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!

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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.

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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

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

Update: Today August 2, 2024 the first two countries announced their submissions and the race is open for the most sought-after award in the Industry plus more interesting The List with all the great movies we all hope to see as-soon-as-possible has just started! Hooray!

As every year the list includes info about festivals when movie has participated and won awards plus female directors are highlighted in BLUE. Also synopsis and tralers are available at my trailers site (MOC) as well as the movie poster collection in Pinterest. Be aware that Pinterest has become more strict with their images and sometimes films have posters that they will delete from the site, so if poster is not there is because was deleted by Pinterest. Sigh.

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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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