64th San Sebastian International Film Festival Award Winners

With a straight forward to reading/giving awards the festival has closed an edition that will be recall for giving top awards to Asian Cinema and YES, to female filmmakers!

Will not deny that is a great surprise that precisely this festival is the one that honors that many female directors, but the most unexpected situations come from the least likely players.   Yes, also believe is the first non-LGBT film festival that gives so many awards to lesbian-interest films! Great!

Usually the only thing that stays on-top-of-mind from this festival are the Horizontes Latinos winners but this year believe there will be more films as, of course, I'm curious about the two Asian Cinema films as well as that film with the actor that won the Best Actor award and the Argentinean film winner of the Best Cinematography.

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17th Sebastiane Award Winner

Gehitu, the Basque Association of Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals and Transexuals, and, on behalf of Gehitu, the Sebastiane Award’s Jury has decided to grant the XVII Sebastiane award to In Between by Maysaloun Hamoud.



Bar Bahar (In Between), Maysaloun Hamoud, Israel and France (L)

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2016 European Discovery - Prix FIPRESCI Nominations

At the Oldenburg International Film Festival in Germany, the European Film Academy has announced this year’s nominations for the European Discovery – Prix FIPRESCI, an award presented annually in co-operation with the International Federation of Film Critics to a young and upcoming director for a first full-length feature film.

This year’s nominations were determined by a committee comprised of EFA Board Members Dagmar Jacobsen (Germany) and Angeles González-Sinde (Spain), filmmaker and 2015 nominee Tom Sommerlatte (Germany), expert Mihai Chirilov (Cluj FF, Romania), and FIPRESCI representatives Isabelle Danel (France), Krzysztof Kwiatkowski (Poland), and Neil Young (UK). On invitation by the festival, the committee met in Oldenburg and decided on the following nominations.

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73rd Venice Film Festival Award Winners

Will not deny that I'm quite pleased with the top awards winners as consider three of them, great contemporary directors each with a very particular and peculiar style. I'm talking about the awesome visuals in Lav Diaz films, the amazing esthetic of Tom Ford, and the outstanding visual -and violent- storytelling style of Amat Escalante. Congratulations to the three directors and yes, I'm looking forward to be able to watch their latest oeuvres.

On the not positive side of la Mostra have to share that seems there was a communication release with the award winners leaked or released ahead of time to the American press and those without fest experience (to put it mildly) started to release winners names three hours before the award ceremony; of course, as American media usually ignores what happens outside their local industry, leaks were about American winners. Just hope that this fest as well as others control their information as they will eventually loose credibility if they don't. Sigh.

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13th Venice Days Award Winners

The independent section of Venice Film Festival that honors film directors closed today with the awards ceremony and here are the many awards related to this section.

The Jury for the Venice Days Award, chaired by the Canadian artist Bruce LaBruce, has bestowed the 2016 Venice Days Award on the following documentary feature film from the Official Selection:
The War Show by Andreas Dalsgaard and Obaidah Zytoon, Denmark and Finland

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31st Venice International Film Critics' Week Award Winners

As Venezia73 starts to slide into the sunset, the collateral sections start to announce their awards winners; the following are two award winners in Settimana Internazionale della Critica.

Premio Mario Serandrei – Hotel Saturnia Award:   Akher Wahed Fina (The Last of Us) by Ala Eddine Slim (Tunisia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates and Lebanon)

From this year on and together with the Audience Award, the Venice International Film Critics’ Week decided to also give a prize for the best technical contribution, named after the great editor Mario Serandrei. The jury, composed by the film critics’ Franco Montini (president of the National Union of Italian Film Critics’), Adriano De Grandis and Piero Spila gave the Mario Serandrei – Hotel Saturnia Award for the Best Technical Contribution to The Last of Us for “the admirable photography of Amine Messadi and the decisive contribution of Moncef Taleb and Yazid Chabbi for the sound, that constitute a real alternative to narration in a film without dialogues, thanks to which The Last of Us (Akher Wahed Fina) by Ala Eddine Slim carries out an original existential road movie, between ghostly intuitions and an almost abstract description of reality”.

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10th Queer Lion Award Winner

A few minutes ago organizers announced the winner of the tenth Queer Lion Award and goes to none other than Hjartasteinn (Heartstone) the debut feature film of Icelandic director Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson.

Have to admit that I'm very pleased with this year selection as I'm very curious about this film as has mesmerizing visuals from awesome cinematography and a story that can be interesting to watch.

Organizers gave the following statement that describes their reasons to the award:

For the exquisite touch in showing the coming of age of two young friends and analyzing the acceptance of homosexual feelings and passions. For the strong and valid representation of the inner conflict that separates and then re-unites the two main characters, set against a natural environment as breathtaking as it can be hard and cruel.

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64th San Sebastian Film Festival Lineup - Update 1

Update 1 with Jury members of the three competitive sections listed below.  Zabaltegi films and jury are not listed below, but it's worth mentioning that is the section's first competitive year and jurors are, Spanish filmmaker Virginia García del Pino (chair), Uruguayan filmmaker Federico Veiroj, and producer Corinne Castel.

8/26/16
This year organizers started very early to tease with constant drops that add to the torrent of films that make the Official Selection as well as the other sections of the festival. So, been trying to do post since a while back, but didn't wanted to do constant updates.

Seems that today finally the Official Selection has been announced completely and according to latest toll there are twenty-five (25) films in the Official Selection with seventeen (17) films in the main Competition, four (4) Out of Competition and four (4) Special Screenings.

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43rd Telluride Film Festival Lineup

Tomorrow the most prestigious non-competitive film festival in the USA will once again open for the screening of a selection that includes most of "the best of the best" from World cinema. Among the surprises is the expected Cristian Mungiu's latest against the omission of Cristi Puiu's film that will represent Romania at the 2017 Oscars or the expected Pablo Larrain's Neruda against the absence of Biennale in competition Jackie. But in general believe that selection has no big surprises as most films were expected to be in this year's selection.

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#TIFF16 Platform Selection

The directors-focused section is only in its second year, but has already lined up outstanding filmmakers with twelve (12) films from Canada, Australia, France, Bhutan, Belgium, USA, United Kingdom, and Netherlands.

“In its inaugural year in 2015, Platform successfully established itself as fundamental to the Festival, and we’re proud to present a dramatically thrilling and daring program for its second year,” said TIFF Artistic Director Cameron Bailey. This year, Platform takes on complex and bold narratives that range from a dark, twisted fantasy, a dramatic crime thriller, an existential illusion to the reinterpretation of a satirical tragedy, a raw coming-of-age story, and tales of revolutions, radicals, and revenge. The program will open with the international premiere of the powerful and topical drama Nocturama from critically acclaimed director-writer Bertrand Bonello.

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#EFA2016 People's Choice Award

Every year, the EFA People’s Choice Award allows film fans across Europe to elect their favorite film. When the European Film Academy invites its members, Europe’s greatest film stars, directors, actors and actresses, to attend the European Film Awards, the People’s Choice Award sheds a spotlight on the people films are made for: the audience.

From 1 September to 31 October, film fans will vote for their favorite film and have the chance to win a trip to attend the 29th European Film Awards on Saturday, 10 December 2016 in Wroclaw, European Capital of Culture 2016.

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10th Queer Lion Award Lineup Update 2

Award organizers were supposed to announce films next Monday, August 22 but today there are some films listed and even when do not know if is the complete list, I'm in the mood of sharing the films that will or could be considered for the Venice Film Festival LGBT award.

Before checking the list, let's find out who are going to decide the winning film (or films?).

Jury
President: Cecilia Ermini, film critic and programmer, Italy
Rich Cline, film critic, UK
Daniel N, Casagrande, founder of Queer Lion Award, journalist, Italy

The following are the films in today's list. Next Monday could modify list according to what organizers do as perhaps they could add more films and/or short films. If find which LGBT interest the film has will add info.

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29th European Film Awards - Long List

It is with great pleasure that the European Film Academy and EFA Productions announce the titles of the 50 films on this year’s EFA Feature Film Selection, the list of feature fiction films recommended for a nomination for the European Film Awards 2016!

With 33 European countries represented, the list once again illustrates the great diversity in European cinema.

In the 20 countries with the most EFA Members, these members have voted one national film directly into the selection list. To complete the list, a Selection Committee consisting of EFA Board Members and invited experts Péter Bognár (Hungary), Dave Calhoun (UK), Paz Lazaro Barquilla (Spain), Christophe Leparc (France) and Alik Shpilyuk (Ukraine) has included further films.

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29th European Film Awards - Documentary Selection

 It is with great pleasure that the European Film Academy and EFA Productions announce the EFA Documentary Selection, a list of 15 European documentaries recommended for a nomination for this year's European Film Awards.

Last year the European Academy changed the procedure to select the nominations in the documentary category and process became similar to the selection of short films nominees with ten (10) documentary festival recommending to EFA committee one film each which had its world premiere at the festival latest edition.

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#Locarno69 Award Winners

Today the most famous Swiss competitive festival comes to an end with the screening of the award winning films and feel kind of sad as this year followed the fest via smart phone app and gee, was great! Thanks Locarno for creating a good, fine working app.

More interesting was the fest collaboration with Festival Scope as yes, was able to watch a couple of films for FREE; but to be honest, didn't enjoyed much the films (lol). Nevertheless the Festival Scope app is also very good and can be send to your TV via Airplay! Since I'm talking about the greatness of Locarno streaming and smart services, let me share that been experimenting with many app services that can stream films directly to your smart TV and my impression is that film distribution has changed! No, is not anymore, WILL change. Now streaming is an important mean to reach film audiences and is happening all over the world.

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