Festivals

“A shop window for the best cinema production in the world”, festival director Alberto Barbera said today as he announced the line-up for the upcoming 77th Mostra Internazionale del Cinema in Venice, the very first major film festival taking place what for many is still the midst of a pandemic. And maybe the analogy is not that far off: in the new age of virtual screenings, Zoom, and other technologies now widely used, at least the Americans will have to go window-shopping for festival films unless they are willing to quarantine themselves for 14 days prior to their attendance.

The 70th Berlin International Film Festival opened with a minute of silence for the victims of the mass shooting in the German city of Hanau. It was followed by the world premiere of, My Salinger Year by writer/director Philippe Falardeau, starring Golden Globe-winner Sigourney Weaver and Margaret Qualley - most recently seen in Fosse/Verdon, Seberg and Once Upon a Time.

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In recent years, Sundance has drawn quite a few politicians and activists to the snow-capped mountains of Park City, most notably Al Gore and Ruth Bader Ginsberg, the former a two-time producer of environmental documentaries, the latter the subject of a doc on her life. This year it was none lesser than the former First Lady, New York Senator, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who flew in from New York (on a commercial flight, not private), to promote Hillary, a four-part, four-hour documentary that will start airing on Hulu in March.

It’s that time of the year again: Hollywood and the international film industry are descending on Park City to kick off the year in movies. The weather forecast is freezing: when the high is 30F, you just know you better pack those earmuffs for a night out on Main Street.

There are not too many international film festivals, besides the big ones such as Cannes, Venice or Berlin, that attract as many big celebrities as Marrakech in Morocco. That is probably due to a long Hollywood tradition of using the country as a location for films starting with Lawrence of Arabia.

The Argentina Film Festival in Hollywood was established in 2001 but had to go dormant for a year in 2017. In 2018 it maintained a very small event due to the economic crisis in the Latin American country.

Undoubtedly one of the largest and best-endowed foreign film festivals in Los Angeles, the Israel Film Festival (November 12-26, 2019) has its formula down: two full weeks of screenings in Beverly Hills’ Ahrya Fine Arts Theater and Encino’s Laemmle Town Center 5, kicked off by a grand gala on Opening Night at the Saban Theatre. And it has worked well and consistently for 33 years now.

Once again, the Arclight Cinemas in Culver City hosted the Asian World Film Festival (AWFF), November 6-14, 2019. Now in its 5th edition, AWFF featured films from more than 50 countries from the entire Asian continent, from the Middle East to Japan, Russia to South-East Asia.