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“Yunan” unfolds as a measured exploration of one man’s search for solace. Munir, a Hamburg-based novelist weighed down by chronic stress and a sense of dislocation, arrives on Germany’s marsh-flooded Hallig islands under a doctor’s recommendation to rest. Stripped of familiar routines, he confronts his own isolation amid windswept pastures and salt-stung air.

Director Ameer Fakher Eldin fashions this film as the second installment of his ‘Homeland’ project, following 2021’s debut. Coproduced across Palestine, Jordan, Canada, Germany, Italy and France, the movie bridges narratives of Middle Eastern displacement with European landscapes. This international partnership brings authenticity to a story centered on exile and human connection.

The film’s heartbeat is its unhurried tone, a naturalistic drama that alternates between Munir’s real-world encounters and poetic interludes drawn from a fragmentary fable. These dream-like sequences echo Abbasid poetry, weaving cultural symbolism into the stark northern coast.

Cinematographer Ronald Plante...

In writer-director Ameer Fakher Eldin’s slow but haunting meditation on exile, Yunan, displaced persons can return to their roots only to find they never left. Nothing in the past has changed except their place in it: “You will be gone, forgotten. As if your existence was nothing but an illusion.” The film is driven by a performance of few words but much gravitas from Lebanese actor Georges Khabbaz as Munir, a novelist of unspecified Middle Eastern origin, living in Hamburg. The somber drama has a cumulative spell, intensified by its hypnotic visual command and an atmospheric principal setting on Germany’s Hallig Islands.

Munir is introduced in a doctor’s office, plagued by frequent shortness of breath that becomes almost overwhelming. The medic tells him his respiratory tests came back normal, suggesting that stress might be his problem and that a break would do him good.

Calls to his...

The fact that only two German films were selected to compete at the 75th Berlinale raised some eyebrows and sparked interest in the pair of sophomore features that received the distinction over new works from higher-profile filmmakers like Tom Tykwer and Jan-Ole Gerster. One such designated Golden Bear contender is Yunan by Syrian-born, German-based director Ameer Fakher Eldin. Featuring iconic Fassbinder muse Hanna Schygulla, it’s a contemplative, somewhat ineloquent drama about the exile experience that aims high but misses the mark.

Munir (Georges Khabbaz) is an Arab writer living in Hamburg. Although doctors can’t find anything wrong with him, Munir is suffering from shortness of breath and what seems to be general world-weariness. When he gives away his dog, transfers money to his sister back home to take care of their senile mother, and travels to a remote island with nothing but a light bag, you know he...

You can see why Munir, a soul-sick writer from an unspecified country in the Middle East, chooses Germany’s remote Hallig Islands as the place to end it all. The soft, watery landscape serves as a suitably calm and scenic backdrop to one’s final days on earth, though it’s not so spectacular or stimulating as to give you a new lease on life altogether. Not at first, anyway. But in the course of Ameer Fakher Eldin’s poetic, existential drama “Yunan,” Munir does gradually find more to the place — and, in turn, to his own life — than initially meets the eye. As a mellow, slow-burning study of cross-cultural human connection, the film is quietly rewarding; a folkloric parallel strand, mapping the protagonist’s journey onto his native heritage, is less successful.

Premiering in competition at the Berlinale, “Yunan” is the second entry in Fakher Eldin’s “Homeland” project,...

Existence as Resistance, the latest fundraising event from the UK-based grassroots organisation Films of Resistance that works to champion and offer financial support to the Palestinian film industry, is taking place in London at Palestine House on February 22.

Films screening include Mahdi Fleifel’s Berlinale 2015 short20 Handshakes For Peace;Kamal Aljafari’s documentary and experimental featureA Fidai Film,which won theVisions du Réel jury prize and played at BFI London Film Festival last year; and Mona Benyamin’sTrouble In Paradise.

Approximately 50% of donations go to supporting cultural and grassroots organisations in Palestine, 40% for production support for Palestinian filmmakers in the...

The Berlinale has reported a 5% increase in audience figures, just over halfway through its 2025 edition.

As of Wednesday morning, February 19, the festival had sold 285,000 tickets, up almost 14,000 from the same time last year.

These figures put the festival on track to set a post-pandemic attendance record, up from the 329,500 tickets sold in 2024 and 327,600 in 2023.

Attendance figures may overtake pre-pandemic levels, with 330,681 tickets sold for the 2020 edition and a 15-year high of 335,986 recorded in 2016.

The festival reports that European Film Market attendance is “on a par” with last year, whichset a new record with over 12,000 visitors for the first time.

Screening...

Opening a film with a line of poetry is always a problematic way to start: the words are quickly forgotten once the visuals begin, making the verses far more meaningful were they before the final credits. In the case of Yunan, the words come from the Abbasid poet Al-Mutanabbi and they speak of craving a person’s presence, yet even when together, “the distance will still linger between us.”

It’s an apt line for the film, both in terms of the inability of the main character to bridge both metaphorical and physical distances, and in the way Ameer Fakher Eldin’s atmospheric sophomore feature keeps the audience at a certain remove, refusing clear-cut explanations or simple emotional catharses. Suffused with a melancholy as saturated as the damp air of the North Sea, Yunan follows on from Fakher Eldin’s ultimately more affecting debut The Stranger with its exploration of...

German actress Hanna Schygulla delivered a powerful criticism of nationalism and far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) at the Berlinale today.

“We have to get away from this nationalistic thing,” said Schygulla, speaking at the press conference for Ameer Fakher Eldin’s Competition title Yunan. “It has only brought tears, wars, people being abused. All this shouldn’t be at stake anymore.

“Now we have the worst people in charge of the world. I feel quite impotent,” continued Schygulla, in a speech that lasted around eight minutes. “Everything in life is in movement, so maybe they will move out at some time – I hope.

Sales activity at the Berlin Film Festival and European Film Market revved up on Saturday as Sony Pictures Classics struck a deal for North American rights to Rebecca Zlotowski’s murder mystery “Vie Privée,” starring Jodie Foster.

Variety‘s Elsa Keslassy had the scoop on SPC’s deal for the film, which also covers key territories in Latin America. “Shot in Paris and Normandy, ‘Vie Privée’ is currently in post-production and will likely world premiere in the festival circuit,” Keslassy writes.

Foster, who speaks fluent French, stars in the film as renowned psychiatrist Lilian Steiner, who mounts a private investigation into the death of one of her patients after she becomes convinced that there has been a murder. Foster last starred in a French-language film 20 years ago in Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Oscar-nominated “A Very Long Engagement.” Zlotowski ranks as one of France’s top filmmakers. “Vie Privée” marks her first deal with Sony Pictures Classics.

The Berlin Film Festival is historically the most political of all the major film festivals, and this year is no exception.

The 75th edition of the Berlinale unspools amid the turbulent lead-up to Germany’s Feb. 21 general elections that in recent weeks have seen thousands of Germans take to the streets in Berlin and other cities against the rise of the far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party which champions tough new rules pertaining to immigration.

And right on cue, the fest’s opening film, Tom Tykwer’s “The Light,” depicts a deeply dysfunctional Berlin family that is saved by its Syrian housekeeper. It’s a “hardcore political” picture, said the director.

“The Light” is one of several films in the fest’s official selection that tackle themes pertaining to immigration and are deeply rooted in the city. “Berlin is so unfinished in so many ways: architecturally, socially, politically,” Tykwer noted.

Timothée Chalamet and Robert Pattinson were among the latest high-profile names confirmed this afternoon as attendees for this year’s Berlin Film Festival.

The pair were included this afternoon in an updated guest list shared by the festival.

Chalamet will attend for the German premiere of his Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown while Pattinson will debut his Bong Joon-ho flick Micky 17. Both films play in the Berlinale Specials sidebar.

Other confirmed guests include Conclave filmmaker Edward Berger who will present Tilda Swinton her Honorary Golden Bear. Jessica Chastain will hit the German capital with Michel Franco’s Golden Bear Contender Dreams, and Jacob Elordi will make the trip to Berlin for the world premiere of his Justin Kurzel series The Narrow Road to the Deep South.

Other celebrity guests confirmed today by the festival include Naomi Ackie, Rose Byrne, Toni Collette, Denis Côté, Marion Cotillard, Lars Eidinger, Mala Emde,...

The Berlin Film Festival has unveiled the lineup for the 2025 edition, running February 13-23. It’s the first official lineup overseen by new artistic director and former BFI London Film Festival leader Tricia Tuttle, who succeeds Carlo Chatrian and brings her background as an American journalist and curator to the annual German showcase. She’s also working with co-directors of programming, Jacqueline Lyanga and Michael Stütz, to help reposition the Berlinale’s profile among the great global film festivals and lure bigger-name filmmakers in the process.

This year’s lineup, announced Tuesday, January 21, features new films from Richard Linklater, Michel Franco, Rebecca Lenkiewicz, Hong Sangsoo (“What Does That Nature Say to You”), Radu Jude (“Kontinental ’25”), and Lucile Hadžihalilović (“The Ice Tower”). Already confirmed in the mix are “Mickey 17” from Bong Joon Ho and Ira Sachs’ Sundance premiere “Peter Hujar’s Day,” plus Tom Tykwer’s “The Light” opening the festival.

Following last week’s lineup announcement, the Berlinale 2025 has now fleshed out its slate with the Competition, Special, and Perspectives sections. Highlights include the world premieres of Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon starring Ethan Hawke, Margaret Qualley, Bobby Cannavale, and Andrew Scott; Radu Jude’s Kontinental ’25; Hong Sangsoo’s What Does that Nature Say to You; Michel Franco’s Dreams starring Jessica Chastain; Lucile Hadžihalilović’s The Ice Tower starring Marion Cotillard; and Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s Hot Milk with Emma Mackey, Fiona Shaw, and Vicky Krieps.

The festival will also include international premieres from Julia Loktev, Mary Bronstein, Kahlil Joseph, and more. In terms of omissions for films that potentially could have been a strong fit: there’s no Steven Soderberg’s Black Bag, Wes Anderson’s German production The Phoenician Scheme, nor Berlinale regular Christian Petzold, who wrapped Miroirs No. 3 only a few months ago.

Check out the lineup...

Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s whirlwind career of 40-plus movies made within just over a dozen years kicked off with Love Is Colder Than Death. It ended, all too soon, with a sendoff that may as well have been called Death Is Hotter Than Love. Even if it hadn’t wound up being Fassbinder’s final cinematic will and testament, Querelle, an uber-horny but otherwise unorthodox adaptation of Jean Genet’s 1947 novel Querelle of Brest, would still feel like a film precariously perched between rowdy, profane life and that liminal, insatiable zone that always follows la petite mort.

But because the timeline spanning the film’s completion to its release was bisected by Fassbinder’s death from a drug overdose, it’s nearly impossible to avoid overlaying the gorgeously wrecked glamour of his entire career onto the film, draping the virtue of his carnal vices over a package that’s already prodigiously overstuffed.

Matthias Glasner’s Dying was the winner of the top prize at this year’s German Film Awards, clinching the Golden Lola in the best film category along with a cash prize of €500,000 for the producers to invest in a future project.

The production by Port au Prince Film & Kultur Produktion, Schwarzweiß Filmproduktion and Senator Film Produktion, which had its world premiere in competition at this year’s Berlinale where it won the best screenplay Silver Bear, also garnered another three statuettes: Corinna Harfouch (best lead actress), Hans-Uwe Bauer (best supporting actor), and Lorenz Dangel (best film score).

Glasner’s family drama,...

Matthias Glasner’s epic dysfunctional family drama Dying has won the top prize for best film at the 2024 German Film Awards, the Lolas.

Dying was one of the critical favorites at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, where Glasner won the Silver Bear for best screenplay. The film stars Lars Eidinger as a classical conductor with an extremely dysfunctional family.

In addition to the top prize, Corinna Harfoch won the best actress Lola for her role in Dying, where she plays Eidinger’s sharp-tonged and cold-hearted mother. Her Dying co-star Hans-Uwe Bauer took best supporting actor, and the film also took the Lola for best film music for composer Lorenz Dangel.

Ayşe Polat took best director and best screenplay for In the Blind Spot, her twisty documentary-style conspiracy thriller set in modern-day Turkey. The film, which premiered in Berlin’s Encounters section last year, won the top prize at the Oldenburg Film Festival,...

Matthias Glasner’s Dying leads the Lolas, the German Film Awards, with nine nominations, including for best feature film, director, screenplay, and score.

Additionally, Lars Eidinger has been nominated as best actor and Corinna Harfouch as best actress; Robert Gwisdek and Hans-Uwe Bauer have both been nominated for best supporting actor.

The family drama premiered in competition at the Berlinale last month and will be released in Germany by Wild Bunch on April 25.

The Lolas will take place at a ceremony in Berlin on May 3.

Timm Kröger’s second feature The Universal Theory, which premiered in Venice’s Horizons section last September,...

German acting legend Hanna Schygulla will be honored this year with a lifetime achievement award at the German Film Awards.

Best known for her work with Rainer Werner Fassbinder, including The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979) Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980), and Lili Marleen (1981), Schygulla’s career has included collaborations with the likes of Wim Wenders (1975’s Wrong Move), Jean-Luc Godard (1982’s Passion) and Fatih Akin (2007’s The Edge of Heaven). More recently, the 80-year-old actress has a scene-stealing cameo in Yorgos Lanthimos’ Oscar-winner Poor Things as Martha von Kurtzroc, the eccentric woman Emma Stone’s character befriends on the cruise ship.

“Hanna Schygulla is an institution of German and European cinema,” said Alexandra Maria Lara, president of the German Film Academy, explaining the decision of the honorary jury. “Through her long-standing collaboration with Rainer Werner Fassbinder, she wrote herself into film history. She became an icon of German auteur cinema with international appeal.

Poor Things Movie (Picture Credit: IMDb)

Poor Things is one of the most discussed movies of 2023, along with Oppenheimer and Barbie. The film stars Emma Stone in the lead role, has won several accolades, and received the Oscars 2024 nominations, too. When the film was released in 2023, critics and audiences praised it heavily.

The film is based on Alasdair Gray’s novel of the same name. The cine buffs who missed watching it on the big screen are eagerly awaiting the movie’s digital release. You don’t have to wait any longer, as the movie will finally be available to stream online. Read to know when and where it will be released digitally, along with other essential details like the cast and premise of Poor Things.

Poor Things Cast

The film stars Emma Stone as Bella Baxter, Wille Dafoe as Dr Godwin Baxter, Mark Ruffalo as Duncan Wedderburn, Ramy Youssef as Max McCandles,...

We have 2 fantastic prize bundles to give away from Poor Things including: a Bubble bottle, Photo book, Novel, Sunglasses, Tote bag, T-shirt, Key ring and Postcards!

From filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos and producer Emma Stone comes the tale of the fantastical evolution of Bella Baxter (Stone), a young woman brought back to life by the brilliant and unorthodox scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe). Under Baxter’s protection, Bella is eager to learn. Hungry for the worldliness she is lacking, Bella runs off with Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), a slick and debauched lawyer, on a whirlwind adventure across the continents. Free from the prejudices of her times, Bella grows steadfast in her purpose to stand for equality and liberation.

Poor Thing Starring: Emma Stone as Bella Baxter

Mark Ruffalo as Duncan Wedderburn

Willem Dafoe as Godwin Baxter

Ramy Youssef as Max McCandless

Christopher Abbot as Alfie Blessington

Suzy Bemba as Toinette...

Yorgos Lanthimos’ Venice Golden Lion Winner Poor Things is here with Searchlight Pictures sewing up nine theaters in four major markets for leg one of the Emma Stone-starring surreal-period-comedy-horror.

The film debuts in NYC and LA as well as San Francisco and Austin (Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar). Lanthimos, Stone and stars Mark Ruffalo and Willem Dafoe join Q&As in New York and tickets have been selling out. Stone hosted SNL last Saturday, joining the exclusive “five-timers club”, and made stops in recent days at Good Morning America, Sunday Today and ABC News Live Prime to talk up the fantastical tale.

Stone plays Bella Baxter, a young Victorian woman mysteriously brought back to life by the brilliant and unorthodox scientist Godwin Baxter (Dafoe) who lives as the doctor’s ward.

Poor Things is a genre-defying film with a great performance by Emma Stone, exploring themes of awakening and curiosity. The world of Poor Things is both fantastical and cruel, with surprising kindness shining through. The film's extravagant sets, costumes, and cinematography capture the inquisitive spirit of the protagonist and deliver bewilderment and brilliance.

Poor Things could be easily slotted into any number of genres — a coming-of-age tale, a sex comedy, a riff on the Frankenstein trope. Yorgos Lanthimos' latest film, like its protagonist Bella Baxter, defies categorization to become something else altogether — a horny, hedonistic, and hysterical gem of a film with an all-time great performance from Emma Stone. Lanthimos has often bewildered audiences with his sensibilities, but Bella Baxter proves to be the perfect muse for the director's inherent curiosity, a lens through which to look at the world that reveals harsh truths and startling beauty.

Poor Things introduces...

A new extended look trailer for Poor Things featuring Emma Stone has just been released, and you can check it out right here (see above), before the film hits theaters on December 8, 2023!

From filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos and producer Emma Stone comes the incredible tale and fantastical evolution of Bella Baxter (Stone), a young woman brought back to life by the brilliant and unorthodox scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe). Under Baxter’s protection, Bella is eager to learn. Hungry for the worldliness she is lacking, Bella runs off with Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), a slick and debauched lawyer, on a whirlwind adventure across the continents. Free from the prejudices of her times, Bella grows steadfast in her purpose to stand for equality and liberation.

About The Film

Genre: Romance, Sci-Fi Starring: Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef, Christopher Abbot, Suzy Bemba, Jerrod Carmichael, Kathryn Hunter, Vicki Pepperdine, Margaret Qualley,...

Could Oscar winner Emma Stone (La La Land) be back in the Oscar hunt with Searchlight Pictures’ Poor Things? According to critics who’ve caught festival screenings, the answer is a resounding yes.

“From filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos and producer Emma Stone comes the incredible tale and fantastical evolution of Bella Baxter (Stone), a young woman brought back to life by the brilliant and unorthodox scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe). Under Baxter’s protection, Bella is eager to learn. Hungry for the worldliness she is lacking, Bella runs off with Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), a slick and debauched lawyer, on a whirlwind adventure across the continents,” reads Searchlight Pictures’ synopsis. “Free from the prejudices of her times, Bella grows steadfast in her purpose to stand for equality and liberation.”

Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo in ‘Poor Things’ (Photo by Atsushi Nishijima © 2023 Searchlight Pictures)

The film marks the second feature film...

Yorgos Lanthimos’s films are prone to hitting audiences with a pit-of-the-stomach feeling, from the pyrrhic victory that closes and overwhelms The Favourite to the unbearable uncertainty of whether someone will disfigure themselves for the sake of love that lodges The Lobster in the heart like a knife. No matter how hard Lanthimos’s characters fight for agency or freedom or power or love, life is still savage and cruel and unforgiving.

But in Poor Things, as unpleasant as life can be, especially for a woman, there’s still hope in the sheer and bizarre splendor of it all. The film is adapted by Tony McNamara from Alasdair Gray’s novel of the same name, which is inspired by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and its interrogation of Victorian repression and hunger for the power of God. And for better and worse, Lanthimos’s acute awareness of that inspiration imbues the film with an unmistakable irony.

Emma Stone's portrayal of Bella Baxter in Poor Things has sparked discussion, with the focus on the film's controversial sex scenes. Stone believes these intimate moments are crucial in authentically depicting Bella's sexual awakening, a central theme of the movie. Poor Things has received positive reviews, with critics praising Stone's energetic performance, the supporting cast, and the director's commitment to surprising the audience.

Emma Stone's portrayal of Bella Baxter in Poor Things has been the subject of some discussion, particularly regarding the film's controversial sex scenes. Stone believes these intimate moments are crucial in authentically depicting Bella's sexual awakening, a central theme of the movie. When discussing her role prior to the Hollywood strikes (via Rappler), she expressed both excitement and anxiety about taking on this daring character. Bella doesn't conform to the norms of her time, and Stone was thrilled by the prospect of portraying a character unburdened by shame,...

Peel back the layers of creature feature make-up and look beyond the gaudy, Gaudí-in-a-fishbowl sets, try to dim the swirling burlesque of guts and gore and pleasures of the flesh and you’ll find a rather classic – and classically appealing – Victorian coming-of-age tale at the center of Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Poor Things.”

That the film remains witty and wise throughout its most lurid stretches makes the Venice Golden Lion contender one of the year’s most unexpected heart-warmers. That the filmmakers lavish commensurate attention on all those bawdy embellishments also guarantees you a bloody good time along the way.

Reteaming with the director who pushed her to new highs in 2018’s “The Favorite,” Emma Stone outdoes herself with a role that deploys her (already considerable) comedic talent to superlative effect. As if born out of a mad-science experiment fusing “Frankenstein” with “Pygmalion,” her turn as Bella Baxter – a peculiar creation with the mind of an infant,...

Back in 2009, Yorgos Lanthimos led the so-called Greek Weird Wave with the Oscar-nominated Dogtooth, an unsettling exploration of a family of teenagers kept from the world by their father in a gated estate that they could never leave. The family is rich, so they can have anything they want except the wide world and their freedom; even sex can be bought in.

Lanthimos’ Poor Things, screening in competition in Venice and certainly one of the most eagerly awaited films at the festival, is packaged very differently. A sort of period film it is stuffed with extravagant costumes and sets that make Disneyland look restrained, all cut from the same spangled cloth as the royal romp The Favourite, Lanthimos’ last film. Strip away the decoration, however, and Poor Things is actually a return to those first concerns of Dogtooth: essentially,...

It’s a failing of our society that we’ve allowed “interesting” to become a euphemism, a blandly veiled insult, something to say when no other praise comes to mind. Little in life is more important than interest: having it, attracting it, identifying it in any crevice of the everyday, making it strange and fresh in the process. Across his career, Yorgos Lanthimos has befuddled many a viewer into calling his work “interesting” as a placeholder for their confusion and excitement, and it’s hard to imagine that he’d ever take offense. He’s a filmmaker who revels in interest, in curiosity at the price of comfort, and in his lavish, violently ravishing new film “Poor Things,” he zeroes in on a heroine with the same craving. To Bella Baxter, a literal child in a woman’s body, everything is new and everything is interesting — words, bodies, maps, music,...

In the upcoming film Poor Things, Emma Stone's character, Bella, challenges men as she becomes more autonomous in society. Bella's sexuality is a crucial part of the story, as she explores the joys of human sexuality and embraces her freedom as a woman. Poor Things is part of a trend of Frankenstein-inspired movies, with all three films, including this one, being women-centric.

Poor Things is an upcoming surreal, sci-fi fantasy directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, written by Tony McNamara, and based on the 1992 novel of the same name by Alasdair Gray. The film stars Emma Stone as Bella Baxter, a young woman whose been brought back to life by a "brilliant and unorthodox" (i.e. mad) scientist named Dr. Godwin Bacter (Willem Dafoe). Now, in a behind-the-scenes clip, Stone has offered some insight into her character's warped situation (via Searchlight Pictures):

"She is understanding what it is to...

A new behind-the-scenes video for Poor Things featuring Emma Stone has just been released, and you can check it out right here (see above)! The film will be in theaters on December 8, 2023!

Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo in “Poor Things.” Photo by Yorgos Lanthimos. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2023 20th Century Studios All Rights Reserved.

From filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos and producer Emma Stone comes the incredible tale and fantastical evolution of Bella Baxter (Stone), a young woman brought back to life by the brilliant and unorthodox scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe). Under Baxter’s protection, Bella is eager to learn. Hungry for the worldliness she is lacking, Bella runs off with Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), a slick and debauched lawyer, on a whirlwind adventure across the continents. Free from the prejudices of her times, Bella grows steadfast in her purpose to stand for equality and liberation.

About The Film

Genre: Romance,...

"We're not going anywhere. Neither now nor later." Janus Films has unveiled a new official trailer for a 4K restoration re-release of a film from 2000 titled Werckmeister Harmonies, which originally debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in the Directors' Fortnight section. This new 4K version premiered last year at the Toronto & Taipei Golden Horse Film Festivals, and will play in a few art house theaters, starting at Film at Lincoln Center in NYC. Worth catching in the cinema if you have the chance. "Béla Tarr’s mesmeric parable of societal collapse is an enigma of transcendent visual, philosophical, and mystical resonance." In this, a young man witnesses an escalation of violence in his small hometown following the arrival of a mysterious circus attraction - featuring a massive stuffed whale and strange man known as "the Prince." The film stars Sandor Bese, Lars Rudolph, Peter Fitz, Hanna Schygulla, plus many other locals.

Editors note: This review was originally published in June 2021 after its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. The film opens in New York on Friday and in Los Angeles on April 21.

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Beautifully upholstered and decked out with a starry cast, Everything Went Fine (Tout S’est Bien Passé) is the sort of comforting, thoroughly mainstream commercial film not often seen in competition at the Cannes Film Festival. Although the subject of euthanasia does not normally suggest a good time at the movies, French director François Ozon serves one up anyway with the help of a raft of crafty and appealing veteran actors, lush filmmaking and savvy and deft handling of the central emotional dynamic.

Shortly after family patriarch André (André Dussollier) suffers a debilitating stroke, the 85-year-old insists to his daughter Emmanuèle (Sophie Marceau) that he wants to end to it all, on his own terms. He seems something of a borderline case,...

Cohen Media Group has dropped the trailer for Francois Ozon’s drama “Everything Went Fine” ahead of its theatrical release in New York on April 14 and Los Angeles on April 21, followed by a national expansion.

“Everything Went Fine” is based on the autobiographical novel by author Emmanuèle Bernheim who previously collaborated on Ozon’s screenplays for “Under The Sand,” “Swimming Pool” and “Ricky.”

The movie follows 85-year-old art collector André Bernheim (André Dussolier) who, after a debilitating stroke, demands that his daughter Emmanuèle (Sophie Marceau), help him end life on his own terms. Faced with a painful decision, Emmanuèle, with the grudging support of her younger sister Pascale (Géraldine Pailhas), begins sorting through the processes and bureaucratic hurdles necessary to fulfill her father’s final wish, as she is forced to reconcile her past with a complicated, stubborn, yet charismatic man.

Here’s the trailer:

“Everything Went Fine” also stars...

There's nothing like a good miniseries. The ability to take as much time as needed to tell a dense yet self-contained story, marrying the immediacy and formal panache of great cinema to the narrative depth of great TV, has allowed many auteurs in both mediums to create some of their finest and most vital work.

Historically, miniseries have been the province of some of television's most memorable hits, from "Roots" to "Taken" to "Band of Brothers." Series like Ingmar Bergman's "Scenes from a Marriage" and Mike Nichols' "Angels in America" are also regularly cited in the upper tiers of master directors' filmographies. In recent years, the format has seen a kind of mainstream revival, thanks largely to the smashing success of titles like "The Queen's Gambit" and "Watchmen."

But countless miniseries from around the world remain that have yet to receive the attention they deserve. Here are 12 examples of...

François Ozon’s ode to Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s play and cult classic takes us on a spellbound carousel ride going round and round in circles with one man at the centre. Denis Ménochet as Peter von Kant is easily recognizable as a stand-in for Fassbinder, whose private life inspired the plot of his 1972 masterpiece. The film featured Margit Carstensen as Petra von Kant, a fashion designer who falls madly in love with a younger model named Karin (Hanna Schygulla) while living with and abusing her silent secretary Marlene.

Ozon in this free adaptation adds another turn of the screw by making the three protagonists male again, reversing the fashion industry background to the film world and the infatuation to an actor. The costumes by Pascaline Chavanne in Peter von Kant are excellent, especially those creamy suits...

Also out during the Christmas and New Year period: ’Roald Dahl’s Matilda The Musical Singalong’ and ’Peter von Kant’.

In a special festive edition of the UK-Ireland box office preview, Screen has pulled together all the new titles to hit cinemas from December 23 up until January 1, including Corsage, Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody and a singalong version of Roald Dahl’s Matilda The Musical.

Out this weekend (December 23) is Wildcat for Dogwoof, in partnership with Amazon Studios. The documentary, which premiered this year at Telluride, follows a British soldier grappling with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder after...

Also out during the Christmas and New Year period: ’Corsage’ and ’Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody’.

In a special festive edition of the UK-Ireland box office preview, Screen has pulled together all the new titles to hit cinemas from December 23 up until January 1. A singalong version of Road Dahl’s Matilda The Musical is the widest release of the period, set to play at 775 locations from January 1.

Roald Dahl’s Matilda The Musical is directed by Matthew Warchus, with Dennis Kelly writing and Tim Minchin composing, and is based on the stage musical created by the same trio.

John Waters officially unveiled his semi-annual list of top 10 films of the year, filled mostly with sex-laden dramas and yes, one Polish existential donkey movie.

Waters awarded the top honor of 2022 to François Ozon’s “Peter Von Kant,” calling the Rainer Werner Fassbinder-inspired feature “by far the best movie of the year” in a list shared with Artforum.

“Fassbinder’s classic lesbian melodrama is appropriated and remade as a gay Frenchman’s love letter to the original version,” Waters wrote. “Hilariously stilted, often overwrought, but always highly entertaining, this cock-eyed tribute will make you swoon when Hanna Schygulla finally makes an appearance and Isabelle Adjani soon follows. My God, it’s just plain Douglas Sirk perfect.”

Waters’ second pick, “Eo” by Jerzy Skolimowski, is another “tribute film” with Waters calling it “Bresson’s ‘Au Hasard Balthazar’ meets ‘Old Yeller.'”

“Can a donkey remember? Just ask Isabelle Huppert, who...

“Cinema is not pages and it’s not minutes: it’s the way you look at the minute that passes,” Syrian director Ameer Fakher Eldin is talking about the 55-page script of “Yunan,” his follow up to “The Stranger” (Al Garib), which played at Venice Days in 2021. Eldin knows from the experience of editing his first film that one page doesn’t equal one minute. “It’s a two hour film,” he says.

Eldin’s second feature is due to film in the first half of 2023 and is currently being presented at this week’s Red Sea Souk Project Market of the Red Sea Film Festival. Iconic figure of New German Cinema Hanna Schygulla and Syrian actor Bassem Yakhour have both been cast in the production. They join Lebanese actor Georges Khabbaz (“Capernaum”), and German actor Sibel Kekilli, from “Game of Thrones” and Fatih Akin’s “Head On.”

Filming will...

Legendary Hungarian director Béla Tarr is at peace.

“It’s time for the old guys to leave. Retire, enjoy the sun,” he tells Variety in Cairo.

Tarr, in town to collect his lifetime achievement award and lead a workshop for young filmmakers, stopped making feature films after 2011 “The Turin Horse.” He has no intention of going back on his word.

“Everyone knew it was going to be my last. I knew that if I manage to make this movie, I won’t be able to say more. The language I have been creating became perfect. It’s ready and packed, so take it or leave it. It’s up to you now,” he says.

“You can’t repeat yourself, it’s boring and fake. We all know these guys who had some success 30 years ago and they keep using the same recipe. But something that was powerful 30 years ago is not powerful today.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder died as he lived: at many frames per second. The cinephile’s errand of trying to watch everything the German filmmaker made in his lifetime, from all 10 hours of “Berlin Alexanderplatz” to more modestly scaled melodramas like “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant,” often feels like an act of running in place. Reports of his “contradictory” and “complex” nature reveal what we already know: He was a self-medicating, workaholic perfectionist who drove himself into the ground, completing more than 40 films in his short life, and died because of it. He also did not believe in love, or so say his latest collaborators in absentia, director François Ozon and Fassbinder’s longtime muse Hanna Schygulla.

Ozon has made his best film in years with “Peter von Kant,” one that will be seen by few but relished by all who do. The movie is both a response to...

More than 20 years after adapting a Rainer Werner Fassbinder play called “Waters Drops on Burning Rocks” into a movie, François Ozon has made this gender-flipped adaptation of one of Fassbinder’s greatest films, “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant,” in an attempt to understand Fassbinder’s real-life struggle with the power plays of love.

Fassbinder’s “Petra von Kant” was shot very quickly on a very low budget, and he used a lot of long takes; every camera movement in Fassbinder’s version of this material feels so ultra-controlled that watching it is like getting tied up in an S & M dungeon or getting slowly strangled by a python. Ozon shoots his own “Peter von Kant” with a casualness that can feel frivolous, and he uses very conventional short takes for shot/reverse shot conversations.

Fassbinder’s “Petra von Kant” revolves around a lesbian love triangle that consists of...

Save Your Tears for Another Day: Ozon Revels in the Camp Mystique of R.W. Fassbinder

It’s clear François Ozon has long been obsessed with the cinema of New German Wave provocateur Rainer Werner Fassbinder, seeing as one of his first successes was 2000’s Water Drops on Burning Rocks, adapted from an unproduced screenplay of his idol’s. Over two decades later, and working at a similar breakneck pace, Ozon attempts something nearing sacrilege in Peter von Kant, a liberal reimagining of Fassbinder’s most hysterically excessive camp masterpiece, 1972’s The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (read review). Whereas the original was a femme-centric snake pit featuring three of Fassbinder’s usual muses, Ozon switches the queered perspective to male and transposes bits and pieces of Fassbinder’s own life into the von Kant prism about a monstrous artist who devours all those around him in the quest to quell his desires.

He seems like a nice person, doesn't he? Strand Releasing has debuted an official US trailer for the French-German indie drama Peter von Kant, one of the latest features from prolific French filmmaker François Ozon. This first premiered at the 2022 Berlin Film Festival earlier this year. Based on the Rainer Werner Fassbinder cult play, The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant, François Ozon’s unique retelling finds "Peter von Kant", a successful, famous director (obviously Rwf), who lives with his assistant Karl, whom he likes to mistreat and humiliate. Through the great actress Sidonie, he meets and falls in love with Amir, a handsome young man of modest means. He offers to share his apartment and help Amir get into the world of cinema. Beyond that, there's not much more to this. The cast features Denis Ménochet as von Kant, Isabelle Adjani, Khalil Gharbia, Hanna Schygulla, Stéfan Crépon, and Aminthe Audiard.

François Ozon is one of France’s most prolific filmmakers, directing 21 features and a handful of shorts since 1997. But his latest, “Peter von Kant,” is one of the most unique films of the director’s career. The playful spin on Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant” is more than just a gender-swapped remake of Fassbinder’s classic German film about an abusive fashion designer.

Ozon made waves by reimagining Fassbinder’s film as an experimental biography of the director himself, casting Denis Menochet as a thinly veiled allegory for the legendary director, and replacing other characters in the film with members of his inner circle. The resulting movie was a hit at the 2022 Berlin International Film Festival and is set to make its North American theatrical debut this weekend. Watch the exclusive trailer below.

“The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant” starred Margit Carstensen as the eponymous fashion designer,...

Exclusive: The Berlin Film Festival, which got underway on Thursday evening, has recorded more than 50 positive Covid results from its testing procedures, organizers have confirmed to us.

A festival spokesperson said: “Since the beginning of the festival we have only detected eight cases of positive tests among the film teams. The Berlinale’s test buses, available for both accredited and audience, did approximately 2,700 tests and had only 54 positive tests.”

The festival continued: “In order to stop possible chains of infections, we are evaluating every case and situation thoroughly, tracking all contacts and identifying possible risk situations. We are still in pandemic times and obviously positive tests are still a reality in our daily lives. It is good to hear that the figures of positive tests are really low. With 2% of positive tests the figures are less than the average percentage of positive tests around Berlin.”

While the 2% figure is reassuring,...

Exclusive: Organizers of the Berlin Film Festival have told us that the world premiere screening of opening film Peter Von Kant was disrupted last night due to “a server problem.”

A festival spokesperson told us: “We very much regret that a server problem at the Berlinale Palast led to an interruption of the screening of Peter Von Kant. After 7 minutes of interruption the screening could be continued.”

The screen blacked out twice in quick succession during last night’s world premiere leading to audible frustration among guests. Reports are that the delay was closer to 10-15 minutes. Following the interruption, the movie played through to its end.

After the premiere, one of the hosts for the night took to the stage to apologize to guests. The film’s star Denis Menochet also thanked cinema-goers for their patience.

It has been a bumpy start for the festival. Covid protocols outside the...

The breath of life and beating heart at the center of countless, Russian nesting doll layers of artifice and art-house reference, actor Denis Menochet doesn’t just anchor “Peter von Kant,” he makes the Francois Ozon project a film. Because without its venerable lead, this twenty-first feature from France’s most prolific modern director might be something of a lark — and wrangles it into a deep-in-the-weeds pseudo-biopic of the German filmmaker himself.

In some ways a sort of spiritual — if admittedly much less audacious — cousin to Todd Haynes’ “I’m Not There,” “Peter von Kant” looks to explore an artist through the prism of his own creations, pulling up the script to Fassbinder’s 1972 film (itself adapted from an earlier play) and Ctrl+H-ing each character with analogues for the director and those in his orbit. And so, in this telling, Peter von Kant is a hard-partying, West German director at...

How do you make something real out of something that was artificial to begin with? Should you even try? François Ozon has, with “Peter von Kant”: a deconstructed, gender-swapped and then fastidiously reconstructed overhaul of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant.” 50 years on, Fassbinder’s film remains as close to un-remake-able as any ever made, mainly because it remakes itself every second as it goes along. If this makes Ozon’s version, which opens this year’s Berlin Film Festival, an oddly self-invalidating proposition from the get-go, that impression only deepens as the minutes tick amusingly but inconsequentially by.

For the uninitiated (who are very obviously not the audience for this inside-baseball bauble), Fassbinder’s film is the story of a sadomasochistic lesbian love triangle between a successful fashion designer, her model protégée and her mute assistant. (It features perhaps cinema’s most famous...