News

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. To keep up with our latest features, sign up for the Weekly Edit newsletter and follow us @mubinotebook on Twitter and Instagram.NEWSGoodbye, Dragon Inn.The Tamil Film Active Producers Association has filed a writ petition to ban social-media film reviews for the first three days of the theatrical release, claiming financial losses due to negative “review bombing.” Theater owners have likewise proposed banning YouTubers from recording audience reactions in cinema lobbies and parking lots.The McL Cinema in Hong Kong’s Diamond Hill district has shuttered after just two years of operations, the seventh theater in the city to have closed this year. Insiders are bracing for the hit to the local film industry’s reputation and financial stability that could follow. For the past decade, Hollywood executives believed that brief theatrical windows would boost subscriber numbers for their streaming services.

The films of the Kurdish Panorama and World Vision sections were introduced at the 11th edition of the Duhok International Film Festival in the Kurdistan region of Iraq.

According to the report of Mansour Jahani, an independent and international cinema journalist, Duhok International Film Festival in memoriam of Yılmaz Güney, the 1982 Palme d’Or winner in Cannes, Presided by Amir Ali Mohammed Tahir and artistic management by the Kurdish director, Shawkat Amin Korki, the 11th edition of Duhok International Film Festival is set to be held on 9-16 December, 2024, at Duhok University’s congregation hall and the Duhok Mall Cineplex in Duhok, Kurdistan Region, Iraq. Heralding the motto of Sports, this edition of Duhok will showcase 107 films by directors of different geographical backgrounds, in a variety of formats such as feature films, shorts, and documentaries in the two categories of competition and out-of-competition.

Feature Films in World Vision

Bangin Ali,...

Leading documentary festival Idfa has selected a diverse lineup for Idfa Forum, the festival’s co-production and co-financing market, which will be entirely online this year, as will the rest of the industry program. Among the 63 projects to pitch at Idfa Forum, there is a strong representation of female pitch teams.

In the Forum, women make up 64% of the producers and directors; in the DocLab Forum, the market’s new media strand, 46% are women. The entire Forum selection includes projects from 45 different production and co-production countries.

Many of the projects center on women. “How to Build a Library,” directed by Maia Lekow and Christopher King, follows two women as they transform a dilapidated, junk-filled library in downtown Nairobi into a vibrant space for the city’s residents.

“Queen of Chess,” directed by Bernadett Tuza-Ritter, tells the story of the relationship and mind games of Judit Polgar, the greatest female chess player of all time,...

Cintia Gil: “In this region, it is not normal for this to happen.”

Speaking to Screendaily, Cintia Gil, co-director of DocLisboa, has revealed the full extent of the pressure that the festival has come under in recent days to withdraw films for “political reasons.”

On the same day last week, the festival was contacted by both the Ukrainian and the Turkish embassies, asking that it pull two titles. One was Russian director Aliona Polunina’s Their Own Republic. The other was Yilmaz Güney’s 1982 classic, Yol, due to be screened this week in its full version.

Their Own Republic...

By Thom Powers

“Resistance is a key theme in this year’s documentaries,” said Tiff Docs Programmer Thom Powers. “We pay witness to rebels challenging the status quo in art, politics, sexuality, religion, fashion, sports and entertainment. They speak powerfully to our times as audiences seek inspirations for battling powerful and corrupt systems.”

Tiff’s 2017 documentary lineup goes deep into the lives of boundary-pushing characters — Grace Jones, Jim Carrey, Jane Goodall, and Eric Clapton, to name only a few of the most famous. But the celebrity factor isn’t enough to make a great film. What sets these docs apart is their directors’ ability to a bring fresh perspective.

Azmaish: A Journey through the SubcontinentBoom For Real The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat

Then there are figures whose names you may not recognize, but they become unforgettable after you see them on screen. They include Scotty Bowers, who was...

In those circles traveled by fans and collectors of anything home video, few things are more hallowed than The Criterion Collection’s first volume of their World Cinema Project DVD/Blu-ray series. One of the company’s most lauded and adored releases in recent memory, Volume 1 of Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project included six new restorations of six legendary films spanning the history of world cinema. From a foundational work in African cinema to a tale of sexual obsession that changed the history of Korean filmmaking, the first in this series has become one of the most important and exciting releases in recent Criterion Collection memory.

And finally, they’re back for a second round.

Again bringing to light six superlative films from across the world, “No. 2” as it’s billed on their website features a treasure trove of world cinema that in many ways rivals if not exceeds its predecessor.

After four years Martin Scorsese is back with another six filmic gems from all corners of the Earth. Love struggles in the slums of Thailand and the economic boom town of Taipei; underdog heroes undertake troubled missions in Turkey and Kazakhstan, a Malay storyteller plays cinematic games with basic narrative, and a vintage Brazilian art film is pure visual poetry. They’ve all been rescued by the World Cinema Project.

Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project No. 2

Blu-ray + DVD

The Criterion Collection 873-879

1931 – 2000 / Color + B&W / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date May 30, 2017 / 124.95

Directed by Lino Brocka, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Ermek Shinarbaev, Mário Peixoto, Lütfi Ö. Akad, Edward Yang

I readily confess that in my patchy history of film festival attendance, I gravitated not toward the really obscure foreign films, unless they promise to be as entertaining as things I’m more familiar with. Based on the results, one of...

The 2017 Cannes Film Festival has announced the lineup for Cannes Classics, a selection of vintage films and masterpieces from the history of cinema. This year’s program is dedicated primarily to the history of the festival, and includes one short film and five new documentaries.

Read More: Cannes Adds Roman Polanski Film to Lineup

Highlights from the lineup include “Belle du Jour” (1967), Luis Bunuel’s classic about a housewife who dabbles in prostitution, and “All That Jazz ” (1979) Bob Fosse’s story of a womanizing, drug-using dancer played by Roy Scheider. There is also the documentary “Filmworker,” which tells the story of Leon Vitali, an actor who abandoned his career after “Barry Lyndon” to become Stanley Kubrick’s right hand man and creative collaborator behind the scenes.

Rights holders to the films decide whether to screen them in 2K or 4K, or use an original print. Jean Vigo’s “L’Atalante,...

Strand will focus on the history of Cannes for the festival’s 70th anniversary.

Cannes Film Festival (May 17-28) has unveiled the line-up for this year’s Classic programme, with 24 screenings set to take place alongside five documentaries and one short film.

Documentaries about cinema including Filmworker - which focuses of Stanley Kubrick’s right hand man Leon Vitali, who played a crucial role behind the scenes of the director’s films - as well as Cary Grant doc Becoming Cary Grant, are set to feature.

This year’s selection is also set to focus on the history of the festival itself, with prize-winning films such as Michelangelo Antonioni Grand 1966 Prix winning film Blow-Up and Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Le Salaire de la peur (The Wages of Fear) from 1952 screening.

Nagisa Oshima’s 1976 film Ai No Korîda (In The Realm Of The Senses/L’Empire Des Sens), Luis Buñuel’s 1967 classic Belle De Jour (Beauty Of The Day...

While Cannes Film Festival premieres some of the best new films of the year, they also have a rich history of highlighting cinema history with their Cannes Classics line-up, many of which are new restorations of films that previously premiered at the festival. This year they are taking that idea further, featuring 16 films that made history at the festival, along with a handful of others, and five new documentaries. So, if you can’t make it to Cannes, to get a sense of restorations that may come to your city (or on Blu-ray) in the coming months/years, check out the line-up below.

From 1946 to 1992, from René Clément to Victor Erice, sixteen history-making films of the Festival de Cannes

1946: La Bataille du Rail (Battle of the Rails) by René Clément (1h25, France): Grand Prix International de la mise en scène and Prix du Jury International.

Presented by Ina.

Akahige, Amarcord, Aleksandr Nevskij among Venice Classics titles; Bertrand Tavernier selects four films.

Akahige, Amarcord, Aleksandr Nevskij and A Matter of Life and Death are among 21 titles announced today to screen in Venice’s (September 2-12) Classics section, which will reveal further titles later this month.

Director Bertrand Tavernier, who is to receive the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement award, has selected and will present four films for the Classics strand: Pattes Blances (White Paws) by Jean Grémillion, La Lupa (The Vixen) by Alberto Lattuada, Sonnenstrahl (Ray of Sunshine) by Pál Fejös and A Matter of Life and Death by Michael Powell and Eric Pressburger.

The 21 restorations:

Akahige (Red Beard) by Akira Kurosawa (Japan, 1965, 185’, B&W), restoration by Tōhō Co., Ltd.

Aleksandr Nevskij (Alexander Nevsky) by Sergej Michajlovič Ėjzenštejn (Ussr, 1938, 108’, B&W), restoration by Mosfilm

Amarcord by Federico Fellini (Italy, 1973, 123’, Color) restoration by Cineteca di Bologna with the support of yoox.com and the...

We all know that Adopt Films has acquired all U.S. rights to the 2014 Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or Winner, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s “Winter Sleep.” And we all know that Memento, with three films in the festival (“Cold in July” by Jim Mickle and the Argentinean “Refugiado” by Diego Lerman in the Quinzaine des Realisateurs, and “Winter Sleep” in Competition) is one of the top international sales agents of the best arthouse cinema today…

Our Pre-Cannes Film Festival Report, the Pre-Festival Report which Tom Brueggemann and I publish before the Festivals of Toronto, Sundance and Cannes. (Ask me if you want a free copy and I’ll send it to you.) lists international sales agents’ films in all sections of the Cannes Film Festival by numbers:

Wild Bunch

7

Le Pacte

5

Pyramide

4

3 films: Memento , Bac, Doc & Film, Films Distribution, Gaumont, Other Angle

2 films: Cj, Visit, Elle Driver, eOne, Seville, Urban Distribution Int’l, Les Films du Losange, MK2, Ndm, Sierra/ Affinity, The Match Factory, Westend

1 film: Alpha Violet, Altitude, Cinetic, Filmnation, Dreamworks Animation, Showbox, Films Boutique, Rezo, Myriad, Indie Sales, Snd - Groupe 6, Sunray, The Coproduction Office, Kinology, Pathe, The Festival Agency, Trust Nordisk, Versatile, Premium Panorama/ Annapurna, Kazak, Lotus,

Celluloid Nightmares, Film Factory, Rai Trade, 31 Juin Films, Alfama, Alice Films, Atoms & Void, Aud, Capricci, Morgane, Paraiso, Six Island Productions

Regarding this film, read my Cannes Blog: Cannes 2014 What I Saw #2: Palme d’Or Winner 'Winter Sleep' or just continue reading here:

Here is what I had to say about the film after I saw it in Cannes:

Whether this film will find a home in the U.S., whose audiences and movie theaters are so impatient, is questionable. At the very least, it should screen at New York’s Film Forum and in L.A. at the American Cinematheque or UCLA’s Film Program. Certainly it will play in the top film festivals forever. It is the sort of classic movie cinephiles will love, along the line of Tarkovsky or Angelopoulos. It is the sort of movie one wishes to see, to fully immerse oneself in, an experience only available in a certain type of movie or after reading a deeply immersive novel of Proust, Tolstoy or Marquez.

Once again, Jeff Lipsky and Adopt Films President Tim Grady who negotiated the deal with Memento Films International head of International Sales and Acquisitions, Tanja Meissner, have proven that they have an impeccable eye for quality.

Adopt plans a year-end 2014 U.S. release for “Winter Sleep.”

Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s epic and yet personally intimate story is about a wealthy self-absorbed Anatolian hotelier and landowner and his uneasy relationships with those around him. Is he evil? Is the power of evil best resisted by giving in to it?

This is Nuir Bilge Ceylan’s first Palme d’Or but he has received the Grand Prix twice already: once for “Distant” (2002) and again for 2011 for “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia”. He also won for the Director Award in 2008 for “Three Monkeys”. It also won the Fipresci prize in Cannes.

“Winter Sleep” is also the second film by a Turkish director to win the Palm, after Yilmaz Guney and Serif Goren’s “The Way” in1982.

When Ceylan received the award, he noted that 2014 was the 100th anniversary of Turkish cinema. “This is a great surprise for me,” Ceylan said, “I want to dedicate the prize to all the young people of Turkey, including those who lost their lives over the past year.”

“Winter Sleep” is being sold internationally by Memento who will also release it in France. Ama Films acquired Greek rights before Cannes. New Wave acquired U.K. rights in Cannes. Stadtkino-Filmverleih has rights for Austria, Film Point Group has Poland.

Mexico

Mantarraya Producciones

Norway

As Fidalgo Film Distribution

Slovak Republic

Film Europe Media Company

Memento coproduced the film with the director's company, NBC Film, in collaboration with Turkey's Zeynofilm, Germany's Bredok Film Production. Eurimages backed the film with 450,000 € of the total 3.6 million € allocated to 13 film productions announced in March 13. (Parenthetically, seven of the Eurimages backed productions had French participation and five German were co-productions. “One, “Lucy in the Star” by Giuseppe Petitto an Italian, Swiss and Austria co-production received 130,000 €. “All My Children” by Ladislav Kabos from Slovakia and Czech Republic received 30,000 €.

To return to “Winter Sleep”: The opening scene of the stunning and surrealistic landscape of Cappadocia, Anatolia immediately establishes this story as exotic and yet familiar. The actor, Haluk Bilginer, seems to be a familiar type – and in fact, his character is that of a former actor who has turned hotelier and landowner; he is attractive in an actor sort of way and seems always somehow distracted while maintaining a hawk’s eye on the household and the area he appears to rule in an almost feudal style. The household he enters and its inhabitants fall into place like pieces of a puzzle one did not realize was, in fact, a puzzle, with the housekeeper, the sister and the young wife slowly taking on a shape within a larger context in this beautiful and ancient city built in the rocks like caves, with a primitively frightening side, personified by the impecunious family living on the property of the landlord. A modern and affable meeting of concerned citizens of the town establishes his relationship with his wife who lives an uneasy truce until he makes one final effort at destabilizing her hard-won independence of mind.

The 3-½ hours of the film pass without ever loosing the audience interest as the story unfolds about the relationship among the townspeople and the landowning man who, in factm is a tyrant until he is forced to see his own powerlessness.

The philosophic underpinnings, discussed in several intimate conversations, about the best way to resist evil, about wealth and the power it bestows and the resentment it engenders, finds a quiet resolution, which arrives unexpectedly along with the end of the story.

One wonders at the movie’s end if one is about to settle into a long winter sleep or if, in fact, one is emerging from such a sleep in which one dreamt of the previous autumn. And does Winter Sleep solve the problem of evil? In a silent and enigmatic way, it says that the power of money and of tyranny, in the face of resistance by one whose soul is not to be conquered, is null.

In a joint statement Grady and Lipsky said: “ ‘Winter Sleep’ is an epic film: A symphony of words and a sonata of visual splendor. A significant stylistic departure from one of the greatest international filmmakers working today. ‘Winter Sleep’ is a motion picture that will have movie audiences discussing with great passion its provocative discussions about art and artists, class struggle, and love and marriage. A film like this, so rich with ideas, dazzling dialogue, and intelligent characters, is one that is instantly unforgettable. We are proud to partner with Nuri Bilge Ceylan on his achievement of a lifetime. “

Adopt Films just debuted Martin Provost’s follow-up to “Seraphine,” “Violette,” starring Emmanuelle Devos and Sandrine Kiberlain. (Another great film)

Read our coverage here:

'Violette' by Martin Provost

Other recent successes for Adopt Films include the Oscar nominated “Omar” from Hany Abu-Assad, and Yuval Adler’s Venice Film Festival award-winning thriller “Bethlehem.” Its upcoming releases include Vinko Brešan’s Karlovy Vary comedy hit “The Priest’s Children,” Oscar winner Caroline Link’s new drama “Exit Marrakech,” Frederik Steiner’s Zurich,” starring Liv Lisa Fries, and Jacques Doillon’s “Love Battles.”

www.facebook.com/adoptfilms

www.twitter.com/adoptfilms...

Ceylan’s Talky Theatrical Epic unlikely to have Many Nodding Off

Since it was first announced to go into production more than a year ago, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s follow-up to his existential and noirish Once a Upon a Time in Anatolia also runs well beyond the three-hour mark, fans of austere and uncompromising cinema rejoiced, for we could feel a swelling sense that Ceylan was approaching a zenith in his artistry and ambition. In truth, it is and it isn’t. A talkathon that may have been derived from a script of 300 pages, Winter Sleep is both Ceylan’s most epic and one of his most intimate films; indeed, it could easily have been conceived as a stage play rather than a film – not least because of the film’s multiple allusions to Shakespeare. Beautiful, exhausting, and at times excessively moralistic, it nonetheless represents a progression in the Turkish auteur’s work,...

Winter Sleep , Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s epic and yet personally intimate story of a wealthy self-absorbed Anatolian hotelier and landowner and his uneasy relationships with those around him. Is he evil? Is the power of evil best resisted by giving in to it?

This is Nuir Bilge Ceylan’s first Palme d’Or but he has received the Grand Prix twice already: once for Distant (2002) and again for 2011 for Once Upon a Time in Anatolia. He also won for the Director Award in 2008 for Three Monkeys. It also won the Fipresci prize.

Winter Sleep is also the second film by a Turkish director to win the Palm, after Yilmaz Guney and Serif Goren’s The Way in1982. When Ceylan received the award, he noted that 2014 was the 100th anniversary of Turkish cinema. “This is a great surprise for me,” Ceylan said, “I want to dedicate the prize to all the young people of Turkey, including those who lost their lives over the past year.”

Winter Sleep is being sold internationally by Memento who will also release it in France. Ama acquired Greek rights before Cannes. New Wave acquired U.K. rights in Cannes. Stadkino has rights for Austria, Film Point has Poland. Memento coproduced the film with the director's company NBC Film in collaboration with Turkey's Zeynofilm, Germany's Bredok Film Production. Eurimages backed the film with 450,000 € of the total 3.6 million € allocated to 13 film productions announced in March 13. (Parenthetically, seven of the Eurimages backed productions had French participation and five German were co-productions. One Lucy in the Star by Giuseppe Petitto an Italian, Swiss and Austria co-production received 130,000 € and All my Children by Ladislav Kabos from Slovakia and Czech Republic received 30,000 €.)

The opening scene of stunning and surrealistic landscape of Cappadocia, Anatolia immediately establishes this story as exotic and yet familiar. The actor, Haluk Bilginer, seems to be a familiar type – and in fact, his character is that of a former actor who has turned hotelier and landowner; he is attractive in an actor sort of way and seems always somehow distracted while maintaining a hawk’s eye on the household and area he appears to rule in an almost feudal style. The household he enters and its inhabitants fall into place like pieces of a puzzle one did not realize was, in fact, a puzzle, with the housekeeper, the sister and the young wife slowly taking on a shape within a larger context in this beautiful and ancient city built in the rocks like caves, with a primitively frightening side, personified by the impecunious family living on the property of the landlord. A modern and affable meeting of concerned citizens of the town establishes his relationship with his wife who lives an uneasy truce until he makes one final effort at destabilizing her hard-won independence of mind.

The 3-½ hours of the film pass without ever loosing the audience interest as the unfolds about the relationship among the townspeople and the landowning man who in fact is a tyrant until he is forced to see his own powerlessness. The philosophic underpinnings, discussed in several intimate conversations, about the best way to resist evil, about wealth and the power it bestows and the resentment it engenders finds a quiet resolution, which arrives unexpectedly along with the end of the story.

Whether this film will find a home in the U.S. whose audiences and movie theaters are so impatient is questionable. At the least, it should show at New York’s Film Forum, at L.A.’s UCLA Film Program or at the American Cinematheque and certainly it will play in the top film festivals forever. It is the sort of classic movie cinephiles will love, along the line of Tarkovsky or Angelopoulos. It is the sort of movie one wishes to see, to fully immerse oneself in an experience only available in a certain type of movie or after reading a deeply immersive novel of Proust, Tolstoy or Marquez.

One wonders at the movie’s end if one is about to settle into a long winter sleep or if, in fact, one is emerging from such a sleep in which one dreamt of the previous autumn. And does Winter Sleep solve the problem of evil? In a silent and enigmatic way, it says that the power of money and of tyranny, in the face of resistance by one whose soul is not to be conquered is null.

The Palme d’Or of the 67th annual Cannes Film Festival went to Winter Sleep, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s epic and yet personally intimate story of a wealty self-absorbed Anatolian hotelier and landowner and his uneasy relationships with those around him. Ceylan’s first Palme d’Or, he has received the Grand Prix twice already. Once for 2002′s Distant and again for 2011′s Once Upon a Time in Anatolia. He also won for best director in 2008 for Three Monkeys.

Winter Sleep is the second film by a Turkish director to win the Palme, after Yilmaz Guney and Serif Goren’s The Way in1982. When Ceylan received the award, he noted that 2014 was the 100th anniversary of Turkish cinema. This is a great surprise for me, Ceylan said, I want to dedicate the prize to all the young people of Turkey, including those who lost their lives over the past year.

Winter Sleep is being sold internationally by Memento who will also release it in France. Ama acquired Greek rights before Cannes.

The Grand Prix was awarded to Alice Rohrwacher’s semi-autobiographical drama The Wonders ( Le meraviglie), one of the true wild-card selections in the Competition. Rohrwacher’s only other film was Corpo Celeste. Isa: The Match Factory and distributed in its home country, Italy, by Bim.

Best Director Award went to Bennett Miller (Moneyball, Capote) for Foxcatcher, about the complex relationship of Olympic wrestlers Mark and Davd Schultz and the Pennsylvania millionaire John du Pont. It is being sold internationally by Kimberly Fox’s new production and sales company Panorama who had pre-sold rights before Cannes for U.S. to Sony Pictures Classics, Canada to Métropole Films Distribution and Mongrel Media Inc., France to Mars Films, Germany to Koch Media Gmbh, Japan to Longride Inc., Switzerland to Ascot Elite Entertainment Group, Taiwan to Long Shong International, U.K. to Entertainment One UK.

The Actress Prize went to Julianne Moore for her role in David Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars , a Hollywood saga where in order to succeed you must be incestuous or schizophrenic. Written by Bruce Wagner it is being sold internationally by Entertainment One, it had pre-sold before Cannes to Benelux to Cdc United Network and Cineart , Colombia to Babilla Cine, France to Canal + and Le Pacte, Germany to Mfa Film Distribution and Rtc Media, Greece to Hollywood Entertainment S.A., Italy to Adler Entertainment Srl, So. Korea to Doki Entertainment, Mexico to Cine Video Y Tv, Norway to Star Media Entertainment, Romania to Independenta Film, Switzerland to Pathe Films Ag, Turkey to Calinos Films, Ukraine to Top Film Distribution (Ukraine), U.K. to Entertainment One Films International.

The Actor Award went to Timothy Spall for his role as the renowned British artist J.M.W. Turner whose use of light and color made him a pioneering and controversial figures of his day. Mr. Turner was directed by seven-time Academy Award® nominated and multiple BAFTA winning writer/director Mike Leigh (Another Year, Vera Drake, Secrets & Lies). The legendary British actor Timothy Spall (Harry Potter, Secrets & Lies) also includes frequent Leigh collaborators, including Academy Award® nominated cinematographer Dick Pope (Vera Drake, Secrets & Lies, The Illusionist) and Academy Award®-winning costume designer Jacqueline Durran (Another Year, Anna Karenina, Atonement). Leigh works in close collaboration with his actors, using his unique methods of improvisation to bring Turner and his 19th century world to life. Mike Leigh said: Turner as a character is compelling. I want to explore the man, his working life, his relationships and how he lived. But what fascinates me most is the drama that lies in the tension between this driven eccentric and the epic, timeless world he evoked in his masterpieces.

I’ve spent a lot of time being a bridesmaid. This is the first time I’ve ever been a bride, so I’m quite pleased about that, Spall said in a long, moving acceptance speech. This is as much an accolade for Mr. Leigh as it is for me. Spall recalled that when Leigh’s Secrets & Lies, in which he also starred, won the Palme d’Or, he was undergoing chemotherapy for leukemia. I thank God that I’m still here and alive.

The film was already pre-sold before Cannes by Isa Pyramide to U.S. to Sony Pictures Classics, Canada to Mongrel Media Inc., France to Canal + and Diaphana Distribution, Germany to Prokino Filmverleih Gmbh, Switzerland to Pathe Films Ag.

The Jury Prize went to two films from the Competition’s youngest and oldest directors: Xavier Dolan’s Mommy and Jean-Luc Godard’s Goodbye to Language. Dolan thanked the Jury President Jane Campion and cited her Palme d’Or-winning The Piano as one of the first and most influential films he watched as a teenager. Godard did not attend the festival. Mommy is being sold internationally by both Seville and Entertainment One and was pre-sold before Cannes to Benelux to ABC - Cinemien, France to Diaphana Distribution, Japan toDongyu Club and Pictures Dept. Co. Ltd.

Camera d'Or went to Party Girl, Un Certain Regard Opening Night Film, the debut feature of three directors including two women, Marie Amachoukeli-Barsacq, Claire Burger and Samuel Theis. It had won the ensemble acting prize the night before at the Certain Regard Awards ceremony. It is being sold internationally by Pyramide. The Caméra d'Or ( Golden Camera ) is the award of the Cannes Film Festival for the best first feature film presented in one of the Cannes' selections (Official Selection, Directors' Fortnight or International Critics' Week). The prize was created in 1978 by Gilles Jacob and is awarded by an independent jury which this year was headed by Nicole Garcia.

Screenplay Award went to Andrey Zvyagintsev and Oleg Negin, Leviathan which was highly praised. Its Isa Pyramide presold the film to Australia to Palace Films, Benelux to Lumière, Brazil to Imovision, Greece to Seven Films, Spain to Golem Distribución, Taiwan toPomi International, U.K. to Artificial Eye,Curzon Cinemas and Curzon Film World

Other prizes:

Short Films Palme d’Or: Leidi (Simon Mesa Soto), a U.K. – Colombia coproduction.

Short Films Special Mention: Aissa (Clement Trehin-Lalanne) from France

Ecumenical Jury Prize: Timbuktu (Abderrahmane Sissako, Mauritania-France) being sold internationally by Le Pacte who is also distributing it in France with TV5Monde.

Un Certain Regard Prizes

Un Certain Regard Prize: White God (Kornel Mundruczo, Hungary-Germany-Sweden). Isa: The Match Factory

Jury prize: Force Majeure (Ruben Ostlund, Sweden-France-Denmark-Norway) Isa: The Coproduction Office, sold to Benelux to Lumiere and to Norway’s Arthaus.

Special Prize: The Salt of the Earth (Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, France-Italy). Isa: Le Pacte who is distributing it in France and has licensed it to

Italy to Officine Ubu and to Romania to Independenta Film.

Ensemble: Party Girl (Marie Amachoukeli, Claire Burger, Samuel Theis, France) Isa: Pyramide

Actor: David Gulpilil, Charlie’s Country (Rolf de Heer, Australia)

Directors’ Fortnight Prizes

Art Cinema Award: Les Combattants (Thomas Cailley, France) Isa: Bac Films presold to Haut et Court for France.

Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers Prize: Les Combattants

Europa Cinemas Label: Les Combattants

Critics’ Week Prizes

Grand Prize: The Tribe (Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy, Ukraine) Isa: AlphaViolet (also French distributor)

Visionary Prize: The Tribe

Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers Prize: Hope (Boris Lojkine, France) Isa: Pyramide. France TV5Monde.

Fipresci Prizes

Competition: Winter Sleep

Un Certain Regard: Jauja (Lisandro Alonso, Denmark-u.S.-Argentina)

Directors’ Fortnight: Les Combattants...

I am not him wins best film in Turkish competition.

Blind [pictured] by Norway’s Eskil Vogt, the story of a married woman losing her sight and battling with the real and imaginary demons of her condition, won the Golden Tulip at the 33rd Istanbul International Film Festival. The jury — presided over by Oscar-winning Iranian director Asghar Farhadi and including British producer Lynda Myles from the National Film & TV School, Turkish actress Defne Halman, French director Philippe Leguay and Romanian writer/director Razvan Radulescu — added a special jury prize for Poland’s Papusza, written and directed by Joanna Kos-Krauze and Krzysztof Krauze.

On the national front, Tayfun Pirselimoglou’s I am not him (Ben O Degilim) lead the field, winning the Best Film Award, also Best Script (also by Pirselimoglou) and best music (by Giorgios Komendakis), an award shared with Ali Tekbas, Serhat Bostanci and A. Imran Erin who wrote the score for Come to My Voice (Were...

The rapid strides taken by auteur Turkish cinema in recent times owes not a little to the daredevil, pioneering spirit of Yilmaz Güney who left a message to succeeding generations that they can achieve great things only if they are prepared to abandon the beaten track and set their sights on challenging summits.

Yilmaz Güney (1937 – 1984)

The seventy-fifth birth anniversary this year of Yilmaz Güney (1937 – 1984), the stormy petrel of modern Turkish cinema, is certain to set the Bosphorus on fire. Güney’s phenomenal many-sided genius made him a force to reckon with when he came to direction after a long stint as Turkey’s most popular film hero. But in the post-Second World War history of the Turkish State and society, Güney occupies a higher place than just that of a trail-blazing film personality. His strong sympathies for the inhabitants of the ‘lower depths’ – a recurring theme in his films – combined...

This Is Not A Film was smuggled out of Iran inside a birthday cake. Long may film-makers continue to take risks for art

Jafar Panahi's This Is Not A Film demonstrates by the simple fact of its existence that the political oppression of difficult artists – a tradition as ancient and venerable as art itself – is alive and well in modern Iran. No surprises there, perhaps, but more encouragingly it also shows that Iranian responses to being silenced are as inventive as any ever developed by film-makers in repressive regimes. Given the formal and stylistic adventurousness of many movies made under arduous political circumstances, you might even argue that a bracing dose of aggressive censorship and brutal repression can sometimes do wonders for a director's formal and intellectual development.

Panahi had no need of such spurs to creativity; he was Abbas Kiarostami's assistant while Kiarostami was making films set...

To follow up on Danny Kasman's review of This Is Not a Film (as well as roundups from the Cannes and New York film festivals), I thought I'd note that Anthony Kaufman and Steve Erickson have reported in the last few days on Jafar Panahi's current status. In a word, limbo, and it's got to be immensely frustrating.

Steve Erickson succinctly sums up the events that have led him there: "In 2010, his request to travel to the Berlin Film Festival was denied. He was arrested in March of that year, purportedly because he was making a film inspired by the protests following Iran's 2009 election. In May, he was released on bail. In December, he was sentenced to six years in jail. Furthermore, he was banned from directing films, writing screenplays, giving interviews (even to Iranian media) and leaving the country for 20 years. While he appealed the sentence, he lost...

Dr. Strangelove is one of 13 digitally restored classics

to be digitally projected at Film Forum starting Friday

As David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson wrap their series, "Pandora's digital box," Film Forum launches another on Friday, This Is Dcp. Leah Churner in a preview for the Voice: "Formalized in 2005 by a collective of the six major studios in Hollywood, the Digital Cinema Package, or Dcp, has replaced 35mm as the standard format for theatrical exhibition. It's a set of high-definition video files delivered on a hard drive encrypted with copyright protection, and it plugs into a system of proprietary servers, software, and projectors. Today, two-thirds of American theaters have converted to Dcp."

Churner's overview is a fine snapshot of what Bordwell calls "the Great Digital Changeover," and Churner cites his observation that, in her words, "one of the odder circumstances of the digital age is that as restoration gets easier, conservation gets harder.

Turkish cinema made an impact on the world map in the early Eighties essentially because the honest nationalist realism of the Kurd actor/screenplay-writer/director Yilmaz Güney was blooming and gaining world attention. Güney, like many outstanding Iranian filmmakers today, was imprisoned in Turkey again and again, as he was perceived to be an inconvenient threat to the government until he died in 1984 in exile. With his passing, there seemed to be no one who could fill Güney’s boots for two decades. Eventually, two Turkish directors Nuri Bilge Ceylan and Semih Kaplanoglu have emerged and raised Turkey’s profile once again in contemporary world cinema as no other, with achievements that shadow each other. Both have already made film trilogies: Ceylan, a trilogy referred to as ‘the provincial trilogy’, and Kaplanoglu the ‘Yusuf’ trilogy. Ceylan (born in 1959) is some 4 years older to Kaplanoglu (born in 1963). Both have made about five to six feature films.

"From the scary thuds and mysterious roars that accompany the no-frills titles to the bizarrely poignant final image of the monster, alone at the bottom of the ocean, Ishiro Honda's 1954 Godzilla is all business and pure dream." So begins the essay by J Hoberman included in the typically extensive Criterion DVD and Blu-ray packages, out today, reviewed and recommended by David Anderson at Ioncinema and Bill Ryan; Gary Tooze takes a close look and listen to the image and audio quality. Related reading: Sean Axmaker's Godzilla primer at GreenCine. Updates, 1/25: Budd Wilkins reviews the "monstrously entertaining package" for Slant, giving it 4.5 out of 5 stars. More from Steven James Snyder in Time.

R Emmet Sweeney at Movie Morlocks: "The intrepid Twilight Time label continues their line of limited edition Blu-Ray releases with an absolutely gorgeous version of Picnic, Columbia's romantic smash of 1955-1956. Sold exclusively through on-line retailer Screen Archives,...

Ask a random sampling of cinephiles - let's even make a rule that they must be well-researched in and fanatic about European cinema - to name a significant Turkish filmmaker, living or dead, and by far the most common answer will be Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Runners-up will be 2010 Golden Bear-winner Semih Kaplanoğlu and German filmmaker Fatih Akin (he's of Turkish descent), and way down at a very distant fourth place will be a man by the name of Yilmaz Güney. Winner of the 1982 Palme d'Or by proxy for Yol (he was imprisoned during production and gave detailed directions to Şerif Gören, the 'official' director, on how to make the film), Güney is the most influential Turkish filmmaker in the country's history, and, frankly, still probably the greatest of them all (Ceylan may well surpass him, though, especially if he makes any more films on the plane as Once Upon a Time in Anatolia,...

Animated Exeter, Exeter

Last year it was Exeter Castle, this year the animation festival spills over on to the city's best-known landmark, with a son-et-lumière piece projected on to Exeter Cathedral (graphics by artists Tundra* and music from Portishead's Beth Gibbons). Free exhibitions and events include a helpful workshop on how to animate vegetables, while guest of honour Joanna Quinn looks back on her distinctive body of work. Plus, of course, over 140 films, from shorts compilations (like the return of Spike And Mike's "Sick And Twisted" programme) to recent features The Illusionist and A Town Called Panic.

Various venues, Mon to 26 Feb

Glasgow Film Festival, Glasgow

Perhaps Edinburgh should start looking over its shoulder at "the fastest-growing film event in the UK". But Scotland's big enough for the both of them, for now. This one's almost too big for itself, as evidenced by the mini-festivals within it: a promising music and film festival,...

Photo: Wild Bunch I have never seen a Ken Loach film, but if I time things properly I will be seeing his latest feature, Route Irish as it was announced this morning as the nineteenth and final entry into the Competition category and will have its first screening on May 20.

Cannes General Delegate Thierry Fremaux commented on that addition saying, "The opportunity of adding another film to the Competition brings the total number of films presented to 19. So it is manageable and we decided to go for it."

He also points out this isn't the first time last minute additions have been made, and to impressive results. "Gilles Jacob included Yilmaz Guney and et Serif Goren's film Yol, Andej Wajda's L'Homme de fer and Abbas Kiarostami's Le Goût de la cerise at the last minute. That's not the end of the story: all three won the Palme d'Or for that year.