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Throughout her storied career as a screen and theater actress, Mirjana Karanović has never run away from a challenge. In the melodrama “Mother Mara,” her second feature as a director, co-writer and star, she gives herself challenges aplenty, including showing herself both physically and emotionally naked. Her Mara is a tough, successful businesswoman with platinum curls à la Marilyn Monroe, whose carefully constructed identity falls apart after the death of her 21-year-old son.

Even Mara’s grieving process defies custom. She refuses to stay away from work or cry on the shoulders of others. Instead, she re-ignites her lifeforce through an affair with a much younger man. Some viewers, who would find it perfectly acceptable if the genders of the two principal characters were swapped, may find the older woman/younger man dynamic implausible, but the performances of the two leads and a late twist in the plot do a...

“Mother Mara,” which has its world premiere at Sarajevo Film Festival as a gala screening, playing out of competition, has debuted its trailer (below). World sales are being represented by Antipode Sales International.

The Serbian drama stars and is directed by Mirjana Karanovic, who previously starred in and directed Sundance competition title “A Good Wife.” As an actor she is best known for Jasmila Zbanic’s “Grbavica,” winner of the Berlin Golden Bear, and Emir Kusturica’s Oscar nominated and Cannes Palme d’Or winner “When Father Was Away on Business.”

The film centers on Mara, a successful businesswoman and single mother, who is heartbroken after her son Nemanja’s untimely death. She becomes emotionally detached, refusing to communicate with friends and family. However, when she meets Milan, Nemanja’s close friend, she finds solace and comfort in their relationship. As they grow closer, they uncover more about Nemanja’s life and his passing,...

The long shadow of the war and its ravages continue to haunt a group of late middle-aged Sarajevan friends in the low-budget, tonally uneven dramedy “May Labor Day” from Bosnian multi-hyphenate Pjer Žalica. Although the material is both a little thin and a tad familiar, the script ticks off a range of contemporary social problems and issues such as the brain drain to Europe of the educated younger generation, junkie no-hopers who get clean through faith, the orphan kids kept off the street through charitable ventures and the nagging dissatisfaction felt by the ordinary men who fought for their country, but feel that it has lost its way.

Serving as the closing night attraction of this year’s Sarajevo Film Festival, “May Labor Day” is a co-production of all the territories of former Yugoslavia and features an ensemble of the region’s best-known actors, who appear to take great pleasure in performing together.

After three solemn features centered on the ramifications of war — not just in her home country of Bosnia but, in 2017’s “Never Leave Me,” Syria too — writer-director Aida Begić leaves political conflict behind in her fourth. “A Ballad,” however, charges no less abrasively into the emotional battleground of a young woman’s separation from her long-term partner, and the personal, legal and familial skirmishes that hamper her fight for independence. Very loosely inspired by the 17th-century South Slavic ballad “Hasanaginica,” Begić’s ambitious, jaggedly structured film brashly updates its moral of female sorrow and subservience to far more modern ideals of feminist resolve and rejection of the patriarchy.

Not every one of the film’s swirling subplots lands, just as not all its social and philosophical lines of inquiry come crisply into focus. But this is the most distinctive and artistically exciting work yet from Begić, who won Cannes prizes for her first two features,...

Neil Armfield.s Holding the Man, Simon Stone.s The Daughter, Jeremy Sims. Last Cab to Darwin and Jen Peedom.s feature doc Sherpa will have their world premieres at the Sydney Film Festival.

The festival program unveiled today includes 33 world premieres (including 22 shorts) and 135 Australian premieres (with 18 shorts) among 251 titles from 68 countries.

Among the other premieres will be Daina Reid.s The Secret River, Ruby Entertainment's. ABC-tv miniseries starring Oliver Jackson Cohen and Sarah Snook, and three Oz docs, Marc Eberle.s The Cambodian Space Project — Not Easy Rock .n. Roll, Steve Thomas. Freedom Stories and Lisa Nicol.s Wide Open Sky.

Festival director Nashen Moodley boasted. this year.s event will be far larger than 2014's when 183 films from 47 countries were screened, including 15 world premieres. The expansion is possible in part due to the addition of two new screening venues in Newtown and Liverpool.

As previously announced, Brendan Cowell...

Dramas which keep the tension tightly under the lid while eschewing a boiling melodramatic outburst can be challenging. On the other hand, de-dramatized dramas with smoother edges are easier to chew on for laid-back, cerebral viewers. Croatian director Ognjen Sviličić demonstrates the mastery of combining both approaches in his fifth feature, These Are the Rules.Bus driver Ivo (Emir Hadzihafizbegovic) and his spouse Maja (Jasna Zalica) are an ordinary middle-aged couple living a routine life in a block of apartments. Their calm and unexcited life peppered by everyday bickering will soon come crashing down as the parents discover their teenage son has been severely beaten. Tomica (Hrvoje Vladisavljevic) comes home one morning, just as his parents are getting up. They let him recuperate the missing...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

While a Venetian touch (gondolas, art, architecture, margherita pizzas) certainly adds to the charm of the Venice Film Festival experience, for a third year straight, cinephiles can skip the packing their suitcases portion of a trip and bring the Lido into their own screening rooms. Venice Biennale’s Sala Web has reteamed with Festival Scope folks to offer an appetite whetting total of eleven features (8 Orizzonti section & 3 Biennale College – Cinema). Announced yesterday, digital tickets for the Sala Web screenings (4€ each) can be grabbed at www.boxoffice.festivalscope.com – but don’t throw your popcorn into the microwave just yet. The 2014 sampling of world cinema/72nd Venice Film Fest is only available during a period of 5 days beginning at 9 pm (Italian time) on the day of each film’s official presentation.

Among the headliner items we find Kandahar helmer Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s The President tells a story set in a fictional...

The 71st Venice Film Festival announced its lineup this morning, highlighted by films from American directors, including David Gordon Green, Barry Levinson, Peter Bogdanovich, Lisa Cholodenko, Andrew Niccol, and James Franco. As had been previously announced, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, starring Michael Keaton and many others, will be the opening film when the festival begins on Aug. 27.

Click below for the entire list of 55 films playing in Venice.

Competition

The Cut, directed by Fatih Akin

Starring Tahar Rahim, Akin Gazi, Simon Abkarian, George Georgiou

A Pigeon Sat On A Branch Reflecting On Existence, directed by Roy Andersson

Starring Holger Andersson,...