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.

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81st Venice International Film Festival (In Progress)

Note: Post is In Progress until tomorrow July 23 when organizers will announce Official Selection in press conference. If necessary, post could continue to be In Progress until films info is uploaded at official site.

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.

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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.

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97th Academy Awards International Feature Film Submissions

Today, Friday, July 12, 2024 is a good day to start my favorite annual post about those movies that definitively are or will become part of my must-be-seen list, the films countries submit to be considered for the #Oscars2025 Best International Feature award.  Even when no country has made no announcement, some are starting to announce news about their selection processes and establishing key dates.

News from the Academy tells us they changed films eligibility period and now is from November 1st, 2023 to September 30, 2024. Also, Wednesday, October 2, 2024 is the submissions to the Academy deadline.

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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.

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#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.

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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.

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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”.

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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.

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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.

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76th Festival de Cannes Award Winners

As several awards have been announced decided to start post today. Post will be in progress until after the awards ceremony on Saturday, May 27th.

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76th Cannes Film Festival Lineup

Update 2 - May 12, 2023 - Today organizers uploaded info, available trailers and more for each movie in the Official Selection and post becomes final after the current update. There are some incongruences that still have to figure out but generally speaking what has been announced in previous press releases is included in the correspondent section. So, there are only 6 days to opening day and I am looking forward to the start of the greatest cinema feast. Enjoy!!!

Update 1 - April 27, 2023 -Recently festival organizers released the Additions to the Selection and list includes film that were expected but nevertheless are not only great additions but also extraordinary films by some great master filmmakers.
In Competition Black Flies and Le Retour were added, in Cannes Premier Perdidos en la Noche, L'amour et les forets, and Eureka; in Out of Competition L'abbe pierre-une vie de combats; in Un Certain Regard Only the River Flows and Une Nuit; in Short Film Filles du Feu; in Special Screenings, Little Girl Blue, Bread and Roses and Le theoreme de Marguerite; in Midnight Screening Hypnotic and Project Silence.

Above films means that more well-known actors and directors will/could walk the red carpet to delight of all who also appreciates the light side of the festival. So, Viggo Mortensen, Chiara Mastroianni -who is this edition Master of Ceremonies-, Marion Cottillard, Amat Escalante, Lisandro Alonso, Virginie Efira, Ben Affleck, Alice Braga, and more.

Seems no more films will be announced but will wait until info about each film is uploaded to official site to make this post final.
-end of update-

April 14, 2023

Yesterday the much awaited press conference with the announcement of the Official Selection for the Cannes Film Festival took place and, besides the long speeches, the list of films was out-of-the-ordinary and gave absolute feeling that festival wishes to recoup its past glories and top-of-mind in the festival circuit and the film industry.

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73rd Berlin International Film Festival Award Winners

As loyal readers have noticed I haven't post much during current  award season and the reason-why  is because have to take care of an ill very close family member. Still, have tried to retweet most of the relevant film related news that havebeen reading.

As Berlinale is one of the three main film festivals in the world and consequently, great films undoubtedly will win awards to call audience attention -and mine- thus most will become must-be-seen in the following year. So, will do the very-long award winners post.

Worth mention that found festival to be slow, not many films got audiences and critics positive attention -nor mine-; so, perhaps juries and their prizes will generate more buzz around award winning films. Let's see what happens in a few hours, when the closing ceremony will take place.

Post was In Progress until after the closing ceremony tonight.

As many comment Berlinale 2023 gave us cinema lovers an interesting and quite unexpected group of winners, many -almost all- must be seen for me. That's quite surprising as many film pundits were expressing not positive feelings about the Jury President and the too-many female jury members (!!!). Then I was flabbergasted with the many tweets expresing high praise to the speeches of the Jury President! Gosh what did they expected from a jury president? Alright to be fair my Kristen Stewart expectations were high and all were met beyond what I could imagine; so, those film critics, film commentators and/or film bloggers that do not appreciate Stewart were those that praised her most -and they mention their previous dislike.

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35th European Film Awards Nominations

As this year there are many great European movies being considered for an European Film Awards nomination decided to return to list EFA's nominations for 2022 awards edition.

The following awards had been already announced.

Lifetime Achievement Award for Outstanding Body of Work to Margarethe Von Trotta
European Innovative Storytelling Award to Marco Bellocchio
European Achievement in World Cinema Award to Elia Suleiman

The Awards ceremony will take place on December 10, 2022 in Reykjavik, Iceland and will be streamed live at awards official site here.

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79th Venice Film Festival Award Winners

Know is not only my opinion but found festival to be low on good cinema and quite uneven in spectacle as started with a few days with big bang both in movies quality -which generated high press interest- to fade into a straight line with no highs nor lows. Somehow my opinion is confirmed with the awards as weren't as dispereced as in previous editions and tended to concentrate in a few films.

Most interesting for me is the amount of USA productions or co productions that won top awards which only confirms the tight festival relation with American cinema. Still -and I'm completely biased- I'm totally in agreement in honoring Cate Blanchett with her second Copa Volpi! No fan of Colin Farrell but will have to check film to find why he won over press and social media favorite Brendan Fraser.

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