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Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi will receive an honorary award at the Singapore International Film Festival (Sgiff) this year.

The 35th edition of Sgiff will organize a special tribute and hold a dialogue session with Panahi, who will receive the festival’s highest honor, the Cinema Honorary Award. This also marks the first time that Panahi is attending Sgiff in-person after the lifting of his 14-year travel ban. Panahi’s films like The Circle, This Is Not A Film and Crimson Gold will be screened at the festival.

The festival’s Cinema Honorary Award was introduced in 2014 and has recognized filmmakers like Hong Kong’s Fruit Chan, Indonesia’s Garin Nugroho, Cambodia’s Rithy Panh, and Japan’s Takashi Miike.

“It’s an incredible honor to be selected as the recipient of the Cinema Honorary Award by Sgiff,” Panahi said. “Since my visit to the festival in 1998 with my film, The Mirror,...

Next month’s Mubi lineup for the U.S. has been unveiled, with a major highlight being their recent release Lingui, The Sacred Bonds and more films from director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun (read our recent chat with him). Matías Piñeiro’s Isabella and Kazik Radwanski’s Anne at 13,000 Ft., two of last year’s highlights, will also arrive.

Two recent Cannes premieres, the Adèle Exarchopoulos-led Zero Fucks Given and Peter Tscherkassky’s Train Again will also finally come to the U.S. courtesy of Mubi. In terms of older highlights, Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark, Hong Sang-soo’s The Power of the Kangwon Province, Jafar Panahi’s Crimson Gold, Jean Renoir’s Grand Illusion, and more will arrive.

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

March 1 | The Willmar 8 | Lee Grant | Down and Out in America: Lee Grant’s Documentaries

March 2 | Train Again | Peter Tscherkassky | Brief Encounters

March...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Crimson Gold (Jafar Panahi)

Following his early days of being an assistant for Abbas Kiarostami, Jafar Panahi’s career soon blossomed, leading to a few collaborations between the two monumental figures of Iranian cinemas––one of which, Crimson Gold, is now available on The Criterion Channel. The masterful 2003 character study, scripted by Kiarostami after he told the tenets of the story to Panahi while sitting in traffic, stars unprofessional actor Hossain Emadeddin in his sole performance. Following a pizza delivery driver who witnesses the sharp class divide and political terror playing out in his society, Kiarostami and Panahi brilliantly preview the brutal ending from the start as the pieces then cogently and subtly fall into place as to why a man would...

It can take time for certain filmmakers to make their first feature, and at 37 years old, Iranian writer-director Panah Panahi is not necessarily an early bloomer.

Then again, when you’re the child of Jafar Panahi (The White Balloon, Crimson Gold, Taxi), one of the world’s most respected auteurs, winner of top awards at the Berlin, Venice and Locarno festivals, and championed by the industry for a stance against the Iranian government that lead to a six-year prison sentence and 20-year ban from filmmaking in his homeland, it makes sense to stop and consider things before trying to direct a movie yourself....

It can take time for certain filmmakers to make their first feature, and at 37 years old, Iranian writer-director Panah Panahi is not necessarily an early bloomer.

Then again, when you’re the child of Jafar Panahi (The White Balloon, Crimson Gold, Taxi), one of the world’s most respected auteurs, winner of top awards at the Berlin, Venice and Locarno festivals, and championed by the industry for a stance against the Iranian government that lead to a six-year prison sentence and 20-year ban from filmmaking in his homeland, it makes sense to stop and consider things before trying to direct a movie yourself....

Banning the celebrated director from making films is the latest step in the regime's attempt to murder the nation's creative soul

A spectre is haunting the Islamic Republic of Iran – the spectre of freedom. All the powers of the old guard have entered a holy alliance to exorcise it: the ayatollahs and their warlords, Ahmadinejad and Khamenei, hanging judges and paramilitary vigilantes.

To try to exorcise that spectre, the custodians of the sacred terror will go to any lengths. But have they gone just a bit too far this time?

What exactly does it mean to condemn a globally celebrated film-maker who has done nothing but bring credit to his profession and glory to his homeland, to six years in prison, and on top of that to ban him from making a film for 20 years, from writing any script, from attending any film festival outside his country, or giving any...

NEW YORK -- Indie banner Wellspring has acquired all U.S. rights to French writer-helmer Andre Techine's latest effort, Strayed, starring Emmanuelle Beart. Based on Gilles Perrault's best-selling novel, the film premiered this year in Cannes. Wellspring is eyeing an August release for the film, a period piece that follows a young widowed schoolteacher who flees the German occupation of Paris with her children. During their escape, the family meets a charismatic teenager who helps them survive in the wilderness. Techine's credits include the Catherine Deneuve starrer My Favorite Season and Alice and Martin, starring Juliette Binoche. Strayed is a French-British co-production, which was sold though the Wild Bunch sales banner. Wellspring acquisitions head Marie Therese Guirgis brokered the pact with Wild Bunch's Carole Baraton. Past and upcoming theatrical releases for Wellspring include Alexander Sokurov's Father and Son, Jafar Panahi's Crimson Gold and Girlhood, by documentary filmmaker Liz Garbus.

NEW YORK -- The 41st annual New York Film Festival, which will kick off Oct. 3 at Manhattan's Lincoln Center, appears to be taking its cue from this year's Festival de Cannes. As previously announced, Clint Eastwood's mystery/drama, Mystic River, from Warner Bros. Pictures/Village Roadshow, will open the Manhattan festival (HR 6/26). It also screened in competition at Cannes in May. It will be reunited at the NYFF with such other Cannes fare as Gus Van Sant's high-school study, Elephant. The HBO Films/Fine Line Features release was Cannes' Palm D'Or winner this year. In addition, other Cannes competitors that made the NYFF cut include Denys Arcand's The Barbarian Invasions (Miramax Films), Lars Von Trier's Dogville (Lions Gate Films), and Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Turkish production Uzak (New Yorker Films). Other NYFF selections that screened in various out-of-competition Cannes sections include Errol Morris' documentary The Fog of War (Sony Pictures Classics); Scottish helmer David Mackenzie's Ewan McGregor-starrer Young Adam; Iranian auteur Jaffar Panahi's Crimson Gold (Wellspring Media); Sri Lankan Lester James Peries' Mansion by the Lake; Cambodian Rithy Panh's S21: The Khmer Rouge Death Machine (First Run Features); and Faouzi Bensaidi's French-Moroccan production A Thousand Months.