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To paraphrase the Bible, "no man is a prophet in his own land. " These words could easily apply to the fate of the now world-famous, late Russian writer Sergei Dovlatov.

Kim Novak receives a special award as World Film Favorite, presented by Vincent Price, at the 14th Golden Globes, on Thursday, February 28, 1957, at the Cocoanut Grove, Ambassador Hotel.

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Shoplifters has caught much attention after being awarded the Palm d’Or in Cannes this year. After its Japanese release in June, the film has gone on to become the biggest box office among his films with a current domestic box office total of $54 million.

The Man Who Surprised Everyone is co-directed and co-scripted by husband and wife team Aleksey Chupov and Natalya Merkulova (Intimate Places, About Love, Only for Adults, Gogol, Beginning).  The directors define the film as a “parable about the resistance of the ordinary Russian man to death” and explain that it is “based on the personal memories of director Natalya Merkulova, her Siberian childhood, the village in which she grew up, the people who surrounded her, and the legends that were told in those places”.

“Outlaw King used meticulous planning, research, great story, historians; over the years of development we prepped 45 different versions of the shooting schedule – everything was watertight – but the budget was ballooning. I had to find a way to bring costs in,” says Gillian Berrie, the producer on Outlaw King who describes herself as a “wee woman” but proves gender and size have nothing to do with ingenuity and experience when it comes to bringing more bang to a budget.

Thanksgiving week in the U. S.

Two friends decide to loot Mexico’s National Museum of Anthropology and steal some of the country’s most important cultural artifacts. This is the plot of Museo, a Mexican production competing for the 2019 Golden Globe in the Foreign Language category.

With the support of her loving father, Lara, (Victor Polster) a transgender teenager, pursues her dream of becoming a professional ballerina. Assigned male at birth, Lara has to overcome more than blistered, bloody feet to realize her dream, and leads a painful trajectory, full of frustrations, as she struggles to come to terms with her more complex journey to womanhood.

Night Accident, a story of unlikely love by Temirbek Birnazarov, was awarded the Grand Prix at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival for “its simple, yet immersive story of a man who has been tortured by life’s travails.  The accident gives him a rich opportunity to lighten his being and distracts him from an even darker journey, and he seizes it with both hands,” summed up the jury.

Imagine a little mountain village in the sixties. The only TV that exists is in the parish hall next to the church.