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The Helsinki International Film Festival was back for its 28th edition this year with its usual, whimsical subtitle “Love and Anarchy”. With 190 films on 12 screens from September 17 to the 27, the 11-day festival attracted over 62,000 visitors last year and saw record numbers of international guests this year.

Written by Graham Greene (possibly inspired by the adventures of his friend and double British agent Kim Philby) and directed by Carol Reed, The Third Man (1949) was a collaboration of two legendary producers: Alexander Korda and David O. Selznick.

Israeli director Nadav Lapid’s The Kindergaten Teacher won the International New Talent Award at the 17th Taipei Film Festival. The HFPA's Barbara Gasser met with the emerging director at the festival to discuss cinema, poetry and the power of recognition.

Tyrant, a new dramatic series premiering on FX is a reworking of an Israeli format (the country which has already brought us In Treatment and Homeland). A group of HFPA journalists recently traveled to Israel to visit with the production of the show.

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Ale Abreu’s The Boy and the World won the top awards at the 38th Annecy International Animation Film Festival that concluded Sunday in France. Considered the Cannes of the Animation Industry the two awards bestowed upon the Brazilian toon only underlines the strength of that country’s animation industry.

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It’s hard to believe Australian actor Heath Ledger has been gone six years but his legacy lives on with scholarship in his name that is given annually by Australians in Film. The sixth annual Australians in Film Heath Ledger Scholarship was awarded June 12th to Cody Fern.

Films Festivals in Los Angeles happen all year round, no surprise perhaps in the city that invented the movie business. Although the global festival circuit is dominated by Cannes, Venice or Toronto, and while Sundance is still the preferred forum for “indies” – in any given week there are venues right here in Los Angeles that delight film lovers with screenings of films from around the globe.

Slowly, gradually but inexorably, over the past decade, something extraordinary has been happening in Brazil : after half a century of total domination as the country’s go-to form of audio-visual entertainment, the telenovela is steadily fading, its audience in a continuous free fall. In its place, a new generation of viewers, who grew up with American series and sitcoms, from Friends to The X Files and Lost, are seeking out the local equivalent of their passions.