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Matteo Garrone’s refugee drama Io Capitano, an Oscar nominee this year for Italy in the best international feature category, was the big winner of this year’s 2024 David Di Donatello Awards, Italy’s equivalent to the Oscars, winning best film and director for Garrone.

Io Capitano also picked up prizes for best cinematography, editing, sound, and visual effects.

Paola Cortellesi’s There’s Still Tomorrow, a black-and-white feminist dramedy that became the top-grossing film in Italy last year, won Cortellesi the Donatello honors for best actress, directorial debut, and original script for the screenplay she co-wrote with Furio Andreotti and Giulia Calenda.

“I want to thank those who gave me the opportunity to write this role as I wanted it,” she said, accepting her actress honor.

Cortellesi’s film, a dramedy about an abused woman in post-wwii Rome that manages to combine serious social drama with situational comedy, sight gags and even a musical number,...

Matteo Garrone’s Oscar-nominated drama Io Capitano triumphed in Italy’s David di Donatello film awards on Friday evening, winning best film and best director.

The film about the trials and tribulations of two Senegalese teenagers as they try to make it to Europe via the Sahara desert and the Mediterranean Sea, also won best producer for companies Archimede, Rai cinema, Pathé and Tarantula as well as best sound, special effects, cinematography and editing.

Io Capitano premiered at the Venice Film Festival last September, where it won best director for Garrone and the Marcello Mastroianni Award for Best Young Actor for Seydou Sarr.

The movie went on to enjoy a buzzy awards season, securing a Golden Globe nomination for best non-English language film and an Academy Award nomination for best international film.

“This film tells the stories of those who are not listened to,” said Garrone, on receiving the best director award.

Italian actress and screenwriter Paola Cortellesi’s directorial feature debut, There’s Still Tomorrow (C’è Ancora Domani), and Matteo Garrone’s Io Capitano lead nominations at this year’s David Di Donatello Awards.

There’s Still Tomorrow nabbed 19 noms, including best film while Io Capitano landed 15, including best director for Garrone. Trailing the leading two is Alice Rohrwacher’s latest film, La Chimera, starring Josh O’Connor. Other leading films are Rapito (11), Comandante (10), Il Sol Dell’avvenire (7), and Adagio (5).

The 69th David di Donatello Awards take place May 3. The live show will be broadcast on Rai 1 in Italy. This year’s hosts include Carlo Conti and Alessia Marcuzzi. The ceremony will take place at the legendary Cinecittà studios.

Check out the full list of nominees below:

Best Film

C’È Ancora DOMANIprodotto da Mario Gianani e Lorenzo Gangarossa per Wildside società del gruppo Fremantle; Vision Distribution società del gruppo Sky; in collaborazione...

Had first-time Senegalese actors Seydour Sarr and Moustapha Fall seen a Matteo Garrone film like “Gomorrah” before being scout-cast in his Italian Oscar nominee “Io Capitano,” they might’ve blinked twice. The 2008 film followed two teens from the Campania slums and into a life of organized crime, ending with them both dead in the mouth of a tractor. “Io Capitano” also follows two teens on a journey — here as African refugees making their way from Dakar to Europe in search of adventure — and as with Garrone’s crowning movie, the Italian filmmaker did not share the full script with his non-professional actors. In other words, Sarr and Fall, who in “Io Capitano” play cousins, had no idea whether their characters would survive the journey across the Mediterranean Sea.

Their voyage to Europe is marked by great danger and peril that Garrone masterfully stages and never dilutes — including a final scene...

Matteo Garrone rose to international prominence with his gritty Mafia thriller Gomorrah (2008), depicting Naples as a hellish war zone. His latest endeavor, Io Capitano earned him the Silver Lion for Best Director at Venice, is a scorching topical drama that provides a unique perspective on Italy, seen through the eyes of outsiders who perceive it as the beacon at the end of a dark and twisted tunnel. The narrative follows a young protagonist lured by the allure of Europe, abandoning the warmth of his domestic life and congenial community to embark on a journey that unveils the harsh reality that the grass on the other side is not always greener. The tale meticulously traces the migrants’ hardships and injustices, unfurling a merciless portrayal of what people inflict upon those they see as helpless. Through the lens of two Senegalese teenagers, the film exposes the punishing process of illegal migration, delving...

Given the challenges that many migrants face when traveling to a new land, it makes sense to assume that they’re fleeing harrowingly nightmarish realities. But the scenes that director Matteo Garrone uses to open his heartrending Io Capitano are far from nightmarish. Garrone’s big-dreaming migrant characters aren’t running away from something so much as they’re running toward it. The possibility that their goal is little more than a mirage makes this epic tale’s often horrendous journey even more wrenching.

The Dakar neighborhood where teenaged Seydou (Seydou Sarr) lives with his mother (Ndeye Khady Sy) and siblings is a chaotic sprawl of ramshackle buildings and bustling markets. A street party practically explodes as a spectacle of drumming, dancing, and colorful homemade couture. Though the Dakar of the film is clearly poor, with few modern conveniences and not much of a job market, it hardly seems the...

Cohen Media Group has bought all North American rights to “Io Capitano,” a lushly-lensed, stirring immigration drama by “Gomorrah” director Matteo Garrone. Sold worldwide by Pathé Films, the critically acclaimed movie is Italy’s official Oscar entry and is slated to be released theatrically in early 2024.

With Cohen Media Group as its North American distributor, “Io Capitano” has strengthened its position in the awards season. The movie world premiered to stellar reviews in September at Venice Film Festival, where it was greeted with a 13-minute standing ovation and won the Silver Lion for Garrone and best emerging actor for Seydou Sarr.

“Io Capitano” went on to win the best European film award at the San Sebastian International Film Festival. The movie is also vying for best film and director at the European Film Awards this weekend.

Reminiscent of “Slumdog Millionaire,” “Io Capitano” tells the epic story of a teenage boy who,...

Io Capitano, Pinocchio, Tale Of Tales director Matteo Garrone with Anne-Katrin Titze: “I would say that fairy tales, as Italo Calvino used to say, fairy tales are true. It’s a different way to talk about the human condition.”

Italy’s Oscar submission and Venice Film Festival Unesco and Best Director Silver Lion winner Matteo Garrone’s suspenseful and fleet Io Capitano (Me Captain), co-written with Massimo Ceccherini (Garrone’s Pinocchio), Massimo Gaudioso, and Andrea Tagliaferri, shot by Paolo Carnera stars the naturalistic duo of Seydou Sarr (Marcello Mastroianni Award Best Young Actor) and Moustapha Fall with Ndeye Khady Sy, Oumar Diaw, Issaka Sawadogo.

Matteo Garrone on Io Capitano shot by Paolo Carnera: “Paolo put himself in the service of the story and he worked carefully on the light, but tried always to be natural, …”

Garrone’s Tale of Tales, based on Giambattista Basile’s early 17th century fairy tales,...

Even if the critical reactions have been mixed, Italian films have proven much stronger than usual at this year’s Venice Film Festival, with a notable resurgence of genre filmmaking in the likes of Adagio and Enea. Ironically, Matteo Garrone, the one local director in the selection whose actual stock in trade is genre of all stripes — gangster realism, satirical comedy (Reality), and baroque fantasy (Tale of Tales) — arrived this year with a blisteringly topical drama that might be his most traditional, and best, yet.

Migrant dreams are a hot topic this year, and Garrone’s Io Capitano (literally “Me Captain”) follows hard on the heels of Agnieszka Holland’s Green Border, which covers the same topic from a different angle: where Holland’s film deals with the experience of immigrants as they arrive in Europe, Garrone’s film fills in some of that backstory, showing the punishing...

Matteo Garrone, who is a two-time Cannes jury prizewinner with “Gomorrah” in 2008 and “Reality” in 2012, is set to be in competition in Venice for the first time with his immigration-themed drama “Io Capitano.”

Shot over 13 weeks in Senegal, Italy and Morocco with a cast of non-professional actors, the Italian auteur’s new film – the title for which translates to “I Captain” – narrates the Homeric journey of two young African men, Seydou and Moussa, who decide to leave Dakar to reach Europe. It depicts their plight through the pitfalls of the desert, the horrors of detention centers in Libya and the dangers of the sea.

“‘Io Capitano’ was born from the idea of ​​telling the epic journey of two young Senegalese migrants who cross Africa, with all its dangers, to pursue a dream called Europe,” Garrone said in a statement to Variety. “To make the film, we started from the true...

Roberto Andò with Anne-Katrin Titze: “I am rehearsing a new play in Naples. It’s a play by Colm Tóibín.”

Toni Servillo (star of Paolo Sorrentino’s Oscar-winning The Great Beauty) plays Luigi Pirandello (winner of the 1934 Nobel Prize for literature) in Roberto Andò’s enchanted Strangeness, which is as gracefully far away from a biopic as it gets. The two men the famous author incognito encounters, both undertakers and madly involved in local theatre, are played by the popular Italian comedy team Ficarra e Picone (Salvatore Ficarra as Sebastiano Vella and Valentino Picone as Onofrio Principato).

Luigi Pirandello (Toni Servillo) with Sebastiano Vella (Salvatore Ficarra) and Onofrio Principato (Valentino Picone) in Roberto Andò’s Strangeness

I first met Roberto Andò the morning before Long Live Freedom (Viva La Libertà), starring Toni Servillo, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi and Valerio Mastandrea was screened at the Film Society of Lincoln Center and Cinecittà...

Belgian directors Felix Van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch’s Italian-language drama The Eight Mountains and veteran Marco Bellocchio’s Exterior Night topped the 68th edition of Italy’s David di Donatello Awards on Wednesday evening.

The Eight Mountains won best film as well as best non-original screenplay, photography and sound.

Based on the novel of the same name by Paolo Cognetti, it stars Luca Marinelli and Alessandro Borghi as two men from different backgrounds who form a life-long bond during summers spent together as children in a remote mountain village.

The film world premiered in Competition at Cannes last year where it co-won the Jury Prize. Read the Deadline review here.

It is the second time in the history of the awards that a film by non-Italian directors has clinched the best film prize.

The last time was in 1971 when the Dino de Laurentiis-produced epic Waterloo by Russian director Sergei Bonderchuk,...

“The Eight Mountains,” Belgian directors Felix Van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch’s Italian-language drama about friendship, mountains and growing up, scored the top prize at Italy’s 68th David di Donatello Awards.

Besides winning best picture, the film also scooped statuettes for best non-original screenplay, photography and sound.

Given that the directors are not Italian, it was a particularly significant victory for “Mountains,” which was praised as “quietly magnificent” by Variety critic Jessica Kiang. The film, which is currently playing well on the U.S. arthouse circuit, tracks the decades-long friendship between two Italian boys named Pietro and Bruno — one from the city, the other a shepherd boy from the Alps.

“It’s pretty incredible,” commented a visibly moved Van Groeningen. “Two Belgians who win this prize in Italy for an Italian movie.” “Thank you for this declaration of love,” added Vandermeersch, his partner in life. “We love Italy very much.

Io Capitano

After 2018’s Dogman and then 2019’s Pinocchio, Italian filmmaker Matteo Garrone stirs his ship towards coming-of-age adventure drama territory. Filmed in Italy, Morocco and Senegal in March of ’22, Io Capitano features Seydou Sarr and Moustapha Fall. Perhaps Garrone, like Guillermo del Toro and David Lowery, is unafraid to move into adventure fantasy matter.

Gist: Written by Massimo Ceccherini, Massimo Gaudioso and Garrone, this tells the story of two young men, who leave Dakar for Europe.

Release Date/Prediction: We are thinking a Cannes premiere is the works – but this doesn’t across like a heavyweight contender.…...

Michele Vannucci’s “Delta” has debuted its trailer ahead of its world premiere on the Piazza Grande at the Locarno Film Festival. True Colours is handling world sales.

The Po Delta in Italy is the setting of the clash between fishermen and poachers. Osso wants to save the river from overfishing at the hands of the Florians, a family on the run from the Danube. Together with the Florians is Elia, who was born in those lands. Overwhelmed by blind violence, the two will face each other in the mists of the delta.

Vannucci said: “From the very beginning, I thought of ‘Delta’ as an action film with strong social implications. A manhunt in which the two protagonists, Elia and Osso, are both executioners and victims of a conflict that dominates them. Two identities on the run, each one fighting with his own ghost, who discover in their duel an...

Hou Zuxin’s ‘The Italian Recipe’ to open the 24th edition of the Asian festival in Italy.

The Far East Film Festival (Feff), held in the Italian town of Udine, has unveiled the full line-up for its 24th edition, including 13 world premieres.

The festival, which has established itself as a European showcase for Asian cinema, is set to run from April 22-30 and will open with the world premiere of The Italian Recipe from China’s Zuxin Hou. The romantic comedy, starring Huang Yao and Liu Xan, is mostly set in Rome and marks just the second official co-production between Italy and China.

Italian director Matteo Garrone recently got ahead of the curve with his take on Pinocchio (preceding four (!) new adaptations of the Carlo Collodi tale this year) and now he’s heading from fantasy into reality for his next project.

Garrone has begun shooting his next project Io Capitano in Dakar, Senegal. Scripted by the director alongside Massimo Gaudioso, Massimo Ceccherini, and Andrea Tagliaferri, the film follows the hazardous journey of two young men (newcomers Seydou Sarr and Moustapha Fall), who leave Dakar for Europe. Descripted as a “contemporary odyssey through the dangers of the desert, the perils of the sea and the ambiguities of the human soul,” production will then head to Morocco and Italy.

Reports indicate that for the coming-of-age adventure, Garrone was inspired by the true stories of a number of young people who made the same journey, including Kouassi Pli Adama Mamadou, Arnaud Zohin, Amara Fofana, Brhane Tareke,...

Aimee Lou Wood Leads UK Comedy Cast

Seize Them!, the UK comedy being helmed by Curtis Vowell (Baby Done), has confirmed its cast as shooting gets underway. Starring will be Aimee Lou Wood (Sex Education), Lolly Adefope (Shrill), Nicola Coughlan (Bridgerton), Nick Frost (Hot Fuzz) and Jessica Hynes (W1A). Written by Andy Riley (Veep), the story is set in the Dark Ages in Britain, following a queen who is toppled by a revolution, leaving her with a bounty on her head. Producing are Damian Jones and Matthew James Wilkinson. The film is financed by Entertainment Film Distributors, which will release in the UK and Ireland.

Garrone’s Next Feature Underway

Dogman director Matteo Garrone is underway with filming on his next project, Io Capitano. The film is shooting in Dakar, Senegal, and stars newcomers Seydou Sarr and Moustapha Fall. The project is an epic tale following the hazardous journey...

The film is an Italian-Belgian co-production, with Pathe on sales.

Newcomers Seydou Sarr and Moustapha Fall will lead the cast of Matteo Garrone’s new film Io Capitano, with filming underway in Dakar, the capital city of Senegal.

In Io Capitano - which translates to English as I, Captain - Sarr and Fall will play two young men who leave Dakar for Europe, embarking on a contemporary odyssey across desert and sea.

The film is based on an original idea by Garrone, taking inspiration from the stories of Kouassi Pli Adama Mamadou, Arnaud Zohin, Amara Fofana, Brhane Tareke and Siaka...

Italian director Matteo Garrone, who was at the 2020 Berlinale with Roberto Benigni-starrer “Pinocchio,” is set to return to the director’s chair in March with coming-of-age adventure drama “Io Capitano,” on which France’s Pathé will be handling international distribution.

Garrone’s new pic, whose title translates as “I, Captain,” will be shot in Italy, Morocco and Senegal, marking the first time, Garrone –– a two-time Cannes jury prize-winner, with “Gomorrah” in 2008 and “Reality” in 2012 –– sets a feature film outside of Italy.

As is customary with Garrone, story details of “Io Capitano” are being kept under wraps, besides the fact that he wrote the screenplay with regular collaborators Massimo Gaudioso and Andrea Tagliaferri and actor Massimo Ceccherini (“Pinocchio”), who also contributed to the “Pinocchio” screenplay.

Rai Cinema chief Paolo Del Brocco told Variety that the film is “a coming-of-age adventure drama,” but declined to disclose further details, saying that Garrone does not want them disclosed.

“After that summer, nothing would be the same,” says Edo (Emanuele Maria Di Stefano), the narrator of “The Catholic School,” Stefano Mordini’s worryingly watchable, stylistically polished account of the lead-up to the tawdry and brutal real-life incident known to Italians as the Circeo Massacre. It is a curiously light beginning for a film that will end in an upsettingly extended sequence of torture and sexual violence, and it points to the queasy contradiction Mordini never resolves, between the painstakingly re-created, rueful coming-of-ager his film mostly is, and the unflinchingly ghoulish true-crime sadism-horror it suddenly becomes.

It is Rome in 1975, and Edo, along with the sons of half of Rome’s wealthy, untouchable elite, attends a private Catholic school in the suburbs. The boys are introduced to us, rather confusingly en masse, but eventually the unwieldy screenplay, co-written by Mordini and Massimo Gaudioso, Luca Infascelli, and based on the sprawling,...

Emerging Italian helmer Claudio Giovannesi, who made a splash in Berlin with his prizewinning Neapolitan teen mob drama “Piranhas,” is set to direct immigration epic “Vita,” set in New York’s early 20th century Little Italy.

Based on Melania Mazzucco’s novel by the same title, winner of Italy’s prestigious Strega Prize, “Vita” is set in 1903 when two kids, a girl named Vita and a boy named Diamante, disembark alone in New York.

“Vita,” which means life in Italian, is grounded in authentic documentation, based on the true story of Mazzucco’s ancestors. The book was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in the U.S.

From the extreme poverty of Italy’s rural south the two kids “are thrust in a modern, chaotic and hostile metropolis. Like all other Italian immigrants, in order to survive they have to work hard in Little Italy: a fierce neighborhood dominated by the Mano Nera,...

Luigi Lo Cascio also stars in this Groenlandia and Kino production, the second film offered up by the director of I Was A Dreamer. Filming kicked off yesterday on Delta, the second feature film by Michele Vannucci. The Roman director who graduated in 1987 is once again directing Alessandro Borghi, who is joined in the cast by Luigi Lo Cascio (the winner of the Best Supporting Role David for The Traitor) to tell a story about a no holds barred duel unfolding amidst the fog of the Po Delta plains. Written by Matteo Garrone’s faithful collaborator Massimo Gaudioso, together with Fabio Natale, Anita Otto and Vannucci himself, Delta depicts a clash between poachers and fishermen in the Po Delta National Park. Osso (Lo Cascio) wants to...

Based on the title alone, one would assume director Francesco Amato’s “18 Presents,” a terminal-illness-themed melodrama about a self-destructive young woman coping with the death of her mother, would place its emphasis on the special gifts the protagonist receives each year until adulthood. Not exactly. While this Italian-language weepie blessedly sidesteps schmaltz and saccharine, it disappointingly fails to capitalize on its promised premise. Neither emotional enough to pay proper tribute to the true story it captures, nor hokey enough to qualify as “so bad, it’s good,” this is a flaccid, failed attempt at heart-tugging poignancy.

Ultra-organized 40-year-old Elisa (Vittoria Puccini) seems to have it all. A good job running a temp agency. A decent-sized house in the Italian suburbs with her steady boyfriend (Edoardo Leo), who loves her dearly. Plus, she’s pregnant with a healthy baby girl. But on the same day that a slight problem arises in her third trimester,...

The angry canine is bearing its teeth, barking loudly and ready to bite. Marcello (Marcello Fonte), however, isn’t the least bit phased. A dog groomer who plies his trade in a small beachside town in Southern Italy, he has the ability to calm the angriest of hounds; despite the quaint little storefront business he runs, he’s earned the nickname “Dogman.” Marcello’s loves his daughter (Alida Baldari Calabria), the scuba-diving trips they take off the coast and his weekly evening soccer games. For a little extra cash, he...

Dogman Magnolia Pictures Reviewed for Shockya.com & BigAppleReviews.net by: Harvey Karten Director: Matteo Garrone Screenwriter: Ugo Chiti, Maurizio Raucci, Matteo Garrone, Massimo Gaudioso Cast: Marcello Fonte, Edoardo Pesce, Alida Baldari Calabria, Nunzia Schiano, Adamo Dionisi Screened at: Dolby 24, NYC, 4/2/19 Opens: April 12, 2019 “Dogman” is the movie that won the “Palm Dog Best […]

The post Dogman Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

Pawel Pawlikowski’s “”Cold War” swept the European Film Academy Awards on Saturday, winning five of its bids: Best Picture, Director, Actress (Joanna Kulig), Screenplay and Film Editing. This Polish picture contended for the top prize against three other films that are also entered in this year’s Oscar race for Foreign-Language Film — Sweden’s “Border,” Poland’s “Cold War,” Italy’s “Dogman” and Belgium’s “Girl.” The fifth nominee was “Happy as Lazzaro,” which is also from Italy.

Winners of the 31st edition of these awards were decided by the 3,000 plus members of the academy, drawn from all parts of Europe. Scroll down to see all the winners (and nominees).

Last year Ruben Ostlund‘s satire “The Square” swept the EFAs with six wins including both Best Picture and Best Comedy. Ostlund claimed both the writing and directing awards for his savage satire set in the high stakes art...

“Cold War” was the big winner at the European Film Awards, picking up the prizes for Best European Film, Actress (Joanna Kulig), Director, and Screenwriter (both Paweł Pawlikowski). Best actor went to Marcello Fonte of “Dogman,” while Armando Iannucci’s “The Death of Stalin” was named Best European Comedy.

“Cold War” also led all films with five nominations, continuing a strong year for the black-and-white drama — Pawlikowski, whose “Ida” won the Foreign-Language Oscar, also took home Best Director laurels from Cannes.

Ali Abbasi’s “Border” and Alice Rohrwacher’s “Happy as Lazzaro” left the ceremony empty-handed despite picking up four nominations apiece.

The full list of winners:

Best European Film

“Border,” Ali Abbasi

“Cold War,” Pawel Pawlikowski

“Dogman,” Matteo Garrone

“Girl,” Lukas Dhont

“Happy as Lazzaro,” Alice Rorhwacher

European Comedy

“C’est La Vie,” Olivier Nakache, Eric Toledano

“Diamantino,” Gabriel Abrantes, Daniel Schmidt

“The Death of Stalin,” Armando Iannucci

European Director

Ali Abbasi,...

“Cold War,” Pawel Pawlikowski’s black-and-white romance set in the 1950s, scooped the prizes for best film, director and screenplay at the 31st edition of the European Film Awards on Saturday.

“Cold War” star Joanna Kulig also won the award for best actress. Marcello Fonte, the star of Matteo Garrone’s “Dogman,” won for best actor.

Armando Iannucci’s political satire “The Death of Stalin” won for best European comedy. Adapted from the French graphic novel by Fabien Nury and Thierry Robin, “The Death of Stalin” is a comic look at how Joseph Stalin’s stroke in 1953 threw the U.S.S.R. into chaos and inspired a mad power grab among his top advisors.

“This is very brave of you. This movie was banned in Russia,” Iannucci said upon picking up his award onstage. The British writer-director added that he loved Europe and made a joke about Brexit.

Lukas Dhont’s “Girl,...

Nominations for the European Film Academy Award were announced on Saturday (Nov. 10) at the Seville film festival in Spain. Four of the entries in this year’s Oscar race for Foreign-Language Film — Sweden’s “Border,” Poland’s “Cold War,” Italy’s “Dogman” and Belgium’s “Girl” — are up for Best Picture. The fifth nominee is “Happy as Lazzaro” from Germany (which submitted “Never Look Away” at the Oscars).

Pawel Pawlikowski’s “Cold War” leads with five nominations: Best Picture, Director, Actor (Tomasz Kot), Actress (Joanna Kulig) and Screenplay. “Dogman” and “Border” have four nominations apiece as does “Happy as Lazzaro.”

Winners of the 31st edition of these awards will be decided by the 3,000 plus members of the academy, drawn from all parts of Europe. The ceremony is scheduled for Dec. 15 in Seville.

Last year Ruben Ostlund‘s satire “The Square” swept the EFAs with six wins including both Best Picture and Best Comedy.

Paweł Pawlikowski’s “Cold War” leads the pack in this year’s European Film Awards, picking up five nominations after winning Best Director laurels earlier this year at Cannes. The black-and-white romance is followed closely by Matteo Garrone’s “Dogman,” Alice Rohrwacher’s “Happy as Lazzaro,” and Ali Abassi’s “Border,” all of which also picked up awards on the Croisette and now find themselves with four nods apiece.

This year’s ceremony takes place on December 15 in Seville, Spain. Here’s the full list of nominations:

European Film 2018

Border, dir: Ali Abbasi

Cold War, dir: Pawel Pawlikowski

Dogman, dir: Matteo Garrone

Girl dir: Lukas Dhont

Happy As Lazzaro, dir: Alice Rohrwacher

European Documentary 2018

A Woman Captured, dir: Bernadett Tuza-Ritter

Bergman – A Year In A Life, dir: Jane Magnusson

Of Fathers And Sons, dir: Talal Derki

The Distant Barking Of Dogs, dir: Simon Lering Wilmont

The Silence Of Others, dirs:...

The nominations for the 2018 Efa awards were revealed at the Seville European Film Festival.

After winning best birector at Cannes Film Festival, Pawel Pawlikowski’s melodrama about love and modern European history leads the European Film Awards (Efa) nominations with five nods including for European film, director, actress (for Joanna Kulig), actor (for Tomasz Kot) and screenwriter (for Pawlikowski).

Cold War was followed closely by Dogman, Border and Happy As Lazzaro with four Efa nominations each. The latter three joined Cold War in being nominated for European film, director and screenwriter.

Like Pawlikowski, Rohrwacher was nominated on her own for Lazzaro’s screenplay,...

Nominations are in for the 31st European Film Awards with previous winner Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War leading the pack. The romance drama won the Best Director prize in Cannes and Pawlikowski is up here for the same nod. Cold War, Poland’s Oscar hopeful this year, is also mentioned in the Best Film, Screenwriting, Actress and Actor categories.

Joining Cold War in the main race are a series of Oscar entries for the Best Foreign Language Film statue. They include Sweden’s wild Border from Ali Abbasi, Italy’s Dogman from Matteo Garrone and Belgium’s Girl by Lukas Dhont. The latter won the Camera d’Or in Cannes for best first film, and also scored the Best Performance nod in the Un Certain Regard section for lead Victor Polster who received a nomination today from the European Film Academy. Netflix acquired Girl for North and Latin America out of the festival.

Festival closer will be Emil Heradi’s Indonesian war thriller Night Bus on April 28.

Celebrating its 20th edition, the Far East Film Festival (Feff) in Udine, Italy is set to open with Korean espionage thriller Steel Rain and the world premiere of Nam Ron’s Malaysian crime drama Crossroads: One Two Jaga on April 20.

Directed by Yang Woo-seok, Jung Woo-sung-starrer Steel Rain was released in South Korea last December where it clocked up more than 4.45 million admissions according to the Korean Film Council (Kofic). It was released worldwide on Netflix last month, but this will be the film’s “world...

It's strange, it's different, and I can see why it wasn't a theatrical hit... but Matteo Garrone's superb telling of three very adult, very extreme 17th century folk tales is a special item, beautifully directed and visually splendid. Tale of Tales Blu-ray Shout! Factory 2016 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 133 min. / Street Date September 6, 2016 / 22.97 Starring Salma Hayek, Vincent Cassel, Toby Jones, John C. Reilly, Shirley Henderson, Hayley Carmichael, Bebe Cave, Stacy Martin, Christian Lees, Jonah Lees, Laura Pizzirani, Franco Pistoni, Jessie Cave. Cinematography Peter Suschitzky Film Editor Marco Spoletini Production Design Dimitri Capuani Original Music Alexandre Desplat Written by Edoardo Albinati, Ugo Chiti, Matteo Garrone, Massimo Gaudioso from a book by Giambattista Basile Produced by Matteo Garrone, Anne Labadie, Jean Labadie, Jeremy Thomas Directed by Matteo Garrone

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Matteo Garrone needs no more endorsement than a mention of his terrific modern gangster film Gomorrah (2008), an epic that makes the...

Stars: Salma Hayek, Christian Lees, Jonah Lees, Vincent Cassel, Hayley Carmichael, Shirley Henderson, Toby Jones, Bebe Cave, Guillaume Delaunay, John C. Reilly | Written by Edoardo Albinati, Ugo Chiti, Matteo Garrone, Massimo Gaudioso | Directed by Matteo Garrone

Tale of Tales is a peculiar film and it’s difficult to know where to start with it. It has been directed by Matteo Garrone, who is best known for the Italian gangster film Gomorrah, a film so naturalistic in its approach, it almost felt like a documentary. Which makes Tale of Tales, a retelling of three archetypal fairystories with a surreal dream-like approach, a surprise straight out of leftfield.

The three interwoven stories take place in separate kingdoms. In the first, Salma Hayek’s queen uses dark magic to finally give her a son (Christian Lees), but becomes violently jealous when her progeny prefers the company of his mysterious doppelganger (Jonah Lees) to her.

The Leone Film Group has begun developing an English-language TV series titled "Colt," based on an idea developed by the late and great iconic spaghetti western filmmaker Sergio Leone.

The concept centers around the six-shooter gun packed by Clint Eastwood in "For a Fistful of Dollars." In 1987 Sergio Leone hooked up with his old writing partners Sergio Donati and Fulvio Morsella to work on an idea for a TV series about a Colt revolver that passes from owner to owner throughout the Old West.

Leone was said to be interested in a more naturalistic take on the Spaghetti Western genre than his earlier works, hoping to show the Old West "like it really was." Donati wrote a treatment draft, but then the project was abandoned.

Italian director Stefano Sollima (Sky's "Gomorra") will direct the first two episodes and act as showrunner along with writing the screenplay alongside Luca Infascelli and Massimo Gaudioso.

Even though fairy tales themselves have often been dark throughout the years, the translation to film from book form has almost exclusively been directed towards young audiences. Occasionally we get more adult themed fairy tales, but they tend to be few and far between. Lost a bit in the Tribeca shuffle for me was the release last weekend of the new movie from Matteo Garrone, the fantasy film of sorts Tale of Tales. It’s a real unique flick, having debuted last year at the Cannes Film Festival before finally now in theatrical release, as of the weekend. It’s interesting enough that I wanted to make a quick mention of it, as it’s really something else. The film is, more or less, a collection of a few fairy tales, just given a different spin than usual. There’s three main ones, including the obsessive quest of the Queen...

The American Film Institute announced today the films that will screen in the World Cinema, Breakthrough, Midnight, Shorts and Cinema’s Legacy programs at AFI Fest 2015 presented by Audi.

AFI Fest will take place November 5 – 12, 2015, in the heart of Hollywood. Screenings, Galas and events will be held at the historic Tcl Chinese Theatre, the Tcl Chinese 6 Theatres, Dolby Theatre, the Lloyd E. Rigler Theatre at the Egyptian, the El Capitan Theatre and The Hollywood Roosevelt.

World Cinema showcases the most acclaimed international films of the year; Breakthrough highlights true discoveries of the programming process; Midnight selections will grip audiences with terror; and Cinema’s Legacy highlights classic movies and films about cinema. World Cinema and Breakthrough selections are among the films eligible for Audience Awards. Shorts selections are eligible for the Grand Jury Prize, which qualifies the winner for Academy Award®consideration. This year’s Shorts jury features filmmaker Janicza Bravo,...

A live action movie adaptation of Boom! Studios' supernatural comic book series, Lumberjanes, is in the works. We also have details on Tale of Tales being acquired for U.S. distribution and a look at Fright Rags' T-shirt depiction of the Doof Warrior.

Lumberjanes Movie: According to TheWrap, Will Widger (who wrote the Black List screenplay, The Munchkin) is lined up to pen a live action feature film adaptation of the Lumberjanes comic book series for 20th Century Fox.

Producing the project are Boom! Studios' Ross Richie and Stephen Christy, with Adam Yoelin co-producing. The folks at 20th Century Fox have reportedly put the Lumberjanes film near the top of their priority list, so we could see this project move rather quickly along the path to the big screen.

A Boom! Studios comic book series that debuted last year, Lumberjanes has propelled past its original eight-part planned run, with its...

The post-Cannes acquisitions trickle continues as IFC announced it has picked up Us rights from Hanway Films to Matteo Garrone’s Competition premiere.

Salma Hayek, Vincent Cassel, John C Reilly and Toby Jones star in Tale Of Tales, Garrone’s English-language gothic debut that weaves together several fairytales from the Middle Ages Neapolitan poet Giambattista Basile.

Shirley Henderson, Hayley Carmichael, Bebe Cave and Alba Rohrwacher also star.

Garrone co-adapted the screenplay with Edoardo Albinati, Ugo Chiti and Massimo Gaudioso.

Jeremy Thomas produced with Jean Labadie and Garrone, while Alessio Lazzareschi, Peter Watson, Nicki Hattingh, Anne Sheehan and Sheryl Crown served as executive producers.

IFC’s Cannes acquisitions haul includes A Perfect Day, while sister label Sundance selects picked up Disorder and held rights to Palme d’Or winner Dheepan ahead of the festival.

IFC Films announced Thursday that it has acquired U.S. rights to Matteo Garrone’s “Tale of Tales.” The film stars Salma Hayek, Vincent Cassel, John C. Reilly, Toby Jones, Shirley Henderson, Hayley Carmichael, Bebe Cave and Alba Rohrwacher. It was produced by Jeremy Thomas, Jean Labadie and Garrone from a screenplay by Edoardo Albinati, Ugo Chiti, Massimo Gaudioso and Garrone. It’s executive produced by Alessio Lazzareschi, Peter Watson, Nicki Hattingh, Anne Sheehan and Sheryl Crown. See photos: The Scene at Cannes 2015: Red Carpet Premieres and Beyond “Tale of Tales,” Garrone’s first English language film, had its...

Il Racconto dei Racconti (Tale of Tales)

Directed by Matteo Garrone

Written by Edoardo Albinati, Ugo Chiti, Matteo Garrone, Massimo Gaudioso

Italy & UK, 2015

The temptation of making it big internationally must have been too strong for Matteo Garrone to resist and two films later, the filmmaker who charmed Cannes with the Neapolitan lilt of Gomorra is back in competition with an incongruous fairy-tale offering teeming with midgets, unidentified beasts and an ogre.

Based on the fairy tales of Giambattista Basile, the seventeenth-century inventor of Cinderella, “The Tale” recounts the regal travails of three grotesque feudal lords in medieval Italy, speaking in various accents of English as you do when you are a medieval Italian feudal lord. Garrone’s production, no doubt betting on the international cachet of some of the cast such as Selma Hayek, Vincent Cassel and John C. Reilly, goes the magical surrealism route, throwing in some beautiful princesses and misshapen old hags,...

Cannes already has a standout movie: the horrific new Renaissance fairytale from Gomorrah director Matteo Garrone. Features scenes of flea-petting, heart-eating and a right royal nightmare

Matteo Garrone’s Tale of Tales is fabulous in every sense: a freaky portmanteau film based on the folk myths collected and published by the 16th-century Neapolitan poet and scholar Giambattista Basile – Garrone worked on the adaptation with Edoardo Albinati, Ugo Chiti and Massimo Gaudioso.

It is gloriously mad, rigorously imagined, visually wonderful: erotic, hilarious and internally consistent. The sort of film, in fact, which is the whole point of Cannes. It immerses you in a complete created world.

Ovid is mulched in with Hansel, Gretel, the Beauty, the Beast, the Prince, the Pauper, in no real order. At times, Garrone seemed to have taken inspiration from Michelangelo Antonioni’s own fabular tale The Mystery of Oberwald – at others, it felt like he had deeply inhaled the strange and unwholesome odour still emanating from Walerian Borowczyk’s Immoral Tales. But there’s also a bit of John Boorman’s Excalibur, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Blackadder, The Company of Wolves, the Tenniel illustrations for Alice in Wonderland… and Shrek.

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Cannes already has a standout movie: the horrific new Renaissance fairytale from Gomorrah director Matteo Garrone. Features scenes of flea-petting, heart-eating and a right royal hag-shagger

Matteo Garrone’s Tale of Tales is fabulous in every sense: a freaky portmanteau film based on the folk myths collected and published by the 16th-century Neapolitan poet and scholar Giambattista Basile – Garrone worked on the adaptation with Edoardo Albinati, Ugo Chiti and Massimo Gaudioso.

It is gloriously mad, rigorously imagined, visually wonderful: erotic, hilarious and internally consistent. The sort of film, in fact, which is the whole point of Cannes. It immerses you in a complete created world.

Ovid is mulched in with Hansel, Gretel, the Beauty, the Beast, the Prince, the Pauper, in no real order. At times, Garrone seemed to have taken inspiration from Michelangelo Antonioni’s own fabular tale The Mystery of Oberwald – at others, it felt like he had...

Fitzgibbon, Sitaru, Vicari, Huddles, Runarsson and van Geffen will be at Les Arcs this December.

Ireland’s Ian Fitzgibbon, Romania’s Adrian Sitaru, Iceland’s Runar Runarsson (pictured), Italy’s Daniele Vicari and America’s John Huddles are among the directors who will be presenting their new projects at the Les Arcs Co-production village this year.

The event, which runs Dec 14-17 within France’s alpine, Sundance-style Les Arcs European Film Festival (Dec 14-21), unveiled the production line-up on Thursday as well as the productions that will be presented in the Works in Progress section on Dec 15.

This year’s co-pro selection mixes upcoming productions from established independent filmmakers with a slew of projects from feted shorts directors who are embarking on their first features.

“We pretty proud of this year’s line-up. There’s a lot of projects I would be seriously looking at if I were going to Les Arcs in a professional capacity rather...

Fitzgibbon, Sitaru, Vicari, Huddles, Runarsson and van Geffen will be at Les Arcs this December.

Ireland’s Ian Fitzgibbon, Romania’s Adrian Sitaru, Iceland’s Runar Runarsson (pictured), Italy’s Daniele Vicari and America’s John Huddles are among the directors who will be presenting their new projects at the Les Arcs Co-production village this year.

The event, which runs Dec 14-17 within France’s alpine, Sundance-style Les Arcs European Film Festival (Dec 14-21), unveiled the production line-up on Thursday as well as the productions that will be presented in the Works in Progress section on Dec 15.

This year’s co-pro selection mixes upcoming productions from established independent filmmakers with a slew of projects from feted shorts directors who are embarking on their first features.

“We pretty proud of this year’s line-up. There’s a lot of projects I would be seriously looking at if I were going to Les Arcs in a professional capacity rather...

Fitzgibbon, Sitaru, Vicari, Huddles, Runarsson and van Geffen will be at Les Arcs this December.

Ireland’s Ian Fitzgibbon, Romania’s Adrian Sitaru, Iceland’s Runar Runarsson (pictured), Italy’s Daniele Vicari and America’s John Huddles are among the directors who will be presenting their new projects at the Les Arcs Co-production village this year.

The event, which runs Dec 14-17 within France’s alpine, Sundance-style Les Arcs European Film Festival (Dec 14-21), unveiled the production line-up on Thursday as well as the productions that will be presented in the Works in Progress section on Dec 15.

This year’s co-pro selection mixes upcoming productions from established independent filmmakers with a slew of projects from feted shorts directors who are embarking on their first features.

“We pretty proud of this year’s line-up. There’s a lot of projects I would be seriously looking at if I were going to Les Arcs in a professional capacity rather...

Chicago – Like Sebastián Silva’s equally mesmerizing and maddening “Magic Magic,” Matteo Garrone’s “Reality” explores a psyche as it slowly unravels, obscuring the line between truth and fiction until it becomes hopelessly blurred. In fact, both filmmakers utilize a similar technique in portraying their heros’ delusions by occupying their peripheral vision with eerie apparitions.

This might make “Reality” sound like a horror film, but it’s actually a Felliniesque comedy—at least for its first act. A surprising portion of the film’s running time is devoted to detailing the modest life of Luciano (Aniello Arena), a fishmonger with an adoring wife (Loredana Paone) and family who harbors an exuberant love of performance. We first see him greeting a Reality TV show star, Enzo (Raffaele Ferrante), in full drag, playing the role of a smitten ex. Though the faces of his surrounding audience are delighted, the scene straddles the line between amusing and squirm-inducing.

Title: Reality Oscilloscope Laboratories Director: Matteo Garrone Screenwriter: Maurizio Braucci, Ugo Chiti, Matteo Garrone, Massimo Gaudioso Cast: Aniello Arena, Loredana Simioli, Raffaele Ferrante, Nando Paone Screened at: Review 1, NYC, 3/7/13 Opens: March 15, 2013 Most people will turn their heads even in New York if Robert De Niro, Al Pacino or Tom Cruise passed by on the street. Americans, like people the world over, are attracted by celebrity, particularly since here in the U.S. more people have TVs than bathtubs. We’re all an audience. But how many people seriously think that they can themselves become famous, so much so that people will turn their heads when they walk down [ Read More ]

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