TBILISI: The main prize of the International Competition of the 18th Tbilisi Film Festival went to the Swedish film Ravens directed by Jens Assur. The top prize in the National competition went to the Georgian/Estonian coproduction Scary Mother directed by Ana Urushadze.
VENICE: Director Paul Schrader joins a group of films in this year’s Venice Main Competition that are concerned with the destruction of our planet’s environment via greed and over-exploitation with his latest film First Reformed. Maybe they are trying to tell us something.
VENICE: Director Darren Aronofsky returns to the Lido with mother! in the main competition a film which he describes as having “poured out of him as a fevered dream.” The description is indeed apt and his vision has left both critics and Venice audiences a bit baffled as to what it all means, that is if it means anything at all.
VENICE: Actor Matt Damon might be in danger of over-exposure if such a thing were possible in today’s Hollywood. The very much “in demand” actor appears as a leading character in two films screening in the main competition in Venice this year Alexander Payne’s Downsizing and George Clooney’s Suburbicom.
VENICE: The honourary Italian from Lake Como George Clooney is back on the Lido with a quirky film called Suburbicon with a script by the Coen brothers that he has amended to make it his own.
VENICE: Director Guillermo Del Toro’s The Shape of Water is a much needed antidote to cynicism in an increasingly cynical world. This may just be Del Toro’s best film in a decade with nothing compares to it since his 2006 Pan’s Labyrinth.
GDYNIA: The 42nd Polish Film Festival Gdynia, held in the Baltic seaside resort from 18-23 September 2017, awarded its top prize of Golden Lion for Best Film to Silent Night directed by Piotr Domalewski and produced by Jerzy Kapuscinski, Ewa Jastrzebska and Jacek Bromski.
FNE at Venice 2017: FNE TV: This year Venice Film Festival became the first film festival to hold a competition for Virtual Reality films and VR even had its own island in the laguna, where VR fans and creators could meet to experience the latest in VR technologies and present their new projects.
VENICE: FNE asked Mariya Gabriel about the future of the Creative Europe MEDIA programme, which is now under consideration and how European Cultural Security can help to secure the Europe of the future.
VENICE: FNE spoke to Michal Bregant Director of Czech National Film Archives about the selection of Cerny Petr / Black Peter (Czechoslovakia, 1963) directed by Milos Forman for Venice Classics section of this year’s festival and why there is an increasing interest in restored classics at international film festivals.
