36th European Film Awards Nominations

Few hours ago the European Film Academy announced the nominations for the 2024 edition of the European Film Awards and in the most innovative creation the announcement was done with a video presenting all nominated films and protagonists. Video might not be for all those that love cinema but is a great experiment that could be improved for future uses. So, if you are one of those who didn't like the video do not worry as here is the list with all the nominees and will be kept here to posterity.

No doubt change tend to be hard to assimilate, especially change that create a bit (or a lot) of confussion. Main change for the 2024 edition is the redefinition of the category that gives the top award, Best European Film. As announced a few weeks back, films from the European Documentary and European Animated Feature Film are also eligible and can be considered for a nomination in the European Film category. The result of the new regulation is that there are fifteen (15) films with a NOMINATION in the Best European Film category! Undoubtedly 15 nominees are too-many for one single category.

What confuses me is that there are 5 documentaries and 5 animated feature films included in the 15 nominees and are exactly the same to those nominated in European Documentary and European Animated Film; the other 5 are feature films. So, documentaries and animated films compete in 2 categories while feature film only in one! Does not seem fair.  Perhaps EFA is trying to give more relevance to docs and animation; but, diminishing the importance of feature films may not be the best way.

Continue reading »

2024 British Independent Film Awards Nominations

Few minutes ago organizers, assisted by Mia McKenna-Bruce and Vivian Oparah, announced the 2024 nominations for the award that celebrates British independent films. Kneecap leads the nominations with 14, including Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Debut Director, Best Debut Screenwriter, Best Independent Film and more.

Kneecap is followed by none other than Love Lies Bleeding by Rose Glass with 12 nominations including Best Independent Film, Best Director, Best Joint Lead Performance for Kristen Stewart and Katy O'Brian, Best Screenplay, and more.

With 9 nominations follows The Outrun, 7 noms each Bird, Becoming a Guinea Fowl and Unicorns, 6 for Hoard and Civil War, plus more films honored with nominations. In total, 29 British feature films are being honored in current edition.

2024 edition is full of A-listers -which only suggests a possible industry surging trend- and films by female directors -which hope it is an increasing trend-. Among the A-listers are Alicia Vikander (stars in 2 nominated films), Kristen Stewart, Saorise Ronan, Elliot Page, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, and newcomer rising real fast, Barry Keoghan, who stars in two honored films.

Continue reading »

36th European Film Awards - Film Selection

A few days back the European Film Academy announced the Film Selection for the current edition of the European Film Awards.

The list with forty-five (45) feature films have been selected by the European Film Academy Board - consulted by a diverse range of European invited experts. With 28 European countries represented both EU and non-EU- there is no doubt that the selection reflects the great diversity in European cinema.

In the coming weeks, the 5,00 members of the European Film Academy will watch and vote the nominations in the categories of Film, Director, Actress, Actor, Screenwriter, and Documentary. The other categories -in total there are 24 categories- will be announced before as it has been done in past years.

EFA nominations will be announced on November 5 and the awards ceremony takes place on December 7 in Lucerne. It is the first time the awards ceremony takes place in Switzerland.

Continue reading »

81st Venice International Film Festival Award Winners

Fest is over but what I was most afraid became real to me, this edition was more about the movie stars/celebrities and less about the movies worth of being at one of the three most important festivals in the world. Sigh.

Fortunatelly the jury didn't participate in all the buzz and fuzz as ended giving awards to very interesting movies or at least, to movies that absolutely are must-be-seen for me as just from trailer called my attention beyond the usual. Perhaps my most favorite trailer images are from Georgian director Dea Kulumbegashvili's April as looks and feels similar to her previous film Beginning; also, can help but to mention that film was produced by Luca Guadagnino who also produced anothe film that I'm very curious about Giovanni Tortorici's Diciannove (Nineteen).

Can't deny that I'm in cloud nine with Pedro Almodóvar winning the Golden Lion, it was about time! After so many nominations (218 according to IMDb) and so many wins (173 according to IMDb) he finally is honored with a top award from one of the three top film festivals in the world. In my book, he is one of the most original alive master filmmakers in the world and deserves all kinds of industry top honors. Sigh. Now let's hope AMPAS members react to his first feature film in English but being realistic the Golden Lion this year was given by a very homogeneous group as most jurors were film directors and there were only two actresses, of course, one was the President. So, could AMPAS members appreciate his work? We'll see soon as time flies nowadays and we are almost in 2025!

Continue reading »

18th Queer Lion Award Lineup and Award Winner

As we know, the line up of titles competing for the 2024 Queer Lion Award is compiled with the collaboration of Alberto Barbera, Venice International Film Festival director, Gaia Furrer, artistic director of Giornate degli Autori, and Beatrice Fiorentino, general delegate of International Film Critics’ Week. They chose among the films with LGBT stories and characters dealing with civil rights issues related to different sexual orientations, equal opportunities, and fight against homotransphobia.

As always let's start taking a look at the official graphic image of the award and the reasons why this year the image is as seen here.

The Poster

The official image of the 18th edition of Queer Lion Award has been created by award longtime collaborator Francesco Gangemi, illustrator and artist, responsible for more than ten years for the images celebrating our award.

For 2024 he has conceived an intimate, personal image, rich on suggestions investigating the fragile interiority each of us has to face in some moments of our life. The inspiration comes from sonnet CXXXIV from Il Canzoniere, written by italian poet Petrarch in 14th Century.

Continue reading »

39th Venice International Film Critics' Week Lineup

A few hours ago la Settimana announced the current edition lineup and released their graphic image for 2024.

Just to refresh our memory, La Settimana is an independent and parallel section of La Mostra organized by the Union of Italian Film Critics with a program that includes a selection of seven (7) debut films in competition and three (3) special events out of competition.

The Poster

Mauro Uzzeo creative creation is to my eyes, a near-apocalyptic contemplation of recent past, current present and near future. Check his own words here to find that I'm not that far from what his creative intentions took him to produce the creative idea behind the poster, go official site here. Poster Design is by Fabrizio Verrochhi and Graphic Production by Emiliano Mammucari.

Continue reading »

81st Venice International Film Festival

On the 50th anniversary of the death of master filmmaker Vittorio de Sica La Mostra Pre-Opening film will screen L'Oro di Napoli (The Gold of Naples) in the Sala Darsena. It is the world premiere of the digital 4K restoration.

Actress Sveva Alviti will host the Opening (Wednesday, August 28) and Closing (Saturday, September 7) ceremonies.

Continue reading »

21st Giornate degli Autori Lineup

What could be consider as an early announcement -a week early before La Mostra press release- by the autonomous section of the Venice International Film Festival, Giornate degli Autori, presented the selection for its 21st edition with 10 films in competition, 1 closing film out of competition, 5 special events, and 3 short films.

To refresh our memory, the Giornate degli Autori was born in 2004, as an independent sidebar of the Venice Film Festival, modeled on the prestigious ‘Directors’ Fortnight’ of the Cannes Festival and promoted by the associations of Italian film directors and authors (ANAC and 100autori). The aim of the event is to draw attention to high quality cinema, without any kind of restriction, with special care for innovation, research, originality and independence. These are all features of the 10 films selected as well as being reflected in the special events held during the Days in the Casa degli Autori.

Also this year there are 9 film in Venetian Nights plus two events and a new sidebar of Giornate for words and images named Confronti. The new sidebar of Giornate for words and images, named Confronti, looks at themes, stories and films that draw us into the past and the future of the world we live in.

Continue reading »

97th Academy Awards International Feature Film Submissions

Update: Today October 29, 2024 different industry sources, some more reliable than others, published a list with 85 films to be consider by AMPAS members and vote to select final films in the shortlist of 15 which will be announced on December 17. The list not only has the fewer films in almost 10 years but also eliminates three documentaries plus one submission I never included in the list below as source was unreliable and Haiti does not have an AMPAS qualified selection committee.

Besides Haiti, films from Jordan, Uruguay and China did not appear in list; noteworthy is  China's submission disqualification, which was in the news allover because has higher than 50% English. Counting this 3 not-in-list films there were 82 films but there are 3 new entries, Guatemala, Lebanon and Nigeria, therefore tally up-to-this-moment is 85 films being considered bye the Academy.

Continue reading »

77th Festival de Cannes Award Winners

Been looking for an article/post/news etc. with ALL #Cannes2024 winners and surprise: couldn't find one! So, even if is not easy for me to sit down and write, decided to do the annual post that includes Official Selection, Quinzaine, Semanine, La Cinef, Marche du Film and Collateral Award winners in one place.

From what I was able to follow daily plus many winners, I believe 2024 edition was a successful one and perhaps we have to thank all sections film selection responsible and well, yes, also to Thierry Frémaux for a great unexpected selection in the main competition.

In the official selection there were twenty-two (22) films in competition and with maybe 2 or 3 exceptions, films were outstanding as there were films from master filmmakers I truly adore like Jacques Audiard, Jia Zhang-ke, Yorgos Lanthimos, Kirill Serebrennikov, Christophe Honore, Paolo Sorrentino, and David Cronenberg plus films by Payal Kapadia (remember 2021 Cannes Golden Eye winner documentary A Night of Knowing Nothing?), Sean Baker, Andrea Arnold (remember Fish Tank?), Agathe Reidinger (1st film), Gilles Lellouche, Michel Hazanavicius, Frances Ford Coppola (from trailer is quite different to what I imagined, now I'm curious), Karim Ainouz, Paul Schrader, Magnus Von Horn, Mohammed Rasoulof, Coralie Fargeat and 2024 Queer Palm winner by Emanuel Parvu. All right one missing, by an extraordinary director Ali Abbasi (remember outstanding Holy Spider), The Apprentice, a film I know will eventually watch because the director but gee the subject matter is one that highly dislike, sigh.

Continue reading »

#Oscars2023 International Feature Film Shortlist

Yesterday The Academy released the Shortlist for several categories including the International Feature Film with 15 films advancing to the next voting round for the selection of the five nominees that will be announced on Tuesday, January 23, 2024.

Category shortlist comes from 88 films submitted by international countries which qualified and were eligible to be considered. Academy members from all branches were invited to participate in the preliminary round of voting and must have met a minimum viewing requirement to be eligible to vote in the category.

Now, in the nominations round, Academy members from all branches can participate but have to watch all 15 shortlisted films.

Continue reading »

80th Venice International Film Festival Award Winners

This year not only festival was slow, had a lot less media coverage (surely due to the lack of International celebrities that are on strike), but due to my new normal wasn't able to give as much time as in previous years and yes, my favorite post started to move quickly, talking about the list of films submited to #Oscars2024 International Feature Film category.

So here are the award winners. Post will be updated as soon as awards are announced and will be finished after the closing ceremony tomorrow, Saturday, September 9.

Continue reading »

17th Queer Lion Award Lineup and Winner

The Poster

Queer Lion, this year, pays tribute to Aus meiner Haut (Skin Deep), a movie that portraysthe dynamics that codify the complex language of feelings, by telling a love story that literally transcends bodies. What initially appears as a body swapping horror movie, quickly starts overcoming both cinematic genres and genders. In doing so, it poses surprisingly clever and daring questions, challenging the very nature and purpose of love, be it the mind, the body, the pleasure or the laws of desire. In demolishing the idea of per-established roles in favor of endless fluid possibilities, the movie boldly succeeds in turning the acronym LGBTQ into a single word.

Aus meiner Haut (Skin Deep) by German-Kazakh director Alex Schaad was the winner of the 16th edition of the Queer Lion Award.

Author of the artwork inspired by the movie is Francesco Gangemi Illustrator: “It was created using paper art technique, paired with a strong ink stroke and bright contrasting colours. Details in tissue paper refine the image and help strengthening the emotional impact. The ink, applied with passion and emotional zeal, creates a chaotic, surreal atmosphere evoking both the mysteries and the intertwoven lives and personal feelings we get to see throughout the whole movie, whose leads’ deep gazes reveal perceptions, identities, quests for help and understanding, merging together in a single face, in a single identity”.

Continue reading »

80th Venice International Film Festival Lineup

Current year hasn't been easy for me but today decided to do a condensed version of the usual very long post to list films in the Biennale Cinema as not easy to find a list without comments, just a plain old list with enough info to get an idea of the quality of the film. The last is the ultimate objective of all the festival listings that are included here as undoubtedly facilitates the visualization of what I wish to see during the coming year. Already have quite a few films from Cannes, Berlinale and other film festivals like Karlovy Vary, Rotterdam among others.

Official press conference took place on July 25th and my spontaneous impression then was a festival more Euro/World centrated which absolutely makes it a lot more interesting for me. On different news, Caterina Murino is the host of the opening and closing ceremonies and none other than Damien Chazelle is the International Jury President of Venezia 80 competition.

Continue reading »

96th Academy Awards International Feature Film Submissions

Friday, December 8th, 2023
This is the last update as the Academy released the list of eligible films in the International Feature Film category and there are 88 films to be considered for the shortlist of 15 that will be released on December 21st.

From last update Cuba is not included in final list as well as those countries mentioned in previous lists. According to all announcements of films to be considered by the Academy for the International Feature Film category done by different sources since August 2023, there are four (4) films that did not make the final official list and they are from these countries/territories: Cuba, Hong Kong. Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan.

Continue reading »