Nearly 25 years after his acclaimed 2001 debut feature “La libertad” competed in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard, Argentina’s Lisandro Alonso is set to direct its follow-up, “La libertad doble.”

Amsterdam-based Ilse Hughan of Fortuna Films, Fernando Bascuñán of Chile’s Planta and Augusto Matte of London-based Deptford Film join Alonso’s 4L in producing the drama. Germany’s The Match Factory, which secured backing from the World Cinema Fund, and Luxembourg-based Les Films Fauves have boarded as co-producers.

“Given the current economic climate in Argentina, securing the necessary gap financing has become a crucial step in moving forward with the project. Despite the challenges, the team is committed to starting production as planned by early 2025,” said Hughan, Bascuñan and Matte, adding: “The need for additional funding is not just a financial requirement but also a strategic decision to maintain the film’s independence and creative integrity.”

Like “La libertad,” its sequel...

One of the pioneers of contemporary slow cinema, Lisandro Alonso made a name for himself on the festival circuit with his 2001 feature La libertad, which took that very notion of duration and “boredom” associated with the art-film subgenre to new heights. Following his international breakthrough-of-sorts in 2014, the Viggo Mortensen-starring post-colonial western Jauja, Alonso returns (finally) with Eureka.

The highly ambitious triptych regarding indigenous experience and representation spans the globe while weaving in and out of reality, a cinematic dimension and somewhere in between. The film manages to be as mysterious and boundary-pushing as Alonso’s past works, even with slightly more resources at hand. Ahead of the film’s Friday theatrical opening, I was lucky enough to catch up with the visionary director over Zoom.

The Film Stage: The film was shot in multiple locations: Portugal, Spain, Mexico, and the United States. Before making the film, had you been...

It would be the longest hap between films and certainly his most ambitious project to date (it was rumored to span all the continents but the pandemic would have changed plans), Argentinean filmmaker Lisandro Alonso‘s Eureka (which premiered in the Cannes Premiere section) does indeed have connective tissues to his last feature (Un Certain Regard selected Jauja). In his sixth feature film, Alonso delves into the lives of indigenous peoples and communities, emphasizing the importance of pausing, reflecting, and reconsidering our perceptions of these individuals, particularly in the context of time and the screen. At the 2023 Marrakech International Film Festival I got to ask him about the thought process behind some of the metaphysical elements, the myth of the American West, representation, and if there are any updates on The God Beside My Bed – a project that would team him with Rick Alverson.…...

Long one of our favorite undistributed films of 2023, Lisandro Alonso’s Eureka has been acquired by Film Movement for a September 20 release. Ahead of this, we have a U.S. trailer that does well to capture the three-headed monster that is the Argentine master’s latest.

As Leonardo Goi said in his Cannes review, “Nine years since that underground epiphany, along comes Eureka, a film that, for large chunks, seems to emerge from the same hallucinatory terrain Jauja opened up. Like all its predecessors, this unfurls as a literal journey dotted with solitary wanderers either searching for or mourning lost relatives. Old tropes and motifs notwithstanding, Alonso’s latest is his most ambitious: a tripartite film, Eureka sides not with the white strangers in strange lands that had long peopled Alonso’s oeuvre, but with the native communities facing these invaders. Its scope is ecumenical, its geography massive. In barest terms,...

Lisandro Alonso is one of the most celebrated Argentine filmmakers working today. And with that love, he’s been able to push the limits of cinema and really take risks. That’s evident in his newest film, “Eureka.”

Read More: ‘Eureka’ Review: ‘Jauja’ Filmmaker Lisandro Alonso Returns With Viggo Mortensen & Chiara Mastroianni For An Inconsistent Triptych [Cannes]

As seen in the trailer, “Eureka” isn’t an easy film to summarize.

Continue reading ‘Eureka’ Trailer: Viggo Mortensen Stars In Lisandro Alonso’s Newest Drama at The Playlist.

Lisandro Alonso’s first film in almost 10 years is also his second film starring Viggo Mortensen. “Eureka,” a time-spanning meditation on Indigenous communities, reunites the Argentine filmmaker with the star of his 2014 expressionist myth “Jauja.” And like that elliptical anti-Western about a Danish father and daughter on a colonial journey in Argentina, “Eureka” is another movie best pitched for the patient or for those attuned to, in the words of Variety’s Guy Lodge, “ambient pleasures.” IndieWire shares the exclusive trailer for “Eureka” below ahead of its release from Film Movement in theaters this September. Watch below.

Here’s the official synopsis, courtesy of Film Movement: “Traversing time, space and genre, Argentinian filmmaker Lisandro Alonso (‘Jauja’) presents an elliptical meditation on the experiences of Indigenous communities across the Americas. Opening in a dusty town of the Old West, reality soon transitions to contemporary South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation...

Viggo Mortensen loves him a good Western. The actor has starred in several of them, 2008’s “Appaloosa,” 2004’s “Hidalgo,” and even more recent arthouse international films like “Jauja” and “Far from Men” employ elements of this genre. Mortensen has also moved into writing and directing features in recent years, following the critically-acclaimed “Falling,” and so his next directorial effort, “The Dead Don’t Hurt,” is also returning to the dangerous Western frontier.

Continue reading ‘The Dead Don’t Hurt’ Trailer: Viggo Mortensen’s Latest Western Stars Vicky Krieps & Arrives In May at The Playlist.

One of the most-anticipated films to premiere at Cannes Film Festival this past year was Lisandro Alonso’s long-awaited Jauja follow-up Eureka. An epic spanning three different stories across space and time, with a cast including Viggo Mortensen and Chiara Mastroianni, we featured it prominently on our list of the best undistributed films of 2023 feature last month. Now, we’re pleased to exclusively announce that the Argentine director’s most ambitious film yet has found a home.

New York-based distributor Film Movement has acquired the film for North American distribution, with a theatrical premiere planned for Q3 of 2024, followed by release on all leading digital platforms and the home entertainment marketplace. The announcement was made by Michael Rosenberg, President, Film Movement, who recently picked up Bertrand Bonello’s Coma, and Romain Rancurel, Head of International Sales for Le Pacte.

“Since his earliest films, Lisandro has pushed the envelope with his unique viewpoint,...

A film over a decade in the making, Felipe Gálvez’s directorial debut The Settlers takes a formally thrilling look at the brutal genocide of the now-extinct Selk’nam people, who were native to the Patagonian region of southern Argentina and Chile. Following its premiere at Cannes Film Festival and acquisition by Mubi, the film went on to play at TIFF, NYFF, BFI London, and AFI Fest, was selected as Chile’s Oscar submission, and will now arrive in theaters starting this Friday.

I said in my Cannes review, “Backed by Harry Allouche’s Morricone-inspired score, The Tale of King Crab cinematographer Simone D’Arcangelo’s appreciation for vast Leone-esque vistas is apparent, albeit with a more inhospitable, bleak variety as the sun always seems to have just a few dying gasps of light left. It recalls Lisandro Alonso’s Jauja in more than just subject matter: D’Arcangelo shoots these...

As U.S. and European sales agents and distributors gather in Buenos Aires next week for Ventana Sur, there will be a very large elephant in the room: the stunning victory in Argentina’s presidential election Sunday of far right Javier Milei, a self-described “anarcho-capitalist.”

Milei won 55.8% of the vote promising to do away with inflation, running at over 140%, as part of “drastic changes” which have included scrapping Argentina’s central bank, dollarizing the economy and slashing public spending by 15% of Gdp.

On the campaign trail, he also promised to abolish Argentina’s Ministry of Culture and national film-tv agency Incaa.

Currently, Argentina also holds the presidency of Ibermedia, the pan-regional fund for Latin America, Spain and Portugal, whose moneys are vital for art-house co-productions.

Incaa also co-organizes Ventana Sur itself with Cannes Film Festival and Market.

A left-leaning Argentine film-tv industry, whether Peronist or not, will take time to digest Milei’s victory.

Mubi Podcast: Encuentros returns for a fifth season.The first episode features:Lois Patiño (Spain), visual artist and filmmaker. Her experimental and contemplative feature and short films have been screened at venues such as the Directors Fortnight, the New York Film Festival, and Ficunam. His debut feature Costa da morte won the award for Best Director in the Filmmakers of the Present competition at Locarno and, more recently, Samsara, his third feature, won the Special Jury Prize in the Encounters section at the Berlinale.Natalia López Gallardo (Bolivia-México), editor, actress and director. She has edited films such as Heli, by Amat Escalante; Jauja, by Lisandro Alonso, and Silent Light (Luz silenciosa) by Carlos Reygadas, for which she was nominated for an Ariel Award. She made her directorial debut in 2006 with her short film En el cielo como en la tierra, presented in Rotterdam, and 17 years later, her first feature film...

Lisandro Alonso’s heady, intoxicating Eureka opens on a pristine beach where a Native American musician sings toward the sun. None of what he says is subtitled, though it’s apparent that his personal history, as well as that of his people, colors every word. When his chant concludes, the man walks slowly inland in one of the protracted transitional sequences in which Alonso specializes. Of all the practitioners of so-called “slow cinema,” the Argentine filmmaker excels at making even the most anti-dramatic actions riveting.

Eventually, the Native singer comes to an overlook where he spots a wagon in the distance. In the back of the vehicle sits a grizzled gunslinger named Murphy (Viggo Mortensen). Up to this point, Eureka has the feel of an ethnographic documentary. But with the arrival of a bona fide movie star, the ambience shifts toward the thorny fantasyland of the American western.

The genre trappings are familiar,...

One of the most-anticipated films to premiere at Cannes Film Festival this past year was Lisandro Alonso’s long-awaited Jauja follow-up Eureka. An epic spanning three different stories across space and time, with a cast including Viggo Mortensen and Chiara Mastroianni, it’ll now make its North American premiere this fall as part of the 61st New York Film Festival’s Main Slate. Ahead of the premiere, and with the film still seeking U.S. distribution, the first trailer has now arrived.

Leonardo Goi said in his Cannes review, “Nine years since that underground epiphany, along comes Eureka, a film that, for large chunks, seems to emerge from the same hallucinatory terrain Jauja opened up. Like all its predecessors, this unfurls as a literal journey dotted with solitary wanderers either searching for or mourning lost relatives. Old tropes and motifs notwithstanding, Alonso’s latest is his most ambitious: a tripartite film,...

By the brazenly esoteric standards of Argentine director Lisandro Alonso, his last feature “Jauja” was virtually a concession to the mainstream. A lushly shot 19th-century historical drama led by Viggo Mortensen, it was — until a typically disorienting coda — close to linear in its colonialist-quest narrative, even as it moved in slow, ever-widening circles, and duly became Alonso’s most widely released film to date. Nine years later (the longest gap yet in a career taken at his own pace), Alonso’s follow-up “Eureka” playfully appears to mock whatever tentative gestures “Jauja” made toward accessibility: A glisteningly opaque meditation on Indigenous living that refracts viewers’ interpretations as it repeatedly switches gear, focus, locus and story, it’s a film built to frustrate those who don’t succumb to its oneiric spell, not that it especially imparts its secrets to those who do.

Eagerly awaited by Alonso’s patient faithful, “Eureka” was...

The barbaric, bloody sins of the past come to define what entities govern certain land today, carried out by conquistadors and colonizers who hide behind righteous religious falsities to denigrate an indigenous population. With his directorial debut, a hauntingly conceived Chilean western The Settlers (Los Colonos), Felipe Gálvez localizes an origin story of this horror vis-a-vis the brutal genocide of the now-extinct Selk’nam people, who were native to the Patagonian region of southern Argentina and Chile. While spare early passages are narratively opaque and formally ornate to a distancing fault, the riveting second half––including a chilling reckoning with others occupying the desolate land and a well-executed structural gamble––brings profound expansion to this chilling story of atrocity.

Split into boldly conveyed chapters, The Settlers begins in 1901 in Chile’s Tierra de Fuego province. As commanded by the bloodthirsty José Menéndez (Alfredo Castro), a trio of explorers are sent...

Lisandro Alonso’s Eureka, which premiered as a Special Screening at this year’s Cannes, begins as a parodic reworking of the filmmaker’s last feature, 2014’s Jauja. There, Viggo Mortensen played a Danish captain crossing inhospitable Argentinian territory in the 1880s with his daughter (Viilbjørk Malling Agger), while encountering what from his perspective are “natives” to be fearfully avoided; Eureka renders that feature’s “not without my daughter” elements as a black-and-white Western set in an indeterminate any-Western-town of America. Mortensen and Agger are once again father-and-child, but this time he’s a considerably dirtier and more disreputable cowboy type. In impeccable academy-ratio black-and-white with rounded […]

The post Cannes 2023: Lisandro Alonso on Eureka first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Lisandro Alonso’s Eureka, which premiered as a Special Screening at this year’s Cannes, begins as a parodic reworking of the filmmaker’s last feature, 2014’s Jauja. There, Viggo Mortensen played a Danish captain crossing inhospitable Argentinian territory in the 1880s with his daughter (Viilbjørk Malling Agger), while encountering what from his perspective are “natives” to be fearfully avoided; Eureka renders that feature’s “not without my daughter” elements as a black-and-white Western set in an indeterminate any-Western-town of America. Mortensen and Agger are once again father-and-child, but this time he’s a considerably dirtier and more disreputable cowboy type. In impeccable academy-ratio black-and-white with rounded […]

The post Cannes 2023: Lisandro Alonso on Eureka first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

There’s been a recent trend in international arthouse cinema that dates roughly back to two Argentine movies of the past decade: Lucrecia Martel’s Zama (2017) and Lisandro Alonso’s Jauja (2014).

Both films told dark tales of European colonization, and the massacres inflicted on South America’s Indigenous populations, in ways that felt altogether contemporary, eschewing traditional narratives in favor of something more enigmatic and modern. In such movies, the past was reflected through the lens of the present. The characters all wore period costumes and the sets were made to look like they dated from the epoch, but the stories being told, and the way they were being told, felt very much of our time, as if the horrors were still with us.

This trend continued, albeit in a more playful sense, in the Italian film The Tale of King Crab (2021), and in a more spiritual sense in the...

The Argentinian director Lisandro Alonso is back with another rewardingly weird journey into the unknown

It is the custom now for everyone in the film business to describe film-makers as “storytellers”. But even leaving aside the fact that so many film-makers are not very good at the old-fashioned business of storytelling, the fact is that cinema does not have to be about story, however uncommercial an idea that seems.

The Argentinian director Lisandro Alonso is a case in point: his work is challenging and opaque and taken an uncompromisingly andante pace and yes, it is probably destined to be shown at festivals. But it is also weirdly hypnotic and exalted and magnificent in its way, and often has nothing do with story. His last movie, with Viggo Mortensen, entitled Jauja, was a case in point. Now he has come to Cannes with his experimentally non-narrative meditation on the global condition of indigenous peoples.

“Eureka” seems somewhat deceitfully simple: a man called Murphy (Viggo Mortensen) searches for his abducted daughter with the help of the mysterious El Coronel (Chiara Mastroianni), even if he has to shoot everyone who stands in his way. A black and white, sleek vision of a western where the key lighting is mesmerizingly subdued, rounded square frame, boxed aspect ratio—did “slow cinema” veteran Lisandro Alonso really make a classical western today?

Continue reading ‘Eureka’ Review: ‘Jauja’ Filmmaker Lisandro Alonso Returns With Viggo Mortensen & Chiara Mastroianni For An Inconsistent Triptych [Cannes] at The Playlist.

The 2023 Cannes Film Festival, taking place May 16 — 27, has added an array of new titles to its already eagerly anticipated Official Selection: Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire’s “Black Flies” starring Sean Penn and in competition; Catherine Corsini’s “Le Retour,” upping the lineup’s record total of seven female directors in competition; Amat Escalante’s Mexican drama “Perdidos en la Noche”; and Lisandro Alonso’s thriller “Eureka,” starring Viggo Mortensen and José María Yazpik.

Alonso and Mortensen previously collaborated on 2014’s “Jauja,” which premiered in the festival’s Un Certain Regard and won its top honor, the Fipresci Prize. “Perdidos en la Noche” and “Eureka” will play in the non-competitive Cannes Premiere section.

Additional titles added on Monday include an Out of Competition screening of Frédéric Tellier’s “L’Abbé Pierre – Une Vie de Combats”; Un Certain Regard titles “Only the River Flows” from Wei Shujun and “Une Nuit” from Alex Lutz; Special...

Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire’s “Black Flies,” starring Sean Penn, and Catherine Corsini’s “Le retour” have been added to the competition lineup of the upcoming 76th Cannes Film Festival. As many as 13 movies have been peppered across several sections, including the Competition, Special Screenings, Un Certain Regard and Out of Competition.

Robert Rodriguez’s “Hypnotic” and Kim Tae-gon’s “Project Silence” are joining the Midnight Screening roster, while Amat Escalante’s Mexican drama “Perdidos en la Noche” and Argentinian helmer Lisandro Alonso’s thriller “Eureka,” starring Viggo Mortensen and José María Yazpik, will bow in Cannes Premiere, a non-competitive section launched in 2021. (Alonso previously won Cannes’ Un Certain Regard with his 2014 movie “Jauja.”) Also slated for Cannes Premiere is Valerie Donzelli’s drama “L’Amour et les forets.”

This year, Un Certain Regard has expanded by two titles, including Chinese director Wei Shujun’s “Only the River Flows” and French director Alex Lutz’s “Une nuit.

Hlynur Pálmason’s fictional account of a Danish pastor sent to Iceland in the 19th century is superb in its compositions and nuanced depictions of hostility

Harshness is transformed into beauty and then terror by this extraordinary film from Icelandic director Hlynur Pálmason about a 19th-century Danish pastor sent to establish a new church on Iceland’s remote south-eastern coast. I left the cinema dazed and elated by its artistry; it is breathtaking in its epic scale, magnificent in its comprehension of landscape, piercingly uncomfortable in its human intimacy and severity. There is such superb compositional sense in the still life tableau shots and the almost archaeological sense of time, creating something deeply mysterious and unbearably sad. There are echoes of Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Roland Joffé’s The Mission, Lisandro Alonso’s Jauja – and even Howard Hawks’s Red River.

Pálmason announces in the opening...

The life and work of writer-director Hlynur Pálmason seems suspended in a liminal space between his homeland of Iceland and the neighboring Scandinavian nation of Denmark, where he studied filmmaking and has now raised a family. And nowhere is that interstitial status more evidently reflected than in his third and finest feature yet, “Godland,” about the arrogance of mankind in the face of nature’s unforgiving prowess, the inherent failures of colonial enterprises, and how these factors configure the cultural identities of individuals.

As in Pálmason’s previous studies of seemingly mild-mannered male characters on the brink of a violent outburst, “Winter Brothers” and “A White, White Day,” his latest maps the mental and physical decay of Lucas (Elliott Crosset Hove), a 19th century Danish priest of the Lutheran faith tasked with overseeing the construction of a church in a remote corner of Iceland, at the time still a territory...

10 films underscoring Mexican cinemas drive into diversity:

“Huesera,” (Michelle Garza Cervera)

Valeria is pregnant, but something is wrong with the baby. Shades of “Rosemary’s Baby,” but “Huesera” goes its own way, as Valeria gradually realizes what for her is really horror.

Genre and LGBTQ, a double winner at Tribeca, taking its coveted New Narrative Director hardware, and picked up by XYZ Films for most world sales. “A terrifying, bone-breaking body horror nightmare,” said Variety. Produced by Mexico’s Napa Films and Machete Films, the latter behind Cannes winners “Leap Year” and “La Jaula de Oro.”

“Mom,” (“Mamá,” Xun Sero)

Selected for Canada’s Hot Docs, Guadalajara Mezcal Award competition, where it won an honorable mention, and now Morelia’s doc strand, one of the banner titles of a new Chiapas cinema. A portrait of Sero’s mom, yes, but also of a remarkable, resilient woman who defied the conventions of her village,...

Bruce Tuchman-backed Rialto International has launched a branded on-demand streaming service in Japan, focused on independent film, and housed on Amazon’s Prime Video Channels platform.

Rialto Channel launched in 1999 in New Zealand, where it was initially branded as The Sundance Channel. It established itself as an award-winning and industry-leading indie film destination for over twenty years.

In Japan, the Rialto-branded venue will feature current and iconic independent films. Confirmed content at launch or going forward includes Chloe Zhao’s “The Rider”; an homage to the recently departed director Peter Bogdanovich with “The Last Picture Show”; Brad Pitt and Jason Statham in Guy Richie’s “Snatch”; Michael Caine in “Harry Brown”; Sean Connery in Gus Van Sant’s “Finding Forrester”; Ewan McGregor and actor/director Don Cheadle’s “Miles Ahead”; Jean-Jacques Beineix’s “Diva”; Michelle Williams in Wim Wenders’ “Land of Plenty”; Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman and Jude Law in “Gattaca”; and “8Mm,...

How you respond to the news that “Robe of Gems” director Natalia López Gallardo is making her feature debut after editing work by the likes of Amat Escalante and Carlos Reygadas may ultimately guide your response to the film as a whole. Though the first-time writer-director forges her own cinematic path here and is very much an artist unto herself, the influence of her collaborators is evident in this elliptical exploration of a criminal underbelly that’s spent so much time in the light it’s hardly even dark anymore.

Nailea Norvind stars as Isabel, who moves into her mother’s villa in rural Mexico along with her husband and children following the matriarch’s departure. There they learn that the sister of Mari, who’s taken care of the family home since time immemorial, has gone missing — a development that so upets Isabel it spurs her into ill-advised action.

Adding to its notable lineup in Latin American movies, Paris-based sales agent MPM Premium has taken international sales rights to “Fogaréu,” from writer-director Flávia Neves, part of Brazil’s new wave of female filmmakers, which is one of the most exciting developments the country’s cinema currently has going for it.

MPM Premium is introducing the film at this week’s Berlin Festival, where it world premieres in Panorama on Feb. 15.

First glimpsed at 2020’s Ventana Sur project market, “Fogaréu” shares a sense of attitude and a feminist agenda and a visual verve with fellow Brazilian Ventana Sur titles “The Pink Cloud,” Iuli Gerbase’s a sci-fi character-driven thriller, and “The Joy of Things,” Thais Fujinaga’s portrait of motherhood, also playing at the same market.

It begins, for example, with menacing shots of the Klu Klux Klan, marching towards the Brazilian colonial town of Goiás, or so it seems...

New York-based Visit Films has swooped on world sales rights to “Robe of Gems” (“Manto de Gemas”) which will world premiere in main competition at next’s month’s Berlinale.

Produced by some of the best known producers on the art film and crossover scene in Mexico and Argentina, “Robe of Gems” marks the directorial debut feature of Natalia López Gallardo who has edited some of the most acclaimed and challenging films coming out of Latin America in the last decade, such as Lisandro Alonso’s “Jauja,” starring Viggo Mortensen, and Carlos Reygadas’ “Post Tenebras Lux” and Amat Escalante’s “Heli,” the latter two both best director award winners at the Cannes Festival.

Written, directed and edited by López Gallardo, “Robe of Gems” turns on Isabel, a woman in the midst of divorce who moves to an old country house her family once owned.

There she discovers her helper Marta...

Supernova

It’s always a noteworthy point of interest when an artist who excels in one film department crosses over into the directors’ chair. Apart from a 2006 Rotterdam selected short (En el cielo como en la tierra), this is Natalia López feature film debut after editing such noteworthy titles as 2007’s Silent Light, 2012’s Post Tenebras Lux, 2013’s Heli, 2014’s Jauja, and 2016’s The Darkness – plus she appeared alongside her hubby Carlos Reygadas in Nuestro tiempo. We didn’t really take notice of the project when it was making the film coin rounds circa 2018, but it was among the projects selected for Venice Gap-Financing in 2020.…...

New films from Oscar laureate Vanessa Ragone (“The Secret in Their Eyes”) and Camera d’Or winners Edher Campos (“Leap Year”) and Juan Pablo Miller (“Las Acacias”) are among attractions at this year’s Ventana Sur’s Primer Corte and Copia Final, the pix-in-post industry centerpieces at Latin America’s biggest film-tv market.

Ragone co-produces “The Face of the Jellyfish,” from Argentina’s Rotterdam-prized Melisa Liebenthal. Campos unveils “Journey to the Land of the Tarahumara,” Mexican Federico Cecchetti’s follow-up to the multi-prized “Mara’akame’s Dream.”

Miller introduces “Sublime,” one of the section’s buzz titles, along with “Diogenes,” from Peru’s Leonardo Barbuy, and two titles from Brazil: Gregorio Graziosi’s “Tinnitus” and Gabriel Martin’s “Mars One,” winner of Ventana Sur’s prestigious Paradiso Wip Award.

Titles brim with talent, observes Eva Morsch-Kihn, curator of Primer Corte and Copia Final along with Mercedes Abarca and Maria Nuñez.

Two of the most distinctive voices in filmmaking are teaming for a new project. American director Rick Alverson and Argentine director Lisandro Alonso will co-direct the Brazilian production The God Beside My Bed. “It will be a film about an American cultural irrelevance that Americans are incapable of seeing, lost in their romantic hall of mirrors, set in Amazonia,” says Alverson, who has shared his admiration for Alonso’s work.

“Lisandro Alonso, and Carlos Reygadas to some degree, for those contemporary filmmakers, it’s all about contention with time — the temporal, and your relationship to the thing — and how the audience changes,” Alverson told Seventh Row in 2015. “I’m really irritated by passive viewing, but I don’t think it’s the audience’s fault. I think they’re conditioned to be passive viewers, because what they see in media does everything for them. It does all of the thinking,...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Dear Comrades! (Andrei Konchalovsky)

The gears of oppressive government bureaucracy are designed to crush homegrown opposition before it becomes too threatening. In that sense, institutions and policies put in place by Hitler’s Third Reich and Trump’s Maga cult have a lot in common with those of 20th century Communist Russia, an ideological rope-a-dope that publically posited figureheads like Stalin and later Khrushchev as warriors of the people while privately undermining any citizen-led resistance with brutal force. Andrei Konchalovsky’s great new film Dear Comrades! depicts such a response with the sobering understanding that historical events of any magnitude can be easily manipulated to match the motivations of those in power.

Viggo Mortensen has had a lot of acclaim and a lot of respected turns in films like “Captain Fantastic,” “A Dangerous Method,” “Eastern Promises,” “The Road,” “Jauja,” and “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy. He is Oscar-nominated and has been recognized by Screen Actors Guild, the Golden Globes, and BAFTA, but one thing he hasn’t done until now is direct.

Continue reading ‘Falling’ Trailer: Viggo Mortensen’s Directorial Debut Is About A Gay Man Coming To Terms With His Homophobic Father at The Playlist.

Claudia Huaiquimilla’s “My Brothers Dream Awake,” Thais Fujinaga’s “The Joy of Things” and Flavia Neves’ “Fogareu” will screen in Primer Corte or Copia Final, the two art film pix-in-post showcases at this year’s Ventana Sur, the biggest movie market in Latin America.

The Cannes Festival and Film Market’s biggest initiative outside France, Ventana Sur will run from Nov.30 to Dec. 4.

“My Brothers Dream Awake” weighs in as another call to resistance from Mapuche writer-director Huaiquimilla whose debut, “Bad Influence” (“Mala Junta”) won the audience award at the Toulouse Latin American Cinema Festival.

“The Joy of Things” marks the feature debut of Brazil’s Fujinaga, a co-writer on Netflix’s “Omniscient,” from Boutique Filmes, as well as on a new season of HBO Latin America’s “Joint Venture,” co-directed by “City of God’s” Fernando Meirelles.

Neves’ debut, “Fogaréu” forms part of a burgeoning line in new...

Three-time Oscar nominee Wim Wenders, the director of “Paris, Texas,” “Wings of Desire” and “Buena Vista Social Club,” joined the “Life Through a Different Lens: Contactless Connections” talk earlier this week. Held by the Venice Film Festival and Mastercard, the virtual event allowed him to reminiscence about his beginnings. “I had no intention of becoming a filmmaker. I wanted to be all sorts of things, from a priest to god knows what, and trying to become a painter I ended up in Paris. Where else? That’s where I discovered the Cinémathèque Française, because I lived in a tiny, unheated room and the Cinémathèque was warm!”

Soon, he started to pay attention to the screen as well. “The first retrospective I followed was dedicated to Anthony Mann. He might not be recognised as one of the greats, but I learned so much from this man.” Always inspired by American cinema,...

Since his striking, transportive drama Jauja in 2014, we’ve been waiting for Lisandro Alonso’s follow-up. News first arrived in 2018 as we learned of Eureka, an ambitious project spanning a time period between 1870 and 2019, with a focus on Native American culture and locations spanning across the world.

The story, made up of four parts, will “make the link between times and continents.” “I would like to film places, people, and cultures that I regret not to see today on big or small screens,” Alonso said. “I would be very curious to know what happened to those who then embodied the Amerindian community, how they live today, how they survive. I would really like to understand what it is like to be a Native American nowadays.”

While the production was already underway and then halted in Portugal when the pandemic hit, Variety now reports more details and the first casting news.

Following his star turn in “Jauja,” a major hit at the 2014 Cannes Festival, Viggo Mortensen will re-team with Argentine director Lisandro Alonso on “Eureka,” one of the boldest upcoming art films from Latin America.

Mortensen, who takes the lead role in “Eureka’s” first part, will be joined by France’s Chiara Mastroianni, a Cesar Award best actress nominee this year for “On a Magical Night,” and Portugal’s Maria de Medeiros (“Pulp Fiction”).

In a nod towards “Jauja,” Mortensen once more takes the role of a father, here Murphy, searching for a daughter, again played by Denmark’s Viilbjørk Malling Agger, who has been kidnapped in “Eureka” by an outlaw, Randall. Despite the actors reprising similar roles, the film is not a sequel.

In addition, the setting for Part 1 of “Eureka,” entitled “Western,” is no longer Argentina’s Patagonia but a lawless township in 1870 on the U.S.-Mexico border,...

The Locarno Film Festival is reinventing itself due to the coronavirus crisis by launching a plan B called Locarno 2020 — For the Future of Films, its core philosophy being to support global indie film directors hard hit by the pandemic as they toiled to bring their projects to the big screen.

“In April we were looking at a lot of different scenarios of what the festival could be,” says Lili Hinstin, artistic director of the Swiss event held in a lakeside town under the Alps in the Italian-speaking portion of Switzerland. Fest has long been a top notch haven for global auteurs. But the Swiss government didn’t want to take any chances with a physical edition Aug. 5-15.

Hinstin and her team felt that opting for the online festival route would go against the spirit of Locarno, known for packed nightly open-air screenings in its 8,000-seat Piazza Grande arena. So...

On the heels of yesterday’s announcement about plans for the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival comes news about two more upcoming events: San Sebastian and Locarno. Variety reports Woody Allen’s new comedy-drama “Rifkin’s Festival” will open the 2020 San Sebastian Film Festival in September. The event is celebrating its 68th edition this year. “Rifkin’s Festival” will mark Allen’s second San Sebastian opener after “Melinda and Melinda” at the 2004 festival, where he was also the recipient of the Donostia Award for career achievement. Other Allen films that have played San Sebastian include “Manhattan,” “Zelig,” “Match Point,” and “Irrational Man,” among others.

Many in the industry expected San Sebastian to host the world premiere of Allen’s new film as the director shot the project in and around the city last summer. “Rifkin’s Festival” centers around an American couple who travel to the San Sebastian Film Festival and are pulled in opposite directions.

On the heels of yesterday’s announcement about plans for the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival comes news about two more upcoming events: San Sebastian and Locarno. Variety reports Woody Allen’s new comedy-drama “Rifkin’s Festival” will open the 2020 San Sebastian Film Festival in September. The event is celebrating its 68th edition this year. “Rifkin’s Festival” will mark Allen’s second San Sebastian opener after “Melinda and Melinda” at the 2004 festival, where he was also the recipient of the Donostia Award for career achievement. Other Allen films that have played San Sebastian include “Manhattan,” “Zelig,” “Match Point,” and “Irrational Man,” among others.

Many in the industry expected San Sebastian to host the world premiere of Allen’s new film as the director shot the project in and around the city last summer. “Rifkin’s Festival” centers around an American couple who travel to the San Sebastian Film Festival and are pulled in opposite directions.

New works by prominent auteurs Lucrecia Martel, Lav Diaz, Lisandro Alonso and Wang Bing grace the lineup of works-in-progress unveiled by the Locarno Film Festival.

The canceled Swiss fest dedicated to indie cinema on Thursday announced 20 titles that made the cut for its innovative The Films After Tomorrow initiative that will provide support to filmmakers forced to stop working due to the global pandemic. Of these, 10 are international and 10 from Switzerland. Prizes will be awarded by juries made up by still unspecified filmmakers on Aug. 15.

“Our role is to act as a link between films, the industry and audiences, and so (when Locarno was canceled due to coronavirus concerns) we looked at alternative ways of carrying out that mission, assessing where our intervention could be most useful at this time,” said Locarno artistic director Lili Hinstin at a Zoom presentation during the Cannes Virtual Market. A total of 545 projects from 101 countries were submitted,...

Viggo Mortensen is the first announced recipient of San Sebastian’s prestigious Donostia Award for this year’s 68th edition. In addition to picking up the career recognition award, Mortensen will also present his directorial debut “Falling” for its European premiere at the festival.

A three-time Oscar nominee for his work in David Cronenberg’s “Eastern Promises,” Matt Ross’ “Captain Fantastic” and most recently Peter Farrelly’s best picture winner “Green Book,” Mortensen is best known for saving Middle Earth as Aragorn, ranger and abdicated heir to the throne of Isildur, King of Gondor, in Peter Jackson’s Academy Award-winning “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.

When not in front of the camera, Mortensen is an established painter, poet, photographer and musician who speaks seven languages. His “Lord of the Rings” payday also allowed him to start his own publishing label, Perceval Press, which specializes in art, critical writing and poetry.

Viggo Mortensen may have three Oscar nominations to his name, but I get the feeling most folks still don’t take the guy seriously enough. Maybe they don’t realize that, in addition to his acting work, Mortensen is also a painter, a poet, a photographer and a musician. When “The Lord of the Rings” made him rich, he used some of that money to launch an indie publishing label, Perceval Press. And between high-profile projects, he went out of his way to collaborate with European auteurs such as Lisandro Alonso (“Jauja”) and David Oelhoffen (“Far From Men”), comfortably acting in languages other than English (he speaks seven).

So what kind of directorial touch should we expect from such a Renaissance man? Will his first feature turn out to be basic and broad, like the meatball chauffeur he played in “Green Book,” or more poetic, informed by his work with relatively esoteric-minded art-house helmers?...

Exclusive: Viggo Mortensen is returning to the Sundance Film Festival for the first time since 2016 when Captain Fantastic made a big splash and led eventually to a Best Actor Oscar nomination for the star. This time however he is adding director and screenwriter to his resume, with his behind the camera debut, Falling, which is set to officially close the festival and is part of the Premieres section but will start screening on Friday. I was invited to see it ahead of time a few weeks ago at a UTA screening and a few days later sat down in a Santa Monica restaurant to talk about the film with its director and co-star.

Falling is produced by Daniel Bekerman of Scythia Films and Chris Curling of Zephyr Films together with Mortensen, who previously produced Everyone Has a Plan, Far from Men and Jauja through Perceval Pictures.

Looking past the dawn of the new decade, 2021 promises to unleash a host of projects from perennial auteurs and sleeping cinematic giants. Although projects will eventually change, become delayed, or stop dead in their tracks, here’s a look of our most anticipated projects we predict should be ready sometime in 2021 based on funding allotments and production plans.

#10. Eureka – Dir. Lisandro Alonso (Argentina)

Six years after his art-house hit Jauja, Argentina’s Lisandro Alonso (who was on the Un Certain Regard Jury at Cannes in 2019) finally moves ahead with his latest project, Eureka, which received funding through Eurimages.…...

Laura Linney, Hannah Gross, and Terry Chen have joined the cast of Viggo Mortensen’s family drama “Falling.”

The movie will be Mortensen’s directorial debut. He’s also producing, wrote the screenplay, and is playing one of the two leading roles in a story about a son’s relationship with his aging father. Production is currently underway in Toronto. It will also shoot in Los Angeles.

Mortensen will portray a man who lives with his male partner, played by Chen, and their adopted daughter in Southern California. Linney will play his sister and Gross will portray his mother. Lance Henriksen will play the father, a farmer whose attitudes and behavior belong to a far more traditional era and family model. He travels to Los Angeles for an indefinite stay with his family as he deals with memory loss.

“Falling” is produced by Daniel Bekerman of Scythia Films and Chris Curling...

Buenos Aires — Mario Vargas Llosa, the great Peruvian novelist, once wrote that reality in Latin America is too compelling to ever be ignored in its fiction. Yet, as WWII raged, Jorge Luis Borges, perhaps the greatest of Argentine writers, pointedly published “Ficciones,” fantasy tales, often philosophical speculation given narrative form.

If this year’s Pci Film Directors Assn, showcase at Ventana Sur is anything to go by, some young Argentine filmmakers are having it both ways, creating films which straddle the fiction-reality divide, or enroll fabrication and myth to large effect. Their films, sneak peaked in brief extracts or teaser trailers at the Pci’s annual Work in Progress showcase during Ventana Sur, and underscored the diversity of Argentine filmmaking, a cause championed by Pci and its around 100 directors, and an indication of the depth of talent of Argentine filmmaking.

“7h 35” is a case in point. The feature debut of Javier Van de Couter,...

Viggo Mortensen will write, produce, star, and make his directorial debut in “Falling,” a story of a son’s relationship with his aging father.

Mortensen wrote the screenplay and will play one of the two leading roles. The cast also includes Lance Henriksen and Sverrir Gudnason (“The Girl in the Spider’s Web”). HanWay Films will handle international distribution, and will commence sales at the American Film Market, which opens on Oct. 31. UTA Independent Film Group will oversee the U.S. sale.

“Falling” is produced by Daniel Bekerman of Scythia Films together with Mortensen, who previously produced “Everyone Has a Plan,” “Far From Men,” and “Jauja” through Perceval Pictures.

Mortensen will portray a man who lives with his male partner and their adopted daughter in Southern California. Henriksen will play a farmer whose attitudes and behavior belong to a far more traditional era and family model. When the father travels...

Ten minutes into Zama, the central character, Don Diego de Zama (Daniel Giménez Cacho), is called to the shore to receive an unexpected visitor, a trader from Montevideo. Cut to an establishing shot of several unfamiliar people moving and milling about Zama—an image that does not establish (in the conventional mode of narrative exposition) very much at all. Then the film transits to a close-up of a wary Zama, placed on the left-hand side of the frame, bringing to his lips the drink that his associate, Indalecio (Germán de Silva), has just poured for him. Various shouts, from off-screen, ping around the sound mix. Indalecio, also off-screen, presents his request for administrative help with the visitor’s business affairs (“Your relationship with the Treasury Minister is good?”) to Zama, who is still in his off-center close-up. Several subjects are elliptically raised in their conversation as the shot churns on:...