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Das Filmfest München hat jetzt die Jurymitglieder für seine von 28. Juni bis 7. Juli stattfindende 41. Ausgabe bekannt gegeben.

Die Jurymitglieder des Filmfest München (Credit: Filmfest München)

Die Jurymitglieder für das 41. Filmfest München (28. Juni bis 7. Juli) stehen fest.

Wettbewerb CineCoPro für internationale Koproduktionen mit deutscher Beteiligung (dotiert mit 100.000 Euro)

• Baran bo Odar (Regisseur und Drehbuchautor)

• Leonie Benesch (Schauspielerin)

• Sol Bondy (Produzent)

Wettbewerb CineMasters für internationale Filme (dotiert mit 50.000 Euro)

• Marie-Lou Sellem (Schauspielerin)

• Moritz Peters

• Rajendra Roy (Chief Curator of Film, Museum of Modern Art, New York)

Wettbewerb CineVision für den besten internationalen Debütfilm (dotiert mit 15.000 Euro)

• Bob Byington (Regisseur und Drehbuchautor)

• Maksym Nakonechnyi (Regisseur)

• Sarah Blaßkiewitz(Regisseurin und Drehbuchautorin)

Wettbewerb CineRebels für „Formatsprenger und Filmabenteurer“ (dotiert mit 15.000 Euro)

• Mia Bays(Direktorin des Filmmaking Fund beim British Film Institute)

• Nicolas Wackerbarth (Filmemacher und Autor)

• Dale Dickey (Schauspielerin)

Wettbewerb CineKindl für eine herausragende Regiearbeit im CineKindl-Programm

• Barbara Kronenberg (Regisseurin und Drehbuchautorin)

• Philipp Budweg (Produzent)

• Jytte-Merle Böhrnsen (Schauspielerin,...

Debut fiction features by Romania’s Cristian Pascariu, Ukraine’s Valeria Sochyvets and Turkey’s Alkim Özmen are among 10 projects selected for Transilvania Pitch Stop (Tps) on June 20-21.

The international co-production platform takes place during the Transilvania International Film Festival in Cluj, Romania, and is part of the industry strand Ro Days.

Titles selected include Cristian Pascariu’s A Flower Is Not A Flower about an 11-year-old girl Ana who escapes from a communist Romanian orphanage into the sewers of Bucharest where she has to use her ingenuity to survive. It is a Romanian-Latvia co-production between Point Film and Riga-based Air Productions.

In her first media interview published ahead of the world premiere of her debut feature “Fragments of Ice” at Swiss documentary film festival Visions du Réel, Ukrainian director Maria Stoianova tells Variety how her film’s intention shifted after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Based entirely on archival footage shot on a camcorder by her father, a figure skater in former Soviet Ukraine, the film is voiced by the director, who was born in 1986 and takes the viewer back to the mid 80s and early 90s through her family’s story, as they experience the dissolution of the Soviet Union and of their dreams of a Western paradise.

Variety debuts the film’s trailer below.

Stoianova started editing in 2021, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Her father, she explains in the voice-over, filmed enthusiastically during his foreign tours with the Ukrainian Ensemble Ballet on Ice as well as moments spent with his family,...

Butterfly Vision producer Darya Bassel and Call Me By Your Name executive producer Naima Abed are among 17 independent producers selected for Ace Animation Special, the animation business programme of European network Ace Producers.

The 17 producers will take part in the workshop from March 19-24 in Dingle, Ireland, in collaboration with the Animation Dingle festival.

Scroll down for the full list of producers

Now in its fifth edition, the workshop aims to show how to diversify business by developing and producing feature and series animation productions, for theatrical, broadcast and streaming release.

Producers will attend with animated features and series projects in early development,...

Filmmaker Mohammed Almughanni’s project Son of the Streets, about a Palestinian child living in a refugee camp in Beirut, has been awarded Best Pitch at the IDFA Forum Awards. The world’s largest documentary film festival presented two additional prizes on Wednesday, including the IDFA Forum Award for Best Rough Cut to Coexistence, My Ass!, and the DocLab Forum Award to Turbulence. Each of the winners receives a cash prize of €1,500.

The logline for Almughanni’s film reads, “Against all odds, a stateless Palestinian child in a Beirut refugee camp embarks on a courageous journey for recognition, education, and a brighter future in Son of the Streets.” The project is listed as a co-production of Poland and Palestine. Almughanni was born in Gaza and studied cinema at the renowned Łódź Film School in Poland.

In a statement about the awards, Best Pitch jurors Zdeněk Blaha and Nada Riyadh explained...

Mohammed Almughanni’s film about a boy coming of age in a Beirut refugee camp won the €1,500 cash prize.

Mohammed Almughanni’s Son Of The Streets has won the IDFA Forum award for best pitch, including a €1,500 cash prize, at the co-production and co-financing market of International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) today, November 15.

A co-production between Palestine and Poland, the film follows a stateless Palestinian boy in a Beirut refugee camp who is coming of age while trying to also get documented. It is produced by Glib Lukianets.

“To be a jury at the Forum means seeing lots of great,...

Amber Fares’ “Coexistence, My Ass!” took home the prize for Best Rough Cut during the awards ceremony for Forum, the industry section of documentary film festival IDFA, on Wednesday. Mohammed Almughanni’s “Son of the Streets” won the award for Best Pitch, and the DocLab award went to “Turbulence” by Ben Joseph Andrews and Emma Roberts.

“Militantropos,” created by a collective of Maksym Nakonechnyi, Yelizaveta Smith, Alina Gorlova and Simon Mozgovyi, received the Rough Cut Award Honorable Mention.

The festival’s head of industry office Adriek van Nieuwenhuyzen opened the ceremony by underscoring the need for dialogue. “I hope when you go home, you leave what we like to call the hope for documentary in good spirits, and that you feel that you have been listened to and that we have had good conversations. I know times are not easy, but I hope you can continue speaking, listening and trying...

The Rough Cut Presentations section has expanded, including five additional projects from Ukraine.

IDFA Forum (November 12-15), the co-production and co-financing market of International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), has selected its 2023 edition titles, with the likes of Aboozar Amini, Asmae El Moudir and Michael Madsen returning with their latest projects to Forum Pitch, while the Rough Cut Presentations section has expanded.

Afghanistan-born, Netherlands-based filmmaker Amini’s Kabul, City In The Wind screened at IDFA in 2018, and is now pitching Kabul, Year Zero, which threads together four vivid coming-of-age stories against the backdrop of war.

After presenting The Postcard at IDFA...

Celebrating its tenth anniversary as part of the industry program of the Transilvania Film Festival, the Transilvania Pitch Stop — one of the leading co-production and co-financing platforms for filmmakers from Eastern Europe, the Balkans and the wider Black Sea region — will showcase 10 projects by first- and second-time directors searching for potential European partners on June 15 in the historic medieval city of Cluj.

The selection, which includes projects from eight countries, is a diverse crop that ranges from intimate personal dramas to stories casting a wider net, capturing their protagonists in the throes of historical forces.

“They are very different this year,” said Dumitrana Lupu, who took over as TIFF’s head of industry in 2022. “We have genre. We have mystery. We have some magical realism.”

For the first time, the organizers selected a documentary to pitch during Tps — “Second Line,” Ukrainian director-producer Olga Stuga’s chronicle of life since the...

Butterfly Vision Photo: Wild Bunch Cannes is now in full swing with cinephiles eagerly awaiting news of this year's batch of heavy hitters, from the likes of Martin Scorsese and Wes Anderson. For those who aren't there, the good news is that many of the great films from last year are available now to stream in the UK - here's a handful you can catch at home.

Butterfly Vision, Mubi

Ukrainian filmmakers have spent the past 12 months in the spotlight, with both fiction features and documentaries making their presence felt globally. Maksym Nakonechnyi's impressive drama about a former prisoner of war was among the best. It follows drone operator Lilya (Rita Burkovska) as she returns from Russian captivity and attempts to adjust back to her old life. Nakonechnyi marries Lilya's experience - with her Ptsd represented by glitches in the film - to the pressure cooker of a news cycle and ever-opinionated social media.

The ongoing Russia-Ukraine war and the momentous burst of rebellion against the Iranian regime prompted by the death of Mahsa Amini are reverberating profoundly at the Cannes Film Festival.

At the festival’s opening ceremony on Tuesday night, legendary French actress Catherine Deneuve paid tribute to the war’s victims by reciting a poem from Ukrainian poet Lessia Oukraïnka, solemnly declaring: “I no longer have either happiness or freedom, only one hope remains to me: to return one day to my beautiful Ukraine.” One year ago, Cannes got off to an emotional start with remarks from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

On the industry side, official Russian delegations and companies with ties to the government are again banned from participating in the Cannes Marché du Film. And Iran’s Farabi Film Foundation, the top national film entity which has been attending the market for years, has not been allowed to book a stand,...

This film offers an unsparing view of how PoWs are treated when they return home – but it may not reflect the current mood

Ukrainian film-maker Maksym Nakonechnyi finished war drama Butterfly Vision last February, just days before the Russian invasion. His film tells a fictional story about a shellshocked female Ukrainian soldier held prisoner for two months by Russian-backed separatists in Donbas during the conflict that began in 2014. It’s a tough, unsparing movie, and possibly not the Ukrainian film that anyone wants to watch right now as the country fights for survival. Nakonechnyi’s reflective script, co-written with Iryna Tsilyk, doesn’t have Russia in its crosshairs; instead there are some inconveniently downbeat insights into the divided attitudes the soldier faces when she returns home.

The soldier’s name is Lilya (Rita Burkovska), nicknamed “Butterfly”, an aerial reconnaissance expert who is released in a prisoner swap. We watch her...

Coming Home: Nakonechnyi Explores Collateral Damage in Prescient Drama

While the near decade long conflict between Russian and Ukraine has spilled into full-blown war, a handful of directors have explored the significantly intense ripple effects which defined the era and documented the events leading up to it. Whether it’s the prolific output of Sergei Loznitsa, or last year’s Reflection from Valentyn Vasyanovych and Loup Bureau’s documentary Trenches, the struggle in the Donbas region has been an omnipresent reality, revisited as a straightforward but utterly prescient melodrama from Maksym Nakonechnyi with his directorial debut, Butterfly Vision. A female drone soldier nabbed by Russian separatists at last returns home during one of the customary prisoner exchanges between sides, pregnant by rape and numbed by the additional trauma triggered by her return.…...

31 doc projects took part in VdR-Industry.

Visions du Réel has unveiled the winning documentary projects that took part in its annual industry programme.

Headed for the first time by Sophie Bourdon, VdR-Industry hosted 1,600 professionals from nearly 80 countries, a similar number to the record 2022 edition. The programme comprised 31 documentary projects from 32 countries.

Scroll down for full list of winners

The vision sud est Jury award, worth Chf 10,000 in cash, for the best project from the South or from Eastern Europe (excluding EU members) went to The Days I Would Like to Forget, an observational doc about the Russia and Ukraine conflict,...

“The Days I Would Like to Forget” by Ukrainian film collective Tabor, which picked up the top industry award at international documentary festival Visions du Réel, is a trilogy project that examines the consequences of war.

It is directed by Alina Gorlova, Maksym Nakonechnyi, Simon Mozgovyi and Yelizaveta Smith, who have been working together and documenting the war in their country for close to a decade.

The project is divided into three 70-minute chapters: “Human & War,” which examines the impact of war on everyday life, “Death & Life,” which focuses on the perception of death during the Russian-Ukrainian war, and “Space & Time,” which investigates the link between the war in Ukraine and other parts of the world.

Gorlova, who was in Nyon to pick up the award together with producer Eugene Rachkovsky, told Variety how all four directors started filming the war in the immediate aftermath of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia on Feb.

A group of Ukrainian filmmakers have won the top industry award at Swiss international documentary film festival Visions du Réel with their project “The Days I Would Like to Forget,” divided into three chapters, each of which will explore a different phenomenon of war.

Filmmakers Alina Gorlova, Maksym Nakonechnyi, Simon Mozgovyi and Yelizaveta Smith of independent Ukrainian production company Tabor were awarded the Vision du Sud Est prize, handed out to the best project from the South or Eastern Europe.

Running alongside Visions du Réel, the festival’s industry event brought together some 1,600 professionals from nearly 80 countries, in line with last year’s record numbers.

A total of 31 projects were presented in the key forums – VdR–Pitching, VdR–Work in Progress (Wip) and VdR–Rough Cut Lab, alongside the VdR–Development Lab – that run April 24 through April 27 in Nyon, Switzerland.

Representing her colleague filmmakers who are shooting in Ukraine, Gorlova...

Mubi has announced its lineup of streaming offerings for next month, including a Béla Tarr double bill, with new 4K restorations of Damnation and Sátántangó, Léa Mysius’ The Five Devils, Radu Jude’s short The Potemkinists, and Kira Kovalenko’s Unclenching the Fists.

They will also present a series on past Cannes Film Festival selections with films by Abderrahmane Sissako, Alice Rohrwacher, Djibril Diop Mambéty, Jeremy Saulnier, and more. Ana Vaz’s The Age of Stone and most recent work It is Night in America will arrive on the service, plus a Merchant Ivory series.

Check out the lineup below and get 30 days free here.

May 1 – Blind Spot, directed by Claudia von Alemann | What Sets Us Free? German Feminist Cinema

May 2 – Heat and Dust, directed by James Ivory | Gilded Passions: Films by Merchant Ivory

May 3 – Damnation, directed by Béla Tarr | Béla Tarr: A Double Bill

May 4 – The Bostonians, directed by...

Iryna Tsilyk’s documentary offers a female perspective on the war in Ukraine.

Iryna Tsilyk’s Red Zone received a special €20,000 Eurimages development award at Cph:dox, as part of the Cph:Forum industry winners on March 23.

The first-time award was given in support of and solidarity with the Ukrainian film industry, to the best pitch by a Ukrainian film.

It was selected by jurors Emma Scott, head of distribution and short film production at Screen Ireland, plus producers Rikke Tambo Andersen of Tambo Film and Heino Deckert Makri of ma.je.de.

The jurors praised an “innovative look at the inner...

Edition runs April 23-27.

Swiss documentary festival Visions du Réel has unveiled the industry projects to be pitched and presented at its 2023 edition, taking place April 23-27.

This year’s selection includes Latvian filmmaker Laila Pakalnina whose new project Cat On My Mind will participate in VdR-Pitching. Pakalnina’s Ausma (2015) and In The Mirror (2020) played in competition at the Blak Nights Tallinn International Film festival while her shorts have screened at Berlin and Cannes.

Also participating in VdR-Pitching is Italy-us filmmaker Mo Scarpelli with her new project Faith about two young girls who live together in an abandoned classroom. Her...

Rita Moreno, Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Sally Field star in ’80 For Brady’ from Paramount Pictures.

The world premiere of 80 for Brady starring Jane Fonda, Sally Field, Rita Moreno, and Lily Tomlin will open the 34th Annual Palm Springs International Festival on Friday, January 6, 2023, and The Lost King from director Stephen Frears will close the festival on Sunday, January 15th. In between, Psiff will screen 132 films including the world premiere of the documentary Shot in the Arm.

“We are beyond excited to welcome back our beloved audience and filmmakers in Palm Springs. We’re especially thrilled to be joined by all four leads of 80 For Brady. The film is brimming with joy and heart, and it’s a perfect film to kick off our 34th edition,” said Artistic Director Lili Rodriguez. “Our programmers have dedicated almost a year to scouting the world for the films that make up this edition.

Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical, coming-of-age drama The Fabelmans has been announced as the opening film of 44th Cairo International Film Festival, running from November 13 to 22.

This year’s edition of the historic Egyptian festival will unfold under the direction of a new management team following the departure of former head Mohamed Hefzy in March.

Veteran actor Hussein Fahmy returns as president at the festival, a role he held in the past, while respected Egyptian film programmer Amir Ramses has taken up the baton of artistic director.

This year’s main International Competition features Ahmad Abdalla’s 19B (Egypt), Firas Khoury’s Alam (Palestine), Nicolas’s Giraud’s The Astronaut (France), Pierre Földes’s Blind Willow Sleeping Woman (France), Damian Kocur’s Bread And Salt (Poland), Maksym Nakonechnyi’s Butterfly Vision (Ukraine), Ali Cherri’s The Dam, Ivan Löwenberg’s I Don’t Want To Be Dust (Mexico), Ridha Behi...

Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans” will open the 44th edition of the Cairo Film Festival, the Arab world’s venerable cinematic showcase, which takes place Nov. 13 – 22.

The Oscar-winning director’s semi-autobiographical film, which follows the formative years of a young man who discovers movies as a means to help him see the truth about others and himself, earned a standing ovation following its premiere at the Toronto Film Festival.

This year’s event in the Egyptian capital, which takes place as most film festivals and industry events have returned to business as usual after two years of pandemic cancellations and disruptions, nevertheless unfolds against a backdrop of global uncertainty.

Festival president Hussein Fahmy conjured the specter of war in Ukraine as he described a “year of ambitions and challenges” in a statement, posing the questions: “Where do we go from here? How can the festival take new steps, in particular,...

The Egyptian festival runs November 13-22.

The Cairo International Film Festival has unveiled the line-up for its 44th edition.

Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans will open the festival following its world premiere at Toronto where it picked up the people’s choice award.

Scroll down for full line-up

Ciff’s international competition section contains 14 titles, including five world premieres.

Egyptian director Ahmad Abdalla’s 19B is one of the world premieres competing for the Golden Pyramid for best film. It follows an old guard whose peaceful job of watching over an abandoned villa is threatened when a young park attendant turns up.

Butterfly Vision Photo: Wild Bunch

Butterfly Vision, London Film Festival, BFI player, from October 14 to 23

Before we get to the telly, here's a bit of streaming stuff. If there was one positive thing to come out of Covid it was film festival's stretching their wings a bit to let audiences who don't live in the city where a festival is being held still watch some of the films online. The BFI Player currently has a selection that includes this timely Ukrainian film that considers the Ptsd of a former prisoner of war as she tries to rebuild her life. Rita Burkovska is compelling in the central role of Lilya and writer/director Maksym Nakonechnyi avoids any voyeurism of her brutal experience as a captive, letting it bleed into her reality instead by way of glitchy flashbacks that suddenly pixelate the image and prove as unsettling to the viewer as the protagonist.

National competition held in Hamburg due to the war in Ukraine; fest plans to hold international competition in Kyiv later this month.

Films by Ukrainian directors Kateryna Gornostai and Nikon Romachenko were the two national competition prize-winners at this year’s Kyiv’s Molodist International Film Festival.

Due to the war in Ukraine, Molodist was held as “festival within a festival” at Filmfest Hamburg from September 30 to October 5.

Gornostai’s Stop-Zemlia named best feature film at an awards ceremony on Wednesday evening, winning the Scythian Deer Statuette and a cash prize of 3,000.

A coming-of-age drama, Stop-Zemlia had its world premiere...

13 projects in development and six works in progress to be presented at festival’s co-production market.

New films from the Czech Republic’s Beata Parkanová and Slovenian director Martin Turk are among the projects in development and works in progress being presented at the 24th edition of the East-West co-production market Connecting Cottbus (coco), which takes place from November 9-11 during Germany’s FilmFestival Cottbus.

Parkanová’s feature project Black Blood, produced by Ondrej Zach of Prague-based Ozet Film, sees her returning to Cottbus after presenting her previous feature The Word as a work in progress at last year’s Connecting Cottbus.

New German titles, festival favourites and a Ukrainian competition,

Ruben Östlund’s Palme d’Or winner Triangle Of Sadness heads the festival favourites that will screen at the 30th anniversary edition of Filmfest Hamburg later this month.

It will be joined by Cannes title Cristian Mungiu’s R.M.N., as well as local Hamburg filmmaker Helena Wittmann’s Human Flowers Of Flesh , Kilian Riedhof’s You Will Not Have My Hate and Ann Oren’s Piaffe, which all premiered at Locarno, and Venice titles Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees Of Inisherin, Jafar Panahi’s No Bears, Houman Seyedi’s World War III,...

The first 30 titles in the running for the EFAs have been announced.

The first 30 titles in the running for the 2022 European Film Awards have been revealed with a second wave of titles due to be announced in September.

Scroll down for first selection of films

The titles include Ruben Östlund’s Palme d’Or winner Triangle Of Sadness, Carla Simón’s Berlinale Golden Bear winner Alcarras and Kenneth Branagh’s Oscar-winner Belfast. Also selected is Colm Bairéad’s The Quiet Girl, which is Ireland’s submission for the best international feature Oscar.

Further Cannes award winners to make the first...

Wild Bunch racks up deals for territories including UK, France and Japan.

Ukrainian director Maksym Nakonechnyi’s critically praised debut dramatic feature Butterfly Vision has racked up a number of eyecatching sales through Wild Bunch International.

The film, a harrowing drama about a woman returning home from the Ukrainian frontline who discovers she is pregnant, is screening in Sarajevo’s In Focus Programme this week following its world premiere in Un Certain Regard in Cannes in May.

Deals confirmed by Wild Bunch’s head of international sales Eva Diederix include France through Nour Films (releasing October 12) and the UK through Mubi.

The buzzy regional event attrracted festival programmers from Cannes, Berlin and around the world.

Croatian director Sonja Tarokić’s debut feature The Staffroom was the big winner at the 69th edition of the Pula Film Festival when it received nine awards at the closing ceremony at the weekend in the port’s 2,000 year-old Roman amphitheatre.

The Croatian Programme Jury, headed by Austrian director Stefan Ruzowitzky, presented the film with the festival’s main award, the Grand Golden Arena for best festival film, as well as Golden Arenas for best director, best actor for Stojan Matavulj , best supporting actress, and best editing.

While Ukrainian filmmakers have called out international festivals such as Cannes and Karlovy Vary for the inclusion of Russian titles in their lineups, Liev Schreiber, who has Ukrainian roots stemming from his maternal grandfather, admits he “struggles” with the idea of boycotting art of any kind.

“I struggle with the idea of boycotting any kind of art or expression,” Schreiber told journalists at a press conference at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival on Saturday. “Having said that, the reason that I believe, and everyone always asked me why I think Ukraine is going to win, is because I believe that they are going to come out of this eventually on the right side of history. And I believe that because they have the truth on their side.”

Schreiber, who was in town to discuss his initiative BlueCheck Ukraine, stressed that what is most in play right now is truth in the media,...

Festival organisers respond to critical open letter from Ukrainian filmmakers.

Karlovy Vary International Film Festival has refused to withdraw a state-backed Russian film from its upcoming edition despite an open letter of protest from a group of Ukrainian directors.

The festival in the Czech Republic is set to screen Stalin-era drama Captain Volkonogov Escaped on July 1 as part of its Horizons strand. Directed by Natasha Merlulova and Aleksey Chupov, the film premiered in competition at Venice last year and its production received support from the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation.

Kviff has previously denounced Russia’s invasion of...

Festival organisers respond to critical open letter from Ukrainian filmmakers.

Karlovy Vary International Film Festival has refused to withdraw a state-backed Russian film from its upcoming edition despite an open letter of protest from a group of Ukrainian directors.

The festival in the Czech Republic is set to screen Stalin-era drama Captain Volkonogov Escaped on July 1 as part of its Horizons strand. Directed by Natasha Merlulova and Aleksey Chupov, the film premiered in competition at Venice last year and its production received support from the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation.

Kviff has previously denounced Russia’s invasion of...

Several leading Ukrainian filmmakers have called out the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival for including a Russian film in its 56th edition, which kicks off on Friday, insisting that it’s reneged on a promise not to welcome any movies with ties to the Russian government.

In a letter addressed to artistic director Karel Och and festival leadership that was shared with Variety, the filmmakers behind Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk’s “Pamfir,” Maksym Nakonechnyi’s “Butterfly Vision” and Valentyn Vasyanovych’s “Reflection,” criticized the long-running Czech festival for including “Captain Volkonogov Escaped,” by directors Natasha Merkulova and Aleksey Chupov, in its Horizons sidebar.

The film, which had its world premiere in competition at the Venice Film Festival last year, received backing from the Russian culture ministry.

“Screening any film that was financially supported by the Russian Ministry of Culture in the midst of war will whitewash Putin’s regime and make it stronger,...

Ten projects by first- and second-time directors searching for European partners took the stage this week during the Transilvania Pitch Stop, one of the leading co-production and co-financing platforms for filmmakers from Eastern Europe, the Balkans and the wider Black Sea region.

The forum’s ninth edition reflects a generation of up-and-coming filmmakers looking to find their voice through deeply personal storytelling, according to Dumitrana Lupu, who recently took over as the Transilvania Film Festival’s head of industry. “People are really writing about their personal experiences,” she told Variety.

Five of the projects received a tailored script consultation from veteran script editor and film consultant Christian Routh, while all of the filmmaking teams were coached by consultant and producer Agathe Berman ahead of their pitch on June 23 to a gathering of producers, sales agents, festival programmers and other industry guests.

Launched in 2014 as a five-day workshop for first- and...

All the People I’ll Never Be – Davy Chou [Review]

The Blue Caftan – Maryam Touzani

Burning Days – Emin Alper

Butterfly Vision – Maksym Nakonechnyi

Corsage – Marie Kreutzer [Review]

Domingo and the Mist – Ariel Escalante Meza

Father & Soldier – Mathieu Vadepied

Godland – Hlynur Pálmason [Review]

Harka – Lotfy Nathan [Review]

Joyland – Saim Sadiq

Les Pires – Lise Akoka, Romane Gueret [Review] [Interview]

Mediterranean Fever – Maha Haj

Metronom – Alexandru Belc [Review]

Plus que jamais – Emily Atef [Review]

Plan 75 – Chie Hayakawa [Review]

Rodéo – Lola Quivoron [Review]

Sick of Myself – Kristoffer Borgli [Review]

The Silent Twins – Agnieszka Smoczyńska [Review]

The Stranger – Thomas M.…...

When Dumitrana Lupu took over as the head of the Transilvania Film Festival’s industry program earlier this year, she was tasked with a two-fold mission of continuing to discover and boost emerging talents from the host country, as well as ensuring that the Romanian festival remains a vital meeting place for filmmakers from Southeastern Europe and the surrounding region.

To do so, she and the organizing team revamped some of TIFF’s industry sections while ensuring that long-running programs provide continuity for a festival that unspools its 21st edition from June 17 – 26.

With a focus on the Black Sea region and its neighboring countries, the Transilvania Pitch Stop has emerged as one of the leading co-production and co-financing platforms for the region’s filmmakers. Among the films supported by the Tps since its inception in 2014 include “Apples,” by Greece’s Christos Nikou, which opened the Horizons sidebar of the Venice...

Festival has programmed 120 films from 52 countries

The Munich Film Festival (June 23 – July 2) is showcasing many of the highlights from last month’s Cannes Film Festival when it returns with a full programme of features for the first time since 2019.

Munich pivoted online in 2020 due to the pandemic, and programmed a reduced number of films in 2021, mainly in open-air locations.

Munich is opening this year with Marie Kreutzer’s Corsage, which saw Vicky Krieps win the Un Certain Regard best performance award for her portrayal of Empress Elisabeth of Austria.

Corsage will play in Munich’s main Cinemasters Competition, alongside Cannes...

Festival has programmed 120 films from 52 countries

The Munich Film Festival (June 23 – July 2) is showcasing many of the highlights from last month’s Cannes Film Festival when it returns with a full programme of features for the first time since 2019.

Munich pivoted online in 2020 due to the pandemic, and programmed a reduced number of films in 2021, mainly in open-air locations.

Munich is opening this year with Marie Kreutzer’s Corsage, which saw Vicky Krieps win the Un Certain Regard best performance award for her portrayal of Empress Elisabeth of Austria.

Corsage will play in Munich’s main Cinemasters Competition, alongside Cannes...

Click here to read the full article.

The Munich International Film Festival unveiled its 2022 lineup Thursday, announcing a program featuring some of the most acclaimed movies from Cannes last month, including award winners Broker, War Pony, The Eight Mountains and Mariupolis 2.

Hirokazu Koreeda’s Broker, which won the best actor honor in Cannes for star Song Kang-ho, will screen in Munich’s CineMasters competition section, alongside The Eight Mountains, which took Cannes’ jury prize for co-directors Charlotte Vandermeersch and Felix Van Groeningen.

Gina Gammell and Riley Keough’s War Pony, winner of the Cannes’ Camera d’Or for best first film, will screen in the festival’s CineVision section, alongside such Cannes favorites as Aftersun – Charlotte Wells’ debut feature starring, Normal People breakout Paul Mescal, was snatched up by A24 following its bow in Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight section — and Maksym Nakonechnyi’s Un Certain Regard title Butterfly Vision, a look...

Selection of titles come from the Black Sea countries and neighbouring territories.

International co-production platform Transilvania Pitch Stop has unveiled the 10 projects set to be showcased later this month.

The ninth edition of the programme will present the titles to potential partners and financiers on June 23, during the Transilvania International Film Festival.

The features in development are from first and second time directors from Bulgaria, Turkey, Greece, Serbia, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Hungary and Ukraine.

This year, five projects will benefit from a tailored script consulting provided by script editor and film consultant Christian Routh, while all projects will be...

It’s possible that the very first casualty of war is not truth, but nuance. Since Maksym Nakonechnyi’s grimly disturbing “Butterfly Vision” was conceived and shot, the protracted Donbas conflict during which it is set has flared into all-out war following Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. It makes the film’s inclusion in this year’s Un Certain Regard lineup an acutely timely statement. With the Cannes Film Festival, like all fests, under intense scrutiny for what its selections suggest about its political stance, this Ukrainian co-production, with its Ukrainian director, cast and crew, is certainly a boost to its anti-Russia bona fides.

But the film’s actual story — which problematizes any more obviously pertinent narrative of unblemished Ukrainian heroism — presents a far more complex picture. Its perceptive pessimism is to its credit as a film. But such a coldly self-critical assessment of the nation’s internal divisions faces an uncertain short-term future,...

Like Sundance World Dramatic Competition winner Klondike, this fiction feature debut from Maksym Nakonechnyi, which played in Un Certain Regard at Cannes, is a reminder that for many in the Donbas region of Ukraine, the conflict with Russia didn’t begin on February 24 but has been rumbling on one way or another since 2014. It also shares with Klondike a female-centric perspective and a central message about stoicism in the face of horror, societal desensitisation and the collateral damage of war.

The focus is Lilya (Rita Burkovska), a Ukrainian soldier specialising in drone aerial surveillance – nicknamed Butterfly by her comrades - who was captured and is being returned to her homeland in a prisoner swap. She is played with an outward self-control by Burkovska even as we see the visible scars she has from beatings in detention are just the beginnings of her trauma. Lilya is caught in...

Though shot and set prior to the Russian invasion, by dint of being a Ukrainian picture detailing the aftermath of a woman soldier’s assault in the Donbas, “Butterfly Vision” lays claim to uniquely wretched timeliness at this year’s Cannes. What is an impressive if formally flawed first film from Maksym Nakonechnyi earns some emotional weight vis-a-vis present events: the Ukrainian flags of blue and white, flown with unsparing pride across Nakonechnyi’s images, bear the immediate frisson of beleaguered resistance, and that women Stateside presently face unprecedented threats to their bodily autonomy only compounds the miserable resonance.

Continue reading ‘Butterfly Vision’: Maksym Nakonechnyi’s Debut Is A Relevant, Resilient Ukrainian Drama [Cannes] at The Playlist.

Afternoon Insiders, Max Goldbart here. Cannes is wrapping and we have the very latest from the Croisette, plus a hell of a lot more in this week’s deep dive. Read on.

Au Revoir, Cannes

Cautious optimism: Diana Lodderhose here, back with week two of our Cannes roundup. For most, this year’s festival will be remembered as a hopeful one, filled with optimism for the business in a post-pandemic world. In the run up to the event, a record number of packages were announced – most of which were broken here at Deadline – but deal-making is seemingly not as fast-paced as one might expect, suggesting some cautious optimism amongst buyers. Andreas Wiseman noted in his halfway temperature check of the festival that there are some record-asking prices being offered up for buyers this year, such as a German ask for Lionsgate’s Hunger Games prequel coming in at a whopping 30M.

The major prize-winners at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival have yet to be announced, but there is no question about which film is the most important. “Butterfly Vision” doesn’t just have the distinction of being one of the two Ukrainian productions on display (the other being Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk’s “Pamfir”), it also tells a story about the effects of warfare both on Ukraine’s soldiers and the citizens who have waited for them back home. It is almost incredible that Maksym Nakonechnyi was able to finish “Butterfly Vision” and to bring it to Cannes, where he made a touching speech about the risk of Ukrainian culture being extinguished. It is even stranger to see a film which is so horrifically timely.

Its heroine is Lilia (Rita Burkovska), a young drone pilot who is nicknamed Butterfly. In the opening scenes, she is handed over to the Ukrainian authorities, having been held...

Arguably the most timely film in Cannes this year, Butterfly Vision will also likely remain one of the least seen, in that it exists overwhelmingly as a marker of a very specific time and place rather than as anything many people might actually choose to watch. Presented in the Un Certain Regard sidebar, this somber and sobering document about Ukraine appears to mix verité-style dramatized scenes with television and other visual material that is never less than tremendously grim. How and by whom it might be shown in the territories where viewers would most appreciate it is unclear; depressing hardly begins to describe it.

Young local filmmaker Maksym Nakonechnyi has been very resourceful in gathering footage that starkly and upsettingly reveals the trauma of recent times; the images are of ruin and disfunction as well as of life continuing in its own fashion.

The central figure is a young aerial...

When Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began, director Maksym Nakonechnyi – whose debut feature “Butterfly Vision” world premiered in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard – was developing his next film – a comedy about flat-Earth conspiracy under the working title “The Earth Is Flat – I Flew Around It and Saw It.” But he is putting it on the backburner now, he tells Variety, because “this war has already changed everything.”

“I wanted to make something that wouldn’t be directly influenced by the war, but then I understood it would be anyway. When we studied Ukrainian literature back at school, we used to complain about all these depressing, tragic stories. Now, we are bitterly joking that our life is like this 24/7,” he says.

Instead, Nakonechnyi is shooting a documentary for dance music platform Resident Advisor about Ukrainian electronic scene, called “Ukraine Underground,” and developing a short documentary set in the Kyiv Zoo.

“Butterfly Vision...

In what is now the third protest to hit the Cannes red carpet during the festival, a group of Ukrainian filmmakers called out the Russian “genocide” in their country and challenged the world to not look away.

Filmmakers from the movie “Butterfly Vision” on Wednesday on the steps of the Grand Palais theater held a banner that read, “Russians kill Ukrainians. Do you find it offensive and disturbing to talk about this genocide?” Those involved also held up transparent squares in front of their faces that showed the online symbol of an eye with a slash through it, which on social media or the web generally warns of disturbing content that you must opt in to see. The filmmakers also wore T-shirts with the same message during their photocall ahead of the film.

“Butterfly Vision,” which premiered on Wednesday in the Un Certain Regard section and is directed by Maksym Nakonechnyi,...

With the Cannes Film Festival abuzz ahead of the world premiere of Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis,” a mournful air raid siren sounded over the Croisette on Wednesday afternoon, serving as a somber reminder that the war in Ukraine has entered its fourth brutal month.

In a solemn protest outside the Salle Debussy, just steps from where Tom Hanks, Austin Butler and other stars of the “King of Rock” biopic were set to hit the red carpet at the Grand Théâtre Lumière, the Ukrainian filmmaking team behind Un Certain Regard player “Butterfly Vision” made an impassioned plea that the world remember their country’s suffering.

Standing on the steps of the Palais as the siren wailed – a nod toward the warnings that sound across Ukraine when a Russian attack is imminent – director Maksym Nakonechnyi, producers Darya Bassel and Yelizaveta Smit, and lead actress Rita Burkovska stood side by side with nearly...