’s three-hour epic isn’t easy to watch, but it is awe-inspiring in its own monumentally mad way

The past is another planet – they do things differently there. This monochrome dream-epic of medieval cruelty and squalor is a non-sci-fi sci-fi; a monumental, and monumentally mad film that the Russian film-maker Alexei German began working on around 15 years ago. It was completed by his son, Alexei German Jr, after the director’s death in 2013. If ever a movie deserved the title folie de grandeur it is this, placed before audiences on a take-it-or-leave-it basis: maniacally vehement and strange, a slo-mo kaleidoscope of chaos and also a relentless prose poem of fear, featuring three hours’ worth of non-sequitur dialogue, where each line is an imagist stab with nothing to do what has just been said.

What on earth does it mean?...

A slo-mo kaleidoscope of medieval squalor, fear and pandemonium, Alexei German’s three-hour epic isn’t easy to watch, but it is awe-inspiring in its own monumentally mad way

The past is another planet – they do things differently there. This monochrome dream-epic of medieval cruelty and squalor is a non-sci-fi sci-fi; a monumental, and monumentally mad film that the Russian film-maker Alexei German began working on around 15 years ago. It was completed by his son, Alexei German Jr, after the director’s death in 2013. If ever a movie deserved the title folie de grandeur it is this, placed before audiences on a take-it-or-leave-it basis: maniacally vehement and strange, a slo-mo kaleidoscope of chaos and also a relentless prose poem of fear, featuring three hours’ worth of non-sequitur dialogue, where each line is an imagist stab with nothing to do what has just been said.

What on earth does it mean?...

As far as the immersive powers of cinematic spectacle go, it’s doubtful any will come close to rivaling the achievements of Russian auteur Aleksei German, a figure many have hailed as the post important director in his country following Tarkovsky. And yet, he is still largely unknown, at least in comparison to the worldly renown of his comparable peers. Over his five decades as a filmmaker, German only produced five films, a perfectionist whose later works far outshine the fastidiousness displayed in the comparable methods of someone like Stanley Kubrick.

Obtaining a serviceable print of his titles often proves difficult (though the tenacious may yet unearth bootleg copies here and there), which hasn’t helped audiences acclimate to his idiosyncratic style. Passing away while working on the finishing touches of his last film, Hard to Be a God, a sci-fi epic taken as representative of the director’s work,...

Hard to Be a God

Written by Aleksey German and Svetlana Karmalita from the novel by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

Directed by Aleksey German

Russia, 2013

“The scholar is not the enemy. The enemy is the scholar who doubts.”

Aleksey German’s Hard to Be a God is in the running for the most disgusting films I’ve ever seen. The film produces an enormously affecting, intricately detailed, and thoroughly realized visceral nightmare, one that never wanes or becomes numbing over its three-hour runtime but instead accumulates into an at-times overwhelming journey into a world run by a phantom regime of hedonist ignorance and reactionary cruelty. Built upon a twist on science fiction that probes fascinating questions about politics, morality, and the myth of the arc of human progress, Hard to Be a God uses this genre framework as a platform to manifest a carnival of depravity and filth. Decades in the making,...

Usually with film reviews, the critic or reviewer has a mandate to give a reasoned or perhaps educated opinion on the qualities of the film they are writing about. Points covered are things like ccharacterization plot mechanics, style, music and cinematography. The reviewer weighs these against their expectations plus their knowledge of what constitutes a successful film and compares it to the contemporary tastes of the time while also placing it within the context of cinema history. Occasionally though, a film comes along that defies all attempts to categorize it and challenges the audience to not enjoy it or even like it, but to endure its myriad horrors for its entire duration. Hard to be a God is one such film.

Hard to be a God takes place on Arkanar, a planet close to Earth which is developmentally 800 years behind, with the human population still living in medieval squalor. A...

Established in 2012 to bolster the film community in Mexico, the Riviera Maya Film Festival has announced the official program of domestic and international films to screen during its third edition. This year's festival includes more than 50 feature films from 23 countries. The festival will go down simultaneously in Cancun, Puerto Morelos, Playa del Carmen and Tulum from March 9-15. Here's a selection of some of the films which will be shown. Additional titles forthcoming.A Promise (Director Patrice Leconte, Starring Rebecca Hall, Alan Rickman, Richard Madden, Toby Murray)Age of Uprising: The Legend of Michael Kohlhaas (Director Arnaud des Pallieres, Starring Mads Mikkelsen, Delphine Chuillot, David Kross)Grand Central (Director Rebecca Zlotowski, Starring Tahar Rahim, Oliver Gourmet, Lea Seydoux)Hard to Be a God (Director Aleksei German, Starring Leonid Yarmolnik, Dmitriy Vladimirov, Laura Lauri)Holy Field Holy War (Director Lech Kowalski)Night...

Omar, set in the occupied West Bank, has won best film at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards (APSAs).Scroll down for full list of winners

David Gerson, who produced the film alongside Waleed F Zuaiter and writer/director Hany Abu-Assad, accepted the award at the ceremony at Brisbane’s City Hall in Australia.

Apsa organisers said Omar is the first feature to be fully funded by the film industry in Palestine.

The jury also decided to award two Jury Grand Prizes to the film Television from Bangladesh and to Ritesh Batra for his direction of The Lunchbox. Batra also won the top award for his screenplay for this film, set in Mumbai.

It was Anthony Chen who won the directing category with his debut film Ilo Ilo from Singapore, with special mentions given to Emir Baigazin for Harmony Lessons and Hiner Saleem for My Sweet Pepper Land.

Cultural worth is one of the judging criteria at the...

Palestine’s Omar and Bangladesh’s Television among best feature nominees in the upcoming Asia Pacific Screen Awards.Scoll down for full list of nominations

Mostofa Sarwar Farooki’s Television is one of six films in the running to win best feature at the 7th Asia Pacific Screen Awards (APSAs) - the first film from Bangladesh to ever be nominated.

Television directly deals with issues of modernity versus tradition in rural Bangladesh, making it a film well worth debating within the context of the APSAs, which celebrate both quality cinema and the cultural importance of film.

Television closed the Busan International Film Festival last year. If it wins Apsa’s highest accolade it will have impressed the jury more than Omar from Palestine; With You, Without You from Sri Lanka; Like Father, Like Son from Japan; The Turning;, an anthology film from Australia and The Past, directed by one of Apsa’s most high-profile regular contenders, Iranian...

So, we had zazous in France, swingjugend in Germany, and a little more on the rock side, the Go Go clubs of 고고 70s (Go Go 70s). Now you can add Стиляги (Stilyagi) to the list.

Oversized shoes? Check. Insanely colorful ties? Check. 50s Cartoon-like hair, without a single hint of mustaches or beards? Check. Grown ass (Russian) men calling each other Dick or Bob despite Momma still sticking to Dimitri? Ohh yes. The stilyagi (roughly “style hunters") craze was one of the biggest cultural movements hitting early 1950s Russia. It was, as it’s generally the case with anti-establishment counter-cultures, a way for young Russians to fight Stalinism in their own way, just like Jo Seung-Woo and Co. fight the Park junta with rock and roll in Choi Ho’s upcoming film. Despite Stalin’s continued tentative to rid the USSR of any hint of American culture ("filthy, decadent...