Videoblog : cineuropa

Awards - Switzerland - Home wins at Montreal and Angoulême

cineuropa — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 15:56:33 +0200

On August 31, the jury of the 1st Angoulême Francophone Film Festival awarded Best Swiss Feature Film Home and a mention to its young actor Kacey Mottet Klein, who stars alongside Isabelle Huppert, Olivier Gourmet, Adélaïde Leroux (Bruno Dumont's Flanders) and Madeleine Budd.

The film - which premiered at the Cannes International Critics' Week (see news) and is the second feature by...

Venice 2008 - Critics' Week - Death comes to Venice with Pinuccio Lovero

cineuropa — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 14:55:23 +0200

At a festival where the average film length is two hours, a 62-minute-long, low budget feature arouses curiosity. Pinuccio Lovero - sogno di una morte di mezz'estate (“Pinuccio Lovero - Dream of a Midsummer Death”) tells the story of a 40-year-old man who has always dreamed of working as a gravedigger and is finally employed as cemetery keeper in a small village in Puglia. It's a...

Festivals - Switzerland - Témoin indésirable Toronto-bound

cineuropa — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 14:44:58 +0200

The 33rd Toronto International Film Festival
(September 4-13) is presenting Juan José Lozano's Témoin indésirable (“Undesirable Witness”) in the Real to Reel section. Awarded in April at the end of its premiere screening at the Nyon Visions du Réel Festival, the documentary produced by Intermezzo Films (Geneva) describes the struggle of television journalist Hollman Morris for...

Festivals - UK - Frost/Nixon, Slumdog Millionaire to bookend London

cineuropa — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 14:36:35 +0200

The 52nd Times BFI London Film Festival (October 15-30) will open with the world premiere of Ron Howard's Frost/Nixon, an adaptation of his own stage play by BAFTA-winning scriptwriter Peter Morgan.

Michael Sheen and Frank Langella will reprise their stage roles as British journalist David Frost and disgraced American President Richard Nixon respectively.
The Festival's Artistic Director...

Venice 2008 - Awards/Critics' Week - France's L'Apprenti scoops Best Film

cineuropa — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 14:18:11 +0200

The 23. International Critics' Week jury - composed of international critics Bruno Fornara, Deborah Young and Elisabeth Lequeret - have awarded Best Film to Samuel Collardey's L'apprenti (“The Apprentice”, see news).

The jury cited the following reasons for their decision: "The sincerity and subtlety with which the director combines documentary and narrative invention to reveal...

Venice 2008 - Horizons/Italy - The ThyssenKrupp aftermath times two

cineuropa — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 13:33:30 +0200

In December 2007, an accident at the ThyssenKrupp industrial plant in Turin left seven men dead and an entire nation in a state of shock. Because the factory would soon close for good, safety measures were minimal at the time of the explosion.

Barely a year later, two documentary films about the incident are shown together on the Lido: Mimmo Calopresti's La fabbrica dei tedeschi...

Box Office - France - Canet and Kassovitz attract U.S. audiences

cineuropa — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 10:49:02 +0200

After its successful UK theatrical run last summer (distribution: Revolver Entertainment), Guillaume Canet's Tell No One is now attracting U.S. filmgoers. The feature - released by Music Box on July 6 on six screens - which had drawn 3 million to screens in France and won four Césars in 2007 (including Best Director) - has totalled $4.38m in receipts at the end of its ninth week of release in...

Venice 2008 - Horizons/France - Duret and Santana explore Brazil's deprived areas

cineuropa — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 09:58:49 +0200

Is it possible to make a documentary about deprived Northeast Brazil, taking inspiration from spaghetti-westerns? France's Jean-Pierre Duret and Brazil's Andrea Santana have done just that: their Puisque nous sommes nés (“As We Are Born”) - which screened in the Horizons section on the Lido - constantly “feels and scrutinises faces and gazes, as in Sergio Leone's...

Venice 2008 - Horizons/Italy - Bullying and homophobia in Locatelli's feature debut

cineuropa — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 16:35:07 +0200

Milanese director Mirko Locatelli - who attracted attention with several medium-length films (in particular the documentary Crisalidi) - makes his feature debut with Il primo giorno d'inverno (“The First Day of Winter”), which had its international premiere today in the Horizons section at the Venice Film Festival.

The film's protagonist, Valerio (Mattia De Gasperis, seen in...

European Film Awards - EFA 2008: 44 films recommended

cineuropa — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 15:23:28 +0200

The European Film Academy and EFA Productions gGmbH have announced the titles of the 44 films which were recommended for a nomination for the European Film Awards 2008.

With 27 countries represented, the list once again illustrates the great diversity in European cinema.

In the coming weeks, the 1,800 members of the European Film Academy will vote for the nominations in the different...

Venice 2008 - Venice Days/Poland - Rosa “scratches” beneath the surface of marital bliss

cineuropa — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 15:15:28 +0200

Polish director Michał Rosa's sixth feature film, Scratch, is a raw and intimate look at the ramifications of suspicion on a close couple after decades of marriage. The film's official screening was received with applause and an animated discussion yesterday, spawned by its ambiguous ending.

Scratch opens on the birthday of Joanna (an enigmatic Jadwiga Jankowska-Cieślak), a...

Venice 2008 - Competition/Algeria-France - Geopolitics according to Tariq Teguia in Inland

cineuropa — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 14:00:49 +0200

Malek is a surveyor; he measures places and borders, calculates distances and symbolically marks out the geopolitical lines of territories. In Inland - whose original title, Gabbla, means hinterland, inland or distance in Arabic dialect - 40-year-old Algerian director Tariq Teguia continues to explore the map drawn in his debut feature Rome Rather Than You, which screened at the 2006 Venice...

Releases - Switzerland - L'autre moitié wins Pariscope praise

cineuropa — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 13:24:50 +0200

The essential guide to entertainment in the French capital, Pariscope, has chosen a Swiss feature as its favourite film. Rolando Colla's L'autre moitié (“The Other Half”), which opened on two screens in Paris last week, has been awarded a surprising 4 out of 4 stars by the guide, as well as winning praises from its critic Arno Gaillard, who says of the film: "The film, modest by...

Venice 2008 - Venice Days/Italy - One Day in a Life took ten years to hit screens

cineuropa — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 12:27:20 +0200

Ten years in the making, screenwriter-critic-filmmaker Stefano Tummolini's independent feature debut One Day in a Life, the only Italian feature in Venice Days this year, screened to enthusiastic audiences today at Venice.

Tummolini wrote the screenplay with lead actor Antonio Merone, who plays Salvatore, a 40-something man who goes to the gay beach outside of Rome in the hopes of spending...

Venice 2008 - Horizons/France - The calvary of modern living

cineuropa — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 11:14:40 +0200

French director Arnaud des Pallières looks at life in a contemporary gated community on the Côte d'Azur in his third feature Le Parc. The two-hander, adapted from a ‘60s novel by US writer John Cheever, stars Jean-Marc Barr and Sergi Lopez as, respectively, Mr Hammer and Mr Nail, two people destined to clash in a violent manner.

Des Pallières, for whom this is his first adaptation...