In his latest film which in English gets the title ‘Suspended Time’, the French maestro gets super personal and in the process, makes us discover the laughter we lost during COVID times.
Read MoreBerlinale announces 2024 juries and expresses solidarity with travel-banned Iranian filmmakers
A multitalented group of people will decide who brings home the top prizes from Berlin, while Iran shows its colors.
Read MoreFour reasons to love Lupita Nyong'o, if you ever needed them
Reason one: she’s going to be Jury President of the Berlinale 2024.
Read MoreJohn Malkovich talks 'Seneca', acting in the TikTok generation & shooting in Morocco, again
The American actor may have said something during the press conference about his good friend Julian Sands, also featured in the film Malkovich is promoting at this year's Berlinale, but during our interview the tragedy of the actor who has gone missing felt like a looming presence, unspoken and indescribable.
Read MoreAn interview with Aamir Khan for 'Laal Singh Chaddha', the Indian Forrest Gump
"We have such a large and healthy audience of our own in India, the fact is that none of the filmmakers have really felt the need to reach out to a world audience," Aamir Khan told me in 2010, "and when I say really felt the need, I mean filmmakers in Argentina perhaps, or in France or Germany, different parts of the world, don't have such big and healthy audiences of their own and so they come from a situation where they really need to reach out to a world audience and an audience in the West."
Read MoreAli Asgari talks 'Until Tomorrow' and filmmaking in Iran
Don’t think of this film as your ordinary Western world garden variety torment, as Asgari's oeuvre usually involves two individuals dancing a dance of impossibilities with the authorities of Tehran, trying to navigate a world that makes one's humanity a challenge.
Read MoreIrrfan Khan, why did you go? The world is uglier today...
Now, in the moment when we would have needed him most, Irrfan Khan has left us. He’s gone. He had been ill for the last couple of years and yet, just as with all those we deeply love and are deserving of that love, his passing was unexpected. Unwarranted. Unwanted. HIs words won’t get us out of this funk now.
Read More“Cinema has a responsibility”: An interview with Rithy Panh
Meeting Cambodian documentary filmmaker Rithy Panh in Doha, during their annual Qumra event, was a real treat for someone who believes in the power of cinema with a conscience. Apart from the Doha Film Institute's wonderful meeting of talents held within the Souq Waqif and inside the Museum of Islamic Art each March and now in its fifth edition, Panh's presence felt historic. He was a Qumra Master in 2017, came back to teach a short documentary lab at the Institute in the summer of 2018, and now is back as a Mentor -- patiently watching works in progress and meeting with filmmakers to share his wisdom.
Read MoreRachid Bouchareb at Berlinale 2016: "Peace Should Be a Subject Taught in Schools"
I find that there is a leitmotif running through three-time Oscar nominated filmmaker Rachid Bouchareb’s work. It’s the idea that peace is fragile, no matter how idyllic the setting of your life, there could always be something threatening to invade it, to destroy the status quo.
Read MoreRoberto Saviano, wins Silver Bear at Berlinale, but here he was in an earlier interview
Roberto Saviano, to any Italian, is a figure that we constantly re-evaluate. I started out being completely taken by his apparent courage and in fact wrote the piece below after meeting him in secret in NYC. I named it “The Face of Courage” for the Huffington Post.
These days, his police protection magically gone, even though the Camorra is still going strong, he’s written the screenplay for an award winning film at Berlinale, and I am starting to doubt his intentions. Or even his provenance. When I wanted to catch up again with the writer and TV personality, he dismissed me on a couple of occasions. But regardless of my own experiences and thoughts about Saviano, this interview I conducted with him in NYC in 2012 is a great testament to something. I just have to figure out what… My good writing perhaps?
Read MoreThe pastel hues of Jeff Goldblum: On watching 'Isle of Dogs' for the first time and Wes Anderson's "some kind of wonderful"
I met Jeff Goldblum in Berlin, where his latest project, Wes Anderson's stop-motion animated masterpiece 'Isle of Dogs' premiered and kicked off the 68th edition of the Berlinale. The actor was dressed to the nines, as he typically is, in the past even having prompted a special quote from his three-time director, "I like the pastel hues of Jeff Goldblum –' That’s the title of something," which remains a personal favorite quote to describe Goldblum.
In person Goldblum is bigger than life but in a way that's not burly or self-important. He simply is the man with the constantly evolving good looks, the actor who has gotten better with age and who, at 65 years old, can still hold a table of jaded journalists spellbound. For the half hour we chatted with him, there seemed to be no one else in the room, even with Bill Murray and Liev Schreiber just feet away at other tables. That's how charismatic Goldblum is. It is a quality that definitely comes across whenever the actor is photographed, like the photographer captured the shot above.
Read MoreAamir Khan on His Fans, Jafar Panahi, 'A Separation' and the Mahabharata
At our first meeting, when I got up, ready to pack up my recording device after the interview and bid Aamir Khan adieu, the Indian mega star insisted “no please, have a seat. I would like to ask you a couple of questions. Do you have the time?” Of course I did, for the greatest star in the firmament of Indian cinema! And so for the next fifteen minutes, Khan unassumingly asked about my background, my love for Arab cinema and my passion for India.
Read MoreThe Reluctant Radical: An Interview with Ryuichi Sakamoto
At this year's Berlinale, the iconically sophisticated Ryuichi Sakamoto serves double duty.
He is part of the official 2018 Competition Jury, and is the subject of Stephen Nomura Schible’s 'RYUICHI SAKAMOTO: async AT THE PARK AVENUE ARMORY', the companion piece, the B side if you will, to 'RYUICHI SAKAMOTO: CODA', a film which screened at the Venice Film Festival in 2017.
When I met Sakamoto in person, inside the Casinò in Venice, I was awe struck. His shiny, perfectly straight silver hair, those tortoise shell eyeglasses and the stylish black suit all made for an image that is so naturally fashionable, hard to forget. Yet Sakamoto is so much more profound than just how he looks, his meticulously styled, outward persona.
Read More‘We Are Facing a Disaster’: Berlinale Winner Gianfranco Rosi Talks Fuocoammare
Can a film change the world?
Italian filmmaker Gianfranco Rosi’s latest masterpiece Fuocoammare (Fire at Sea) was awarded the top prize at this year’s Berlinale and jury president Meryl Streep declared the film “urgent, imaginative and necessary filmmaking,” when handing him the Golden Bear. Fuocoammare also received the Ecumenical Prize and that jury released a statement saying that Fire at Sea is “a film that refuses to allow the status quo to go unquestioned.” If that isn’t changing the world through cinema, then I give up.
Read MoreActor Michael Shannon Redefines Fatherhood, Good & Evil in 'Midnight Special'
Ladies, get a hold of some waterproof mascara, ‘cause you’ll need it!
In Jeff Nichols’ Midnight Special, actor Michael Shannon gives everyone a daddy complex, by being the best father we all wished for in our youth, or that fantasy baby daddy we’ve dreamed about in the thick of the night. And the tears, well those are a fabulous byproduct of this charismatic actor’s latest, cathartic performance.
Read MoreThree Questions with Liev Schreiber
There is something perfectly magnetic about Liev Schreiber. He's tall, strong and handsome, with clear as aquamarines blue eyes. But it goes beyond that. When he sat down in the chair next to mine in Venice, I gasped.
And now I can't wait to watch him... eh hum.... hear him play a dog in Wes Anderson's 'Isle of Dogs'.
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