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Identified only by their last name, Tu, the husband and wife in Brief History of a Family have built their comfortably middle-class life together in accordance with China’s one-child policy. Now, in less restrictive times, a chance to expand their nuclear unit arrives in the form of their teenage son’s mysterious new friend. From shifting perspectives, writer-director Lin Jianjie examines the contained volatility of this four-person configuration. His stylistic choices can be spot-on or self-conscious in their artifice, but his debut feature reveals a talent to watch. With its intriguing performances, narrative restraint and unanswered questions, the movie delivers a strong pull of yearning as well as tantalizing currents of suspicion and dread.

The two boys are schoolmates who apparently have never interacted until the day Wei (Lin Muran) makes an overture of friendship that’s less innocent than it seems. The studious loner Shuo (Sun Xilun) becomes...

Films Boutique has closed a raft of deals on the Chinese movie “Brief History of a Family,” which will play at the Berlinale in the Panorama section.

Chinese filmmaker Lin Jianjie‘s feature debut, “Brief History of a Family” premiered at Sundance and will be screening for buyers at the EFM as well.

Films Boutique has sold the movie to Benelux (September Films), Italy (Movies Inspired) and Spain (Karma Films).

The drama is set in the aftermath of an incident at the high school attended by Wei, an outgoing only son from a middle-class family, and Shuo, his quiet, perceptive classmate. Wei soon introduces his friend to his father, a cell biologist, and his mother, a former flight attendant. Learning that Shuo comes from a troubled background, Wei’s parents welcome this boy to spend more time in their home. Shuo slowly integrates himself into Wei’s family life and...

Chinese filmmaker Lin Jianjie’s debut feature “Brief History of a Family,” which is being sold by Films Boutique, has debuted its trailer (below), following its world premiere in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition section of the Sundance Film Festival.

The film, which will make its European premiere in the Panorama program of the Berlin Film Festival, was received warmly by Variety critic Carlos Aguilar. In the review, Aguilar says the suspenseful drama was “elevated by its consistent visual inventiveness.” He adds that although at first it seems to be the story of a “cunning infiltrator wreaking havoc in an unsuspecting household,” it then “reveals itself as a tale of wish fulfillment for everyone involved.” Aguilar says that it is this approach which “turns Lin’s debut into an engrossing brain-tickler.”

The drama is put in motion by an incident at the high school attended by Wei, an outgoing only son from a middle-class family,...

“Perception is real, and the truth is not,” announces Imelda Marcos in “The Kingmaker,” a jaw-dropping documentary in which director Lauren Greenfield exposes just how effective the wounded peacock has been in reshaping her status. Once world-famous for her shoe collection, Imelda benefited enormously from husband Ferdinand’s two-decade dictatorship over the of the Philippines, until being forced to flee to Hawaii in 1986. Now, back from exile, the disgraced former first lady is fully invested in reclaiming her family’s position atop a country whose coffers they once pillaged, attempting to bend democracy and boost her son, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., to power.

Marcos’ print-the-legend philosophy has particular resonance in a post-truth world, although such sinister undertones sneak up on audiences in a movie that begins, innocently enough, as the latest of Greenfield’s astonishing portraits of wealth run amok. Even as far away as the Philippines, the photographer can...

A still from Vinay Shukla and Khushboo Ranka’s Proposition for a Revolution

Nfdc Film Bazaar’s Work-in-Progress Lab has announced its selection in Fiction and Documentary categories.

The Work-in-Progress (Wip) Lab gives filmmakers a chance to have their rough-cut feature-length films viewed by an eminent panel of international advisers. These advisers have a one-on-one discussion with the filmmaker with an intention to help the filmmaker achieve an accomplished final cut of the film.

Nfdc Film Bazaar 2014 will be held from November 20-24 in Goa Mariott Resort.

Work-in-Progress Lab 2014:

Fiction :

Bokul by Reema Borah Highway by Umesh Vinayak Kulkarni Nil Battey Sannata by Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari Tathagat by Manav Kaul Thithi by Raam Reddy

Documentary :

12 Acres by Rajesh Thind Maidaan (Home Ground) by Kavita Carneiro Nehi Mozo Hanü Dizo Le (Without You, I am Nothing) by Anushka Meenakshi and Iswar Srikumar Proposition for a Revolution by Khushboo Ranka...

The Cinema Eye Honors, devoted to highlighting the best of the year's nonfiction films, have flipped for Lixin Fan's fantastic "Last Train Home," which follows a family of migrant workers as they struggle to stay connected while living separated by hundreds of miles. "Last Train Home" received the most nominations -- seven -- while Banksy's "Exit Through The Gift Shop" and Afghanistan documentary "Armadillo" each received six. The award ceremony will take place on January 18 at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York, and will be broadcast on the Documentary Channel.

Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking

Armadilllo

Directed by Janus Metz

Produced by Sara Stockmann and Ronnie Fridthjof

Exit Through The Gift Shop

Directed by Banksy

Produced by Jaimie D'Cruz

Last Train Home

Directed by Lixin Fan

Produced by Mila Aung-Thwin and Daniel Cross

Marwencol

Directed by Jeff Malmberg

Produced by Jeff Malmberg, Tom Putnam, Matt Radecki, Chris Shellen...

On the ninth anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks on America, I watched Armadillo, a Danish documentary about the war in Afghanistan, at the Toronto International Film Festival in Canada. I saw it because it seemed relevant and I had a few hours between films that I was actually excited for. I went in without any expectations, totally unaware that it would be the most thought-provoking film I would see that weekend.

Armadillo explores the War on Terror on a personal level through the eyes of a small group of soldiers who are deployed for the first time to Forward Operating Base Armadillo on the edge of the Helmand frontline in Afghanistan. Taliban territory lies 800 meters beyond the camp’s walls. As operations get intense and the war becomes a reality, their boredom turns to cynicism and anger. Getting shot at and watching friends fall, the soldiers, who were originally sent to help the locals,...