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Franz Rogowski stars in the film which is based on real events.

Italy’s True Colours is launching pre-sales at the EFM of Giorgio Diritti’s Italian-Swiss co-production Lubo, starring Franz Rogowski, for which it has acquired worldwide rights.

Now in post, Lubo is set on the eve of Second World War. Rogowski stars as a young Caucasian man of nomadic ethnicity called to serve in the Swiss army to defend the border with Austria from the threat of the Nazi army who hears his children have been taken away by the authorities and his wife killed in the scuffle.

Franz Rogowski stars in the film which is based on real events.

Italy’s True Colours is launching pre-sales at the EFM of Giorgio Diritti’s Italian-Swiss production Lubo, starring Franz Rogowski, for which it has acquired worldwide rights.

Now in post, Lubo is set on the eve of Second World War, Rogowski stars as a young Caucasian man of nomadic ethnicity called to serve in the Swiss army to defend the border with Austria from the threat of the Nazi army who hears his children have been taken away by the authorities and his wife killed in the scuffle.

The Guadalajara Film Festival’s industry centerpiece, its Encuentro de Co-produccion, a springboard for Latin American feature film projects, unspools this week online, as directors and producers look to catch the eye of the international marketplace and secure key sales, distribution and production partners.

Guadalajara has long rejected the idea that gender-based quotas are needed when programming a festival while demonstrating an organic level of inclusion in its industry sections that should make some European festivals blush. The 2020 Meeting is no exception. More than half of the projects set to pitch this week are directed by women, with just as many featuring female producers or co-producers.

As important as any statistics though, the kinds of films that women are pitching at Guadalajara break moulds as well. Gone are the days when the industry expected women directors to tell women’s stories. Now, the women pitching at Guadalajara can present horror,...

The interview was initially conducted on October 2017

Yosuke Takeuchi, born in 1978, studied at the Shibaura Institute of Technology and then went to Paris to study painting. He won the Jury Special Award at the exhibition of the Académie de Port-Royal in 2003. In 2006, he directed his first short film “Segutsu”. “The Sower” is his first feature length film.

We speak with him in detail about the film and its messages, Suzuno Takenake, Japanese cinema, and many other topics

In choosing to write and direct your first feature, did you enjoy one process more than the other, and would you like to keep the same creative control in your future films?

Writing a scenario is always difficult. I rewrote it many times before I was able to start filming. Compared to that, filming is only within a certain period of time so the difficulty passes by quickly. When you look back on it,...

After a long stay in a mental hospital, Mitsuo, visits his brother Yuta, along with Yuta’s wife Yoko, and their two kids, Chie and Itsuki. A happy reunion with tears shed takes place as Mitsuo meets Itsuki for the first time. Chie takes a particular interest in the mild-mannered Mitsuo, asking him to take her to the park along with Itsuki. The outing soon turns to tragedy though, after Chie drops her baby sister, leading to her death. Scared to admit what transpired, Chie tells her parents that Mitsuo dropped Chie. To protect his niece, Mitsuo goes along with the lie, ultimately alienating him and sending him spiraling into depression. Meanwhile, Chie develops her own struggle, becoming practically mute after her confession.

“The Sower” screener at Thessaloniki International Film Festival

Following the struggles of both Mitsuo and Chie, the film focuses on their inner turmoil. Mitsuo tries to make amends with Yuta and Yoko,...

Arnaud Ducret, Géraldine Pailhas, Stéphane de Groodt and Alison Wheeler star in the cast of this Les Films du Cap and Mm Films production, sold by Other Angle. Filming came to an end on 23 December for Tendre et saignant, Christopher Thompson’s second feature film as a director following his initial Bus Palladium (which earned two César nominations in the categories of Male Newcomer and Musical Score in 2011). Standing tall in lead roles are Arnaud Ducret and Géraldine Pailhas, among others, as well as the series Marseille), who are flanked by Belgium’s Stéphane de...

Dubai-based Cercamon handles worldwide sales on Bronx-set tale.

Film Movement has acquired North American rights to Goldie, Sam de Jong’s coming-of-age story that premiered in Generation 14 Plus in Berlin and is being sold in Cannes by Dubai-based Cercamon.

‘Instagirl’ supermodel Slick Woods makes her acting debut as the titular character in the Bronx-set tale about a streetwise teen who discovers her true strength when her dream of becoming a dancer collides with harsh reality.

The drama, Dutch filmmaker de Jong’s follow-up to his 2015 feature debut Prince, screened at Tribeca Film Festival last month and hails from Twentieth Century Fox and Vice Films.

"I think he fancies you." Film Movement has debuted an official trailer for an indie romantic drama titled The Sower, originally Le Semeur in French. Adapted from Violette Ailhaud's novel, and directed by first-time filmmaker Marine Francen, the film is set in 1851 and is about a small farming village in the Lower Alps that is cutoff from all men. France's autocratic President Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte has ordered the arrest of all the men, and so the women take an oath: if a man comes, they will share him as a lover. When a mysterious and handsome stranger arrives, he ignites passions and jealousies that threaten to destroy the tight-knit community. The Sower stars Pauline Burlet as Violette, along with Geraldine Pailhas, Alban Lenoir, Iliana Zabeth, Francoise Lebrun, and Raphaëlle Agogué. Shot in 1.37:1, this looks like it has some lush, gorgeous cinematography amidst all the heavy sexual tension and infighting.

A different version of “The Sower,” Marine Francen’s poised and petite freshman feature, might have included the extended, rather remarkable story behind its literary source. Aged 84, former village schoolteacher Violette Ailhaud wrote her autobiographical short story “L’homme semence” in 1919, passing it to an attorney with clear instructions that it be given to her eldest female descendant in 1952, a full century after the events it documents; a curious, bittersweet tale of lost innocence and sexual conspiracy in a community of women, it remained in the family for half a century before being published, to steadily building acclaim, in 2006. Some manner of film adaptation was inevitable. Francen’s, however, honors Ailhaud by telling only the story she wrote, albeit with subtly modernized language and aesthetics, underlining its enduringly provocative gender politics in the process.

The resulting film is so delicately wrought and exquisitely visualized that the harsher, eerier details of...

Distributor plans a 2019 theatrical, digital, home entertainment and Svod release.

Film Movement Classics has acquired Us and English-speaking Canadian rights to Fritz Lang Indian Epic, the two-part cliffhanger comprising The Tiger Of Eschnapur and The Indian Tomb.

The distributor plans a 2019 release as a theatrical double feature followed by digital and home entertainment release, and a launch on FilmMovement’s Svod platform, Film Movement Plus.

After more than two decades of exile in Hollywood, Lang triumphantly returned to his native Germany to direct the two-part cliffhanger in 1959 from a story he co-authored nearly 40 years earlier.

Film Movement president Michael Rosenberg,...

Exclusive: U.S. arthouse buyer Film Movement has picked up North American rights to seven movies for its classics label, including John Woo’s first contemporary action film Heroes Shed No Tears (1984) and Viggo Mortensen starrer The Reflecting Skin (1990) by Philip Ridley (U.S. rights only).

Also new to the label are King Hu’s martial arts film The Fate Of Lee Khan (1973); Stanley Kwan’s Hong Kong New Wave drama Center Stage (1991), starring Maggie Cheung; biopic Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask (1995) about the charismatic and influential anti-colonial writer and theorist; Véra Belmont’s baroque dramedy Marquise (1997), featuring Sophie Marceau in one of her first starring roles; and Gérard Corbiau’s Oscar-nominated lavish costume drama, Farinelli (1994).

Shed No Tears, Center Stage and The Fate Of Lee Khan were licensed from Fortune Star Media. Farinelli and Marquise came from Screenbound Pictures while The Reflecting Skin was picked up from...

Academy Award-winner Damien Chazelle is coming to Morelia to kick off Mexico’s 16th Morelia International Film Festival (Ficm) on Oct. 20 with his latest film, “First Man.”

For the first time, the festival will be presenting a medal for artistic excellence to Alfonso Cuaron, whose recent Venice Golden Lion-winner “Roma,” Mexico’s submission to the Oscars and Spain’s Goyas, will screen at the festival.

Pawel Pawlikowski returns to Morelia to present his latest work, “Cold War.” Other notable guests presenting their films include Paul Weitz, who presents “Bel Canto”; Fran Healy with her documentary “Almost Fashionable: A Film About Travis”; Dan Millar, who brings his documentary “Botero”; and Almudena Carracedo, who presents her acclaimed documentary “The Silence of Others.”

Hailed by Variety critic Owen Gleiberman as a film “so revelatory in its realism, so gritty in its physicality, that it becomes a drama of thrillingly hellbent danger and obsession,...

San Sebastian — Paris-based sales agent Loco Films has acquired world sales rights outside Spain and France to “Journey to a Mother’s Room,” a flagship first feature from the Barcelona-based writer-director Celia Rico, part of a young generation of often women directors who are lending new energies and focus to Catalan cinema.

Alfa Pictures will distribute the film in Spain. “Journey to a Mother’s Room” will world premiere in competition at San Sebastian’s main sidebar, its New Directors section, a launchpad for other notable women talents such as, reaching back to just last year, Switzerland’s Lisa Brühlmann (“Blue My Mind”), Colombia’s Laura Mora (“Killing Jesús”) and France’s Marine Francen (“The Sower), its eventual winner.

Loco Films will introduce the film to buyers at the San Sebastian Festival, which starts Friday. After that, “Journey to a Mother’s Room” will segue to the BFI London Festival.

The Osaka Asian Film Festival launched this year’s run with the opening ceremony at the Hankyu Umeda Hall on March 09, 2018.

At the opening ceremony, the lead actress of the opening film, “Anarchist From The Colony”, Moon Choi, appeared with the directors’ , Lim Kah-wai (林家威) of “No Where, Now Here” (どこでもな い、ここしかない), Miyazaki Daisuke (宮崎大祐) of “Tourism”, Takeuchi Yosuke (竹内洋介) of “The Sower” (種をまく人) , and Yazaki Hitoshi (矢崎仁司) of “Still Life Of Memories” (スティル ライフオブメモリーズ). They were followed by lead actress Irina Chiu and producer Tekun Ji from “Pai Kau”, as well as actor Ichitani Shin (一谷伸) and producer Lee Jong-eon from “Woozoo Be Alright?” (あなたの宇宙は大丈夫ですか).

Lim Kah-wai, originally from Malaysia, has made six films in Asia and Europe, five of which have been screened by Oaff. He stepped forward as a representative of the other guests for the opening ceremony and gave a speech in which he said,...

Thirteen first and second films revealed.

The San Sebastian Film Festival has revealed 13 of the first and second films by European, Asian and Latin American filmmakers set to compete for the Kutxabank-New Directors Award.

Among the films are Chilean film Princess, produced by Juan de Dios, Pablo Larraín and Fernanda del Nido, and the first film by Marine Francen, former assistant to Michael Haneke and Olivier Assayas, starring Pauline Burlet (The Past) and Géraldine Pailhas (Young & Beautiful).

Princess is the second feature film by Marialy Rivas. The Chilean director debuted with Young & Wild (Joven & Alocada) selected for Films in Progress 20 at the San Sebastian Festival (2011) and a competitor in Horizontes Latinos after winning the World Cinema Screenwriting Award at Sundance in 2012.

The film, which was selected by Films in Progress 28, narrates the experience of a 12-year-old girl living in a sect.

The Sower (Le Semeur), the first film by Marine Francen, former assistant...

Thirteen first and second films revealed.

The San Sebastian Film Festival has revealed thirteen of the first and second films by European, Asian and Latin American filmmakers set to compete for the Kutxabank-New Directors Award.

Among the films are Chilean movie Princess, produced by Juan de Dios, Pablo Larraín and Fernanda del Nido and the first film by Marine Francen, former assistant to Michael Haneke and Olivier Assayas, starring Pauline Burlet (The Past) and Géraldine Pailhas (Young & Beautiful).

Princess is the second feature film by Marialy Rivas. The Chilean director debuted with Young & Wild (Joven & Alocada) selected for Films in Progress 20 at the San Sebastian Festival (2011) and a competitor in Horizontes Latinos after winning the World Cinema Screenwriting Award at Sundance in 2012.

The film, which was selected by Films in Progress 28, narrates the experience of a 12 year-old girl living in a sect.

The Sower (Le Semeur), the first film by Marine Francen, former assistant...