Festivals

The irony was not lost on Alice Englert – writer, director and star of the dark comedy Bad Behaviour – that her Sydney Film Festival premiere was taking place within the same program that featured a film retrospective devoted to her mother, Jane Campion. “It does feel kind of insane,” Englert told the Sydney Morning Herald of the festival’s family affair.

Emotions were running high on the red carpet at the premiere of Banel & Adama by Ramata-Toulaye Sy. It was completely understandable.

In addition to its curated and prestigious world premieres, the Cannes Film Festival has a notoriously active marketplace, with producers and filmmakers from all over the world descending each year upon the Côte d’Azur to pitch their would-be projects and attempting to secure financing. In 1982, however, director Wim Wenders had a different aim.

The documentary feature, Freedom is Beautiful, focuses on two remarkable Kurdish Iranian asylum seekers who are musicians, artists, poets and close friends. Farhad Bandesh and Mostafa ‘Moz’ Azimitibar were also freed within a month of each other, in 2020, after each having spent eight years locked up in brutal refugee camps on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island and a Melbourne detention center run by the Australian Government.

It began with an ocean and ended with trees. The Ora! Fest’s closing night ceremony stayed in line with the entire festival’s environmental theme as awards were handed out in a variety of categories.

Cate Blanchett might be the biggest star of the Aussie drama, The New Boy, but the film’s opening night premiere for the 70th annual Sydney Film Festival (June 7-18) prompted the biggest response for its smallest stars. Blanchett, who is also a co-producer, was absent as Indigenous writer/director Warwick Thornton took to the stage at the State Theatre and gave a special nod to the eight young boys in their first film – including the young lead, Aswan Reid.

Celebrating its 12th year, (fondly referred to by organizers as the 12th season) of their beloved TV camp, the annual ATX TV Festival took place in Austin over the first weekend of June and brought eager fans and various industry figures together, all in the cause of mutual love for the small screen. The festival included engaging panels, networking events and opportunities to watch stand out shows.

The Arab films that participated in the 76th Cannes Film Festival varied in both themes and genres. They had a strong and remarkable presence throughout the competition and other programs of the festival.

Italians comprise one of the largest immigrant groups in New York City. Italian cinema is also among the most internationally awarded industries.

When Dame Helen Mirren arrived in a golf cart in the historical center of Monopoli, the charming port town in Puglia, she – unlike her colleagues who are attending the festival – had only been on a three-hour car ride to get there. Mirren loves to spend her summers in her Italian home, a 16th-century Masseria, a typical Pugliese farmhouse in Tiggiano that she and her husband, director Taylor Hackford, have spent the better part of five years restoring.