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Short films generated by artificial intelligence are popping up at more and more film festivals, and the largest event yet is dedicating an entire section to AI-generated movies.

The 2024 Tribeca Festival announced Friday it will host Sora Shorts, a new program featuring five original short films all made using OpenAI’s text-to-video AI model Sora. It’s not the first time AI films have made their way to a major film festival, but it is the first time movies made with Sora have.

Sora still hasn’t been released to the public and is new even for the most seasoned AI filmmakers, but OpenAI gave the cohort of five directors early access to the program — so long as they each agreed to the filmmaking terms surrounding AI as negotiated last year with the DGA, WGA, and SAG-AFTRA guilds.

Nikyatu Jusu, the director of the Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner “Nanny,...

Exclusive: Matthew Wilder has been set to write and direct an untitled film that chronicles the life and work of author Joan Didion.

The plan is to paint a dreamlike day in the life of Didion and California in the late 1960s, when the brilliant young journalist is hurtled from encounters with jailed Manson girls to protesting Black Panthers, and from Nancy Reagan pausing in a photo op to Vietnam War POWs — climaxing with an epilogue in a near-future California where an AI Joan encounters a dystopia beyond her wildest anxiety dreams.

The film, produced under David Michaels’ Enfant Terrible Cinema, will shoot in Los Angeles in the first or second quarter of 2024. Financing is being discussed with potential partners this week at AFM.

A National Book Award winner and recipient of a National Humanities Medal, Didion’s account of grief and loss in 2005’s The Year of Magical Thinking...

Harrison Ford looked emotional as he received a five-minute standing ovation at this year’s Cannes Film Festival on Thursday.

The actor, 80, was seen on camera appearing teary-eyed as he responded to everyone clapping and standing up around him.

Read More: ‘Indiana Jones’ Swings Into Cannes Film Festival; Harrison Ford Honoured Before Joyous Festivalgoers

Ford is bidding farewell to his iconic character in the movie “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny”, which had its world premiere at the French Riviera festival.

Harrison Ford and #indianajones cast getting a standing O before movie. Spot Bob Iger. pic.twitter.com/4VUQmNpHON

— Tatiana Siegel (@TatianaSiegel27) May 18, 2023

Seeing a teary eyed Harrison Ford during the #IndianaJones standing O at Cannes is oh so sweet. I love how Cannes truly celebrates cinema. pic.twitter.com/jmWR3Ka1IQ

— Reza Sixo Safai (@rezawrecktion) May 18, 2023

The star — who also received an honorary Palme d’Or — first...

Exclusive: The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1972 drama, is being reimagined for the second time in as many years, this time by a team of Iranian filmmakers.

Fassbinder’s movie has also been adapted by high-profile French filmmaker François Ozon, with his French-language version starring Denis Menochet, Isabelle Adjani and Hanna Schygulla set to open the Berlin Film Festival next month.

The Bitter Tears of Zahra Zand, which is Farsi-language, has now wrapped filming in London.

Directed and co-written by Vahid Hakimzadeh (Greater Things) along with co-writer and star Boshra Dastournezhad (Radio Dreams), the film is a tragicomic melodrama that tells the story of Zahra Zand (Dastournezhad), a high society fashion designer from Iran who has fled the Islamic revolution of 1979. Recently divorced, she lives in the fantasy world of her glamorous apartment in 1980s London. Distraught at the loss of her country, she descends...

Stars: Nicolas Cage, Bill Moseley, Sofia Boutell, Nick Cassavetes, Tak Sakaguchi, Young Dais, Charles Glover, Tetsu Watanabe | Written by Aaron Hendry, Reza Sixo Safai | Directed by Sion Sono

I love Nicholas Cage movies, the crazier the better. Sometimes though some movies feel like they just weren’t made for him. Prisoners of the Ghostland is a film that holds so much promise but in the end feels like other movies have done the same thing, just way better.

When the Governor (Bill Moseley) sends out notorious criminal Hero (Nicolas Cage) to find his Bernice (Sofia Boutella), Hero believes this could be his chance to redeem himself for his past. Strapped into a suit that will blow him up if he doesn’t succeed in his task, he is fighting time to find the girl and hopefully save himself.

The start of Prisoners of the Ghostland shows a lot of promise,...

Prisoners of the Ghostland screenwriter/producer Reza Sixo Safai joins hosts Josh Olson and Joe Dante to discuss his wildest cinematic experiences.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Infested (2002)

The Howling (1981) – Josh Olson’s trailer commentary, Randy Fuller’s wine pairings

Hollywood Boulevard (1976) – Jon Davison’s trailer commentary

Bela Lugosi Meets A Brooklyn Gorilla (1952) – Joe Dante’s trailer commentary

Prisoners of the Ghostland (2021)

Mandy (2018)

Candy (1968) – Glenn Erickson’s trailer commentary

S.O.B. (1981)

The Shining (1980) – Adam Rifkin’s trailer commentary

Robin Hood (1973)

The Story of Robin Hood (1952)

Modern Times (1936)

The Kid (1921)

The Deer (1974)

A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (2014) – Allan Arkush’s trailer commentary

Qeysar (1969)

The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

The Warriors (1979)

New Jack City (1991)

Colors (1988)

The Whip And The Body (1963)

Blow Out (1981) – Josh Olson’s trailer commentary

Porky’s (1981)

Cinema Paradiso (1988) – Glenn Erickson’s Region B Blu-ray review, Glenn Erickson’s 4K Blu-ray review

Circumstance (2011)

Ninja 3: The Domination (1984)

Flashdance (1983)

Debbie...

This review of “Prisoners of the Ghostland” was first published after the film’s January 2021 premiere at the Sundance Film Festival.

Prolific and wildly eccentric Japanese auteur Sion Sono has spent most of his career at the dizzying point at which arthouse bravado meets grindhouse gonzo, and his best films stretch the limits of narrative so far as to leave viewers simultaneously gobsmacked and exhilarated. It’s perhaps inevitable that he would cross paths with Nicolas Cage, an actor whose post-Oscar film choices have tended to veer into the grimiest edges of genre, resulting in a very mixed bag of delights and duds.

One might have hoped that “Prisoners of the Ghostland” — Sono’s English-language debut, starring Cage, and making its world premiere at Sundance — would have elevated Cage to Sono’s level, but unfortunately, it’s done the opposite. While the film far outshines most of Cage’s recent...

Prisoners Of The Ghostland Available in Select Theaters, on Demand and Digital on September 17th! Starring Nicolas Cage, Sofia Boutella, Nick Cassavetes, Bill Moseley, Tak Sakaguchi, Yuzuka Nakaya Directed By Sion Sono Written By Aaron Hendry & Reza Sixo Safai Synopsis In the treacherous frontier city of Samurai Town, a ruthless bank robber (Nicolas …

The post Official Trailer – Prisoners Of The Ghostland Starring Nicolas Cage – In Select Theaters, On Demand and Digital September 17th appeared first on Horror News | Hnn.

Prisoners of the Ghostland Trailer — Sion Sono‘s Prisoners of the Ghostland (2021) movie trailer has been released Rlje Films. The Prisoners of the Ghostland trailer stars Nicolas Cage, Sofia Boutella, Nick Cassavetes, Bill Moseley, Tak Sakaguchi, Takato Yonemoto, Canon Nawata, Jai West, Charles Glover, Grace Santos, and Yuzuka Nakaya. Crew Reza Sixo Safai [...]

Continue reading: Prisoners Of The Ghostland (2021) Movie Trailer: Bank-robber Nicolas Cage is on a Mission to Rescue Sofia Boutella...

Prisoners of the Ghostland Trailer — Sion Sono‘s Prisoners of the Ghostland (2021) movie trailer has been released Rlje Films. The Prisoners of the Ghostland trailer stars Nicolas Cage, Sofia Boutella, Nick Cassavetes, Bill Moseley, Tak Sakaguchi, Takato Yonemoto, Canon Nawata, Jai West, Charles Glover, Grace Santos, and Yuzuka Nakaya. Crew Reza Sixo Safai [...]

Continue reading: Prisoners Of The Ghostland (2021) Movie Trailer: Bank-robber Nicolas Cage is on a Mission to Rescue Sofia Boutella...

Last night, Prisoners of the Ghostland, the latest from trailblazing filmmaker Sion Sono, premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. The genre-bending post-apocalyptic actioner stars Nicolas Cage as a bank robber called “Hero,” who is tasked by a nefarious figure known only as “The Governor” to retrieve his granddaughter (played by Sofia Boutella), who has run away and gone off the grid. To take on the role of The Governor in Prisoners of the Ghostland, Sono brought on veteran actor and fan favorite Bill Moseley, who relished the opportunity to play the over-the-top bad guy, even if he wasn’t very familiar with the director’s work prior to becoming involved.

“My contact for Ghostland was the writer, Reza Sixo Safai,” Moseley explained. “We're pals here in Los Angeles, and he had talked about the movie and suggested I look into it. I didn't really know anything about Sion Sono, so...

Arguably the hardest working man in show business, Nicolas Cage appeared in over 40 films the last decade alone. Yes, he may no longer work with the likes of David Lynch, Brian De Palma, Francis Ford Coppola, Charlie Kaufman or the Coens, but the eternally entertaining actor usually finds a gem every now and again that truly utilizes his eccentric talents. That’s why the prospect of him teaming with a director as unhinged and prolific as he is an actor made for the most-anticipated collaboration in some time. With Cage as his lead, Sion Sono––one of Japan’s most creative, kinetic filmmakers––embarked on his English-language debut Prisoners of the Ghostland following his life-altering, death-defying heart attack. The results are a madcap Mad Max-esque, Gilliam-style fever dream that throws everything at the screen that its limited, but resourceful budget can muster up. The actual experience of watching this...

At some point in the distant future, long after nuclear holocaust or airborne plague has wiped out the human race, some film critic will no doubt uncover a list of the projects Nicolas Cage has turned down, and it will finally become clear how the actor determined the course of his career.

For about a dozen years, from mid-’90s Bruck-buster “The Rock” through family hamster-tainment “G-Force,” it has seemed that the ka-ching of a cash register must have been the deciding factor, but in the dozen years since, a pattern has emerged that Cage isn’t merely cashing checks but may in fact be shaping the world’s most eccentric filmography by design.

Proof positive is his agreement to make “Prisoners of the Ghostland” with Japan’s resident weird-meister Sion Sono — a revolving position that amounts to being the unofficial poet laureate of extreme psychosexual shlock, one that’s...

Some movies don’t seem inevitable until they’re made. The most absurd thing about Sion Sono’s “Prisoners of the Ghostland” — a sukiyaki psych-Western that casts Nicolas Cage as a criminal on a mission to rescue a runaway girl from a post-apocalyptic wasteland before the bombs attached to his balls explode — is that it didn’t already exist.

This is the first film that Sono shot (predominately) in English, and the first film that Cage shot with a (predominately) Japanese crew, but “Prisoners of the Ghostland” leaves no doubt that these two wildmen speak the same language. If this gonzo cross-cultural mash-up pulls taut across more ideas than it has skin on its bones, well, it’s easy to forgive Sono and Cage for getting a bit overexcited about meeting for the first time (It may be worth noting that Sono suffered a heart attack during pre-production that scuttled...

In the lead-up to its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, Sion Sono's Prisoners of the Ghostland has been acquired for US distribution by Rlje Films:

Press Release: Los Angeles, Jan. 26, 2021 – Rlje Films, a business unit of AMC Networks, has acquired the US rights to the action/adventure film Prisoners Of The Ghostland ahead of its world premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Prisoners Of The Ghostland presented by Patriot Pictures was fully financed by Michael Mendelsohn’s Union Patriot Capital Management. XYZ Films produced, is handling world sales, and will be introducing the film to international buyers on the heels of Sundance.

Directed by the acclaimed Japanese director, Sion Sono (Why Don’t You Play in Hell), the film was written by Aaron Hendry and Rexa Sixo Safai (Western Wonderland). The film stars Nicolas Cage (Mandy), Sofia Boutella (The Mummy), Nick Cassavetes (Face/Off), Bill Moseley...

Rlje Films, a business unit of AMC Networks, has acquired the US rights to the action/adventure film Prisoners Of The Ghostland ahead of its world premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Prisoners Of The Ghostland presented by Patriot Pictures was fully financed by Michael Mendelsohn’s Union Patriot Capital Management. XYZ Films produced, is handling world sales, and will be introducing the film to international buyers on the heels of Sundance.

Directed by the acclaimed Japanese director, Sion Sono (Why Don’t You Play in Hell), the film was written by Aaron Hendry and Rexa Sixo Safai (Western Wonderland). The film stars Nicolas Cage (Mandy), Sofia Boutella (The Mummy), Nick Cassavetes (Face/Off), Bill Moseley (Texas Chainsaw Franchise), Tak Sakaguchi (Tokyo Tribe) and Yuzuka Nakaya (The Forest of Love). Joseph Trapanese composed the original score.

“We’re excited to once again work with Nicolas Cage on a highly-anticipated film...

Before its Sundance Film Festival premiere, Japanese director Sion Sono’s action/adventure feature Prisoners of the Ghostland has been snapped up by AMC Networks’ Rlje Films.

Rlje distributed Cage’s trippy sci-fi feature Color Out of Space, which they picked up at TIFF 2019, and released this past summer’s The Tax Collector from David Ayer.

Prisoners of the Ghostland, written by Aaron Hendry and Rexa Sixo Safai, is set in the treacherous frontier city of Samurai Town where a ruthless bank robber (Cage) is sprung from jail by wealthy warlord The Governor (Bill Moseley), whose adopted granddaughter Bernice (Sofia Boutella) has gone missing. The Governor offers the prisoner his freedom in exchange for retrieving the runaway. Strapped into a leather suit that will self-destruct within three days, the bandit sets off on a journey to find the young woman—and his own path to redemption.

Prisoners of the Ghostland...

Rlje Films has acquired the U.S. rights to “Prisoners of the Ghostland,” an action film starring Nicolas Cage that is set to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival later this week.

Japanese auteur Sion Sono (“Why Don’t You Play In Hell”) directs “Prisoners of the Ghostland,” which is described as a mashup between Westerns, samurai films, action movies and post-apocalyptic thrillers. And Rlje Films is the same team that released Cage’s “Color Out of Space” and “Mandy,” both of which were similarly indie, art house movies that have become cult favorites. No release date has been set for the latest film.

“Prisoners of the Ghostland” also stars Sofia Boutella, Nick Cassavetes, Bill Moseley, Tak Sakaguchi and Yuzuka Nakaya. The film is set in the treacherous frontier city of Samurai Town where a ruthless bank robber (Cage) is sprung from jail by the wealthy warlord The Governor (Moseley), whose...

The Sundance Film Festival, the largest independent film festival in the United States, celebrates bold, creative, and distinctive voices. The upcoming 2021’s edition will offer an online platform featuring seven days of premieres, events, artist talks, and cutting-edge Xr exhibitions. It will also be partnering with independent cinema communities across the U.S. to safely host in-person events. From January 28 through February 3, adventurous audiences and indie film lovers everywhere will come together to be the first to discover exciting new creative visions that people will be talking about all year.

This year the Festival will downsize to 72 feature films (from last year’s 128) but still including a 50% of the total of female directors, more than 50% of the total of filmmakers of color and a number of genderqueer artists.

The full line-up includes few interesting Asian titles. Here they are:

“Fire in the Mountains“

a searing portrait of the power dynamics...

Principal photography set to commence in Japan this month on Sion Sono’s English-language debut.

Rising star Sofia Boutella from Climax and The Mummy and Ed Skrein have joined Nicolas Cage in Xyz Films’ Afm worldwide sales title Prisoners Of The Ghostland.

Bill Moseley has come on board the English-language debut by Japanese auteur Sion Sono, which will also star Japan’s Young Dais and Tak Sakaguchi.

Principal photography is scheduled to commence in Japan this month on the story of a criminal (Cage) dispatched to rescue an abducted woman (Boutella) from a dark supernatural realm known as the Ghostland.

Japanese director Sion Sono suffered a heart attack Thursday and has since undergone an operation. Sono’s representatives have told Japanese media that his life is not in danger.

His illness may delay production of Nicolas Cage-starring horror-action film “Prisoners of the Ghostland,” which was scheduled to begin shooting this spring.

Cage is to star as a criminal out to rescue a kidnapped girl who has fallen into a dark alternative universe. Imogen Poots has also boarded the film, which is Sono’s first in English.

“Our understanding is that he is in very good condition, and there’s no impact on ‘Ghostland’ or timeline,” producer Nate Bolotin of Xyz Films told Variety in an email.

Pushing boundaries of sex and violence while mixing in classical music, Christian imagery and black humor, Sono became an international cult favorite in the early years of the millennium. Among his best-known films abroad are “Suicide Club,...

Imogen Poots has joined Nicolas Cage in Japanese auteur Sion Sono’s first English-language feature, the post-apocalyptic action-horror film Prisoners of the Ghostland, which Xyz is shopping in Berlin.

Patriot Pictures and Union Patriot Capital Management have also boarded the project, written by Aaron Hendry and Reza Sixo Safai, to produce and fully finance.

Described ­by Cage himself as possibly his "wildest movie" ever — and this after his insane blood-soaked psychedelic 2018 hit Mandy — Prisoners of the Ghostland is billed as an "East meets West vortex of beauty and violence."

When a notorious criminal, Hero (Cage),...

Imogen Poots has joined Nicolas Cage in Japanese auteur Sion Sono’s first English-language feature, the post-apocalyptic action-horror film Prisoners of the Ghostland, which Xyz is shopping in Berlin.

Patriot Pictures and Union Patriot Capital Management have also boarded the project, written by Aaron Hendry and Reza Sixo Safai, to produce and fully finance.

Described ­by Cage himself as possibly his "wildest movie" ever — and this after his insane blood-soaked psychedelic 2018 hit Mandy — Prisoners of the Ghostland is billed as an "East meets West vortex of beauty and violence."

When a notorious criminal, Hero (Cage),...

Exclusive: As the advancement of technology continues to replace the need for human labor, American History X director Tony Kaye is undertaking a new — and maybe controversial — step in filmmaking by employing an Artificial Intelligent (A.I.) actor as the lead in his next film, 2nd Born.

Unlike Robin Williams’ 1999 film Bicentennial Man or the Steven Spielberg-directed A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Kaye is aiming to cast a real robot, who will be trained in different acting methods and techniques. The idea, which originated from Kaye and producer Sam Khoze, is to forgo the use of computer-generated effects in favor of a physical A.I. robot as an actor, who they are hoping will get SAG recognition.

2nd Born is the sequel to 1st Born, an indie comedy directed by Ali Atshani and starring Val Kilmer, Tom Berenger, Greg Grunberg, Jay Abdo, Taylor Cole, Reza Sixo Safai, William Baldwin, Denise Richards and Robert Knepper.

The Cageaissance may be upon us. After earning his best reviews in years with Sundance’s Mandy, Nicolas Cage will help Sion Sono make an English-language debut with the post-apocalyptic picture Prisonsers of the Ghostland, which Deadline describes as the story of a “notorious criminal Hero (Cage) who is sent to rescue an abducted girl who has disappeared into a dark supernatural universe.” Melding the origins of its direcotr and setting, Reza Sixo Safai (what a name) and Aaron Hendry’s script finds them in “an East-meets-West vortex of beauty and violence” while trying to “escape the mysterious revenants that rule the Ghostland.” A lot of which sounds like nonsense, and very well could be, but Sono can handle that. And thoughts of the pairing alone will be worth the price of admission.

Meanwhile, Cohen Media Group have reunited with Abderrahmane Sissako for the Mauritanian auteur’s The Perfumed Hill.

Exclusive: Nicolas Cage has been set to star in Prisoners of the Ghostland, a post-apocalyptic action thriller that will mark the English-language debut of Japanese filmmaker Sion Sono. Untitled Entertainment’s Laura Rister, Eleven Arts’ Ko Mori, Reza Sixo Safai of Black Light District Entertainment and Xyz Films’ Nate Bolotin are producing.

Xyz Films is also repping worldwide rights on the new title this week at the Cannes Film Festival. Xyz and Cage previously teamed on Mandy, which is playing in the fest’s Directors’ Fortnight section after bowing at Sundance. That pic is getting a summer theatrical release via Rlje Films.

Ghostland, penned by Aaron Hendry and Safai, centers on notorious criminal Hero (Cage) who is sent to rescue an abducted girl who has disappeared into a dark supernatural universe. They must break the evil curse that binds them and escape the mysterious revenants that rule the Ghostland, an...

Escaping a former troubled lifestyle doesn’t always guarantee a person’s future safety, as their past almost always has a way of catching up with them. That’s certainly the case for the protagonist in the new neo-noir crime drama, ‘The Persian Connection.’ In honor of the movie’s release in theaters today by Samuel Goldwyn Films, Shockya […]

The post Reza Sixo Safai Tells Helena Mattsson They Have to Leave in The Persian Connection Exclusive Clip appeared first on Shockya.com.

A man enters a nightclub. He is late for an appointment. A woman greets him. They sit down for a moment. It becomes obvious that they share a shady past. What secrets wait to be revealed? Reza Sixo Safai, Helena Mattsson and Julian Sands star in The Persian Connection and we have an exclusive clip for your viewing pleasure. Synopsis: As a child soldier, Behrouz (Reza Sixo Safai) miraculously survived the Iran-Iraq War to be squirreled away to the streets of Los Angeles. After two decades under the ruthless Iranian mobster Cirrus Golshiri (Parviz Sayyad), Behrouz leaves the underworld to follow his American Dream of becoming a "Real Estate Man." But after a chance encounter involving a high-stakes poker game, he is brought back into...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

After premiering at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival, “The Persian Connection” is finally headed to a theater near you. The debut feature of director Daniel Y-Li Grove, the film is a neon-noir film set in the Persian underbelly of L.A.

Read More: Film Acquisition Rundown: The Orchard Picks Up ‘Thelma,’ Samuel Goldwyn Films Buys ‘Gook’ and More

“The Persian Connection” follows Behrouz, a former child soldier who, after surviving the Iran-Iraq War, was smuggled away to the streets of Los Angeles to be monitored by the Iranian mobster Cirrus Golshiri. Wanting to escape from the life of organized crime and under the table dealings, Behrouz dreams of becoming the “American Real Estate Man.”

Twenty years later, a high stakes poker game brings Behrouz and Cirrus face to face. Accused of stealing from his boss, events from Behrouz’s past and present begin to collide and he and his girlfriend,...

Film previously titled The Loner debuted at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival.

Samuel Goldwyn Films has acquired North American rights to The Persian Connection, written and directed by Daniel Y-Li Grove.

The film, which premiered at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival, is slated for release in theatres, on demand and digital this summer.

The gangster drama centres on a former child soldier who, after being wrongly accused of stealing from his former boss, must return to the Persian opium underworld of Los Angeles to hunt down stolen drugs as events from his past and present clash, spiraling out of control. Cast include Reza Sixo Safai, Helena Mattsson, Parviz Sayyad and Julian Sands.

“The Persian Connection is an artistic take on a modern gangster film,” said Peter Goldwyn, president of Samuel Goldwyn Films. “Daniel’s imagining of the gritty side of Tehrangeles is a unique world from a neon lens, of which the likes you’ve never seen before...

Film previously titled The Loner debuted at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival.

Samuel Goldwyn Films has acquired North American rights to The Persian Connection, written and directed by Daniel Y-Li Grove.

The film, which premiered at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival, is slated for release in theatres, on demand and digital this summer.

The gangster drama centres on a former child soldier who, after being wrongly accused of stealing from his former boss, must return to the Persian opium underworld of Los Angeles to hunt down stolen drugs as events from his past and present clash, spiraling out of control. Cast include Reza Sixo Safai, Helena Mattsson, Parviz Sayyad and Julian Sands.

“The Persian Connection is an artistic take on a modern gangster film,” said Peter Goldwyn, president of Samuel Goldwyn Films. “Daniel’s imagining of the gritty side of Tehrangeles is a unique world from a neon lens, of which the likes you’ve never seen before...

Samuel Goldwyn Films has acquired North American rights to The Persian Connection, a noir thriller written and directed by Daniel Y-Li Grove that played at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival as The Loner. Reza Sixo Safai, Helena Mattsson, Julian Sands and Parviz Sayyad star in the pic, which now will aim for a summer release in theaters and on demand. Safai stars as Behrouz, who after surviving the Iran-Iraq War as a child soldier moved to Los Angeles to serve two decades…...

sounds intriguing on paper: a former child soldier from Iran drifts through L.A.'s seedy underbelly and becomes entangled in a web of crime, violence, and drugs. Heavily influenced by films like Drive and David Lynch's oeuvre -- one of the opening shots is a white picket fence with yellow flowers, a nod to the red ones in Blue Velvet, and Lynch regular Laura Harring turns up as a mysterious femme fatale -- The Loner struggles to find its own voice amidst its admittedly stunning neon dreamscape. Our guide through this world is Behrouz (Reza Sixo Safai, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night), the aforementioned child soldier, who is now an opium addict running errands for his real estate-tycoon boss when not having drug-fueled...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

There really are only so many different stories. The trick is to tell one that feels new in more than just the details. Consider the following setup — a criminal trying to go straight is pulled back into the world of violence he so desperately tried to leave behind. We’ve seen it a hundred times before from Les Miserables to Swordfish, but what makes the best examples stand out are the characters and the world around which the story unfolds. Writer/director Daniel Grove‘s feature debut, The Loner, is set in modern day Los Angeles, but it’s an L.A. that feels new and fresh with nearly every frame. Behrouz (Reza Sixo Safai) was a child soldier in Iran during his country’s war with Iraq in the 1980’s, but after escaping the slaughter at the front lines he made his way west to the land of opportunity. What...

While I enjoyed The Loner, I’ll admit that it doesn’t initially have its bearings straight. Writer/Director Daniel Grove opens on an Iranian child being beckoned into martyrdom, but then a tonal shift to 1980s Los Angeles brings about neon-drenched noir settings that some may struggle to interpret. We try to make connections, yet the puzzle is still unclear in its early stages.

Fortunately, as clarity explains itself, a neo-noir-ish, stranger-with-no-name kind of gangster film plays out, exploring an Iranian/Russian underground region of La that few have witnessed (if it even exists?). Patience is certainly a virtue, but you’ll be paid off in time – just don’t jump to any jumbled conclusions too quickly.

Reza Sixo Safai stars as Behrouz, a former Iranian gangster who finds himself being sucked back into a sleazy underworld crime syndicate. His old boss, Cirrus (Parviz Sayyad), accuses him of stealing merchandise,...

The 5th edition of the Us in Progress co-production forum was held on October 22-23, 2015, during the 6 th American Film Festival in Wrocław. Director Shaz Bennett and producers Melanie Miller and Diane Becker acquired the most awards and therefore emerged as Us in Progress winners for "Alaska is a Drag".

Us in Progress is an industry event that aims to strengthen the trans-Atlantic film industry collaborations and partnerships and help European film professionals establish working relationships with new emerging American filmmakers. The event is a bi-annual program conducted at the Champs-Elysées Film Festival in Paris during the summer before kicking-off in Wroclaw at Aff during the fall.

At the 6th American Film Festival, six films in various stages of post-production have conducted private screenings for film industry professionals, including Laurent Danielou (Loco Films), Mathieu Delaunay (Memento Films), Oda Schaeffer (k5), Silje Grimsdal (Trust Nordisk), and festival programmers from Edinburgh, Locarno, Tribeca, and a jury composed of yours truly, Sydney Levine, and Polish post-producers, to compete for post-production and promotional packages. In addition to the filmmaking duo, Shaz Bennett and Melanie Miller, two films have earned significant post-production awards - "Actor Martinez" by Nathan Silver and Mike Ott and "The Loner" by Daniel Y-Li Grove.

Here is a detailed listing of the awards:

"Alaska is a Drag" by Shaz Bennett, produced by Melanie Millerwill received:

post-production services up to the value of €10.000 (e.g. color grading or conforming, master Dcp, master Hdcam Sr, master Blu-ray, master DVD) from Chimney Poland, based in Warsaw; part of Chimney Groupa score composed by Maciej Zielinski from Soundflower Studiofinal mix 5.1 sound post-production to the value of $20.000 Euro (including rental of sound mixing studio with Thx and Dolby Premier certificates) from Toya Studios an offer to acquire Polish TV rights from Ale Kino+Several years ago, the filmmakers also received a couple of grants to develop the script from Clever in San Francisco (Cheryl Dunye’s company) and Naked Angels.

The script was developed through several programs at Sundance, Film Independent and Fox as well as the AFI Directing Workshop for Women.

"The Loner" by Daniel Grove and produced by Reza Sixo Safai received:

digital post-production services up to the value of €10.000 (excluding 35mm processing/scan; including conforming, color grading, grain/noise management, finishing, mastering, simple VFX, Dcp and other file based master from Fixafilm based in Warsaw and free registration to Producers' Network at Cannes 2016. "Actor Martinez" (working title) by Mike Ott and Nathan Silver (produced by Britta Erickson) received a second acquisition offer by Ale Kino+

Selected projects participating in last year's Us in Progress Wrocław or 2015 Us in Progress Paris were included in the Aff program: "Take Me to the River," dir. Matt Sobel (Polish premiere); "Stinking Heaven" (dir. Nathan Silver); "Ma" (dir. Celia Rowlson-Hall) and Reza Safai and Daniel Y Grove-produced "A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night" returned to the Aff to let the audiences benefit from the creators' attendance.

For the missing color correction, sound mix, VFX, and other deliverables for Bennett's and Miller's "Alaska is a Drag", the Us in Progress prize adds significant value in the finishing stage of post-production. The organizers and programmers of Us in Progress, Ula Śniegowska (artistic director of Aff), Adeline Monzier and Marie Zeniter (Black Rabbit Film), and Chantal Lian (Champs-Elysées Film Festival), look forward to following all the participating unfinished projects, and the future work and collaborations of all Us in Progress filmmakers.

More about Us in Progress and American Film Festival on www.americanfilmfestival.pl.

Alaska Is A Drag director Shaz Bennett and producer Melanie Miller were the big winners at Us in Progress at the American Film Festival in Wroclaw, Poland.

The fifth edition of Us in Progress, an industry event that showcases in-progress Us films to European film professionals, screened six films in various stages of post-production.

Alaska Is A Drag now receives post-production services worth €10.000 at Chimney Poland in Warsaw; a sound mix from Toya Studios; a score compsed by Soundflower Studio; and a TV rights deal with Ale Kino+.

The film is about an aspiring superstar, Leo (Martin L. Washington Jr.) and his twin sister Tristen (Maya Washington), who are stuck working in a fish cannery in Alaska.

Attendees at Us in Progress included Laurent Danielou (Loco Films), Mathieu Delaunay (Memento), Oda Schaeffer (K5), Silje Grimsdal (TrustNordisk), and festival programmers from Edinburgh, Locarno and Tribeca.

A jury composed of Sydney Levine and Polish post-producer awarded packages to [link...

The American Film Festival is building families. The 6th edition (October 20-25, 2015) of the Wroclaw, Poland film fest was better than any of the previous four I have attended as a jury member for the Us in Progress section. Networking with the USiP filmmakers, past participants Matt Sobel (“Take Me to the River”),Leah Meyerhoff (“I Believe in Unicorns”),Reza Sixo Safai (“A Girl Walks Home at Night Alone”) and whose present project “ The Loner” (he produced and stars in it, Daniel Grove directed) won at USiP, etc. mingled with Indie Star Awardees David Gordon Green and Hal Hartley and other filmmakers like Jenner Furst ("Welcome to Leith") invited to present their films and to eat and party together over five days and four nights which lasted until the wee hours of the morning.

African American Women's classics also showed for the first time ever to appreciative Polish audiences. Though luckily for them, but a sad miss for the audiences, every one of the filmmakers was too busy with other work to attend. The selected films brought rarely before scenes of life in America to a new public.

You can be sure Ava DuVernay was invited, and you can be equally certain that she was very busy with multiple projects.

When I was in Trinidad, I heard from the film's distributor, Michelle Materre, a well known lecturer and film curator whose film series and discussion group, Creatively Speaking, takes place at the N.Y. Film Society’s Lincoln Center and in L.A. that Julie Dash was busy working on a TV series or a doc. I hope one of you reading this will email me a more news of her, because since her film “Daughters of the Dust” premiered at Sundance in 1991, her fan base has grown and eagerly awaits more stories from her. For those who missed her instant classic at Sundance, "Daughters of the Dust" presents a transgenerational saga set on the fictitious island of Ibo's Landing in 1902 about a young woman's quest for identity. Guichees, or Gullahs, aka the Georgia Sea Islanders are U.S.'s most African community still living today off the Georgia and South Carolina coast. The film was presented to the audience as a radical feminist manifesto and landmark of independent American cinema.

Other films included in the series, curated by Ula Sniegowsk and a young film academic Ewa Drygalska, included Katherine Collins' (who tragically died of cancer at age 46) 1982 film "Losing Ground", Tanya Hamilton's "Night Catches Us", the popular and fabulous " The Secret Life of Bees" another Sundance premiering film, by Gina Prince-Blythewood (2008), Dee Rees' 2012 Sundance film "Pariah" and her recent HBO (who incidentally is an important sponsor of the festival with a showcase of its own films) fictional doc "Bessie" starring the one and only Queen Latifah, and Ava DuVernay's "Middle of Nowhere" and "Selma".

While we're on the subject of African American movies, the Spike Lee mentored new talent Michael Larnell, was here with my favorite "Next" generation film " Cronies".

Us in Progress had two out of six selected films about African Americans, the Four Award winning "Alaska Is a Drag" directed by former L.A. and Sundance Festival worker, debuting director Shaz Bennett, produced by Melanie Miller and Diane Becker; and "The Alchemist Cookbook" written and directed by Joel Potrykus. Other films included "Dope", documentarians' Albert Maysles' " In Transit", Nick Broomfield's "Tales of the Grim Sleeper" and Frederick Wiseman's "In Jackson Heights", Mark Silver's "3 ½ Minutes, Ten Bullets", sleeper hit "Tangerine" by Sean Baker, "Field Niggas" a nocturnal portrait of Harlem by Khalik Allah, David Gordon Green's “George Washington", and last, but by no means least, Clint Eastwood's "Bird" as part of his extensive retrospective.

This festival is held in the largest Arthouse multiplex in Europe, built and owned (as is the festival itself, along with New Horizons Film Festival in July and several others) by arthouse film distributor and entrepreneur Roman Gutek.

Fabulous. Written by Sydney Levine in her hotel room at The Monopole where an opera rehearsal wafts through the morning air of a sunny, dry 50*F metropolis mixing with the sound of the streetcar. This has been a fabulous experience topped off by a fabulous tour of the city and today a visit to Europe's most fabulous zoo and aquarium.

Round-up of news from the sixth American Film Festival and Us in Progress showcase.

Shaz Bennett’s Alaska Is A Drag was the big winner at the fifth edition of the Us In Progress showcase during Wroclaw’s sixth American Film Festival (Oct 20-25).

The strand’s jury awarded post-production services worth up to $40,000 to the project. This will include colour correction from Chimney Poland, a score composed by Maciej Zielinski from Soundflower Studios, and a final sound mix from Toya Studios, as well as an offer to acquire TV rights from Ale Kino+.

The film, which is writer-director Bennett’s feature version of her 2012 short of the same name, was produced by her 4248 Productions with Melanie Miller’s Fishbowl Films.

The cast of the $700,000 project includes Matt Dallas, Jason Scott Lee, Margaret Cho, newcomer Martin L. Washington Jr. and Christopher O’Shea.

Daniel Grove, an executive producer on acclaimed horror A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night,picked...

Name and focus changes for every section, which are now all competitive, resulting in the festival’s structure being “slimmer’.

The ninth Rome Film Festival (Oct 16-25) has revealed a diverse line-up including the Italian premieres for potential awards contenders including David Fincher’s Gone Girl. the world premiere of Takashi Miike’s As the Gods Will and Burhan Qurbani’s We are Young, We are Strong and European premiere of Oren Moverman’s Time Out of Mind, Toronto hit Still Alice and Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet.

This year for the first time the award-winners in each section of the programme will be decided by the audience on the basis of votes cast after the screenings.

Each section has changed name and focus for 2014 and are all competitive, resulting in the festival’s structure being “slimmer’.

Italian comedies Soap Opera and Andiamo a Quel Paese bookend the line-up.

Full line-up

Cinema D’Oggi

World premiere

• Angely...

By Terence Johnson

Managing Editor

A stylish and soulful film, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is a film of bad men, dangerous women, love and beautiful images. More than just a vampire film, Ana Lily Amirpour crafts an eerie, moody tone poem that’s a fantastic film to watch.

Bad City an industrial town, filled by all matter of folks from the scrupulous to the shady. Arash (Arash Marandi), one such citizen, longs to just get in his nice car and go. Working as a landscaper and living with his junkie father is proving more difficult, when his father runs afoul of a local drug dealer. A local prostitute (Mozhan Marnò) has just turned 30 and wants to escape as well. They all long for better lives, but are unable to move from their station. This relatively tranquil, yet unfulfilling existence, is slowly shattered as a vampire (Sheila Vand) begins stalking the streets,...

Following on from the Bay Area Boom article about the San Francisco Film Society’s Filmmaker360 program, we are profiling the 13 finalists for the Sffs’s Kenneth Rainin Foundation Filmmaking grant. The winners of this award will be announced on December 8. Daniel Grove And Reza Sixo Safai, A Better Place Than This Synopsis: A happy-go-lucky prison guard, Para Dastur has a charismatic demeanor that hides a very grim truth: he is Singapore Changi Prison’s resident hangman. Not just an anonymous executioner, Dastur takes it upon himself to console the condemned and help them come to terms with fate, shepherding them until he utters the final …...

Arguably a natural progression from her freedom-focused 2004 directorial debut, The Colour Of Love, Maryam Keshavarz’s Circumstance is a political yet personal account of two young girls’ strongly frowned upon love and their longing for acceptance in a place where women are making significant progress in regards to wealth and stature.

A fascinating and often very fun insight into the lives of school friends Ati (Nikohl Boosheri) and Shireen (Sarah Kazemy), Circumstance has a lot to say about Iran’s corrupt use of influence and money, but this is woven in as an accepted part of everyday life instead of as a way to make a damning and shocking condemnation of the Iranian system.

For a film with little physical conflict, Keshavarz surprisingly maintains an underlying sense of threat and tension to proceedings, never letting you feel too safe in the girls’ happiness, displaying her more than adequate ability to balance fear with youthful bliss.

The Imposter (15)

(Bart Layton, 2012, UK) Frédéric Bourdin, Charlie Parker, Carey Gibson. 99 mins.

Documentaries don't come much stranger than this. The film begins with the discovery in Spain in 1997 of a 16-year-old boy. Could this really be Nicholas Barclay, who went missing aged 13 from his home in San Antonio, Texas? Well, no. Nicholas's family welcomed this "boy" into their home without realising that he was in fact a 23-year-old French-Algerian master of deception named Frédéric Bourdin. Then things got really weird.

Shadow Dancer (15)

(James Marsh, 2012, UK/Ire) Clive Owen, Andrea Riseborough, Aidan Gillen, Gillian Anderson. 102 mins.

An embittered mother dedicated to the Ira struggle is forced to turn informer by MI5. This stark and suspenseful thriller returns documentary-maker Marsh to scripted drama after Man On Wire and Project Nim.

The Watch (15)

(Akiva Schaffer, 2012, Us) Ben Stiller, Jonah Hill, Vince Vaughn, Richard Ayoade, Rosemarie DeWitt, Mel Rodriguez. 102 mins.

Paul Blart: Mall Cop...

★★★★☆ American Iranian director Maryam Keshavarz debuts with Circumstance (2011), the sensual tale of a complex love triangle set in the swirling underground party scene of Tehran. A wealthy, liberal family struggle to cope with the increasing sexual rebellion of their daughter Atafeh (Nikohl Boosheri), who is falling in love with her best friend Shireen (Sarah Kazemy). The situation is made more complicated with the return of Atafeh's brother, Mehran (Reza Sixo Safai), a devout Muslim who has also fallen for his sister's beautiful companion.

Read more »...

Circumstance

Written and directed by Maryam Keshavarz

France, USA, Iran, 2012

Coming out of a recent screening of ‘Circumstance’ (in the presence of Maryam Keshavarz, the writer/director) my friend and I, rather wowed, agreed that while heartache is universal, freedom is a privilege, a didactic take somewhat misrepresentative of the teenage same-sex melodrama not devoid of the occasional near-prurient moments of lingerie-on-nubile-flesh or insistent camera frolicking over the sensuousness of central character Shireen’s (Sarah Kazemy) visage. Despite these pre-eminently Western, rather clichéd visual tropes of framing feminine beauty (no doubt informed by the author’s American upbringing), Keshavarz’s feature debut, winner of the 2011 Sundance Audience Award, carries a refreshing, heart-rending sincerity, an unpolished and at times awkward poise befitting the characters beginner status, in life and in love.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=td-cYUVOg4Q

Atafeh (Nikohl Boosheri) and Shireen are a pair of sixteen-year old Teheran...

Chicago – Set during the precarious moment following Obama’s election and prior to the Green Wave, Maryam Keshavarz’s Iran-set feature debut is one of the most provocative cinematic treasures of 2011. It’s an elegantly lensed tale of star-crossed lovers that delivers a real erotic charge, while providing an excellent showcase for beguiling newcomers Nikohl Boosheri and Sarah Kazemy.

Since any public expression of passion is forbidden between Keshavarz’s two teenage protagonists, it brings a whole other level of tension and dread to their shared attraction. Atafeh (Boosheri) has the resources and security provided by her wealthy family that allows her to live a double life with her friend and eventual lover, Shireen (Kazemy). In order to fully explore their feelings, the young women escape into their fantasies of living in a more enlightened land. For them, Dubai is tantamount to Oz.

DVD Rating: 4.5/5.0

There’s a fleeting but unforgettable moment when Atafeh,...

Chicago – Some films never get a fair shot with audiences. They open in a handful of art house theaters scattered throughout the country before inconspicuously landing on DVD. Passionate movie lovers are left with the task of championing these unjustly obscure titles and helping them to acquire the audience they deserve.

Before I reveal my picks for the top ten Best Overlooked Films of 2011, here are the ten runners-up:

“Autoerotic”

Autoerotic

While Steve McQueen’s magnificent art film, “Shame,” plunges into the dark depths of sexual addiction, Joe Swanberg and Adam Wingard’s “Autoerotic” takes a decidedly more playful approach to similar material. Though Swanberg has made a series of uncommonly intimate films about the sex lives of twentysomething Chicagoans, he’s never attempted a film as overtly comic as this one, and Wingard proves to be an ideal collaborator. “Autoerotic” is easily Swanberg’s most accessible film to date,...

It’s always surprising to learn that people in faraway foreign lands really have the same dreams and desires as folks next door to us here. The main conflict is how their families and communities react and respond to them. For the past several decades Iran has been a big part of the Middle East news. Our last president even included it in his “Axis of Evil”. It turns out that a lot of the population, particularly the young people, really embrace Western culture and attitudes. The new film from writer/director Maryam Keshavarz, Circumstance, shines a light on a part of that country that its government wishes to keep hidden.

Circumstance tells the story of two women in their late teens. Atafeh ( Nikohl Boosheri ) is the outgoing, musically gifted daughter of an upper class family who were at the forefront of the revolution that ousted the Shah several decades ago.

Chicago – Power is a strange, corrupting force. Human beings manufacture power based on governments, money and religion. Oftentimes an element of humanity must be sacrificed to obtain power. In Iran, that element is women, as religious and governmental oppression conspire to create “Circumstance.”

Rating: 3.5/5.0

A fascinating exploration into culture, Circumstance uses an artistic force to counteract the religiosity and big brother maneuverings in that mysterious country and offers a glimpse into the challenges of suppressing natural urges. In highlighting the plight of lesbian lovers in Iran, the film also exposes the weaknesses of their power structure, as no one seems to be happy with the cultural atmosphere, even those who benefit from it the most.

Set in urban Tehran, Shireen (Sarah Kazemy) and Atafah (Nikohi Boosheri) are 16 year old schoolgirls who are best friends and look out for each other. Their escapades include sneaking around town to find the underground...