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In an exclusive interview with Variety, German maestro filmmaker Werner Herzog discussed his plans to lead the 3rd Film Accelerator program organized by Barcelona-based La Selva. Herzog and his long-time cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger will be on hand to guide the 25 directing and 25 cinematography aspirants who will pair up to create short films no longer than 10 mins in length.

On day one, he will give them a framework on which to base their project. “They’re not to come with a pre-formulated plan for their projects,” said Herzog, who revealed that he was lending his voice to “Parasite” director Bong Joon Ho’s upcoming hand-drawn animated feature about deep-sea creatures.

This would not be the first time for Herzog, who has lent his distinguished gravelly voice to many other parts in the past, most notably in episodes of “The Simpsons,” “The Boondocks” as well as Adult Swim’s “Rick and Morty” and “Metalocalypse.

The first thing you notice about the Adamant is that it’s absolutely beautiful — not just for a psychiatric facility, which tend to resemble prisons or kennels, but for a building of any kind. A floating barge moored on the right bank of the Seine (where it’s surrounded by a labyrinth of unfeeling concrete towers), this self-contained wing of the Paris Central Psychiatric Group sticks out of the landscape like an antique cabinet that was accidentally dropped into the middle of an Ikea showroom; it’s hard to shake the feeling that someone might notice the error and scoop the whole thing right out of the water at any moment.

And yet the barge’s oak brown wooden slats continue to creak open every morning, music to the ears of local men and women whose mental disorders have left them nowhere else to go. Unlike so many other day centers like it,...

On the 4th of July 2016 Iranian filmmaker, producer, author and poet Abbas Kiarostami died in Paris. While he did not receive the same kind of recognition in his home country Iran as he did in the rest of world, his body of work is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful in the history of cinema. Numerous authors have interpreted the various layers of meaning within his features, but perhaps one of the most intriguing aspects of his works is the way he uses landscape. While many directors uses landscape, rural or urban, as the background for the story or the characters, Kiarostami has continued to explore means to use landscape as a means to not just tell a story, but to enhance it, which he perfected throughout his career. In the following, we will take a look at a few examples within his wide filmography emphasizing this very point.

1. Where is the Friend's Home?...

Although features such as “Close-Up” (1990) received high praise from international critics, making it possible for director Abbas Kiarostami to seek financial backing for his projects in other countries, producing new features in his home country Iran proved to be increasingly difficult. Iranian authorities accused the director of becoming Westernized because of the use of Western music, especially classic, and also showing a rather clichéd image of Iran. However, Kiarostami still returned to the village of Koker, the setting of “Where is the Friend’s House”, to tell yet another story, inspired by one incident during the filming of one scene in “And Life Goes On”. The two actors, a boy and a girl, both local, had to do a scene together, but something was off and there was a certain tension between the two of them, which Kiarostami investigated further, uncovering a story of lost love and disappointment closely linked...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.Closeup of Fay Wray from Doctor X after restoration work. Image from https://www.cinema.ucla.eduNEWSAfter working together in the film Rojo (2018), director Benjamin Naishtat and actor Alfredo Castro reunite to talk about the terror, pleasure and mystery involved in the process of creating a film. They agree that for both director and actor, the seed of creation is the irrationality of madness, and that uncertainty is an essential factor in filmmaking. Castro and Naishtat call for a subversive cinema that cannot be domesticated by current narrative paradigms and that is also capable of using the imagination as a means and a catalyst to reinterpret our history. To listen to this episode and subscribe on your favorite podcast app, click here.The great French film director Jacques Rozier is being evicted from his...

Full Bloom is a series, written by Patrick Holzapfel and illustrated by Ivana Miloš, that reconsiders plants in cinema. Directors have given certain flowers, trees or herbs special attention for many different reasons. It’s time to give them the credit they deserve and highlight their contributions to cinema, in full bloom.Ivana Miloš, Through the Olive Trees (2021), monotype, collage and gouache on paper, 33 x 24 cmThe olive tree does not weep and does not laugh. The olive treeIs the hillside’s modest lady. ShadowCovers her one leg, and she will not take her leaves off in front of the storm.—from The Second Olive Tree by Mahmoud Darwish; transl. Marilyn HackerAs long as there are olive trees growing somewhere, we may find hope for life. While the tree defines landscapes like no other and is connected to a special density of sunlight and the sound of chirping cicadas (so overused...

Ramin Bahrani, Oscar-nominated writer/director of The White Tiger, discusses a few of his favorite movies with hosts Josh Olson and Joe Dante.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

The White Tiger (2021)

Man Push Cart (2005)

Chop Shop (2007)

99 Homes (2015)

The Boys From Fengkuei (1983)

The Time To Live And The Time To Die (1985)

The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie (1976)

Bicycle Thieves (1948)

La Terra Trema (1948)

Umberto D (1952)

Where Is The Friend’s Home? (1987)

Nomadland (2020)

The Runner (1984)

Bashu, the Little Stranger (1989)

A Moment Of Innocence a.k.a. Bread And Flower Pot (1996)

The House Is Black (1963)

The Conversation (1974)

Mean Streets (1973)

Nashville (1975)

Aguirre, The Wrath Of God (1972)

The Enigma Of Kaspar Hauser (1974)

Paris, Texas (1984)

Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962)

Vagabond (1985)

Luzzu (2021)

Bait (2019)

Sweet Sixteen (2002)

Abigail’s Party (1977)

Meantime (1983)

Fish Tank (2009)

Do The Right Thing (1989)

Malcolm X (1992)

Nothing But A Man (1964)

Goodbye Solo (2008)

The Spook Who Sat By The Door (1973)

Dekalog (1989)

The Double Life Of Veronique...

With early rollouts of vaccines offering a sliver of silver lining to this most tumultuous of years, film festivals around the world already begin anticipating some return to normalcy in 2021. Falling annually around the middle of August, just before the leaves of the gorgeous Ticino valley begin losing their chlorophyll, the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland will be feeling more hopeful than many.

The 2021 festival will also be the first under the stewardship of new creative director Giona A. Nazzaro. A critic of 30 years, delegate of the Venice Critics’ Week, member of IFFR’s selection committee, and author of various tomes on action and Hong Kong cinema, Nazzaro recently took over the role from Lili Hinston—who helmed Locarno during the turbulent spell following Carlo Chatrain’s departure for the Berlin Film Festival in 2018 and online switch following the Covid-19 outbreak earlier this year. We caught up with Nazzaro earlier...

Giona Nazzaro signals determination to hold a physical edition of the festival next August.

Respected programmer and selector Giona Nazzaro was announced as the new artistic director of the Locarno Film Festival on Thursday (November 5).

He arrives at the 73-year-old lakeside festival from the International Film Critics’ Week at the Venice Film Festival. He put his stamp on the parallel selection as delegate general from 2016, showcasing an eclectic selection of films ranging from UK actress-director Alice Lowe’s dark comedy Prevenge to Tunisian filmmaker Alaeddine Slim’s The Last Of Us, which won the Lion of the Future for best debut film,...

Stars: Babek Ahmed Poor, Farhad Kheradmand, Mohamad Ali Keshavarz, Zarifeh Shiva, Buba Bayour, Khodabakhsh Defaei | Written and Directed by Abbas Kiarostami

They may not have a breakneck pace, and they may seem unbearably light on explicit incident, but Abbas Kiarostami’s Koker Trilogy did the shared universe thing two decades before Marvel perfected the formula. Each film is a deeply humanistic fable in its own right and each is woven into the fabric of the others. Together they show just how powerfully mind-bending the use of sequels can be.

The first part, Where Is The Friend’s House?, starts simply. One day at school, Ahmed (Babek Ahmed Poor) witnesses his friend Mohammad Reda (Ahmed Ahmed Poor) being told off by their teacher for forgetting his notebook. Reda is on his last warning – one more strike and he’s expelled. When Ahmed gets home, he realises he’s accidentally picked up Reda’s notebook.

Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.

Metrograph

Films by Mizoguchi, Kurosawa, and Naruse kick off a retrospective of Japanese actress Machiko Kyō.

The Pasolini retrospective continues.

Streetwise and its follow-up, Tiny: The Life of Erin Blackwell, begin a run.

The restoration of A Bigger Splash continues screening, while the ’90s indie film Chalk has been restored.

Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!

Three years after Palme d’Or-winning Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami passed away at the age of 76, Janus Films is rolling out a wide-ranging and lovingly designed touring retrospective of some of his seminal works. The new retrospective includes restorations of The Koker Trilogy, plus features like “Close-Up,” “Taste of Cherry,” “Shirin,” “24 Frames,” “ABC Africa,” “The Wind Will Carry Us,” “Ten,” and “Five.”

The new restorations were undertaken by the Criterion Collection and mk2 with contributions by Kiarostami’s son, Ahmad Kiarostami.

Born in 1940 in Tehran, the filmmaker first studied painting at the University of Tehran; later, he worked as a graphic designer and commercial director. Kiarostami credited a job in the film department at Kanun (the Centre for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults) for shaping him into a filmmaker.

He made his first feature, “The Report,” in 1977, just two years before the 1979 revolution that saw so...

Every week, IndieWire asks a select handful of film and TV critics two questions and publishes the results on Monday. (The answer to the second, “What is the best film in theaters right now?”, can be found at the end of this post.)

This week’s question: In honor of “The Trip to Spain,” what is the best movie trilogy?

Richard Brody (@tnyfrontrow), The New Yorker

Far be it from me to choose between Antonioni’s non-trilogy “L’Avventura,” “La Notte,” and “L’Eclisse” and Kiarostami’s explicitly-denied “Koker” trilogy of “Where Is the Friend’s Home?,” “Life and Nothing More,” and “Through the Olive Trees” (and I’m tempted to make a trilogy of trilogies with Carl Theodor Dreyer’s “Day of Wrath,” “Ordet,” and “Gertrud”), but if I put Kiarostami’s films first, it’s because he puts their very creation into the action. Reflexivity isn’t a...

Any list of the greatest foreign directors currently working today has to include Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. The directors first rose to prominence in the mid 1990s with efforts like “The Promise” and “Rosetta,” and they’ve continued to excel in the 21st century with titles such as “The Kid With A Bike” and “Two Days One Night,” which earned Marion Cotillard a Best Actress Oscar nomination.

Read MoreThe Dardenne Brothers’ Next Film Will Be a Terrorism Drama

The directors will be back in U.S. theaters with the release of “The Unknown Girl” on September 8, which is a long time coming considering the film first premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2016. While you continue to wait for their new movie, the brothers have provided their definitive list of 79 movies from the 20th century that you must see. La Cinetek published the list in full and is hosting many...

Abbas Kiarostami, the great Iranian postmodernist who died last summer at the age of 76, used to say that he preferred the kind of movies that put their audience to sleep. “Some films have made me doze off in the theater,” he would explain, “but the same films have made me stay up at night, wake up thinking about them in the morning, and keep on thinking about them for for weeks.” So while I passed out (and passed out hard) roughly 15 minutes into “24 Frames,” the fascinating, posthumously completed non-narrative project that will serve as Kiarostami’s final farewell, I suspect that he wouldn’t take my unconsciousness as a criticism or a show of disrespect.

On the contrary, I imagine that he would have been delighted to see the dozens of nodding heads that dotted the film’s final Cannes screening, where the narcotic quality of Kiarostami’s cinema was...

Iranian director, who passed away on July 4, will have a retrospective of his works screened at Biff.

The late Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami will be named Asian Filmmaker of the Year at the forthcoming Busan International Film Festival (Biff) (Oct 6-15).

The Palme d’Or winning director of Taste Of Cherry, who passed away July 4, had a “close relationship” with Biff, said executive programmer Kim Ji-seok.

The auteur’s son Ahmad Kiarostami will accept the award on his behalf at the Biff opening ceremony on October 6.

The festival will screen nine of his films including those in the Koker trilogy: Where Is The Friend’s Home? (1987), And Life Goes On (1992) and Through The Olive Trees (1994).

“He came to the festival several times, the first being for our second edition in 1997. He was head of the New Currents jury in 2005 and the dean of the Asian Film Academy in 2010. After we opened the Busan Cinema Center, he came and...

Among the many filmmakers mourning Abbas Kiarostami is Martin Scorsese, who over the weekend delivered a 12-minute remembrance at New York City’s School of Visual Arts. Scorsese, who’s long stood out as one of Hollywood’s most eclectic, devoted cinephiles, was a friend of the revered Iranian filmmaker for more than a decade and said during his remarks that he was “still prepping for the meeting next year” that the two planned to have. Kiarostami died on July 4 at the age of 76.

Read More: Abbas Kiarostami Remembered: Why He Was Iran’s Essential Filmmaker — Critic’s Notebook

Scorsese recalls first meeting Kiarostami at the Cannes Film Festival while both serving on the Cinéfondation jury, which he was “a little cautious” for, as the icon of Iranian cinema’s reputation preceded him. Once meeting him, Scorsese found Kiarostami to be “elegant, eloquent, very quiet, very careful with his words...

The film world has been mourning Abbas Kiarostami this week, and on Friday the filmmaker’s body was returned to his birthplace of Tehran. Kiarostami, who won the Palme d’Or in 1997 for “Taste of Cherry,” died of cancer last Monday, July 4 at his home in Paris; he was 76 at the time of his passing and had been an icon of world cinema for decades.

Read More: Abbas Kiarostami Remembered: Why He Was Iran’s Essential Filmmaker — Critic’s Notebook

His sons Ahmad and Bahman attended a funeral service in Paris on Friday, but Ahmad was unable to travel to Iran due to security concerns related to his involvement in dissident organizations. He asked all those who were able to attend that, “if you are going to say goodbye to my father, wear your best attire that would be appropriate for a celebration of my father’s productive and creative life.

Editor’s note: With the death of renowned Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami over the weekend, IndieWire has been reaching out to some of his friends and collaborators to reflect on his significance. The following thoughts from fellow Iranian director Jafar Panahi — who is currently restricted to traveling within the country and banned from filmmaking by his government — were provided to IndieWire by way of journalist and translator Jamsheed Akrami. Panahi’s most recent film, “Taxi,” was released last year.

Mr. Kiarostami, My Teacher

My most vivid recollection of all the years I spent with Mr. Kiarostami is probably the first one. As an aspiring filmmaker, I desperately wanted to work with him. When I learned he was in preproduction for “Through the Olive Trees,” I just picked up the phone and left him a message saying that I was a film graduate employed by the Iranian Television and was interested...

The Palme d’Or-winning director Abbas Kiarostami passed away on July 4 and since then many industry members have expressed their condolences and remembered the Iranian filmmaker and his great work. Now, The Toronto Film Festival has shared a recent two-hour “In Conversation With” video where the “Taste of Cherry” helmer joined Tiff Director & CEO Piers Handling for an intimate onstage conversation.

A true master of world cinema, the writer and director is known for acclaimed films such as “The Wind Will Carry Us” and “Certified Copy.” In the video Kiarostami talks about his life, career and his exhibition “Doors Without Keys.”

Read More: Abbas Kiarostami, Palme d’Or-Winning Director Of ‘Taste Of Cherry’ And ‘Certified Copy,’ Dies At 76

This past winter, Tiff Bell Lightbox hosted a career retrospective on the director who made this first feature, “The Report,” in 1977. He is remembered for many hit films, including his Koker trilogy,...

Richard Peña on Abbas Kiarostami:"It was such a privilege to know him, and more of a pleasure. Simply one of the great artists of our time." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

The last time I spoke with Abbas Kiarostami, who died on Monday, July 4, 2016 in Paris, was when he presented Like Someone In Love, starring Tadashi Okuno and Rin Takanashi at the New York Film Festival in 2012. The director of Ten, Certified Copy, Through The Olive Trees and the Cannes Palme d’Or winning Taste of Cherry also co-wrote Jafar Panahi's The White Balloon and Crimson Gold.

At the press conference for Like Someone In Love, moderated by Richard Peña, I commented to him how very much Yasujiro Ozu is present as absence in his film - through the grandmother, the neighbour, the people talked about and unseen. There is a mother with her two children in Halloween costumes,...

Editor’s note: Filmmaker Ramin Bahrani has been a major presence in American independent film since his 2005 debut, “Man Push Cart.” His most recent film, “99 Homes,” was released last year. The filmmaker’s style in his early work is heavily influenced by the late Abbas Kiarostami, with whom Bahrani formed a relationship over the course of his career. With the news of Kiarostami’s death at the age of 76, Bahrani shared the following tribute to his longtime mentor.

When I saw “Where is the Friend’s House?” as a teenager, my path as a burgeoning filmmaker was irrevocably altered. I immediately tracked down VHS copies (badly dubbed, pirated) of “Close Up” and “Life and Nothing Else…” and watched them in my hometown of Winston-Salem, Nc, wondering how the prosaic can be revealed with such a profound depth of poetry. Can cinema be like this?

See MoreAbbas Kiarostami Remembered: Why He...

One of the most interesting collisions of the public perception of Iran’s Islamic state and its reality is how, out of an apparently repressive state hostile to the creative arts, Abbas Kiarostami became the essential free filmmaker. “Freedom” is always a relative term when it comes to cinema, which, like politics, unfortunately runs on money. But it’s easy to spot the genuinely free filmmakers when they come along. Despite their varying struggles to get their movies made, the work that results is directly personal and unbound by prevailing cultural trends and diktats. They range from Jean Vigo to Kidlat Tahimik, Pedro Costa to Shirley Clarke, Stan Brakhage to Jose Luis Guerin. Kiarostami was the free filmmaker par excellence, since he managed to find his ever-developing acute approach to modernism through whatever system in which he might find himself working.

Read More: Abbas Kiarostami, Palme d’Or-Winning Director Of...

Palme d’Or-winning Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, best known for films like “Taste of Cherry” (which earned him the Cannes accolade in 1997), “Close-Up” and “Certified Copy,” has died. He was 76.

The news was first reported by the Iranian Students’ New Agency (Isna) on Monday afternoon, who wrote “Abbas Kiarostami, who had travelled to France for treatment, has died.” Other news outlets, including The Guardian, have also begun reporting the news.

Born in 1940 in Tehran, the filmmaker first studied painting at the University of Tehran; later, he worked as a graphic designer and commercial director. Kiarostami credited a job in the film department at Kanun (the Centre for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults) for shaping him into a filmmaker.

He made his first feature, “The Report,” in 1977, just two years before the 1979 revolution that saw so many of his creative peers leave the country. Kiarostami, however, stayed and...

In the spirit of fun and satire as only the Lebanese can do it (think Nadine Labaki), “ Very Big Shot” (Lebanon, Qatar; 2015) takes an unexpected twist from its initial drug heist opening to its anti-hero protagonist grasping the power of the image of media and ultimately spinning into the power of image in politics. This romp brings to mind 2012 Toronto Film Festival’s “Seven Boxes” (“7 Cajas”) which sold very well internationally.

The comedic mask covers a lot more for the audience to either pick up on or just to enjoy for what it is: a well told fun and funny story. The story has a particular Lebanese flavor and it began in a particular community which has drug dealers and violence and fanatics, but it moves into more universal contradictions between what is real, what is fiction as depicted in the movie being made within the film we are watching and how fiction becomes political fodder.

“ Very Big Shot “depicts the lives of three brothers – Jad, who is just coming out of prison after serving five years for a crime committed by his elder brother Ziad, and their middle brother Joe. A delivery for a local crime ring spins out of control and Ziad seizes the opportunity to make a fortune.

That “Very Big Shot” was made by three brothers and actually stars an actor who, after coming out of prison for manslaughter could not find other employment, makes this movie more nuanced than most audiences would imagine.

The directorial debut of Mir-Jean Bou Chaaya, who worked with his two brothers, Christian Bou Chaaya and Lucien Bou Chaaya, “Very Big Shot” started out as a short and received such positive attention and critical acclaim at several international festivals, that the idea of developing it into a full-fledged feature film was born.

The feature film project received support both from the region and international talent, giving the Arab world a powerful film on organized crime and the political nexus.

Earning tremendous acclaim at its screening at the third Ajyal Youth Film Festival, “Very Big Shot” is a dark comedy that pans the camera on Lebanese society, tackling multiple layers of the society. Says director Mir-Jan, “in Lebanon there is no separation between social life and political life and the scenario reflects that”.

It is co-written by Mir-Jean Bou Chaaya and Alain Saadeh, who also stars in the film. The three Bou Chaaya Brothers combine financial know-how of brother Lucien who was (and still is) an investment attorney in Paris before turning his attention to raising financing for this film and talent; director Mir-Jean and actor producer Christian, a real-life restaurant owner which reflects directly on this film where the three fictitious brothers make a living running their father’s legacy, a pizza take-out place. In real-life one of the three brothers would always keep the others going in the face of obstacles which are inevitable for first time filmmakers.

We sat and spoke with the three brothers and actors Alain Saadi,Fouad Yammine, and Alexandra Kahwagi

Sydney at SydneysBuzz: One of my favorite scenes was when the woman’s scarf was snatched off of her in the movie scene being shot within the actual movie and how locals believed it was real and joined the staged fight. It was very much like neorealism in “The Bicycle Thief” when what was being shot on film as a mob stopping the thief was amplified by real citizens joining in and actually beating up the thief/ actor.

Mir-Jean: In the short, the film was shot in the street and a fifty, fifty-five year old woman saw the Muslim woman and the Christian man fighting and entered the scene and slapped the actor and so we put the scarf scene in the movie as well.

What are your favorite movies about movie making?

Mir-Jean: De Sica’s “After the Fox”, Woody Allen’s “Crimes and Misdemeanors”, Truffaut’s “Day for Night”, Kiarostami’s “Through the Olive Trees” , “ Living in Oblivion”. Reality and fiction is a very interesting subject, but the power of the image was the key in our film, not the making a movie within a movie.

It’s funny, “Argo” premiered in 2012 when the short was also showing. “Argo” won an Oscar and the short was compared to it.

Alexandra Kahwagi : “Living in Oblivion” and “Singing in the Rain” are my favorites.

Alain Saadeh, how do you play the characters you play?

I work from within. As a kid, I liked the sort of tough guy character. I wanted to be like a tough guy in our family. There is a neighborhood in Lebanon where they say, “Don’t make trouble, just shoot him and go home”. But aside from liking that kind of character, to get to the human side, you have to be open minded to your own inner motivations as well.

Being true to yourself leaves no room for imitation.

Mir-Jean: I tried to be true to the milieu and therefore used the same street lingo without any modification to lend the film an authentic feel. The participation of Marcel Ghanem, multi-award winning television host, helped raise the profile of the movie as well as give confidence to the cast and crew.

We did not interfere with the actors and gave them total freedom, thus giving them the space to deliver a nuanced performance.

It seemed like an anachronism to be using “film” in the movie.

The use of film in the movie was a gesture to pay homage to George Nasser, the first Lebanese in the Cannes Film Festival.

The ending seemed rather sudden and I didn’t quite understand it…

There were three endings to this movie. One was a well-developed one but this was not convincing. It was about the ultimate form of manipulation, therefore the screen went to black. The story really ends at the airport, but the movie ending as it was, was more important than the ending of the story itself. There was a transformation of the character who, in being true to himself, discovers the power of image and the power of media. He had to become either a lobbyist or a politician. The ending also said something about the nature of politics in Lebanon.

What about the film’s distribution?

After “Very Big Shot” premiered in Toronto this fall, word of mouth was good but no international sales agent was on board to make deals for these first time filmmakers. B for Film picked it up for international representation and it went on to play in Talinn and London Film Festivals.

Here in Doha, Qatar, we were thrilled by the audience’s strong and positive reception. “Very Big Shot” looks like it could do very well at the box office, not only in the Middle East and North Africa where it will be distributed by Front Row after playing Dubai and Marrakesh Film Festivals. It has already been released in Lebanon November 19 to very good attendance considering it has no names. It opened in the top four (against three Hollywood blockbusters) which proves that people are interested in home-grown cinema.

The film will earn returns on sales in North America, Europe and Latin America as well for those loving a good (if foreign-language) caper with a view into Lebanon today (did you know there has not been a president there for 18 months?).

How did you go about financing the film?

Lucien: The biggest challenge for unknown new talents is finding finance and the platform to take the film to a global audience. We thank Doha Film Institute for its support to the film and Ajyal Youth Film Festival for screening it and supporting the emerging talent.

When the short was first seen in Abu Dhabi, an investor associated with Doha came in to help and that was how we became a Doha Film Institute grant recipient. Doha’s support did more than give us the first monies; it made us count in the international film community.

I knew every financial detail had to be transparent to create a comfort zone for investors. I furnished a completion bond and a detailed budget. Four Lebanese expats in Paris invested to support Lebanese film.

Well known music composer Michel Elefterides was one of its first investors which also gave credence to the film. He had liked the short and saw its potential. He also discovered two musicians, the Chehade Brothers who played in the film and who are now best sellers in Lebanon.

The film gained from the international collaboration that came from writer George Nasser whose 1957 film “Whither?” was the only Lebanese film to make it to Cannes Film Festival and Yves Angelo. They brought Hollywood and French cinematic sensibility to the production.

This combination helped us to create a powerful script and a movie that resonates with the global audience.

We are also seeking to support filmmakers and film industry in Lebanon and the Arab World through our institute SuppAr-the Arab Art Support Group.” The Arab Art Support Group gives us and other filmmakers a support system to raise money in a sustainable, ongoing way. In effect it is a financial company created to support the arts.

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: July 22, 2014

Price: DVD $29.98, Blu-ray $39.98

Studio: Cohen Media

The great Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami’s (Certified Copy) acclaimed 1999 drama The Wind Will Carry Us arrives as a digitally remastered release on Blu-ray and DVD, an “acknowledgement” of the film’s 15th anniversary that marks its Blu-ray debut.

The Wind Will Carry Us film follows the changes in the daily routines of the inhabitants of a mountain village after a small group of outsiders arrives, claiming to be “communication engineers.” As the deceptive story unfolds, we learn that the mysterious strangers are on a secret mission: They are a television crew sent from Tehran to await the death of an old woman in order to cover the funeral practices of the village. But the village operates on its own schedule, forcing the TV crew to remain much longer than planned. The leader of the crew (Behzad Dorani) winds...

Abbas Kiarostami

The 2014 Cinéfondation and Short Films Jury at the Cannes film festival will be headed by acclaimed Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami.

He will be accompanied by French director, screenwriter and actress Noémie Lvovsky, Brazilian director and visual artist Daniela Thomas, Chadian director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun and Nowegian director Joachim Trier.

They will be tasked with awarding three prizes to films submitted by students from film schools the world over, which will be presented in the Cinéfondation Selection, to be announced at a later date.

The Jury will also decide the Short Film Palme d’or to be awarded in the award ceremony on May 24.

Kiarostami has presented a number of his films at Cannes, including five in Competition: Through the Olive Trees (1994), Taste of Cherry (Palme d’or 1997), Ten (2002), Certified Copy (2010) and Like Someone in Love (2012).

Abbas Kiarostami is to head the Cinéfondation and Short Film Jury of the 67th Cannes Film Festival.

The Iranian director and screenwriter has been nominated for the Palme d’Or five times and won in 1997 with Taste of Cherry.

The 2014 Cinéfondation and Short Films Jury will also include directors Noémie Lvovsky (France), Daniela Thomas (Brazil), Mahamat-Saleh Haroun (Chad), and Joachim Trier (Norway).

They will be tasked with awarding three prizes to films submitted by students from film schools around the world, which will be presented in the Cinéfondation Selection, to be announced at a later date.

The Cinéfondation Prizes will be announced by the Jury on May 22, at a ceremony to be followed by a screening of the winning films.

The Jury will also decide the Short Film Palme d’or to be awarded at the prize-giving ceremony on May 24.

Kiarostami rose to international fame with Where is the Friend’s Home (1987) and went on to present...

Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami will give a masterclass at the 54th edition of the International Film Festival of Cartagena de Indias –Ficci.

Cartagena’s festival, which runs March 13-19, will also feature a retrospective of his work.

His films to be screened include Taste of Cherry (1997); The Wind Will Carry Us (1999); Shirín (2008); Ten (2002); Ten by Ten (2004); Certified Copy (2010); Close Up (1990); Where is the Friend’s Home? (1987); Life Goes on (1992) and Through the Olive Trees (1994).

These screenings will make his work better known to the Colombian public; his films have never been shown commercially in Colombia before.

His visit to Cartagena is sponsored by the University of Magdalena and made possible thanks to producer Blackfactory Cinema in alliance with Medio de Contención Productions, companies that will organize the workshop “Filming in Colombia with Abbas Kiarostami” in Bogotá from March 3-12 at the Centro ÁTICO of the Universidad Javeriana of Bogota.

If you had gone to see every single one of the acclaimed movies from Iran that have played in the U.S. since the mid-’90s — the lyrically subdued Abbas Kiarostami films, like Through the Olive Trees and Taste of Cherry, that were hailed at the time as minimalist masterpieces; the feminist political parable The Circle; scrappy fables like The White Balloon, Children of Heaven, and A Time for Drunken Horses; the enchantingly colorful woven rug of a movie Gabbeh — it would be perfectly reasonable for you to come away from that experience thinking that Iran is a land of...

Like Someone in Love: Filmmaker Kiarostami has created a 'lovely' drama The 73-year-old, Iranian-born filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami is among the freshest and most energetic directors working today. His ideas always intrigue without wandering aimlessly; his screenwriting is sparse, but always rings true; his execution is stylistic and beautiful. Kiarostami has worked on shorts, documentaries, and narrative features that deal with a wide range of topics, from students' homework (in Homework) to Iran's sociopolitical landscape. (Pictured above: Actress Rin Takanashi in the Tokyo-set Like Someone in Love, written and directed by Kiarostami.) His new effort opens in New York and L.A. on Friday; the film can be considered a solid addition to his canon. Like Someone in Love leaves audiences with the sense of having watched a story deliberately unfinished. The film tackles a similar topic to the one found in the director's Tuscany-set movie Certified Copy, starring Juliette Binoche...

Like Someone in Love, the gorgeous, deeply mysterious and unsettling new film by Abbas Kiarostami, continues his return to narrative filmmaking, which began with Certified Copy, the Italy-set feature that marked his first outside his native Iran. Kiarostami's latest, which can be seen as a companion piece, is set in Tokyo, and like Certified Copy, transforms its adopted setting into a rich environment where his cinematic gifts are evident in ways that rival some of his Iranian masterpieces, such as Close-Up, Through the Olive Trees, and Taste of Cherry. Also like Certified Copy, Kiarostami explores the theme of identities assumed and performed, although in contrast to the more romantically-inclined tone of his previous film, here he introduces an element of volatile instability, leading to a...

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

Like Someone in Love, the gorgeous, deeply mysterious and unsettling new film by Abbas Kiarostami, continues his return to narrative filmmaking, which began with Certified Copy, the Italy-set feature that marked his first outside his native Iran. Kiarostami's latest, which can be seen as a companion piece, is set in Tokyo, and like Certified Copy, transforms its adopted setting into a rich environment where his cinematic gifts are evident in ways that rival some of his Iranian masterpieces, such as Close-Up, Through the Olive Trees, and Taste of Cherry. Also like Certified Copy, Kiarostami explores the theme of identities assumed and performed, although in contrast to the more romantically-inclined tone of his previous film, here he introduces an element of volatile instability, leading to a denouement...

From Palme d’Or winner “Amour” to the latest offerings from some of the biggest names of world cinema such as Alain Resnais, Abbas Kiarostami, Bernando Bertoluci, Manoel de Oliveira , Brillante Mendoza, Ken Loach, Jacques Audiard, 14th Mumbai Film Festival has a lot to offer to the filmbuffs.

The festival offers an exciting lineup of more than two hundred films, spread over about a dozen screen and seven days! To help our readers decide we’ve picked up the most talked about films from festival circuit.

14th Mff runs from October 18th-25th, 2012 at the National Centre for Performing Arts (Ncpa), and Inox, Nariman Point, Liberty Cinemas, Marine Lines as the main festival venues and Cinemax, Andheri and Cinemax Sion as the satellite venues.

To get delegate pass for the festival, you can register here:

1) Beast of the Southern Wild

Dir.: Benh Zeitlin (USA/ 2012 /Col./ 92’)

Section: International Competition for...

Unable to film in his native Iran, Abbas Kiarostami now has to shoot his enigmatic films abroad. Does it matter that Cannes audiences found his new work exasperating?

It's hard to spot Abbas Kiarostami amid the gloom of the Cannes beachfront pavilion. There he is, behind the curtain, still as a millpond, his clothes dark and his glasses darker. "I am not a creature of the red carpet," he explains, lest there be any doubt of that. Today he could pass for a fugitive from justice or a supergrass on witness protection, set to dish the dirt from his base in the shadows.

Once, not so long ago, Kiarostami was the de facto leader of the Iranian new wave, the creator of soulful, enigmatic human stories rooted in his home soil. Now the movement is defunct and the 71-year-old director in effect stateless, flushed from his habitat by the Ahmadinejad...

Cannes, France — Abbas Kiarostami has found inspiration far from home.

The Iranian director's films are routinely banned in his home country, whose Islamist government has arrested or barred several younger filmmakers from working.

The 72-year-old auteur has responded by looking abroad for inspiration. His last feature, "Certified Copy," was shot in Italy, and his new Cannes Film Festival entry "Like Someone in Love" was made in Tokyo, in Japanese and with a Japanese cast.

"In the past few years for fairly obvious reasons, perhaps, I had to work outside Iran," Kiarostami told reporters in Cannes on Monday, saying this presented him with a challenge. "How could I convey to you what I had in my imagination without resorting to geography?"

Kiarostami built a global reputation with simple stories told with passion and conviction in Iran-set films like "Life and Nothing More" and "Through the Olive Trees. He said now setting...

Despite his house arrest, and 20-year ban on making films, the Iranian director has released a movie – the unclassifiable This Is Not a Film, smuggled out of the country in a cake

If one accepts Iran's ruling that Jafar Panahi is no longer a film-maker, then it follows that his latest release is an orphan, unnamed and unclassifiable; a 75-minute yawp in the darkness.

"This Is Not a Film," the opening title assures us, after which we are free to sit back and watch as the Iranian dissident pads distractedly about his Tehran apartment, testing the limits of his cage and implicitly highlighting the absurdity of his situation. The result may well be the most intriguing, quietly compelling non-movie we'll see all year.

In December 2010, Panahi was convicted by Iran's Islamic republic of "making propaganda against the system" and placed under house arrest. He faces a 20-year ban on writing scripts,...

Two Films in Competition at Iffi 2011

Still from Nader and Simin

An art film is the result of filmmaking as a serious, independent undertaking aimed at a niche rather than mass market. Film scholars typically define ‘art films’ through those formal qualities that mark them as different from mainstream Hollywood films, which includes, among other things, a narrative dwelling upon the real problems of everyday life, an emphasis on the authorial expressivity of the director rather than generic convention and a focus on the subjectivity of the characters rather than on plot. If the art film finds it difficult to reach wide audiences, the place where it thrives is the international film festival in which films that rarely get public releases are shown to a discerning public. But the ‘discerning public’ at international film festivals may have actually helped create a new kind of cinema poorer in local significance, as...

Before we turn to others to set up Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, let me recommend two pieces right at the top here, the first by Ari Arikan, whose review for Fandor opens with an engaging and quite funny tale of his experience with the sheer vastness of the film's setting, and the second by Bilge Ebiri, a long-time champion of Nuri Bilge Ceylan who considers Anatolia to be among his best works.

First, though, Scott Foundas, writing for Cinema Scope before the film screened in Toronto: "From Memories of Murder (2003) to Zodiac (2007), Bellamy (2009), and Police, Adjective (2009), the past decade has witnessed its fill of revisionist takes on the police procedural — films in which politics, personal obsession, or personal exhaustion eclipse the underlying question of 'Whodunnit?' Movies, in short, that push the audience's lust for closure ever more towards an existential or absurdist void. The co-winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes,...

At the heart of Certified Copy is evidently a ‘philosophical’ idea – ill thought out – about the distinction between copy and original being nebulous. Miller and the woman begin by enacting the role of husband and wife – just as a copy would begin by ‘enacting’ an original – but soon get so taken up by their roles – as a copy would get immersed in its subject – that they ‘become’ husband and wife.

Abbas Kiarostami is the best known of Iranian filmmakers and it will not be out of place to assert that he put Iranian cinema on the world map. Yet, a careful viewing of his films raises questions about the validity of his methods. To put is plainly, Kiarostami’s best films erase the distinction between documentary and fiction apparently by having his actors (or non-actors) playing themselves in partly fictional situations.

To illustrate with perhaps his best film Through the Olive Trees...

It seems like only yesterday that the American Film Institute released their 100 Years...100 Movies [1] list. Actually though, it was over 10 years ago when we first got our look at that "definitive" list of the 100 best American movies. They then did a ten year anniversary of it in 2007 with only minor adjustments and both years Citizen Kane held the number one place as the best American movie. Of course, the problem with those lists is that they only list American films. While Hollywood might be considered the epicenter of film, the art form itself spans the globe, way beyond American borders. That's why the Toronto International Film Festival came up with their Essential 100 movies. Created by merging lists made by Toronto Film Festival supporters along with another made by their programmers, these are supposed to be the 100 essential movies every cinephile must see. And it starts off with a bang as Citizen Kane has been toppled.

Ok cinephiles. Who among you has seen all 100 on the Toronto International Film Festival's Essential 100? The full list is pasted below. True confession: I have seen all but the following 11, which I shame-facedly reveal below: 1. Pather Panchali Satyajit Ray (pictured) 2. La Jetee Chris Marker 3. Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom Pier Paolo Pasolini 4. Through the Olive Trees Abbas Kiarostami 5. Dust in the Wind Hou Hasaio-Hsien 6. Chronique d'un Ete Edgar Morin and Jean Rauch 7. La Noire de... Ousmane Sembene 8. Andre Rublev Andrei Tarkovsky 9. A Nos Amours Maurice Pialat 10. Earth Aleksandr Dovzhenko 11. Oldboy Park Chan-Wook The Essential 100 This list represents the merging of one 100 film list as determined by an ...

Iranian court to reconsider detention of film-maker after international campaign

Tehran's prosecutor general has asked the Islamic revolutionary court to reconsider the continued detention of the celebrated Iranian film-maker, Jafar Panahi, raising hopes that he may quickly be freed.

A high-profile international campaign calling for Panahi's release has drawn the support of leading figures in the arts and politics. According to some reports a bail hearing could take place as early as this weekend and could free Panahi until his trial.

Panahi, 49, was detained on 1 March for allegedly planning to make a film about the election which returned President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to office last year. The vote was believed to have been rigged, triggering widespread protests and a violent crackdown by the regime.

Despite his continued detention, Panahi – who won international recognition for films including The Circle and The White Balloon – was selected as a juror for this year's Cannes film festival,...

Bass-baritone William Shimell makes his film debut opposite Juliette Binoche in Certified Copy, the Iranian director's new movie, which will have its world premiere in Cannes

When Abbas Kiarostami's Certified Copy premieres at the Cannes film festival this month, all eyes will be on the director's first movie made outside his native Iran.

Just as intriguingly, though, Juliette Binoche's co-star in the movie will not be Robert de Niro – who was rumoured to have been in talks for the part – but rather, an unknown British man.

Unknown, that is, in cinema circles. William Shimell is in fact a respected opera singer, a bass-baritone who has sung at the Met, La Scala and the Royal Opera House over the course of a long and distinguished musical career.

But Shimell had never acted in a film before working on Certifed Copy. In fact, he had never acted in straight theatre of any kind.

The film-maker is renowned as an artist who stayed in Iran after the Islamic revolution of 1979, when others fled abroad. As his new film premieres in Edinburgh, he talks to Maya Jaggi

Abbas Kiarostami was about to celebrate his 50th birthday when the earthquake of 1990 hit northern Iran. He drove with his son from the capital, Tehran, to the devastated region, where he had recently filmed Where Is the Friend's House?, an acutely observed moral tale about a boy striving to return an exercise book to a classmate to save him from punishment. The feature won him acclaim at the Locarno film festival in 1989. "Travelling in the area touched me deeply," he says. "I had such a close and profound experience of death that it changed my work in an optimistic way."

After completing And Life Goes On and Through the Olive Trees, two more films set around the earthquake-devastated village of Koker which,...