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Great Freedom, starring Franz Rogowski, is showing exclusively on Mubi in many countries starting May 7, 2022. The actor is also the subject of Mubi's retrospective, Franz Rogowski: Man of the Hour.Franz Rogowski in Great Freedom (2021).Some people just have it—"it" here being largely indefinable and perhaps even a quality others also possess but for whatever reason doesn’t galvanize the masses like that rare individual. German actor Franz Rogowski is one of those people, a once-in-a-generation talent whose meteoric rise has been as surprising as it is warranted. Though he’d featured prominently as both a lead (in German director Jakob Lass’s 2013 bizarre romantic improvisation Love Steaks) and a supporting player, Rogowski’s star truly began to rise when Berlin School auteur Christian Petzold cast him in his 2018 masterpiece Transit, which launched the face that launched a thousand appreciations of it, particularly in the United States where he had theretofore been largely unknown.

Around the secluded mountainside cabin in the Austrian Alps where filmmaker Peter Brunner sets his fierce and freakish “Luzifer,” every day is sacred. As Christians so intensely devout that they don’t even seem to belong to any sect, in particular, Johannes (Franz Rogowski) and his mother (Susanne Jensen) have taken to this hidden-away refuge as if literal altitude will bring them closer to God.

Continue reading ‘Luzifer’ Review: Franz Rogowski Stars In Peter Brunner’s Chilling Arthouse Drama at The Playlist.

Mubi has unveiled its streaming offerings this April in the U.S. and leading the pack is a special spotlight on Franz Rogowski, star of their recent theatrical release Great Freedom. Selections include Christian Petzold’s Transit as well as a pair of underseen offerings, Luzifer and Aisles.

Also in the lineup are a number of recent releases, including Dominik Graf’s Fabian: Going to the Dogs, Alice Rohrwacher, Francesco Munzi, and Pietro Marcello’s Futura, Mario Furloni and Kate McLean’s Freeland, and Sion Sono’s Red Post On Escher Street. Timed with her new documentary Cow, a trio of shorts by Andrea Arnold will also arrive.

Check out the lineup below and get 30 days free here.

April 1 | Battle Royale | Kinji Fukasaku

April 2 | Mood Indigo | Michel Gondry

April 3 | Army of Shadows | Jean-Pierre Melville

April 4 | Wasp | Andrea Arnold | Three Shorts by Andrea Arnold

April 5 | Tracks | Henry Jaglom | Method in the...

Mubi takes most of the world on the IFFR 2021 title.

Mubi has bought Norika Sefa’s Kosovar-North Macedonian feature Looking For Venera for North America, Latin America, the UK, Spain and Italy from UK sales outfit Film Republic.

The film is about a Kosovar teenager’s life with several generations of family in a crowded house. It won the special Jury award on debut at International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2021 and went on to win further prizes at the Sarajevo, Split, Hong Kong and Trieste film festivals.

Busy slate

Additionally Film Republic has added Adrian Silvestre’s Spanish debut My...

Valdimar Jóhannsson’s Icelandic-Swedish-Polish drama “Lamb,” starring Noomi Rapace was awarded best film and actress for Rapace at the 54th edition of Sitges’ International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia, which wrapped Sunday.

The prizes add to an Originality Prize which the film received when competing at July’s Cannes Un Certain Regard.

“Lamb,” a horror-comedy combo, follows protagonist Maria, played by Rapace, a woman living with her husband in the total loneliness of the Icelandic countryside. According to a Variety review, “creepy-funny-weird-sad ‘Lamb’ proves just how far disbelief can be suspended if you’re in the hands of a director — and a cast, and a SFX/puppetry department — who really commit to the bit.” Lamb is produced by Go to Sheep, Black Spark Film & TV and Madants with New Europe Film Sales and A24 attached.

Rapace shared best actress honors with Susanne Jensen in Peter Brunner’s “Luzifer.” Justin Kurzel...

Perk the ears at any film festival and you might hear talk that Franz Rogowski is the best European actor of his generation. The captivating German offers further evidence to support such claims with Luzifer, a rather ugly sort of film (though intentionally so) made good by the strange draw of his charisma—plus, amongst other things, a terrific Tim Hecker score. Inspired by true events, it is the story of a secluded innocent who must do battle with a plague of satanic drones. The director is Peter Brunner, an Austrian filmmaker with a taste for grungy aesthetics. His 2018 film To the Night attempted something not too dissimilar with Caleb Landry Jones but couldn’t quite find the right alchemy.

Rogowski plays Johannes, a young man living in a state of precarious codependency with his mother, a recovering addict (played by artist Susanne Jensen) who has long since given herself over to the almighty.

A simple wooden hut, somewhere at the foot of the majestic Alps. Here Johannes (Franz Rogowski) and his mother, Maria (Susanne Jensen), live the lives of modern hermits, completely cut off from civilisation. At the border of modernity, different orders mix and clash with each other: man with nature, and fervent faith, rising to the mountain heights, with the barren, rocky, godless landscape at their feet. Peter Brunner's Luzifer is a portrait of a complex religious emotionality that is as close to illumination as to madness or possession.

Maria and Johannes are not ordinary people. The very choice of names suggests biblical clues. After all, Jan (Johannes is a Medieval Latin derivative from John) was a beloved disciple of Jesus, and he was the only disciple to stay with his master until the very end. Christ, dying on the cross, entrusted to him the protection of his holy mother.

As the 2021 Locarno Film Festival rounds its final bend, sales deals were still coming through.

In one such pact, San Sebastian New Directors title “That Weekend” has been snapped up by leading Italian sales-production shingle The Open Reel. A debut feature from director Mara Pescio, the film tells the story of Julia who returns to the neighborhood she left years ago to recover money she hid in her home. The reunion prompts a life-changing confrontation with her daughter.

The film is an Argentina-Brazil co-production hailing from Maravillacine, Murillo Cine, Santiago Carabante and Persona Non Grata Pictures. Variety previously spoke with Pescio about her making her directorial bow.

In other late Locarno dealing, Compañia de Cine, a Buenos Aires-based boutique sales operation, announced it had taken world rights to “Mostro,” which world premiered Aug. 11 in Locarno Cineasti del Presente.

Also, Mad Solutions signed all sales and distribution rights for Arab-speaking countries...

London-based sales agency Film Republic has picked up Peter Brunner’s “Luzifer,” which will feature next week in competition at the Locarno Film Festival. The film stars Franz Rogowski, who toplined Terrence Malick’s “A Hidden Life,” and is produced by Austrian auteur Ulrich Seidl.

In “Luzifer,” which is based on the reimagining of a true story, Rogowski plays Johannes, an innocent, Kaspar Hauser-like man with the heart of a child, who lives secluded in an alpine hut together with his eagle and his devout mother. Daily life in this isolated world is governed by prayer and ritual. But suddenly, modern objects and disruptive noises intrude between nature and worship. A hotel development threatens to poison their paradise and awaken the devil.

In a statement, Brunner commented: “I wanted to show people who return to the essentials. As dropouts from digital pollution, they seek spirituality in nature. This dance, a...