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The teaser for Fatih Akin’s “Amrum” has debuted ahead of the film’s world premiere in the Cannes Premiere section of the Cannes Film Festival. Beta Cinema is handling world sales, with Warner Bros. distributing the film in Germany and Dulac Distribution in France.

The film is set on Amrum Island, off the coast of Germany, in spring 1945. In the final days of the war, 12-year-old Nanning braves the treacherous sea to hunt seals, goes fishing at night, and works on the nearby farm to help his mother feed the family. Despite the hardship, life on the beautiful, windswept island almost feels like paradise. But when peace finally comes, it reveals a deeper threat: the enemy is far closer than he imagined.

The film is based on the childhood of German actor, writer and director Hark Bohm, who wrote the original screenplay, which was then re-written and directed by Akin.

In 1963, director Vittorio De Sica—the godfather of Italian neorealism—presented us with a cinematic masterpiece, no less remarkable than his earlier works like “Bicycle Thieves” (1948) and “Two Women” (1960). In fact, I would argue that “Il Boom” is, in many ways, a continuation of those two films. De Sica’s earlier works gave us a stark portrayal of the suffering endured by Italian citizens during and immediately after World War II. But with “Il Boom,” he chose to shift his focus: to peel back the layers of post-war prosperity and expose the false promise of economic recovery that Italy supposedly enjoyed nearly two decades after the war’s end.

Unlike his earlier somber melodramas, De Sica opts for a more vibrant tone here, crafting a sharp and perfect black comedy. And black comedy is perhaps the most suitable vehicle for mocking a reality that is superficial and deceptive. Even the...

Kino Lorber has picked up North American rights to Boris Lojkine’s Souleymane’s Story, a French drama about a bicycle deliveryman and asylum seeker in Paris, that won the jury prize at Cannes Un Certain Regard last year.

Non-professional Abou Sangare, who plays the titular lead character, Souleymane, won the Un Certain Regard best actor honor and has been universally praised for his performance, winning best acting honors at the European Film Awards and France’s Césars.

The film plays like a ticking-clock thriller as Souleymane, a Guinean immigrant, races through the streets of Paris, making food deliveries on his bicycle, struggling to stay afloat. In two days, he has to report for an asylum application interview, which will determine whether he will receive the coveted carte de séjour, which would allow him to live and work legally in France. The “story” of the film’s title refers to...

Italian filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher has been selected to preside over the Caméra d’Or jury at the 78th Cannes Film Festival, running May 13-24.

The Caméra d’Or (golden camera) is awarded to thebest first feature film in Cannes’ Official Selection, or in the parallel Critics’ Week or Directors’ Fortnight sections.

Last year’s prize went to Norwegian director Halfdan Ullmann Tøondel for his Un Certain Regard premiereArmand.

Rohrwacher is a Cannes regular whose own debut featureHeavenly Bodypremiered in Directors’ Fortnight in 2011 and her follow-up filmThe Wonderswon the Grand Prix in Competition in 2014.

Her 2018 filmHappy As Lazzaroscreened in Competition and...

Mira Shaib’s Arzé pulls its framework from the shadow of Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves (1948), but the parallels go beyond plot alone. Shaib re-contextualizes the journey of a stolen scooter, placing it firmly within the fractured landscape of modern-day Beirut.

In this sense, the film is as much a portrait of Lebanon’s internal divisions as it is a personal story of a mother’s desperation. The streets of Beirut, alive with movement and tension, act as more than just a backdrop—they embody the wounds of a nation split by sectarianism and economic instability.

Shaib’s debut feels grounded in a specific historical and cultural moment yet also speaks to a broader, almost universal reality: that survival—personal and familial—requires bending the rules, even breaking them. Arzé, a single mother striving to keep her family afloat, is pushed to extremes that are both heartbreaking and darkly comedic.

“Beijing Bicycle” was the third film by Wang Xiaoshuai, who was born in Shanghai in 1966 and originally wanted to become a painter. Awarded the Grand Jury Prize at the Berlinale in 2001, this was Wang’s first film to be “officially” shown abroad. His first film, “The Days” (1993), was a rough piece of independent cinema, made with minimal resources, and was not submitted for censorship. Without approval from the censors, it was (and is) forbidden to be shown in public. It was thanks to non-Chinese friends that “The Days” was able to be screened in the Forum at the 1994 Berlinale. In 1997, this process was repeated with “Frozen”, which was already sensitive due to its political subject matter. It premiered at the Rotterdam Festival, with the pseudonym Wu Ming (“no name”) given as the director’s name.

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“Beijing Bicycle” is notable,...

Illustrations by Michelle Perez.The inner life of man is constituted by the fact that man relates himself to his species, to his mode of being. […] He can put himself in the place of another precisely because his species, his essential mode of being—not only his individuality—is an object of thought to him. —Ludwig FeuerbachThere are only individuals. —Friedrich NietzscheThe idea of the individual haunts much of the writing on Vittorio De Sica’s films. No other critic has played a greater role in shaping how we speak about them than André Bazin, who remarked that De Sica’s postwar masterpiece Bicycle Thieves (1948) allowed its actors “first of all to exist for their own sakes, freely … loving them in their singular individuality.”1 This line has cast a long shadow over the perception of De Sica’s neorealist work and the manner in which it is mythologized. Typically described,...

The infamous cover of New York Magazine’s December 2022 issue declared that Hollywood is in the middle of a “Nepo Baby Boom,” but this is hardly restricted to the American film industry. Case in point is Christophe Honoré’s laugh-free inside-baseball satire Marcello Mio, a movie which could have been reverse-engineered from that article’s headline––“She Has Her Mother’s Eyes… and Her Agent!”––before any actor willing to play a caricature of themselves had even agreed to sign on. That thankless task is handed to Chiara Mastroianni, a prior collaborator of Honoré who you’d be forgiven for assuming, based on the overall toothlessness of the script, hadn’t met him prior to filming due to how the pair approach the subject of celebrity culture with kid gloves on each side of the camera.

This fictionalized version of Chiara is a failure who has been unable to escape the shadow of her parents,...

Every now and then, a film comes along that transcends its genre, reshaping the cinematic landscape and becoming something of a cultural phenomenon. Steven Spielberg’s Jaws is one such movie.

Released in 1975, this thriller didn’t just win audiences over; it reinvented the concept of the summer blockbuster. But its influence didn’t stop there. Jaws secured a rare spot in the hearts of filmmakers worldwide, including one of the most celebrated animators of all time, Hayao Miyazaki.

A scene from Jaws | Credits: Universal Pictures

From the pulse-pounding score that sticks to your bones to the ever-tightening noose of suspense, Jaws was a cultural earthquake, setting the stage for the blockbuster era that would follow. And then there’s that shark. It didn’t just swim into our screens—it sunk its teeth into the very heart of Hollywood, leaving a legacy that continues to send ripples through the industry.

★★★★★/★★★★★

Drawing on hardboiled US fiction, as American film had fed on his own Seven Samurai, the director brings unforgettable intensity to his anxious noir

Akira Kurosawa’s scalding 1949 cop thriller Stray Dog (★★★★★), with its extended closeup shot of a mad dog snarling into the camera over the opening credits, is about a stolen gun; as with De Sica’s stolen bicycle the year before, the resulting search leads us on a tour of the city, scene by scene into a world of poverty, cynicism and violence.

It is a gripping, drum-tight picture, a panoramic drama of crime revealed over one sweltering summer in postwar Tokyo which culminates in an ominous monsoon downpour and it stars two alpha-dogs of Japanese cinema, both stalwarts of Kurosawa. Takashi Shimura is veteran police officer Detective Sato, tolerant, good-humoured, realistic about the prospects for containing, if not eradicating crime, and Toshiro Mifune is his partner,...

Picking the best Shyam Benegal movies is an embarrassment of riches. His body of work is unprecedented for Indian cinema. My delightful dilemma was not about which ones to choose but about the ones to abandon. He interrupted Hindi film’s archetypal romance, drama, and comedy strips. Shyam Babu (as he is fondly referred to) stubbornly defied the saleable account with social pragmatism. He also spearheaded the fractures that were commencing to surface in the society due to the chaotic socio-political environment of a young nation in 1974, the year he debuted. He triggered and became the colonizer of parallel cinema in India with his path-breaking debut feature, Ankur (1974). Mr. Benegal has won seven National Awards for Best Feature Film in Hindi throughout his career!

Self-admittedly, Shyam Benegal’s style of filmmaking is heavily inspired by the works of Satyajit Ray. And if you observe closely, you could also find impressionable,...

France’s “Emilia Pérez,” Germany’s “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” and Brazil’s “I’m Still Here” have been named to the shortlist in the Oscars’ Best International Feature Film category, retaining their frontrunner status in a race that had fewer high-profile contenders than usual this year.

Other films on the list are Canada’s “Universal Language,” the Czech Republic’s “Waves,” Denmark’s “The Girl With the Needle,” Iceland’s “Touch,” Ireland’s “Kneecap,” Italy’s “Vermiglio,” Latvia’s “Flow,” Norway’s “Armand,” Palestine’s “From Ground Zero,” Senegal’s “Dahomey,” Thailand’s “How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies” and the United Kingdom’s “Santosh.”

“Flow” is the only animated film on the list, while “Dahomey” is the only documentary. The Palestinian selection, “From Ground Zero,” is the most unusual of the shortlisted films, consisting of 22 separate short films made over the last year by directors living in Gaza.

Lebanese Oscar entry “Arzé” takes its cues from Vittorio De Sica’s “Bicycle Thieves,” but maps the classic story onto modern-day Beirut. Mira Shaib’s directorial debut has the growing pains of a first feature. However, as it gradually explores its political backdrop, its drama transforms in intriguing, even exciting ways, as diligent single mother Arzé (Diamand Abou Abboud) and her angsty teenage son Kinan (Bilal Al Hamwi) travel between neighborhoods segregated by sect and class.

Before this sectarian scope emerges, “Arzé” appears relatively straightforward as a social drama. Arzé — whose husband has long since left for Europe in search of a better life — runs a bakery out of her kitchen, for which she and Kinan make deliveries by foot. They also care for Arzé’s sister Layla (Betty Taoutel), whose own husband was kidnapped some time ago, and who lives under the constant delusion that he might return any second.

Several directors of photography are in Oscar contention this year after reteaming with a director they had worked with previously. Some lensed $100 million-plus epics, while others shot films with tighter budgets. Whatever their situation, six of this year’s leading DPs gathered on Zoom in October for THR’s annual Cinematographer Roundtable to discuss their paths into the profession, their stance on VFX and the biggest challenges they faced on their projects this year.

The six roundtablists were Maria’s Ed Lachman, who previously worked with Pablo Larraín on El Conde; Gladiator II’s John Mathieson, who lensed the first movie as well as others from Ridley Scott’s filmography; Wicked’s Alice Brooks, whose collaborations with director Jon M. Chu include In the Heights; Emilia Pérez’s Paul Guilhaume, who shot Jacques Audiard’s Paris, 13th District; Dune: Part Two’s Greig Fraser, who, of course, also shot...

Silvia Pinal, an actress in Mexico’s Golden Age of cinema, has died. She was 93.

Pinal had been hospitalized earlier this month for a urinary tract infection. Mexico’s Secretary of Culture confirmed Pinal’s death.

“The Ministry of Culture of the Government of Mexico regrets the passing of leading actress Silvia Pinal,” read the statement posted on X. “With a career spanning more than six decades, she participated in more than 60 films and plays. Her legacy lives on as a fundamental pillar of cinema, theater and television in Mexico. May she rest in peace.”

Pinal was born in Guaymas, Sonora, México on September 12, 1931. She studied acting at the National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature. Pinal’s acting debut was in 1949 with the comedy Dos pesos la dejada.

Making her debut during the Golden Age of Mexican cinema, Pinal got to star opposite legendary actor Pedro Infante in La...

Clint Eastwood started his acting career in the mid-1950s with various smaller and uncredited parts in both film and TV before landing his first major TV role as Rowdy Yates in Rawhide. This part and his co-starring role for 217 episodes helped transition his career from TV actor to internationally known film superstar, with his breakout roles in the Dollars Trilogy as 'The Man with No Name'. The 1960s were a decade that transformed Eastwood's career and turned him into one of the most important figures in the cinematic landscape.

Eastwood's starring roles in iconic Westerns A Fistful of Dollars and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly launched him into the mainstream and showed his undeniable star power. They showed his ability to portray an intense, quiet, yet charismatic lead that helped change not only his career but the genre as a whole, focusing on a...

Following a two-hour masterclass at the Cairo Film Festival, Gaspar Noé spoke with Variety about future genres he’d like to tackle: “The main film genres that really would interest me for a future project are documentary, war film, and horror. Probably I should even try to mix those three genres. I also would like to do a movie with young children, or a movie for children.”

The Argentinian director of “Irreversible” (2002) and “Vortex” (2021) had earlier answered questions from British-Iranian critic Mo Abdi, telling the audience of his sold out event: “Kids are like small adults. When we are kids we are in danger. You are exposed to everything. I’m very attached to kids in life, though I don’t have kids. The relationship you have with kids is direct and playful. I would like to do a movie with little kids. They relate to fragility, they relate to...

If you live or travel somewhere in the Mediterranean, you will probably have stumbled upon some African selling refreshments or any kind of thing actually, on the beach. Probably, though, you will not question how this individual has gotten there or why. Iranian Milad Tangshir has come up with a movie that gives an answer to this rarely asked question, through an Italian film that seems to be heavily inspired by De Sica’s “Bicycle Thieves”.

Anywhere Anytime is screening at Thessaloniki International Film Festival

Issa is a young Senegalese undocumented immigrant trying to survive as best he can in Turin, Italy. When he’s fired by his previous employer in the open market for fear of being fined by the police, Issa’s friend helps him get started working as a food-delivery rider for the company “Anywhere Anytime.” This new gig gives him a sense of security and freedom,...

Richard Gere began his professional film career in 1975, appearing in the crime thriller "Report to the Commissioner." In 1976 and 1977, he secured notable supporting roles in "Baby Blue Marine" and "Looking for Mr. Goodbar," before securing his first leading role in 1978's "Bloodbrothers," a coming-of-age drama about two Italian-American brothers living in the Bronx. That same year, Gere appeared in Terrence Malick's dreamy "Days of Heaven," more or less securing him as a permanent Hollywood fixture. Gere has been working steadily ever since, using his affable on-camera charm and approachable good looks to remain one of the industry's most reliable movie stars. His high-profile marriage to model Cindy Crawford in 1991 only added to the actor's status as a sex symbol.

Gere often takes roles that require more razzle-dazzle than deep acting range, but Gere has been nominated for Golden Globes and Emmys, and won a SAG Award, so he's no slouch as a thespian.

Milad Tangshir’s 2024 film Anywhere Anytime draws inspiration from one of the greatest films ever made, Vittorio De Sica’s 1948 classic Bicycle Thieves. Both works tell poignant stories of ordinary people facing economic hardship and the toll it takes. Though borrowing elements of plot and style, Tangshir ensures his own film has substance as a contemporary tale.

Anywhere Anytimecenters on Issa, a Senegalese immigrant working odd jobs in Turin, Italy. After losing his latest role, Issa earns money through food delivery, just as automated gig work has exploded. But this new livelihood depends entirely on his rusty bicycle—one small obstacle away from ruin. When it’s stolen, Issa embarks on a fraught search, his desperation escalating as barriers like racism and bureaucratic uncaring compound ordinary troubles.

Tehran-born director Tangshir brings unique vision through his Iranian and adopted Italian lenses. He sees how global dynamics impact local communities in flux,...

David O. Selznick was a demanding producer who often interrupted pitches and then bullied filmmakers once their movies started shooting. I wonder how impresarios of his era — Selznick, Sam Goldwyn or Darryl F. Zanuck — would have coped with the unruly YouTubers, TikTokers, Instagrammers or superstar influencers crowding today’s marketplace.

Or how they’d deal with esteemed filmmakers like Alfonso Cuarón, who today are re-inventing and re-structuring their craft to fit the ecocentrics of streamerville?

In a maze of memos, Selznick told George Cukor, then King Vidor, that they lacked the pizzazz to turn Gone With The Wind into a hit. Would he have instructed Passthatpuss to trim his act or Todd Phillips to pull the tunes from Joker 2?

The bottom line, I suppose, is that pop culture has moved to a new rhythm and only sentimentalists worry about the creative debris along the way.

Cuarón’s confounding seven-part...

The Oscars international feature film race got another strong competitor on Tuesday when Italy announced it would submit “Vermiglio” as its entry for the 97th Academy Awards. Written and directed by Maura Delpero, the film won the Silver Lion in Venice earlier this month.

Delpero’s drama is set in 1944 in the alpine village of the film’s title. When a young Sicilian soldier named Pietro (Giuseppe De Domenico) comes to town, his presence, according to the synopsis provided by Sideshow and Janus Films, “disrupts the dynamics of the local teacher’s family, changing them forever. During the four seasons marking the end of World War II, Pietro and Lucia, the eldest daughter of the teacher, instantly drawn to each other, led to marriage and an unexpected fate. As the world emerges from its tragedy, the family will face its own.”

Produced by Cinedora, Charades and Versus Productions, “Vermiglio” was...

The Criterion Channel’s at its best when October rolls around, consistently engaging in the strongest horror line-ups of any streamer. 2024 will bring more than a few iterations of their spooky programming: “Horror F/X” highlights the best effects-based scares through the likes of Romero, Cronenberg, Lynch, Tobe Hooper, James Whale; “Witches” does what it says on the tin (and inside the tin is the underrated Italian anthology film featuring Clint Eastwood cuckolded by Batman); “Japanese Horror” runs the gamut of classics; a Stephen King series puts John Carpenter and The Lawnmower Man on equal playing ground; October’s Criterion Editions are Rosemary’s Baby, Night of the Hunter, Häxan; a made-for-tv duo includes Carpenter’s underrated Someone’s Watching Me!; meanwhile, The Wailing and The Babadook stream alongside a collection of Cronenberg and Stephanie Rothman titles.

Otherwise, Winona Ryder and Raúl Juliá are given retrospectives, as are filmmakers Arthur J. Bressan Jr. and Lionel Rogosin.

Not since Bicycle Thieves has a film focused so determinedly on the theft of a bike as James, receiving its world premiere at the Oldenburg Film Festival. Which isn’t to suggest Max Train’s eccentric new comedy has much in common with Vittorio De Sica’s 1948 neorealist classic, aside from similarly being shot in black and white. The sort of picture for which the term “quirky” could have been invented, it bears much more similarity to the early works of Jim Jarmusch, especially in its deadpan style. Probably best appreciated at a midnight screening after a few drinks, the Canadian indie is yet another example of the festival discovering a small-scale gem.

The movie begins with the hard-drinking title character (Dylan Beatch, who co-wrote the screenplay with Train) being violently arrested and then recounting his tale to a detective who wants to know why he has committed so many crimes against a single individual.

Vietnamese Director Duong Dieu Linh’s horror-comedy “Don’t Cry, Butterfly” is the big winner of the Venice Critics’ Week where it scooped the grand prize and the award for most innovative feature.

Written and directed by Duong Dieu Linh, the Hanoi-set film follows a housewife who uses voodoo to try and get her cheating husband to fall back into love with her. Instead, she invites a mysterious presence into the house.

“Don’t Cry, Butterfly,” which is being sold by Barunson E&a, marks the directorial debut of Duong Dieu Linh. It’s also a companion piece to her award-winning short film series about middle-aged women that includes “A Trip to Heaven,” “Sweet, Salty” and “Mother, Daughter, Dreams.” Just like the shorts, “Butterfly” explores recurring themes of womanhood, family relations and cultural traditions, and is told through a quirky sense of humor and use of magical realism.

The main jury – comprising producer Kerem Ayan,...

Levan Akin’s Crossing is now showing exclusively on Mubi in many countries.Crossing.Levan Akin’s tender, pensive new film begins in Batumi, the Georgian city where his family is from, and soon finds itself in Istanbul, “a place where people come to disappear,” as one character later muses. Forces of prejudice and patriarchy oppress these sister cities. In Batumi, Achi (Lucas Kankava) wakes to the sounds of a television talk show in a ramshackle house between the train tracks and the sea. A window over the sofa on which he sleeps frames the protean Black Sea, which hints at an escape route for the restless youth.When a former schoolteacher, Lia (Mzia Arabuli), comes looking for her lost niece, Tekla, who was turned out by her family after transitioning, Achi’s hateful brother complains about “prostitutes” and “degenerates” in their midst. Having been evicted from the nearby cottage where she had been living,...

“Anywhere Anytime” is, quite overtly and unapologetically, a re-tread of the beloved classic “Bicycle Thieves.” However, in modernizing Vittorio De Sica’s neorealist landmark, Iranian-born director Milad Tangshir imbues his version with both contemporary cultural nuances and a unique perspective as an immigrant to Italy, resulting in a remake that stands apart.

The film follows Issa (Ibrahima Sambou), an undocumented Senegalese immigrant, who works odd jobs in Turin while evading the watchful eye of the police, just in case. When the pressure of evading the law (or paying mounting fines) becomes too great for Issa’s boss, he lets the diligent youngster go from his low-paying flea-market job, leaving him to the mercy of the gig economy.

Over-the-table work is hard to come by, given his legal status, but friend and fellow immigrant Mario (Moussa Dicko Diango) sets him up with a food delivery app and even lends Issa his smartphone.

Charades has taken international sales rights to “Il tempo che ci vuole” (The Time It Takes), directed by Francesca Comencini. The film will premiere at the Venice Film Festival in the out of competition section.

“The Time It Takes” will be released in Italian theaters on Sept. 26 through 01 Distribution.

The film centers on a devoted father working in the film industry, who shares a deep bond with his young daughter. Together, they discover the magical world of childhood through the daughter’s eyes and the “Pinocchio” set he’s working on, “where chaos meets fantasy.”

The child becomes a young woman, and the state of enchanted limbo between father and daughter vanishes. She realizes that her childhood is slipping away, giving way to adolescence. The young woman starts taking drugs while hiding the truth from her father. Refusing to ignore the situation, the father confronts his daughter and decides to...

Anywhere Anytime, pays homage to Vittorio De Sica’s post-war poverty classic, The Bicycle Thief, but updated to the modern delivery economy. Like the stripped down cinéma vérité of that film, which nearly single-handedly created a new aesthetic of storytelling on film, the key art for Milad Tangshir’s film has a spare, almost Banksy street art feel. On a creamy textured background, there are only two tones at play here: black and yellow. The colours of transportation (think taxis and road lines). The lemony outlined text rhymes with the lead character's branded gig economy' backpack, while the lead character himself is a fuzzy, hazy, charcoal drawn profile. The credit block provides some foundation for the bicycle element, with other small bits of festival text and production credits at...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Fandango Film Sales has taken all rights to Italy-based Iranian director Milad Tangshir’s debut feature film “Anywhere Anytime” ahead of its launch from the Venice Critics’ Week and TIFF’s Centrepiece section.

The film riffs off Vittorio De Sica’s neorealist classic “Bicycle Thieves,” albeit in a contemporary setting, telling the tale of Issa, a young Senegalese illegal immigrant living in Turin who – after being fired by an employer for fear of being fined by the police – starts working as a food-delivery rider, a gig that gives him a sense of security and freedom until his bike gets stolen. “Issa then embarks on a desperate odyssey through the streets of the city to find his bike,” according to the provided synopsis.

Tangshir, who has born in 1983 in Tehran, released three albums with the Iranian rock band

Ahoora, before moving to Italy in 2011. Since then, he has produced and directed...

Wirgin Worries.

After kicking off August with discussions of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s surrealist masterpiece Santa Sangre (listen) and the screenlife sequel Unfriended: Dark Web (listen), we’re returning to the world of Andy Warhol with a look at Paul Morrissey‘s Udo Kier-starring vehicle Blood for Dracula (1974).

In the film, the deathly ill Count Dracula (Udo Kier) and his slimy underling Anton (Arno Juerging) travel to Italy in search of a virgin’s blood (the only type of blood he can drink). They’re welcomed at the crumbling estate of indebted Marchese Di Fiore (Vittorio De Sica), who’s desperate to marry off his daughters to rich suitors. But there, instead of pure women, the count encounters siblings with impure (aka not virgin) blood and their Marxist manservant Mario (Joe D’Allesandro), who’s suspicious of the aristocratic Dracula.

Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get a new episode every Wednesday.

The Venice Film Festival will celebrate Italian production designer Paola Comencini with its Campari Passion for Film Award dedicated to film industry figures who, along with the director, contribute to excellence in creating cinematic art.

The long list of feature films and TV series on which Paola Comencini has served as production designer comprises Italy’s smash hit “There’s Still Tomorrow” directed by Paola Cortellesi, groundbreaking TV series “Romanzo Criminale,” and drama “Il tempo che ci vuole,” directed by her sister Francesca Comencini, that will launch from Venice out-of-competition.

The Venice statement described “Il tempo che ci vuole,” which pays homage to their father Luigi Comencini – the Italian master who made Oscar-nominated Cinema Italiano classic “Bread, Love and Dreams,” with Gina Lollobrigida and Vittorio De Sica – as “a film in which the set design is not only a creative and accurate work but an incredible emotional journey.”

“Throughout her lengthy career as an architect,...

U.S. journalist and filmmaker Michael Premo’s doc “Homegrown,” which follows a group of Donald Trump supporters from the 2020 campaign trail all the way to the attack on the U.S. Capitol, is among titles set to world premiere at the Venice Film Festival’s Critics’ Week.

Brooklyn-born Premo played a significant role in Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Sandy’s hurricane response effort.

The out-of-competition opener of the section dedicated to first works is French director Aude Léa Rapin’s “Planet B,” a cyberpunk sci-fi film starring Adèle Exarchopoulos (“Blue Is the Warmest Color”) about a group of political activists in 2039 France who, pursued by the state, vanish without a trace only to reawaken “trapped in an entirely unfamiliar world,” according to the provided synopsis.

Besides “Homegrown,” the seven-title competition comprises Italian drama “Anywhere Anytime,” directed by Iran-born helmer Milad Tangshir. The film riffs off Vittorio De Sica’s “Bicycle Thieves,...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Anthology Film Archives

A Zoë Lund retrospective includes films by Abel Ferrara and Larry Cohen; Stan Brakhage plays in “Essential Cinema.”

Museum of the Moving Image

Films by Robert Altman, Isabel Sandoval, and Alain Berliner play in “From the Margins: The Trans Film Image“; “See It Big at the ’90s Multiplex” brings Pulp Fiction, Speed and Menace II Society on 35mm.

Museum of Modern Art

A career-spanning Powell and Pressburger retrospective continues, including The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp on Saturday.

Japan Society

An imported 35mm print of August in the Water screens on Sunday.

Film Forum

Seven Samurai, Powell and Pressburger’s The Small Back Room and Vittorio De Sica’s Shoeshine all screen.

Metrograph

Films by Akira and Kiyoshi Kurosawa play in In Pursuit of Shadows; films by Linklater and Otto Preminger play as part of Summer...

While its often the world premieres that get the most buzz out of any major film festival, look to their restorations lineup (if they are smart enough to have one), and a treasure trove of classics sure to be better than most premieres await. Ahead of their official lineup being unveiled on July 23, the Venice Classics slate is here, featuring films by Michelangelo Antonioni, Fritz Lang, Frederick Wiseman, Howard Hawks, Nagisa Ōshima, Anthony Mann, Lina Wertmüller, and many more.

“The programme of Venice Classics includes the commemoration of several important anniversaries.” said Festival artistic director Alberto Barbera. “First and foremost, the centennial of the birth of Marcello Mastroianni, the most beloved and celebrated Italian actor in the world, whom we will see in The Night (La notte), one of Michelangelo Antonioni’s finest films. It has been fifty years since the death of Vittorio De Sica, who in The Gold of Naples...

Wim Wenders’s Perfect Days suggests a kind of spring cleaning for the German filmmaker. The elaborate concepts and charged iconographies of The American Friend, Paris, Texas, and Wings of Desire are nowhere to be seen here. Wenders aims for simplicity with Perfect Days, following a middle-aged man, Hirayama (Yakusho Kôji), as he goes about his day cleaning Tokyo’s toilets, taking pictures of trees, listening to classic rock and pop, reading classic literature, and savoring the humble sources of day-to-day affirmation that we tend to take for granted.

Hirayama’s humility is the gauntlet that Wenders has thrown down for himself. Perfect Days wants to be an invitingly human movie that homes in intensely on the little moments of a man’s life so as to unearth universal truths. There’s a bit of Vittorio de Sica’s micro-texture-minded sensibility swimming around in it, and the impression that Wenders...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Museum of the Moving Image

A Sergei Parajanov retrospective has begun, while “See It Big at the ’90s Multiplex” includes Speed and Strange Days on 35mm.

Anthology Film Archives

A Bruce Baille program plays in “Essential Cinema,” while Denys Arcand films screen.

Film Forum

Seven Samurai begins playing in a new 4K restoration, while Powell and Pressburger’s The Small Back Room and Vittorio De Sica’s Shoeshine continue.

Metrograph

The Infernal Affairs trilogy screens this weekend; films by Bergman and Wes Anderson play on 35mm as part of Summer at Sea; films by Marker and Godard play in Under the Pavement, the Beach; Summer of Rohmer and Piping Hot Pfeiffer continue.

Museum of Modern Art

A career-spanning Powell and Pressburger retrospective continues.

IFC Center

Blow Out, Days of Being Wild, In the Mood for Love, and The Cook, the Thief,...

Venice Classics will screen restorations of Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Night and Vittorio De Sica’s The Gold Of Naples as part of an 18-film programme at the 81st Venice Film Festival (August 28-Septemer 7).

The Night, a 1961 black-and-white drama depicted a day and night in the life of a disillusioned novelist and his alienated wife, will play in the 100th anniversary year of the birth of its lead actor Marcello Mastroianni.

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De Sica’s 1954 The Gold Of Naples is formed of six episodes inspired by Giovanni Marotta’s short stories, and plays...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Roxy Cinema

Fellow Roxy programmer Charli Xcx presents Project X, To Die For, and Velvet Goldmine on 35mm, as well as Party Girl; a puppet program plays on Saturday, as does City Dudes.

Anthology Film Archives

Prints of Citizen Kane, L’Atalante, and Andy Warhol play in “Essential Cinema.”

Museum of the Moving Image

“See It Big at the ’90s Multiplex” includes Hoop Dreams and Bound; a Marx Brothers double-feature takes place on Saturday.

Museum of Modern Art

A career-spanning Powell and Pressburger retrospective continues.

Film Forum

Powell and Pressburger’s The Small Back Room begins playing in a new restoration; Vittorio De Sica’s Shoeshine continues playing in a new restoration; Yankee Doodle Dandy shows on Sunday.

Metrograph

Films by Claire Denis, Hong Sangsoo, Jia Zhangke and more play in an mk2 retrospective; Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Pitfall, and...

The Price of Nonna’s Inheritance reunites the unorthodox but united Delle Fave clan. Directed by Giovanni Bognetti, this comedy sequel centers on grandmother Giuliana’s engagement to her dubious ex, Nunzio.

Worried for her mother’s safety and inheritance, Anna calls on her husband Carlo and their adult children, Alessandra and Emilio, to intervene. Christian De Sica and Angela Finocchiaro reprise their roles as the long-married but mismatched parents, joined this time by Dharma Mangia Woods, Claudio Colica, and Fioretta Mari.

While this dysfunctional Italian family’s tactics leave much to be desired, their devotion to one another remains the true heart of the film. Over the course of their ill-advised scheme, bonds are strengthened through shared laughter and frustration. Whether thwarting wedding plans or each other, the Delle Faves prove that what really matters is having one another’s backs through every comedic calamity.

The Delle Fave Dysfunctions...

Documentarian Vittorio De Seta’s first narrative feature, Bandits of Orgosolo, builds upon several of the director’s shorts about the Sardinian region where the film is set. Featuring a cast of non-professionals, the film follows the shepherd Michele (Michele Cossu) as he and his young son, Peppeddu (Peppeddu Cuccu), end up fleeing deeper into the mountainous countryside when the father is wrongly suspected of livestock rustling and murder. With carabiners on his trail, Michele leads his child and his sheep into higher and rockier ground, and as vegetation and water become increasingly scarce, starvation rips through the flock. Eventually, and in a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, circumstances force Michele into the sort of crimes of which he was initially innocent.

This overarching narrative recalls Vittorio De Sica’s seminal Bicycle Thieves. But where De Sica’s neorealist drama took a snapshot of postwar Italy’s shattered economic and moral torpor,...

Cannes Do Spirit

Coralie Fargeat’s Demi Moore-starring feminist body horror film “The Substance” has been set as the closing night title for the New Zealand International Film Festival. The picture is one of 16 which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last month selected for the Nziff which is now under the artistic leadership of Paolo Bertolin.

The Nziff’s Fresh” strand features: “Good One,” by India Donaldson (daughter of New Zealand cinema legend Roger Donaldson); “To A Land Unknown,” by Mahdi Fleifel; Truong Minh Quý’s “Viet and Nam” a journey of young miners in Vietnam; Mo Harawe’s “The Village Next to Paradise”; and Agathe Riedinger’s “Wild Diamond.”

The “Widescreen” strand showcases films including: Chinese director Guan Hu’s Un Certain Regard-winning “Black Dog”; Mohammad Rasoulof’s “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” which took home Cannes’ Special Jury Prize; Boris Lojkine’s “The Story of Souleymane...

Editor’s note: this list was originally published in May 2024. It has since been updated in honor of Father’s Day.

Every family relationship is fertile material for any film, but none have been pillaged quite as extensively as the father/son dynamic. Blame the patriarchy, perhaps, for centering the male experience far more extensively in fiction, resulting in films where daughters and mothers tend to fall by the wayside in favor of drama between the men of the family.

Still, filmmakers and their work respond to the imperfect culture we all live in, and the relationship between a father and son can act as a vehicle to explore powerful ideas on screen. Familial expectations, pressures to uphold legacies, and the emotional repression that often defines heterosexual male relationships inform many of cinema’s greatest father stories, which can frequently be boiled down to the (somewhat reductive) label of “daddy issue” dramas.

Cinecittà and Film at Lincoln Center’s Sophia Loren: La Signora Di Napoli

Edoardo Ponti’s The Life Ahead; Mario Mattoli’s Poverty And Nobility opposite Totò and Enzo Turco; Alessandro Blasetti’s Too Bad She’s Bad with Marcello Mastroianni and Vittorio De Sica; Dino Risi’s The Sign Of Venus (Il Segno Di Venere) with Franca Valeri and Raf Vallone; Vittorio De Sica’s Two Women with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Eleanora Brown, plus De Sica’s 1963 and Marriage Italian Style (Matrimonio All’Italiana) with Mastroianni, and The Voyage (Il Viaggio) with Richard Burton; Stanley Donen’s Arabesque with Gregory Peck; Francesco Rosi’s More Than A Miracle (C’era Una Volta) with Omar Sharif; Charlie Chaplin’s A Countess From Hong Kong with Marlon Brando; Ettore Scola’s A Special Day (Una......

When Akira Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto, and Hideo Oguni were writing the screenplay for their 1954 epic "Seven Samurai," they couldn't have predicted its lasting influence on cinema. Not only did Kurosawa's masterful direction alter and revolutionize the way action sequences would be shot, but the premise became a reliable and lasting template that multiple other filmmakers would employ in the ensuing decades. For those unlucky enough to have never seen "Seven Samurai," the setup is simple: a remote farming village is regularly looted by passing bandits, leaving them destitute. Unable to withstand another attack, the villagers gather up their modest means and hire seven rogue samurai to protect them. The samurai know that the job won't pay, but each one has their own reasons for joining the cause. Using their cunning and limited means, the samurai repel the bandit attack.

Most recently, the "Seven Samurai" premise was transposed onto Zack Snyder's "Rebel Moon.

Ever since they were granted essential worker status during the pandemic, food deliverers on bikes have become a steady fixture of the contemporary urban landscape. And yet, most us only interact with them for a few seconds at a time, grabbing the box of pizza or bag of food, saying thank you (if we’re polite) and quickly shutting the door.

What happens after that is the subject of director Boris Lojkine’s compelling third feature, The Story of Souleymane (L’Histoire de Souleymane), a realistic and very humanistic look at one immigrant’s grueling daily life in Paris, where he struggles to make a living and obtain legal status.

Another movie immediately comes to mind here, which is Vittorio De Sica’s neorealist classic, Bicycle Thieves. Both films are structured as suspenseful, ticking-clock dramas where men navigate a ruthless city as they ride around on two wheels, doing everything they can to get by.

While certainly best-known for Bicycle Thieves, Vittorio De Sica’s vast, varied body of work is worth diving into. This June, those in NYC can experience quite a taste of it with four films by the director at Film at Lincoln Center’s Sophia Loren retrospective, immediately followed by the release of the new 4K restoration of Shoeshine at Film Forum. Restored by The Film Foundation and Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovata, in association with Orium S.A. Restoration, the new trailer from Janus Films has now arrived.

Here’s the synopsis: “One of the greatest achievements in the cinematic revolution known as Italian neorealism, Vittorio De Sica’s Shoeshine stands as a timeless masterpiece of trenchant social observation and stirring emotional humanism. In postwar Rome, street kids Giuseppe (Rinaldo Smordoni) and Pasquale (Franco Interlenghi) shine the shoes of American servicemen in hopes of saving enough money to purchase a beautiful horse.

David Schickele’s Bushman opens with Gabriel (Paul Eyam Nzie Okpokam), a young Nigerian immigrant, walking down a San Francisco highway and conspicuously balancing a pair of shoes on his head while trying to thumb a ride. The image announces the film’s neorealist intentions, alluding to postwar Italian films’ on-location, street-oriented settings, and even puns on the title of Vittorio De Sica’s Shoeshine. Which isn’t to say that Bushman intends to turn neorealism on its head exactly. Rather, it aims to consider how the contexts the bred neorealism might relate to the late-1960s, when the United States was at war in Vietnam and Nigeria was in year two of a civil war following its decolonization in 1960.

After a playful opening sequence in which Gabriel is picked up by a motorcyclist (Mike Slyre) who looks as though he just stepped off the set of Easy Rider, the...

Juliette Binoche, Sally El Hosaini and Isabel Coixet, are among the six filmmakers taking part in anthology film Bike Me Up, which will shoot across six European cities this summer, celebrating the locations’ relationships with cycling.

Binoche will make her debut as writer and director for the Paris film, in which she will star alongside Ralph Fiennes. London will be written and directed by El Hosaini and feature James Krishna Floyd. Berlin will be directed by Matthias Schweighöfer and star himself and Ruby O. Fee.

The Barcelona segment will be helmed by Coixet, while Bucharest will be written and directed by Cristina Jacob.

Before 1967's A Fistful of Dollars, Clint Eastwood's career consisted primarily of several uncredited roles in films with dull titles like Revenge of the Creature (1955) and Tarantula! (1955), and one-off performances in anthology series like the dryly named waterlogged drama Navy Log (1955) and the much more memorable Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955). Before Eastwood's teeth-gritting snarl and perpetual sun-in-the-eye squint became as intrinsic to American popular culture as Twinkies, the actor was in dire need of a proper vehicle to coax the latent hard-ass from his slumber.

In those early years, it was 1959's Rawhide, in which Eastwood portrayed the precocious ramrod Rowdy Yates, a former Confederate Army soldier. If any of those early performances could be said to provide an inkling as to what sort of gruff underbelly could be scratched with the right material, it was Rawhide. In Yates, we have a nascent iteration of the type of character...