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How’s this for an epic cast list? Karim Aïnouz‘s “Rosebush Pruning” had enough hype surrounding it already: Elle Fanning as the star; Efthimis Filippou penning a script that adapts the 1965 classic “Fists In The Pocket“; Mubi, The Match Factory, and Fremantle‘s The Apartment footing the bill. But the ensemble Aïnouz cast around Fanning now makes his follow-up to “Motel Destino” one of next year’s most anticipated films.

Continue reading ‘Rosebush Pruning’: Karim Aïnouz’s Dark Satire With Elle Fanning Adds Callum Turner, Riley Keough, Jamie Bell & More at The Playlist.

Riley Keough and Callum Turner have joined the cast of Karim Aïnouz’s Rosebush Pruning!

The stars are replacing Kristen Stewart and Josh O’Connor were originally announced on the project during Cannes alongside Elle Fanning, via Deadline.

Elle is still on the cast, and filming is underway in Spain.

Keep reading to find out more…

The casting change is believed to be for scheduling reasons, with Kristen currently in post-production on her project, The Chronology of Water.

Jamie Bell, Lukas Gage, Tracy Letts, Elena Anaya and Pamela Anderson have also joined the production.

The movie is an adaptation of Marco Bellochio’s psychological movie from 50 years ago, Fists in the Pocket, about a young man who takes drastic measures to rid his dysfunctional family of its various afflictions.

Riley Keough recently opened up about losing her mom Lisa Marie Presley.

An array of big name talent has joined Elle Fanning in “Rosebush Pruning” from “Motel Destino” and “Firebrand” director Karim Aïnouz for Mubi, The Match Factory and Fremantle company The Apartment.

Callum Turner (“Masters of the Air,” “The Boys in the Boat”), Riley Keough (“Daisy Jones & The Six,” “Zola”), Jamie Bell (“All of Us Strangers, Rocketman”), Lukas Gage (“The White Lotus,” “Euphoria”), Tracy Letts (“Lady Bird,” “Ford vs Ferrari”), Elena Anaya (“The Skin I Live In,” “MotherFatherSon”) and Pamela Anderson (“The Last Showgirl,” the forthcoming “The Naked Gun”) are set to start in the film, which was first announced last year and is now shooting in Spain. Kristen Stewart and Josh O’Connor were originally attached to the project in lead roles alongside Fanning, but have been replaced by Keough and Turner, respectively.

Aïnouz is directing from a script written by Efthimis Filippou (“Kinds of Kindness,” “The Killing of a Sacred Deer,...

Callum Turner and Riley Keough have joined the cast of Karim Aïnouz’s Rosebush Pruning, replacing Kristen Stewart and Josh O’Connor who were originally announced on the project during Cannes alongside Elle Fanning.

Fanning remains on board alongside Masters of the Air star Turner and Daisy Jones & The Six actress Keough, whose involvement was unveiled as filming is underway in Spain.

The swap-out is believed to be for scheduling reasons with Stewart currently immersed in post-production on her long gestated passion project The Chronology of Water.

In further newly-announced cast additions, Jamie Bell (All of Us Strangers), Lukas Gage, Tracy Letts, Elena Anaya (The Skin I Live In) and Pamela Anderson, who is enjoying a buzzy big screen comeback with The Last Showgirl, have also joined the production.

Originally announced with the title format Rosebushpruning, the movie, for Mubi, The Match Factory...

Callum Turner and Riley Keough have replaced Josh O’Connor and Kristen Stewart in the lead roles of Karim Aїnouz’s Rosebush Pruning.

Jamie Bell, Lukas Gage, Tracy Letts, Elena Anaya and Pamela Anderson have also joined the cast, alongside the previously announced Elle Fanning.

Production is now underway in Spain.

The film centres on a young man suffering from epilepsy who plots the murders of his dysfunctional family.

Efthimis Filippou wrote the script, an adaptation of Marco Bellocchio’s 1965 debut film Fists In The Pocket.

Kavic Film secured the adaptation rights and produces the film with Viola Fügen and Michael Weber...

Marco Bellocchio’s “Se posso permettermi Capitolo II” (May I Say? Chapter Two), which has its world premiere Sunday in the Out of Competition section of the Venice Film Festival, has debuted a first clip (below). Rai Cinema is handling world sales.

The 30-minute film is the sequel to the short of the same name made in 2019 as part of the Fare Cinema (Making Cinema) training program.

The synopsis reads as follows: “Over the course of one day, Fausto, invincible in his inertia, watches a paradoxical procession of visitors pass by: the mellifluous village parish priest; a mysterious man with his absurd idea of a ghost-themed business; the captain of the Carabinieri who proposes a shotgun wedding with his daughter, who’s carrying the child of a stranger.

“Finally, late at night, a pair of thieves, in cahoots with Barbara, break into the house. Fausto surprises them, as always impassive and bored,...

The British Film Institute (BFI) has issued a further 11 awards through the UK Global Screen Fund (Ukgsf), including Karim Aïnouz’s Rosebushpruning, Irish football story Saipan, starring Steve Coogan, and The Bureau-produced Moroccan co-production Behind The Palm Trees.

Rosebushpruning is the next feature from Brazilian director Aïnouz. It is a contemporary adaptation of Marco Bellocchio’s Fists In The Pocket, with Elle Fanning attached to star.

Producers are Kavac Film, The Match Factory and Surfilm, with CryBaby the minority UK producer on the project. Fremantle’s Italy-based The Apartment is on board as a co-producer, and Mubi is one of the backers.

Veteran Italian director Marco Bellocchio has revealed details of his new drama series Portobello, which is based on the real-life story of Enzo Tortora, the Italian TV celebrity journalist falsely accused of being a Mafia member and drug runner in the early 1980s.

“He [Tortora] was convicted and sentenced to prison because of a huge judiciary mistake,” Bellocchio said of his subject who hosted hit TV show Portobello but ended up receiving a 10 year prison sentence. “They [the authorities] literally destroyed his family, his life, his professional career - and he died out of sheer grief.”

Bellocchio didn’t know Tortora personally but...

Fremantle’s Rome-based company The Apartment has boarded Karim Aïnouz’s next feature Rosebushpruning in partnership with The Match Factory, Mubi, Kavac Film and Rai Cinema.

It marks the first big film announcement for The Apartment since the arrival of Annamaria Morelli as its CEO in February, following the departure of founder Lorenzo Mieli.

As announced in Cannes this week, Kristen Stewart, Josh O’Connor, and Elle Fanning are signed to co-star in Rosebushpruning, which shoots later this year.

Aïnouz is directing from a script written by Efthimis Filippou, adapted from Marco Bellocchio’s debut feature Fists in the Pocket, a satirical drama about a dysfunctional family.

Viola Fügen and Michael Weber are producing Rosebushpruning for The Match Factory, which is also handling worldwide sales for the film.

The adaptation rights have been acquired from Kavac Film also attached at the production team with Simone Gattoni.

Fremantle’s The Apartment will partner with The Match Factory, Mubi, Kavac Film and Rai Cinema to produce Karim Aïnouz’s next feature film “Rosebushpruning.”

Directed by Aïnouz, the film’s lead cast includes Kristen Stewart (“Love Lies Bleeding,” “Spencer”), Josh O’Connor (“Challengers,” “God’s Own Country”) and Elle Fanning (“Teen Spirit,” “The Great”). Aïnouz is directing from a script written by Efthimis Filippou (Kinds of Kindness, Dogtooth, The Lobster), which is an adaptation from Marco Bellocchio’s debut feature Fists in the Pocket.

Viola Fügen and Michael Weber are producing “Rosebushpruning” for The Match Factory, who are also handling worldwide sales for the film. The adaptation rights have been acquired from Kavac Film also attached at the production team with Simone Gattoni. The Apartment, a Fremantle Company, is co-producing, with Annamaria Morelli as executive producer. Rachel Dargavel for Crybaby Films is co-producing in the UK. Mubi is financing production alongside...

Fremantle’s The Apartment boarded Karim Aïnouz’s next feature Rosebushpruning, as co-producer, with The Match Factory, Mubi, Kavac Film and Rai Cinema.

The cast for the film, first announced last year, includes Kristen Stewart, Josh O’Connor and Elle Fanning.

Brazilian director Aïnouz is in Cometition at Cannes with Motel Destino, having last year premiered Firebrand in Compeition. Aïnouz is directing from a script by Kinds Of Kindness and Dogtooth writer Efthimis Filippou who has adapted Marco Bellocchio’s debut feature Fists In The Pocket.

Viola Fügen and Michael Weber are producing Rosebushpruning for The Match Factory, who are also...

Marco Bellocchio is the 84-year-old Italian director behind films like “Fists in the Pocket” from 1965, “Vincere” from 2009, and “Devil in the Flesh” from 1986. His strict Catholic upbringing has led him to make films that take a critical eye toward the Church, condemning its politics and documented history of abuse. Now, he is taking the Church to task once again with his latest film, “Kidnapped: The Abduction of Edgardo Mortara,” out May 24 from Cohen Media Group. Watch the trailer, an IndieWire exclusive, below.

Here’s the official synopsis: “In 1858, in the Jewish quarter of Bologna, the Pope’s soldiers burst into the home of the Mortara family. By order of the cardinal, they have come to take Edgardo, their seven-year-old son. The child had been secretly baptized by his nurse as a baby and the papal law is unquestionable: he must receive a Catholic education. Edgardo’s parents, distraught, will do...

With over six decades of an illustrious filmmaking career, Marco Bellocchio’s latest feature, Kidnapped: The Abduction of Edgardo Mortara, will be coming U.S. theaters later this month from Cohen Media Group. A story once in the hands of Steven Spielberg to adapt, the 84-year-old Italian director’s latest work follows Edgardo Mortara, a seven-year-old Jewish boy who was taken from his family in Bologna to be raised Catholic in the actual arms of Pope Pius IX. Ahead of the May 24 release, we’re pleased to exclusively announce NYC’s Quad Cinema will be presenting the retrospective “Marco Bellocchio’s Film of Revolution,” taking place May 17-23.

See the lineup below.

Fists in the Pocket In the Name of the Father A Leap in the Dark Enrico IV Devil in the Flesh Good Morning, Night Marx Can Wait

Bellocchio also shared a personal statement ahead of the retrospective, which one can read below.

The octogenarian director, whose latest film dramatises the 19th-century abduction of Edgardo Mortara by the Vatican, has been plumbing the depths of the Italian psyche on screen for the past 60 years – and worries for the future of cinema

He’s 84, but could be 10 or even 20 years younger. In his jacket and open-necked shirt, he looks like a university professor, speaking animatedly (addressing me directly or via his interpreter), voice habitually a little raised, as if at the university lectern or on stage at a film festival Q&a.

The Italian director Marco Bellocchio began his career nearly 60 years ago with the low-budget family-dysfunction shocker Fists in the Pocket and carried indefatigably on chronicling the psychodrama of the Italian soul from a Freudian and Marxist point of view. Now he discusses his barnstorming film, a huge period costume-drama taken from Italian history: Rapito, or Kidnapped, based on Daniele Scalise’s nonfiction...

Marco Bellocchio has ruffled some feathers over the years – starting with his feature debut “Fists in the Pocket.”

“I do remember that people were shocked about me making a film, in Italy, about a son killing his mother. They were surprised and I don’t know why. I thought it was a good idea – from a dramatic point of view,” he said at International Film Festival Rotterdam during a talk with festival director Vanja Kaludjercic.

While his colleague Bernardo Bertolucci found himself in even bigger trouble – “They wanted to burn the negative of ‘The Last Tango in Paris,’ which was absurd! I had issues, but not as big as this one” – “Fists in the Pocket” still angered many. Including Luis Buñuel.

“He is perceived as this great surrealist, a revolutionary, but he was a conservative moralist. He couldn’t believe this angry young man was so bitter against his mother.

“Kidnapped,” the new feature film from Marco Bellocchio, has been acquired for domestic distribution by Cohen Media Group, TheWrap has confirmed.

The drama, which played in competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, concerns a young Jewish boy who, after being secretly baptized by his nurse as a baby, is abducted and raised Christian in 19th Century Italy.

The picture debuted to mostly positive reviews (76% fresh and an average critic rating of 7/10 on Rotten Tomatoes), with TheWrap’s Ben Croll noting that the film “doesn’t so much pit one faith against another, casting oppressors against oppressed; instead, the film sets individuals against larger institutions.” It has earned $1.14 million in Italy since opening there in late May.

Marco Bellocchio, along with his contemporaries Bernardo Bertolucci and Pier Paolo Pasolini, helped redefine Italian and world cinema in the 1960s and beyond. He created the landmark films “Fists in the Pocket,...

To play Arthur, a gentleman archeologist-turned-tombaroli (illegal grave-robber) in Alice Rohrwacher’s La Chimera, British actor Josh O’Connor swapped the double-breasted bespoke suits he donned as Prince Charles on Netflix’s The Crown for a rumpled cream linen outfit that looks like its owner has worn through too many late night digs.

But the role in the Italian drama “is much more me than The Crown” was, says O’Connor. Ahead of his interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the actor proves his working-class roots by head-swiveling at the sight of blue-collar directing icon Ken Loach, giving interviews just behind him on the roof of the festival Palais in Cannes, where La Chimera (and Loach’s The Old Oak) are screening in competition. “That’s Ken Loach over there!” O’Connor half-shouts/half-whispers, adding shyly, “he’s one of my heroes.”

O’Connor’s performance as Arthur, a tomb raider who...

Kristen Stewart, Josh O'Connor and Elle Fanning will lead the cast of 'Rosebushpruning'.The trio are set to feature in the movie from director Karim Ainouz, whose historical drama 'Firebrand' – starring Jude Law and Alicia Vikander – premiered at the Cannes Film Festival recently.Ainouz will direct from a script by Efthimis Filippou and adapted from Marco Bellocchio's 1965 film 'Fists in the Pocket'.The dark satire of family and social values is considered to be a landmark piece of Italian cinema.In the original 'Fists in the Pocket', a young epilepsy sufferer (Lou Castel in his film debut) plots the murders of his dysfunctional family. It proved controversial when it was first released but has gone on to develop a strong following.Ainouz said: "Marco Bellocchio's astonishing debut, 'Fists in the Pocket', was released over 50 years ago and had a huge impact on Italian...

Almost sixty years ago, Italian filmmaker Marco Bellocchio made his feature directorial debut with the psychological drama Fists in the Pocket. Kavac Film recently acquired the remake rights to that film, and The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed that it’s going to be made under the title Rosebushpruning. Kristen Stewart (Underwater), Elle Fanning (The Great), and Josh O’Connor (The Crown) have signed on to star in the film.

Karim Aïnouz, whose period drama Firebrand premiered at the Cannes Film Festival this month, will be directing Rosebushpruning from a screenplay by Efthimis Filippou (Dogtooth). Fists in the Pocket was about a young man suffering from epilepsy plotting the murders of his dysfunctional family.

The Hollywood Reporter notes that Fists in the Pocket proved controversial at the Locarno Festival, where it had its premiere and was condemned by several major cinema figures, but was warmly received by younger critics and audiences, becoming a sleeper hit.

The Cannes Film Festival comes to a close on Saturday and you can feel it. Things are starting to slow down, standing ovations aren’t as long and those on the Croisette are starting to get tired.

Beloved filmmaker Wes Anderson debuted his latest feature, “Asteroid City,” on Wednesday and the reaction was more muted than the reception to “Killers of the Flower Moon” or even the more mixed “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.” TheWrap’s Steve Pond emphasized the whole did not live up to the sum of its parts, despite pristine craft as always.

“‘Asteroid City’ also feels like a wasted opportunity of sorts,” he said in his review. “At one point, a radio off-screen plays Slim Whitman’s ‘Indian Love Call,’ the song that killed all the alien invaders in Tim Burton’s ‘Mars Attacks.’ It couldn’t help but prompt a longing for the...

Fresh off the debut of “Firebrand,” it appears that acclaimed filmmaker Karim Aïnouz has already lined up his next film, “Rosebushpruning.” And as you might expect, he’s already landed an incredible cast to lead the feature.

According to The Match Factory and Mubi, Karim Aïnouz’s next film will be titled “Rosebushpruning,” and it will be a remake of the classic Italian film, “Fists in the Pocket.” Exact details about the plot are unknown, but if it follows ‘Fists,’ which was directed by Marco Bellocchio, the film will tell the story of a family dealing with various medical conditions and the effect it has on their relationships.

Continue reading ‘Rosebushpruning’: Kristen Stewart, Elle Fanning & Josh O’Connor To Star In Karim Aïnouz’s Remake Of ‘Fists In The Pocket’ at The Playlist.

Mubi has picked The Settlers, the latest pic from Chilean filmmaker Felipe Gálvez for North America, the UK, Latin America, Turkey, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Benelux, and India.

The pic debuted in the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard section last night. Mubi has said it will release the film theatrically in the U.S., UK, and additional territories with release plans to be announced.

Set in Chile at the beginning of the 20th century, The Settlers follows a wealthy landowner who hires three horsemen to mark out the perimeter of his extensive property and open a route to the Atlantic Ocean across vast Patagonia. The expedition, composed of a young Chilean mestizo, an American mercenary, and led by a reckless British lieutenant, soon turns into a “civilizing” raid.

The deal was negotiated with mk2. Producers include Giancarlo Nasi, Benjamín Domenech, Santiago Gallelli, Matías Roveda, Emily Morgan, Thierry Lenouvel,...

The Match Factory and Mubi team on the adaptation of Marco Bellocchio’s ‘Fists in the Pocket’.

Kristen Stewart, Josh O’Connor and Elle Fanning are to lead Rosebushpruning, a dark satire from Firebrand director Karim Aïnouz, backed by The Match Factory and Mubi.

The upcoming feature is set to begin shooting in spring 2024 and is an adaptation of Marco Bellocchio’s 1965 psychological drama Fists In The Pocket, with adaptation rights acquired from Italy’s Kavac Film.

It is scripted by Efthimis Filippou, who co-wrote Dogtooth, The Killing Of A Sacred Deer and The Lobster with director Yorgos Lanthimos, securing an...

Kristen Stewart and Elle Fanning will lead the cast of the upcoming psychological drama Rosebushpruning, Deadline reports, a new take on the 1965 movie Fists in the Pocket.

From The Match Factory and Mubi, the film will be directed by Karim Aïnouz (Firebrand).

“Rosebushpruning is a dark satire of family and social values, centering on a young man suffering from epilepsy who plots the murders of his dysfunctional family.”

Josh O’Connor will also star in Rosebushpruning.

Efthimis Filippou (Dogtooth) wrote the screenplay for the remake.

“Marco Bellocchio’s astonishing debut, Fists in the Pocket, was released over 50 years ago and had a huge impact on Italian cinema and storytelling at the time,” said Aïnouz.

The filmmaker adds, “I’m excited to be collaborating with Efthimis Filippou to revisit this iconic work to create a contemporary parable about the death of the traditional patriarchal family — which I hope will be touching and provocative in equal measure.

Kristen Stewart, Josh O’Connor and Elle Fanning are to lead The Match Factory and Mubi’s Rosebushpruning from Firebrand director Karim Aïnouz.

The movie is an adaptation of Marco Bellochio’s psychological feature 50 years ago, which was titled Fists in the Pocket. Aïnouz, who won the Cannes 2019 Un Certain Regard with The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão and is behind the Alicia Vikander-starring Firebrand, is directing from a script written by Efthimis Filippou (Dogtooth). Adaptation rights were acquired from Kavac Film and shooting will begin in 2024.

Rosebushpruning is a dark satire of family and social values, centering on a young man suffering from epilepsy who plots the murders of his dysfunctional family.

“Marco Bellocchio’s astonishing debut, Fists in the Pocket, was released over 50 years ago and had a huge impact on Italian cinema and storytelling at the time,” said Aïnouz. “I’m excited to be collaborating with Efthimis...

The 2023 Cannes Film Festival may be slowly winding down, but a red hot new project has just landed in the market to spice things up.

Kristen Stewart (Spencer), Josh O’Connor (The Crown, God’s Own Country) and Elle Fanning (Teen Spirit, The Great) are set to lead the cast of Rosebushpruning, the next feature from Karim Aïnouz, whose Jude Law- and Alicia Vikander-starring period drama Firebrand last week had its world premiere in Cannes’ main competition to hugely positive reviews. The Match Factory and Mubi are backing the film.

The Hollywood Reporter understands that Aïnouz will direct from a script written by Efthimis Filippou (Dogtooth, Killing of Sacred Deer, The Lobster) and adapted from Marco Bellocchio’s 1965 debut feature Fists in the Pocket, a dark satire of family and social values now considered a landmark piece of Italian cinema. The adaptation rights were acquired from Kavac Film.

The Match...

Based on the true story of a young Jewish boy kidnapped by papal authorities, this is a full-tilt melodrama that lays bare tyranny, bigotry and the abuse of power in the Catholic church

Cannes is this year becoming a counterblast to ageism. Italian director Marco Bellocchio, at the age of 83 – and almost 60 years after he first came to prominence with his 1965 movie Fists in the Pocket – has created a gripping, heartbreaking true-political crime story from the pages of history. It is a full-tilt melodrama with the passionate vehemence of Victor Hugo or Charles Dickens, which lays bare an ugly formative episode of Europe’s Catholic church: an affair of antisemitism and child abuse.

It is based on the true story of Edgardo Mortara, a young Jewish child in Bologna who, in 1858, when he was six, was taken away from his family by the papal authorities. This was done because Edgardo...

At 83 years-old, Italian auteur Marco Bellocchio has been on a hot streak these past years, with the success both at home and abroad of his 2019 Sicilian mafia epic, The Traitor, and his first ever TV miniseries, Exterior, Night, playing well around Europe.

His latest feature — the 31st in a prolific career that began at age 24 with his breakout drama, Fists in the Pocket — is probably not his greatest, but that’s not really a put-down in a filmography filled with memorable work, including other recent movies like Vincere and Good Morning, Night.

Kidnapped (Rapito), a period piece about a Jewish boy taken away from his family to live in the Vatican in 1858, may not be on par with those titles, but it’s still an engaging and somewhat fascinating film, telling a true story that probes historic Italian antisemitism and the follies of the Catholic church.

Filled with the director...

“Fists in the Pocket” director Marco Bellocchio has long woven elements of autobiography into his work, threading personal themes of siblings, madness and suicide through his most intimate films. Far less apparent until now was how the maestro sublimated himself behind the fiction, using cinema to address such elements on screen so as to avoid processing them on a consciously verbal level. With “Marx Can Wait,” he mixes up that pattern, delivering a frank and revealing documentary about his family — and most especially himself — that centers on his twin brother Camillo, who committed suicide in 1968.

The catalyst was a 2016 reunion of the surviving Bellocchio siblings in their Emilian hometown of Piacenza. Whether planned beforehand or not, the event gave the director the opportunity to involve his brothers and sisters in a discussion about their childhood, but more specifically about Camillo, recalled at the start as “an angel” whose intense, unaddressed...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

2021 Oscar-Nominated Short Films

Check out Jared Mobarak’s reviews of all of this Oscar-nominated short films, including Animation, Live-Action, and Documentary.

Where to Stream: Virtual Cinemas

Concrete Cowboy (Ricky Staub)

There is a moment of surreal wonder near the start of Concrete Cowboy, the TIFF premiere co-starring Idris Elba, that is never equaled again, a sequence of unexpected radiance conjuring a sense of astonishment. A troubled teenager has been sent from Detroit to Philadelphia to spend the summer with his long-absent father. He arrives at night to a nearly empty, rather foreboding street. Eventually he finds his (seemingly) menacing father and is led into a ramshackle, messy home. Suddenly...

Distributor planning hybrid theatrical-virtual release shortly after cinemas reopen.

Modern Films has secured UK and Ireland rights to Marco Bellocchio’s mafia drama The Traitor from The Match Factory, and is planning a hybrid theatrical-virtual release shortly after cinemas reopen.

The UK distributor is in talks with cinemas to screen the film from July 24, three weeks after exhibitors are allowed to reopen venues after months of shutdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Virtual screenings will also be available from the same date, hosted online by individual cinemas, and will follow a virtual preview and Q&a on June 26 at the...

Distributor planning hybrid theatrical-virtual release shortly after cinemas reopen.

Modern Films has secured UK and Ireland rights to Marco Bellocchio’s mafia drama The Traitor from The Match Factory, and is planning a hybrid theatrical-virtual release shortly after cinemas reopen.

The UK distributor is in talks with cinemas to screen the film from July 24, three weeks after exhibitors are allowed to reopen venues after months of shutdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Virtual screenings will also be available from the same date, hosted online by individual cinemas, and will follow a virtual preview and Q&a on June 26 at the...

Criterion re-releases the mordant directorial debut of Italian auteur Marco Bellocchio, Fists in the Pocket (1965), just as the perennial filmmaker ends his sixth decade of filmmaking with this year’s delicious reincarnation of the Tommaso Buscetta scandal in the Cannes premiered The Traitor (review).

Shot on family property and with family funds, Bellocchio’s debut foretells the tale of a crumbling middle-class family debilitated by dysfunction in their familial Italian villa. The fatherless brood of adult children are held afloat by eldest brother Augusto (Marino Mase), who holds a job in the village and intends to dissociate himself from his family by moving in with his girlfriend.…...

Lyon, France — Leading Italian restoration company L’Immagine Ritrovata’s acquisition of renowned film lab Eclair Cinéma, announced last month, is expected to be approved by the French Commercial Court of Nanterre, according to a source familiar with the deal.

‘Immagine Ritrovata’s French subsidiary, L’Image Retrouvée, last month signed a binding letter with Paris-based Ymagis Group, a key European player in digital technologies for the film industry, to take over Eclair Cinema, a subsidiary of the group’s Eclair business unit that oversaw post production and restoration activities in France before being placed in receivership in 2018.

Eclair Cinema has since undergone major restructuring and is now focused solely on content restoration, an area of expertise in which it is a leader in France, boasting more than 750 feature film restorations. The subsidiary generated €2.32 million ($2.55 million) in revenue from its core restoration business in the first half of 2019.

The agreement is...

Fists in the Pocket

Blu ray

Criterion

1965/ 1.85:1 / 108 min.

Starring Lou Castel, Paola Pitagora

Cinematography by Alberto Marrama

Directed by Marco Bellochio

The split-personality of world cinema was never more evident than in 1965 when Fists in the Pockets and Repulsion debuted alongside The Sound of Music and That Darn Cat. All four films dealt with fantasies of family life but only one suggested smashing the institution altogether. And that film was That Darn Cat (“sarcasm font”).

Hailed as one of the most audacious debuts in film history, director Marco Bellochio’s Fists in the Pocket premiered that summer at the Locarno Film Festival. Both Time and Newsweek raved and even Life Magazine, America’s favorite coffee table prop, confessed they were “stunned but exhilarated.” The movie received a more predictable reception from the usual suspects – The Christian Democrat Party called for its expulsion from the public eye.

Bellochio’s film about a deranged brood,...

After a somewhat muted reception at Cannes earlier this year, Sony Pictures Classics has just released the first trailer for Italian director Marco Bellocchio’s mafia film The Traitor. In addition to Cannes, the film is currently making its way through the festival circuit, with screenings at both Toronto and New York film festivals.

Starring Pierfrancesco Favino as Tommaso Buscetta, a real-life figure, and the first Mafia boss to become an informant on the Nostra Costa in the early 80s, Bellocchio’s film appears to the type of time-spanning gangster film that is rarely seen these days. In addition to Favino, Luigi Lo Cascio, Fausto Russo Alesi, and Maria Fernanda Cândido co-star.

Bellocchio has been a staple of Italian filmmaking since the mid-60s with his first film Fists in the Pocket. His previous film was 2016’s Sweet Dreams staring Bérénice Bejo, which also received lukewarm reviews.

Check out the trailer below.

Witness for the Prosecution: Bellocchio Delivers Vigorous Portrait of the Man Who Took Down the Cosa Nostra

Italian auteur Marco Bellocchio, on the verge of entering his eighties, presents one of the liveliest offerings of his six-decade career with The Traitor, an expose on Tommaso Buscetta, the first high profile mafia informant whose testimony led to a landmark court case, setting a precedent for others to come forward against the criminal organization. Pierfrancesco Favino, known for his appearances in countless supporting roles from mainstream Hollywood productions, stars as Buscetta, initially a reluctant witness and eventual informant poster boy who is mournful of the days when the Cosa Nostra was an organization dependent on “men of honor.” Having steadily directed films since his celebrated 1965 debut Fists in the Pocket, Bellocchio has presented a wide range of genres throughout his career, and his take on an integral chapter of the Sicilian mafia...

Almost an hour into Marco Bellocchio’s “The Traitor” — a lively but scattershot and exasperating biopic about Tommaso Buscetta, the first Sicilian mob boss to become an informant for the authorities — the film’s charismatic protagonist (Pierfrancesco Favino) tells an interrogator a story about one of the first men he was ever assigned to kill. Bellocchio then cuts to a brief flashback that offers us more about his subject than the rest of this two-and-a-half hour film combined. The young Buscetta sees his target across a courtyard, and his target sees him. Knowing that Buscetta is there to kill him, the man takes his baby son into his arms for protection, hoping that his assassin wouldn’t risk endangering the life of an innocent child. Buscetta, a dignified man who sincerely believes his beloved Cosa Nostra was once a society of honor, can’t bring himself to take the shot.

Kantemir Balagov comes from Kabardino-Balkaria, a region in the Russian Caucasus that is very poor and has a high level of youth unemployment. Balagov studied under Russian director Alexander Sokurov for three years, and made his debut feature with “Closeness,” which was in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard in 2017, and won the Fipresci prize. “Beanpole,” his second feature, plays in Un Certain Regard this year. Set in 1945 in Leningrad, which was devastated in World War II, the film centers on two young women, Iya and Masha, who are struggling to rebuild their lives.

What impact did Alexander Sokurov have on you as a filmmaker?

Other than giving me an understanding of the profession of the director, he helped me to achieve self-consciousness and taught me how to love literature. To me these two things are interconnected, because consciousness feeds on literature.

How do you describe your approach to directing?

I am...

Cannes veteran Marco Bellocchio’s vast body of work spans from “Fists in the Pocket” (1965) to “Sweet Dreams,” which launched at Director’s Fortnight in 2016. The auteur known for psychodramas and for bringing the complexities of Italian history, and hypocrisy, to the big screen is back, this time in competition, with “The Traitor,” a biopic of Tommaso Buscetta, the first high-ranking member of Cosa Nostra to break the Sicilian Mafia’s oath of silence. He spoke to Variety about making his first film with “no direct link or identification with my personality.”

What drew you to the story of Tommaso Buscetta?

What I like about this character is that he’s neither a victim nor a hero. He’s a very determined man, always on the run. He’s a survivor. Buscetta had to continuously navigate really dangerous situations. He fled to Brazil because he knew there was a war...

To mark the release of Requiescant on 16th November, we’ve been given 3 copies to give away on Blu-ray. Lou Castel (Fists in the Pocket, A Bullet for General) plays a young man who was raised to be a pacifist by a travelling preacher after Confederates massacred his family. But when his step-sister runs away,

The post Win Requiescant on Blu-ray appeared first on HeyUGuys.

Above: Us poster for Alphaville (Jean-Luc Godard, France, 1965).As the 53rd New York Film Festival ends today, I thought I would go back half a century and take a look at the 3rd edition of the festival. Curated by Amos Vogel and Richard Roud, the then fledgling fest comprised 17 new features, 6 retrospective selections (ranging from Feuillade’s 1915 Les vampires to Godard’s 1960 Le petit soldat), and a number of shorts or demi-features (including Chris Marker’s The Koumiko Mystery). The main slate was chock-full of masterpieces (Gertrud, Alphaville, Charulata) and films by masters (Franju, Visconti, Kurosawa) and young turks on the rise (Straub, Bellocchio, Forman, Penn, Skolimowski). And there is only one film in the list—Laurence L. Kent’s Canadian indie Caressed—that I had never heard of before.In his introduction to the festival catalog Amos Vogel wrote:“Several fascinating, contradictory facts stand out in the 1965 New York film scene.

Here are a handful of links that I think are worth reading today, for discerning Criterion Collection fan.

Articles

Over on his Criterion Reflections blog, David has just posted his review of Mikio Naruse’s Scattered Clouds:

Since a couple years have passed between my last viewing of a Naruse film (1964’s Yearning, back in 2013, though not reviewed anywhere), I was thus quite eager to sit down and take in Scattered Clouds, available on Criterion’s Hulu channel (and only there, as no version of it on disc is anywhere to be found for the Region 1 market, anyway.)

Don’t miss the Criterion Collection As Haiku blog’s latest entry, on Lonesome.

Jonathan Rosenbaum has republished his review of Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan on his blog, adding:

Even though this is favorable, I think I underestimated the achievement of this first feature; reseeing it a quarter of a century later,...

As usual, the Masters programme is cholk-full of carryover items from world renowned auteurs who’ve already premiered last February (Berlin), this past May (Cannes) or as part of the upcoming action on the Lido (Venice). Of the thirteen titles and personalities that need no introduction, it’s the likes of Hong Sang-soo (Locarno) and the Venice preemed, and not yet picked up items from Skolimowski, Bellocchio & Sokurov (all potential Golden Lion winners) that are still sight unseen for several North American based cinephiles. Here are the baker’s dozen of items:

11 Minutes (11 Minut) – Jerzy Skolimowski, Poland/Ireland

North American Premiere

A jealous husband out of control, his sexy actress wife, a sleazy Hollywood director, a reckless drug messenger, a disoriented young woman, an ex-con hot dog vendor, a troubled student on a mysterious mission, a high-rise window cleaner on an illicit break, an elderly sketch artist, a hectic paramedics...

While the Toronto International Film Festival has its fair share of both Hollywood and Canadian productions, the festival has also cultivated a strong look at foreign and arthouse films during its run. Most of these films get their own spotlight in the Masters programme, which featured films from Jean-Luc Godard, Michael Winterbottom, and Nuri Bilge Ceylan in its 2014 lineup. With the 2015 incarnation fast approaching, Tiff announced some of the films that will be seen as part of this year’s Masters lineup. The films, with their official synopses, can be seen below.

Masters

11 Minutes, directed by Jerzy Skolimowski, making its North American Premiere

A jealous husband out of control, his sexy actress wife, a sleazy Hollywood director, a reckless drug messenger, a disoriented young woman, an ex-con hot dog vendor, a troubled student on a mysterious mission, a high-rise window cleaner on an illicit break, an elderly sketch artist, a...

Hong Sang-soo's Right Now, Wrong Then.The lineup for the 2015 festival has been revealed, including new films by Hong Sang-soo, Andrzej Zulawski, Chantal Akerman, Athina Rachel Tsangari, and others, alongside retrospectives and tributes dedicated to Sam Peckinpah, Michael Cimino, Bulle Ogier, and much more.Piazza GRANDERicki and the Flash (Jonathan Demme, USA)La belle saison (Catherine Corsini, France)Le dernier passage (Pascal Magontier, France)Der staat gegen Fritz Bauer (Lars Kraume, Germany)Southpaw (Antoine Fuqua, USA)Trainwreck (Judd Apatow, USA)Jack (Elisabeth Scharang, Austria)Floride (Philippe Le Guay, France)The Deer Hunter (Michael Cimino, UK/USA)Erlkönig (Georges Schwizgebel, Switzerland)Guibord s'en va-t-en guerre (Philippe Falardeau, Canada)Bombay Velvet (Anurag Kashyap, India)Pastorale cilentana (Mario Martone, Italy)La vanite (Lionel Baier, Switzerland/France)The Laundryman (Lee Chung, Taiwan)Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, USA) I pugni ni tasca (Marco Bellocchio, Italy)Heliopolis (Sérgio Machado, Brazil)Amnesia (Barbet Schroeder,...

Exclusive: New Alba Rohrwacher drama among trio.

Indie sales powerhouse The Match Factory has struck a three-film deal with Cannes regular Marco Bellocchio, which includes the acclaimed director’s next two films and his directorial debut Fists in the Pocket (I Pugni in Tasca).

Alba Rohrwacher, star of Hungry Hearts and The Wonders, is set to reteam with the Dormant Beauty director on Blood of my Blood (Sangue Del Mio Sangue).

The actress stars alongside Filippo Timi (Vincere), Roberto Herlitzka (The Great Beauty), Pier Giorgio Bellocchio and Lidyia Liberman in the film currently near completion which Bellocchio describes as a story about “love for the past and the need to make a clean break with it”.

The film is a co-production between Simone Gattoni of Kavac Film, Beppe Caschetto of Ibc Movie, Tiziana Soudani of Amka Films Production, Fabio Conversi of Barbary Films and Rai Cinema.

The deal will also include Sweet Dreams (Fai Bei Sogni) - announced...

The Italian auteur is to receive the Pardo d’onore at the Locarno Film Festival in August.

Italian director Marco Bellocchio is to be honored with the Pardo d’onore Swisscom at this year’s Locarno Film Festival.

Bellocchio’s debut feature Fists In The Pocket screened at Locarno in 1965, winning the Vela d’argento, and the film will play again this year as a special Piazza Grande screening on August 14. The restored print is being sold internationally by The Match Factory.

Bellocchio will also take part in a masterclass in the Spazio Cinema.

A regular visitor to Locarno, the Italian auteur’s Victory March played in competition in 1976. He was president of the jury in 1997 and in 1998, the Festival featured a major retrospective of his work.

Previous recipients of the Pardo d’onore include Jean-Luc Godard, Ken Loach, Sidney Pollack, William Friedkin, Jia Zhang-ke, Alain Tanner, Werner Herzog and, in 2014, Agnès Varda...

L’ultimo Vampiro

Director: Marco Bellocchio // Writer: Marco Bellocchio

Marco Bellocchio is a key figure from mid-60s radical Italian cinema with his 1965 film Fists in the Pocket. He’s gone on to enjoy a steady filmography with intermittent renewals of interest in his work, such as critical hits with titles like Good Morning, Night (2003), and, most recently with his scalding Vincere (2009). While we found his Isabelle Huppert/Toni Servillo headlined euthanasia film Dormant Beauty (2012) to be a bit overwrought (we interviewed the filmmaker then) , we’re excited to see his latest, which has received a provocative new title, L’ultimo Vampiro (The Last Vampire)—formerly known as La Monaca. Bellocchio reunites with Rohrwacher and his regular cast mate Roberto Herlitzka for this tale based on the true tale of a 17th century noblewoman forced to become a nun, but whose free-spirited love affairs inside the convent lead to incarceration.