Film Movement has acquired North American rights toKazuya Shiraishi’s period samurai drama and Udine Far East Film Festival winner Bushido.

The film also played in official selection at New York Asian Film Festival and will open theatrically in 2025 followed by digital roll-out.

Based on a classic story from the rakugo style of Japanese verbal entertainment, Bushido stars Tsuyoshi Kusanagi as Kakunoshin Yanagida, a down-on-his-luck samurai and master player of the board game Go who seeks revenge on the man who destroyed his life. Kaya Kiyohara, Jun Kunimura, and Takumi Saitoh also star.

Shiraishi’s roster of contemporary action credits...

Japan’s leading indie film festival, Tokyo Filmex (November 23-December 1) has unveiled the line-up for its competition, opening and closing films, and other sections.

The festival, which marks its 25th year in 2024, will open with Jia Zhang-Ke’s Caught By The Tides, which played in competition at this year’s Cannes, and close with Hong Sang-soo’s By the Stream, for which actor Kim Min-hee won the Pardo for best performance at Locarno.

The 10 competition titles include the Georgian film April, directed by Dea Kulumbegashvili, which won the special jury prize at Venice this year; Girls Will Be Girls, the...

Film Movement has bought North American rights to Belgium Oscar entry “Julie Keeps Quiet” which is executive produced by tennis champion Naomi Osaka, and world premiered at Cannes’ Critics Week.

A feature debut directed by Leonardo Van Dijl, “Julie Keeps Quiet” went on to play Karlovy Vary and Toronto, and will next screen at the BFI London Film Festival following its Cannes bow. The movie will have its U.S. premiere at the Hamptons Film Festival.

The drama stars newcomer Tessa Van den Broeck as Julie, a young and promising tennis player who faces a dilemma when her prominent coach is suspended after the suicide of a former prodigy. Suspicions of inappropriate conduct arise and pressure starts mounting for Julie to speak up. As she refrains from sharing her experiences, her silence leaves the investigation and the coach’s future in limbo.

“Julie Keeps Quiet” is slated for a theatrical...

The nominations for the 61st Golden Horse Awards were announced last week. Considered the “Chinese-language Oscars,” the awards showcase films made in Mandarin, Cantonese, or other Chinese dialects. This year’s nominations included a diverse range of movies from Taiwan, Hong Kong, mainland China, and Singapore.

John Hsu’s supernatural comedy “Dead Talents Society” topped the nominations with eleven total nods. The film tells the story of ghosts competing to haunt humans in an imagined afterlife. It received nominations for Best Feature Film, Best Director for John Hsu, and Best Original Screenplay. “Dead Talents Society” has already won audience awards at festivals like Toronto International Film Festival, where it was the runner-up in the Midnight Madness category.

Two other films, Tom Lin’s “Yen And Ai-Lee” and Geng Jun’s “Bel Ami,” followed closely behind with eight nominations each. These movies, along with Ray Yeung’s “All Shall Be Well...

John Hsu’s Taiwanese supernatural comedy Dead Talents Society has scored 11 nominations for the 61st Golden Horse Awards, followed by Tom Lin’s Yen And Ai-Lee and Geng Jun’s Bel Ami, with eight nods each.

Dead Talents Society and Bel Ami are among the five films competing in the best film category, along with Ray Yeung’s All Shall Be Well, Yeo Siew Hua’s Stranger Eyes and Lou Ye’s An Unfinished Film. The same five films are also running in the best director category.

They reflect the overall representation at this year’s Golden Horse Awards, with the participation of Hong Kong,...

John Hsu’s horror comedy Dead Talents Society heads the race for this year’s Golden Horse Awards with 11 nominations, including Best Narrative Feature, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actress for Sandrine Pinna.

The film, set in a fictional underworld where ghosts can linger in the mortal realm by competing to haunt humans, is produced by Taiwan’s Activator Co, Sony Pictures International Productions and several other local companies.

It was followed in the awards race by Tom Lin’s Yen And Ai-Lee and Geng Jun’s Bel Ami, which both received eight nominations.

Dead Talents Society and Bel Ami are both nominated for Best Narrative Feature, along with Ray Yeung’s All Shall Be Well, Yeo Siew-hua’s Stranger Eyes and Lou Ye’s An Unfinished Film. All five of these films are also nominated for Best Director.

Best Leading Actor nominations include King Jieh-wen (A...

Comedy-horror “Dead Talents Society” picked up 11 nominations for the Golden Horse Film Awards, making it the most acclaimed title among the 169 films in contention for the prestigious Chinese-language prizes.

“Yen and Ai-Lee” and “Bel Ami” both received eight nominations, putting them in a tie for second place. Recent Venice competition film “Stranger Eyes,” from Singapore’s Yeo Siew Hua received six.

Five films compete for the best narrative features award: John Hsu’s “Dead Talents Society,” Ray Yeung’s “All Shall Be Well,” Lou Ye’s “An Unfinished Film,” Geng Jun’s “Bel Ami” and “Stranger Eyes.” The same five also contest the best director award.

Nominees for best leading actor are: King Jieh-wen (“A Journey in Spring”), Chang Chen (“The Embers”), Yau Hawk-sau (“The Way We Talk”), Wanlop Rungkumjad (“Mongrel”) and Zhang Zhiyong (“Bel Ami”). Chang is a previous winner in the category.

Nominees for best actress are: Patra Au Ga-man...

Indie distributor Film Movement has snapped up North American rights to Swiss director Ramon Zürcher’s “The Sparrow in the Chimney” following its world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival.

Described by Variety’s Guy Lodge as a “darkly engrossing psychodrama of pent-up domestic tensions,” the film explores the tumultuous relationship between two sisters, Karen and Jule, whose reunion at a family gathering reignites old conflicts and deep-seated emotional turmoil.

Zürcher, thrilled by its pending North American release, explained: “This film is an exploration of the invisible forces that shape us, particularly within the family structure.”

Sold worldwide by Cercamon, the family drama “should be an arthouse breakthrough” per Variety‘s review.

“This film offers a beautifully crafted, intimate story that will resonate with audiences who appreciate cinema that is both emotionally authentic and visually captivating,” said Sebastien Chesneau of Cercamon, who negotiated the deal with Film Movement.

“What drew...

The 44th running of the Hawaii International Film Festival presented by Halekulani will open with “Tinā,” an uplifting drama film that marks the feature directorial debut of Miki Magasiva, and close with Sori Fumihiko’s “Hakkenden: Fiction and Reality.”

In between, the festival will pack in 92 features and 114 short films, major awards for guests including Jimmy O Yang, Hong Kong’s Sandra Ng and documentary filmmaking star Stanley Nelson.

“This year, we have the largest selection of Hawai`i films in competition in the festival’s history, are presenting multiple films that explore Indigenous perspectives, narrative sovereignty, and the nurturing of cultural identity, and additionally, we are launching a new spotlight showcasing the best in television,” said Beckie Stochetti, Hiff executive director.

Hailing from New Zealand, with dialog in English and Samoan, “Tinā” sees Anapela Polata’ivao (“Our Flag Means Death”) portray a well-respected and gifted vocal coach endure family tragedy...

Anyone familiar with the filmography of Jia Zhangke will easily recognize “Caught by the Tides” as one of the celebrated director’s features. Such familiarity may well create interest and pleasure at seeing Jia revisit the characters, locales and subjects that made him famous. But this atmospheric film, in which mood and visuals prevail over plot, might also disorient and bemuse viewers who are not already intimate with his work.

Subscribe to Amp newsletter by clicking on the image below

The film has been described as a career retrospective for the director, and with good reason. Stuck at home during the Covid 19 pandemic, Jia decided to review the enormous amount of footage he had shot since 2001. The images could be documentary-style footage capturing slices of life that had caught Jia’s ever-alert attention: singing crowds, swirling dancers, young people going to their favorite places, in Datong, Zhuhai, or many other places across China.

Ali Samadi Ahadis politisches Drama ist eine von neun deutschen (Ko-)Produktionen die in die Sektion Centrepiece des Toronto International Film Festival eingeladen wurden.

Ali Samadi Ahadis „Sieben Tage“ feiert in Toronto seine Weltpremiere (Credit: Brave New Work)

43 Titel von Filmemachern aus 41 Ländern warden im Rahmen der Centrepiece-Sektion des Toronto International Film Festival (5. bis 15. September) zu sehen sein. Wie das Festival heute bekannt gab, werden 18 dieser Titel dort ihre Weltpremiere feiern.

Zu den Titeln, die in der Centrepiece-Sektion ihre Weltpremiere feiern werden, ist auch Ali Samadi Ahadis politisches Drama „Sieben Tage“ über die inhaftierte iranische Frauenrechtsaktivistin Maryam, die die Erlaubnis, für sieben Tage ihre Familie zu treffen. Ihr Ehemann und ihre Kinder bitten Maryam, mit ihnen zu fliehen, anstatt in das Gefängnis zurückzukehren – doch Maryam hat sich noch nicht entschieden.

Neben „Sieben Tage“ werden in der Centrepiece-Sektion des TIFF acht weitere deutsche Koproduktionen zu sehen sein: Tumpal Tampubolons „Crocodile Tears...

A drama about an Iranian human rights activist and a documentary about the hacking of queer indie pop duo Tegan and Sara are among the films that have been added to the lineup of the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, which unveiled its Centrepiece section on Tuesday to kick off a second week of programming announcements.

The 43 films come from filmmakers representing 41 countries, with 18 of the titles receiving their world premieres at TIFF. Those premieres include “Seven Days,” a film about an imprisoned Iranian activist directed by Ali Samadi Ahadi and written by Mohammad Rasoulof, a filmmaker who was himself sentenced to flogging and prison by Iranian authorities; “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life,” a romantic comedy from French writer-director Laura Piani; “The Legend of the Vagabond Queen of Lagos,” a debut from the Nigerian filmmaking group known as the Agbajowo Collective; and Erin Lee Carr’s “Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara,...

The Melbourne International Film Festival has set ten features to play in its Bright Horizons competition section.

They include: India Donaldson’s “Good One”; Luna Carmoon’s “Hoard”; Annie Baker’s “Janet Planet”; Leonardo Van Dijl’s “Julie Keeps Quiet”; Ena Sendijarević’s “Sweet Dreams”; Matthew Rankin’s “Universal Language”; Mo Harawe’s “The Village Next to Paradise”; Gints Zabalodis’ animated “Flow”; Rungano Nyoni’s “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl”; and Australian director Charles Williams’ debut feature “Inside.”

The non-competitive Headliners section, which showcases films that have premiered at other festivals, includes: Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis”; Mumbai-based director Payal Kapadia was recently the first Indian director for 30 years with a film in competition in Cannes presents “All We Imagine as Light”; Coralie Fargeat’s Demi Moore-starring “The Substance”; Jia Zhangke’s “Caught by the Tides”; Sebastian Stan in Aaron Schimberg’s “A Different Man”; Cannes best director-winning Asian odyssey,...

Nostalgic docufiction that morphs into a lockdown thriller, Lou Ye’s “An Unfinished Film” is the second work at this year’s Cannes Film Festival (alongside Jia Zhangke’s “Caught by the Tides”) in which a “Sixth Generation” Chinese filmmaker has repurposed their old films to create something new. The line between reality and drama blurs as Lou genuinely re-discovers years-old footage, and proceeds to follow a fictitious film crew completing an abandoned project, only for China’s severe Covid-19 lockdowns to interrupt their work, as well as life in all its rhythms.

Few films have so skillfully captured the way Covid caused such traumatic temporal disruptions in its early days, wherein sudden changes in physical and emotional routine caused time to both stretch and collapse. The foundation for this dissonance is laid when Lou, by way of director character Xiaorui — played by Mao Xiaorui, Lou’s assistant director on...

Hong Kong action thriller Twilight Of The Warriors: Walled In, which screened at Cannes this week, is set to become a trilogy, reuniting director Soi Cheang and producers John Chong and Wilson Yip.

Like the first film, the two new instalments will be based on the novel City Of Darkness by Yuyi. Both are expected to go into production around the same time next year on newly built extensive sets, according to Angus Chan of Entertaining Power, who owns the film rights to the novel.

The second instalment, Twilight Of The Warriors: Dragon Throne will be set in the 1950s and 1960s,...

Chinese auteur Lou Ye is on a mission to finish An Unfinished Film, which he is presenting as a Cannes Special Screenings, in a way that he set out to make before the Covid pandemic changed its course. It will exist as a separate film.

He describes the new untitled project as “organic, made in a casual and personal way on a modest budget”. It exists as a separate project to the Cannes title and will contain old and mostly unseen footage from his previous films including Spring Fever, which won best screenplay in Cannes in 2009; Mystery, which premiered in...

These auteurs are ready for their close-up.

When Quentin Dupieux’s comedy about an ill-fated film set, “The Second Act,” opened the Cannes Film Festival May 14, it will be just one of several movies about filmmaking and filmmakers to touch down on the Croisette. After all, directors Christophe Honoré, Paul Schrader and Josh Mond are among the other prominent filmmakers who are ready to premiere semi-autobiographical stories.

Honoré’s in-competition comedy, “Marcello Mio,” casts Chiara Mastroianni as a version of herself who — after a director compares her to her late father, Marcello Mastroianni — dresses in drag and takes on his identity. Schrader’s in-competition drama, “Oh, Canada,” focuses on a documentary filmmaker (Richard Gere) telling his life story in a doc. Mond’s drama “It Doesn’t Matter” follows two friends chronicling their lives on video. Leos Carax’s 40-minute “C’est pas moi” is partly a self-portrait, with footage from his films and life.

Philippe Bober’s Coproduction Office has boarded worldwide sales of Lou Ye’s An Unfinished Film ahead of its premiere at Cannes and has already closed two major deals.

The film, which is set to play in the Special Screenings section of the festival next month, has been snapped up by Bac Films for France and Lucky Red for Italy. A first look at the film can be seen above.

Set in January 2020, the story follows a film crew that reunites near Wuhan to resume shooting a film halted 10 years earlier, only to share unexpected challenges as cities are placed under lockdown.