RSIFF: A Colourful Ocean of remarkable films at the Red Sea A film festival named after the Red Sea? Where is the Red Sea? Let me see…it touches Eritrea, Djibouti, Egypt and Jeddah. A film festival in Jeddah? Ok, so Jeddah is by the sea, and a good location to hold a film festival. A film festival organised in Saudi Arabia? You will be surprised. Incidentally, this was not the first edition, but the third. For me, though, it was the first. Another surprise, to an Indian, was that a c...

Mark your calendars for: Friday, February 16th, 2024 The Event Hall, Documentation Centre for Displacement, Expulsion, Reconciliation Stresemannstr. 90, 10963 Berlin. https://www.efm-berlinale.de/en/industry-sessions-ms/about/venue/venue.html ...

Red Sea International Film Festival, 2023, 01: A royal pilgrimage for film-buffs On the registration form, there was question, ‘Will you be going to the Medina pilgrimage?’ I wasn’t, so I typed, “No”. On the Saudi Airlines direct flight from Mumbai to Jeddah, the man seated behind me asked me the same question. “I could take you to Medina. It is only 480 kms from Jeddah, but at 180 kms per hour, we will take you there in no time.” Turned out th...

Techqua Ikachi, Land - mein Leben © Mano Film, Selfportrait © Maria Lassnig Stiftung / Courtesy sixpackfilm, Deda-Shvili an rame ar aris arasodes bolomde bneli © 3003 Film Production Forum     Relations & Resistance: The 2024 Forum Special    This year’s Forum Special is dedicated to films that show a stance – whether in the 1970s or 2023. Programmed around a documentary core,...

Techqua Ikachi, Land - mein Leben © Mano Film, Selfportrait © Maria Lassnig Stiftung / Courtesy sixpackfilm, Deda-Shvili an rame ar aris arasodes bolomde bneli © 3003 Film Production Forum     Relations & Resistance: The 2024 Forum Special    This year’s Forum Special is dedicated to films that show a stance – whether in the 1970s or 2023. Programmed around a documentary core,...

  left to right Berlinale Carlo Chatrian, UEFA EURO 2024 Celia Šašić, UEFA EURO 2024,  Berlinale Mariëtte Rissenbeek © Richard Hübner / Berlinale 2024   The Berlinale is taking part in the cultural programme for the 2024 European Football Championship with Berlinale Meets Fußball.   “Football is a community game underlining team spirit and capable of promoting exchange, understanding and social cohesion. This makes...

Key Visual der / of the Berlinale 2024 © Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin / Claudia Schramke, Berlin Starting in late January, at Potsdamer Platz and across the city, the Berlinale poster will build anticipation for the 74th Berlin International Film Festival, taking place from February 15 to 25, 2024.   “The attentive, open and approachable bear stands as a symbol for the intended focus of the 74th Berlinale: the festival as an open place for our audience and the film i...

Saoirse Ronan © The Outrun Panorama First Films in Panorama Confirmed: Counter Movements   ...

Saoirse Ronan © The Outrun Panorama First Films in Panorama Confirmed: Counter Movements   ...

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  Gropius Bau © Juliane Eirich 2023 The European Film Market (EFM) at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival will open its doors for seven days from February 15 to 21, 2024. Two months before the start of the festival, the stands at the two market venues Gropius Bau and Marriott Hotel are almost already fully booked. Once again, the EFM is expecting more than 11,500 market participants, exhibitors, rights holders, producers, buyers and investors to visit B...

Berlinale Talents Key Visual und Thema für 2024: „COMMON TONGUES - Speaking Out in the Language of Cinema” © Ada Favaron und Imad Gebrael     Language, common language, film language is the theme of the 22nd edition of the talent development initiative Berlinale Talents. It was long unheard of, and yet it is taken for granted today: since the 1920s, there has been sound an thus the spoken word in film alongside visual language. This opened up...

  The work is harder than you ed, the hours longer than you can fathom, the food less than desirable. Then there are the endless forgotten tasks, the emergencies requiring speedy solutions, the hand holding, the adrenalin pumping and the tears sometimes flowing. And then the magic happens. You see the audience laughing, clapping, dancing, mesmerized, and you why you are there. Because you made it happen. Happy New Year & thank you for making the magic happen! The ...

  SEE THE 2024 AGENDA HERE! Meet a few of our featured speakers Alicia Silverston is not Clueless about Marty Callner (or anything else for that matter)         Alicia Silverstone is an American actress who rose t...

Premier film festival streaming platform Entertainment Oxygen (eo), the one-stop shop for indie film festivals and filmmakers, is celebrating the new year with announcement of three new topline international festival partners - Soho London Independent Film Festival (January 25-28, 2024), Auroville Film Festival in India (January 22-28, 2024) and Utah International Film Festival (February 12-17, 2024). CEO/founder eo Apple TungFong comments, We're de...

      us for a transformative two-day event that promises to delve deep into the future of the audiovisual sector in Europe. Book your seats now and enjoy a very special rate. Discover the event This year's edition inovates as a it is intended to be highly participatory, based broadly on Design Thinking principles.  Here is a glimpse at the program (subject to evolve):    Day 1: Insightful Discussions and Expert s Engage with industr...

IFFI 54, 5: IFFILMS, In Retrospect, Part III I continue my views and mini reviews, about films I saw at IFFI 54, held in Goa, during November 20-28, 2023. Toxic An odd love story, Toxic is based on a public swimming pool as its centre-piece. Coming from the Czech Republic, and directed by Stefan Vorzacek, it is the story of a lonely executive, Tomas, who visits the pool as a form of workout, and falls in love with its enticing attendant, Esther. But the affair goes awry with the intervent...

IFFI 54, 4: FILMIFFI, In Retrospect, Part II Continuing my sharing of views and mini-reviews of films screened and seen at the 54th International Film Festival of India. The Zone of Interest We begin with The Zone of Interest, set in Auschwitz. Chronicling the life of a German Commandant, Rudolf Höss, his wife Hedwig, and five children, it shows how attached one can get to a house, garden, orchard and vegetable plot, after taking pain-staking efforts to nurture them make them really ...

IFFI 54, 03: IFFILMS, In retrospect In my last post, I talked about the Competition Films that I saw. Didn’t catch many, but you can never have enough of them. Here, I will move on to the other sections, which, too, had a mix of the very good, the good and the fair. From these, I will begin with the opening film, Catching Dust, which was described in the catalogue as a slow burner thriller. Catching Dust Slow burner it sure was, but the thrills were few and far between. The first thi...

  Last night at the Palm Springs International Film Festival Awards Meryl Streep said, "I am here for my friend Cary Mulligan. If you think of the dimension of all her characters, the emotion is always full and felt, and tucked away and hidden in reserve, her work in Maestro, it’s like the smaller tremors we get here in California..that scene in Maestro on Thanksgiving, we hardly see there faces, it’s hard to see her, but it shakes you with...

  The jury will be made up of João Pedro Rodrigues, Juliette Duret and Lluís Miñarro Five projects by renowned international filmmakers and emerging talents, have been selected for the second edition of VENTURA, the film training, development and co-production platform created by the Enfoques Cultural Association, organiser of the Play-Doc festival in Tui, Galicia. The VENTURA organisation wishes to highlight the enormous quality of the works received, as well as ...

  The meeting place for all forms of documentary   Fipadoc, the first international documentary meeting in , returns from January 19th to 27th in Biarritz for a 6th edition which opens the year and sheds light on winter and the world by sharing and celebrating all forms of documentary storytelling for all screens: from cinema, television, and series, including virtual reality, podcasts with the link to the musical creation.    The plural and unique meeting place in...

  Call for entry MBIFF 21st now open October 3, 2025 Earlybird Deadline November 14, 2025 Regular Deadline December 5, 2025 Late Deadline December 31, 2025 Extended Deadline FILMMAKERS, IT’S YOUR TIME TO SHINE! Submissions are NOW OPEN for the 21st Myrtle Beach International Film Festival, hitting the Grand 14 Theater’s massive 57ft screen April 21-25, 2026! Unleash your wildest stories, boldest docs, or heart-pounding thr...

IFFI 54, 02: IFFILMS in Competition When recalling the films you have seen, over a month ago, the 360-page catalogue is indispensable. I will refer to it, to recap the fare which I could manage to see in the seven days I spent there IFFI is usually held from November 20 to 28, in Panaji, Goa. I always arrive 1-2 days earlier, by train, and then begin watching from the inaugural film, which is the only film screened on the first day. My visit was curtailed because of the invitation from the Re...

International Film Festival of India 54, 01: Glitches galore It was inevitable. Since I had to leave for Mumbai on the 27th of November, to catch my flight to Jeddah, to attend the Red Sea International Film Festival, I had to miss the last two days of IFFI. As if this was not enough, I was unfortunate to catch only the bad to mediocre films shown at the festival. Add to that the pain in the neck arrangements for the press, under the leadership of Ms. Monideepa Mukerjee, the Director General ...