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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.

The Lobster by Greek iconoclast Yorgos Lanthimos won the Jury Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. The film, which was acquired for distribution by Alchemy, marks the latest success in the director’s singular canon of the absurd.

Australian actor Matt Levett has been named the seventh recipient of the Australians in Film Heath Ledger Scholarship, which fosters the education and career development of emerging Australian actors within the United States. The 31-year-old actor, whose credits in Australia include the popular series A Place Called Home and the recent award-winning mini-series Devil’s Playground, arrived in Los Angeles on the weekend as one of 20 finalists but didn’t find out he was the winner until he got a call from Kim Ledger, Heath’s father and Patron of the HLS endowment, late Sunday night.

Award-winning Filipino director, Brillante Mendoza, 54, is back in Cannes for the fourth time. “This is like home to me,” the University of Santo Tomas alum told us when we interviewed him at the Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP) booth at the International Village along the Boulevard de la Croissette.

One of the most talked about films at the 68th Cannes Film Festival is Pixar’s animated film, Inside Out, which is set in the mind of a young girl, where her emotions such as Joy, Anger, Fear, Sadness and Disgust run amok. The out-of-competition film is the second Pixar film to appear in Cannes.

Nordic welfare countries are complex.  They are often named as the happiest countries on Earth but there is a darker side to the coin; their people are one of the top ranked consumers of antidepressants.

The Buenos Aires International Independent Film Festival promised to surprise, reveal, awake everyone’s creativity and reinvent a love affair with the audience and the city. As a first time BAFICI attendee my love affair with the city couldn’t be reinvented but it began: The combination of the city’s European architecture and Argentine friendliness certainly stole my heart.

Child 44 the mystery-thriller based on the novel by Tom Rob Smith set in stalinist Soviet Union was abruptly pulled from release in Russia. The Daniel Espinosa film starring Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman, Noomi Rapace and Vincent Cassel, deals with the hunt for a serial killer, but the larger villain arguably is the totalitarian state which insists the murders did not take place because “murder is strictly a capitalist crime”.

The 34th Istanbul Film Festival cancelled its film competitions as well as the closing ceremony this week due to the withdrawal of more than 20 filmmakers in a protest against government censorship. The festival is a major film showcase for the region and is regularly attended by members of the HFPA.

The HFPA got a peek under the hood of the massive operation that is a James Bond production, traveling to Mexico City, the location for the elaborate opening sequence of the upcoming Spectre. As is a 007 tradition, the intricate action scene which opens the movie takes place on the backdrop of an exotic festival, in this case a Day of the Dead parade and festival in the Zocalo, the capital city’s grand central square.