News

Studiocanal launched a brand new official podcast – and the host might just be familiar to Film Stories listeners.

This is a bit of an odd story for me to write. Basically, well, because I’m in it. I’ll see how I get on.

The rather fine folks at Studiocanal have launched an official podcast, digging into the huge archive of movies under its stewardship. It’s arriving regularly, and as well as focusing on a movie of the month, there’s a broader exploration of other bits and bobs too.

Don’t take our word for it. Here’s Jamie McHale, the head of theatrical marketing at the studio: “We’re thrilled to be launching an official podcast to celebrate our incredible library of titles and upcoming theatrical releases. The in-depth analysis and regular features such as “Dream Double Bills” and “Hidden Gems” from Simon and his guests are...

From the very first moments of the “The Salt Path,” frantically capturing the vestiges of one middle-aged couple’s life swept out to sea by a turbulent tide of saltwater and sorrow, director Marianne Elliott’s inspirational drama chooses a deliberately deceptive path and gets off on the wrong foot. It’s not until later that it’s discovered that this in-media-res attention grabber, which has shaded our view of these downtrodden souls’ transformative journey, is a distorted reality. It’s used to manipulate us into anticipating that their watershed moment will be dire, when it’s really their saving grace. Yet with understated performances from Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs, as well as immersive land and soundscapes that enhance the thematic pull, this portrait of loss, humanity and rebirth makes it worth the emotional investment.

Fifty-somethings Ray Winn (Anderson) and her husband Moth (Isaacs) are having a rough go...

A new feature documentary exploring class division in the UK film industry will feature actors Maxine Peake and Vicky McClure, writer Paul Laverty and filmmakers Sean McAllister and Kolton Lee.

Currently at editing stage having filmed from July 2023 to July 2024, Quiet On Set: The Class Division In The Film Industry is written, directed, produced and edited by UK filmmaker Mark Forbes, who self-funded the production himself and described it as “very low-budget”.

Forbes has interviewed over 20 members of the industry, including Philippa Childs, head of UK creative union Bectu; Marcus Ryder, CEO of the Film & TV Charity; and Mariayah Kaderbhai,...

The revived Edinburgh Filmhouse is set to open at the turn of the year, with Aftersun director Charlotte Wells and actor Jack Lowden to be the UK cinema’s inaugural patrons.

A 25-year renewable lease has been signed with the 88 Lothian Road building owners Caledonian Heritable, which will mean the team of former Edinburgh Filmhouse staff who have led the campaign to re-open the cinema as an arthouse, independent venue can proceed with the refurbishment plans that will see the existing cinema building fully modernised.

In March the Filmhouse was awarded £1.4m from the UK government’s Levelling Up Community...

Vera Drew’s The People’s Joker – which was pulled from TIFF in 2022 over “rights issues” — starts a theatrical debut today at the IFC Center, moving to LA’s Landmark’s Nuart next weekend and expanding thereafter with about 85 booking so far — a nice outcome for the mixed-media coming-of-age dark superhero parody that “had gone into into hibernation mode” until Outfest LA Film Festival, said Frank Jaffe, whose distribution company Altered Innocence acquired it then. It’s U.S premiere garnered a Special Mention in the North American Narrative Feature Competition.

Co-written by Drew and Bri LeRose, the film is a reimagining the origin story of iconic Batman villain The Joker, starring Drew as painfully unfunny aspiring clown and closeted trans girl grappling with her gender identity while unsuccessfully attempting to join the ranks of Gotham City’s sole comedy program, in a world where comedy has been outlawed. She...

Image: Zeitgeist Films/Kino Lorber With 15 films and two Palme d’Or wins, Ken Loach is the surprise answer to the trivia question about the record-holder for the director having the most individual efforts screened in the main competition at Cannes.The workhorse British filmmaker has made a career largely...

Image: Zeitgeist Films/Kino Lorber

With 15 films and two Palme d’Or wins, Ken Loach is the surprise answer to the trivia question about the record-holder for the director having the most individual efforts screened in the main competition at Cannes.

The workhorse British filmmaker has made a career largely...

“I’m Nevenka,” a Movistar Plus+ original film and the awaited next feature from Spain’s Iciar Bollaín, has closed its earliest pre-sales, struck by Film Factory Entertainment, including a bellwether deal in France.

The deals come as “I’m Nevenka” has wrapped production, shooting in the Basque city of Bilbao before transferring to rural Zamora, western Spain.

Daniel Chabannes’ Epicentre Films, a classic 30-year-old distributor and producer of non-English language art pics, especially from Europe and Latin America, whose recent acquisitions take in San Sebastian Gold Shell winner “The Rye Horn” and Amos Gitai’s “It’s Not Over,” has acquired French rights.

A distributor of both big Cannes winners – “Triangle of Sadness,” “Rosetta,” “The Child” – and slightly more out-there propositions, such as Pablo Berger’s silent movie “Blancanieves,” Xenix Film Distribution has clinched rights to Switzerland.

Iciar Bollaín: A Broader Audience Auteur

The early pre-sales are hardly surprising. Since her big breakout,...

If you’re lucky enough to live in New York, Film Forum is mounting a 20-film Ken Loach retrospective on April 19 after his latest — and quite possibly last — film, Cannes 2023 entry “The Old Oak” starts rolling out on April 5. The British director carries the distinction of being one of nine filmmakers (among them Francis Ford Coppola and Ruben Östlund) to win the Palme d’Or twice: for the Irish history “The Wind That Shakes the Barley” (2006), starring Cillian Murphy, and healthcare drama “I, Daniel Blake” (2016).

Both times, the Competition juries were powerless to resist the films’ emotional pull.

And resistance is futile. That’s because Loach knows how to move us. His movies hit a nerve because they dig into believable characters inspired by real people and informed by current events.

Loach and his long-time screenwriter Paul Laverty do not rip stories out of the headlines so much as they...

Ken Loach has said that The Old Oak will be his final film, and, in its humble way, it represents a good stopping point for the iconoclastic British filmmaker. The film isn’t some self-consciously summarizing coda but the latest in a long line of intimately scaled looks at the myriad ills facing Britain’s working class. Set, like many of Loach’s films, in the country’s post-industrial northern region, The Old Oak is alive to the decline that’s reduced a once booming mining town to a place with a decimated economy. But it also adds a crucial update to Loach’s long-running survey of domestic strife by incorporating the growing migration from the Middle East and the racial and nationalist tensions that have arisen from it.

The film opens with locals openly airing their scorn at a bus of Syrian refugees as one of the transplants, Yara...

Edinburgh Filmhouse has received a vital funding boost from the UK government’s Levelling Up community fund and is now on course to re-open this autumn, two years after it was forced to close.

A total of six Scottish community spaces were saved from closure owing to £3.8m funding from the government’s Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities’ Community Ownership Fund.

Across the UK, the department has today (March 23) announced £33.5m in funding to protect more than 80 projects. Filmhouse has been awarded £1.54m.

The Edinburgh Filmhouse building was sold for £2.65m in April last year. The building was...

Two Spanish female stars who have broken out to huge global audiences in Netflix hits – “Nowhere” and “A Perfect Story” lead Anna Castillo and Ester Expósito, highly prominent in “Elite” in early seasons – are set to star in dramedic vampire thriller “Death to Love,” (“Que muera el amor”), the first series created by “Piggy” director Carlota Pereda, who will also serve as its showrunner.

“If there are two actresses you can believe are immortals, with their out-of-this-world allure and talent, it’s Anna and Ester. I can’t wait to explore this world of darkness, joy and Eternal Love with them,” Pereda told Variety.

With that talent package, and the backing of two Spanish powerhouse producers, Morena Films and Buendía Estudios, “Death to Love” is shaping up as one of the hottest packages to come to market from Spain after it emerged from February’s Berlinale Series Market as one...

Rebecca O’Brien, award-winning collaborator on Loach's films, raised urgent warnings at a select committee inquiry into the industry

The Bafta-winning producer behind Ken Loach’s acclaimed films has warned that the UK indie film sector will “die” without additional fiscal support.

Appearing in front of a session of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee’s inquiry into British film and high-end TV, Rebecca O’Brien – who runs the production company Sixteen Films with Loach and screenwriter Paul Laverty – raised urgent concerns about the state of the industry.

Cillian Murphy is J. Robert Oppenheimer and Robert Downey Jr is Lewis Strauss in ‘Oppenheimer’ (Photo by Melinda Sue Gordon © Universal Pictures)

Oppenheimer went into the 2024 Ee BAFTA Film Awards with the most nominations with 13, and earned the most wins overall with seven. Christopher Nolan took home his first BAFTA Best Director win, and the film also earned Best Film, Leading Actor (Cillian Murphy), Supporting Actor (Robert Downey Jr), Editing, Cinematography, and Original Score awards.

Poor Things followed with five wins in the Leading Actress (Emma Stone), Costume, Make Up & Hair, Production Design and Special Visual Effects categories. The Zone of Interest collected three wins: Outstanding British Film, Film Not in the English Language, and Sound. And The Holdovers was recognized with Supporting Actress (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) and Casting honors.

David Tennant (Good Omens) hosted the 2024 Ee BAFTA Film Awards which took place on February 18th at The Royal Festival Hall in London.

Oppenheimer was the major winner at the 2024 Bafta Film Awards, winning seven awards including best film.

Scroll down for full list of winners

The event was held tonight (February 18) at London’s Royal Festival Hall on the Southbank, with David Tennant on hosting duties for the first time.

Samantha Morton received the Bafta Fellowship, whilst film curator June Givanni was honoured with Bafta’s outstanding British contribution to cinema award.

More to follow

Full list of winners

Winners in bold

Best Film

Anatomy Of A Fall - Marie-Ange Luciani, David Thion The Holdovers - Mark Johnson Killers Of The Flower Moon - Dan Friedkin,...

The 2024 Bafta Film Awards ceremony is taking place today (February 18) at London’s Royal Festival Hall on the Southbank.

The show started at around 4:45pm UK time and finishes at approximately 8pm, and will be broadcast with a time delay on BBC One starting at 7pm. Unlike last year’s ceremony, the final categories will not be broadcast live. David Tennant is on hosting duties.

Screen will be posting all the winners on this page as they are announced during the live ceremony (refresh the page for latest updates).

Christopher Nolan’s historical drama Oppenheimer leads the nominations with 13 nods.

The stars and artists behind the biggest films of 2023 descended on London this weekend for the BAFTA Film Awards. British film’s biggest night is often seen as the best predictor of Oscar momentum before the Academy Awards and the results often mirror each other.

If that’s the case this year, it will be all “Oppenheimer” all the time. Universal’s Christopher Nolan epic took home many of the night’s biggest categories, winning the top prize of Best Film along with Best Director for Nolan, Leading Actor for Cillian Murphy, and Supporting Actor for Robert Downey Jr. The film also picked up major craft wins for Cinematography, Editing, and Original Score.

While the dominant showing makes an “Oppenheimer” Oscar sweep seem even more likely, Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Poor Things” won for Costume Design, Makeup & Hair, Production Design, and Visual Effects, and star Emma Stone won Leading Actress for her...

It’s the biggest day in the British Film Industry’s calendar as the 2024 BAFTA Awards Ceremony is held at the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank in London. Hosted by David Tennant and attended by British Academy of Film and Television Arts President Hrh Prince William, Hannah Waddingham will deliver an exclusive live music performance, in addition to Sophie Ellis-Bextor who will perform her iconic hit ‘Murder on the Dancefloor’. Samantha Morton to receive BAFTA Fellowship and June Givanni to receive Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema Award.

A full list of BAFTA winners can be found below the interviews.

Scott Davis and Colin Hart were on the red carpet for HeyUGuys. All the red carpet interviews follow.

2024 BAFTA Red Carpet + Winners Room Interviews

BAFTA 2024 Winners Room Interviews

BAFTA 2024 Winners Best Film

“Anatomy of a Fall” — Marie-Ange Luciani, David Thion

“The Holdovers” — Mark Johnson

“Killers of the Flower Moon” — Dan Friedkin,...

If there was one puzzle from the 2023 Venice Film Festival, it concerned Caleb Landry Jones and the actor’s curious decision to conduct all his press arrangements for the Luc Besson thriller “Dogman” with a Scottish accent. As was later revealed, the Australian had taken a quick break from shooting U.K. drama “Harvest” on location in Scotland and was staying in character for the duration of his brief Italian detour.

Alongside honing Landry Jones’ vocal abilities, “Harvest,” being directed by Athina Rachel Tsangari (the Greek director’s first English-language film) and based on the book by Jim Crace, also marks the beginning of a new chapter for one of the U.K.’s best-known indie production companies.

Sixteen Films, co-founded by Ken Loach and producer Rebecca O’Brien in 2002, has been behind every film by the beloved and iconoclastic director over the last two decades, including “The Wind That Shakes the Barley,...

Glasgow Film Festival’s (Gff) Industry Focus (March 3-7) returns with a line-up that includes a celebration of the new wave of UK filmmaking and brings together filmmakers for an in conversation event with the BFI’s head of the Filmmaking Fund Mia Bays and BBC Film director Eva Yates.

NextGen will unite executives with Girl director Adura Onashile, Scrapper filmmaker Charlotte Regan and Lucy Cohen, whose feature Edge Of Summer will world premiere at this year’s Gff.

Further highlights include the Animatic Live Pitch - Gff’s new animation talent development scheme, which culminates in a live pitch...

Cillian Murphy is J. Robert Oppenheimer and Robert Downey Jr is Lewis Strauss in ‘Oppenheimer’ (Photo by Melinda Sue Gordon © Universal Pictures)

Oppenheimer continues with its awards season domination, picking up 13 2024 Ee BAFTA Film Awards nominations. BAFTA also found a lot to admire in Poor Things, nominating it 11 times in categories including Best Film and Leading Actress (Emma Stone).

Killers of the Flower Moon and The Zone of Interest received nine nominations, followed by Anatomy of a Fall, The Holdovers, and Maestro with seven. All of Us Strangers was nominated in six categories, and Barbie and Saltburn received five nominations.

“The 38 films nominated by BAFTA voters today span an extraordinary range of genres and stories. The field this year is incredibly strong. More films were entered, making the selection process particularly tough for our voting members. The films and talented people nominated represent some of the most talked about films of the year,...

The 2024 BAFTA Award nominees have been unveiled, with Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” leading with 13 total nominations.

The epic period piece is up for Best Film, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Leading Actor for Cillian Murphy, Best Supporting Actress for Emily Blunt, and Best Supporting Actor for Robert Downey Jr., as well as a slew of crafts categories.

The 77th BAFTA Awards will take place Sunday, February 18 at London’s Royal Festival Hall. David Tennant is hosting the ceremony.

Behind “Oppenheimer,” Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Poor Things” landed 11 nominations including Best Film, Outstanding British Film, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Leading Actress for Emma Stone. Lanthimos, however, was shut out of the Best Director category.

The BAFTA Award snubs don’t stop there: Despite “Killers of the Flower Moon” earning nine nominations including Best Film, director Martin Scorsese and Golden Globe-winning actress Lily Gladstone are not recognized in their respective categories. “Barbie...

This afternoon the full list of nominations for the 2024 BAFTA Film Awards were announced in London, with Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer and Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things leading the nominees.

Jonathan Glazer’s adaptation of Martin Amis’s The Zone of Interest received nine nominations, the same as Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon. Other notable films we’ll be looking out for on the night include Andrew Haigh’s brilliant and touching film All of Us Strangers, and the enthralling Anatomy of a Fall.

British films are well represented with Rye Lane, Scrapper and How to Have Sex among the nominees.

The 77th annual British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards will be held on Sunday, the 18th of February. We’ll see you there.

Full List of 2024 BAFTA Nominations

Best Film

Anatomy Of A Fall Marie-Ange Luciani, David Thion

The Holdovers Mark Johnson

Killers Of The Flower Moon Dan Friedkin,...

Nominations for the 2024 BAFTAs have been revealed!

This year, Oppenheimer scored the most nominations with a total of 13. Poor Things received the second-most nominations this year with a total of 11.

There are some big surprises within the nominations including no nomination for Lily Gladstone and her director Martin Scorsese for Killers of the Flower Moon. In addition, Barbie’s Greta Gerwig and Poor Things‘ Yorgos Lanthimos were not nominated in the Best Director category.

The British Academy announced the nominees for their annual awards on Thursday (January 10).

This year’s ceremony is set to take place on February 18 live from London, England with David Tennant hosting.

Keep reading to see the full list of nominees…

Outstanding British Film

“All of Us Strangers” — Andrew Haigh, Graham Broadbent, Pete Czernin, Sarah Harvey

“How to Have Sex” — Molly Manning Walker, Emily Leo, Ivana MacKinnon, Konstantinos Kontovrakis

“Napoleon” — Ridley Scott, Mark Huffam, Kevin J. Walsh,...

Ken Loach, director and trade unionist of sixty years, has had his decision-making privileges as member of Bectu’s Writers, Producers & Directors branch committee revoked. More below:

There’s a headline we didn’t think we’d be writing today.

Ken Loach, the outspoken filmmaker best-known for social dramas such as Kes, The Wind That Shakes The Barley and this year’s The Old Oak, has been suspended from UK film and TV union Bectu over internal divisions with parent union, Prospect.

According to Deadline, Loach was suspended along with two other Bectu members, while another six were issued with disciplinary measures.

The group say they are being punished over a technicality surrounding the resignation of a representative from within the branch, who previously critiqued the leadership of Prospect chief Mike Clancy.

Prospect said the individuals involved broke union rules, and that there was evidence bullying and discrimination had taken place.

Studiocanal UK, Sixteen Films and Why Not Productions are pleased to announce that Ken Loach & Paul Laverty’s The Old Oak will be available on digital download, Blu-ray and DVD from 15th December. To celebrate we are giving away DVDs to two lucky winners!

The film sees BAFTA-winning director Loach return to the North East following his previous two films I, Daniel Blake, winner of the Palme d’Or and BAFTA Outstanding British Film awards, and Sorry We Missed You which both also shot in the region. Shooting took place across County Durham last year in locations including Murton, Easington Colliery and Horden.

The Old Oak is a special place. Not only is it the last pub standing, but it’s also the only remaining public space where people can meet in a once thriving mining community that has now fallen on hard times after 30 years of decline. Tj Ballantyne...

Two movies which come in on immigration from vastly different angles – Laura Ferrés’ “The Permanent Picture” and Ken Loach’s “The Old Oak” – won big Saturday night at Spain’s Valladolid Festival, walking off with its main competition Golden Spike and the Spanish event’s best actor (Dave Turner) and Audience Award plaudits respectively.

The prize ceremony also saw Charlotte Rampling, star of closing film “Juniper” from Matthew J. Saville, accept an enthusiastically applauded Honorific Spike for her career achievement.

Though decided upon by independent juries, Valladolid’s prizes say much about the new-fit festival after a first-year reboot by new director José Luis Cienfuegos, previously a Gijón and Seville fest head.

Under directors Fernando Lara (1984-2004), Juan Carlos Frugone (2005-08) and Javier Angulo (2009-2022), Valladolid has consolidated as one of Spain’s biggest festivals, after San Sebastián. and a bastion of auteurist, arthouse independent cinema. Few figures in Europe...

The BAFTAs have a soft spot for home-grown talent. Earlier this year, “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande” scored four bids at the British Academy Film Awards, including Best Actor (Daryl McCormack) and Best Actress (Emma Thompson). Before that, in 2022, Adeel Akhtar snuck into the Best Actor lineup for “Ali & Ava” and Joanna Scanlan won Best Actress for “After Love.”

This pattern of Brits recognizing Brits could bode well for Daniel Kaluuya this year, who makes his directorial debut with the new Netflix drama “The Kitchen.” The film depicts a dystopian London in which all social housing has been eliminated. The focus in the story are the residents of The Kitchen, a community that refuses to leave their homes despite their struggles. At the heart of the film is Kane Robinson‘s (also known as Kano) Izi, who takes Jedaiah Bannerman‘s young boy under his wing and tries...

Speciality distributor Cosmic Cat has set U.K. release dates for documentary “Cassius X: Becoming Ali.”

The film follows the early years of Cassius Clay, from a bright-eyed rookie boxer from Louisville, Kentucky, to world heavyweight champion and from working class intellectual to one of America’s most influential civil rights campaigners. The film reveals how the teachings of Elijah Muhammad, reinforced by a friendship with revolutionary preacher, Malcolm X, set Clay on the journey to become Cassius X, before his induction to the Nation of Islam and ascension to the name of Muhammad Ali.

“Cassius X: Becoming Ali” is directed by Muta’Ali Muhammad (“Yusuf Hawkins: Storm Over Brooklyn”) and is based on the book “Cassius X: A Legend In The Making” by journalist Stuart Cosgrove. It is produced by Two Rivers Media (“The Small Hand (Ghost Story),” “Killing Escobar”) in association with Paramount Media Networks and MTV Entertainment Studios...

We present our red carpet interviews from the UK Premiere of The Old Oak, directed by Ken Loach, written by Paul Laverty and starrring Dave Turner, Ebla Mari, Claire Rodgerson, Chris Mcglade, and Trevor Fox. Oh, Jeremy Corbyn turned up too, so we quizzed the former Labour leader on his film tastes. Kept it light, you know. We saw the film recently and Loved it. Read our glowing review right here.

The film hits UK cinemas on September 29th. Ethan Hart and Colin Hart were on the red carpet, here are their interviews.

The Old Oak Premiere Interviews

Plot:

The Old Oak is a special place. Not only is it the last pub standing, but it’s also the only remaining public space where people can meet in a once-thriving mining community that has now fallen on hard times after 30 years of decline. Tj Ballantyne (Dave Turner) the landlord hangs...

For his allegedly final feature, esteemed kitchen sink surfer/social realist Ken Loach takes us to the North of England, 2016 to tell the tale of Yara (Elba Mari), a twenty-something Syrian refugee with a passion for photography who travels to the UK with her family to escape her war torn country. Upon arrival, Yara and family are rehoused in an old mining village but met with hostility from racist locals. Yara then meets and befriends pub landlord/handyman Tommy J. Ballantyne (Dave Turner), who welcomes her to the village and sets out to mend local community fissures, despite retaliation from his prejudiced pub regulars.

Regular Ken Loach writer/collaborator Paul Laverty’s screenplay charts Yara and Tommy’s attempt to disentangle the socio-economic/political division in the community born from bigotry and financial hardships, to strive for solidarity. The village adversities at the root of the locals’ despair are partly...

Further Cannes titles to be selected include ’Firebrand’ and ’The Old Oak’.

The first titles in the running for the 2023 European Film Awards have been revealed by the European Academy, including Cannes premieres Anatomy Of A Fall, How To Have Sex, The Old Oak and Firebrand.

Anatomy Of A Fall won the Palme D’Or for French director Justine Triet at Cannes. The Hitchcockian mystery thriller is about a woman, played by Sandra Hüller, accused of murder when her husband dies of suspicious causes. Marie-Ange Luciani and David Thion produce.

How To Have Sex won the top Un Certain Regard...

The European Film Academy has fired the starting gun in the race for the European Film Awards. It has recommended 19 films to its members who will then select the nominees from this list, as well as some additional titles from the summer festivals, which will be announced next month.

Among the selected films are Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or winner “Anatomy of a Fall,” and the winner of its Jury Prize, “Fallen Leaves,” along with fellow Palme d’Or contenders “Kidnapped,” “Firebrand,” “La Chimera” and “The Old Oak.”

Other titles include “How to Have Sex,” which won the Un Certain Regard Award in Cannes, “The Animal Kingdom,” which also played in Un Certain Regard, Cannes Directors’ Fortnight titles “Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry” and “The Goldman Case,” and “Close Your Eyes,” which played in the Cannes Premiere section.

Also selected are “Afire,” which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Berlinale,...

Cannes Competition titles Anatomy Of A Fall, The Old Oak, and La Chimera are among the first set of titles recommended for nominations at this year’s European Film Awards.

Overall, 19 titles have been selected for the first stage of nominations by the European Film Academy Board. The selection includes films from seventeen countries. In the coming weeks, the 4,600 members of the European Film Academy will watch and vote for the selected films. The winners will be announced at the European Film Awards ceremony in Berlin on December 9.

Films eligible for the European Film Awards must be deemed European features, and have had their first official screening between June 1, 2022, and May 31, 2023. Eligible films must also have a European director. The rules state that if the director is not European, “provided they have a European refugee or similar status or have lived in Europe and worked in the European film industry...

Admissions to indoor screens are up, but Piazza Grande open-air screenings hit by rain.

Attendance at this year’s edition of Locarno Film Festival was 6% up on 2022 at the event’s halfway point, according to the festival’s managing director Raphael Brunschwig.

A 22% increase in admissions to the festival’s indoor screening venues up to Monday evening (Aug 7) compensated for the 12% drop in audience figures at the nightly open-air screenings on the town’s Piazza Grande due to heavy rain which dissuaded many from attending on the festival’s first two evenings.

Head of press Fiorenza Conforti confirmed that total...

Exclusive: Zeitgeist Films and Kino Lorber have acquired all U.S. rights to Ken Loach’s Cannes Competition entry The Old Oak, which has been mooted to be the veteran filmmaker’s last movie.

The Old Oak, which has a screenplay from Loach’s frequent collaborator Paul Laverty, will open theatrically in early 2024 at Film Forum in New York with a national release set to follow.

The movie revolves around The Old Oak, the last standing pub in a once thriving mining village in northern England, and a gathering space for a community that has fallen on hard times. There is growing anger, resentment, and a lack of hope among the residents, but the pub and its proprietor Tj are a fond presence to their customers. When a group of Syrian refugees move into the floundering village, a decisive rift fueled by prejudices develops between the community and its newest inhabitants.

Molly Manning Walker’s How To Have Sex and Ken Loach’s final film The Old Oak are among the 13 titles that received cash awards through the BFI’s Global Screen Fund.

The BFI announced the full list of recipients who received support from the £7m per year fund this afternoon. The list also includes the Cannes Competiton title Club Zero, starring Mia Wasikowska, and In Camera, written and directed by Naqqash Khalid, which screened at Karlovy Vary. Scroll down for the full list.

Financed through the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport (Dcms), the BFI said today that a further £743,225 was allocated through the fund’s International Distribution strand. To date this strand has made 47 awards totaling over £1.7 million, the BFI said.

UK Global Screen Fund applications are currently open to international distribution festival launch support and international sales support, both assessed on a rolling basis. The fund will...

Apple TV has debuted the full trailer for Martin Scorsese’s epic western crime saga ‘Killers of the Flower Moon,’

Based on David Grann’s broadly lauded best-selling book, the film is set at the turn of the 20th century, oil brought a fortune to the Osage Nation, who became some of the richest people in the world overnight. The wealth of these Native Americans immediately attracted white interlopers, who manipulated, extorted, and stole as much Osage money as they could before resorting to murder.

Directed by Martin Scorsese and Screenplay by Eric Roth and Scorsese, the film stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Lily Gladstone, Jesse Plemons, Tantoo Cardinal, John Lithgow, Brendan Fraser, Cara Jade Myers, Janae Collin, Jillian Dion, William Belleau, Louis Cancelmi, Tatanka Means, Micheal Abbot Jr., Pat Healy, Scott Shepard, Jaso Isbell, Sturgill Simpson.

Also in trailers – Trailer drops for Ken Loach & Paul Laverty’s ‘The Old Oak...

StudioCanal has debuted the trailer for Ken Loach and Paul Laverty’s ”The Old Oak.’

The Old Oak is a special place. Not only is it the last pub standing, but it’s also the only remaining public space where people can meet in a once-thriving mining community that has now fallen on hard times after 30 years of decline. Tj Ballantyne (Dave Turner) the landlord hangs on to The Old Oak by his fingertips, and his predicament is endangered even more when the pub becomes contested territory after the arrival of Syrian refugees who are placed in the village without any notice.

In an unlikely friendship, Tj meets a curious young Syrian Yara (Ebla Mari) with her camera. Can they find a way for the two communities to understand each other? So unfolds a deeply moving drama about their fragilities and hopes.

The film sees BAFTA-winning director Loach returns to...

In The Old Oak, an English man and a Syrian woman become unlikely friends on one side of a simmering culture war. It’s the latest from Ken Loach and, if reports are true, it will be the 86-year-old director’s last. The Old Oak is, of course, a timely story about modern Britain, immigration, and xenophobia. It’s also a parting statement from Loach––one last rallying cry for solidarity––and a fitting coda to his six-decade long career.

It’s hard to imagine that Loach first made his name in 1964: viewers who watched Cathy Come Home on the BBC that week could have seen “Good Vibrations” go to number 1 on Top of The Pops. Seen by a quarter of the population, it in fact did change British attitudes towards homelessness. Occasionally to the point of self-parody, Loach has never stopped making that kind of film: stories purpose-built...

In “The Old Oak,” which played in Competition in Cannes, Ken Loach portrays a village in the North-East of England where the indigenous white community comes into conflict with Syrian refugees – a conflict fuelled by the despair, deprivation and decline of the rust-belt region. Such conditions can be a seed-bed for far right groups, the director tells Variety.

Such issues have not been explored sufficiently in film and television, Loach says, and he draws a parallel with the portrayal of the rise of Nazism in Germany in the mass media.

“We have endless programs about the Second World War, about the horrors of Nazism and fascism, about the racism, about the Holocaust. Quite properly, we have endless programs about that, but what they refuse to point out is that that arose from alienation, anger, feeling cheated, and finding scapegoats. And that’s how we ended up with Hitler, and that...

Veteran Ken Loach mounts the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival last night for his most recent film The Oak Tree. Could he be in line for another Palme d’Or? Photo: Courtesy of Cannes Film Festival When The Old Oak by Ken Loach was unveiled last night - the final film in this year’s 76th Cannes Film Festival Competition - it marked a potentially significant occasion for the director who has won the top award (the Palme d’Or) twice before for The Wind That Shakes The Barley and I, Daniel Blake.

Loach, 86, has hinted that this could be his last feature foray although his faithful screenwriter Paul Laverty has suggested that “it is not out of the question he could do something other than film”.

The Old Oak of the title is the only focal point left in a former mining village in the north-east of England where locals gather.

Editor’s Note: This review originally published during the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. “The Old Oak” will be released in U.S. theaters on April 5, 2024.

Three-dimensional characterization is a casualty of Ken Loach’s ongoing social justice project. Yet the 86-year-old idealogue’s tireless stocktaking of the human toll exacted by a Conservative British government – in power since 2010 – has been of political consequence. His 2016 Palme d’Or winner “I, Daniel Blake”, about the crushing UK benefits system, had its title projected onto the Houses of Parliament and became a rallying shorthand amongst campaigners for reform.

According to Loach, “The Old Oak” will be his last film. And given that his brand of morality plays have filled a void in terms of a genuinely revolutionary cinema, it feels precious to take umbrage at something as cosmetic as a lack of artistry. Indeed, my disenchanted reaction to “The Old Oak” and its sincere...

A northern pub landlord confronts locals’ hostility towards Syrian immigrants in Loach’s latest – and possibly last – piece of politically trenchant cinema

A decade or so ago, the rumour was that Ken Loach was getting ready to quit. Then began a new parade of Conservative prime ministers in this country, each shiftier and more mediocre than the last; Loach decided he had more to say and do after all. What followed was a blaze of energy, anger and productivity culminating in a remarkable late surge – in fact, a trilogy, of which this might come to be seen as the final episode. Working with his regular collaborator, the screenwriter Paul Laverty, Loach has been taking on issues and stories that you don’t see on the TV news or on glitzy streaming services, and showed that film-makers could actually intervene in the real world. Loach got questions about poverty and austerity...

British director Ken Loach has always had his finger on the pulse of his country’s simmering socioeconomic situation, especially when it concerns the plight of the working class. It’s no surprise, then, that for his latest feature — the 27th for the 86-year-old filmmaker, who made his first movie, Poor Cow, all the way back in 1967 — he’s decided to tackle two issues not only at the forefront of U.K. politics, but most of Europe and the U.S. as well.

Compassionate if a bit schematic at times, The Old Oak is a ripped-from-the-headlines story about Syrian refugees arriving in a failing blue-collar town in northern England, and the anger it provokes among certain residents looking for a scapegoat to pin their problems on. You could make virtually the same movie about Central Americans arriving in Texas, or Sub-Saharan Africans arriving in France, so much are immigration and...

What could well be Ken Loach’s final film has as much fire and fury as his debut Poor Cow did in 1967, if we discount his pioneering TV work in the run-up. The visual style hasn’t changed a great deal in the years since, but that’s because the British movie veteran, soon to turn 87, isn’t much fussed about surfaces, it’s the inner lives of his characters that he wants to capture. In that respect, The Old Oak would make a fitting swansong, capping the recent North-East trilogy with a vital film that is clearly the work of the team behind previous Cannes Competition hits I, Daniel Blake and Sorry We Missed You.

The setting is Easington, County Durham, and the year is 2016. Curiously, the Brexit Referendum is never mentioned, but the sentiments that fueled the pro-Leave movement certainly are. It opens with a coach party of...

Only nine directors have ever won the Palme d’Or twice. Francis Ford Coppola did it in the ’70s with The Conversation and Apocalypse Now. Ruben Östlund joined the club last year after following The Square with Triangle of Sadness. But this year, there is a very real possibility that, at 86, Ken Loach may go above and beyond that by winning a third Palme for his new film, The Old Oak. Loach first won in 2006 with the historical Irish drama The Wind That Shakes the Barley, then doubled up in 2016 with I, Daniel Blake, a caustic study of Britain’s healthcare crisis. After that came Sorry, We Missed You, a no-less withering look at the punitive gig economy. Like the latter two films, The Old Oak is set in the North East of England and completes an unofficial trilogy, this time with a slightly more optimistic bent. Like all of...

Welcome, Insiders. Cannes is now well under way while the picket lines remain busy in LA. Jesse Whittock here in London. I’ve rounded up all the big and important news from film and TV, so sit back and enjoy the read. Subscribe here.

Cannes Gets In Gear Cannes

Controversy: Diana Lodderhose here reporting from Cannes where it’s been all systems go on the Croisette since the festival kicked off with the opening of Johnny Depp starrer Jeanne du Barry on Tuesday. It wouldn’t feel like a proper Cannes without a healthy dose of controversy. Festival head Thierry Frémaux responded to French actress Adèle Haenel’s suggestion that Cannes is part of a French eco-system that turns a blind eye to sexual violence. “It’s not true and the proof is that if you believed it, you would not be here, listening to me now, taking your accreditations...

The Old Oak is about the rehousing of a group of Syrian refugees in a run-down former mining town

It’s June 2022, a week of rail workers’ strikes are under way and refugees are in the news whether arriving from Ukraine or via boats across the channel despite the threat of transportation to Rwanda. Ken Loach and his old compadres, writer Paul Laverty and producer Rebecca O’Brien, could not have chosen a more pertinent time for shooting their latest film, The Old Oak, which premieres at the Cannes film festival this month.

The story is set in an anonymous former mining town decades after the pit closures. Shops are boarded up, money is scarce, divisions over the 1984 miners’ strike linger. There is still a pub, the eponymous Old Oak, run by a former miner, Tj Ballantyne, played by Dave Turner, but it is on its last legs, kept afloat by...

Ken Loach admits that 'The Old Oak' is likely to be his final film.The 86-year-old director believes that the upcoming flick – which is set to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival next month - will probably be the last time he gets behind the camera as he will be too old to do so in the coming years.Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Ken said: "Films take a couple of years and I'll be nearly 90. And your facilities do decline. Your short-term memory goes and my eyesight is pretty rubbish now, so it's quite tricky."The 'Kes' director says he had no issues coping with the demands of making a film but does find it harder to sustain the "good humour" and "nervous emotional energy" to set the tempo during a film shoot and keep momentum going.Loach went into the movie knowing that it would be his swansong.