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Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof is set to attend the Cannes premiere of his latest feature, The Seed Of The Sacred Fig, after receiving an eight-year prison sentence from Iranian authorities and fleeing his home country.

Speculation had been rife that the dissident director would attend the festival when the film receives its world premiere in Competition on Friday (May 24), having found asylum in Germany, but Cannes’ general delegate Thierry Fremaux has now confirmed his attendance.

“We are particularly touched to welcome [Rasoulof] here as a filmmaker,” Fremaux said in a statement to Agence France-Presse (Afp).

Our joy will be that of...

International filmmakers are calling for solidarity with Mohammad Rasoulof and persecuted filmmakers in Iran in an open letter, shared with Variety.

Rasoulof – about to screen his latest film “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” in Cannes’ main competition – was sentenced to imprisonment and torture by the Islamic Republic of Iran. He fled the country.

“We condemn the inhumane treatment of Rasoulof and numerous other independent artists in Iran, who are being severely punished, criminalized and silenced for exercising their artistic freedom,” it was stated in the letter, already signed by “Holy Spider” star Zar Amir Ebrahimi, Fatih Akin, Atom Egoyan, Ildiko Enyedi, Andrew Haigh, Agnieszka Holland, Laura Poitras, Sandra Hüller, Sean Baker, Payal Kapadia and Ariane Labed.

“We stand in full solidarity with Rasoulof’s demands and call upon the international film community to raise our voices against an Islamist dictatorship that systematically oppresses every aspect of their society’s lives.

Mubi has announced its lineup of streaming offerings for next month and amongst the highlights is a tribute to Tilda Swinton, featuring I Am Love and a trio of early films: Cycling Frame, The Box, and Egomania: Island Without Hope. There’s also a handful of notable festival favorites and new releases from the past year or so, including Maureen Fazendeiro and Miguel Gomes’ The Tsugua Diaries, Charlotte Gainsbourg’s Jane by Charlotte, Ted Fendt’s Outside Noise, Émilie Aussel’s Our Eternal Summer, and Kofi Ofosu-Yeboah’s Public Toilet Africa.

Also including films by Takashi Miike, Fatih Akin, Zhang Yimou, Albert Maysles, Andrew Dominik, Rick Alverson, and more check out the lineup below and get 30 days free here.

August 1 – Ichi the Killer, directed by Takashi Miike | Takashi Miike: A Double Bill

August 2 – Nest, directed by Hlynur Palmason | Brief Encounters

August 3 – Our Eternal Summer, directed by Émilie Aussel | Festival Focus:...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: David Fincher and Gary Oldman on the set of Mank (2020). David Fincher's Mank leads this year's nominations for the Academy Awards. A complete list of all nominations can be found here.Legendary actor Yaphet Kotto, best known for his charismatic presence in films like Alien, Blue Collar, and Live and Let Die has died.Spike Lee will be leading the 2021 Cannes Film Festival Jury, promising to return after the cancellation of last year's festival: "Book my flight now, my wife and I are coming!" After a months-long hiatus, Film Comment has announced its return, marked by a new weekly letter and two new episodes of the Film Comment podcast. Recommended VIEWINGAbove: Mark Rappaport's The Stendhal Syndrome or My Dinner with Turhan Bey. Today's the last day to watch two new essay films...

Above: What Do You See When You Look at the Sky?Awards: Golden Bear for Radu Jude's Bad Luck Banging or Loony PornTOP Picksdaniel KASMAN1. What Do You See When You Look at the Sky?2. Petite maman3. Limbo4. Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn5. The Girl and the Spider6. Azor7. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy8. Mr. Bachmann and His Class9. Fabian - Going to the Dogs10. Just a MovementELA BITTENCOURT1. Fury is a Feeling Too2. Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn3. What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?4. We5. Tzarevna Scaling6. The Girl and the Spider7. Taste8. Ski9. Manual for an Occupation: The First 54 Years10. Tie: Mr. Bachmann and His Class | As I WantCOVERAGEDANIEL KASMANFrom Where They Stood (Christopher Cognet, France)Fabian - Going to the Dogs (Dominik Graf, Germany)The Girl and the Spider (Ramon and Silvan Zürcher, Germany)What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (Alexandre Koberidze,...

Cynthia Beatt has been making films since the late 1970s, which makes my discovery of her work at this year’s Berlinale woefully belated. But it also makes me hopeful that her essential experimental short, Fury Is a Feeling Too (1983), will screen more widely soon. Fury, which first showed at the Berlinale Forum in 1984, and which earlier this year was given a 2k restoration by Arsenal Berlin from the 16mm original, showed in this year’s Forum Expanded—the only film in the program that wasn’t a new production.The film’s inclusion is an inspired curatorial choice, not only because it continues the crucial work that the Berlinale is doing unearthing important cinema by women directors—including Self-Defined, the program of German women filmmakers organized together with Deutsche Kinemathek that I covered in 2019—but also because the film centers on the one thing that those experiencing the festival...

Day 2 of this week’s Berlinale announcements see the selections for its Forum, Forum Expanded and Shorts programs revealed.

The Forum program contains 17 movies, primarily from filmmakers at the beginning of their careers, though with some establish directors included such as Israeli documentarian Avi Mograbi and Berlin directors Chris Wright and Stefan Kolbe. In total, 14 are world premieres.

The Forum Expanded selection consists of shorts, medium-length films and features, and will screen 17 films as well as art installations. In the Shorts program, a total of 20 titles will compete for the Berlinale prizes this year. Scroll down for the full line-ups.

Yesterday, the festival unveiled its Generation and Retrospective programs.

As previously reported, buyers will get the chance to view these movies during the virtual EFM, which runs March 1-5. Juries will also be appointed to decide on the festival’s awards during this period. Audiences will hopefully have a chance...

Project gearing up to shoot next year in South Pacific island of Fiji.

Berlin-based director Cynthia Beatt’s long-gestated hybrid project Heart Of Light with Tilda Swinton, exploring questions of identity and belonging against the backdrop of the South Pacific island of Fiji, is gearing up to shoot next year.

“We’ve got some 65% of the finance together,” said producer Christoph Hahnheiser of Berlin-based Black Forest Film, who is co-producing alongside Vincent Wang at Paris-based House on Fire.

The pair who united on the project at Cannes last year have secured the backing of German broadcaster Zdf as well as...

Amos Gitai [pictured], Michael Smiley and Lenora Crichlow among the judges at this year’s festival.

Edinburgh International Film Festival (Eiff) has announced this year’s juries.

Amos Gitai will chair the jury for the Michael Powell Award Competition for Best British Feature Film, with Nina Hoss and Michael Smiley also on the jury. The award carries a cash prize of £20,000 and the jury will also select the award for Best Performance in a British feature film.

The jury for Best International Feature Film Competition (£10,000) includes Niki Karimi (chair), Michael Fitzgerald and Mark Rabinowitz, while the Best Documentary Feature Film Competition (£10,000 and supported by Al Jazeera) will be chaired by Cynthia Beatt alongside Dominique Auvray and Sunmin Park.

Linda Ruth Williams will chair the jury for the Short Film Competition (supported by Virgin Atlantic) along with Lenora Crichlow and Nicole Gerhards.

Now in its third year, the Student Critics Jury programme will see seven aspiring film critics work under...

Highlights include Anton Corbijn’s A Most Wanted Man, starring the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Abel Ferrara’s controversial Dsk feature Welcome To New York.

The full line-up of the 68th Edinburgh International Film Festival (Eiff) has been revealed this morning by artistic director Chris Fujiwara at Edinburgh’s Filmhouse.

This year’s festival, which runs from June 18-29, will comprise 156 features from 47 countries, including 11 world premieres, eight international premieres, seven European premieres and 95 UK premieres.

New titles announced today include Anton Corbijn’s A Most Wanted Man, starring the late Philip Seymour Hoffman in one of his final performances that was first shown at Sundance in January.

Straight from its lively premiere in Cannes is Abel Ferrara’s controversial title Welcome To New York, inspired by the case of former Imf managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, starring Gérard Depardieu, which will receive its UK premiere at Eiff.

Other new titles added to the line-up include [link=nm...

We’ll Never Have Paris, from Big Bang Theory star Simon Helberg, to close the festival, which has also revealed details of its Germany focus.

Simon Helberg’s romantic comedy We’ll Never Have Paris has been named as the closing night film of the 68th Edinburgh International Film Festival (June 18-29).

Helberg, who plays Howard Wolowitz in Us sitcom The Big Bang Theory, wrote, co-directed with Jocelyn Towne and stars in the film, based on the co-directors’ real life romantic history. Zachary Quinto, Alfred Molina, Melanie Lynskey, Jason Ritter and Maggie Grace co-star.

The film follows a neurotic young man (Helberg) rattled by a sudden declaration of love from an attractive co-worker (Grace) moments before he is about to propose to his girlfriend (Lynskey). Heartbroken, she flees to Paris, and he must race across the Atlantic to win her back.

Released in the UK by Metrodome, the film is produced by Robert Ogden Barnum (All is Lost) and Katie Mustard...

What I love about this new poster for Luca Guadagnino’s I Am Love (Io sono l'amore) is not just its gorgeous typography, but also how it celebrates its lead actress, the incomparable Tilda Swinton. In the film, which premiered at Venice and Sundance and opens in the U.S. in June, Swinton plays a Russian woman married into a rich Milanese family who embarks upon a tempestuous affair with her son’s business partner. In the UK quad poster Swinton’s co-stars (including Barry Lyndon’s Marisa Berenson) have been turned into grey statues, like characters in a Roy Andersson film, while Swinton is suitably vivid in pink.

Ever since she pirouetted to the wails of Diamanda Galas, tearing furiously at her wedding dress and running with scissors, in Derek Jarman’s masterpiece The Last of England (1988), Swinton has been a constantly arresting presence in film. Furiously intelligent and a restlessly curious human being,...

News from Berlin: Tilda Swinton is here and getting back on her bike to travel along what used to be the Berlin Wall. The original 1998 film by Cynthia Beatt, had her biking the length of the Berlin Wall in 1988. Beatt filmed the journey, and it was called "Cycling the Frame". I will see it this Sunday evening at Kino Arsenal, part of Berlin's Film Museum. This new portion will retrace their trip and will be called "Cycling the Invisible Frame." Frieder Schlaich of Berlin's Filmgalerie 451 will produce. The title refers to the fact that while the wall has been demolished, there remains what is called an invisible "wall in the minds" dividing east and west Germany.

Cologne, Germany -- Oscar winner and Berlinale jury president Tilda Swinton is getting back on her bike to travel along what used to be the Berlin Wall.

Swinton, together with filmmaker Cynthia Beatt, biked the length of the Berlin Wall in 1998. Beatt filmed the journey, but the material was never used.

The pair plan to retrace their trip this month for a new documentary, "Cycling the Invisible Frame." Frieder Schlaich of Berlin-based company Filmgalerie 451 will produce. The title refers to the fact that most of the wall has been torn down, though many Germans still speak of a invisible "wall in the minds" dividing east and west Germany.