News

The sales agent has commenced international sales on the Sigma Films and Thruline Entertainment horror supported by Creative Scotland.

Former Screen UK Star Of Tomorrow Sophie Cookson, riding high on the success of global hit Kingsman: The Secret Service, plays a young woman who runs a ghostbusting racket with her sibling.

When the pair investigate a haunted foster home where a sadistic killer used to operate, they uncover a far more terrifying supernatural force.

Iceland’s Olaf de Fleur will direct Hush and Sigma’s Brian Coffey and Thruline’s Danny Sherman produce. Coffey produced The Legend Of Barney Thomson and Citadel, while Sherman is working on the upcoming The Wild One Hundreds and Bathing Flo.

Principal photography is set to kick off in October in Scotland.

Ben Ketai, whose credits include The Forest and The Strangers 2, adapted the screenplay from a novella by Em Blomqvist. Eva Konstantopoulos made script revisions.

de Fleur won...

Me discovering this film has nothing to do with me actually attending Nippon Connection in Frankfurt but rather reading about it in Jasper Sharp's blog and eyeing the accompanying photo which featured an outlandishly designed costume representing the planet Mercury. Looking better in to it I discovered a brilliant artist who goes by the name of Pyuupiru. A performance artist, designer and photographer who uses himself and his altered body in his art but also a man who is unsure about his own skin and uses art to create his own world where he feels comfortable. After reading about it I quickly contacted the director who was gracious enough to provide me with a screener.Director Daishi Matsunaga is a personal friend of the artist and for some reason or other decided to begin filming his friend in 2001 who was at that time breaking out and getting noticed. What follows...

Icelandic filmmaker Ólafur Jóhannesson is one of the country’s busiest director. Last year he premiered his first feature length fiction film The Higher Force, co starring The Sopranos’ Michael Imperioli, after focusing solely on documentaries earlier in his career. His pseudo doc The Amazing Truth About Queen Raquela won The Teddy at last year’s Berlin Film Festival and this summer he’s gearing up for another feature. But after The Higher Force he created a TV series about angels working basically as God’s bureaucrats who want to be reborn as humans. The series was created by Olafur and his frequent collaborator Stefan Schaefer and co-stars other Soprano alumni Steve Schirripa and Sharon Angela.

Today is the day the series premieres so head on over to their website and take a gander.

Icelandic documentarian Olaf de Fleur openly blends fact and fiction in <i>The Amazing Truth About Queen Raquela</i>, the partially true story of Filipino transsexual Raquela Rios, who drifts from prostitution to the more lucrative realm of Internet "ladyboy porn," then winds up moving to Europe when one of her patrons propositions her via e-mail. Much of the dialogue in <i>Queen Raquela</i> is improvised&mdash;and some of it delivered directly into the camera, interview-style&mdash;and a lot of the footage was shot in on the fly, with handheld or hidden cameras. But de Fleur does impose a narrative on this vérité exercise, in an attempt to concoct a kind of postmodern, grown-up fairytale: a Cinderella story for the reality-TV age. <i>Queen Raquela</i>'s plotty elements don't always work: The acting in the story-driving scenes sometimes comes off as amateurish, and the circumstances that send Rios halfway around the world seem contrived.

By Neil Pedley

If the old maxim "What I really want to do is direct" still holds true, this week's releases confirm that the filmmaking game is more open than ever. Anyone can have a crack at it; actors, teachers, digital artists, preachers. Perhaps you should have a go yourself. Hell, if Paul W.S. Anderson can get work doing it...

"The Amazing Truth About Queen Raquela"

Offering up the most unlikely fairytale you're ever likely to see, Icelandic filmmaker Olaf de Fleur Johannesson draws on his documentary background with this endearing low-budget, semi-improvised Cinderella story. As a young Filipino lady-boy, the spunky, pre-op sex worker Raquela longs to be the belle of the ball as she trawls the Internet looking for love. When an American suitor pledges to be her Prince Charming and proposes a meeting in France, Raquela departs for her long-awaited date with destiny under the glittering Paris skyline.

New York -- Here! Films has acquired North American rights to the transsexual drama "The Amazing Truth About Queen Raquela," winner of the Teddy Award for best feature at the 2008 Berlin International Film Festival.

Icelandic writer/director Olaf de Fleur's feature is partly based on the life of lead actress Raquela Rios. In the film, her character falls into a life of prostitution in the Philippines before her dream of meeting a husband in Paris somehow leads her to an Iceland fish factory and a new career in porn.

Here! sister company Regent Releasing will launch the film's platform Sept. 26 and this fall. The subtitled film contains English, Filipino and Icelandic dialogue.

The deal was negotiated by Regent's Mark Reinhart with Xyz Films' Nate Bolotin and Cicala Filmworks' Stefan Schaefer on behalf of the director.

BERLIN -- Revanche, a crime drama set in rural Austria by director Gotz Spielmann has won the best European film award at this year's Berlin International Film Festival.

The prize, presented by the Europa Cinemas Label, a network of some 1,700 art-house cinemas across Europe, honors a film screening in the Berlinale's Panorama sidebar section.

A tale of guilt and revenge, Spielmann's film follows the story of Axel, a low-ranking criminal who falls in love with one of the girls in his bosses' brothel. It stars Johannes Krisch, Irina Potapenko and Andreas Lust. Germany's The Match Factory is handling international sales on the picture.

"This is a very well made and dramatic film that we believe has the potential to grip audiences around Europe," the Europa Cinemas jury said in a statement.

"The story is absorbing, the characters well drawn and the performances uniformly strong. This is true European cinema at its best -- an authentic and uncompromised view of a corner of Europe."

The Berlinale's Teddy Award for best film with a gay theme was awarded in Berlin Thursday night to Olaf de Fleur's The Amazing Truth about Queen Raquela.

The Icelandic film is set in the Philippines and tells of a transsexual prostitute who dreams of marrying a white, Western man.