KARLOVY VARY: One Polish film and no less than three Bulgarian coproductions are among the ten films selected for the Official Selection of the LUX FILM PRIZE. The Official Selection was announced on 2 July 2017 at a presentation during the Karlovy Vary Film Festival. The Official Selection was announced by Helga Trüpel, Vice-Chair of the Committee on Culture and Education, Martina Dlabajova, Vice-Chair of the Committee on Budgetary Control, Bogdan Wenta, Member of the Committee on Culture and Education and Doris Pack, LUX FILM PRIZE Coordinator. The 2017 LUX Film Prize winner will be awarded on 15 November 2017 in Strasbourg.
MOSCOW: The 39 Moscow International Film Festival (22-29 June 2017) awarded its main prize the Golden George for Best film to Crested Ibis / Yuan Shang (China) directed by Lian Qiao. The jury was headed by Iranian director Reza Mirkarimi.
MOSCOW: The 39 Moscow International Film Festival (22-29 June 2017) has announced its main competition programme with three films from Russia scoring slots in the lineup that focuses heavily on Asian with films from China, India, Bangladesh, Japan and Korea. The programme also includes competitions for documentaries and shorts
CANNES: Director Sofia Coppola has decided to do a remake of director Don Siegel’s Civil War made more than 40 years ago that starred Clint Eastwood. The decision is a strange one and the result is Beguiled a film that succeeds on some fronts but not on others.
CANNES: Documentarist turned fiction director Sergei Loznitsa makes his third venture into fiction film with A Gentle Creature which has scored a competition slot in Cannes. His two previous feature film outings My Joy and In the Fog both scored major art house and festival successes and A Gentle Creature looks set to continue this trend.
CANNES: Safdie brothers, Benny and Josh, have followed up on their gritty Heaven Knows What that delved into the New York heroin scene with a fast paced street drama Good Time starring Robert Pattinson as a bank robber clearly cut in the mold of Al Pacino and Dog Day Afternoon.
CANNES: Russian director Andrei Zvyagintsev follows up on his international art house hit Leviathan which looked at corruption in society with Loveless that looks at the breakdown of family values and love in our contemporary life. While there are no doubt those that will jump to say that this is all about Russia or that “Mr Putin is responsible” as he seems to be accused of just about everything globally these days, Zvyagintsev really is looking at much deeper and more universal values here than just the politics of the moment.
CANNES: Director Todd Haynes scores a slot in the Cannes competition line-up with this seventh feature Wonderstruck based on author Brian Selznick’s critically acclaimed 2011 epic fable for children. Selznick is also known as a children’s book illustrator and the Haynes film follows in this groove with the main fascination of the film being its striking visuals. Selznick also wrote the screenplay for the film.
KRAKOW: The 57th edition of the Krakow Film Festival (28 May – 4 June 2017) wrapped with awards for the best documentary, short and animated films in one of Europe’s top showcases for non-fiction feature films.
CANNES: The 70th Cannes Film Festival held from 17 to 28 May awarded its top prize the Palme d’Or to The Square, a Swedish, German, French, Danish and USA coproduction directed by Ruben Östlund. The jury headed by Pedro Almodóvar also made a surprise special award for the 70th anniversary of Cannes to Nicole Kidman, who appeared in two competition films The Killing of a Sacred Deer and The Beguiled and two films screening out of competition, the season two of Top of the Lake and special screening How to Talk to Girls at Parties.
