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Miami International Film Festival (Miff) has announced the films selected to screen during its 31st edition of the annual 10-day event, which will be held March 7-16, 2014. This year’s festival, which is a program of Miami Dade College’s MDCulture, will premiere 92 feature films and 28 short films from 38 countries, participating in competition and non-competition categories. Miff will open at the Olympia Theater at Gusman Center for the Performing Arts, and will begin with the North American premiere of ‘Elsa & Fred’ from director Michael Radford. Academy award winners Shirley MacLaine and Christopher Plummer play the titular characters originated by China Zorrilla and Manuel Alexandre in the remake [ Read More ]

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Santa Monica -- Shirley MacLaine and Christopher Plummer have signed on to star in the romantic comedy Elsa & Fred, a remake of the hit Spanish-Argentine film, which Michael Radford (Il Postino) will direct. MacLaine plays a lively retiree in New Orleans who gets a at first unwanted neighbour when straight-laced widower Fred (Plummer) moves into her apartment building. The original 2005 film was set in Madrid. Written and directed by Marcos Carnevale, it featured actors China Zorrilla and Manuel Alexandre and was a huge box office hit in Argentina. Carnevale brought the project to Afm last year to

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Although too few movies take into account the rich lives of the elderly—unless those elderly are actors trying to pass as action heroes—that doesn't fully excuse a movie as cloying and predictable as Elsa & Fred. Manuel Alexandre and China Zorrilla star as unattached neighbors who take turns inadvertently insulting each other, then develop a grudging friendship that turns into a tentative romance. She's a brassy matron who speaks her mind, craves adventure, and models herself after Anita Ekberg. He's a timid soul who clings to his routine and his medication, and sums up his late wife in one word: "tidy." Will they overcome their differences and find happiness together before either the end credits roll or one of them croaks? Do you even need to ask? Writer-director Marcos Carnevale keeps Elsa & Fred breezy and light—even with the specter of death hovering over his leads—but the absence of.

By Neil Pedley

As the temperature rises, romance blooms amongst the geriatric set, "Mary Poppins" goes Bollywood, and parents will get their first chance to lay eyes on that which will likely have them driving to Toys "R" Us all summer long.

"Elsa and Fred"

Seeing anyone under 30 fall in love on screen is elusive these days, and so director Marcos Carnevale's gentle and endearing tale of romance between a couple with a real-life combined age of 176 is quite the breath of fresh air. In a role that nabbed several awards in his native Spain, Manuel Alexandre stars as Fred, an embittered widower whose chance encounter with Elsa (China Zorilla), a mischievous Fellini fanatic, leads the pair to Italy to fulfill her dream of reenacting the famous Trevi Fountain scene from Fellini's "La Dolce Vita." In Spanish with subtitles.

Opens in limited release.

"Finding Amanda"

Fans of the small...