News

Die Deutsche Akademie für Fernsehen (DAfF) hat weitere Nominierungen unter anderem in der Kategorie Dokumentarfilm oder Fernseh-Unterhaltung bekannt gegeben. Die Serien „Disko 76“ und „Kleo“ wurden mehrfach bedacht.

„Disko 76″ (l.) und „Kleo“ Staffel 2

Zum 12. Mal vergibt die Deutsche Akademie für Fernsehen, kurz DAfF am 21. Februar in Berlin die DAfFNE, die unabhängige Branchenehrung für herausragende Einzelleistungen im deutschen Fernsehen. Erstmalig werden die Nominierten für die DAfFNE etappenweise bekannt gegeben. Die DAfF veröffentlicht nunmehr acht weitere Kategorien:

Dokumentarfilm

• Regina Schilling | Diese Sendung ist kein Spiel – Die unheimliche Welt des Eduard Zimmermann | Zdf | zero one film GmbH |

• Matthäus Wörle | Geamăna | Ard, Zdf | Hff – Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film München |

• Artem Demenok | Leningrad – Stimmen aus einer belagerten Stadt | Ndr, rbb, arte | Schmidt & Paetzel Fernsehfilme GmbH |

Fernseh-journalismus

• Jan Tenhaven | 37 Grad: Schock Shalom – jung, jüdisch, jetzt! | Zdf | Nordend Film GmbH |

• Jonas & David von Simplicissimus | Putins Bären – Die gefährlichsten Hacker der Welt | Ard | Swr, funk |

• Edgar Verheyen...

Prepare to delve into the unexplained and mysterious with “The Proof Is Out There” Season 4, airing this Friday, March 1, 2024, at 10:03 Pm on History. In the intriguing episode titled “Falcon 9 Mystery, Demonic Wall Climber and Leningrad Alien Fetus,” viewers will be taken on a journey to uncover the truth behind some of the most puzzling phenomena.

First up, reports emerge of a strange, swirling vortex with a brilliant white center spotted in the skies over Oklahoma. As eyewitness accounts pour in, experts attempt to unravel the mystery behind this bizarre occurrence.

Next, a shocking discovery shakes the foundations of belief when a video claimed to be unearthed from the Vatican archives allegedly depicts a real case of demonic possession. Viewers will be on the edge of their seats as investigators analyze the footage and grapple with the implications of its authenticity.

Don’t miss the gripping investigations and mind-bending revelations...

Exclusive: Michael Hirst, creator of Vikings and The Tudors, is taking on one of the most epic and tragic events of World War II, the 872-day blockade of Leningrad.

He will write the series, an adaptation of Anna Reid’s 2011 book Leningrad: The Epic Siege of World War II, 1941-1944, which draws mostly upon personal diaries. The project is a co-production between Range Media Partners and Svetlana and Alexey Kuzmichev’s Orangery Productions.

One of modern history’s most harrowing stories, the Siege of Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) is one of the deadliest blockades of a city in human history. Nazi troops encircled the city two and a half months into the invasion of the Soviet Union at the height of the war, trapping everyone inside with no food, no resources, and no escape. Nearly a million civilians died – mostly from starvation.

But while this is a story about brutality and profound suffering,...

This Super Bowl weekend, fewer movie tickets will sell than any weekend this year. But ticket sales should still improve over last year. Because studios always steer clear of this weekend, believing that football fans won’t venture into theaters for all three days, soft grosses are a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This year’s weekend uptick could reach a projected $95-100 million, compared to $74 million last year. January 2019 might have sold the fewest tickets in a month in decades. But don’t count on the year ahead to yield a huge bounty: 2019 opened six releases that grossed over $400 million domestic, which may not happen in 2020.

Most of the good news this weekend will come from holdovers. The two newbies, “Gretel & Hansel” (United Artists) and “The Rhythm Section” (Paramount), represent more fresh studio product than usual for this date. But their combined gross might be little more than the $12-13 million...

Exclusive: After winning the Fipresci prize for Tesnota (Closeness) two years ago at Cannes, Russian director Kantemir Balagov returns with Beanpole a story about the plight of two women in a devastated post WWII Leningrad.

Iya and Masha search for meaning and hope in the struggle to rebuild their lives amongst the ruins. The film premieres tonight at 7:15 pm in the Un Certain Regard section of the festival. You can watch an early clip above in which some war survivors goad a young child to bark like a dog, for their own entertainment. Beanpole is produced by Leviathan and Loveless producers Alexander Rodnyansky and Sergey Melkumov. Leviathan won best screenplay at Cannes in 2014 while Loveless took the Jury Prize in 2017. Both pics were nominated in the best foreign film category at the Oscars and were Russia’s submissions. Wild Bunch is handling overseas sales.

Says Balagov in a statement:...

Growing up as Sergio Leone’s career escalated segueing from the so-called “Dollars Trilogy” to “Once Upon a Time in the West” up to their father’s final masterpiece, “Once Upon a Time in America,” led his children Raffaella and Andrea to become steeped in two inextricably linked passions: film and family.

“Film has always been an aggregating element of our family,” says Andrea, speaking with Raffaella in the office that used to be their father’s in a villa on Rome’s outskirts, now the company’s headquarters. “In the evenings we would discuss movies and our father used to talk to us about his projects.”

Raffaella remembers spending every other summer of her childhood on one of the director’s sets in Spain, in the desert of Almeria where “A Fistful of Dollars,” “For a Few Dollars More,” “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” as well as other Leone films,...

Near the end of shooting “Leto,” his followup to breakout drama “The Student,” Russian filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov was arrested, charged with embezzling $2 million in state funds from a Moscow-area avant-garde theater he runs, and ultimately placed under house arrest pending trial. Serebrennikov still finished the film, which was then accepted into Cannes’ Competition section, where it screened last May without its filmmaker in attendance.

That Serebrennikov’s arrest — he was just freed mere weeks ago, and is pushing for a full acquittal — came at the hands of a government that isn’t too hip to his outspoken anti-Kremlin views should give anyone pause as to its motivations, as should the content of the film he was making when the hammer came down on him. As with much of Serebrennikov’s work, it’s a film that makes plenty of veiled jabs at modern Russian life under Vladimir Putin’s rule,...

Historical epics can defeat the very best auteurs. Stanley Kubrick was thwarted by “Napoleon.” Sergio Leone fell at “Leningrad.” Yet Britain’s Mike Leigh delivered “Peterloo” just five years after his Cannes hit “Mr. Turner.” The subject is a political demonstration that took place in Manchester, England, in the fall of 1819, when armed troops attacked a civilian crowd of more than 60,000 people who had gathered in St Peter’s Field to call for parliamentary reform.

You might imagine that this was a long-gestating project for the 75-year-old, but that seems not to be the case. “It vaguely occurred to me [to do it] quite a long time ago,” he muses, “but then I forgot all about it. But the interesting thing is that I, and a bunch of people who grew up in the north, in Manchester, really didn’t know about it. It’s Manchester’s best-kept secret, for some reason that’s very,...

There are a lot of things that Billy Joel couldn’t possibly have imagined when he first played Madison Square Garden on December 14th, 1978. He couldn’t have imagined that 40 years later he’d sit on the same stage with his three-year-old daughter in his lap while the venue hoisted a banner into the rafters commemorating his 100th show at the arena. He couldn’t have imagined he’d be popular enough at age 69 to pack the place every single month for years on end despite effectively retiring as a...

Exclusive: Alexander Rodnyansky, the producer who in the past unveiled Leviathan and Loveless here, is back at the Cannes Film Festival to launch a new company. Ar Content is designed to invest in strong scripts and source material, aimed to exploit the demand for global-minded commercial content.

“Everybody wants great material, but nobody wants to investing in developing it, and so that is why I decided that will be my focus,” Rodnyansky told Deadline. “Developing great material, and not simply financing packages. It was obvious to me the priority is to make films that are global because that is where the business is going, and I am sensitive to it, coming from a different part of the world.

“Ar Content is a sister company to Ar Films, which produced both Leviathan and Loveless,” he said. “This is a response to a growing demand for premium quality, particularly as streaming distribution...

Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov's latest, the aptly titled Leto (Summer), is a helium-light work about scruffy young Soviets in 1980 making music, partying, flirting and quietly defying the state, roughly in that order. Certainly, it's a much more jovial affair than his last, The Student, a portrait of a religious teenager whose fundamentalist zealotry spreads like a contagion to society around him. This time the young people are the good guys, determined to smuggle the rebellious spirit of Western rock, punk and New Wave music into a pre-perestroika Leningrad that's still highly repressive.

Politics and ideology are only peripheral concerns...

by Alex C. DeleonIntroducing here a new (to me, but not to his fans!) reviewer whose voice is clear and decidedly different! Get ready for some new films and new outlooks!“Off the Wall Minireviews from Berlin”

I saw 21 films at Berlin this week at least 18 of which were Ordeals to sit through or so tedious they led to walkouts — It was almost enough to make me give up on film viewing altogether —

An unusually large number of films dwelt on the gathering infirmity of people [of a certain age ]and the uselessness of carrying on — I call them “Why Bother” movies — Ah for the good old days when movies told stories instead of kvetching about the misery of the Human Condition and the impossibility of having any kind of good relationship …other than extremely kinky or totally insane.

The misery of the Human Condition is the Hallmark at Berlin 2018, and here is —

1. Badly.

With the formal compactness of a taut short story but the moral weight of a 19th century Russian novel, James Toback's misleadingly titled The Private Life of a Modern Woman shrewdly investigates how an accidental incident upends the equilibrium of a young woman who seems to have everything going for her. Building quickly to two long and transfixing scenes that have no cinematic precedents that come to mind, this is a small but weighty film that general audiences might find either too self-serious, given the profusion of classical music (Shostakovich's staggering “Leningrad” Seventh Symphony often booms from ...

With the formal compactness of a taut short story but the moral weight of a 19th century Russian novel, James Toback's misleadingly titled The Private Life of a Modern Woman shrewdly investigates how an accidental incident upends the equilibrium of a young woman who seems to have everything going for her. Building quickly to two long and transfixing scenes that have no cinematic precedents that come to mind, this is a small but weighty film that general audiences might find either too self-serious, given the profusion of classical music (Shostakovich's staggering “Leningrad” Seventh Symphony often booms from ...

Many consider Dmitri Shostakovich the greatest composer of the 20th century. Born September 25, 1906, he might not have lived past his teens if he hadn't been talented. During the famines of the Revolutionary period in Russia, Alexander Glazunov, director of the Petrograd (later Leningrad) Conservatory, arranged for the poor and malnourished Shostakovich's food ration to be increased. Shostakovich's Symphony No. 1, his graduation exercise for Maximilian Steinberg's composition course at the Conservatory, was completed in 1925 at age 19 and was an immediate success worldwide. He was The Party's poster boy; his Second and Third Symphonies unabashedly subtitled, respectively, "To October". (celebrating the Revolution) and "The First of May". (International Workers' Day).

His highly emotional harmonic language is simultaneously tough yet communicative, but his expansion of Mahlerian symphonic structure, dissonances, sardonic irony, and dark moods eventually clashed with the conservative edicts of Communist Party officials. In 1936 he was viciously denounced by Pravda...

Russian movie star Tatiana Samoilova dead at 80; known as ‘the Russian Audrey Hepburn,’ Samoilova was best remembered for Cannes winner ‘The Cranes Are Flying’ (photo: Tatiana Samoilova in ‘The Cranes Are Flying’) Russian film star Tatiana Samoilova, best remembered for playing the female lead in Mikhail Kalatozov’s 1957 romantic drama The Cranes Are Flying, died of heart complications at Moscow’s Botkin Hospital late night on May 4, 2014 — the day the Leningrad-born (now St. Petersburg) actress turned 80. Samoilova, who had been suffering from coronary heart disease and hypertension, had been hospitalized the previous day. The daughter of iconic stage and film actor Yevgeny Samoilov, among whose credits was the title role in a 1954 production of Hamlet and several leads in highly popular movies made during World War II, Tatiana Samoilova studied ballet at Moscow’s prestigious Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko music theater. Beginning in 1953, she took acting lessons for three years...

Today, July 11, is the memorial day for the 11,000 victims of war killed during the four year siege of Sarajevo. The Siege of Sarajevo was the longest siege of a capital city in the history of modern warfare. Serb forces of the Serbian Republic and the Yugoslav People's Army besieged Sarajevo, the capital city of Bosnia and Herzegovina, from 5 April 1992 to 29 February 1996 during the Bosnian War. The siege lasted three times longer than the Siege of Stalingrad and a year longer than the Siege of Leningrad.

"We used that tunnel to transfer the rushes during the end of the war for the shooting of Perfect Circle by Ademir Kenovic!" -- Sylvain Bursztehn

This legendary film festival began during the seige and served as a part of the spiritual resistance put up by the brave people of the town of some 400,000 people.  This 18th edition opened with Angelina Jolie presenting her Bosnian war film In the Land of Blood and Honey.

Branko Lustig, two-time Academy Award Winner for Best Picture spoke about the early origins of Schindler's List.  After asking whether he should speak in Croatian or Bosnian, he settled on English stating, "I am not Angelina Jolie.  I am not George Clooney.  You have an old Jew in front of you." This Croatian Jewish survlivor of Auschwitz made a cameo appearance as the Maitre D of an exclusive SS nightclub in the film.  Leopold Federberg, the owner of a leather goods shop near the Beverly Wilshire Hotel told the first story of Schindler which MGM originally optioned and developed long before Universal acquired it for Steven Spielberg.  He appeared  in the film as "Poldi". The reason the child was in red, the only colored element in the black and white film, was as a symbol of all the children who were murdered in the Shoah.  Lustig bore witness to the murder and hoped this film would be instrumental in eliminating such wars.  However, he was proven wrong as he witnessed the second genocide in his lifetime, that of the Bosnian Muslims by the Serbians, an equally horrendous event.

Today in Sarajevo all programs centered around the genocide.

Six years ago the festival added a Talent Campus, the only other one in Europe (there are also Talent Campuses (Campi?) in Tokyo, Guadalajrara and Buenos Aires).  I am honored to have been invited here to discuss selected shorts with their producers and directors as a part of the strategic planning for future screenings and future careers for the flmmakers.

We are also seeing films such as Los Salvajes from Argentina, I, Anna starring Charlotte Rampling and Gabriel Byrne and many films from the area of Bosnia, Herzegovina, Croatia, and other Balkan nations.  Sarajevo, btw, was also the site of the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand by a terrorist which set off World War I and was home to Sephardic Jews driven from Spain during the Inquisition.  It is home to Muslims, Jews, Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics.

This trip marks the last of the summer for us which began in Cannes.  We've gone from Cannes to Nice, Clug (Transylvania Film Festival), Berlin (Jewish Film Festifal), Paris (Champs Elysees Film Festival), Moscow and St. Petersburg (Doors), Paris again and now Sarajevo.

What stands out most from all these trips is the vibrancy and optimism of the new generation of the Eastern European film community.  The wealthy West Europe fears cutbacks in media funds and looks down from its peak while this fresh generation of Eastern European nations seem to understand the need to work together developing their talents and aiming upward as a whole.  Though exhausted by two months of travel, I feel elated to know that such a fresh new crop of talent is now planting its roots in the fertile soil of the world of cinema.

DVD Playhouse—November 2011

By Allen Gardner

Tree Of Life (20th Century Fox) Terrence Malick’s latest effort is both the best film of 2011 and the finest work of his (arguably) mixed, but often masterly canon. A series of vignettes, mostly set in 1950s Texas, capture the memory of a man (Sean Penn) in present-day New York who looks back on his life, and his parents’ (Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain) troubled marriage, when word of his younger brother’s suicide reaches him. Almost indescribable beyond that, except to say no other film in history so perfectly evokes the magic and mystery of the human memory, which both crystalizes (and sometimes idealizes) the past. Like Stanley Kubrick’s 2001, this is a challenging, polarizing work that you must let wash over you. If you go along for the ride, you’re in for a unique, rewarding cinematic experience. Also available on Blu-ray disc.

How much do you know about the assault on Leningrad? Besides being one of the most lethal sieges of any city in all of history with over a million civilians dead, it was mostly about the love affair between a beautiful journalist and her romantic struggles in the company of freedom fighters in the city. Actually, it was a massacre, but a British woman being stranded in the doomed city wasn’t really of any historical significance. It’s not uncommon to focus on a single narrative within a much larger timeline, but does so while minimizing the importance of Leningrad’s most tragic moment. This was a time when innocent people were dying in the street of starvation (among other things), but that’s downplayed in the face of a well filmed but poorly written, shallow drama horribly acted and with audio that’s either ineptly synced or dubbed...

Your Weekly Source for the Newest Releases to Blu-Ray Tuesday, October 18th, 2011

Attack On Leningrad (2009)

Synopsis: When in 1941 Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, their troops quickly besieged Leningrad. Foreign journalists are evacuated but one of them, Kate Davies, is presumed dead and misses the plane. Alone in the city she is helped by Nina Tsvetnova a young and idealist police officer and together they will fight for their own survival and the survival of the people in the besieged Leningrad. (blu-ray.com)

Special Features: Unknown.

Baaria (2009)

Synopsis: Peppino, the nickname of the boy at the story’s heart, is a tough little kid in the 1930s, used to the rough-and-tumble world of Baaria (local slang for Tornatore’s native Bagheria), a hot and dusty Sicilian village with one main street. His adventures are many and his memories singular: men gambling in the local square, goats eating his schoolbooks, and...

Everything looked spectacular for Mira Sorvino in 1996. She'd just won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role in Woody Allen's "Mighty Aphrodite", she was beautiful, and a slew of high-profile offers soon followed. Unfortunately, the majority of those projects were considered commercial flops on release, and her star quickly faded from view. Nevertheless, while her time as an A-lister proved woefully brief, Sorvino has continued working steadily in independent projects, despite the fact that you've probably never heard of most of them. ("Attack on Leningrad", anyone? "Like Dandelion Dust"?) Her next film, entitled "The Class Project", will see the actress...

Release Date: Oct. 18, 2011

Price: DVD $24.98, Blu-ray $29.98

Studio: Entertainment One

Armin Mueller-Stahl is a German general in Attack on Leningrad.

Gabriel Byrne (TV’s In Treatment), Mira Sorvino (Mimic) and Armin Mueller-Stahl (Avalon) star in the movie Attack on Leningrad, an action-filled war drama based on the true story of World War II’s deadliest siege, which lasted three horrific years.

Written and directed by Russian filmmaker Aleksandr Buravsky, the film focuses on a young British journalist, Kate Davis (Sorvino), who is trapped within the devastated city of Leningrad during the infamous Nazi siege in the winter of 1941. While isolated within the famished city and separated from her lover, American journalist Philip Parker (Byrne), Kate befriends Nina Tsvetkova (Olga Sutulova, The Night is Bright), a member of the Leningrad militia, and two Russian children. Struggling to survive the brutality of the Nazi siege, together they fight for their lives amidst a landscape of death,...

Here are the new MPAA ratings from Bulletin No: 2181.

Age Of The Dragons Rated PG-13 For some violence. Arena Rated R For strong brutal and bloody violence throughout, graphic nudity and language. Attack On Leningrad Rated R For some violence.1 Boy Wonder Rated R For some brutal violence and pervasive language. The Child's Eye Rated R For horror/disturbing images. Christmas Lodge Rated G The Howling Reborn Rated R For horror violence, some sexuality and drug use. Jack and Jill Rated PG For crude material including suggestive references, language, comic violence and brief smoking. Release Date: November 11, 2011 Note: Amended Rating Reason. Rated PG - Bulletin No. 2178 (6/29/11). Little Birds Rated R For pervasive language, some violence including a sexual assault, sexuality/nudity, drug and alcohol use - all involving teens. Red State Rated R For strong violence/disturbing content, some sexual content including brief nudity, and pervasive language. Release Date: October...

Thomas Dekker, Lynn Collins, Jeremy Piven and Kate Walsh are starring in "Waska," an indie drama being produced by Tim Perell and Shirley Vercruysse of Process Film.

Mira Sorvino, Elizabeth McGovern and Joseph Morgan are also in the movie.

Based on a novel by Leslie Schwartz, the story follows a young father (Dekker) whose 3-year-old son freezes to death during a fishing trip. As a local prosecutor (Piven) goes after him, townspeople like his ex-wife (Collins) rage at him and others support him as he attempts to makes sense of what happened.

Catherine Trieschmann wrote the adaptation, which is being directed by Gaby Dellal.

The movie is shooting in Calgary, Alberta.

"Entourage" star Piven, repped by CAA, also is lending his voice for "Marmaduke."

Collins, repped by Wme and 3 Arts Entertainment, will shoot "John Carter of Mars" after wrapping "Waska." She most recently co-starred in "X-Men Origins: Wolverine."

Walsh stars...