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Luis Ortega’s slow, unpredictable dramedy set in the world of mob-run racing in Buenos Aires, “Kill the Jockey,” plays its cards close to its chest. If surprising shifts into magical realism and existential rumination mean we are kept guessing about the film’s ambitions, there is also a sense that Ortega has let the material get away from him like a runaway horse.

Someone bested by a beast before the title even has a chance to flash up on screen is our titular jockey. We are first introduced to Remo Manfredini (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart) catatonic in a bar before he is found by a menacing male search party. They revive him by the uncharming method of inserting a riding crop into his mouth and drive him to a race track. Here he pre-games with horse drugs mixed with booze and cigarettes and then takes a slow walk through a...

Emerald Fennell’s dark comedy Saltburn takes a massive jump from to over 1,500 screens today as Bradley Cooper’s Maestro, Hayao Miyazaki’s latest The Boy and the Heron, animated They Shot The Piano Player and other festival favorites launch awards season runs this Thanksgiving specialty weekend.

Apple, opening Napoleon wide with Sony, is also planting a flag for evergreen status for last year’s holiday romp Spirited, a musical retelling of A Christmas Carol with singing, dancing Ryan Reynolds and Will Ferrell.

Maestro, presented by Netflix, raises the baton in ten locations including New York and LA today and plans to add more theaters weekly. The anticipated Venice-premiering film – see Deadline review — was directed by and stars Bradley Cooper as the iconic conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein, with Carey Mulligan as his wife of 25 years, Felicia Montealegre Cohn Bernstein. Cooper is also a co-writer and producer alongside Martin Scorsese,...

Fallen Leaves, Aki Kaurismäki’s first film since 2017’s The Other Side of Hope, took home the Jury Prize from this year’s Cannes while charming critics more than just about anything else in competition. His “gentle tragicomedy” marks the fourth part of a working-class series, following Shadows in Paradise, Ariel, and The Match Factory Girl, bearing influence from Ozu, Bresson, and Chaplin.

Ahead of a fall-festival run and November 17 theatrical release, Mubi have unveiled a brief but lovely teaser that confirms Rory O’Connor’s Cannes diagnosis of “a charming, moving, bittersweet romance packed with all the lovely things we’ve come to associate with him after four decades.” As he continued, “The locations and colors still come in admirable shades of mustard and pea soup––as do the characters and their moods. As a film, Fallen Leaves could hardly be simpler––two people living separate, lonesome lives meet and...

Aki Kaurismäki’s Cannes Jury Prize winner “Fallen Leaves” has snagged the 2023 Intl. Federation of Film Critics (Fipresci) Grand Prix for best film of the past year. All films released after July 1 2022 were eligible.

The Fipresci Grand Prix will be presented to Kaurismäki at the San Sebastian Film Festival’s opening night gala ceremony on Sept. 22, a tradition that dates back to 1999. “Fallen Leaves” will also play in San Sebastian’s Perlak best of fests section.

Chosen by 669 Fipresci members from three finalists — the other two were “The Banshees of Inisherin,” by Martin McDonagh, and “Tár,” by Todd Field – “Fallen Leaves’” triumph reflects the general critical rapture with which the film was greeted at Cannes, though Variety didn’t join the party.

This is the second time that Kaurismäki will have received this recognition from the international critics, which went in 2017 to

“The Other Side of Hope.”

The fourth part...

To judge by Aki Kaurismäki’s typically wry and winsome “Fallen Leaves,” the Finnish auteur’s first movie since threatening to retire after “The Other Side of Hope” came out 2017, only two things have any significant importance have happened in the world over the last six years.

The first and most pressing of those is the war in Ukraine, which bleeds into Ansa’s (Alma Pöysti) already depressing kitchen every time the supermarket cashier dares to turn on her radio after work. Listening to news of the latest atrocity in Kyiv is the only thing worse than eating her microwaved dinner in the complete silence Ansa settles for when she can’t find anything more comforting on the airwaves. She doesn’t need any further evidence of the darkness outside her window, thank you very much.

The other major historical milestone since 2017 was obviously the release of Jim Jarmusch’s “The Dead Don’t Die,...

Aki Kaurismäki, the deadpan cockeyed minimalist of Finland, has become the ultimate illustration of the principle that if you make movies in the same mood and style, with the same monosyllabic bombed-out hipster vibe, for a period of 30 years, your movies may not have changed — but the world around them has, so the films will have a totally different effect.

In “Fallen Leaves,” the Kaurismäki bauble that’s showing at Cannes this year, there’s actually a scene in which a character uses a computer. The film’s heroine, Ansa (Alma Pöysti), loses her job as a supermarket worker, and to find another gig she rents an Hp laptop at a makeshift Internet café that charges 10 Euro for half an hour. Apart from that, the movie unfolds in that scruffy and sparsely decorated so-familiar-it’s-cozy pre-tech Kaurismäki zone, where people still use electric adding machines or listen to a bulky...

Finnish actors Alma Pöysti and Jussi Vatanen have been making names for each other for a while now. But playing leads in Aki Kaurismäki’s latest film, “Fallen Leaves,” was a whole different story.

“He has always been that household name, even when I was growing up on a farm in the 1980s, kicking a ball against our cowhouse. It’s crazy that now, we are here together. Also, he is really just a regular guy. Funny and he actually talks a lot,” Vatanen tells Variety in Cannes.

A household name himself thanks to the “Lapland Odyssey” franchise, he has been exploring dramatic roles in “Forest Giant” or “The Man Who Died.”

“As a Finn, you are very, very familiar with his style. We have seen all his movies and it’s just in our blood, I guess. I actually thought that [entering this universe] was quite easy.”

Pöysti, celebrated for her turn...

Early in Aki Kaurismäki’s slender but enormously satisfying Fallen Leaves (Kuolleet Lehdet), the male protagonist is invited by his buddy to go to Friday night karaoke. “Tough guys don’t sing,” he replies, in the signature affectless deadpan shared by all the Finnish master’s characters. But that tough guy turns out to be yearning for love, refusing to give up when a lost phone number and a series of other obstacles keep him from a woman he barely knows. In a sense the tough guy is also Kaurismäki himself, inhabiting a world defined by dourness and melancholy but always seeking pathways to comfort, hope and light.

The director had spoken of retirement after his beautiful Syrian refugee tale The Other Side of Hope in 2017, and this return after six years is waggishly described as a work previously believed to be lost. It’s an expansion of Kaurismäki’s Proletariat Trilogy,...

Humor, it seems, has returned to the Main Competition at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. After a few days of mostly serious dramas about Nazis and terrorists and sweatshops, a lighter touch has emerged from a couple of expected sources: first Todd Haynes, a filmmaker with a great range but also a real touch for pulpy material that he shows in “May December,” and now Aki Kaurismäki, the Finnish master of comedy so deadpan that it can take an audience half the movie to figure out that it’s Ok to laugh.

They figured it out when Kaurismaki’s “Fallen Leaves” premiered in Cannes on Monday. With a brisk one-hour-and-21-minute running time, the film is a wry delight whose very restraint is part of the joke. Jonathan Glazer’s Cannes standout “The Zone of Interest” might be a movie without a single closeup, but “Fallen Leaves” is pretty much a...

Premiering in competition at the Cannes Film Festival later this month, the trailer has dropped for Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki’s Fallen Leaves via distributor The Match Factory. His first film since 2017’s The Other Side of Hope, Fallen Leaves draws from the filmmaker’s established working-class trilogy, which includes his previous films Shadows in Paradise (1986), Ariel (1988) and The Match Factory Girl (1990). Per an official synopsis: “Fallen Leaves tells the story of two lonely people (Alma Pöysti and Jussi Vatanen) who meet each other by chance in the Helsinki night and try to find the first, only, and ultimate love […]

The post Trailer Watch: Aki Kaurismäki’s Fallen Leaves first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Premiering in competition at the Cannes Film Festival later this month, the trailer has dropped for Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki’s Fallen Leaves via distributor The Match Factory. His first film since 2017’s The Other Side of Hope, Fallen Leaves draws from the filmmaker’s established working-class trilogy, which includes his previous films Shadows in Paradise (1986), Ariel (1988) and The Match Factory Girl (1990). Per an official synopsis: “Fallen Leaves tells the story of two lonely people (Alma Pöysti and Jussi Vatanen) who meet each other by chance in the Helsinki night and try to find the first, only, and ultimate love […]

The post Trailer Watch: Aki Kaurismäki’s Fallen Leaves first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

One of the great directors working today, Aki Kaurismäki, is returning with his first film since 2017’s The Other Side of Hope. Fallen Leaves, the latest work from the Finnish director, will premiere in competition at Cannes Film Festival this month and now The Match Factory has debuted the first trailer as sales kick off. Described as a “gentle tragicomedy,” it marks the fourth part of Kaurismäki’s working-class trilogy, following Shadows in Paradise, Ariel, and The Match Factory Girl.

Here’s the synopsis: “Fallen Leaves tells the story of two lonely people (Alma Pöysti and Jussi Vatanen) who meet each other by chance in the Helsinki night and try to find the first, only, and ultimate love of their lives. Their path towards this honorable goal is clouded by the man’s alcoholism, lost phone numbers, not knowing each other’s names or addresses, and life’s general tendency...

’Suzume’, ’On The Adamant’, and ’Art College 1994’ all land in joint fourth place with a score of 2.7.

Celine Song’s feature debut Past Lives has finished top of Screen’s 2023 Berlin jury grid after the final five titles failed to match its average score of 3.6 from seven critics.

The romantic drama has the highest score of a Berlin jury grid winner since 2017’s The Other Side Of Hope by Aki Kaurismaki, which scored 3.7.

Click top left to expand

Past Lives stars Greta Lee, Teo Yoo and John Magaro, and follows two childhood friends from South Korea who reconnect...

A favorite at Toronto International Film Festival last fall (where it premiered following being selected for Cannes), Ben Sharrock’s BAFTA-nominated drama Limbo takes a wry and poignant look at the refugee experience in a fictional remote Scottish island. Now set to arrive in the U.S. on April 30 via Focus Features and in the U.K. and Ireland on July 30 via Mubi, the latter have released the first trailer, which suggests it could be a strong double feature pairing with Aki Kaurismäki’s The Other Side of Hope.

Jared Mobarak said in his Tff review, “What begins as a modest and perhaps slight take on the refugee crisis tinged by an acquired yet welcome taste of British comedy, however, slowly reveals its underlying drama via the stark inevitability of its existence. You can only deflect from your plight so long before the stress and anxiety bubbles back to the surface.

Apc (About Premium Content) has scored key territories sales on “Man in Room 301,” the anticipated Finnish thriller drama which is playing in competition at Canneseries.

The gripping series, written by U.K. actor-turned-screenwriter Kate Ashfield (“Born to Kill”), opens in summer 2007 with the Kurtti family spending their holidays in cabin chalets in the land of a thousand lakes when their two-year old son, Tommi, is killed by a gunshot. Elias, a surly 12-year-old neighbor who has already committed minor acts of aggression against the family, is blamed for the death of the child. 12 years after the tragedy, the family is just about to go on holiday at a Greek resort when they receive a threatening anonymous letter. At the rest, they come across a man that looks like an adult Elias.

Commissioned by Finland’s leading streamer Elisa Viihde, the show was sold by Apc to Arte for France and Germany,...

How to be a Human: Three Films by Aki Kaurismäki is showing September 18 - October 9, 2020 on Mubi in the United Kingdom.Above: The Other Side of Hope.As Finland’s most successful cinematic export, Aki Kaurismäki is a one-man studio system and potentially a genre unto himself. An auteur in the truest sense, Kaurismäki exercises almost complete control over all elements of his work: from designing his own sets to a distinctly pared-down and deadpan approach to dialogue, along with command over the production and distribution of his films. While Kaurismäki’s films are in many ways innately Finnish, the cinematic worlds which he has created are distinctly his own and could take place anywhere. “Kaurismäki-land” is a land governed by its own rules, a parallel universe that overlaps with our own. The citizens of Kaurismäki-land are mostly working-class romantics and dreamers. Prone to depression, they drink and smoke their...

Delicatessen As our dive into documentaries and festival films has been continuing this week with coverage from Sheffield Doc/Fest and the Human Rights Watch Film Festival in New York, we thought we bring you some sunny escapism with a selection of quirky continental comedies. If you're looking for more inspiration, don't forget to check out our weekly Stay-At-Home Seven.

The Other Side Of Hope, Amazon UK, £3.49

Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki is a fierce controller of the look and colour scheme of his film, crafting worlds that make you aware of their constructed nature even as you're totally absorbed by them. In this tale of a restaurateur who befriends a refugee, the dominant shade is a melancholic blue - but if that all sounds gloomy be assured that Kaurismäki finds plenty of droll humour in unexpected places and you'll certainly never look at sushi in quite the same...

Actor, Director and Unhcr Goodwill Ambassador Cate Blanchett has today given some inspiring and thought-provoking film recommendations to occupy film-lovers in these uncertain times.

Blanchett has collaborated with IMDb to share her top six ‘Films of Hope’ Watchlist, focusing on films that explore themes around human resilience, isolation and what it means to have hope and a home. Blanchett stresses the importance of connecting with others, acknowledges support people are giving to their local communities and asks them to also remember vulnerable refugees around the world.

In a personal home-shot film presenting her Watchlist for IMDb, Blanchett says: “Like most of us I’m staying at home right now as part of the global effort to keep each other safe in these very trying times. Covid-19 has affected all of us and we have seen what it has done in countries with strong and robust health care systems but now...

Nimby

Finland’s Teemu Nikki scored an international breakthrough with his sophomore film, the sardonic Euthanizer. He reteams with his producer Jani Poso for German-Finnish co-prod Nimby (Not in My Back Yard) and actress Hannamaija Nikander, who has been featured in several of Nikku’s shorts as well as his past two features, Lovemilla (2015) and Euthanizer (2017). Newcomers Susanna Pukkila and Almila Bagriacik will star in the lead roles, with other supporting cast including Elias Westerberg, Matti Onnismaa (of Euthanizer), Mari Rantasila, Antti Reini, Leila Abdullah and Stephan Schad.…...

Tobias Pausinger, Caitlin Smith join as part of a restructure of its development and acquisition department.

Leading German sales company The Match Factory has hired Tobias Pausinger as head of acquisition and development and Caitlin Smith as acquisition manager, as part of a restructure of its development and acquisition department.

Pausinger, effective immediately, will lead development and acquisitions for the company’s sales business, as well as Match Factory Productions and Berlin-based Pola Pandora (both also headed by The Match Factory CEO Michael Weber).

He returns to the company after ten years, when he was an acquisitions manager following its...

Haugesund, Norway — Actor Omar Abdi, who starred in the Ahmed-scripted short “Citizens,” and actress Yasmin Warsame, who made her name as a Canadian model, will topline romantic-tragedy “The Gravedigger,” the latest big screen project from Bufo, the Helsinki-based outfit behind Berlinale winner “The Other Side of Hope.”

The film follows a Djibouti gravedigger trying to re-unite his family in a time of strife.

Bufo founders Mark Lwoff and Misha Jaari will lead the charge on this international co-production, working alongside France’s Pyramide Productions and Germany’s Twenty Twenty Vision Filmproduktion.

Financing partners include Finland’s Church Media Foundation and The Finnish Film Foundation, France’s Cnc, The Arab Fund for Arts and Culture and World Cinema Fund, and Germany’s Ffhsh, along with co-production partners Yle and Zdf/Arte.

The Somali-language film will begin lensing in Djibouti this October, with an intended finish date of Spring 2020. Bufo’s boutique...

It’s time for last orders at Corona, Dubrovnik and Kafe Mockba, as the legendary Helsinki complex, co-owned by Finland’s best known directors, will close down for good in June. After undergoing complete renovation, the building on Eerikinkatu will then be turned into a hotel.

The decision to serve eviction notices to one of Helsinki’s most beloved spots provoked a general outcry. Sadly, it is now final, with Andorra Culture and Entertainment Center – consisting of Corona Bar, Dubrovnik and Kafe Mockba, as well as movie theatre Kino Andorra – shutting down its long-serving doors already in June. “There was nothing to be done” – explains Nuppu Koivu, who has been working there for 17 years. Scoring a part of a waitress in Aki Kaurismäki Berlin Silver Bear-winner “The Other Side of Hope” somewhere along the way. “The owners of the building decided not to renew our contract, there will be a...

Aki Kaurismäki. Photo courtesy of Janus Films.Watching an Aki Kaurismäki film can feel like dropping in on a world just out of step with our own. All the elements are there—the streets, the buildings, the people (and their docile dogs). But something is always off. A man’s desk is taken away while he’s still sitting at it to indicate he’s been laid off. A woman asks a pharmacist what rat poison does. “It kills,” the pharmacist says blankly. It’s as if the Finnish filmmaker is recreating a version of planet Earth with all the nuance removed. These highly orchestrated facsimiles should feel foreign, but their simplicity and dry humor instead allows for a familiarity to sink in. His universe is in fact far more relatable—and far more human—than meets the eye. Although he’s gained a reputation as a comically cynical auteur,...

The other finalists were Three Billboards, Cold War and Zama.

Phantom Thread has been voted best film by the International Federation of Film Critics (Fipresci), with director Paul Thomas Anderson set to collect the Grand Prix at the San Sebastian Film Festival (Sept 21-29).

The vote was decided by 473 critics from all over the world, who chose the winner from films that premiered after July 1 2017.

The other three finalists were Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri by Martin McDonagh, Cold War by Pawel Pawlikowski – which won best director in Cannes - and Zama by Lucrecia Martel.

It will be the third...

Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Phantom Thread” has won the Fipresci Grand Prix, the top prize of the International Federation of Film Critics. The U.S. filmmaker became the first director to win the award three times, having previously won in 2000 and 2008 with “Magnolia” and “There Will Be Blood,” respectively.

The director will receive the award at the opening ceremony of the San Sebastian Intl. Film Festival on Sept. 21.

The film was chosen as the year’s top film in a poll of 473 international film critics and journalists. The prize was open to any film receiving its international premiere since July 2017. It beat out fellow short-listed nominees: Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cannes best-director winner “Cold War”; Martin McDonagh’s Oscar-, BAFTA- and Golden Globe-winner “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”; and Lucrecia Martel’s “Zama.”

“Phantom Thread,” which stars Daniel Day-Lewis in his final feature role, had its premiere in New York in December.

The Traverse City Film Festival is celebrating its 14th year in 2018 by bringing together some of the year’s best indies and documentaries, plus classics from Jonathan Demme, Hal Ashby, and more. The Michigan-set festival, backed by Michael Moore, is being run in 2018 by directors Susan Fisher and Meg Weichman, who have worked on the festival for nearly a decade and have been at the helm since December.

Tickets for this year’s edition will go on sale to the public on Saturday, July 21 (click here for the official festival website). Friends of the Film Festival will be able to get early access to tickets with advance sales starting Sunday, July 15.

The full lineup for the 2018 Traverse City Film Festival is below.

Opening Night: “Rbg”

Centerpiece: “Hearts Beat Loud”

Closing Night: “Burden”

Open Space

“Stop Making Sense,” Jonathan Demme

“Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle,” Jake Kasdan

“Coco,” Lee Unkrich

“Black Panther,...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options — not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves — we’ve taken it upon ourselves to highlight the titles that have recently hit platforms. Every week, one will be able to see the cream of the crop (or perhaps some simply interesting picks) of streaming titles (new and old) across platforms such as Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, and more (note: U.S. only). Check out our rundown for this week’s selections below.

The Endless (Aaron Moorhead & Justin Benson)

To resolve is to settle, finding the determination to do something rather than simply wait for something to happen to you. A resolution isn’t therefore a firm ending. On the contrary, it serves to provide beginnings. That decision has the potential to set you onto a path towards freedom either from the danger of outside forces or the complacency rendering you immobile within.

Refugees travel lightly, but we can unpack this: What is “the other side of hope,” anyway? Some say it’s despair; others more cynically say it’s truth. But what they mean with those answers are “opposite,” which is not necessarily the same as “the other side.” The latest production from Finland’s greatest auteur, Aki Kaurismäki, is being singled as one of his best. It bears the thoughtful title, “The Other Side of Hope” (Toivon Tuolla Puolen). As the second part of a self-prescribed “Immigration Trilogy,” Kaurismäki isn’t so much interested in wallowing in despair of the contemporary immigrant experience, as difficult as that experience all too often is. Rather, the filmmaker takes us, tonally speaking, around to the backside of the issue: the dingy, once-ignored...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Refugees travel lightly, but we can unpack this: What is “the other side of hope,” anyway? Some say it’s despair; others more cynically say it’s truth. But what they mean with those answers are “opposite,” which is not necessarily the same as “the other side.” The latest production from Finland’s greatest auteur, Aki Kaurismäki, is being singled as one of his best. It bears the thoughtful title, “The Other Side of Hope” (Toivon Tuolla Puolen). As the second part of a self-prescribed “Immigration Trilogy,” Kaurismäki isn’t so much interested in wallowing in despair of the contemporary immigrant experience, as difficult as that experience all too often is. Rather, the filmmaker takes us, tonally speaking, around to the backside of the issue: the dingy, once-ignored...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

The Square was the most successful film across the network in 2017.

European Cinemas Network, the collective of European exhibitors, has unveiled its statistics report for 2017 at its annual meeting at the Cannes Film Festival.

The network, which has more than 1000 cinemas, added 26 cinemas in 2017 and is now spread across 34 countries. Those cinemas devote close to 58% of screenings to European films, and see 54% of their admissions come from European movies.

In 2017, the network generated 39.2 million admissions for European films, including 21.1 million admissions for European films not playing in their native coutnries.

The overall figure for admissions in the network was 73,190,000 in...

At a time when the arthouse market is struggling with declining viewers, Germany’s Pandora Film continues to achieve success in both production and distribution with an eclectic lineup of domestic and international films.

The Cologne-based company’s shareholders, producers Claudia Steffen, Christoph Friedel, Reinhard Brundig and Raimond Goebel, attribute their strong performance in part to their close working relationships with filmmakers. Pandora’s recent co-productions include Claire Denis’ upcoming science fiction drama “High Life,” starring Robert Pattinson and Juliette Binoche, Marcelo Martinessi’s award-winning Paraguayan drama “The Heiresses” and Ulrich Köhler’s German feature “In My Room,” which premieres in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard.

Steffen and Friedel spoke with Variety about the company’s latest productions, the current industry climate and the company’s inner workings.

Where is Pandora Film today, both as a producer-distributor in Germany as well as a key co-production partner for international filmmakers?

Steffen: With...

As the arthouse market is struggling with declining audiences, Germany’s Pandora Film continues to achieve success in both production and distribution with an eclectic lineup.

The Cologne-based company’s shareholders — producers Claudia Steffen, Christoph Friedel, Reinhard Brundig and Raimond Goebel — attribute their strong performance in part to their close working relationships with filmmakers. Pandora’s recent co-productions include Claire Denis’ upcoming science-fiction drama “High Life,” starring Robert Pattinson and Juliette Binoche; Marcelo Martinessi’s award-winning Paraguayan drama “The Heiresses”; and Ulrich Koehler’s German feature “In My Room,” which premieres in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard.

Steffen and Friedel spoke with Variety about the company’s latest productions, the current industry climate and the company’s inner workings.

Where is Pandora Film today, both as a producer-distributor in Germany and as a key partner for international filmmakers?

Steffen: With our distribution colleagues we have been reacting to the increasingly difficult German arthouse market.

For all of its well-documented troubles, the Berlin International Film Festival is still a veritable smorgasbord for adventurous distributors who might be willing to take a chance on some exciting arthouse cinema. Most of the approximately 400 movies that play at the massive annual showcase will never see the light of day in the United States, either in theaters or even on streaming platforms, but the ones that are scooped up for domestic release tend to make an outsized impact once they land on these shores. Two of the current nominees for Best Foreign Language Film premiered at last year’s Berlinale (“On Body and Soul” and “A Fantastic Woman”), while other standouts from the 2017 edition like “Félicité” and “The Other Side of Hope” eventually became highlights of the fall movie season.

As always, the 2018 festival was completely overwhelming, and offered a handful of buried treasure that American audiences deserve to see.

Both films record strong ratings on the 2018 edition of the grid.

Wes Anderson’s Isle Of Dogs, which opened the 2018 Berlin Film Festival, and Alexey German Jr’s Dovlatov are setting the early pace on this year’s Screen Berlin jury grid.

Screen’s international jury of critics awarded both films a respectable 3.1 stars from a possible 4.

For Isle Of Dogs, two critics, Sight & Sound’s Nick James and Screen’s own, awarded the film a maximum four stars.

Dovlatov also received two maximum ratings, from Nicholas Wenno of Dagens Nyheter and Anton Dolin from Meduza.

At last year’s Berlin Film Festival, only two titles from the Berlin competition topped a score of 3.1 – Have A Nice Day and chart-topper The Other Side Of Hope.

Nine films have registered scores so far on the 2018 edition, which will amass scores for every film in the festival’s competition. Eva (on 1.3) and Damsel (on 1.4) are the two films to register...

We take for granted how easy it is to travel between countries nowadays. But it wasn't always so easy. And it might not be so easy in the future. The latest film from German filmmaker Christian Petzold (Jerichow, Barbara, Phoenix) is a feature titled Transit, which is premiering at the Berlin Film Festival. The film feels similar to something Aki Kaurismäki would make, specifically his most recent film The Other Side of Hope, and even feels like it would play nice with Ai Weiwei's documentary Human Flow. Transit is about refugees and transit papers, and the lives of people who are just trying to find a way out, a way to somewhere else. They're just trying to move on. It's the kind of film you need to sit on and think about for days or weeks, and not instantly process, because there's so much more going on beyond just what's presented on the surface.

May is going to be a good month for fans of the Romanian New Wave, as Cristian Mungiu’s two most recent films are both joining the Criterion Collection. “Graduation” and “Beyond the Hills” will be released alongside new additions “Midnight Cowboy,” “The Other Side of Hope,” and “Moonrise”; “Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters” and “Au hasard Balthazar,” which have already been released on DVD, are getting Blu-ray upgrades.

“Au hasard Balthazar”

“A profound masterpiece from one of the most revered filmmakers in the history of cinema, director Robert Bresson’s ‘Au hasard Balthazar’ follows the donkey Balthazar as he is passed from owner to owner, some kind and some cruel but all with motivations outside of his understanding. Balthazar, whose life parallels that of his first keeper, Marie, is truly a beast of burden, suffering the sins of humankind. But despite his powerlessness, he accepts his fate nobly.

A year of uncertainty–to put it lightly–at every waking moment, 2017 won’t be remembered fondly. Offering brief moments of solace, the best cinema of the year included both escapism and a glimpse of humanity that was undetectable when looking at headlines. It was also the rare year that didn’t ramp up in quality in latter months; in fact, only one film in my top 10 actually premiered in the fall, with a trio of others getting theatrical releases during that time.

It hurt to leave off Lady Bird, The Untamed, The Other Side of Hope, Ex Libris – The New York Public Library, and the year’s best blockbuster, Okja, but when all is said and done, here are the 15 films that most resonated with me this year. Along with the below feature, one can see a vague ranking of all ~150 films I’ve viewed here, as well as...

Chris here. With the new year brings another instalment of our favorite cinematic visual puzzle: the Criterion Collection's animated hints at the films coming to their lineup this year! While the cat's already out of the bag that this year we will see Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides and Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man will get the cineaste luxury treatment, the always charming and coy drawing below provides some brain teasers of what else we might see. The more obvious guesses include Aki Karismäki's The Other Side of Hope and Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine - can you spot any other titles coming soon from Criterion?...

Over the last six weekends, six new specialized releases have opened to a per-theater average of over $60,000. “I, Tonya” is the latest, and comes at a time when seats at prime theaters are at a premium.

Still, it isn’t necessarily a bad weekend to open. Last year, “La La Land” launched to $881,000 in five theaters, a nearly $170,000-per-theater result. But it had far less competition, ecstatic reviews, top stars, and signs of early appeal that propelled it to over $100 million and much more worldwide.

This year has more strong titles; even better, most show early success with wider audiences. “The Disaster Artist” expanded quickly in its second weekend to place #4 overall, while A24 had a second Top 10 hit again with “Lady Bird.” That film, coming off critics’ group wins, is thriving and easily the leader among fall releases so far. In fact, it already is the second-biggest specialized release...

Sometimes, the best things in life are worth waiting for. 2017 has seen the return of filmmakers like Lucrecia Martel after 9 years since her previous feature film, and while he may not have made a film as awe-inspiring or formally groundbreaking as the stunning Zama, six years is much too long to wait for yet another winner from director Aki Kaurismaki.

Over half a decade since his brilliant 2011 film Le Havre, Kaurismaki has returned with arguably his most formally inventive and politically driven film to date. Entitled The Other Side Of Hope, the director introduces viewers to the pair of Khaled and Wikstrom, two men who couldn’t have led more different lives. Sherwan Haji stars as Khaled, a man hailing from Aleppo who is seeking asylum in Helsinki. He encounters Sakari Kuosmanen’s Wikstrom, a salesman who goes from leaving his wife to ostensibly winning a restaurant in a card game.

I find it odd that no major filmmakers are tacking the Syrian refugee crisis. An estimated five million people have fled the war torn country since 2012 and the number easily doubles when you add up internally displaced refugees. I find it doubly odd that it is Aki Kaurismaki, the Finnish master of deadpan comedy, taking on the topical subject. First it was his French-language film Le Havre, which dealt with immigration. With The Other Side of Hope, Kaurismaki lends a hand, with his light touch, on Aleppo, without sacrificing the seriousness of the situation. Surprisingly, the result is an affecting, optimistic look at human kindness and decency. It also turns out to be one of his finest films. There are two strands of narrative...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Each month, the fine folks at FilmStruck and the Criterion Collection spend countless hours crafting their channels to highlight the many different types of films that they have in their streaming library. This December will feature an exciting assortment of films, as noted below.

To sign up for a free two-week trial here.

Friday, December 1

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World*: Criterion Collection Edition #692

Stanley Kramer followed his harrowing Oscar winner Judgment at Nuremberg with the most grandly harebrained movie ever made, a pileup of slapstick and borscht-belt-y one-liners about a group of strangers fighting tooth and nail over buried treasure. Performed by a nonpareil cast, including Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Ethel Merman, Mickey Rooney, Spencer Tracy, Jonathan Winters, and a boatload of other playing-to-the-rafters comedy legends, Kramer’s wildly uncharacteristic film is an exhilarating epic of tomfoolery. Supplemental Features: an audio commentary featuring It’s a Mad,...

The Other Side Of Hope Fipresci, the International Federation of Film Critics has named Aki Kaurismäki's The Other Side of Hope (Toivon Tuolla Puolen) as the best film of the past year.

The Finnish director will receive the Fipresci Grand Prix 2017 during the opening ceremony of the San Sebastián International Film Festival on September 22.

The prize was voted on by hundreds of film critics around the world. It is the second time Kaurismäki has taken home the critics' highest accolade, after The Man Without A Past (Mies Vailla Menneisyyttä) was awarded the Grand Prix 2002.

The film was one of three finalists for the award, alongside Oscar-winner Moonlight, by Barry Jenkins, and Berlinale Golden Bear winner On Body And Soul (Testrol és Lélekrol) by Ildikó Enyedi. ...

The 23rd edition of the Sarajevo Film Festival kicked off last night with a screening of Aki Kaurismaki’s The Other Side Of Hope.

The event took place in two traditional festival locations: the city’s National Theatre, and 3,000-seat Raifeissen Bank Open Air cinema.

Attendees on the night included documentary filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer – whose credits include the Oscar-nominated The Act Of Killing and The Look Of Silence – who is in Sarajevo for the duration of the festival to participate in the True Stories Market, part of the CineLink programme.

Also in attendance were members of the 2017 jury, including Edinburgh International Film Festival artistic director Mark Adams.

25 films comprise the main slate of 55th edition set to run from September 28-October 15.

The Film Society of Lincoln Center has announced the 25 films for the main slate of the 55th New York Film Festival.

This year’s selection showcases films honoured at Cannes such as Ruben Östlund’s Palme d’Or-winner The Square, Robin Campillo’s Critics’ Prize winner Bpm, and Agnès Varda and Jr’s Faces Places.

From Berlin, Aki Kaurismäki’s Silver Bear winner The Other Side Of Hope and Agnieszka Holland’s Alfred Bauer Prize-winner Spoor mark the returns of two New York Film Festival veterans, while Luca Guadagnino makes his debut with Call Me By Your Name (pictured).

As previously announced, the opening night screening is Richard Linklater’s Last Flag Flying, while Todd Haynes’ Wonderstruck is the Centerpiece, and Woody Allen’s Wonder Wheel will close the festival.

Nyff Director and Selection Committee Chair Kent Jones said: “Every year, I’m asked...

25 films comprise the main slate of 55th edition set to run from September 28-October 15.

The Film Society of Lincoln Center has announced the 25 films for the main slate of the 55th New York Film Festival.

This year’s selection showcases films honoured at Cannes such as Ruben Östlund’s Palme d’Or-winner The Square, Robin Campillo’s Critics’ Prize winner Bpm, and Agnès Varda and Jr’s Faces Places.

From Berlin, Aki Kaurismäki’s Silver Bear winner The Other Side Of Hope and Agnieszka Holland’s Alfred Bauer Prize-winner Spoor mark the returns of two New York Film Festival veterans, while Luca Guadagnino makes his debut with Call Me By Your Name (pictured).

As previously announced, the opening night screening is Richard Linklater’s Last Flag Flying, while Todd Haynes’ Wonderstruck is the Centerpiece, and Woody Allen’s Wonder Wheel will close the festival.

Nyff Director and Selection Committee Chair Kent Jones said: “Every year, I’m asked...

It’s beginning to look a lot like fall festival season. On the heels of announcements from Tiff and Venice, the 55th edition of the New York Film Festival has unveiled its Main Slate, including a number of returning faces, emerging talents, and some of the most anticipated films from the festival circuit this year.

This year’s Main Slate showcases a number of films honored at Cannes including Ruben Östlund’s Palme d’Or–winner “The Square,” Robin Campillo’s “Bpm,” and Agnès Varda & Jr’s “Faces Places.” Other Cannes standouts, including “The Rider” and “The Florida Project,” will also screen at Nyff.

Read MoreTIFF Reveals First Slate of 2017 Titles, Including ‘The Shape of Water,’ ‘Downsizing,’ and ‘Call Me By Your Name’

Elsewhere, Aki Kaurismäki’s Silver Bear–winner “The Other Side of Hope” and Agnieszka Holland’s Alfred Bauer Prize–winner “Spoor” come to Nyff after Berlin bows.

Following their gala selections of Richard Linklater’s Last Flag Flying, Todd Haynes’ Wonderstruck, and Woody Allen’s Wonder Wheel, the New York Film Festival have now unveiled their full Main Slate. Their picks include Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me by Your Name, Lucrecia Martel’s Zama, Greta Gerwig’s debut Lady Bird, as well as the Palme d’Or-winning The Square and more favorites from Cannes, Berlin, Locarno, and Sundance.

“Every year, I’m asked about the themes in our Main Slate line-up, and every year I say the same thing: we choose the best films we see, and the common themes and preoccupations arise only after the fact,” Nyff Director and Selection Committee Chair Kent Jones says. “As I look at this slate of beautiful work, I could just make a series of simple observations: that these films come from all over the globe; that there is a...

Closing Night, Remarks, WinnersInternational Jury: Olafur Eliasson, Artist (Iceland); Dora Bouchoucha Fourate, Producer (Tunisia), Julia Jentsch, Actress (Germany); Maggie Gyllenhaal, Actress, Producer (U.S.); Paul Verhoeven — Jury President — Director, Screenwriter (The Netherlands); Wang Quan’an, Director, Screenwriter (People’s Republic of China); Diego Luna, Actor, Director (Mexico)

A new tradition of sharing a “coup de champagne” on Closing Night of the Berlinale seems to be in the making with Ben and Stephanie Gibson and us. Last year we found ourselves together at the Hyatt for pre-Closing Night Drinks; this year we shared a coup at the Berlinale Palast before the crowd arrived.

Closing Night Before the Crowds Arrive

Ben, btw, is the director of dffb, the German Film School in Berlin. Read more in my previous blog here. He and his wife Stephanie could make a great TV series with the stories of their families. Once the crowd took over,...

Stanley Tucci, Catherine Deneuve dramas join competition; TV dramas and Oleg Sentsov doc set to get world premiere.

The Berlin International Film Festival has finalised its competition and Berlinale Special strands.

Joining the festival in Out Of Competition berths are Stanley Tucci-directed Final Portrait and Catherine Deneuve drama Sage Femme.

James Gray’s The Lost City Of Z will have its interntional premiere while documentary The Trial: The State of Russia vs Oleg Sentsov will have its world premiere.

Among TV world premieres are Amazon’s Patriot and BBC One’s SS-gb.

In total, 18 of the 24 films selected for Competitionwill be competing for the Golden and the Silver Bears. 22 of the films will have their world premieres at the festival.

For the third time, Berlinale Special Series will present a selection of TV series in the official programme. Six German and international productions will have their world premieres at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele this year...