Reims Polar, a new international festival set in Northern France and dedicated to police thrillers, has awarded Wen Shipei’s “Are You Lonesome Tonight?,” Adikhan Yerzhanov’s “Assault” and Lado Kvataniya’s “The Execution.”
The selection of Reims Polar is curated by Bruno Barde, who is also the artistic director of the Deauville American Film Festival.
“Assault,” a dead-pan thriller set fictional village in rural Kazakhstan and revolving around a school hostage situation, won the festival’s Grand Prize Award. Yerzhanov, a prolific Kazakh director, previously directed “The Gentle Indifference of the World” which played at Cannes’ Un Certain Regard in 2018.
The Reims Polar jury prize went to a pair of feature debuts, “Are You Lonesome Tonight?,” a Chinese film which world premiered out of competition at last year’s Cannes, and Russian filmmaker Lado Kvataniya’s “The Execution,” a thriller inspired by the case of an infamous Soviet-era serial killer.
The selection of Reims Polar is curated by Bruno Barde, who is also the artistic director of the Deauville American Film Festival.
“Assault,” a dead-pan thriller set fictional village in rural Kazakhstan and revolving around a school hostage situation, won the festival’s Grand Prize Award. Yerzhanov, a prolific Kazakh director, previously directed “The Gentle Indifference of the World” which played at Cannes’ Un Certain Regard in 2018.
The Reims Polar jury prize went to a pair of feature debuts, “Are You Lonesome Tonight?,” a Chinese film which world premiered out of competition at last year’s Cannes, and Russian filmmaker Lado Kvataniya’s “The Execution,” a thriller inspired by the case of an infamous Soviet-era serial killer.
- 4/12/2022
- by Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
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- 10/20/2021
- MUBI
Just One Film is a series that recommends individual films from festivals around the world—the movies you otherwise might have missed that deserve to be discovered.“These days you either sink or swim,” says Zhuang (Chen Minghao) to his rebellious teenage son Shu (Liu Haoran) in Zhang Ji’s slick cop noir Fire on the Plain. It’s a warning for a boy on the cusp of manhood, a sullen adolescent who has sauntered through life picking fights and entertaining his anger at any opportunity. He is not prepared for the climate of northeastern China in the late 1990s, politically or meteorologically. This is a land of bitter winds and failing factories, of lost jobs and economic downturn. People there dream of the south and its warm prospects. Shu is the focal point of Zhang’s debut feature film, an adaptation of novel Moses on the Plain by Shuang...
- 10/18/2021
- MUBI
While Western cinema all too often equates film noir with retro pastiche and period fare, Chinese filmmakers continue to sustain the genre in bracingly contemporary, socially relevant ways — often sneaking a wealth of political and economic commentary past censors and straight into their sleek underworld narratives. Zhang Ji’s remarkable debut feature, “Fire on the Plain,” follows in this rich tradition: On the surface, it’s a grand, expansive yarn meshing cool policier with . A collective sense of yearning for other lives and other options runs through the well-oiled mechanics of the plot, elevating this San Sebastian competition standout from merely compelling to truly stirring.
Former cinematographer Zhang is best known for his work on Zhang Bingjian’s “North by Northeast,” and this is about as fully formed as first features come — matching the technical finesse you might expect, given his background, to real storytelling brio. If “Fire on the Plain...
Former cinematographer Zhang is best known for his work on Zhang Bingjian’s “North by Northeast,” and this is about as fully formed as first features come — matching the technical finesse you might expect, given his background, to real storytelling brio. If “Fire on the Plain...
- 9/28/2021
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
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