News

Angelina Jolie may have missed out on a competitive Gotham Award nomination this year for her acclaimed performance in “Maria,” but the Oscar-winning actress will still participate in the upcoming ceremony.

On Thursday, the Gotham Film & Media Institute announced Jolie will receive the Performer Tribute for her performance as Maria Callas in Pablo Larrain’s upcoming film “Maria.” The actress will receive the honor at the 34th edition of The Gothams, taking place on Monday, December 2 at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City. According to a press release, “The tribute will honor Jolie’s rendition of the legendary opera singer Maria Callas.”

“Like the legendary figure she portrays, Angelina Jolie transcends mere performance to craft something extraordinary. Her interpretation captures both Maria Callas’s complexity as an artist and the cultural resonance that defines an icon,” said Jeffrey Sharp, Executive Director of The Gotham. “We are thrilled to...

Luis Ortega’s slow, unpredictable dramedy set in the world of mob-run racing in Buenos Aires, “Kill the Jockey,” plays its cards close to its chest. If surprising shifts into magical realism and existential rumination mean we are kept guessing about the film’s ambitions, there is also a sense that Ortega has let the material get away from him like a runaway horse.

Someone bested by a beast before the title even has a chance to flash up on screen is our titular jockey. We are first introduced to Remo Manfredini (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart) catatonic in a bar before he is found by a menacing male search party. They revive him by the uncharming method of inserting a riding crop into his mouth and drive him to a race track. Here he pre-games with horse drugs mixed with booze and cigarettes and then takes a slow walk through a...

The Match Factory has boarded international sales on An Urban Allegory, the new short film by Alice Rohrwacher and Jr, ahead of its world premiere at Venice Film Festival, Out of Competition.

The work marks the second collaboration between Italian filmmaker Rohrwacher and French artist and director Jr, after Omelia Contadina which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2020.

Taking inspiration from Greek Philosopher Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, asking what would happen if one of the prisoners managed to free themselves from their chains and escape from the cave, An Urban Allegory explores what would happen if the prisoner were Jay, a 7-year-old boy.

The film stars Lyna Khoudri, Palme d’Or winning director Leos Carax and Naïm El Kaldaoui in his first role.

The Match Factory has acquired international sales rights for “An Urban Allegory,” a short film by Italian filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher and French artist and director Jr, ahead of its world premiere at Venice Film Festival, where it plays out of competition.

“An Urban Allegory” marks the second collaboration between Rohrwacher, best known for “La Chimera,” “Happy as Lazzaro” and “The Wonders,” and Jr, whose credits include “Faces Places,” “Women Are Heroes,” “Paper and Glue” and “Tehachapi,” after premiering “Omelia Contadina” at Venice Film Festival in 2020.

The film stars César winner for most promising actress Lyna Khoudri, Palme D’Or winner director Leos Carax and Naïm El Kaldaoui in his first role.

According to a press statement, the synopsis is as follows: “In the ‘Allegory of the Cave,’ Plato ponders: What would happen if one of the prisoners managed to free themselves from their chains and escape from the cave? What if that prisoner were Jay,...

Disney’s Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes leads the new titles at this weekend’s UK-Ireland box office, with the ape adventure starting in over 650 sites.

Directed by Wes Ball, Kingdom is the fourth film since the Planet Of The Apes series reboot in 2011; and 10thPlanet Of The Apes film overall since the series began with Franklin J. Schaffner’s 1968 classic starring Charlton Heston.

Set 300 years after the events of 2017’s War For The Planet Of The Apes, Kingdom sees a young chimpanzee hunter embark on a journey with a human woman, to a dangerous holdout ruled by an ambitious bonobo monarch.

Josh O’Connor in LA Chimera. Photo credit: Simona Pampaollona. Courtesy of Neon

In Alice Rohrwacher’s Felliniesque tragicomic adventure tale LA Chimera, an English archaeologist-turned-tomb raider named Arthur (Josh O’Connor) leads a merry band of grave robbers who plunder ancient Etruscan tombs, eking out a meager living selling the stolen artifacts to collectors. Arthur is a haunted man, mourning his lost love, and caught up in recurring memories of their last moments together.

The tomb-raiding gives LA Chimera a bit of an Indiana Jones vibe, but while Arthur appears to be a trained archaeologist, he is not working for university nor is he a professor. Instead, he is what archaeologists call a “pot-hunter” plundering archaeological sites for grave goods he can sell for profit. And this grave-robbing is by no means lucrative, as he lives in a shack he built from cast off items, in the shadow of an aqueduct,...

Isabella Rossellini in La Chimera (Neon), on the red carpet (Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images), in Blue Velvet (De Laurentis Entertainment Group/Sunset Boulevard/Corbis)The actor: Isabella Rossellini has carved out a unique career path by marching to the beat of her own drum, even though her family is...

Isabella Rossellini inLa Chimera(Neon), on the red carpet (Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images), inBlue Velvet(De Laurentis Entertainment Group/Sunset Boulevard/Corbis)Graphic: Jimmy Hasse

Welcome to Random Roles, wherein we talk to actors about the characters who defined their careers. The catch: They don’t know beforehand what...

Chicago – One of the heralded auteur filmmakers of the recent decade is Alice Rohrwacher. The Italian director joins her cinema forebears like Pier Paolo Pasolini and Federico Fellini, both of which she’s been favorable compared to, in creating unique and personal stories that resonant beyond their narrative. Her latest, opening at Chicago’s Music Box Theatre on April 5th, is “La Chimera.”

Rating: 5.0/5.0

Based on her memories as a child of Italy, the term “La Chimera” represents a pursuit that individuals have in the back of their minds and their lives that they somehow find elusive. Rohrwacher puts this in the context of a petty thief and English-speaking expatriate named Arthur (Josh O’Connor), out of jail but reverting back to his skill as a tomb raider for ancient Estrucian artifacts … in the 1980s this was a mania in Italy. His gang is looking for a quick score, but he...

Josh O’Connor plays a troubled archaeologist obsessed with his dead girlfriend in “La Chimera,” the adventurous and ruggedly beautiful new Italian film from Alice Rohrwacher finally out this Friday from Neon.

In the haunted and haunting 2023 Cannes premiere, O’Connor’s mopey, recently-freed-from-jail Arthur joins with a band of tombaroli, or gravediggers, to excavate ancient treasures that may include an Etruscan statue that Arthur feels homages his former partner. The statue is too beautiful for human eyes, as Arthur says. O’Connor, the daffy and floppy-eared British actor beloved for his roles in films like the new queer classic “God’s Own Country” and already for Luca Guadagnino’s upcoming “Challengers,” went Method to play the part of an outsider adrift in the Italian countryside. Not only did he learn Italian — the actor speaks near-fluently in scenes that ask he do so — but O’Connor also spent his nights between shooting...

In ancient times, the Etruscan civilization built elaborate underground tombs not to please human eyes but those of the spirit world. A similar spirit of feeling unbound from the pressures of the present-day animates Italian filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher’s La Chimera, a 1980s-set adventure following a roving group of tomb raiders who attempt to excavate and pillage these secret sanctuaries. The director has always depicted time as layered rather than strictly linear. The present exists not ahead the past but on top of it, and the moments she depicts will one day be history for another era. This vision lends the sensation that she, like the ancient culture she depicts, is communicating with something beyond our perception.

Rohrwacher finds a perfect partner in her search for the sublime with Josh O’Connor. The English actor provides a human incarnation of the director’s restless attempt to collapse the contradictions of time.

Josh O’Connor and Carol Durate Photo: Neon The past is so close you can almost touch it in Alice Rohrwacher’s romantic treasure hunt, La Chimera. Set in the liminal space between living and dying, better known as the Italian countryside, Rohwacher’s carefully excavated narrative unearths a funny and...

"You've cast a spell." One of the best films from 2023! Neon has finally unveiled the official US trailer for the Italian film La Chimera, the latest from acclaimed Italian filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher. This first premiered at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival last year, where I first fell in love with it, before going on to play at the Telluride, Toronto, Zurich, and New York Film Festivals. Josh O'Connor stars as Arthur, one of the key members of a band of black market bandits (known as the "Tombaroli") who dig up archeological artifacts hidden in tombs around Italy and sell them to a collector. The cast also features Isabella Rossellini, Carol Duarte, Alba Rohrwacher, Vincenzo Nemolato, and Lou Roy-Lecollinet. I Adore this film and everything in it – I went to see it three times at three different festivals last year. It ended up as my #1 film of 2023 on my final Top 10 for...

Josh O’Connor is on a quest to find his long lost (and dead) love.

O’Connor leads writer-director Alice Rohrwacher’s “La Chimera,” a mystical adventure that premiered at Cannes 2023.

The official synopsis reads: “Everyone has their own Chimera, something they try to achieve but never manage to find. For the band of tombaroli, thieves of ancient grave goods and archaelogical wonders, the Chimera means redemption from work and the dream of easy wealth. For Arthur (O’Connor), the Chimera looks like the woman he lost, Beniamina. To find her, Arthur challenges the invisible, searches everywhere, goes inside the earth…all in search of the door to the afterlife of which myths speak. In an adventurous journey between the living and the dead, between forests and cities, between celebrations and solitudes, the intertwined destinies of these characters unfold, all in search of the Chimera.”

Isabella Rossellini co-stars as the mother of Arthur’s deceased lover.

Josh O’Connor knows how heavy the crown lies in modern celebrity culture.

“The Crown” Golden Globe winner, who portrayed Prince Charles on the hit Netflix series, told GQ that the fame following the role was shocking.

“It was a fucked-up time,” O’Connor said. “I found it so impactful, people stopping me. You want to be in stuff that’s successful and seen, but I think sometimes we underestimate how powerful even a slight loss of anonymity can be.”

O’Connor continued, “What I was doing in my career before ‘The Crown’ — I just wanted to carry on doing that.”

The actor is starring in Luca Guadagnino’s “Challengers,” which originally was set to debut at the Venice Film Festival before the SAG-AFTRA strike. The film is now being released April 26, 2024. O’Connor additionally recently led “La Chimera” which premiered at Cannes. O’Connor is next set to...

Diane Kruger To Be Feted At Zurich

Diane Kruger is set to receive Zurich’s Golden Eye Award during the fest’s latest edition, running September 28-October 8. Kruger will accept the award on October 2 and present her latest pic Visions, by French filmmaker Yann Gozlan. In the pic, Kruger plays a married airline captain whose life flies out of control when she bumps into an old flame. Previous winners of Zurich’s Golden Eye Award include Eddie Redmayne, Iris Berben, Kristen Stewart, Jake Gyllenhaal, John Malkovich, Helen Hunt and Olivia Colman. “Thank you Zurich Film Festival for this wonderful recognition,” Kruger said. “I’m honored and proud to be part of the impressive list of past honorees. I look forward to returning to Zurich and celebrating with all of you in October.”

Asian Achievers Awards Sets Shortlist

Exclusive: The shortlist for this year’s Asian Achievers Awards has been revealed.

Alice Rohrwacher’s “La Chimera,” in which “The Crown” star Josh O’Connor plays a British archeologist named Arthur who gets involved in an international network of stolen Etruscan artifacts during the 1980s, has sold worldwide after premiering positively in Cannes.

The Match Factory has inked deals for the film in the U.K. and Ireland (Curzon); Australia and New Zealand (Palace Entertainement); Benelux (September Film); Germany (Piffl Medien); Hong Kong (Edko); Spain (Elastica); South Korea (M&m International); China (Jetsen); Japan (Bitters End); Taiwan (Swallow Wings); Austria (Stadtkino); Baltics (A-One); Bulgaria (Art Fest); Cis (Mauris Film); Czech Republic & Slovakia (Aerofilms); Finland (B-Plan Distribution); Denmark (Filmbazar); Former Yugoslavia (McF): Greece (Cinobo); Hungary (Cirko); Middle East and North Africa (Moving Turtle); Poland (Aurora Films); Portugal (Midas); Romania (Independenta); Singapore (Anticipate Pictures); Thailand (Documentary Club); and Ukraine (Arthouse Traffic).

As previously announced, North American rights were sold while the film was in production to Neon.

The Match Factory announces key sales for tomb robber drama.

The Match Factory has agreed multiple sales for Alice Rohrwacher’s Cannes Competition film La Chimera.

The tomb robber drama starring Josh O’Connor, Isabella Rossellini, Alba Rohrwacher and Carol Duarte was well received by critics and ranked in joint fourth place on Screen’s Cannes jury grid.

Neon acquired North America rights for La Chimera last year. Since then The Match Factory has inked deals for the film in the UK and Ireland (Curzon), Australia and New Zealand (Palace Entertainment), Benelux (September Film), Germany (Piffl Medien), Hong Kong (Edko), Spain...

The tombaroli are my Palme d'Or picks from 2023! One of the best films that premiered at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival is the sensational La Chimera, the latest creation from acclaimed Italian filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher (best known for her previous films The Wonders and Happy as Lazzaro). It's been five years since her last feature film, and it's worth the wait, because it's clear she puts in so much time and effort into meticulously crafting and honing these films that each one needs time to develop into something special. La Chimera is another magical realism adventure, similar to Happy as Lazzaro with plenty of fantasy elements and a vintage Italian feel, but with an entirely different story about a band of tomb raiding archeologists. It's unlike anything I've ever seen, an astoundingly original creation that can't really be compared to much else before. I've already noticed some hasty comparisons to Indiana...

Few would have imagined that Brazilian-Algerian director Karim Aïnouz––whose The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão won the top prize in Un Certain Regard four years ago––would make his Competition debut with a Tudor period drama, Firebrand. For his English-language debut, Aïnouz was handed a script penned by Henrietta Ashworth and Jessica Ashworth (writers of Tell It to the Bees and Killing Eve), the feminist tone of which is quite obvious. Even if one can easily tell that Aïnouz was attached to the project rather than seeking it out himself, his outsider perspective brings a certain freshness to this loosely historical retelling of the last months of King Henry VIII’s (a tyrannical Jude Law) reign. Yes, the one who beheaded his wives.

Our entry point––our central character––is Queen Catherine Parr (Alicia Vikander), a confident young woman whose benevolence is only matched by her determination: to do well,...

Alice Rohrwacher’s ’La Chimera’ and Ken Loach’s ’The Old Oak’ were the final two titles to land on the grid.

Aki Kaurismäki’s Fallen Leaves has topped Screen’s 2023 Cannes jury grid with an average score of 3.2, after the final two titles, Alice Rohrwacher’s La Chimera and Ken Loach’s The Old Oak, landed with 2.9 and 2.1, respectively.

See the final jury grid below.

Rohrwacher’s La Chimera saw four critics give the Italian drama a four (excellent) while Die Zeit’s Katja Nicomedus and Postif’s Michel Ciment gave it one (poor). The rest of the...

A Cannes mainstay since her humble beginnings in the Directors’ Fortnight section with Corpo celeste, Alice Rohrwacher quickly ascended to comp-worthy status with the Grand Prix winning The Wonders (2014) and Best Screenplay winning Lazzaro Felice (2018). She was actually on the Croisette last year with the short Le pupille (Cannes Classics) and comes with the Neon-backed project La Chimera — her third trip in competition. Starring a dirty pants, shoes and socks wearing Josh O’Connor and featuring Isabelle Rossellini in a bit role, this is a last-day miracle of a picture.

Set during the 1980s in the clandestine world of the tombaroli, or tomb robbers, La Chimera tells the story of a young English archaeologist (O’Connor) caught up in the illegal trafficking of ancient finds.…...

Alice Rohrwacher makes movies like no one else. Her extraordinary work ventures into Italy’s labyrinthine past through fascinating pocket communities, vanishing breeds that seem suspended in time. In The Wonders, it was a family of beekeepers, like the director’s own; in Happy as Lazzaro, it was isolated sharecroppers kept in the feudal dark by exploitative landowners; and in the invigoratingly strange and lyrical La Chimera, it’s a ragtag band of tombaroli, illegal grave-robbers who dig up Etruscan relics and make their money selling those antiquities on to fences who in turn sell them to museums and collectors for vastly larger sums.

The three films make up an informal trilogy — set in the regions of Tuscany and Umbria where Rohrwacher was born and grew up — about the delicate thread between life and death, present and past. The latter remains very much alive almost everywhere you look in Italy,...

Italian filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher’s La Chimera absolutely charmed the Cannes Film Festival audience at its world premiere in competition this afternoon, receiving a 9-minute standing ovation inside the Palais’ Lumière theater. For those keeping score, that ties for the longest of this year’s event with Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon which played out of competition.

An emotional Rohrwacher spoke in both Italian and French. Her first comment was “Grazie a tutti” in her native language before segueing to French and recounting that the film was made among friends. She continued, “This film couldn’t have been done without everybody who is here and especially Josh O’Connor.” The two then shared an embrace.

Alice Rohrwacher gives a speech post-9 minute standing ovation in #Cannes for her film ‘La Chimera’ pic.twitter.com/QfuBNSgOAF

— Deadline Hollywood (@Deadline) May 26, 2023

La Chimera, as Deadline’s Pete Hammond wrote in his review,...

In “La Chimera,” the ancient past nestles mere inches below the surface of the present, eventually breaking above ground and disrupting, if not the space-time continuum, the more mundane order of things. The borders between life and death feel similarly frictious and permeable, as if we could merely visit one from the other, as easily as sleeping and waking. Arthur (Josh O’Connor), the wandering Brit at the center of Alice Rohrwacher’s marvelously supple and sinuous new film, is accustomed to such limbo states. So are admirers of Rohrwacher’s filmmaking, which, in this eccentric, romantic tale of competing grave-robbers in Central Italy, touches the transcendental without diving into the outright fabulism of 2018’s “Happy as Lazzaro.”

Grounding the feyer impulses of “La Chimera” — a return for Rohrwacher to more metaphysical musings after the simpler charms of her Oscar-nominated short “Le Pupille” — is, well, the literal ground: grubby and gritty and,...

Set in 1980s Tuscany, Rohrwacher’s captivating film follows a lovelorn Englishman plundering Italy’s historical artefacts with a bizarre gang

Alice Rohrwacher’s new film is a beguiling fantasy-comedy of lost love: garrulous, uproarious and celebratory in her absolutely distinctive style. It’s a movie bustling and teeming with life, with characters fighting, singing, thieving and breaking the fourth wall to address us directly. As with her previous film Happy As Lazzaro, Rohrwacher homes in on a poignant sense of Italy as a treasure house of past glories, a necropolitan culture of ancient excellence. It can be plundered for the present day artefacts and spirits raised from the dead, but at the cost of incurring a terrible sadness: a feeling of surrounding yourself with ghosts.

The setting is Riparbella in Tuscany in the 1980s, and Josh O’Connor is tremendous as Arthur, a dishevelled Englishman in a grubby white suit...

Editor’s Note: This review originally published during the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. Neon will release “La Chimera” in theaters March 29, 2024.

Just when it seemed like Cannes couldn’t get any worse for “Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny,” it turns out that James Mangold’s $300 million sequel wasn’t even the festival’s best movie about a sad and grumpy archeologist who chases a band of tomb raiders across the waters of Italy in order to stop them from selfishly exploiting a priceless artifact from before the birth of Christ. What are the odds?

Strange as that coincidence might be, it’s no surprise that Alice Rohrwacher’s new film is better than a Disney blockbuster that happens to share the same general milieu, but it’s worth pointing out that the arthouse version of this story is far more entertaining than the studio blockbuster take. It’s also...

Hidden cinematic treasures are buried everywhere in Cannes. But even the most tireless hunters and diggers amongst us couldn’t have predicted that this year’s finest archeology film would not be found in James Mangold’s “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” but in Alice Rohrwacher’s whimsically ethereal tapestry of romance, history and afterlife, “La Chimera.”

A rich and humorous folk tale overflowing with cultural details, aesthetic pleasures and the effervescent musicality of the Italian language, Rohrwacher’s melancholically grainy pastoral fable isn’t exactly about professional archeology, to be perfectly clear. But what some of her characters—the ancient-grave-raiding collective “tombaroli,” led by Josh O’Connor’s (“The Crown”) enigmatic Arthur—lack in bona fide archeological expertise, they make up for with rebellion and a reckless sense of aspiration.

Violating the bottomless sacred burial grounds of their little Italian village and stealing historical wonders the Etruscan people have taken to their grave,...

Alice Rohrwacher is in the Cannes competition for the third time with “La Chimera,” in which “The Crown” star Josh O’Connor plays a young British archeologist named Arthur who gets involved in an international network of stolen Etruscan artifacts during the 1980s.

For Rohrwacher, the film is connected to growing up in Umbria, once the center of the Etruscan civilization. But it’s also the final piece of a triptych on a territory that she started with her previous Cannes entries: “The Wonders” and “Happy as Lazzaro.” Three works that, as she has put it, pose a central question: “What to do with the past?”

Also starring in “La Chimera,” which can be loosely translated as “The Unrealizable Dream,” are Isabella Rossellini as a retired opera singer; Brazil’s Carol Duarte (“The Invisible Life”) as non-Italian woman who intersects with Arthur; Alba Rohrwacher as an international artifacts trafficker; and Vincenzo Nemolato...

Cinema Italiano is on a roll, as reflected by the fact that this year Italy has scored three Cannes competition slots.

Despite the persisting sore spot that sees the country still lagging behind other European territories in terms of post-pandemic box office returns, Italy “continues to produce and invest heavily in film and is overcoming the crisis,” noted Cannes artistic director Thierry Fremaux after announcing the lineup.

The robust Croisette contingent marks the second time in 20 years that Italy lands three Cannes competition berths. Though the trio of selected directors — Marco Bellocchio, Nanni Moretti and Alice Rohrwacher — are all Cannes regulars “they represent three different generations of auteurs,” said Paolo Del Brocco, chief of state broadcaster Rai’s Rai Cinema arm that co-produced all three titles. And each of these films, he went on to point out, displays “very different ideas and cinematic visions.”

Moretti is back on the Croisette...

On paper, the 76th Cannes Film Festival looks like an embarrassment of riches, assembling no shortage of big guns in terms of major-name filmmakers.

Pretty much every list of hotly anticipated titles will be topped by Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, an epic Western crime drama based on David Grann’s nonfiction book about the murder of Indigenous Americans on tribal land in 1920s Oklahoma. Likewise, it seems redundant to include Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, given the legions of fans already jostling to watch Harrison Ford crack the whip one last time in James Mangold’s conclusion of the beloved action-adventure franchise.

New works from celebrated filmmakers are simply too numerous to cram into a rundown of just ten titles, so their absence here should not be misinterpreted as lack of interest.

That includes Ken Loach’s story of tensions caused by the arrival...

Having won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival for “Le Meraviglie” (The Wonders) in 2014, and the screenplay award there for “Lazzaro Felice” (Happy as Lazzaro) in 2018, Alice Rohrwacher is very pleased that her latest feature, “La Chimera,” starring Isabella Rossellini, Josh O’Connor and her sister Alba Rohrwacher, will also compete at the festival.

“I am very attached to the Cannes festival, both as a spectator and as a director. It is always a dream and always a surprise to be nominated. The emotion is the same as the first time,” the Italian director tells Variety at Visions du Réel film festival, in Nyon, Switzerland, where she is a special guest.

Rohrwacher describes “La Chimera” as “a film that, in a very special way, talks about our relationship with the afterlife by following the story of a man who belongs to a gang of archaeological thieves.”

Working with Alba Rohrwacher,...

The Italian director, who will be in Cannes with ‘La Chimera’ hosted a wide-ranging masterclass at Visions du Reel.

In the final days of the Geneva edit of her fourth fiction feature La Chimera, set for Cannes Competition, Italian director Alice Rohrwacher sat down at Visions du Reel for an expansive look at her career to date.

Her recent filmography includes an Oscar-nominated short film (The Pupils in 2022), a documentary and signing on for two episodes of a large-budget HBO TV show (My Brilliant Friend). They follow the loosely-connected, occasionally-autographical features which have dazzled audiences, from Corpo Celeste to The Wonders and Happy As Lazzaro.

The Italian director, who will be in Cannes with ‘La Chimera’ hosted a wide-ranging masterclass at Visions du Reel.

In the final days of the Geneva edit of her fourth fiction feature La Chimera, set for Cannes Competition, Italian director Alice Rohrwacher sat down at Visions du Reel for an expansive look at her career to date.

Her recent filmography includes an Oscar-nominated short film (The Pupils in 2022), a documentary and signing on for two episodes of a large-budget HBO TV show (My Brilliant Friend). They follow the loosely-connected, occasionally-autographical features which have dazzled audiences, from Corpo Celeste to The Wonders and Happy As Lazzaro.

Italian filmmaker will attend the festival as a special guest.

Alice Rohrwacher will attend the 2023 Visions du Reel film festival in Switzerland as a special guest.

Italian writer, director and editor Rohrwacher will give a masterclass on Saturday, April 22 about her films. She will also present a retrospective of her fiction, hybrid and documentary work at the festival.

Rohrwacher’s first fiction film Corpo Celeste debuted in Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes in 2011, going on to play festivals including Sundance, New York and the BFI London Film Festival. She has since returned to Cannes with 2014’s The Wonders, 2018’s Happy As Lazzaro and 2021 documentary Futura.

When Alfonso Cuarón hit the awards campaign trail for “Roma” in 2019, he turned it into a larger mission. “I grew up watching foreign-language films,” the Mexican filmmaker said as he won the Oscar for a category then known as Best Foreign Language Film, and his speech went on to cite movies like “The Godfather and “Citizen Kane” as examples.

Message received: The next year, the Oscars went global. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said adieu to the word “foreign” and changed the name of the category for Best International Feature Film. A few months later, “Parasite” became the first non-English language movie to win Best Picture. While the Academy continues to work on globalizing the Oscar race, Cuarón’s own crusade to support non-English language cinema continues as executive producer of nominee“Le Pupile.”

Cuarón played a critical role in garnering Italian auteur Alice Rohrwacher her first nomination this year.

In the delightfully mischievous short film Le Pupille, which earned Italian writer-director Alice Rohrwacher her first Oscar nomination, a rebellion is brewing within the confines of a Catholic girls’ school in Italy on a chilly Christmas Eve in the midst of World War II.

Young Serafina (Melissa Falasconi) attracts the ire of Sister Fioralba (Alba Rohrwacher, the director’s sister), the stern mother superior who rules her boarding school with an iron fist and steely gaze. As the schoolgirls prepare for the evening’s festivities — stoically re-creating the Nativity — they listen to a radio report that offers somber news from the battlefield. But when Serafina accidentally changes the station, inadvertently filling the hall with the sounds of a love song with a lyric like “kiss me on my little mouth,” the girls erupt into song and dance and, as punishment for their jubilant misbehavior, are rewarded with mouthfuls of soap...

Charades has dropped the trailer for “Disco Boy,” the anticipated feature debut of Giacomo Abbruzzese, starring Franz Rogowski (“Passages”) which is competing at the Berlin Film Festival.

The movie is produced by the rising French production company Films Grand Huit. Shot across two continents by Hélène Louvart, the movie boasts a diverse international cast and a soundtrack by electronic music artist Vitalic.

“Disco Boy stars Rogowski as Aleksei, who embarks on a difficult journey across Europe and reaches Paris to enlist in the French Foreign Legion, a highly selective military corp that allows any foreigner, even undocumented, to be granted a French passport. In the Niger Delta, Jomo (Morr Ndiaye) fights against oil companies that threaten the survival of his village. His sister Udoka (Laëtitia Ky), meanwhile, dreams of escaping, knowing that all is already lost here. Beyond borders, life and death, their destinies will intertwine.

The film marks the feature debut of Abbruzzese,...

The five nominees for this year’s Best Live Action Short Oscar have been announced. We at Gold Derby understand that this can be one of the tougher categories to predict, so we wanted to give you all a hand by telling you what each one is about and where you can currently watch them. Be sure to bookmark this page as we will be updating it with links to stream them as they become available. Also, don’t forget to make your predictions in all 23 categories in our infamous predictions center.

As a reminder, the last four winners in this category were “The Long Goodbye” (2021), “Two Distant Strangers” (2020), “The Neighbor’s Window” (2019) and “Skin” (2018).

See 2023 Oscar nominations: Full list of nominees in all 23 categories

Best Live Action Short Oscar 2023: Where to watch the nominees

“An Irish Goodbye” – When their mother suddenly dies, two estranged brothers find themselves reunited...

Click here to read the full article.

The International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) on Monday unveiled its full line for its 2023 event.

After two all-virtual festivals, the IFFR is finally returning in-person fest, running January 25-February 5 in the Dutch port city. Rotterdam is one of the last major festivals to return post-pandemic, its 2022 event having been forced to go online-only at the last minute when Dutch authorities imposed a new lockdown in December last year, just weeks before the IFFR kicked off.

The resulting revenue shortfall —closed theatres equals zero ticket sales —meant IFFR had to slash its budget, cutting 15 percent of its staff and restructuring.

Festival director Vanja Kaludjercic, who runs the IFFR together with managing director Marjan van der Haar, told The Hollywood Reporter the cuts were made “in order to avoid having to make big changes to the festival.” The 2023 edition, however, will be significantly smaller than the pre-pandemic versions,...

It’s nice seeing a movie grow from festival stand-out to full-blown theatrical release. Credit to Kino Lorber for taking up Murina, which won Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic the Camera d’Or for best first feature at last year’s Cannes Film Festival and begins a U.S. run on July 8. An executive producer credit for Martin Scorsese and cinematography duties by Hélène Louvart are one thing, but in Murina you’ll be most impressed by newcomer Gracija Filipovic, who engages in a strange game of flirtation with her father’s co-worker (Cliff Curtis) in deceptively picturesque locales.

Ahead of the release is a theatrical trailer that neatly sells the film. For a bit of context, our review says “The onscreen duplicity resonates in a way that’s universal; we can see everyone’s winks, scowls, and hesitation as they try to keep the peace opposite Julija’s rising impatience towards...

Italian director Alice Rohrwacher, whose “The Wonders” and “Happy as Lazzaro” both won prizes in Cannes, is back at the fest with “The Pupils,” a short film that is screening during her masterclass in the “Rendez-vous With…” section.

Variety is unveiling an exclusive clip (above).

Written and directed by Rohrwacher, the 37-minute short is backed by Disney and was produced by Alfonso Cuaron in tandem with her regular producer Carlo Cresto-Dina. It features a cast comprising the director’s sister and regular collaborator, Alba Rohrwacher, actor-director Valeria Bruni Tedeschi — whose latest directorial effort “Forever Young” is competing in Cannes — and also Melissa Falasconi, Carmen Pommella, Greta Zuccheri Montanari, Luciano Vergaro — aka “Catirre” — and Tatiana Lepore.

Shot in Super 16 but in 35mm format, “The Pupils” (the Italian title is “Le Pupille”) is a coming-of-age fable centered around innocence, greed and fantasy that follows rebellious little girls at a Catholic boarding school...

Alice Rohrwacher, the Italian director whose “The Wonders” and “Happy as Lazzaro” both won prizes at Cannes, is returning to the festival with “The Pupils,” a short film that will screen during her masterclass in the “Rendez-vous With…” section.

Penned and directed by Rohrwacher, the 37-minute short is backed by Disney, and was produced by Alfonso Cuaron and Carlo Cresto-Dina. It boasts a cast that includes Alba Rohrwacher, actor-director Valeria Bruni Tedeschi — whose latest movie is competing at the festival — Melissa Falasconi, Carmen Pommella, Greta Zuccheri Montanari, Luciano Vergaro — aka “Catirre” — and Tatiana Lepore.

Shot in Super 16 and in 35mm format, “The Pupils” is a facetious coming-of-age fable that follows rebellious little girls at a Catholic boarding school in the run-up to Christmas in a time of scarcity and war.

Rohrwacher said she ventured into “Pupils” after Cuaron asked her if she would like to make a short film about the Christmas holidays.

In the Italian town of Vejano, local hunters gather to share stories rich enough to inspire movies. Over the past decade, filmmakers Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis have been dutifully documenting these sessions — some fact-based, others blurring the lines of reality — translating them to screen via films that entertain, while also testing what audiences might believe. The first two, “Belva Nera” (about a black panther sighting) and “Il Solengo” (focused on an enigmatic recluse), were fashioned as nonfiction portraits, but the latest legend proved fanciful enough to call for a more narrative approach. And thus, “The Tale of King Crab” was born.

Debuting in Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes last summer, this surprising account of a curious cross-continental quest already feels timeless, like one of Pasolini’s classic allegorical films (“The Arabian Nights”) or Alice Rohrwacher’s more recent, loosely fact-based “Happy as Lazzaro.” It’s an old-fashioned literary fable,...

FireFollowing a successful but necessarily impersonal virtual edition in 2021, the Berlin International Film Festival returned to in-person activities this year, drawing skepticism in some quarters but ultimately quieting the naysayers with a safe and efficient event that put the movies back where they belong: on the big screen. With mandatory daily Covid tests, 2G plus vaccination protocols, ticket reservations, assigned seating, and half-capacity venues, the Berlinale’s typically convivial vibe was sterilized and regimented in a way that’s already become familiar in an era of masks and social distancing. But no matter: the program, overseen by Carlo Chatrian in his third year as artistic director, while never quite reaching the skyscraping heights of recent editions (in which films like Days and What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? confirmed the new regime’s dedication to auteur-driven art cinema), provided a deep and rewarding wellspring of work...

Emmy-winning “The Crown” star Josh O’Connor will be the protagonist of Italian auteur Alice Rohrwacher’s next film “La Chimera,” which is set in the world of archeological looting and is currently shooting in and around Southern Tuscany.

O’Connor, who in “The Crown” played the young Prince Charles, in “La Chimera” is playing a young British archeologist named Arthur who gets involved in an international network of stolen Etruscan artifacts during the 1980s.

Also starring in “La Chimera,” which can be loosely translated as “The Unrealizable Dream,” are Isabella Rossellini as a retired opera singer; Brazilian actor Carole Duarte (“The Invisible Life”) who plays another non-Italian woman who intersects with Arthur; Alba Rohrwacher as an international artifacts trafficker; and Vincenzo Nemolato (“Martin Eden”) who plays one of the “tombaroli,” literally grave robbers, as artifacts thieves are known in Italy.

“‘La Chimera’ is the story of a young English archaeologist...

Italy’s robust 2022 Berlinale representation of a half-dozen titles runs the gamut from the latest works by venerable veterans Paolo Taviani and Dario Argento to pics by fresh new Cinema Italiano voices including Chiara Bellosi, whose first film, “Ordinary Justice,” launched from Berlin in 2020.

Taviani, who is 91, is returning to Berlin but alone this time — his filmmaker brother, Vittorio, with whom he won a Golden Bear in 2012 for “Caesar Must Die,” passed away in 2018 — in competition with surreal drama “Leonora Addio,” inspired by a short story by Italian playwright and author Luigi Pirandello.

Argento, who set his 1977 chiller “Suspiria” in Germany, will be at the Berlinale for the first time as a director with Rome-set suspenser “Dark Glasses,” though he was on the fest’s main jury panel in 2001. Film unspools as a Berlinale Special Gala.

Bellosi is back with Panaorama selection “Swing Ride” (“Calcinculo”), about a 15-year-old named...

Chiara Bellosi, whose first work, “Ordinary Justice,” launched from Berlin’s Generation 14plus section in 2020, is back with “Swing Ride” (“Calcinculo”) about an overweight 15-year-old named Benedetta pining for attention in an Italian province where she falls in love with the skinny non-binary Amanda.

A key difference between the two films is that while “Ordinary Justice,” which examined the lives of two families on opposite sides of a murder case, originated from a deeply researched screenplay that Bellosi wrote, “Swing Ride” — premiering in Panorama on Feb. 13 — stems from a prizewinning script proposed to her by Carlo Cresto Dina, her producer, who also discovered Alice Rohrwacher (“Happy as Lazzaro”) and is known for nurturing the cream of Italy’s new cinematic crop.

“It’s a very different process; it was the first time that I had to start from a world that didn’t germinate from me,” said Bellosi about working...

MK2 Films, the banner behind Joachim Trier’s Oscar-nominated “The Worst Person in the World,” has boarded “Nezouh,” from Syrian director Soudade Kaadan.

The drama, set against the backdrop of the conflict in Damascus, marks Kaadan’s follow up to her 2018 feature debut, “The Day I Lost My Shadow,” which won the Lion of the Future prize at Venice. Her 2019 short “Aziza,” meanwhile, won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize.

Co-financed by BFI, which awarded National Lottery funding, and Film4, “Nezouh” is an allegorical tale of female emancipation.

The movie follows 14-year-old Zeina and her family, whose lives are shaken after a bomb rips a giant hole in the roof of their building, exposing them to the outside world. One day, a young boy living nearby lowers a rope through the opening and Zeina discovers her first taste of freedom. Whilst her father is determined to stay in his home and not become a refugee,...

Set to begin production this month, Isabella Rossellini (who currently has five feature films in post) has informally announced that she will be among the players for Alice Rohrwacher‘s upcoming fourth fiction feature film. We are expecting further casting announcements for La chimera to be unveiled soon — production is set for Rome and will likely move to the North in Tuscany shortly after. While the feature could easily be ready for the upcoming 2022 Venice Film Festival edition, we expect Rohrwacher to return to the Cannes competition in 2023. 2011’s Corpo Celeste was an Un Certain Regard selection while 2014’s The Wonders and 2018’s Happy as Lazzaro were prize winners in the comp.…...