By Moira Sullivan. The award at the 70th Venice Film Festival called the “Special Orizzonti Award for Innovative Content” went to Shahram Mokri’s Mahi Va Gorbeh (Fish and Cat). The Orrizzonti (Horizons) category features work that takes cinema into new directions. This is well exemplified by acclaimed Iranian writer-director’s amazing […]
Eastern Boys: A Venice Film Festival Review
September 12, 2013
By Moira Sullivan. Eastern Boys, directed by Robin Campillo, won best film in the 70th Venice Film Festival’s Orizzonti section. The film offers a complex and provocative narrative about a young gang of East European undocumented immigrants who plunder a middle-aged man (Olivier Rabourdin) after he tries to pick up one of […]
The 70th Venice Film Festival
September 11, 2013
By Moira Sullivan. Venice is the oldest film festival in which artistic films that abandon the safe predictability of conventional narratives are often rewarded. This year’s festival featured fifty-two world and two international premieres. The festival has expanded with a need for larger facilities, and has created a “light market” […]
66th Cannes Film Festival Day 12 – Revisiting the Palme d’Or Winner La Vie d’Adèle
May 31, 2013
By Moira Sullivan. In an unprecedented decision, the jury for the official competition of the 66th Festival de Cannes, led by President Steven Spielberg, awarded the French-Tunisian director Abdellatif Kechiche and French actresses Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos the Palme d’Or for La Vie d’Adèle – Chapitre 1 & 2 (Blue is the […]
66th Cannes Film Festival Day 11 – Michael Kohlhaas, Cinema de la Plage and the 2013 Queer Palm Award
May 29, 2013
By Moira Sullivan. Michael Kohlhaas Arnaud Des Pallière’s Michael Kohlhaas failed to engage spectators because of the slow pace and tough to chew narrative construction. The dramaturgy forced viewers to wait out the step-by-step construction of the film. For relief, most of Kohlhass is shot in the Cévennes mountains and […]
66th Cannes Film Festival Day 10 – Cannes Luncheon, Manuscripts Don’t Burn and Only Lovers Left Alive
May 28, 2013
By Moira Sullivan. Cannes Luncheon Toward the end of the festival, when the press was anxious to leave for home and needed an injection of new sites and hospitality, the mayor of Cannes, Bernard Brochand, took the opportunity to invite over 100 journalists to a luncheon in the old quarters […]
66th Cannes Film Festival Day 9 – La Belle et Le Bête and Opium
May 27, 2013
By Moira Sullivan. The remaining three days of the festival continued an ongoing feast of cinematic treasures. Salle Bunuel screened a double feature on May 24th to honor Jean Cocteau. Fifty years have gone by since his death in 1963 and the festival paid him tribute. Cocteau was a previous […]
66th Cannes Film Festival Day 8 – La Vie d’Adèle and Behind the Candelabra
May 25, 2013
By Moira Sullivan. This is truly the year of important gay themes at the festival with L’Inconnu du Lac (Stranger by the Lake)¹ by Alain Guiraudie in Un Certain Regard, destined for a top award, and now Abdellatif Kechiche’s La Vie d’Adèle (Blue Is the Warmest Color) headed for the […]
66th Cannes Film Festival Day 7 – Wakolda and We Are What We Are
May 24, 2013
By Moira Sullivan. Two films that sounded promising on Day 7 were clearly well made but lacked any compelling pull for the cineaste. Lucía Puenzo’s Wakolda, a title referring to the name of a doll, promised a powerful story, but the narrative got flattened in the making of the film. […]
15th Udine Far East Film Festival
May 23, 2013
By Moira Sullivan. The 15th Udine Far East Film Festival opened on April 19 and ran through April 27, with a great lineup of films from East Asia. Located in a small town in Italy near the Austrian border, and simply known as the Udine Festival for short, the event […]