Author: SD

Ontario Creates’ International Financing Forum (IFF) will feature 40 projects from Canadian and international teams bringing new work from Malcolm McDowell, Clement Virgo, and Rafael Kapelinski, director of 2017 Berlin Crystal Bear winner Butterfly Kisses. The forum, now in its 19th year, runs September 8-9 in Toronto in association with Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). It brings together jury-selected producers looking to find co-producers and secure financing for upcoming projects. Canadian projects include The Benefactor starring McDowell from A Clockwork Orange and Mozart In The Jungle in the story of a widower who believes his house is haunted. Ontario’s Byron A.…

The UK’s National Cinema Day is returning this Saturday, August 31, with participating cinemas across the UK offering tickets from £4. Now in its third year, the day will take place at over 630 venues, with all formats at participating venues, including 3D, Imax and 4DX, priced from £4. This is a 25% rise in price from the 2022 and 2023 editions, where tickets started at £3. Odeon, Cineworld, Vue, Picturehouse, Showcase and Curzon are among the operators set to take part.  National Cinema Day was developed by cross-industry body Cinema First, with the support of the Film Distributors’ Association…

Emanuel Parvu’s Three Kilometers To The End Of The World took the Best Feature Film prize at the 30th Sarajevo Film Festival, which gave out its awards yesterday (Friday, August 23). The Romanian film, which debuted in Competition in Cannes earlier this year, received the €16,000 prize, co-funded by the Tourism Association of Canton Sarajevo. Scroll down for the full list of feature winners  Set in a conservative Danube Delta community, it follows a gay teenager’s journey of self-discovery, which clashes with the traditional values of his parents and neighbours. Yorgos Zois won Best Director for Greece-Bulgaria-US co-production Arcadia, which…

Rich Peppiatt’s comedy-drama Kneecap opens in 237 cinemas across England, Wales and Scotland through Curzon this weekend, following a strong two weeks in its native Ireland. The film opened in Ireland and Northern Ireland on August 8 through Wildcard Distribution and held a top five spot for its first two weekends amid summer box office competition, reaching £557,610 as of Sunday, August 18. Kneecap is a semi-fictionalised story of the eponymous Belfast-based hip-hop trio, and charts their rise from the Gaeltacht Quarter of West Belfast to becoming popular music artists. Group members Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh, Naoise Ó Cairealláin and JJ…

There was a palpable sense of relief surging through EIFF as it made its first fully-fledged return following a tough few years with the collapse of former parent charity the Centre for the Moving Image in 2022 threatening the future of one of the world’s longest-running festivals. At a BBC Film drinks reception on the festival’s second night, the film funder’s director Eva Yates recalled standing on the same stage the previous year during programmer Kate Taylor’s scaled-back edition, with no one quite sure what the future held. The consensus among the industry present in Edinburgh was festival director Paul…

Jack King’s The Ceremony has won the inaugural £50,000 Sean Connery Prize for Feature Filmmaking Excellence at the revamped Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF), which drew to a close tonight (August 21). Yorkshire-born King’s feature debut follows two migrant workers who are forced to bury a colleague in the Yorkshire hills. When one demands to accord the dead man his rightful Islamic burial, nerves begin to fray, and a power struggle emerges. Cast includes Tudor Cucu Dumitrescu, Erdal Yildiz, Liam Thomas, Arnold Bakshi and Mo’min Swaitat. Producers are Hollie Bryan and Lucy Meer for the UK’s Cosmosquare Films and Strive…

Media veteran Edgar Bronfman Jr. has reportedly made an 11th-hour $4.3bn bid for Paramount Global, rivalling the previous offer from Skydance Media and RedBird Capital. With one day to go before the official August 21 close of the “go-shop” window allowing Paramount Global’s special committee to consider “superior” bids, Bronfman Jr. is understood to have offered $2.4bn for Shari Redstone’s National Amusements, owner of a controlling interest in Paramount Global. The proposal includes a $1.5bn balance sheet injection and a $400m payment to cover a termination fee Paramount Global would pay Skydance Media were it not to consummate the previously…

Osgood Perkins’s horror film Longlegs has crossed $100m at the global box office including a $72m North American gross through Neon, consolidating its status as the highest-grossing American independent film of the year to date. The film starring Maika Monroe and Nicolas Cage has amassed $31m from international territories licensed by Black Bear Pictures. The UK, where Black Bear distributed directly, leads the field on $10m. Longlegs is yet to open in a number of major regions and territories including Latin America and Italy. Black Bear’s sister company Elevation Pictures distributed the film in Canada which accounts for just over…

“Cinema is in a very bad way – I think it’s lost its place,” Brian Cox told the Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF) during a surprise appearance in the festival’s industry programme. “I think it has lost its place, partly because of the grandiose element between Marvel and DC and all of that, and it’s beginning to implode. You’re losing the plot, I think. Television has really stolen the march, when you get incredible things like Ripley, like Succession,” said Cox. “In terms of the work,” continued the Succession star, referencing films in the vein of Deadpool & Wolverine, “it becomes…

Toxic (Akiplėša), the debut feature from Saulė Bliuvaitė, has won the 2024 Golden Leopard, the top prize at the Locarno Film Festival. Toxic follows two teenage girls from a bleak industrial town who join an extreme local modelling school. Featuring a cast of non-actors, it was selected for Les Arcs work-in-progress programme in 2023, and was also a prize-winner at Meeting Point Vilnius this year. Bendita Film Sales are handling sales. The film also won Locarno’s Swatch first feature award.  The Golden Leopard for best film includes a cash prize of CHF 75,000 ($86,650) to be shared equally between the film’s…