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Also opening this weekend was ‘Insidious: The Red Door’ which made £2.3m for Sony.

RankFilm (distributor)Three-day gross (June 30-July 2)Total gross to date Week 1. Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny (Disney) £3m £13.2m 2 2. Elemental (Disney) £2.9m £3m 1 3. Insidious: The Red Door (Sony) £2.3m £2.3m 1 4. Spider-Man: Across The Spiderverse (Sony) £964,646 £27.7m 6 5. The Little Mermaid (Disney) £490,133 £26m 7

Disney titles went head-to-head at the UK-Ireland box office this weekend after Pixar animation Elemental narrowly missed out on knocking Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny off the top spot.

While previews helped push the Elemental over the £3m mark, its three-day...

The setting for British-Moroccan director Fyzal Boulifa’s latest feature may be radically different from the kitchen sink spaces of his debut drama Lynn + Lucy but it carries with it further contemplation of class structures and the way that people’s closest relationships can often prove to be the most toxic.

Also, as with his first film - which saw him street cast Roxanne Scrimshaw in one of the title roles - he has looked to non-professionals this time around. The charismatic Aïcha Tebbae proves to be a real discovery in the role of Fatima-Zahra, a mother who has a complex relationship with her teenage son Selim (Abdellah El Hajjouji). The pair carry their lives around with them in a collection of large bags, moving just another part of their established routine and one triggered, at the start of the film, by an attempt by her to get money for the.

The acclaimed British-Moroccan director, who made his name with 2019’s Lynn + Lucy, on growing up in white working-class Leicester, filming with nuance and the brutality of London

Fyzal Boulifa and I arrive together at his film distributor’s offices, to a boisterous welcome from a pair of French bulldogs. He stoically endures their enthusiasm while confiding under his breath that he is actually terrified of dogs. It seems an apt introduction to a director who spent more than a decade in the shadows, painstakingly teaching himself how to direct short films, before two of them burst into the sunlight with wins at the Cannes film festival.

It was immediately clear that he was something special. The Curse, his 2012 short, which was nominated for a Bafta, is a jewel-like fable of a young Moroccan woman persecuted by children who spot her consorting with a man outside a remote desert settlement.

In the little-remembered 1950 noir “The Damned Don’t Cry,” Joan Crawford plays a Texan housewife whose grief for her late son spurs her to make a new life for herself in the urban underworld. Fyzal Boulifa’s exquisite new film of the same title is named expressly for that Crawford vehicle, but is neither a remake nor a direct homage. Rather, it remixes the narrative components of that film and others of its ilk into the kind of new-school-old-school heart-tugger — one might say tearjerker if its characters weren’t, true to its title, stoically dry-eyed throughout — that might have been designed for the shoulder-padded diva were she alive in 2022 and, perhaps more crucially, of Moroccan heritage.

Charting the turbulent relationship between a single mother and her teenage son on the destitute fringes of Tangier society, the second feature from BAFTA-nominated British-Moroccan filmmaker Boulifa sees him shifting focus to his North African...

Wissam Charaf’s Dirty, Difficult, Dangerous will open the Venice sidebar.

Abel Ferrara’s Padre Pio, Steve Buscemi’s The Listener and rising UK director Georgia Oakley’s Blue Jean are among the world premieres in this year’s Giornate degli Autori (GdA) , the independent sidebar of the Venice Film Festival (August 31 - September 10).

Lebanese director Wissam Charaf’s Dirty, Difficult, Dangerous will open the programme in competition. The film entwines multiple love stories against the backdrop of Lebanon’s near collapse.

UK director Fyzal Boulifa’s The Damned Don’t Cry is also playing in competition. The film is a...

Upcoming features from Margarethe Von Trotta and Fernando Trueba also receive support.

Co-productions from Belgian director Lukas Dhont, Canada’s Brandon Cronenberg and UK filmmaker Fyzal Boulifa are among 49 selected for support in the latest Eurimages funding round.

Dhont, whose transgender dancer drama Girl won the Camera d’Or at Cannes in 2018, received €300,000 toward his anticipated second feature, Close.

The Belgium-France-Netherlands co-production centres on two 13-year-old boys who have always been incredibly close but drift apart after their relationship is questioned by schoolmates. When tragedy strikes, one is forced to confront why he distanced himself from his closest friend.

German...

Upcoming features from Margarethe Von Trotta and Fernando Trueba also receive support.

Co-productions from Belgian director Lukas Dhont, Canada’s Brandon Cronenberg and UK filmmaker Fyzal Boulifa are among 49 selected for support in the latest Eurimages funding round.

Dhont, whose transgender dancer drama Girl won the Camera d’Or at Cannes in 2018, received €300,000 toward his anticipated second feature, Close.

The Belgium-France-Netherlands co-production centres on two 13-year-old boys who have always been incredibly close but drift apart after their relationship is questioned by schoolmates. When tragedy strikes, one is forced to confront why he distanced himself from his closest friend.

German...

Films by women writer-directors including Rose Glass, Sarah Gavron, Chloé Zhao and Emerald Fennell scored the most nominations for the 41st London Critics’ Circle Film Awards, which were announced on Tuesday.

Glass’s horror film “Saint Maud” earned eight nominations, including film, director, screenwriter, actress (Morfydd Clark), supporting actress (Jennifer Ehle) and British/Irish film of the year, while Clark is also nominated for British/Irish actress.

Sarah Gavron’s coming-of-age tale “Rocks” scored six nominations, Chloé Zhao’s road movie “Nomadland” five, and Emerald Fennell’s black comedy “Promising Young Woman” four. David Fincher’s biopic “Mank” and Steve McQueen’s house-party film “Lovers Rock” also had four nominations each.

The late Chadwick Boseman received nominations for his lead role in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” and his supporting role in “Da 5 Bloods.” Other multiple acting nominees include Morfydd Clark, Anthony Hopkins, Carey Mulligan, Riz Ahmed, Vanessa Kirby, Sacha Baron Cohen and Bukky Bakray.

Series includes British independent titles released theatrically in the last three years.

BBC Film and the BFI have united on a new series of UK films from the past three years which will screen on BBC Two on a weekly basis.

‘British Film Premiere: New Films From New Voices’ marks a change in broadcast strategy for films previously on theatrical release: of the seven films in the series, six had a theatrical premiere within the last two years.

BBC Film (previously known as BBC Films) and the BFI negotiated with the films’ distributors to allow for a shorter window to the broadcast premiere.

The BFI Southbank, which reopens on 1 September with new health and safety measures in place to protect staff and audiences, has announced their full reopening schedule which includes a season exploring the influence of ‘La Haine’ (1995).

The programme for September will resonate with the now, drawing on the themes that have dominated our lives during lockdown. These include Redefining Rebellion, a season programmed by film journalist and critic Kaleem Aftab, which draws its inspiration from Mathieu Kassovitz’s trailblazing ‘La Haine’. Re-released in a 4K restoration in selected cinemas by the BFI on 11 September, ‘La Haine’ maybe 25 years old, but its themes of social and economic divide and discontent, make it just as distinctive now as it was then.

Also in news – 2020 Toronto Film Festival Line-Up announced

During September the BFI will continue to host BFI at Home events for free on BFI YouTube, with guests for the Redefining Rebellion...

In Fyzal Boulifa’s fiercely impressive feature debut, set on an Essex housing estate, two childhood friends try to navigate adult lives that turn toxic

Fyzal Boulifa is a young British director of Moroccan heritage who was Bafta-nominated for his short film The Curse and now makes his fiercely impressive feature debut with Lynn + Lucy, a gruelling social-realist tragedy with a batsqueak of horror, set on a tough Essex estate that Boulifa says is not so very different from where he was brought up in Leicester.

It’s a film about class, community, self-esteem and female friendship and how desperate unhappiness can be incubated in secret, like bacilli in an unseen petri dish. Lynn + Lucy is Loachian in its way (Ken Loach’s company Sixteen Films is a co-producer) and is also indebted to a later generation of film-makers; it feels like Clio Barnard’s The Arbor, her verbatim...

The nominations for the 2019 British Independent Film Awards have been revealed, and it was a huge morning for Armando Iannucci’s Charles Dickens adaptation “The Personal History of David Copperfield” and Tom Harper’s musical drama “Wild Rose.” “Copperfield” led all movies with 11 nominations, including Best British Indie Film, Best Actor for Dev Patel, and Best Screenplay for Iannucci and co-writer Simon Blackwell. Fox Searchlight has U.S. distribution rights to the movie and has announced a 2020 theatrical release.

“Wild Rose,” which earned a second-best 10 nominations, will also compete for Best British Indie Film against “Bait,” “For Sama,” and “The Souvenir.” “Wild Rose” breakout Jessie Buckley landed a Best Actress nomination opposite Renee Zellweger for “Judy,” which Buckley just so happens to have a supporting role in.

While Zellweger landed in the Best Actress field (which she is widely expected to do all awards season thanks to her acclaimed leading...

Armando Iannucci’s take on the Charles Dickens classic “David Copperfield” is a strong front-runner in the British Independent Film Awards, scoring 11 nominations.

Dev Patel is up for best actor for his starring role in “The Personal History of David Copperfield,” and his co-stars, Tilda Swinton and Hugh Laurie, compete in their respective supporting categories.

“Wild Rose,” featuring Jessie Buckley as a rising singer, is also a major contender, with 10 nominations. Horror thriller “In Fabric” follows with nine, and Joanna Hogg’s “The Souvenir” with eight. Dance music feature “Beats,” biopic “Judy,” and documentaries “For Sama” and “Diego Maradona” landed five nods apiece.

British actors Naomi Ackie and Joe Cole unveiled the 2019 nominations in London on Wednesday.

Renee Zellweger gets a best actress nom for her turn as late-career Judy Garland. She will vie with Buckley, Holliday Grainger, Sally Hawkins and Vicky Knight for the award.

For the best actor prize,...