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It’s been nearly a decade since Athina Rachel Tsangari, the idiosyncratic Greek filmmaker who’s never one to repeat herself, has graced us with a new film. Tsangari is always looking for a new challenge: from the improvisational, genre-bending desolateness of The Slow Business of Going (2000), to her Greek Weird-Wave breakout Attenberg (2010) and game of hypermasculinity, Chevalier (2015), each new project takes on a whole different formal imagination. What links them together? Beyond their ostensible differences is Tsangari’s affinity for betweenness—that feeling of not belonging. This feeling is reflected in the films as much as in Tsangari’s life, bouncing […]

The post “A Nihilist Western”: Athina Rachel Tsangari on Harvest first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

It’s been nearly a decade since Athina Rachel Tsangari, the idiosyncratic Greek filmmaker who’s never one to repeat herself, has graced us with a new film. Tsangari is always looking for a new challenge: from the improvisational, genre-bending desolateness of The Slow Business of Going (2000), to her Greek Weird-Wave breakout Attenberg (2010) and game of hypermasculinity, Chevalier (2015), each new project takes on a whole different formal imagination. What links them together? Beyond their ostensible differences is Tsangari’s affinity for betweenness—that feeling of not belonging. This feeling is reflected in the films as much as in Tsangari’s life, bouncing […]

The post “A Nihilist Western”: Athina Rachel Tsangari on Harvest first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Das Berliner Weltkinofestival hat jetzt das Programm von Wettbewerb und Specials seiner von 29. November bis 7. Dezember stattfindenden 19. Ausgabe bekannt gegeben.

Kurdwin Ayubs „Mond“ ist einer der Filme im Wettbewerb von Around the World in 14 Films (Credit: Ulrich Seidl Filmproduktion)

Das Berliner Weltkinofestival Around the World in 14 Films hat jetzt das Programm für seine von 29. November bis 7. Dezember stattfindende 19. Ausgabe bekannt gegeben.

Herzstück ist nach Angaben des Festivals der 14 Filme umfassende Wettbewerb in dem der

Basis Berlin Postproduction Award für Beste Regie vergeben wird. Unter den eingeladenen Filmen von zehn Regisseurinnen und fünf Regisseuren befinden sich auch Titel, die zuvor schon auf Festivals wie Sundance, Cannes, Venedig oder Locarno erfolgreich gezeigt wurde.

Die Wettbewerbsfilme von Around the World in 14 Films im Überblick:

• „Kill the Jockey”, Regie: Luis Ortega (Argentinien)

• „Sujo”, Regie: Astrid Rondero und Fernanda Valadez (Mexiko)

• „The Village Next to Paradise”, Regie: Mo Harawe (Somalia)

• „Vermiglio”, Regie: Maura Delpero...

Athina Rachel Tsangari‘s The Harvest is still touring the film festival circuit which began with a competition slot at Venice Film Festival followed by showcases at TIFF, NYFF, Busan, BFI London and some recent additional stateside screenings at Chicago and the AFI Fest just yesterday. And though she typically keeps her upcoming film projects under wraps, she did provide some crumbs about what might be her next feature film – and it’ll feature an American actress who the filmmaker has admired and has been out of the game for a while now. So we should not be shocked if one day an obscure name or an Eva Mendez, Bridget Fonda, Mira Sorvino or Phoebe Cates type comes out of retirement to sign up with the Greek-American filmmaker.…...

Athina Rachel Tsangari, the Greek director with roots in New York and Austin, Texas, does not need any convincing when an actor or crew member proposes an offbeat idea.

Her new film “Harvest” is based on Jim Crace’s interior monologue of a novel and set in the unspecified past. It feels like the middle ages, apart from the occasional anachronism. On the ramshackle set in Scotland, most of the characters were wearing wooden clogs, but Tsangari’s lead actor Caleb Landry Jones (best known to audiences as the brother in “Get Out;” he also won a Cannes prize in 2021 for the drama “Nitram”) strolled up in contemporary hiking boots.

“I loved it,” the director tells TheWrap of Jones’ footwear. “I’m open to stuff like that. It has nothing to do with what people were wearing in medieval times, but it works. Especially in a film like this one,...

Memoir Of A Snail, the latest stop motion pic from Oscar-winning filmmaker Adam Elliot, and Edinburgh-based filmmaker Laura Carreira’s haunting debut feature On Falling are among the top prize winners at this year’s London Film Festival.

The competition winners were announced this afternoon by the London Film Festival’s various juries. The jury heads were Alexandre O. Philippe, (Official Competition), Dionne Edwards (First Feature Competition), June Givanni, (Documentary Competition), and Chloe Abrahams (Short Film Competition).

Memoir Of A Snail took Best Film while Carreira’s On Falling, produced by Jack Thomas-o’Brien of Sixteen Films, won the Sutherland Award in the First Feature Competition. On Falling is the first British feature to win the Sutherland Award since 2010. Clio Barnard won it that year with The Arbor. Previous winners include Andrea Arnold, Lynne Ramsay, Robert Eggers, Julia Ducournau, and Mati Diop.

Memoir Of A Snail tells the tale of separated twins in 1970s Australia.

Carlos Marques-Marcet’s Toronto-winning musical drama They Will Be Dust, will open the 69th edition of the Valladolid International Film Week, also known as the Seminci, on October 18.

The end of life drama starring Alfredo Castro and Angela Molina won the Platform section at TIFF last month.

Valladolid, headed by José Luis Cienfuegos for a second year, is a key launchpad into the Spanish market for local and international films.

There are a total of 22 titles in the running for the festival’s top prize, the Golden Spike that comes with a €70,000 award for the Spanish distributor. The Silver Spike...

While there’s a few more fall film festivals popping up in the next month, the major ones are behind us, which means we have a strong sense of the films to have on your radar in the coming months and even through 2025. We’ve asked our writers from across the globe to weigh in on their favorite world premieres from Locarno Film Festival, Venice Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, New York Film Festival, and BFI London Film Festival.

Our coverage will continue with a few more reviews this week, and far beyond as we provide updates on the journey of these selections, so continue to explore all of our festival coverage here. In the meantime, check out top picks from our writers below and return soon for our extensive year-end coverage.

Soham Gadre (@SohamGadre)

1. April (Dea Kulumbegashvili)

2 and 3. Youth (Homecoming and Hard Times) (Wang Bing...

The folk-horror genre has been a perennial mainstay on screens for decades, with recent installments from films like Midsommar, Enys Men, and more recently Starve Acre revitalizing the genre. Harvest, which marks the English-language debut of Greek director Athina Rachel Tsangari, continues this tradition but deploys it in more novel ways. The film utilizes its quasi-folk-horror sensibility to paint an elegiac portrait of a pre-industrial village in the Scottish Highlands.

The film, adapted from Jim Crace’s novel of the same name, follows a small community nearing the end of the harvest season, run under their master Charles Kent (Harry Melling), who inherited the estate their village is on from his late wife, and his right-hand man Walter Thirsk (Caleb Landry Jones). The village displays all the traditional trappings of folk-horror communities found in films like The Wicker Man. They consciously live outside the gaze of God, engage in bizarre practices,...

A24 has picked up U.S. distribution rights to Pillion, the debut feature of British director Harry Lighton (Wren Boys) from Poor Things producers Element Pictures starring Harry Melling (The Pale Blue Eye) and Alexander Skarsgård (The Northman, Succession).

Described as a “funny, filthy romance,” Pillion sees Skarsgård play Ray, an ” impossibly handsome leader of a bike gang” who takes on Colin (Melling), a weedy wallflower, to be his new submissive. Ray uproots Colin from his dreary suburban life and introduces him to a community of kinky, queer bikers. But as Colin dives deeper into Ray’s world, he begins to question whether the life of a 24/7 submissive is really for him.

Lighton, BAFTA-nominated for his 2017 short Wren Boys, directed Pillion from his own script which is loosely inspired by Adam Mars-Jones’ 2019 novel Box Hill. The film wrapped production this summer.

Element Pictures, a Fremantle company, produced Pillion with financing...

The Chicago International Film Festival is gearing up for its 60th edition with an exciting lineup of global cinema, running from October 16 to 27, 2024. This year’s competition slate promises a wide array of international storytelling, with films spanning from Azerbaijan to Brazil, Japan to Tunisia, all competing for the festival’s prestigious Gold Hugo awards. The films are set to debut across multiple categories: International Feature, International Documentary, and New Directors, along with entries for the OutLook and Shorts competitions.

A remarkable 30 feature films are making their North American or U.S. premieres, with three world premieres adding to the anticipation. Some filmmakers are no strangers to Chicago, returning to the festival after prior successes, like Péter Kerekes, whose film 107 Mothers earned him the Silver Hugo for Best Director in 2020, and documentary powerhouse Joshua Oppenheimer.

Among the festival’s top-tier International Feature Competition, several standout titles have already made waves at Cannes,...

Hard Truths

Scheduled to take place in England’s capital from the 9th to the 20th October is the 2024 edition of the London Film Festival. The UK’s premier film celebration will be taking over the city with screenings at a whole host of London-wide venues including the BFI Southbank, BFI IMAX, Prince Charles Cinema and Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall to name but a few. As it has done for a number of years now, the festival will also be presenting a number of select screenings in regional cinemas too as part of Lff on Tour. For those who aren’t able to make it to cinemas there will be a number of films, of both feature and short length, made available for free on the BFI Player once the festival gets underway.

The lineup of feature films on offer has once again excited us here at Dn headquarters.

“Nickel Boys”, which opens the New York Film Festival on September 27, wouldn’t exist without producers Dede Gardner (Plan B) and Joslyn Barnes (Louverture Films). Both women boast enviable track records of finding, backing, and promoting rising talent, along with Gardner’s Plan B partner Jeremy Kleiner, who produced with her the Oscar-winners “Moonlight” and “12 Years a Slave,” as well as Best Picture nominees “The Tree of Life,” “The Big Short,” “Selma,” “Vice,” and “Women Talking.”

Barnes is known in the documentary space for producing Oscar nominees “Strong Island” (Yance Ford) and “Hale County This Morning, This Evening,” her first collaboration with Brown professor and photographer RaMell Ross. Barnes was finishing “Strong Island” when Ross showed her eight minutes of his project; she resisted at first but eventually became intensely involved in the shoot, archives, and the final edit. Ross sees the world differently than most filmmakers; his rare...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Between the Temples (Nathan Silver)

In a state of arrested development after his wife unexpectedly died from a freak accident, Ben Gottlieb (Jason Schwartzman) is suicidal, pleading to a truck to just run him over and begging that he be fired from his job as cantor at the local Jewish temple in upstate New York. While this set-up may not scream comedy, Between the Temples is in fact hilarious, packed with endless jokes and adoration for physical gags while we witness Ben find new meaning in life through an unexpected acquaintance. Above all, Nathan Silver’s feature, from a script he co-wrote with C. Mason Wells,is a thrillingly alive, nimble piece of filmmaking: shot on 16mm by Sean Price Williams with...

The first batch of titles were announced in August, and now with Locarno and Venice firming up the selection process, we now have our second wave of films. Sixteen feature films (nominations of the European Film Awards will be revealed on 5 November) have been added and we find the likes of Venice competition winners in Pedro Almodóvar, Maura Delpero and Dea Kulumbegashvili, Orizzonti section winner Bogdan Mureşanu, Locarno Golden Leopard winner by Saulė Bliuvaitė and Toronto preemed Hard Truths by master filmmaker Mike Leigh.

April directed by Dea Kulumbegashvili

Conclave directed by Edward Berger

Hard Truths directed by Mike Leigh

Harvest directed by Athina Rachel Tsangari

Misericordia directed by Emma Dante (Italy)

Moon directed by Kurdwin Ayub (Austria)

Mr.…...

The European Film Academy has added a further 16 feature films to the longlist – known as the Feature Film Selection – for the European Film Awards. With the already announced 29 films the list comprises 45 titles.

These films will now be considered for the nomination stage of the European Film Awards. The nominees will be revealed on Nov. 5.

Among the titles are several Venice award-winners: Pedro Almodóvar’s Golden Lion winner “The Room Next Door,” Grand Jury Prize winner “Vermiglio,” Special Jury Prize winner “April,” and Horizon winner “The New Year That Never Came.” Other titles include Edward Berger’s “Conclave,” Mike Leigh’s “Hard Truths” and Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer.”

The films were selected by the European Film Academy Board, who consulted with a team of invited experts.

The European Film Awards take place on Dec. 7 in Lucerne, Switzerland.

These are the additional titles in the Feature Film Selection:

“April,” directed by Dea Kulumbegashvili

“Conclave,...

Mitte August hatte die European Film Academy die ersten 29 Spielfilme benannt, die ins Rennen um eine Nominierung für die European Film Awards gehen, nun wurde die Liste um 16 weitere Titel erweitert – darunter auch deutsche (Ko-)Produktionen.

Die weiteren Filme der Spielfilmauswahl für die European Film Awards stehen fest (Credit: European Film Academy)

Wie bereits im August anlässlich der Bekanntgabe einer ersten, 29 Titel umfassenden Liste an Spielfilmen angekündigt, hat die European Film Academy nun weitere Filme benannt, die sich Hoffnung auf eine Nominierung für die am 07. Dezember in Luzern stattfindende Verleihung der European Film Awards machen können. Mit den 16 weiteren Filmen gehen nun insgesamt 45 europäische Spielfilme ins Rennen. Ausgewählt wurden die Produktionen vom Vorstand der European Film Academy, der sich dabei von europäischen Filmexpertinnen und -experten beraten ließ.

Dies sind die zusätzlichen Titel in der Spielfilmauswahl:

• „April“

• „Konklave“

• „Hard Truths“

• „Harvest“

• „Misericordia“ (Regie: Emma Dante; Italien)

• „Mond“ (Regie: Kurdwin Ayub; Österreich...

Luca Guadagnino’s Queer and Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door are among the 16 films added to the European Film Award 2024 contenders.

Several UK features have been shortlisted including Edward Berger’s Conclave, Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths and Athina Rachel Tsangari’s Harvest. Joshua Oppenheimer’s The End, a UK co-production with Denmark, Germany, Ireland and Sweden, has also been selected.

Further features include Dea Kulumbegashvili’s April, which won the special jury prize at Venice Film Festival as well as Maura Delpero’s Vermiglio, a Silver Lion winner at Venice and Italy’s submission for international feature at the Oscars.

An eventful week in the waning days of a medieval English village provides the narrative backbone for Harvest, Athina Rachel Tsangari’s moody-verging-on-mopish adaptation of Jim Crace’s novel of the same name. The book is written in a bewitching prose style somewhere between a monologue and a first-person essay. Dialogue is sparse, much of it denoted as overheard half-phrases, and the overall ambience alien, which is more than apt for a setting—a lord-of-the-manor-ruled agricultural collective—effectively lost to time.

Tsangari, who co-wrote the screenplay with Joslyn Barnes, finds her own way into this foreign land by accentuating the grit and the grime. This is evident in everything from Sean Price Williams’s grainy 16mm cinematography (some sort of crud is always visible at the edges of the frame) to the lead casting of Caleb Landry Jones, a performer who often seems like he’s just emerged dazed and confused from primordial sludge.

Das Chicago International Film Festival feiert dieses Jahr 60. Jubiläum. In den Internationalen Wettbewerb wurden u.a. Pia Marais‘ „Transamazonia“ und Mohammad Rasoulofs „Die Saat des heiligen Feigenbaums“ eingeladen. „Der Spatz im Kamin“ von Ramon Zürcher feiert seine US-Premiere, The Match Factory hat gleich drei Koproduktionen dort. Aus Österreich sind „Pfau“ und „The Village Next to Paradise“ im Debüt-Wettbewerb vertreten.

„Der Spatz im Kamin” (Credit: Zürcher Film)

Sowohl „Transamazonia“ von Pia Marais (hier unsere Spot-Besprechung) als auch „Der Spatz im Kamin“ von Ramon Zürcher (hier unsere Spot-Besprechung) feierten ihre Weltpremiere im Wettbewerb von Locarno. Beide Filme laufen nun auch in Chicago, genauer gesagt im internationalen Wettbewerb des Chicago International Film Festival, das dieses Jahr 60. Jubiläum begeht. „Der Spatz im Kamin“ sogar als US-Premiere („Transamazonia“ tut dies Anfang Oktober beim New York Film Festival). Ebenfalls nach Chicago wurde Mohammad Rasoulofs vielgepriesener „Die Saat des heiligen Feigenbaums“ (hier unsere Spot-Besprechung) eingeladen, der von...

Payal Kapadia’s Cannes grand prix winner All We Imagine As Light and Mohammad Rasoulof’s special prize recipient The Seed Of The Sacred Fig, along with Athina Rachel Tsangari’s Venice selection Harvest are among the international competition selections at the 60th Chicago International Film Festival running October 16-27.

A packed line-up also brings Joshua Oppenheimer’s Telluride entry The End to the International Feature Competition, along with the North American premiere of The Quiet Son from Delphine Coulin and Muriel Coulin, which debuted on the Lido.

There are world premieres for Clarissa Campolina and Sérgio Borges’s Suçuarana...

Payal Kapadia’s Cannes grand prix winner All We Imagine Is Light and Mohammad Rasoulof’s special prize recipient The Seed Of The Sacred Fig, along with Athina Rachel Tsangari’s Venice selection Harvest are among the international competition selections at the 60th Chicago International Film Festival running October 16-27.

A packed line-up also brings Joshua Oppenheimer’s Telluride entry The End to the International Feature Competition, along with the North American premiere of The Quiet Son from Delphine Coulin and Muriel Coulin, which debuted on the Lido.

There are world premieres for Clarissa Campolina and Sérgio Borges’s Suçuarana...

This year’s festival is rich in impressive female leads, including Kidman, Gaga and Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton bonding for Almodóvar, while a strong documentary lineup ranges from Trump to Yoko Ono

In a summer when oppressive heat has turned the Venice Lido into a sauna, the stars at the city’s annual film festival were as numerous as the droplets of sweat. Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga, Jude Law, Angelina Jolie, George and Brad, the list goes on… Interestingly, many A-listers were working in English-language productions by auteurs from Spain (Pedro Almodóvar), Italy (Luca Guadagnino), Chile (Pablo Larraín), Greece (Athina Rachel Tsangari), Mexico (Alfonso Cuarón)… It shows how much cinema’s mainstream is fuelled today by global voices, although it raises the question of where this leaves the world’s national cinemas once their biggest names move abroad.

One director who has returned to his national roots is Brazilian film-maker Walter Salles.

As the Toronto International Film Festival gets underway, The Hollywood Reporter’s critics weigh in on this year’s crop of titles, from biopics to documentaries, sweeping epics to intimate character studies, tear-jerking dramas to laugh-out-loud comedies.

Several of this year’s slate have already debuted at other festivals throughout the year. For those curious about the very best the TIFF calendar has to offer, a few — but not nearly all — of the highlights include the Steven Soderbergh ghost story Presence, which David Rooney hailed as “masterfully done” out of Sundance; the Icelandic grief drama When the Light Breaks, which Lovia Gyarkye described as “impossible to shake” at Cannes; and the literary adaptation Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, which Caryn James praised at Telluride for the “astonishing” child performance at its center.

In addition, the lineup includes a number of highly anticipated world premieres — we’re curious about David Gordon Green’s Nutcracker,...

Debuting tomorrow at TIFF before heading for competition slots at San Sebastian and London, Laura Carreira’s On Falling looks set to be the breakout British title from this year’s festival circuit.

Recent examples include Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun and Georgia Oakley’s Blue Jean. And Carreira’s On Falling, the latest feature from Sixteen Films, depicts an equally dark and politically driven slice of contemporary society. The film follows Aurora, a young Portuguese woman who struggles to make ends meet across one week in her adopted home of Glasgow, Scotland. Long days spent grabbing packages off shelves for an anonymous e-commerce giant barely cover the bills and leave her exhausted and desperate for something more.

Per the synopsis: Aurora seeks to resist the loneliness, alienation, and ensuing small talk that begin to threaten her sense of self. Set against a landscape dominated by an algorithm-driven gig economy, designed to keep us apart.

Fifteen features will world premiere at the 68th BFI London Film Festival (Lff), including Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s documentary Endurance, and previously announced opening title Steve McQueen’s Blitz.

The festival takes place from October 9-20.

Free Solo and Nyad directing duo Vasarhelyi and Chin direct Endurance alongside Natalie Hewit, which examines the lost ship of Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton. Further world premieres include Sophie Compton and Daisy-May Hudson’s documentary Holloway, about one of the largest women’s prisons in Europe.

Steven Knight’s Victorian boxing series A Thousand Blows, starring Stephen Graham, will receive its world premiere.

The 68th BFI London Film Festival has unveiled its star-studded 2024 lineup, featuring Angelina Jolie, Elton John, Daniel Craig, Florence Pugh, Andrew Garfield, Saoirse Ronan, and more in a program boasting 39 world premieres and 12 international premieres among its 253 feature, short, series and immersive works.

The festival’s headline gala screenings will showcase a range of high-profile films. The world premiere of Steve McQueen’s “Blitz” starring Ronan opens the festival, while Morgan Neville’s “Piece by Piece” closes it.

Other gala screenings include R.J. Cutler and David Furnish’s “Elton John: Never Too Late,” Sean Baker’s “Anora,” Ali Abbasi’s “The Apprentice” starring Sebastian Stan, Andrea Arnold’s “Bird,” Edward Berger’s “Conclave” with Ralph Fiennes, Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Pérez,” Mike Leigh’s “Hard Truths,” Ben Taylor’s “Joy,” Pablo Larraín’s “Maria” featuring Jolie, Marielle Heller’s “Nightbitch” starring Amy Adams, Pedro Almodóvar’s “The Room Next Door...

Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s latest documentary feature Endurance about the epic search to find the lost ship of Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, Sean Baker’s Anora, and Marielle Heller’s Nightbitch starring Amy Adams are among the titles that have been announced within the full lineup of the British Film Institute’s (BFI) 68th London Film Festival. Scroll down for the full list.

Endurance, which Oscar winners Vasarhelyi and Chin have made for National Geographic, will screen as a world premiere. Running October 9-20, Lff will feature 40 World Premieres, 12 International Premieres, and 21 European Premieres.

Eye-grabbing entries from today’s launch include headline gala screenings of Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or winner Anora, Edward Berger’s latest feature Conclave, and Ali Abbasi’s much-talked-about Donald Trump biopic The Apprentice. Other highly-anticipated titles that arrive from the...

While lesser known than her contemporary Yorgos Lanthimos, Greek filmmaker Athina Rachel Tsangari has played a large part in shaping the so-called “weird wave” that swept the country’s cinematic exports. Her international breakthroughs “Attenberg” and “Chevalier” highlighted the absurdity of social structures by having intrepid individuals flout taboos. Tsangari’s latest work, “Harvest,” approaches her central concern from the reverse angle, showing how the imposition of an artificial order fertilizes the soil to reap chaos.

Continue reading ‘Harvest’ Review: Caleb Landry Jones Tries To Expand Borders In Athina Rachel Tsangari’s Allegorical Drama [Venice] at The Playlist.

Greek filmmaker Athina Rachel Tsangari marked her return to Venice this evening with the world premiere of competition title Harvest, which was unveiled to a 7-minute, 50-second ovation at the Sala Grande.

Cast members hugged Tsangari following the premiere, which received a warm reception from the audience.

Harvest stars an ensemble cast led by Caleb Landry Jones alongside Harry Melling, Rosy McEwen, Arinzé Kene, Thalissa Teixeira and Frank Dillane.

The film is a loose adaptation of Jim Crace’s novel of the same name. Over seven hallucinatory days, a village with no name, in an undefined time and place, disappears. In this tragicomic take on the Western, townsman turned-farmer Walter Thirsk (Jones) and befuddled lord of the manor Charles Kent (Melling) are childhood friends about to face an invasion from the outside world: the trauma of modernity.

Tsangari has described Harvest as a film about “reckoning.”

In her director’s statement Tsangari said,...

Sheep, Sheep, Sheep: Tsangari’s Monotonous Treatise on Modernization

Adapted from a novel by Jim Croce, Harvest is Greek auteur Athina Rachel Tsangari‘s third feature narrative, and, unfortunately, also her least effective. Described as the director’s take on the Western genre which aims to depict “the trauma of modernity,” it instead plays like a glacially paced bit of folk horror as concerns an unnamed time and place where an obscure farming community has been deemed an obsolete outpost to its money hungry landowners. While an aggressive edit of about thirty minutes from its two-hour plus run time might make its endlessly repetitive interactions feel a bit less languorous, a lack of tension and characterization robs this moral fable from conjuring any real emotional impact.…...

An unnamed village, an unknown time; somewhere in Britain, sometime in the Late Middle Ages, something is about to end. Athina Rachel Tsangari’s Harvest sees the twilight of an old social order, but is not mourning a paradise lost. That would be too simplistic a comparison for a filmmaker whose work has always succeeded in weaving the allegorical with the political, such as gender constructs in Attenberg or Chevalier. Nine years after the latter, the Greek director returns to feature filmmaking with an adaptation of Jim Crace’s acclaimed book of the same name, making Harvest her third film and first period piece.

Harvest season comes with warm yellows (fields), bright greens (meadows), and deep blues (the lake). Amidst all of this beauty, we find Walter Thirsk (Caleb Landry Jones), a villager whose bright eyes and pale skin may mislead you: he is so deeply immersed in this natural world––its cycles,...

Set in an unspecified time and place that feels like rural Scotland in the late 18th or early 19th century, Harvest tells the story of an isolated farming community facing upheaval. Written and directed by Greek filmmaker Athina Rachel Tsangari, it’s an adaptation of British author Jim Crace’s 2013 novel of the same name. The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2022.

We’re introduced to a close-knit village living off the land and each other’s support. Field work and harvest celebrations are a big part of life. But changes are coming on the horizon that will challenge their traditional way of doing things. When strangers arrive—a mapmaker, a wealthy heir, and others—it sets off a chain of events that throws everything into turmoil over the course of a dramatic week.

Walter Thirsk is an outsider among the villagers but cares deeply about the land.

Venice film festival

Dastardly deeds are afoot in an imagined medieval village with unscrupulous landowners in this directionless study of inauthenticity

Hopes were high at Venice for this film, the English-language debut for the formidably talented Greek New Wave director Athina Rachel Tsangari, based on the novel by Jim Crace. Sadly, it’s a tiresome folk non-horror set in a quaintly imagined medieval village on the Scots-Mummerset border with plenty of golden-hour landscape shots and dreamy insect closeups: a pastiche bucolic non-place with rural-effect activities.

These are smudgy-faced folk preparing for the titular harvest sporting various funny hats and Dionysiac masks and the children are forced at a certain age to ritually hit their heads against a local rock to learn not to get above themselves and learn never to leave the district – an entirely preposterous tradition which takes us very close to Lars von Trier territory.

And sadly it...

There is a sense-memory of Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven when Harvest begins; we are in the midst of a wheatfield, the ripe ears above us, the blue sky glimpsed between the stalks. Caleb Landry Jones appears, caressing a butterfly. Then he bites off a piece of mossy wood, chews experimentally and spits it out; we have just shifted sideways from Malick’s lyricism into the unpredictably strange, unforgiving world of Greek director Athina Rachel Tsangari.

Venice competition title Harvest is set in what is probably a Scottish village sometime in the 18th century, when much of the country was being convulsed by an agricultural revolution. During the Clearances, thousands of peasant farmers were evicted to make way for industrial-scale sheep farming, their fields grassed, and woods razed for pasture. Landry Jones plays Walter Thirsk, who came to this imaginary village — so remote that it doesn’t require a name,...

It’s been nine years since Athina Rachel Tsangari’s last film “Chevalier,” a mordant contemporary satire of toxic male ego and destructive dick-measuring contests. Much has changed in the Greek writer-director’s third feature “Harvest” — her first English-language work, her first literary adaptation and by some measure her most ornate and expensive production to date, set some centuries in the past — but the theme of petty, ruinous patriarchy holds strong. Taking on British author Jim Crace’s Booker-shortlisted historical novel about a farming community undone by parochial distrust and encroaching capitalism, Tsangari’s vigorous, yeasty period piece occasionally loses the thread of its sprawling ensemble narrative, but transfixes as a whole-sackcloth immersion into another time and place.

Quite what time and what place is up for debate, however. As in Crace’s novel, neither is specified, though the accents and craggy-lush landscape — the film was shot on location in Argyllshire,...

With her small but delicious body of directorial work, Greek New Waver Athina Rachel Tsangari has amassed a loyal fanbase. Her debut “Attenberg” (2010) announced a talent capable of balancing absurdist humor with an infectious warmth for human weirdness. Where lauded contemporary Yorgos Lanthimos makes his characters suffer to drive existential points home, Tsangari uses deadpan observations as a way to affectionately deepen her psychological portraits. Crucially, her creations care about each other, even if they are often hamstrung by certain weaknesses.

The announcement of a third feature, “Harvest,” world premiering at Venice, nine years on from “Chevalier,” was cause for genuine excitement among Tsangari heads. Forays into a TV miniseries (“Trigonometry” in 2020) and regular producing gigs have been no substitute for a feature film brewed in her singular mind palace. So, how does “Harvest” stack up?

At first glance, it seems like Tsangari has totally switched things up. Her first...

Greek writer-director-producer Athina Rachel Tsangari’s last feature was 2015’s Chevalier, a sly black comedy skewering masculine hyper-competitiveness which built on the promise of her first two acclaimed works, Attenberg (2010) and The Slow Business of Going (2000). Those put her on the cutting edge of the Greek Weird Wave along with her compatriot Yorgos Lanthimos (Poor Things), whose early work she often produced. Now Tsangari returns to Venice, where Attenberg made such a splash, with Harvest, a work of marked maturity and sobriety — less weird than woebegone and woad-tinted, based on the acclaimed novel of the same name by Jim Crace. The result is a moving if willfully ahistorical study of an agrarian paradise lost.

Like Crace’s book, Harvest the film never specifies when and where the story takes place. However, the Scottish accents of the ensemble, which range from Glaswegian to the more northerly, teuchter cadences of the Highlands proper,...

If anyone had a particularly surreal Venice in 2023, it was Caleb Landry Jones.

Not only was the actor on the Lido for barely 24 hours — for the world premiere of Luc Besson’s “DogMan” in which he played a cross-dressing vigilante-thief with a pack of canines at his command — but the 34-year-old had effectively been yanked from a muddy film set on the top of a mountain in Scotland early one morning, flown to Italy, put in a shirt, ferried from press conference to red carpet, flown back to Scotland the next day and driven to the top of a mountain to shoot a crucial scene.

“I was in Venice, but all I was thinking about was this really important scene I had to do,” he says. “And I kept falling asleep in the screening and trying to wake up and Luc would be like, ‘Man, it’s ok, go to sleep,...

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Andres Veiel’s documentary “Riefenstahl,” which challenges the carefully crafted public persona of one of Germany’s most controversial directors, is one of 17 German films playing in the various sections of the Venice Film Festival.

A deep dive into Leni Riefenstahl’s previously inaccessible archive, the 160-minute film lifts the lid on secrets the director of the 1935 Nuremberg propaganda film “Triumph of the Will” struggled more than half her life to keep hidden.

Veiel was brought onboard to direct by producer Sandra Maischberger of Berlin’s Vincent Films, who had gained unfettered access to Riefenstahl’s archive after the death of her longtime companion and husband Horst Kette in 2016.

“For me, it is the right festival for the film,” Veiel tells Variety. “The political situation in German and Italy is similar — with the rise of the right-wing, and a longing for propaganda and fake news. For a debate about the film,...

Andres Veiel’s documentary “Riefenstahl,” which challenges the carefully crafted public persona of one of Germany’s most controversial directors, who was forever tainted by working with the Nazis, is one of 17 German films playing in the various sections of the Venice Film Festival.

A deep dive into Leni Reifenstahl’s previously inaccessible archive, the 160-minute film lifts the lid on secrets the director of the 1935 Nuremberg propaganda film “Triumph of the Will” struggled more than half her life to keep hidden.

Veiel, who was brought onboard to direct by producer Sandra Maischberger of Berlin’s Vincent Films – who had gained unfettered access to Riefenstahl’s archive after the death of her longtime companion and husband Horst Kette in 2016 – is untroubled by the film’s out-of-competition berth as he believes the festival is the right venue for its first showing.

“For me, it is the right festival for the film,...

Buongiorno, Insiders. The fall festival season is now underway and Deadline is at all the major events to bring you the big headlines. Jesse Whittock here to guide you through the big film and TV news. Sign up for the newsletter here.

Views From Venice

Sigourney Weaver attends The Venice Film Festival red carpet of the opening film Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

Lift off on the Lido: After a starry opening night courtesy of Tim Burton’s zany Beetlejuice sequel, the Venice Film Festival is booming with a stacked roll call of A-list talent shooting into town on those cute little boats. This year is perhaps starrier than ever with names including Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, George Clooney, Michael Keaton, Jenna Ortega, Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga, Tilda Swinton, Julianne Moore, Daniel Craig, Angelina Jolie, Kevin Costner, Nicole Kidman, Isabelle Huppert, Winona Ryder, Monica Bellucci, Willem Dafoe and Sigourney Weaver. The latter received...

We’re in that time of year where film festivals dominate the news. Yes, that means a lot of first looks and reviews of some of the most anticipated films of the year. However, it’s also a time for some of the smaller films to gain buzz and surprise us. The upcoming film, “Harvest,” could be one of those features.

Read More: Venice 2024 Film Festival Preview: 15 Must-See Movies To Watch

As seen in the teaser for the film, “Harvest” tells the story of a small village and its inhabitants.

Continue reading ‘Harvest’ Trailer: Athina Rachel Tsangari’s New Drama Plays The Festivals This Fall at The Playlist.

Returning almost a decade after her last feature Chevalier, Greek director Athina Rachel Tsangari is back this year with Harvest, which is coming to Venice, TIFF, and NYFF. Shot by Sean Price Williams and starring Caleb Landry Jones, Harry Melling, Rosy McEwen, Arinzé Kene, Thalissa Teixeira, and Frank Dillane, the film follows the tale of a remote village in medieval England. Ahead of the premiere, the first trailer and poster have arrived.

Here’s the NYFF synopsis: “Greek filmmaker Athina Rachel Tsangari, who deconstructed human behavior within bounded communities in Attenberg and Chevalier, sets her sights on entirely new environs in Harvest, which takes place in a remote village in medieval England. Adapted from the acclaimed novel by British writer Jim Crace, Tsangari’s film stars Caleb Landry Jones as Walter Thirsk, the former childhood friend and manservant of the village’s weak-willed landowner, Master Kent (Harry Melling). Marked by...

The Match Factory has hired former Netflix executive Marc van den Bosch-Mprah in the newly created role of VP acquisitions.

Based in Berlin, van den Bosch-Mprah will lead The Match Factory’s worldwide acquisition strategy and report to general manager Michael Weber. His appointment is effective immediately.

Van den Bosch-Mprah was most recently at Netflix, where he spent the last two years as head of acquisitions and co-production for Germany, Austria and Switzerland. There, he spearheaded the negotiation of a long-term partnership for Constantin’s theatrical releases in German-speaking Europe, and co-produced movies, series and documentaries, including Netflix’s first...

World sales and production outfit the Match Factory, part of streaming and production company Mubi, has appointed former Netflix manager Marc van den Bosch-Mprah as VP acquisitions.

The newly-created role is based in Berlin and van den Bosch-Mprah, effective immediately, will report into Michael Weber, general manager, to lead the Match Factory’s worldwide acquisition strategy.

Van den Bosch-Mprah was most recently at Netflix, where he spent the last two years as head of acquisitions and co-production in German-speaking Europe, spearheading the negotiation of a long-term partnership for Constantin’s theatrical releases in the territory, co-producing movies, series and documentaries, including Netflix first Swiss production “Early Birds.”

Van den Bosch-Mprah has more than 15 years’ experience in the film and TV industry. Prior to joining Netflix, he had managerial roles at European broadcast giant Rtl, Warner Bros. and Viacom.

Weber said: “Marc’s expertise in acquisition strategy, sales and local...

The Match Factory has appointed former Netflix manager Marc van den Bosch-Mprah as VP Acquisitions, with immediate effect.

Van den Bosch-Mprah will report to The Match Factory general manager Michael Weber, in the Berlin-based role which will see him lead the company’s worldwide acquisition strategy.

The experienced exec was most recently at Netflix, where he spent the last two years as Head of Acquisitions & Co-Production (Dach).

In that role, he spearheaded the negotiation of a long-term partnership for Constantin’s theatrical releases in German-speaking Europe, co-producing movies, series and documentaries, including Netflix first Swiss production Early Birds.

Van den Bosch-Mprah brings 15 years of experience in the industry, which also includes managerial roles at Rtl, Warner Bros, and Viacom.

“We’re thrilled to welcome Marc to The Match Factory team,” said Weber.

“His expertise in acquisition strategy, sales and local co-production aligns perfectly with our goal of enhancing our global presence.

Exclusive: Greek filmmaker Athina Rachel Tsangari has finally returned to feature filmmaking with Harvest, for which we can share a first-look clip above.

Harvest stars an interesting ensemble led by Caleb Landry Jones. Tsangari completed the feature in northern Scotland earlier this year without much publicity. The pic is a loose adaptation of Jim Crace’s novel of the same name. The film’s synopsis reads: Over seven hallucinatory days, a village with no name, in an undefined time and place, disappears. In Tsangari’s tragicomic take on a Western, townsman turned-farmer Walter Thirsk and befuddled lord of the manor Charles Kent are childhood friends about to face an invasion from the outside world: the trauma of modernity.

Tsangari wrote the screenplay alongside Joslyn Barnes. The film was produced by Rebecca O’Brien (Sixteen Films), and Joslyn Barnes (Louverture Films) alongside Match Factory Productions, Tsangari’s Haos Film, and Meraki Film.

The fate of Greece’s participation in this season’s international feature film Oscar race hangs in the balance after a chaotic selection committee process has left the culture ministry and Hellenic Film Academy (Helfiac) at loggerheads.

Helfiac president Lefteris Charitos told Screen on Thursday night that the ministry’s behaviour “undermines the selection proceedings and forces us to distance ourselves from them” after the government department rescinded its invitations to a four-person selection committee in early August and replaced them with a new group.

The original committee members – Vassilis Kekatos, winner of the 2019 Cannes short film Palme d’Or...

“Harvest,” directed by Athina Rachel Tsangari and starring Caleb Landry Jones, has been acquired by Mubi in several key territories ahead of its premiere in competition at Venice Film Festival.

Mubi will distribute the film in the U.K., Ireland, Germany, Austria, Benelux and Latin America with release plans to be announced in the coming months.

Based on Jim Crace’s Booker prize shortlisted novel of the same name, “Harvest” takes place “over seven hallucinatory days” when a “village with no name, in an undefined time and place, disappears,” according to its official synopsis. “Townsman-turned-farmer Walter Thirsk and befuddled lord of the manor Charles Kent are childhood friends about to face an invasion from the outside world: the trauma of modernity.”

Along with Landry Jones — who broke out in Martin McDonagh’s “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” and won the Cannes best actor award for his performance in 2021’s “Nitram” — “Harvest” stars Harry Melling,...