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Dubai-based sales agent Cercamon has boarded “Perla” ahead of its premiere at International Film Festival Rotterdam in the Tiger Competition.

Directed by Alexandra Makarová, it focuses on a painter who – after fleeing Communist Czechoslovakia – lives in 1980s Vienna with her new partner Josef and teenage daughter Julia. But when Julia’s father contacts her, Perla decides to cross the border again – and risk everything she has built.

“I come from a family of refugees who fled Russia after the October Revolution. Ours is a tragic story. There’ve always been conversations about concentration camps, hunger and missing father figures,” Makarová told Variety.

“My mother is a painter as well and I was mostly inspired by the women in my family. They were always left alone with the children, raising them while still trying to follow their dreams.”

In her film, Makarová decided to show a mother who challenges societal expectations.

Nightsiren follows a young woman who returns to her remote village, uncovering the truth behind her sister's disappearance and facing suspicion from the locals. The film features stunning landscapes and scenery, adding to the mystical atmosphere created by the story. Working with live animals on set posed challenges, but the filmmakers took precautions to ensure the safety and well-being of the animals involved.

Now available to stream on VOD, Nightsiren follows a young woman who returns to the remote village she fled after a tragic accident took her sister's life. Sarlota begins digging into her past, holding out hope that her younger sibling may have survived the fatal injury she blames herself for. However, the locals begin to grow suspicious of her presence, and she quickly becomes a target. Accused of practicing witchcraft, Sarlota realizes that she may never be able to escape her former home.

Tereza Nvotová is a...

Svetlonoc Review — Svetlonoc (2022) Film Review from the 75th Annual Locarno Film Festival, a movie directed by Tereza Nvotova, written by Tereza Nvotova and Barbora Namerova and starring Natalia Germani, Eva Mores, Juliana Olhova, Iva Bittova, Jana Olhova, Marek Geisberg, Noel Czuczor and Zuzana Konecna. The new Slovakian horror film Svetlonoc (Nightsiren) is crafted [...]

Continue reading: Film Review: Svetlonoc: The Past and Present Collide in a Fascinating Horror Film [Locarno 2022]...

Bleecker Street’s I’m Your Man opens on 12 screens in seven markets, expanding to another 15 next week in a rare platform release banking on strong word of mouth for the well-reviewed, 94% Certified Fresh film that’s Germany’s entry for the 2022 International Feature Oscar race.

Helmed by Unorthodox director Maria Schrader, the sci-fi romantic comedy earned star Maren Eggert the Best Actress Silver Bear at this year’s Berlin Film Festival.

Co-star Dan Stevens supported the film on social and in a Today show appearance Wednesday. He’ll be at a Q&a at the Landmark in LA on Saturday.

Initial openings include NY, LA, San Francisco, Boston, Washington, D.C., Phoenix and Dallas. Bleecker plans a small expansion in those markets as well next week. The film has a 17-day exclusive theatrical window. Deadline review here,

Eggert plays...

It sometimes feel as if the Holocaust and Nazi Germany are subjects that have been exhausted on screen, but filmmakers continue to return to those dark times: The past few months have already seen the festival premieres of two striking animated films, “Where Is Anne Frank” and “Charlotte,” and the recent Toronto Film Festival also brought Barry Levinson’s “The Survivor,” with Ben Foster as an Auschwitz inmate haunted by what he did to make it through the war.

Slovakian director Peter Bebjak’s “The Auschwitz Report” had a slight head start on those other films, premiering in its home country in January and being chosen as the Slovak Oscar entry in last year’s race. Now receiving a U.S. release, the film is dark and grueling; it finds a new lens on the Holocaust and tells an unfamiliar story in a way that brings home both the unfathomable...

The trouble with unimaginable horror is precisely that: It cannot be imagined. For Alfred Wetzler and Rudolf Vrba, two Slovakian Jews who escaped from Auschwitz in 1944 to bring evidence of the systematic genocide within the camp, the hardest part of issuing The Vrba-Wetzler Report was simply being believed. Director Peter Bebjak’s “The Auschwitz Report,” Slovakia’s official entry to the international feature category in last year’s Academy Awards, measures the immense gulf between the authors’ harrowing experiences and a reception that was far more muted and perplexed than they anticipated. The unrelenting brutality of the film’s scenes at Auschwitz are a reminder that people sometimes need to be shaken from their complacent assumptions and realize the atrocities that human beings are capable of committing against other human beings.

Bebjak wants to ensure that viewers never forget what happened either, and so his monochromatic images, drained of color and hope,...

Two prisoners at the extermination camp make a perilous bid for freedom in an intense, disturbing Holocaust story based on real events

In 1944, two Jewish Slovaks, Rudolf Vrba (Peter Ondrejička) and Alfred Wetzler (Noel Czuczor), both of them prisoners at Auschwitz-Birkenau, hide in some wooden pallets and wait for a moment to escape. Carrying documents that will prove what is really happening in the extermination camp, they manage to make it through the fence and into the forest, an escape that precious few managed. Meanwhile, those who stayed behind, some of whom risked their lives to help Vrba and Wetzler escape, are cruelly punished by the camp guards.

This dramatised account of a true story plays like a grim high-stakes thriller as we root for the two men to make it over the border. Their names may be unfamiliar, but even for those who know about the Auschwitz Protocols – a...

"You can look away, or you can risk your life and expose it to the whole world." Signature Entertainment in the UK has released the official UK trailer for this Slovak WWII thriller The Auschwitz Escape, also known as The Auschwitz Report, inspired by the novel "What Dante Did Not See" by Alfred Wetzler. This is the true story of Freddy and Walter - two young Slovak Jews, who were deported to Auschwitz in 1942. On 10 April 1944, after meticulous planning and with the help and the resilience of their inmates, they manage to escape. They managed to return to Slovakia, but the report they wrote seemed too unbelievable to be true, despite providing direct evidence of what they had experienced. Noel Czuczor & Peter Ondrejicka star as Freddy & Walter, and the extensive cast includes John Hannah, Wojciech Mecwaldowski, Jacek Beler, Michal Rezný, Kamil Nozynski, Aleksander Mincer, and Christoph Bach. This looks better...

The Auschwitz Report, Slovakia’s contender for the International Feature Oscar, tells the true story of two Slovakian Jews who escape Auschwitz in a bid to tell the world about the Nazi atrocities taking place in the concentration camp.

Based on the book Escape From Hell by one of the runaways, Alfréd Wetzler, the film has been realized in uncompromising detail by director Peter Bebjak. It pictures the brutal reality of everyday life in the early days of Auschwitz, the sacrifices made to alert allies to the horrors, and the crushing realization that the world was not quite ready to hear about what was taking place behind the barbed wire.

Bebjak tells Deadline during the film’s Contenders International panel that he wanted to tell Wetzler and Rudolf Vrba’s story to remind the world that past mistakes should not be repeated at a time when populism is on the march.

Deadline kicks off the New Year and movie awards season with our first edition of Contenders International, which gets underway this morning at 8 a.m. Pt. The event showcases 22 titles from 15 studios, streamers and distributors with presentations including clips and filmmaker/talent Q&As. In all, 19 of the films are official submissions to the Best International Film category at the 93rd Academy Awards.

Due to the pandemic Contenders International will be presented virtually, so click here to register and join the livestream. You can additionally follow along for the day on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram via @Deadline and #DeadlineContenders. See the full schedule of panels below.

While international markets have been a profit center for the studios for many years, local films have begun to take on greater importance outside festivals and indeed their home countries. That was particularly the case in 2019 with South Korea’s Parasite, which went on...

Samuel Goldwyn Films has obtained U.S. rights to Peter Bebjak’s historical drama The Auschwitz Report, which was selected as Slovakia’s contender for Best International Feature Film for the 93rd Oscars. The company is planning a release for sometime next year.

The pic, which is Bebjak’s second film chosen as Slovakia’s official entry, is a true story of two imprisoned Slovak Jewish men, Rudolf Vrba and Alfréd Wetzler. Risking certain death, the two orchestrate a meticulous report of Nazi operations before escaping from Auschwitz to reveal the long-denied truth to the world. What Wetzler and Vrba come home to, however, is the agonizing realization that even the truth may not be enough.

Noel Czuczor, Peter Onderjička and John Hannah star. Bebjak co-wrote the screenplay with Jozef Paštéka and Tomáš Bombík. Producers are Natália Rau Guzinkiewiczová, Rasťo Šesták and Bebjak.

The deal was handled by Dirk Schürhoff,...

Samuel Goldwyn Films has acquired the U.S. distribution rights for “The Auschwitz Report,” Slovakia’s entry for international film to the Academy Awards.

The movie, directed by Peter Bebjak and based on Alfréd Wetzler’s novel “What Dante Did Not See,” tells the true story of two imprisoned Slovak Jewish men, Rudolf Vrba and Wetzler, who escape Auschwitz and risk their lives to meticulously report the horrific reality of Nazi operations to the world.

“The film is both heartbreaking and inspiring,” said Peter Goldwyn of Samuel Goldwyn Films. “Peter Bebjak crafted this film with great care both towards historical accuracy and the subjective experience of its central characters. The result is a gripping, visually inventive experience. We are honored to be part of the story of this important film.”

Goldwyn, which also is distributing Danish entry “Another Round,” plans to release the film in the U.S. in 2021.

“I...

Sales agent Beta Cinema is launching its Cannes Market slate, which is headlined by psychological thriller “Corvidae,” with a playful and novel approach. The company has produced an entertainment show, in the style of a late-night chatshow, featuring its sales team pitching its films and presenting exclusive clips from them. Variety has been given an exclusive sneak peek at the show before it goes live on Friday.

Beta Cinema CEO Dirk Schürhoff is the charismatic host of chatshow “The Beta Cinema Show,” filmed at the company’s offices in Oberhaching, near Munich, while Thorsten Ritter, exec VP acquisitions, sales and marketing, leads the house band on electric guitar. Its sales executives beam in their reports from around the world, while the kangaroo from the hit film “The Kangaroo Chronicles” assists. The tone is fun and tongue-in-cheek, but it’s a serious attempt to add a bit of showbiz pizzazz to the virtual market format.

Director Peter Bebjak’s previous films include The Line, which won the best director award at the 2017 Karlovy Vary Film Festival.

Munich-based Beta Cinema has taken worldwide sales rights to The Auschwitz Report, a new film about the two Slovak Jews, Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, who escaped from the concentration camp and delivered a meticulous report about the systematic genocide to the outside world.

They struggled to make people believe them but the Vrba-Wetzler Report is still credited with saving hundreds of thousands of lives.

The project is directed by Slovakia’s Peter Bebjak, whose previous films include The Line,...