Just as Taiwan sits atop our latest headlines, with China once again threatening to squash the country’s need for independence, I sat down with KEFF, the young Taiwanese-American filmmaker whose latest work, his feature debut world premiering in Critics’ Week, sits very high on the list of my favorite films in Cannes this year. And that’s saying a lot, as masterpieces abounded!
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And the Kering 2024 'Women In Motion' Emerging Talent Award goes to Malaysian director Amanda Nell Eu
The first time I ever met Eu, I knew she would be a filmmaker to watch. This latest award just reinforces her power.
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Photo by © Getty Images, courtesy of the DFI, used with permission.
Michael Winterbottom at Qumra 2023: "If you want to have a healthy film culture, you want directors who are making lots of films"
Qumra Master Michael Winterbottom is a critically acclaimed British filmmaker renowned for unconventional narratives and hard-hitting social commentary. In fact, what Winterbottom does counts as much in real life as it does on the big screen.
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Filmmaker Rithy Panh in Qatar, photo courtesy of the Doha Film Institute
“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.
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Alice Rohrwacher, photo by © Fabio Lovino
Alice Rohrwacher on why she's not making documentaries, the talisman in names & casting her Lazzaro
As I sit with a group of journalists surrounding Alice Rohrwacher, on an open terrace in Cannes, there is a dog howling and barking, far in the background. I giggle to myself as I seem to be the only person noticing it and because in her film ‘Lazzaro Felice’ (‘Happy as Lazzaro’) she features a wolf who is quite central to the story. This sound in the distance brings a whole otherworldly, almost magical element to our chat and if she does anything with her films, Rohrwacher proves a purveyor of magic through the lens.
This week, Rohrwacher descends on Doha to become a Master during their annual Qumra event. The Doha Film Institute is also about magic, and they make theirs happen behind the scenes by bringing together the crème de la crème of international filmmakers, producers, film curators, programmers, sales agent and festival directors to create a cinematic tsunami that is bound to be felt around the world. It is five days and nights of jam packed cinematic networking as well as constant learning, through their Masterclasses, lectures and mentorship, as well as over fine local dishes at working breakfasts, lunches and dinners.
From where I stand, the partnership seemed inevitable between Rohrwacher and the DFI.
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Giona A. Nazzaro flanked by the filmmakers of ‘Still Recording’ Ghiath Ayoub and Saeed Al Batal
"Would you live in the world of this director?”: Venice Film Critics Week's Giona A. Nazzaro discloses his most personal programming secret
Having just closed its thirty-third edition, the Settimana Internazionale della Critica (Venice International Film Critics Week also known as SIC for short) is the Venice festival sidebar that can boast the discovery of such world cinema masters as Olivier Assayas (SIC 1986), Pedro Costa (SIC 1989), Bryan Singer (SIC 1993), Peter Mullan (SIC 1998), Abdellatif Kechiche (SIC 2000), as well as Ronit and Shlomi Elkabets (SIC 2004). Each year, and year after year since the early ‘80s, the Venice International Film Critics Week has been changing cinema and in the process, also reshaping us and making us better. Because I do believe that cinema is undisputedly the fastest and most efficient way to change the world.
For the past three years renowned Italian film journalist and critic Giona A. Nazzaro has been SIC’s General Delegate, a duty he was elected to by a committee and for which the current mandate expires with this edition. Inshallah, as those of us who have spent more than a day or two in the Arab world are used to saying, he will be reelected to another mandate. I’ve grown quite fond of Nazzaro, in a truly professional way. He’s kind and very talented, but he also has an incredible instinct for discovering the unprecedented. And the past three years have been exciting ones at the SIC.
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Demian Hernandez in Dominga Sotomayor's 'Too Late to Die Young'
Dominga Sotomayor wraps us in colors of nostalgia with 'Too Late to Die Young' in Locarno
It was the film I most craved to watch at this year's Locarno Festival, and it happened to be the very first film I watched here. It didn't disappoint me!
Dominga Sotomayor's 'Too Late to Die Young' ('Tarde Para Morir Joven') is a beautiful shot, strangely evocative and perfectly soothing piece of filmmaking. Yet it somehow has stayed with me throughout the festival, a meter by which I have been judging everything else I've watched in Locarno.
Sotomayor’s film tells the simple enough yet unusual tale of a teenager, Sofia (played by Demian Hernandez) coming of age in a commune on the slopes of the Andes just above Santiago, Chile and the surrounding cast of characters that accompany her journey all the way to the final climax of the film. It is accented by this etherial cinematography and cool sounds and you can't help, as an audience member, but become wrapped in nostalgia. In this film's case, unlike a Syrian filmmaker once said to me when I interviewed him for his film, childhood is a geographical place and Sotomayor brings us there to experience it along with her. It's her memories of growing up in a community very much like the one in the film.
I caught up with the cool and self assured Sotomayor in Locarno where the film screens as part of the festival's International Competition.
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