75th Golden Globes Anniversary

After three tries Pixar finally won a Golden Globe! It was a feat not to be repeated until 2007 when the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (and the Academy) established a new category: Best Animated Feature, which Pixar then went on to win five years in a row. Toy Story 2 was a sequel that many thought was even better than the first.

A satire of American middle-class notions of beauty and personal satisfaction, and the consecration of Kevin Spacey as a great American actor, American Beauty is the story of a sexually frustrated suburban father, directed by Sam Mendes and written by Alan Ball. It was the only Globe-winning drama in the entire 90s to not be a period piece.

Following the Golden Globe nominee Force Majeure, Swedish filmmaker Ruben Östlund presents his latest work, The Square, which was awarded the Palme d’Or at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival. The film, which also features Elisabeth Moss and Dominic West, is now competing as Sweden’s submission for the foreign-language Golden Globe Award.

Montreal might turn 350 in the minds of most Canadians, but French-Canadian director François Girard's Hochelaga, Land of Souls shows that the history of their land is much more complex than that. The opening of the film shows the aftermath of a 13th-century battle in which many Natives died.

Andrea Bocelli might be blind, but this did not prevent him from becoming one of the greatest singers in the world. His autobiographical novel The Music of Silence has now been adapted to the screen by British director Michael Radford.

The well-traveled winner of several festival awards, including the Jury Grand Prix and Best Actress prize at the 20th Shanghai International Film Festival, Iranian drama Yellow, writer-director Mostafa Taghizadeh’s debut feature, unfolds against a uniquely intense backdrop and tells a tale of friendships ripped apart. What starts off as a road trip movie, with a seemingly carefree and well-integrated mix of male and female friends seeking to pay a fond farewell to their homeland before leaving for Italy to start new jobs on a shared project, quickly detours into more fraught territory after a terrible car accident injures a young boy.

Since they joined forces for a TV movie in their native Bulgaria seven years ago, former TV reporter Kristina Grozeva and art school graduate Petar Valchanov have become one of the most formidable teams in local cinema. Their short film, Jump, was nominated for the European Film Awards, the first time it happened for that country.

Based on the best-selling novel by Cambodian author and human rights activist Loung Ung, First They Killed My Father tells the gripping story of how a young Loung and her siblings survived the deadly Khmer Rouge regime from 1975 to 1978. Told through the eyes of Ung from the ages of five to nine years old, the film depicts the indomitable spirit and devotion of her family as they struggle to stay together during the Khmer Rouge years.

Italian American director Jonas Carpignano’s A Ciambra won a Directors Fortnight prize at the Cannes Film Festival and was acquired for distribution by IFC’s Sundance Select label. It is a film steeped in the Italian neorealist tradition as well as modern documentary influenced dramas (think Andrea Arnold’s American Honey or Chloe Zhao’s The Rider, also at Cannes this year).

A movie Steven Spielberg would like to forget. For the Hollywood Foreign Press, it wasn’t a problem.