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Some apotheosis of film culture has been reached with Freddy Got Fingered‘s addition to the Criterion Channel. Three years after we interviewed Tom Green about his consummate film maudit, it’s appearing on the service’s Razzie-centered program that also includes the now-admired likes of Cruising, Heaven’s Gate, Querelle, and Ishtar; the still-due likes of Under the Cherry Moon; and the more-contested Gigli, Swept Away, and Nicolas Cage-led Wicker Man. In all cases it’s an opportunity to reconsider one of the lamest, thin-gruel entities in modern culture.

A Jane Russell retro features von Sternberg’s Macao, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and Raoul Walsh’s The Tall Men and The Revolt of Mamie Stover; streaming premieres will be held for Yuen Woo-ping’s Dreadnaught, Claire Simon’s Our Body, Ellie Foumbi’s Our Father, the Devil, the recently restored Sepa: Our Lord of Miracles, and The Passion of Rememberance.

Given the aesthetics of A Question of Silence and its characters’ desire to uncover the motives of three women who suddenly attack and kill the male owner of a boutique, it’s understandable that Dave Kehr wrote that Marleen Gorris’s debut film “was built on a fashionable confusion of fascism and feminism.” But while much of A Question of Silence’s power comes from the steady, meticulous accrual of realistic microaggressions and outright misogyny that these women face on a daily basis, their violent act, as well as their lack of empathy or regret after the fact, is better read as purely symbolic rather than as the filmmaker’s tacit endorsement of their crime.

The film’s scenes are given a sense of verisimilitude by its on-location shooting in Amsterdam, and that raw authenticity brushes up against highly stylized sequences (shades of Rainer Werner Fassbinder) that are punctuated by moody bursts of synthesizers.

The Canadian director’s finely balanced drama about the abuse, secrets and shame of an isolated religious community boasts wonderfully nuanced performances, yet the real action lies in its knotty central argument

The Canadian writer-director Sarah Polley’s superbly inventive adaptation of Miriam Toews’s 2018 novel begins with a declaration: “What follows is an act of female imagination.” That phrase, taken directly from Toews, is pointedly double-edged, having been used by the elders of a remote religious colony to explain away years of drugged sexual assaults – attacks attributed to ghosts, demons, or hysteria (“wild female imagination”) that have left women and girls terrorised, pregnant or dead. When the assailants are finally caught and taken into custody “for their own protection”, the women have a brief window in which to imagine their future. Should they stay within the community that has raped and abused them, or leave, thereby casting themselves out of the Garden of Eden,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSThe winners of this year's socially distanced Academy Awards ceremony include Daniel Kaluuya, Youn Yuh Jung, and Chloé Zhao. Find our full list of winners and nominees here.The legendary layout artist Roy Naisbitt has died at 90. Best known for his intricate and interweaving visions, Naisbitt worked on films like Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Space Jam, Balto and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Recommended VIEWINGAn extension of This Long Century, Ecstatic Static is a database of films and information from a broad community of artists. The site is currently screening films like Simon Liu's Signal 8, and also has an extensive library featuring new notes on filmmaking by Jodie Mack, Helena Wittmann, and more. Anthology Film Archives has announced a new online festival, presented in partnership with production company Vanda. Entitled Vanda Duarte: Dissident Films by Latin American Women Directors,...

Each of the five nominees for Best International Feature Film tackles heavy-hitting real-world issues — alcoholism, bullying, asylum-seeking emigration, government corruption, genocide — but showcases them in exceptional and entertaining ways. This diverse group hailing from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Denmark, Hong Kong, Romania, and Tunisia challenges the status quo with these captivating stories that are sure to leave a lasting impact.

The crowd-pleasing frontrunner of the set is “Another Round,” which leads in critics guild wins and marks Denmark’s 13th Academy Award nominee. Its premise, a group of middle aged teachers tests the theory that maintaining a 0.05% Bac enhances one’s life, seems the least harrowing among its competition of heavier real-world issues. “The Hunt,” Thomas Vinterberg’s previous film nominated for Best Foreign Language Film in 2013, is another thrilling Mads Mikkelsen showcase with some of the same supporting cast. Vinterberg’s directing nomination is not only a big indicator for the film’s widespread love,...

Which film will follow on from ‘Roma’ in winning the prize?

Submissions for the best international feature film award at the 2020 Academy Awards have started to come in, and Screen is keeping a running list of each film below.

This is the first year the award will be given under the new name of ‘best international feature film’, after a change in April from ‘foreign-language film’.

The eligibility rules remain the same: an international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture produced outside the Us with a predominantly non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Stone worked as a producer, director, distributor and exhibitor in London and the Us.

Producer, director, distributor and exhibitor Barbara Stone, who worked in London and the Us, has died aged 83.

Stone was perhaps best known for founding the Gate Cinemas and Cinegate Film Distribution with her husband David Stone, who died in 2011.

The Gate Cinemas was one of the UK’s best-known independent cinema chains in the 1970s and 1980s. It started with the acquisition of the former Classic cinema at Notting Hill Gate in 1974, which was renamed the Gate, followed by the Gate 2 in Brunswick Square in 1978 and...

Bille August’s 1987 award winner is yet another full cinema meal, a deeply satisfying drama about working conditions among Scandinavian immigrants back when being poor was a life sentence. Max von Sydow’s performance is stunning, as an aging stock tender forced to begin again as a veritable serf. He and his good son Pelle are surrounded by little dramas dealing with injustices among the workers and servants, as well as between the landholders in the big farmhouse.

Pelle the Conqueror

Blu-ray

Film Movement Classics

1987 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 150 min. / Pelle erobreren / Street Date May 30, 2017 / 39.95

Starring: Pelle Hvenegaard, Max von Sydow, Erik Paaske, Bjorn Granath, Astrid Villaume, Axel Strobye, Troels Asmussen, Kristina Tornqvist, Karen Wegener, Sofie Grabol, Lars Simonsen, Buster Larsen, John Wittig, Troels Munk, Nis Bank-Mikkelsen.

Cinematography: Jörgen Persson

Film Editor: Janus Billeskov Jansen

Original Music: Stefan Nilsson

Written by Bille August, Per Olov Enquist, Max Lundgren, Bjarne Reuter

from...

Marleen Gorris' sightly absurdist, slightly magic realist movie about a strong woman who takes charge in a rural Dutch community is a fable about a kind of matriarchal utopia -- where decisions are made with patience and understanding, the weak are protected and women aren't abused. It's an Oscar winner for Best Foreign film -- the first directed by a woman, Antonia's Line Blu-ray Film Movement 1995 / Color / 1:78 widescreen / 103 min. / Antonia / Street Date April 19, 2016 / 39.95 Starring Willeke van Ammelrooy, Els Dottermans, Dora van der Groen, Veerle van Overloop, Esther Vriesendorp, Carolien Spoor, Thyrza Ravesteijn, Mil Seghers, Jan Decleir, Elsie de Brauw, Reinout Bussemaker, Marina de Graaf, Jan Steen, Catherine ten Bruggencate, Paul Kooij, Fran Waller Zeper, Leo Hogenboom, Flip Filz, Wimie Wilhelm. Cinematography Willy Stassen Film Editors Wim Louwrier, Michiel Reichwein Original Music Ilona Sekacz Produced by Gerard Cornelisse, Hans de Weers, Hans de Wolf Written and Directed by Marleen Gorris...

Susanne Bier Oscar winner 'In a Better World' director Susanne Bier Susanne Bier, whose In a Better World won the 2011 Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award, is seen above on the 83rd Academy Awards' Red Carpet, just outside the Kodak Theatre. The other 2011 Oscar nominees in the Best Foreign Language Film category were: Rachid Bouchareb's Outside the Law / Hors-la-loi (Algeria). Alejandro González Iñárritu's Biutiful (Mexico). Yorgos Lanthimos' Dogtooth (Greece). Denis Villeneuve's Incendies (Canada). As in previous years, several international favorites were left out of the 2011 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar competition. Among these were the following: Xavier Beauvois' French Academy César winner Of Gods and Men / Des hommes et des dieux (France). Semih Kaplanoglu's 2010 Berlin Film Festival winner Bal / Honey (Turkey). Apichatpong Weerasethakul's 2010 Cannes Film Festival winner Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives / Loong Boonmee raleuk chat (Thailand). Prior to In a Better World,...

Dutch director Sacha Polak has revealed further details of her first English-language project, Vita and Virginia.

The film, based on the play by Eileen Atkins, tells the story of the passionate love affair between writers Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West. Both women were members of the free thinking Bloomsbury set but their lesbian affair scandalised parts of British society. Sackville-West was married to the celebrated politician and diarist, Harold Nicholson.

Romola Garai has come on board to play Sackville-West.

“She (Garai) is so interesting and sexy. She will be the perfect Vita,” said Polak, who was at this year’s Berlinale with new film Zurich, sold by Beta.

The part of Woolf will be cast shortly. Polak insists that her film’s Woolf won’t be the “gloomy” and “depressing” figure with the prosthetic nose played by Nicole Kidman in The Hours.

“We are keen on showing another Virginia Woolf, a funny one...

UK veteran producer Simon Perry has been appointed head of production at Swedish regional film centre Film i Väst in Trollhättan, aka Sweden’s Trollywood.

Perry - former head of British Screen Finance and, more recently, the Irish Film Board from 2006-11 – has signed a two-year contract with the centre and started in his new job this week.

He replaces Swedish producer Jessica Ask, who left to join independent production company Anagram Film & TV.

“We are happy to welcoming Perry to Film i Väst, and look forward to a collaboration with one of the world’s most experienced co-producers on the international scene,” said CEO Tomas Eskildsson.

Film i Vast operates on an annual budget of $11.5m (Sek 93m).

Perry, a film journalist, independent filmmaker and producer with his own Umbrella Films, was head of state-financed development and production company British Screen Finance (later known as the UK Film Coucil) from 1991.

Since 2000 he has concentrated on teaching...

In 100 years of cinema, no American woman director has ever been invited to join the pantheon of international auteur directors. Non-American women directors like Andrea Arnold, Jane Campion, Liliana Cavani, Claire Denis, Marleen Gorris, Agnieszka Holland, Lynne Ramsay, Agnes Varda, Lina Wertmuller among others-- directors with bodies of work that match those of their male counterparts-- hardly exist in America, with the possible exceptions of masterful experimental directors, Maya Daren and Nina Menkes.

Kathryn Bigelow, who could be a top contender for American auteur director, had to leave America, after six years of unemployment, to seek financing in Europe, and is still not included with men among auteur directors. Other successful women directors who have made both commercially and critically successful features in America are mostly film and TV stars: Drew Barrymore, Jodie Foster, Penny Marshall, Barbra Streisand, Betty Thomas, to name a few. These directors have done fine work, but mostly within the confines of the studio system where, just once in a blue moon, a director like Nora Ephron, Catherina Hardwicke, Mimi Leder or Nancy Meyers can carve a niche.

The question arises, who are the American women directors whose films reveal the work of an auteur director? One could jump in with dozens of directors, from Anders, Arzner, Bigelow, Cholondenko, Coppola, Coolidge, Dash, Dunham, Hardwicke & Holofcener— just to start through the alphabet, but like Bigelow, none of these excellent directors is embraced as an auteur by the paternalist American film establishment.

In the United States less than 5% of feature films are directed by women, so for a director to emerge who is not already a women celebrity, is virtually impossible. Women directors usually make just one film before getting taken down early in the pipeline: if it’s not the misogynistic Hollywood studio system that expels them, their films are given paltry distribution and P&A budgets, or sometimes gender-biased critics comprised of over 80% males will likely taint their reviews.

One perfect example of a very fine American woman director whose body of work clearly distinguishes her as an auteur director is Jane Spencer. Jane Spencer is the director of the beloved low-budget indie feature Little Noises that premiered at Sundance some years ago to ecstatic reviews— and enamored audiences, and of Faces On Mars, which premiered in Europe at Solothurn. Her new film, The Ninth Cloud, which is being repped for distribution by Shoreline Entertainment is a dreamy, surreal marvel, which could do very well on the 2014 international festival circuit.

For Spencer, who dreams big, but must keep her budget small, ingenuity is the name of the game. As she says, “My dream as a kid was to direct big David Lean-style epics, so working within the framework I can create, I try to imbue my indie films with giant, epic themes.” Imagine if women directors like Spencer were afforded the budgets and opportunities to realize their immense talents for creating epic, visionary films.

I have always thought that film directors are like alchemists and magicians, but women directors have to be able to master another kind of magic as well: film financing in a void. Most women directors must cobble their production budgets together in any number of mysterious ways, and I wanted to know how Spencer had done it again. How did she succeed in making yet another wonderful feature film? How had she found the money?

Spencer answered the question with a question: “In an industry so difficult for women directors, how can any women director raise the money to make a film? You are basically forced to think outside the box. You just can’t give up. You try all the traditional methods: submit your script to actors, agents, studios, production companies, get it to friends in the business. They almost always lead to dead ends.

“So, finally, you go out and find it dollar-by-dollar— private equity from investors who like the project obviously, private loans you— yourself— take out. You get everything on the cheap, but keep the quality; get everyone to do you favors, but make sure they ‘get it’ and believe in the film. That’s the only way an American woman can make an indie feature film.”

Spencer shot The Ninth Cloud on super 16mm. Having a film camera instead of shooting digitally gives The Ninth Cloud a look that is simultaneously both very modern and nostalgic. As Spencer says, “It allows for the documentary, free-camera look I wanted to capture inspired by films like The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, Darling, and Billy Liar. These low-budget 1960’s British kitchen sink films were an inspiration for Spencer, her Production Designer/Producer Richard Hudson and her Dp, Sam Mitchell. She goes on, “I wanted the film to express an impressionistic vision of Zena’s (the main character) world.”

In the film, in which we follow the dreamy, strange Zena, through what turn out to be her final days....Spencer glorifies the vulnerable Zena through a nuanced appreciation for her ability to “see.” Keeping her indie budget low, Spencer uses inexpensive, old film technology to record her character’s fleeting, childlike, and magical perception of the world around her—and it works beautifully. The film captures the elusive, dream-like moments, as fleeting as a painter’s sudden awareness of reflected sunlight glancing off rippling water-- impressionism-- that gets at the essence of art, and is the very reason we revere our great male “Masters of Cinema.”

As Spencer puts it: “I wanted to depict, from a women’s perspective for once, the victorious dreamer. One doesn’t have to accept ‘reality’ to live a meaningful life. Whatever your journey is—stay with your dream. You cannot be dissuaded by pressure to conform to social norms, systems, or institutions that tell you ‘cannot' because it’s 'unrealistic' or 'impossible.'"

We all know that numerically, becoming a female film director in America is virtually impossible— as former DGA president, Martha Coolidge says: “like winning the lottery.” It’s a bizarre anomaly that America, the leader of the free world, virtually excludes women from its most culturally influential global export—media. Hollywood’s level of support of women film directors is among the worst in the world, something that is now accentuated by the recent drafting of international charters that promote the gender equity among women directors in many countries outside the United States.

However, making feature films that move and inspire audiences is Spencer’s quest and she has not been dissuaded by statistics. She says: “This was a very, very difficult film to finance. We had some wonderful equity investors, our own company invested a lot of the money-- especially for post, and there turned out to be not many pre-sales. It was very much patchwork financing, very hard, and we filmed it over the space of a year, in sections, because budget-wise, we had to.”

Even after her critical success at Sundance her studio meetings were difficult. After years of struggling to get financed out of L.A., Spencer happened to move to Europe for personal reasons, and immediately had much better luck.

"We got it done-- though at times we didn’t think we would. We started financing in 2008 when the financial crisis happened, so some of our financiers fell out. Our wonderful male lead at the time, Guillaume Depardieu, whom I adored, died of pneumonia on a set in Romania. I really wondered if this film would happen - for a moment. But then the producers and I got right back up on our feet and started financing it again. We found the amazing lead actress Megan Maczko in a play on London’s West End....Michael Madsen, who is great in the film—so sympathetic -- playing a dishwasher/poet (instead of a guy with a gun) - was lovely and stayed with the project....and we got the great French actor Jean Hugues Anglade onboard - We got right back up on our feet and started financing it again. By 2011 we had finished shooting. We’ve been in post for two years: all of 2012 and much of 2013.”

All the hard work has been well worth the effort. Spencer’s multi-layered film is woven with themes of Djuna Barnes and Baudelaire and traverses the landscapes of Marcel Carne and Antonioni. What makes the film so exceptional is how freshly these motifs have been re-imagined through this director’s effortless lens. The Ninth Cloud is at once tender and deeply moving, yet it manages to reject sentimentalities while glorifying its heroine and uplifting the audience.

Will women directors like Spencer ever join the pantheon of international male auteur directors? That depends upon the whether or not the U.S. cultural consciousness evolves to finally embrace gender equity in our nation’s most influential global export—media. Only then will women directors get the budgets and opportunities to test their metal and take their rightful places in the annals of American cinema.

The Ninth Cloud will be opening in select theaters internationally starting 2014.

Please visit The Int’l List of Living Women Directors: http://www.womendirectorsinhollywood.com/

Marie Giese is American feature film director, a writer, a member & elected Director Category Representative for women at the DGA. She graduated from Wellesley College and UCLA graduate film schooland co-founded the foremost international web forum for political action for women directors (Visit Here). An activist for parity for women directors in Hollywood, she is in development to direct two feature films Rain and Treasure Hunt...

For the past 15 years, European Film Promotion (Efp) has showcased ten young actors who have shown potential in feature films in order to help them expand their careers to a more international level. Previous Shooting Stars have included Thure Lindhardt, Mélanie Laurent, Elena Anaya, and Carey Mulligan. The actors will appear at the 62nd Berlin International Film Festival, which runs February 9-19, 2012. Dutch Oscar winner Marleen Gorris, member of the Shooting Stars jury, commented: "the films were a real pleasure to watch. We came away marvelling at the often brilliant way the nominated actors portrayed the feeling of a kind of modern loneliness, taking you on a journey in their search for identity no matter which part of Europe they came from." The actors selected this year are: France: Adèle Haenel Nominated by uniFrance films ...

Nadine Labaki, Where Do We Go Now? Today it was announced that Patty Jenkins, whose Monster earned Charlize Theron a Best Actress Oscar in early 2004, will be directing Thor 2. Officially, Perkins is the first woman director at the helm of a big-budget, Hollywood superhero movie. Below you'll find ten movies directed by female filmmakers that are among the 63 contenders for nominations for the 2012 Academy Awards' Best Foreign Language Film category. Seven of those hail from Europe; one is from the Americas, one from East Asia, and one from West Asia (or the Middle East). They are: the Dominican Republic's Leticia Tonos for Love Child, France's Valérie Donzelli for the semi-autobiographical Declaration of War, Greece's Athina Rachel Tsangari for Attenberg, Hong Kong's Ann Hui for A Simple Life, and Ireland's Juanita Wilson for As If I Am Not There. Also: Lebanon's Nadine Labaki for Toronto Film Festival Audience Award winner Where Do We Go Now?...

One of Britain's most distinguished actors, known for her roles on stage and screen

Margaret Tyzack, who has died aged 79, was one of Britain's greatest and most popular actors, working on stage, television and film for more than half a century. Sometimes described as being in the mould of Edith Evans and Flora Robson, she will be remembered particularly for performances in the golden age of BBC TV drama – Winifred in The Forsyte Saga (1967), Antonia in I, Claudius (1976) – as well as for stage performances such as Martha in the National Theatre's revival of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1981), for which she won an Olivier award for best actress, and Lottie with Maggie Smith in Lettice and Lovage (1987 and 1990), which earned her both Tony and Variety Club stage actress of the year awards. In 2008, well into her 70s, she scored perhaps one of her finest triumphs on stage as the wily,...

You likely have your own views on The Kids Are All Right, whether you've seen it or not. We've had several viewpoints shared by contributors of different opinions, but people in some parts of the country still haven't been able to see the film. Today, The Kids Are All Right is released on DVD, which means anyone with access to the internet can purchase a copy and watch it for themselves.

Out writer/director Lisa Cholodenko is behind the film that got people talking about lesbian partnerships, gay parenthood and sexual fluidity. The release of The Kids Are All Right also coincided with a new study about children of gay parents being well-adjusted, prompting many reports on the film to signal it as proof that there's a new "normal" when it comes to the nuclear family, and it's not always about having one mom and one dad.

But with power comes great responsibility.

Cologne, Germany -- Anja Uecker has taken over as managing director of Cinepool, the theatrical division of German sales giant Telepool. She will work closely with Irina Ignatiew, who heads up Telepool’s international TV sales operation.

Uecker will be part of the team Telepool takes to the European Film Market in Berlin next month, where it will be pushing its new slate, which includes Marleen Gorris’ “Within the Whirlwind” starring Emily Watson and mystery thriller “The Door’ from director Anno Saul featuring Mads Mikkelsen and Jessica Schwarz.

While fans can't wait for the season premiere of Showtime's Californication to air on September 28, some spoilers have already been released regarding the second season, which brings back David Duchovny as Hank Moody, a troubled writer who is struggling with midlife crisis and an insatiable desire for sex.

In fact, the second season will introduce us to a new recurring character named Daisy, played by Carla Gallo, who guest starred in series such as Law and Order, ER, Crossing Jordan, House and Bones.  Hank will also be thrown into prison, where he will be seen with another new character Lew Ashby, who will be played by Callum Keith Rennie.

Meanwhile, in other news, Californication actress Natascha McElhone, who plays Hank Moody's ex-girlfriend and mother of his child, will be taking on Oscar-winning Marleen Gorris' film Heaven and Earth, in which she will play the central character.

Actress Natascha McElhone is to star in a new movie about a pioneering British doctor - just months after her surgeon husband tragically died from heart failure.

The Californication star is take the lead role in a film chronicling the life of James Miranda Barry - a woman who pretended to be a man in order to qualify as a doctor.

McElhone's husband, British plastic surgeon Martin Kelly, suffered a cardiac arrest in May, collapsing on the doorstep of the couple's London home.

Heaven and Earth, directed by Oscar-winner Marleen Gorris, will begin filming next year - after McElhone gives birth to her third child with Kelly.

BERLIN -- The Berlin International Film Festival on Tuesday added Oscar-winning producer Fred Roos, Bollywood producer-director Yash Chopra, German actor Armin Mueller-Stahl and multimedia performance artist Matthew Barney to its 2006 jury. The eight-member jury also includes Dutch director Marleen Gorris, cinematographer Janusz Kaminski and Korean actress Lee Young-ae. This year's jury president is British actress Charlotte Rampling. "We have a very international jury this year, I'm excited to see what the results of that will be," festival director Dieter Kosslick said. The Berlin festival jury selects the Gold and Silver Berlin Bear winners as well as the Alfred Bauer Prize, named after the festival's founder. For the first time this year, the jury will announce the winners during the awards ceremony Feb. 18, which will be broadcast live on German pubcasters ZDF and 3Sat from the Berlinale Palast on Potsdammer Platz in Berlin. The 2006 Berlin International Film Festival runs Feb. 9-19.

BERLIN -- Regional subsidy board Filmstifftung NRW has backed two German/French co-productions just two days after the third annual Franco-German cinema summit wrapped in Cologne, Germany. Filmstifftung NRW said Tuesday it will pump €1.2 million ($1.4 million) into Within The Whirlwind, a literary adaptation from director Marleen Gorris (Mrs. Dalloway) that is a co-production of Cologne-based Tatfil and France's Lorival. The funding agency is also putting up €2.5 million ($2.9 million) for Henri Quatre, a three-part miniseries being co-produced by Berlin's Ziegler Film and GTV of France.

AMSTERDAM -- Mijke de Jong's family film Bluebird, has been picked as the official Dutch contender for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2006 Academy Awards, selection committee Holland Film announced Wednesday. The movie, awarded a Glass Bear in the children's section of this year's Berlin International Film Festival, tells the story of a 13-year-old girl who is pestered by her schoolmates. The events have a dramatic effect on her private life. Bluebird has been presented at several international festivals, including Toronto. The Dutch are traditionally one of the first territories to announce their candidate for the foreign language Oscar. Previous Dutch winners in the section are Marleen Gorris' Antonia's Line in 1996 and Mike van Diem's Karakter in 1998. Two years ago, Twin Sisters, directed by Ben Sombogaart, received a nomination.

LONDON -- U.K.-based production and financing company Random Harvest has signed Marleen Gorris, director of the foreign-language Oscar-winning Antonia's Line, to shoot Bronte, the company said Thursday. Random Harvest said it picked up the screenplay from DreamWorks SKG for an undisclosed sum after the studio put it in turnaround. No cast has been signed for Bronte, which follows the story of the three Bronte sisters -- Charlotte, Emily and Ann -- who between them wrote several English classics including Wuthering Heights, Agnes Grey and Jane Eyre. The project, currently in development, will be produced under the company's production label Random Harvest Pictures and is set to begin shooting in the fall.

LONDON -- U.K.-based production and financing company Random Harvest has signed Marleen Gorris, director of the foreign-language Oscar-winning Antonia's Line, to shoot Bronte, the company said Thursday. Random Harvest said it picked up the screenplay from DreamWorks SKG for an undisclosed sum after the studio put it in turnaround. No cast has been signed for Bronte, which follows the story of the three Bronte sisters -- Charlotte, Emily and Ann -- who between them wrote several English classics including Wuthering Heights, Agnes Grey and Jane Eyre. The project, currently in development, will be produced under the company's production label Random Harvest Pictures and is set to begin shooting in the fall.