Swiss festival programmes 148 films for this year’s edition.
The Zurich Film Festival (Zff) has unveiled a line-up of 148 films for its 2023 edition which takes place from September 28 to October 8.
The festival’s Focus Competition – which showcases feature films and documentaries from Germany, Austria and Switzerland - has six world premieres. They include Swiss films The Driven One by Piet Baumgartner, a long-term study of students at the elite university Hsg St. Gallen, and road movie Return To Alexandria by Zurich-based Tamer Ruggli, which stars Nadine Labaki and Fanny Ardant.
Scroll down for Focus and Feature Film Competition line-up
Other...
The Zurich Film Festival (Zff) has unveiled a line-up of 148 films for its 2023 edition which takes place from September 28 to October 8.
The festival’s Focus Competition – which showcases feature films and documentaries from Germany, Austria and Switzerland - has six world premieres. They include Swiss films The Driven One by Piet Baumgartner, a long-term study of students at the elite university Hsg St. Gallen, and road movie Return To Alexandria by Zurich-based Tamer Ruggli, which stars Nadine Labaki and Fanny Ardant.
Scroll down for Focus and Feature Film Competition line-up
Other...
- 9/14/2023
- by Tim Dams
- ScreenDaily
This number will increase as Cannes, Venice and other summer festival titles are added to the mix alongside studio releases.
French cinemas reopen this Wednesday (May 19) after lying dark for six months due to the Covid-19 pandemic, with the country’s 100-plus distributors rushing to set theatrical dates for an estimated backlog of 400 stalled films.
As a result, French cinemagoers will have access to the richest and most diverse offering of films in the world over the coming months, spanning festival titles, local mainstream comedies and dramas, world cinema and studio blockbuster fare, as the summer advances.
As of May...
French cinemas reopen this Wednesday (May 19) after lying dark for six months due to the Covid-19 pandemic, with the country’s 100-plus distributors rushing to set theatrical dates for an estimated backlog of 400 stalled films.
As a result, French cinemagoers will have access to the richest and most diverse offering of films in the world over the coming months, spanning festival titles, local mainstream comedies and dramas, world cinema and studio blockbuster fare, as the summer advances.
As of May...
- 5/17/2021
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- ScreenDaily
Swiss sales outfit Lightdox has acquired Julien Faraut’s documentary “Les Sorcières de l’Orient,” taking part in the Big Screen Competition of the Rotterdam Film Festival.
The film follows the former players of the Japanese women’s volleyball team. Now in their 70s, they used to be known as the “The Sorcerers of the East” because of their seemingly supernatural powers on the courts. From the formation of the squad in the late 1950s as a worker’s team at a textile factory, right up until their triumph at the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo, their memories and true magic from long ago bubble up into a heady brew where fact and fable fly hand in hand.
Faraut told Variety: “I’ve always thought that if I enjoyed making a film, the viewers will probably enjoy watching it afterwards. It was such a delight to meet The Sorcerers, to be inspired by their strength,...
The film follows the former players of the Japanese women’s volleyball team. Now in their 70s, they used to be known as the “The Sorcerers of the East” because of their seemingly supernatural powers on the courts. From the formation of the squad in the late 1950s as a worker’s team at a textile factory, right up until their triumph at the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo, their memories and true magic from long ago bubble up into a heady brew where fact and fable fly hand in hand.
Faraut told Variety: “I’ve always thought that if I enjoyed making a film, the viewers will probably enjoy watching it afterwards. It was such a delight to meet The Sorcerers, to be inspired by their strength,...
- 2/3/2021
- by Davide Abbatescianni
- Variety Film + TV
Michele Panetta’s beautiful docu-fiction focuses on the parallel lives of a young Italian and a Nigerian migrant
The title could allude to mass in the church in which some scenes are set. But the bodies are more secular in this rather beautiful docu-fictional piece from Italian film-maker Michele Pennetta, a very physical movie about poverty and loneliness, about people whose bodies are perhaps all they have.
Il Mio Corpo returns Pennetta to the Sicilian landscape he has explored in his previous feature Fishing Bodies, from 2016. This time, he has found two different real people in Sicily whose lives he brings together in a kind of diptych. One of them is Oscar, a tough, scrappy, lonely kid who may have been emotionally abused by his father – there is talk of a court case in which the judge heard testimony against Oscar’s father from Oscar himself, which clearly still rankles.
The title could allude to mass in the church in which some scenes are set. But the bodies are more secular in this rather beautiful docu-fictional piece from Italian film-maker Michele Pennetta, a very physical movie about poverty and loneliness, about people whose bodies are perhaps all they have.
Il Mio Corpo returns Pennetta to the Sicilian landscape he has explored in his previous feature Fishing Bodies, from 2016. This time, he has found two different real people in Sicily whose lives he brings together in a kind of diptych. One of them is Oscar, a tough, scrappy, lonely kid who may have been emotionally abused by his father – there is talk of a court case in which the judge heard testimony against Oscar’s father from Oscar himself, which clearly still rankles.
- 12/10/2020
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Il mio corpo (“My body”) is a documentary. No, really, it is a documentary. Though given how absent are both camera and director Michele Pennetta, you’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise. There is some narrative shaping going on here. But not too much.
The focus is on two young men, scraping a living on the underbelly of Italy’s underbelly: Sicily. Men? Not quite. No longer boys. Yet still the insecurity and uncertainty of the young teen pokes through. Oscar is a Sicilian teenager. His mohawk seems to signal rebel, though in the context of his family, it is his reluctance to wear one that betokens rebellion - yet his occasional, open lapse into smiles and playfulness signifies a character not yet fully formed.
Stanley is a young Nigerian immigrant, attempting to settle down. Yet, in his attachment to his Christian upbringing and determination to cook banku – fish stew – the way.
The focus is on two young men, scraping a living on the underbelly of Italy’s underbelly: Sicily. Men? Not quite. No longer boys. Yet still the insecurity and uncertainty of the young teen pokes through. Oscar is a Sicilian teenager. His mohawk seems to signal rebel, though in the context of his family, it is his reluctance to wear one that betokens rebellion - yet his occasional, open lapse into smiles and playfulness signifies a character not yet fully formed.
Stanley is a young Nigerian immigrant, attempting to settle down. Yet, in his attachment to his Christian upbringing and determination to cook banku – fish stew – the way.
- 12/9/2020
- by Jane Fae
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Swiss sales company Lightdox has acquired international rights to Lars Edman and William Johansson Kalén’s legal documentary “Arica” ahead of its IDFA world premiere in the Frontlight section.
Andreas Rocksen at Laika Film & Television Ab and William Johansson Kalén produced the legal documentary, with Clin d’Oeil films, Relation04 Media As, Radio Film Ltd. and Aricadoc each contributing as co-producers.
One of several high-profile Chilean productions or co-productions featuring at this year’s event, “Arica” examines the circumstances, long-term fallout and eventual legal battle resulting from illegal waste dumping of toxic chemicals by the Boliden mining company on the outskirts of Arica, a village in northern Chile.
According to the Business & Human Rights Resource Center, Boliden shipped approximately 20,000 tons of smelter sludge to the Polygono area in Arica between 1984 and 1985. The waste, originating from Boliden’s Rönnskär arsenic plant in Sweden, was sold to Chilean company Promel for processing, however,...
Andreas Rocksen at Laika Film & Television Ab and William Johansson Kalén produced the legal documentary, with Clin d’Oeil films, Relation04 Media As, Radio Film Ltd. and Aricadoc each contributing as co-producers.
One of several high-profile Chilean productions or co-productions featuring at this year’s event, “Arica” examines the circumstances, long-term fallout and eventual legal battle resulting from illegal waste dumping of toxic chemicals by the Boliden mining company on the outskirts of Arica, a village in northern Chile.
According to the Business & Human Rights Resource Center, Boliden shipped approximately 20,000 tons of smelter sludge to the Polygono area in Arica between 1984 and 1985. The waste, originating from Boliden’s Rönnskär arsenic plant in Sweden, was sold to Chilean company Promel for processing, however,...
- 11/19/2020
- by Jamie Lang
- Variety Film + TV
Principal photography started this week in Naples on Michele Placido’s fourteenth film as a director, Caravaggio’s Shadow. The film will focus on the intricate, adventurous and tumultuous life of the great Italian painter from the 1600s. Starring are Riccardo Scamarcio as Caravaggio, Louis Garrel as the mysterious Shadow, Isabelle Huppert as the Marquise Costanza Colonna and Micaela Ramazzotti as ‘Lena’. The Goldenart production, made with Rai Cinema, is an Italian-French co-production between Charlot, Le Pacte and Mact Production, in co-operation with the Campania Film Commission and Qmi. Wild Bunch handles sales.
UK distributor Curzon has picked up well-received Italian drama Il Mio Corpo (pictured), which played as part of the Acid program at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Michele Pennetta’s docu-drama follows two young men living separate but equally tough hardscrabble lives on the margins of Sicilian society. The film is scheduled for release in the...
UK distributor Curzon has picked up well-received Italian drama Il Mio Corpo (pictured), which played as part of the Acid program at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Michele Pennetta’s docu-drama follows two young men living separate but equally tough hardscrabble lives on the margins of Sicilian society. The film is scheduled for release in the...
- 9/28/2020
- by Andreas Wiseman and Jake Kanter
- Deadline Film + TV
Oscar is a Sicilian teenager with the tough-guy mohawk of a rebel and the shy, rare, dimpled smile of a child. Stanley is a handsome young Nigerian immigrant, his short hair worn in locs, who insists on saying grace before the home-style meals he prepares: banku, fish stew. Oscar grudgingly helps his father and brother grub a living for the family, scavenging for scrap metal; through his connection to the parish priest, Stanley gets casual jobs harvesting grapes and herding sheep. The two protagonists of Michele Pennetta’s beautiful, quietly scorching documentary have nothing in common except, maybe, everything: they share a kind of looming futurelessness, a melancholy awareness of the inescapability of their hard, poor circumstances and a reliance on the forbiddingly arid landscapes of economically ravaged Sicily to provide a living.
This is the third of Pennetta’s projects to deal with life on the fringes of solvency and legality in contemporary Sicily,...
This is the third of Pennetta’s projects to deal with life on the fringes of solvency and legality in contemporary Sicily,...
- 7/1/2020
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
Selection aims to connect works by emerging directors with distributors and audiences.
France’s Association for the Diffusion of Independent Cinema (Acid) has unveiled the nine films selected for its special 2020 programme, replacing its 27th annual parallel Cannes showcase which was cancelled this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Despite the circumstances, we’ve chosen to maintain the criteria of Acid Cannes programming, namely to commit to supporting as many films, nine feature films, with the same special attention given to films without distributors and first features,” the body said in a statement.
Paris-based Acid was created in 1992 by a...
France’s Association for the Diffusion of Independent Cinema (Acid) has unveiled the nine films selected for its special 2020 programme, replacing its 27th annual parallel Cannes showcase which was cancelled this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Despite the circumstances, we’ve chosen to maintain the criteria of Acid Cannes programming, namely to commit to supporting as many films, nine feature films, with the same special attention given to films without distributors and first features,” the body said in a statement.
Paris-based Acid was created in 1992 by a...
- 6/4/2020
- by 1100388¦Melanie Goodfellow¦0¦
- ScreenDaily
Cannes' Acid sidebar event unveiled its 2020 program on Thursday. It includes nine films that will not screen in Cannes but have the support of the sidebar event for up-and-coming and alternative cinema.
Acid, like the official Cannes Film Festival and the Critics' Week section, has chosen to present an official selection of films this year, despite having to cancel all physical events due to the novel coronavirus pandemic.
The Acid selection includes Jessé Miceli's Coalesce, Ilan Klipper's Tightrope Walkers, The Seeds We Sow from director Nathan Nicholovitch, Michele Pennetta's L Mio Corpo, Marie Dumora's Far From You I Grew, Nora ...
Acid, like the official Cannes Film Festival and the Critics' Week section, has chosen to present an official selection of films this year, despite having to cancel all physical events due to the novel coronavirus pandemic.
The Acid selection includes Jessé Miceli's Coalesce, Ilan Klipper's Tightrope Walkers, The Seeds We Sow from director Nathan Nicholovitch, Michele Pennetta's L Mio Corpo, Marie Dumora's Far From You I Grew, Nora ...
Cannes' Acid sidebar event unveiled its 2020 program on Thursday. It includes nine films that will not screen in Cannes but have the support of the sidebar event for up-and-coming and alternative cinema.
Acid, like the official Cannes Film Festival and the Critics' Week section, has chosen to present an official selection of films this year, despite having to cancel all physical events due to the novel coronavirus pandemic.
The Acid selection includes Jessé Miceli's Coalesce, Ilan Klipper's Tightrope Walkers, The Seeds We Sow from director Nathan Nicholovitch, Michele Pennetta's L Mio Corpo, Marie Dumora's Far From You I Grew, Nora ...
Acid, like the official Cannes Film Festival and the Critics' Week section, has chosen to present an official selection of films this year, despite having to cancel all physical events due to the novel coronavirus pandemic.
The Acid selection includes Jessé Miceli's Coalesce, Ilan Klipper's Tightrope Walkers, The Seeds We Sow from director Nathan Nicholovitch, Michele Pennetta's L Mio Corpo, Marie Dumora's Far From You I Grew, Nora ...
From Thomas Imbach’s “Nemesis” and Michele Pennetta’s “Il Mio Corpo” to a 13-title National Competition – featuring Nick Brandestini’s section winner “Sapelo,” celebrated French screenwriter Antoine Jaccoud’s directorial debut “Back to Visegrad” and Tribeca world premiere “Wake Up on Mars – ” this year’s Visions du Réel festival proved, as ever, a notable launchpad for Swiss documentaries.
Held online on May 4, a Swiss Films presentation of five upcoming doc features added to this impact, and suggested much about the nature of Switzerland documentary scene.
A power in movie production – in 2018 only Europe’s “big five” territories and Russia produced more features – Switzerland is also a European doc talent hub. The five docs presented Monday were all produced by Swiss companies. Only one, Roland Colla’s “W. What Remains of the Lie” was directed by a Swiss director, though at least there of the other helmers have either studied...
Held online on May 4, a Swiss Films presentation of five upcoming doc features added to this impact, and suggested much about the nature of Switzerland documentary scene.
A power in movie production – in 2018 only Europe’s “big five” territories and Russia produced more features – Switzerland is also a European doc talent hub. The five docs presented Monday were all produced by Swiss companies. Only one, Roland Colla’s “W. What Remains of the Lie” was directed by a Swiss director, though at least there of the other helmers have either studied...
- 5/4/2020
- by John Hopewell
- Variety Film + TV
Switzerland’s Close Up Films, producer of the Participant Media-backed Toronto-premiered “Sing Me a Song” and co-producer of high-profile Cannes title “The Swallows of Kabul,” is developing a new production, “The Gift” (“Faiseuse de Secret”).
Set to be presented on Saturday April 25 as part of an Rts Prize: Documentary Perspectives showcase at Visions du Réel in Nyon, Switzerland, news of “The Gift,” comes as Close Up Films bows its latest film, Michele Pennetta’s “Il Mio Corpo,” in main competition on Visions du Réel’s online platform. It will be made available to 500 viewers over April 25 to May 2. Swiss sales company Sweet Spot Docs has acquired international sales rights to “Il Mio Corpo.”
Produced by Close Up Films’ Flavia Zanon, whose credits also include Karim Sayed’s “My English Cousin” and Locarno-selected “Bird Island,” “The Gift” turns on what seems a remarkable phenomenon for modern-day Switzerland. The Secret is...
Set to be presented on Saturday April 25 as part of an Rts Prize: Documentary Perspectives showcase at Visions du Réel in Nyon, Switzerland, news of “The Gift,” comes as Close Up Films bows its latest film, Michele Pennetta’s “Il Mio Corpo,” in main competition on Visions du Réel’s online platform. It will be made available to 500 viewers over April 25 to May 2. Swiss sales company Sweet Spot Docs has acquired international sales rights to “Il Mio Corpo.”
Produced by Close Up Films’ Flavia Zanon, whose credits also include Karim Sayed’s “My English Cousin” and Locarno-selected “Bird Island,” “The Gift” turns on what seems a remarkable phenomenon for modern-day Switzerland. The Secret is...
- 4/24/2020
- by John Hopewell
- Variety Film + TV
Europa Cinemas Label awarded to Tableau Noir; Fipresci prize goes to What Now? Remind Me. Talk of Marco Mueller’s return with new Palazzo project.Scroll down for full list of winners
Catalan director Albert Serra was the surprise winner of this year’s Golden Leopard in Locarno for a historical drama with a difference, Story Of My Death.
Described by Serra by as “a movie about the beauty of horror, and also about the horror of beauty,” Story Of My Death imagines an encounter between Casanova of 18th rationalism and Count Dracula from the romantic 19th century.
French co-producer Capricci Films is handling international sales on the Spanish-French co-production which will be screened in Toronto’s Wavelengths programme next month.
However, films tipped for Leopard statuettes such as Claire Simon’s Gare du Nord and David Wnendt’s Wetlands were passed over by the International Jury headed by Filipino director Lav Diaz. Moreover, local...
Catalan director Albert Serra was the surprise winner of this year’s Golden Leopard in Locarno for a historical drama with a difference, Story Of My Death.
Described by Serra by as “a movie about the beauty of horror, and also about the horror of beauty,” Story Of My Death imagines an encounter between Casanova of 18th rationalism and Count Dracula from the romantic 19th century.
French co-producer Capricci Films is handling international sales on the Spanish-French co-production which will be screened in Toronto’s Wavelengths programme next month.
However, films tipped for Leopard statuettes such as Claire Simon’s Gare du Nord and David Wnendt’s Wetlands were passed over by the International Jury headed by Filipino director Lav Diaz. Moreover, local...
- 8/18/2013
- by screen.berlin@googlemail.com (Martin Blaney)
- ScreenDaily
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