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Miguel Gomes’s Grand Tour takes its title from an established travel itinerary known as the Asian Grand Tour, a popular option with Westerners seeking a broad but surface-level introduction to the continent in the early 20th century. Proceeding from Mandalay to Rangoon (present-day Yangon) to Singapore, and then on through Bangkok, Saigon, Manila, and Osaka, before ending in Shanghai, the tour was ideally designed to satisfy the era’s popular taste for Eastern exoticism in an efficient, tourist-friendly package.

It’s easy to see the appeal for Gomes, a director for whom boundaries of space and time have always been ripe for cinematic manipulation. Grand Tour retraces the steps of the journey with the imagination and playfulness of his best work, indulging its globetrotting impulses while casting a satirical eye on its uncomfortable basis in colonial conquest.

Gomes’s film actually takes its titular tour twice, utilizing a diptych...

Argentine filmmaker Gastón Solnicki is cooking up his latest feature, “The Souffleur,” which he’ll be presenting during the Venice Gap-Financing Market, which runs Aug. 30 – Sep. 1.

The film tells the story of Lucius Glantz, an American who’s managed the same international hotel in Vienna for 30 years. When he discovers one day that the venerable building is slated to be sold and demolished, he embarks on a quest to stop its destruction, pitting him against a cocky Argentine realtor. As the conflict between them escalates, the hotel’s trademark soufflé mysteriously stops rising, forcing Glantz to confront the prospect of the end of all he holds dear.

Directed by Solnicki off a script he co-wrote with Julia Niemann, “The Souffleur” is produced by Gabriele Kranzelbinder and Eugenio Fernández Abril for Vienna-based Little Magnet Films, Primo and Solnicki’s Argentine production company Filmy Wiktora.

The director tells Variety that the idea...

Exclusive: Mubi has snapped up multiple key territories for Portuguese filmmaker Miguel Gomes’ Grand Tour, following the film’s world premiere in Competition at Cannes where it won the Best Director prize.

The global distributor, streaming service and production company has acquired North America, UK, Ireland, Latin America, Germany, Austria, Turkey and India. The company will unveil release plans in the coming months.

Opening in Rangoon, Burma in 1918, the film follows British civil servant Edward Abbot (Gonçalo Waddington) who flees fiancée Molly Singleton (Crista Alfaiate) the day she arrives for their wedding. Determined to get married and amused by his move, Molly tracks him across Asia.

Grand Tour was Gomes’ first feature to world premiere in Competition at Cannes, after debuting previous critically-acclaimed films Arabian Nights in Cannes Directors’ Fortnight in 2015 and Tabu, which played in competition at the Berlinale in 2012, winning the Silver Bear.

Gomes co-wrote the screenplay with Mariana Ricardo,...

If Chris Marker and Preston Sturges ever made a film together, it might have looked something like Grand Tour, a sweeping tale that moves from Rangoon to Manila, via Bangkok, Saigon and Osaka, as it weaves the stories of two disparate lovers towards a fateful reunion. The stowaways could scarcely be more Sturgian: he the urbane man on the run, she the intrepid woman trying to track him down. Their scenes are set in 1917 and shot in a classical studio style, yet they’re delivered within a contemporary travelogue––as if we are not only following their epic romance but a director’s own wanderings.

Grand Tour, which delivered much-needed magic to this year’s Cannes Film Festival lineup, is directed by the one and only Miguel Gomes, the Portuguese filmmaker behind The Tsugua Diaries (an entertaining Covid joint from 2021), Arabian Nights (his epic 2015 triptych), and Tabu (a breakout from...

Our times are troubled, our burdens heavy, our passage through life often arduous and the bad kind of absurd. But for anyone feeling a pessimism creeping in like slow poison and taking the edge off any appetite for adventure, Portuguese singularity Miguel Gomes comes like a comet across the Cannes competition with “Grand Tour,” an enchanting, enlivening, era-spanning, continent-crossing travelogue that runs the very serious risk of infecting you with the antidote: a potent dose of wanderlust for life. “Abandon yourself to the world,” says one character, a Japanese monk prone to walking about with a wicker basket on his head, “and see how generous it is to you.” Abandon yourself to “Grand Tour” and reap similar, joyful rewards.

Monkeying around in time like a macaque in a hot spring, trundling through countries like a comically short-legged donkey on a jungle trail, yet somehow also peering down on the action...

Rwandan actress Eliane Umuhire (“Augure by Baloji,” “My New Friends”), French producer Sylvie Pialat (“Timbuktu,” “Staying Vertical”), Belgian cinematographer Virginie Surdej and Canadian film critic, journalist and frequent Variety contributor Ben Croll have been named on the jury for the Critics’ Week section of the Cannes Film Festival.

The four will now join Spanish filmmaker Rodrigo Sorogoyen, who last week was named Critics’ Week jury president, with the group set to choose the sidebar competition’s award winners, including the Grand Prize for best feature film, the French Touch Prize of the Jury, the Louis Roederer Foundation Rising Star award for best actor or actress and the Leitz Ciné Discovery Prize for best short film.

The 2024 Critics Week lineup is set to be unveiled on April 15, four days after the Cannes official selection is announced on April 11.

Last year, Venice Golden Lion-winning “Happening” director Audrey Diwan presided over a Critics...

Plot: Years after her sister disappeared at Arvores National Park, a young woman named Lennon gets a job as an Arvores park ranger in hopes of finding out what happened to her sibling. Unfortunately for her, she does find out.

Review: Teresa Sutherland wrote the screenplay for Emma Tammi’s 2018 horror Western The Wind and was part of the writing staff on the Mike Flanagan series Midnight Mass, and now she has made her feature directorial debut with the horror film Lovely, Dark, and Deep, which she was inspired to make after hearing “real-life conspiracy theories surrounding the unusually high number of unsolved missing person cases that happen in national parks and forests”. She came up with a theory of her own… something dealing with an ancient supernatural force that still operates in these isolated places “where it still gets dark”… and delivered it in the form of a movie that has some interesting ideas,...

You don’t need to have lived in the proverbial middle of nowhere to understand the kind of terror Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury’s The Soul Eater mines from the fictional Roquenoix. As shot by Simon Roca, this remote hamlet in northeastern France isn’t a ghost town so much as a burial ground where humans and buildings alike are waiting to rot. A grandiose sanatorium once towered over the tree-shrouded hills, bringing in enough cash and tourists to fill the village’s coffers. But when a motorway was built across the valley, the tourists disappeared, the sanatorium was abandoned; and the few who stayed behind were left to wrestle with an ancestral legend and a series of murders that may or may not be connected with it.

The single most terrifying thing in The Soul Eater isn’t the titular devourer, but that spectral, lifeless town where its victims are stranded.

The Sundance Film Festival 2024, beloved by independent film enthusiasts, opens the film festival circuit with a bustling calendar of parties, thought-provoking panels, and red-carpet premieres.

Celebrating its 40th milestone, the lineup boasts diversity across various categories, featuring 53 short films, 35 documentary features, and 83 feature films. The award-winning films for the 2024 Sundance Film Festival were announced today at The Ray Theatre in Park City during a ceremony.

The jury and audience-awarded prizes include Grand Jury Prizes awarded to In The Summers (U.S. Dramatic Competition), Porcelain War (U.S. Documentary Competition), Sujo (World Cinema Dramatic Competition), and A New Kind of Wilderness (World Cinema Documentary Competition). The Next Innovator Award presented by Adobe was awarded to Little Death.

Related: Sundance Film Festival Awards: ‘In The Summers’, ‘Didi’, ‘Daughters’ Top Winners List

Audiences came together in person over the weekend in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Sundance Resort with talent that included June Squibb,...

The 2024 Sundance Film Festival has announced its winners, with In the Summers taking the Grand Jury prize for U.S. Dramatic Competition and Porcelain War landing the award for U.S. Documentary Competition.

Sujo won the jury prize for the World Cinema Dramatic Competition section, and A New Kind of Wilderness won for World Cinema Documentary Competition.

Audience awards went to Sean Wang’s Dìdi (弟弟) in the U.S. Dramatic Competition and Daughters in the U.S. Documentary Competition, with the latter also earning the Festival Favorite Award selected by audiences across all new feature films presented at the fest. Girls Will Be Girls landed the audience award for World Cinema Dramatic Competition, and Ibelin won it in the World Cinema Documentary Competition.

Elsewhere, the Next innovator award went to Little Death, with Irish rap biopic Kneecap winning the audience award for the Next section.

Sundance CEO Joana Vicente said,...

The 2024 Sundance Film Festival awards ceremony revealed winners Friday honoring the best of this year’s lineup in Park City.

The U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury prize went to Alessandra Lacorazza’s In the Summers, about two sisters who navigate their loving but volatile father during their yearly summer visits to his home in Las Cruces, Nm. Lacorazza also won a special jury prize for directing.

See the full list of winners below.

Other Grand Jury winners unveiled today in the ceremony at the Ray Theatre included Porcelain War in the U.S. Documentary competition, A New Kind of Wilderness in the World Cinema Documentary competition, and Sujo in the World Cinema Dramatic competition.

Angela Patton and Natalie Rae’s documentary Daughters received the Festival Favorite Award, which Park City audiences select across all new feature films presented at the festival, as well as the Audience Award for the U.

The 2024 Sundance Film Festival winners are in, with films like “In the Summers,” “Didi,” and “Daughters” dominating across the categories. “In the Summers” filmmaker Alessandra Lacorazza, whose film centers on a fractured family in New Mexico, also won the Directing prize in U.S. Dramatic.

On Friday, January 26, the winners of juried prizes were shared out of the competition sections, including the U.S. Dramatic Competition, U.S. Documentary Competition, World Cinema Dramatic Competition, World Cinema Documentary Competition, and the Next lineup.

The 2024 Sundance jury consisted of 16 filmmakers and artists across all sections, with the U.S. Dramatic Competition jury made up of “Winter’s Bone” director/co-writer Debra Granik, “Shortcomings” screenwriter Adrian Tomine, and “Master of None” producer Lena Waithe.

“Navalny” producer Shane Boris, “The Disappearance of Shere Hite” director Nicole Newnham, and “The Sentence” director Rudy Valdez serve on the U.S. Documentary Competition jury, with “The Babadook” director Jennifer Kent,...

The 2024 Sundance Film Festival Jury (Photo Credit: Sundance)

The 2024 Sundance Film Festival is welcoming back festival alumni to serve as members of the jury. All 16 members selected to serve on the competition jury have personal experience bringing films to the festival.

“For our 40th Festival, the jury members this year are all artists who have had films at prior Festivals. They know what it is to introduce new work to the Sundance community and we are so pleased to be able to welcome them back to Sundance to take in the films our programming team has curated. We can’t wait to see what resonates with them,” stated Kim Yutani, Director of Programming.

This year’s jury includes Debra Granik, Adrian Tomine, and Lena Waithe for U.S. Dramatic Competition; Shane Boris, Nicole Newnham, and Rudy Valdez for U.S. Documentary Competition; Jennifer Kent, Mira Nair, and Rui Poças for...

To mark the festival’s fortieth anniversary all 16 of this year’s jurors are festival alumni.

Lena Waithe, Mira Nair and Shaunak Sen are among the 16 jurors who will choose award winners in six competitive sections at this month’s Sundance Film Festival.

To mark the fortieth edition of the US festival, which runs January 18-28 in Park City and Salt Lake City, all 16 jurors are festival alumni. In addition to serving on juries they will participate in talks, panels and other events to mark the festival milestone.

Awards for feature films in five competition sections of the festival will...

“Master of None” star Lena Waithe, directors Mira Nair and Debra Granik, and astrophysicist Dr. Nia Imara are among the jurors who will be bestowing awards at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

They will be making the trek to Park City for the 40th annual festival, which takes place from Jan. 18-28.

The 2024 jurors include Granik, Adrian Tomine and Waithe for U.S. Dramatic Competition; Shane Boris, Nicole Newnham and Rudy Valdez for U.S. Documentary Competition; Jennifer Kent, Nair and Rui Poças for World Cinema Dramatic Competition; Mandy Chang, Monica Hellström and Shaunak Sen for World Cinema Documentary Competition; Christina Oh, Danny Pudi and Charlotte Regan for Short Film Program Competition; and Zal Batmanglij for the Next competition section.

“For our 40th festival, the jury members this year are all artists who have had films at prior festivals,” said Kim Yutani, Sundance’s director of programming. “They know...

The 2024 Sundance Film Festival jury has officially been unveiled, with 16 filmmakers and artists on the juries across sections.

Multi-hyphenate producer Lena Waithe, actor Danny Pudi, and directors Debra Granik, Nicole Newnham, Jennifer Kent, Christina Oh, and Charlotte Regan are just a sampling of filmmakers who have had projects at prior Sundance festivals. All of this year’s jury members are Sundance alums to mark the festival’s 40th anniversary.

The 2024 Festival will take place January 18 through 28 in-person in Park City and Salt Lake City, Utah along with a selection of films available online across the country from January 25 through 28. Many of the jurors will participate in 2024 festival programming, including announcing the awards on January 26. Awards across five categories will be honored at an intimate award ceremony held at The Ray Theatre in Park City; the short film jury winners will be announced at the Shorts Awards & Party presented by Argo...

The 2024 Sundance Film Festival has set 16 alums from past editions to serve on its Competition Jury, also announcing the set of five set as jurors for the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize.

The list includes Debra Granik, Adrian Tomine, and Lena Waithe in U.S. Dramatic Competition; Shane Boris, Nicole Newnham, and Rudy Valdez in U.S. Documentary Competition; Jennifer Kent, Mira Nair, and Rui Poças in World Cinema Dramatic Competition; Mandy Chang, Monica Hellström, and Shaunak Sen in World Cinema Documentary Competition; Christina Oh, Danny Pudi, and Charlotte Regan in Short Film Program Competition; and Zal Batmanglij in the Next competition section.

Members of the Alfred P. Sloan Jury, who deliberated ahead of the festival and settled on Sam and Andy Zuchero’s Love Me as the winner of their science and tech-focused award, included Dr. Mandë Holford, Dr. Nia Imara, Matt Johnson, Theresa Park, and Courtney Stephens.

The Golden Shell winner at the San Sebastián––the Basque film festival’s top prize––went to home-grown filmmaker Jaione Camborda for this absorbing and sensual Galician-language abortion drama The Rye Horn, an urgent film about women in a totalitarian environment that has potent echoes today.

It’s 1971 and the late stages of the Franco regime on an island off the northwest coast of Spain, the same Galicia region that provided the untamed landscapes of The Beasts and Olivier Laxe’s Fire Will Come. Maria, perhaps in her late 30s or early 40s, makes a living in this rustic part of the world picking shellfish, in touch with nature and the tactile world of her surroundings. But in this tight-knit community, she’s also an unofficial midwife, perhaps a symbol of how the centralized, male-led Spain of the regime has neglected this far-flung end of the country––only women protect women here.

The final verse of Robert Frost’s memorable poem, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” inspires and captures the essence of writer/director Teresa Sutherland’s directorial debut. Lovely, Dark, and Deep applies cosmic horror to a familiar genre setting, the wilderness, to unfurl a twisted, stunningly shot psychological mood piece. While Frost’s poem was deceptive in its simplicity, Sutherland’s debut only skims the surface of its themes, mining them for a beguiling cosmic nightmare.

After an ominous opener that teases all is not well in these woods, Sutherland’s debut introduces Lennon (Barbarian’s Georgina Campbell), the new park ranger filling a coveted, recently vacated position at an isolated outpost. From the outset, something’s amiss with Lennon. Visions of eerie black deer cross her path, only to dissipate in a blink as Lennon travels to her new position. Lennon overlooks all foreboding signs that something...

“Tiger Stripes,” the debut feature of Malaysian director Amanda Nell Eu, won the Grand Prize at Cannes’ Critics’ Week, the Cannes sidebar dedicated to first or second films. The prize was awarded by a jury presided over by Audrey Diwan, the Venice prizewinning director of “Happening.”

The French Touch Jury Award went to Belgian director Paloma Sermon-Daï’s “It’s Raining in the House,” a film about adolescence, while the Revelation prize from the Louis Roederer Foundation was handed out to Jovan Ginic, the actor of Vladimir Perisic’s “Lost Country.” The Sacd prize, meanwhile, went to “The Rapture” by Iris Kaltenbäck.

“Tiger Stripes” tells the story of Zaffan, a 12 year-old girl who discovers a terrifying secret about her body. Ostracized by her community, Zaffan fights back, learning that in order to be free she must embrace the body she feared, emerging as a proud, strong woman.

The film stars Zafreen Zairizal,...

Amanda Nell Eu’s debut feature wins sidebar’s €10,000 grand prize.

Malaysian director Amanda Nell Eu’s art horror Tiger Stripes won the top €10,000 grand prize of the 62nd edition of Cannes’ Critics Week sidebar.

Nell Eu’s debut feature explores themes of metamorphosis and rebellion in her film about a teenage girl whose body begins to morph at an alarming rate as she learns to embrace her true self. The film is a multi-territory co-production between Malaysia, Taiwan, Singapore, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Indonesia and Qatar.

Screen’s review said the film “truly growls in its depiction of the...

The 2023 Cannes Critics Week lineup has officially been unveiled.

Hot off of the world premiere of first-time filmmaker Charlotte Wells’ Oscar-nominated “Aftersun,” this year’s Critics Week marks seven highly-anticipated feature debuts from directors like Amanda Nell (“Tiger Stripes”) and Jason Yu (“Jam”).

The lineup kicks off with opening night film “Ama Gloria,” directed by French filmmaker Marie Amachoukeli, who previously won Cannes’ Camera d’Or for 2014’s “Party Girl” which Amachoukeli co-directed with Claire Burger and Samuel Theis. (Critics Week allows for both first and second films in its lineup.) “Ama Gloria” centers on six-year-old girl Cléo who copes with her nanny Gloria leaving to return to Cape Verde.

The closing night film is Erwan le Duc’s “La fille de son père,” billed as a “bittersweet comedy about paternity and filiation with a poetic and off-beat angle.” Le Duc previously helmed “Perdrix”; Nahuel Perez Biscayart and Céleste Brunnquell star as father and daughter.

Cannes Critics’ Week, a parallel film festival sidebar selected by the French Syndicate of Cinema Critics, has unveiled its 2023 selection of 11 features, including seven competition titles and four special screenings.

The section focuses on first and second features from emerging directors. The 62nd edition runs alongside the main Cannes festival May 17-25.

This year’s competition lineup includes two Asian horror movies: the Korean horror film Sleep (Jam) from first-time director, and former Bong Joon Ho assistant, Jason Yu, and Tiger Stripes from Malaysian director Amanda Eu. The former features Parasite star Lee Sun-kyun and Train to Busan‘s Jung Yu-mi as newlyweds whose lives descend into horror triggered by the husband’s strange behavior while asleep. Tiger Stripes, which draws inspiration from Southeast Asian folklore, is a coming-of-age tale about a 12-year-old girl whose body starts to change in alarming and horrifying ways as she hits puberty.

Physical changes...

Sidebar devoted to first and second films runs May 17-25.

Cannes Critics’ Week, the sidebar devoted to first and second films, has unveiled the selection for its 62nd edition running May 17-25.

Scroll down for full list of titles

A selection committee led by Ava Cahen, now in her second year in the position, chose 11 titles from 1,000 films screened and seven were selected for the competition.

All of the films in selection are world premieres. Seven are first films that will vie for the Camera d’Or and six are directed by women, including four of the seven films in competition.

Rolling off a successful edition that premiered Charlotte Wells’ celebrated film “Aftersun” with Paul Mescal, Cannes Critics’ Week is back with an international lineup spanning South Korea and Malaysia to France and Jordan, among others.

The Critics’ Week sidebar runs parallel to the Cannes Film Festival, and focuses on first and second films. Under the leadership of artistic director Ava Cahen since last year, the lineup will boast 11 feature films chosen from 1,000 submitted movies.

Out of these 11 movies, seven are feature debuts and six are directed by women. Among them is the opening night film, “Ama Gloria,” directed by French helmer Marie Amachoukeli, who previously won Cannes’ Golden Camera for “Party Girl” which she co-directed with Claire Burger and Samuel Theis.

“Ama Gloria” tells the story of Cléo, a six-year old girl who sees her beloved nanny, Gloria, leave town to return to Cape Verde.

This 62nd edition will wrap...

Happening director Audrey Diwan will head up this year’s jury for the Cannes Critics’ Week sidebar, organizers unveiled on Wednesday.

The French filmmaker won the Golden Lion in Venice for Happening, an abortion drama set in early 1960s France, which was her second feature. She will take over duties as jury president for the Critics’ Week, a parallel Cannes festival sidebar that focuses on first and second features from emerging talents.

Joining Diwan on this year’s Critics’ Week jury are German actor Franz Rogowski (A Hidden Life, Disco Boy), Portuguese cinematographer Rui Poças (Frankie, Tabu), Sundance festival programming director Kim Yutani, and Indian journalist and Berlinale festival programmer Meenakshi Shedde.

Originally set up by an association of French film critics in 1962, Critics’ Week is the oldest non-official Cannes sidebar. The section is credited with discovering some of the biggest names in independent and arthouse cinema, many of whom...

Director won the Golden Lion at Venice in 2021 for ‘Happening’

Cannes Critics’ Week has named director Audrey Diwan as jury president for its 62nd edition this year, which runs from May 17 – 25.

Diwan won the Golden Lion at Venice for her second feature Happening in 2021. Born in 1980, Critics’ Week described the French director as belonging to a new generation of female filmmakers “whose sharpness and formal freedom are reinventing the codes and redefining the boundaries of international cinema.”

She will be accompanied on the jury by Portuguese director of photography Rui Poças, German actor, choreograph and dancer Franz Rogowski, Indian journalist,...

Audrey Diwan, director of the 2021 Venice Golden Lion winner “Happening,” has been named jury president of the 62nd annual Critics Week.

The jury members include Portuguese director of photography Rui Poças; German actor, choreographer and dancer Franz Rogowski (“A Hidden Life”); Indian journalist, curator and Berlinale programming advisor Meenakshi Shedde; and Sundance programming director Kim Yutani.

The Critics Week sidebar runs parallel to the Cannes Film Festival, and focuses on first and second films. Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania (“The Man who Sold his Skin”) served as last year’s jury president.

Diwan, a former journalist, made her debut with “Losing It” in 2019. Two years later, the filmmaker took home the Venice Film Festival’s top prize for her sophomore feature, the searing 2021 abortion drama “Happening,” which was snapped up for distribution by IFC Films. She became only the second woman (after 2020’s “Nomadland” helmer Chloe Zhao) to win the Golden Lion since Agnès Varda,...

French director and writer Audrey Diwan, who won the Venice Golden Lion in 2021 for her second feature Happening, has been announced as jury president for this year’s edition of Cannes Critics’ Week.

The parallel Cannes section devoted to emerging talents and first and second features will unfold from May 17 to 25 this year.

“Born in 1980, she belongs to this new generation of female filmmakers whose sharpness and formal freedom are reinventing the codes and redefining the boundaries of international cinema,” Cannes Critics’ Week said of the director.

Diwan will be joined on the jury by Portuguese director of photography Rui Poças (Tabu, Zama, Will-o’-the-Wisp), German actor, choreographer and dancer Franz Rogowski (A Hidden Life, Undine, Disco Boy).

Further jury members comprise Indian journalist, curator and advisor to the programming of the Berlin Film Festival, Meenakshi Shedde as well as American film programmer Kim Yutani, Sundance’s Film Festival programming director.

In “Alma Viva,” Portugal’s Oscar entry which is currently screening in main competition at the Marrakech Film Festival, it’s Summer, time for Salomé to visit her beloved grandma Avo in North East Portugal.

Ever since they moved to France with her mom, she comes back every year. Avo is revered in the village, but also feared. Some consider her a witch. Grandma’s connection with spirits and the dead fascinates Salomé. But the summer idyll is over when Avo, a diabetic who for years self-medicated with herbs and spells, suddenly dies.

While raging fires enclose the area, the family and neighbors struggle to find unity in mourning.

Sold by Kinology Films, “Alma Viva” marks the feature debut of experienced documentarian Cristèle Alves Meira, shot in the village of her mother and maternal grandmother.

“It is a region [left] deserted by the massive exodus of its population abroad or to cities.

In A Little Love Package, Vienna’s institutions, people, buildings, and overlapping epochs make for a stiff drink: a bright, effervescent, lightly intoxicating film easily downed in one. The director is Gastón Solnicki, a nicely ruminative Buenos Aires filmmaker whose make-it-up-as-you-go approach allows his films to meander. Solnicki’s work has a playful spirit: it’s episodic both in form and content, though never amorphous; and he moves between narrative, documentary, still imagery, and immersive sound with seamless élan. Forged in lockdown, Love Package is a breezy collage of meteorites and cigarettes; cheese and boiled eggs, and how best to make them. But at heart it’s about how eras end, what they leave behind, and how new ones begin.

Solnicki’s previous film, Introduction to the Dark, was his first based in Vienna; it opened with images of the Prater amusement park, where Harry Lime once tallied the merits of Switzerland.

By way of improvisation, relying heavily on events to naturally develop, Argentine filmmaker Gastón Solnicki presents a meandering ode to the city of Vienna, its customs, cultures, facades, and the near-sacrilege of enacting a smoking ban in cafes city-wide.

In, “A Little Love Package,” two main protagonists become the vehicles through which the minutiae of everyday life in Vienna unfolds. Experimental aural and visual cues present themselves as Angeliki (Angeliki Papoulia) and Carmen (Carmen Chaplin) seek the perfect apartment in a city suspended in time.

Produced by Little Magnet Films, out of Austria, and Solnicki’s Argentine production company, Filmy Wiktora, “A Little Love Package” is the fifth cinematic feature for Solnicki, whose entire catalog was recently acquired by Moma.

Ahead of its debut in the Berlinale’s Encounters strand, he spoke with Variety about the allure of Vienna, breaking from cinematic tradition, and shooting a film during the pandemic.

Brazilian Gregorio Graziosi’s “Tinnitus” is co-written by Andrés Julian Vera and Marco Dutra, a Locarno best director winner for “Good Manners”; its Dp is Rui Poças, whose credits include Lucrecia Martel’s “Zama” and upcoming “Tabu.”

Its score is from David Boulter, who played keyboard on Claire Denis’ “Bastards,” collaborated on the score of her “High Life.”

Such credentials will make, almost inevitably, for one of the most polished of entries at Copia Final, Ventana Sur’s pix-in-post competition, where it screens on-site at the Cinemark Puerto Madero on Wednesday.

Developed at the Cannes Festival’s Résidence, “Tinnitus” looks set to weigh in as high art in the service of what on paper may seem a classic sports comeback narrative involving Marina, a high-board synchronized diver, who suffers a serious diving accident caused by tinnitus. She is encouraged by her substitute Teresa, she stages a comeback, though still terrorized...

New films from Oscar laureate Vanessa Ragone (“The Secret in Their Eyes”) and Camera d’Or winners Edher Campos (“Leap Year”) and Juan Pablo Miller (“Las Acacias”) are among attractions at this year’s Ventana Sur’s Primer Corte and Copia Final, the pix-in-post industry centerpieces at Latin America’s biggest film-tv market.

Ragone co-produces “The Face of the Jellyfish,” from Argentina’s Rotterdam-prized Melisa Liebenthal. Campos unveils “Journey to the Land of the Tarahumara,” Mexican Federico Cecchetti’s follow-up to the multi-prized “Mara’akame’s Dream.”

Miller introduces “Sublime,” one of the section’s buzz titles, along with “Diogenes,” from Peru’s Leonardo Barbuy, and two titles from Brazil: Gregorio Graziosi’s “Tinnitus” and Gabriel Martin’s “Mars One,” winner of Ventana Sur’s prestigious Paradiso Wip Award.

Titles brim with talent, observes Eva Morsch-Kihn, curator of Primer Corte and Copia Final along with Mercedes Abarca and Maria Nuñez.

Isabelle Huppert in a beautiful Burberry vest and jacket on Joan Crawford and movie star shoes in Mildred Pierce: "My favourite ever!" Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Ira Sachs' Frankie, co-written with longtime collaborator Mauricio Zacharias, starring Isabelle Huppert in the title role, with Brendan Gleeson, Jérémie Renier, Marisa Tomei, Pascal Greggory (Olivier Assayas' Non-Fiction), Greg Kinnear, Vinette Robinson, Ariyon Bakare, Carloto Cotta, and Sennia Nanua, shot by Rui Poças in Sintra, Portugal, had its world première at the Cannes Film Festival.

Frankie (Isabelle Huppert) with her son Paul (Jérémie Renier)

At the Four Seasons on a stormy afternoon in New York, Isabelle connected Werner Schroeter's Two, Michael Haneke's The Piano Teacher, Chantal Akerman, costume designer Khadija Zeggaï, and the magic of Sintra for the first half of our conversation on Frankie.

One day in the beautiful town of Sintra...

Line-up includes The Ornithologist director Joao Pedro Rodrigues and Xx’s Nanouk Leopold.

Joao Pedro Rodrigues, who won the best director award at Locarno for The Ornithologist, and Xx’s Nanouk Leopold, are among the guest mentors of the 11 filmmakers selected for the FeatureLab at the TorinoFilmLab this year.

The FeatureLab is dedicated to first and second-time filmmakers with projects at an advanced stage. The workshop will take place in Bordeaux in June in partnership with Alca (Agence Livre Cinéma et Audiovisuel en Nouvelle-Aquitaine).

Rodrigues and Leopold will be joined by: producers Nadia Turincev of Rouge International, and documentary specialist...

If, at this point in this season, you’re tired of hearing the same handful of titles bandied about in the awards conversation, the prizes given out by the International Cinephile Society should come as a tonic. Voted on by a globe-spanning group of over 100 film critics, scholars, programmers and industry professionals, they can be counted on to zig where even the most broad-minded critics’ groups zag, often singling out films widely ignored by other precursors.

Case in point: The big winner in this year’s Ics awards was a Spanish-language auteur work, but it wasn’t “Roma” — Alfonso Cuarón’s Oscar frontrunner received only the cinematography prize. Instead, it was “Zama,” a nightmarishly atmospheric colonial drama from Argentinian director Lucrecia Martel, that ruled the roost with wins for Best Picture, Director, Non-English Language Film and Actor for leading man Daniel Giménez Cacho.

A favorite of critics on the festival...

A man in a uniform is standing on the beach, staring at the sea. Natives trudge along the shore behind him. His profile makes him look like a statue, the sort of noble "Hail the conquering hero!" sculpture you'd see in national galleries. His name is Don Diego de Zama (Daniel Giménez Cacho). The place is the edge of Argentina. The century is the 18th. He's been sent to claim and tame this land for Spain, a good old-fashioned magistrate of the crown in full colonialist bloom. Hearing the sound of laughter behind some rocks,...

Contrasts abound in Juliana Rojas and Marco Dutra’s terrifyingly captivating Good Manners, a horror-meets-children’s-movie that uses all the tropes at its disposal to conjure up a piercing discussion of class, race, and desire in present-day Brazil. Six years after their collaborative debut, Hard Labor (2011), the writer-directors return to the theme of social divisions, this time to tackle it through the unconventional lens of werewolf mythology in a fantasy-fueled melodrama that should inject a much-needed revitalizing serum into a stagnating genre.

An unemployed professional caretaker from one of São Paulo’s poorer suburbs, dark-skinned Clara (a remarkable Isabél Zuaa) lands a gig as a live-in nanny at a fancy high-rise apartment. Her employer, pregnant Ana (Marjorie Estiano), is an entitled, white 29-year-old from a rich plantation family: shunned from her relatives after she refused to abort, she now awaits the due date indulging in compulsive shopping and steak eating.

For his seventh feature, beloved American auteur Ira Sachs is taking his gig on the road. Sachs’ newest film, “A Family Vacation,” will start production this October in Portugal, and the “Love Is Strange” and “Little Men” filmmaker has lined up a cast of old favorites and new collaborators for the new drama. The film will star Academy Award nominee Isabelle Huppert, Jérémie Renier (“Saint Laurent,” “Summer Hours”), Academy Award winner Marisa Tomei, Academy Award nominee Greg Kinnear, and André Wilms (Aki Kaurismaki’s “Le Havre” and “La Vie de Boheme”).

Billed as a family drama, and written by Sachs and his longtime co-writer Mauricio Zacharias (“Love is Strange,” “Little Men”), the feature is “about three generations of a family grappling with a life-changing experience during one day of a vacation in Sintra, Portugal, a historic town known for its dense gardens and fairy-tale villas and palaces.”

Sachs previously worked...

Written and directed by Lucrecia Martel, the Argentine auteur behind La Cineaga and The Headless Woman, Zama is the long-awaited adaptation of Antonio Di Benedetto’s classic of Latin American modernism.

Zama transports us to a remote corner of 18th-century South America where Zama, a servant of the Spanish crown, slowly loses his grip on reality. Zama brings a 21st century perspective to bear on the history of colonial catastrophe in the Americas. Marooned in an a colonial outpost, the titular Don Diego De Zama (a soulful yet funny Daniel Gimenez Cacho, Bad Education, Y Tu Mama narrator, Arrancame la vida) waits in vain for a transfer to a more prestigious post.

Martel, in a perfect coupling of literary source material and cinematic sensibility, renders Zama’s world as both absurd and mysterious as he succumbs more and more to lust, paranoia and a creeping disorientation. A fever dream, the...

Two Chinese girls rescue a drowning bird-watcher in this playful, increasingly surreal film

A playful, queer riff on the last chapter in the life of St Anthony of Padua, the patron saint for the recovery of lost items, The Ornithologist follows a beautiful, pouty bird-watcher named Fernando (Paul Hamy) as he observes the wildlife populating the misty woods and winding rivers of north-east Portugal. Things quickly take a turn for the bizarre when his kayak snaps and his waterlogged body is rescued by two Chinese girls (self-styled “good Christian girls”), who wrap him in foil, revive him with some “ancient tea” and, er, tie him up. Director João Pedro Rodrigues seems more interested in how to get from one bit of story to another than overall narrative clarity, but the steel-stomached will find there’s fun to be had with the film’s investment in the spectacle of bodies (variously...

Caro Danny,I share your admiration for First Reformed, certainly one of the best films I’ve seen at this year’s Tiff and Paul Schrader’s most concentrated work in ages. From the very first shot—an adagio dolly-in on a severely framed chapel—we’re in familiar territory for the veteran filmmaker, yet in the presence of a fierce new lucidity. “Even a pastor needs pastoring,” someone tells the ecclesiastical protagonist (Ethan Hawke, harrowed like one of Beckett’s aged photographs), but his midnight-of-the-soul juncture is something he must sort through alone. Contemplating the paltry church attendance from the pulpit, grimacing at other people’s earthy jokes, and growing agitated at the planet’s ecological ruination, he struggles with a cancerous body and a nauseous soul. Still, the feeling is not one of hopelessness, due to the priest’s stirrings of resolve and desire and also to Schrader’s stylistic vehemence,...

You don’t make La Ciénaga, The Holy Girl, and The Headless Woman in a row without winning accolades and a passionate following the world over. As such, the anticipation level for Argentinian director Lucrecia Martel’s fourth feature and first in nearly a decade is understandably high. When Zama was denied a Cannes slot back in May, people assumed it was a blameless case of conflict of interest, as competition jury president Pedro Almodóvar is also a producer of the film. When the Venice Film Festival subsequently selected the long-awaited picture but put it in the less prestigious out-of-competition section, however, eyebrows were raised with palpable outrage – especially considering the fact that among the 21-title strong competition line-up, only one film comes from a female filmmaker.

Well, now that we’ve seen it, the festival programmers’ reservations seem easier to understand.

A synopsis of the film reads: Based on...

The Brazilian filmmakers Juliana Rojas and Marco Dutra have been working together for over a decade now. After an award-winning career in short films, their feature debut Hard Labor (2011) world premiered at Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard section. Following this, the two writer-directors pursued their solo careers, continuing to explore the genre of horror and musical. I interviewed the duo about their long-awaited reunion for their new film Good Manners (2017), which will have its world premiere as part of the International Competition at the 70th Locarno Film Festival.Notebook: The two of you have been working together for over a decade now. How do you understand the development of this long time partnership?We met in film school when we were at the end of our teens. What first brought us together was our common interest in musicals, fantasy and horror films. These are the kinds of...

Tabu

Directed by Miguel Gomes

Written by Miguel Gomes

Portugal, 2012

With his third feature, Portuguese critic-turned-auteur Miguel Gomes has proven himself to be a director in complete control of his craft. Tabu is a film of artistic cool – breaking classic genre conventions in the most crafty and affectionate way by consistently subverting the narrative in a beautiful dreamlike style. The film is divided into two parts: The first section is set in modern day Lisbon and titled Paradise Lost. It follows Aurora, an elderly cranky woman who spends her last days suffering from paranoia and the emotional burden of a troubled past. The second section, titled Paradise, is set in Mozambique in the 1960s, and tells the story of her uncontrollable and obsessive relationship with a man named Venturo, deep in the jungles of Africa. These two chapters are preceded by an enigmatic prologue, which turns out to be a...