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Director Luca Guadagnino has a new box office record to celebrate this weekend, as his tennis-based romance "Challengers" is on track for an opening weekend north of $15 million -- the filmmaker's biggest debut ever. Admittedly that was quite a low bar to clear, since Guadagnino has built his career in smaller arthouse films with slow rollouts and/or limited releases. His previous biggest opening weekend was the 2022 cannibalism-based romance "Bones and All" ($2.2 million).

Still, "Challengers" has significantly outstripped box office projections, which had it pegged for an opening weekend between $7 million and $12 million. Deadline reports that star and producer Zendaya has been a major driving force behind the movie's performance, with 55% of PostTrak audiences polled saying that she was the main reason for seeing it. That's not too surprising; Zendaya shares the movie's central love triangle with Mike Faist and Josh O'Connor, but the marketing team was clearly aware that...

Five years after the remarkable success of “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” that won the Palme D'Or at Cannes in 2010 and many more festival awards, director and eclectic Thai video artist Apichatpong Weerasethakul presented “Cemetery of Splendour”, another imaginative and enigmatic work that elaborates on the author's fascination with the act of sleeping as a means of accessing deeper layers of consciousness and understanding.

Cemetery of Splendour is screening at Metrograph

In order to be enchanted by the director's imaginative and hypnotic world you need to unlock a certain receptiveness towards a non-traditional narrative, a storytelling that is more stratified than linear. The film takes place in the town of Khon Kaen, Isan province, Northwest of Thailand where the director grew up, and more than a story, there are many places and many stories. There is a former school transformed into a small country hospital in a...

Welcome to Global Breakouts, Deadline’s fortnightly strand in which we shine a spotlight on the TV shows and films killing it in their local territories. The industry is as globalized as it’s ever been, but breakout hits are appearing in pockets of the world all the time and it can be hard to keep track… So, we’re going to do the hard work for you.

This week we’re featuring Taweewat Wantha’s Thai horror pic Tee Yod (aka Death Whisperer). A smash in its home market, it set an opening day record for the year in late October and has the distinction of being the first Thai film ever released in IMAX.

Name: Tee Yod (Death Whisperer)

Country: Thailand

Producers: Major Join Film, Bec World, M Studio

Distributor: M Pictures

For fans of: Shutter, Pee Mak, supernatural horror

Following quickly in the footsteps of another 2023 Thai horror hit,...

Reliably one of the most euphoric and rewarding events on the circuit, the New York Asian Film Festival emerged at a time when hardcore cinephiles were forced to import prohibitively expensive foreign-region DVDs if they wanted to watch the latest hits from the other side of the world, and the first editions of the fest — then hosted at the Anthology Film Archives — got a major boost by screening hard-to-find cult objects and/or future classics at a time when Chinese, Japanese, and South Korean cinema were all on the rise to one degree or another.

No disrespect to the prestigious New York Film Festival, but Nyaff beat them to the punch when it comes to major auteurs like Park Chan-wook, whose “Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance” screened at the 2002 event alongside millennial breakouts like Corey Yuen’s “So Close,” unheralded pop masterpieces like Fumihiko Sori’s “Ping Pong,” and what the fuck did I just witness?...

It’s often said that the sign of a true craftsman is the ability to make complex tasks look effortless. No 21st-century filmmaker more breezily captures the multiplicity of modern life than Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who across seven solo-directed features and dozens of short films has created worlds both cosmic and intimate. Less than two years after Memoria‘s U.S. premiere shook Lincoln Center’s foundation at the 59th New York Film Festival, he has been invited back for a full-career retrospective paired with screenings of works that inspire, inform, and challenge his own body of work.

Ahead of the series, kicking off this Thursday at Film at Lincoln Center, Apichatpong joined us over video chat from Thailand to discuss his career, process, and future.

The Film Stage: A little note before my questions begin: In 2011, when I was 17, I reached out to you through the comments section of your production company,...

When Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul made the 2021 Colombian Oscar entry “Memoria,” his first movie outside of his home country, it was only the start of his new chapter in Latin America. Last year summer, Apichatpong hosted a workshop for aspiring filmmakers in the Amazon rainforest of Peru, an ideal backdrop for his languid, otherworldly cinematic creations. Now, he’s ready to do it again.

“The second workshop is coming in September,” Apichatpong told IndieWire in a video call from Thailand this week. “I think it’s going to be called ‘How Not to Make Movies.’” He smiled. “I’m serious,” he said. “Sometimes you really don’t need cinema.”

That’s a bold statement from a filmmaker whose entire career has been defined by uncompromising, immersive filmmaking on his own terms. Apichatpong’s films, the subject of an upcoming retrospective at New York City’s Film at Lincoln Center in May,...

Thai auteur Apichatpong Weerasethakul has revealed plans to shoot a film in Sri Lanka, inspired by the work of science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke.

Speaking to New York’s Metrograph theatre, Apichatpong said he may be partnering with a streamer on the project. He plans to start location scouting in Sri Lanka next month and said he hopes the project will be “more flexible” than his last film.

“It’ll be a smaller budget, and probably with [my long-time actors] Jenjira [Pongpas] and Sakda [Kaewbuadee],” he told Metrograph’s film journal. “It’s the same old gang.”

Apichatpong’s last film, Memoria, was filmed in Colombia with Tilda Swinton and went on to win the Jury Prize at Cannes film festival in 2021. He also won the Cannes Palme d’Or in 2010 for Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives.

Referring to the Memoria shoot, he said: “In Colombia, it was more complicated because of the bigger production,...

Starring Tilda Swinton, "Memoria" is the movie you might have heard about that was originally slated for a never-ending theatrical release. The plot, which takes a backseat at times to the unfettered stillness of slow cinema, concerns a Scottish ex-pat named Jessica who begins hearing a mysterious sound no one else can hear in the jungles of Colombia. In 2021, the movie shared the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, where Thai writer-director Apichatpong Weerasethakul had previously won the Palme d'Or for his surreal 2010 drama "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives."

It's worth talking upfront about the film's unique release strategy because "Memoria" is a movie that you might need to do a bit of planning to see. Neon announced late last year that it would "only ever be available in cinemas," seemingly in a bid to get moviegoers actually going to the movies again and have them...

After the Oscars, the Palme d’Or is the most prestigious film award in the business, and it’s a lot less predictable. Coming from a jury usually comprised of actors and directors, it arrives as the outcome of furious debate and often conflicting values about the nature of the art form. There is no mathematical formula for predicting the Palme d’Or, and educated guesswork can be misleading, but it’s still worth a shot.

Handed out at the festival since 1955, the golden prize represents the pinnacle of prestige for the filmmaker who receives it. As Cannes presents itself as the nexus of the greatest cinema on the planet, the prize is an extension of that mentality, and it invites winners into an exclusive club that spans film history. Recipients of the Palme d’Or have ranged from “Black Orpheus” and “La Dolce Vita” to “Apocalypse Now.” In some cases,...

Thai cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom – whose films include Luca Guadagnino’s Oscar nominee for best picture “Call Me by Your Name” and Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Palme d’Or winner “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives,” and who recently lensed Netflix thriller “Beckett” – received the third Robby Müller Award on Thursday, following in the footsteps of Mexican Dp Diego García and American director Kelly Reichardt.

The trophy is given out by International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Netherlands’ Society of Cinematographers and Andrea Müller-Schirmer.

“When he films empty space, it becomes clear that it was actually never empty,” argued the jury, but Mukdeeprom was also feted by his illustrious collaborators, from Guadagnino and Tilda Swinton to “Arabian Nights” helmer Miguel Gomes.

“You came to work for one year, not knowing what we were going to shoot or how, so I think you are kind of crazy. In a very good way,...

The presence or absence of sound in Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s films is a fundamental element, as is its timing. Sound is a character alluding to memory, touch, the erotic, the urban and natural world. At just under two hours, this mix is a dreamscape journey into Apichatpong’s cinema sonics. From the opening edit, we’re surrounded by the luscious sounds of Syndromes and a Century (2006), traveling through the Thai director’s singular vision of place, love, desire, family, the body, history, and the conscious versus unconscious. Moments of song or dialogue tend to break the chapters. A jolt of song at the titles (not necessarily approaching at the presumed moment) making way for the next act, a motorcycle ride, or a much-favored exercise class, music bursts out momentarily relieving ambient trance. Here there's a focus on several films, Syndromes and a Century, Blissfully Yours (2002), Tropical Malady (2004) and Mysterious Object at Noon...

Louverture Films, the production company founded by actor Danny Glover and Joslyn Barnes, is moving into television as well as animation, gaming and installation works. With two new principal partners in situ, the expansion has enlisted a host of creatives, including directors Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Lucrecia Martel.

Co-founded by Glover and Barnes in 2005 — alongside long-time partners Susan Rockefeller and the Bertha Foundation’s Tony Tabatznik — the company has brought on board Sawsan Asfari and Jeffrey Clark as principal partners. Variety understands that the new partners will allow Louverture to access more funding resources.

In addition, producer Karin Chien, who on Sunday delivered a rousing Sundance Institute Producing Fellows’ keynote, is becoming a partner and executive VP. Meanwhile, Barnes has been promoted to president while Glover remains CEO and co-founder.

Louverture, named after Haitian revolutionary leader Toussaint Louverture, has built its reputation on international and arthouse films and a strong theatrical documentary slate.

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Dean Stockwell in David Lynch's Blue Velvet (1986)The actor Dean Stockwell, remembered for his performances in films like The Boy with the Green Hair (1948), Paris, Texas (1984), Blue Velvet (1986), and many more, has died at the age of 85. As Sheila O'Malley mentions in her tribute, Stockwell's career was marked by numerous disappearances. He didn't always love acting, but "he lived long enough to be able to not just appreciate but feel the love that people had for him, the way audiences fell in love with him for 70 years." A newly discovered memoir by Paul Newman will be published next year by Knopf. Based on Newman's conversations with screenwriter Stewart Stern, the book aims to tell the legendary actor's story in his own words. Following the exit of Robert Pattinson and Taron Egerton, Joe Alwyn...

Here's an interesting one. The film "Memoria," which co-won the Jury Prize at this year's Cannes Film Festival and has been selected as Colombia's entry for Best International Feature Film at next year's Academy Awards, is coming to theaters — exclusively and forever — as a never-ending U.S. tour. The film stars Tilda Swinton and is written and directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul ("Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives"), but if you want to see it, the only way to do that will be to wait for it to come to a cinema near you.

The film's distributor, Neon, issued a press...

The post Oscar Hopeful Memoria Will Only Screen in One Theater a Time, Never Hit Streaming or VOD appeared first on /Film.

Distributor Neon has lined up a most unusual release plan for Thai filmmaker Apichatpong’s latest film “Memoria,” which won the Jury Prize at Cannes and is next playing at the New York Film Festival. IndieWire has the exclusive news on the release plan.

Rather than a traditional platform release in multiple theaters simultaneously, the Tilda Swinton-starring film will be rolled out with a “deliberate and methodical approach,” says Neon, “moving from city to city, theater to theater, week by week, playing in front of only one solitary audience at any given time.” The idea is to frame “Memoria” as a kind of never-ending, moving-image art exhibit. The film will only play in theaters, and it will not become available on DVD, on demand, or streaming platforms.

The launch will kick off at the IFC Center in New York on December 26, where it will play for a one-week exclusive theatrical run.

The second of three blocks of the Asian Cinema Education International Journalism and Film Criticism Course focused on journalistic skills which are essential for film festivals organisers.

There are two ways to take part in the course:

in the full version, with registration, the participant gets the possibility of direct contact with tutors and consultation of own written work (registration ended on September 28);the webinars can also be watched without registration.

Participation in the course is free of charge. All webinars are conducted in English only – this is the working language of the whole course.

You can find the whole course here Festival skills – course info

Festivals play an important role in the life cycle of a film but are equally important for film critics. New talents find an audience there, like-minded people from different places meet. Not only is it a place for film critics and journalists to broaden their horizons,...

Ever since his Palme d’Or victory with “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” in 2010, Thai filmmaker Apichatapong Weerasethakul is somewhat of a star player in Cannes Film Festival line-up. With his foreign-language debut “Memoria”, he has achieved success, Jury Prize, at this year’s edition of the festival. We were lucky to catch it at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, where it played in the Horizons programme segment.

It is a bit corny to start a film review with William Faukner’s quote about the nature of the past, how it is not dead and maybe not even past, but here it can serve as nice introduction. The same kind of thinking, but with some of the theoretical scientific proof could be told for the nature of the sound. It does not die out, it just infinitely tones down to fall out of the limits of our perception.

After going virtual last year and not handing out any prizes due to the Covid pandemic, the 2021 Cannes Film Festival returned to form by announcing its winners on July 17. How many of these will figure in the upcoming Oscar race? We recap the results from the 74th edition of this foremost of film festivals and review its history as a forecaster of the Academy Awards.

The top award at Cannes is the Palme d’Or. Over the years, 40 winners of this prize have amassed 135 Academy Award nominations. Seventeen of these have claimed a combined 32 Oscars. This year, the Palme d’Or went to French filmmaker Julia Ducournau‘s “Titane.” Her dramatic thriller centers on a father reunited with his son who was missing for a decade during which several unexplained crimes were committed. Ducournau is the second woman to take this top prize following Jane Campion‘s breakthrough in 1993 with “The Piano.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s “Memoria” starts with a bang, which is not at all typical of the infamously understated Thai auteur, making his return to Cannes competition 11 years after winning the Palme d’Or for “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives.” Nor is working with an internationally recognized movie star, which the director does this time around, enlisting Tilda Swinton as a kind of stand-in for himself in this oblique and sometimes taxing excursion into the jungles of Colombia.

Swinton plays a foreign-born orchidologist plagued by a strange condition whereby it sounds as if a gong is ringing inside her head — or else a wrecking ball is smashing loudly against a steel drum somewhere off in the distance. The opening bang, therefore, is a literal one, not some big set-piece or action sequence, lest you think the independent art-house director has sold out and decided to go all Hollywood...

Musing on the power of memory and the fluidity of time, the latest from Thai director Apichatpong Weerasetakul sees him returning to the Cannes competition for the first time since his surprise Palme d’Or triumph in 2010 with “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives.”

“Memoria” certainly brings back memories of that otherwordly win under the aegis of jury president Tim Burton. But the Thai director’s slow, contemplative, karmic style is so far from the kinetic visual rush of this year’s president, Spike Lee, that another win would be a seismic shock.

Starring Tilda Swinton, “Memoria” is a film from another planet, a cinematic vision unlike any other in the Cannes running and unique because of its filmmaker’s philosophical long takes. Swinton, who is also credited as executive producer, plays Jessica, a haunted British woman who wanders the streets of Colombian cities Bogota and Medellin as...

“Memoria” begins with the first jump scare in Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s career, but the sudden impact isn’t as relevant as the way it resonates in the silence that follows. Anyone familiar with the slow-burn lyricism at the center of the Thai director’s work knows how he adheres to a dreamlike logic that takes its time to settle in. The Colombia-set “Memoria,” his first movie made outside his native country, does that as well as anything in “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” or “Cemetery of Splendor.” But this time around, there’s a profound existential anxiety creeping in.

With Tilda Swinton’s puzzled gaze as its guide, “Memoria” amounts to a haunting, introspective look at one woman’s attempts to uncover the roots of a mysterious sound that only she can hear. More than that, it’s a masterful and engrossing response to rush of modern...

"It's like a rumble from the core of the Earth." Neon has unveiled the first official trailer for the mysterious new drama Memoria, the latest film from acclaimed Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul, best known for his films Tropical Malady, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Mekong Hotel among many, many other creative projects. This is premiering in the main competition at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival this week, and Neon already has plans to release it soon. A woman from Scotland, while traveling in Colombia, begins to notice strange sounds. Soon she begins to think about their appearance. That's about all we know. Tilda Swinton stars with a cast including Elkin Díaz, Jeanne Balibar, Juan Pablo Urrego, Daniel Giménez Cacho, and Agnes Brekke. The director explains his idea for this: "While researching, I often heard a loud noise at dawn. It was internal and has occurred in many of the places I visited.

Tilda Swinton plays a character shaken by a strange boom in the new trailer for Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s upcoming film, Memoria.

In the film, Swinton plays a Scottish woman named Jessica, who hears a loud “bang” at daybreak, which triggers a mysterious sensory syndrome that follows her as she travels through the jungles of Colombia.

The new trailer for Memoria gives few other details away, comprising a series of seemingly disconnected scenes, all threaded together by the presence of the boom. In the opening scene, Jessica tries to describe the sound to an audio engineer,...

Apichatpong Weerasethakul, the acclaimed Thai filmmaker behind Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Cemetery of Splendour, and more, is back with Memoria. The movie is set to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, and we now have a mysterious, intriguing trailer that’s bound to make this shoot up to the top of your “must-see” list (if it […]

The post ‘Memoria’ Trailer: Tilda Swinton Experiences a Mysterious Sensory Syndrome in the New Film From Apichatpong Weerasethakul appeared first on /Film.

Ever the weaver of mysterious, transcendent dramas that unfold across far-flung landscapes that stir awakenings in his protagonists, Apichatpong Weerasethakul returns with the long-awaited “Memoria.” This marks the Thai filmmaker’s English-language debut and his first pairing with Tilda Swinton. The film, which premieres July 15 at Cannes, will be released later this year in the United States by distributor Neon. An official trailer has been released in the meantime. Check it out below.

The drama is centered on a Scottish woman who, after hearing a strange banging sound at daybreak, begins to experience a bizarre sensory syndrome while she’s traveling through the jungles of Colombia.

Weerasethakul has remained comfortably outside of any studio system, making the films he wants to make, from the beautiful and beguiling queer love story “Tropical Malady” to the Cannes Palme d’Or-winning folk tale “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives.” But distribution...

Tilda Swinton is sitting cross-legged on a couch in her Highlands home, wearing heavy black specs and an army green Nine Inch Nails T-shirt, surrounded by her trio of spaniels.

The Oscar-winning actor recently returned to her native Scotland after working “almost nonstop” for the past 18 months, at the same time the entertainment business was largely shut down by the coronavirus pandemic.

An Instagram post of Swinton brandishing an appropriately funky face shield with Pedro Almodóvar on the sanguine Madrid set of “The Human Voice” became a viral sensation last summer. In the fall, after accepting the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at the Venice Film Festival, she, alongside her dog Louie, starred in a Wales-set film called “The Eternal Daughter” directed by her oldest friend, “The Souvenir” helmer Joanna Hogg. This year, she celebrated Mardi Gras in Sydney with “Luther” star Idris Elba on her first trip to...

A sweeping and melancholic first trailer has arrived for Neon’s secret omnibus film project, “The Year of the Everlasting Storm.” Featuring seven stories from seven auteurs from around the world, the film chronicles an unprecedented moment in time, and is a true love letter to the power of cinema and its storytellers. The seven-segment film is set to debut at the Cannes Film Festival this year (re-opening its doors for an in-person event after last year’s cancelled one), alongside two other Neon titles, “Memoria,” directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul (who has a segment in “Everlasting Storm”) and “Titane,” directed by Julia Ducournau.

“The Year of the Everlasting Storm” has been slotted as Special Screening at the Cannes Film Festival this year. (The full lineup for the French festival was just announced on Thursday.) The film features contributions from seven major award-winning directors: Weerasethakul, David Lowery, Laura Poitras, Jafar Panahi,...

“Dying isn’t simple, is it?” Those words repeat through Christopher Makoto Yogi’s “I Was a Simple Man,” calling frequent attention to the film’s title, and to its curious use of the past tense. It frames the cancer-stricken final days of Masao Matsuoshi (Steve Iwamoto) in the context of someone who’s only thinking about the mess of people caught in his web now that his body has run out of filament and they’re all forever enmeshed.

Not that Yogi holds that against him. Layering the spectral hush of “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” over the elegiac domesticity of a late Ozu film like “An Autumn Afternoon,” the Honolulu-born filmmaker’s singularly Hawaiian second feature is haunted and haunting in equal measure — a reckoning pitched at the volume of a whisper. Just because people don’t stay behind doesn’t mean they ever leave.

Strand Releasing has acquired U.S. distribution rights to Majid Majidi’s “Sun Children,” which competed at Venice and represents Iran in the international feature film race at the 2021 Academy Awards.

Represented in international markets by Hengameh Panahi’s Celluloid Dreams, “Sun Children” has been critically acclaimed in the festival circuit, and its young leading actor Ruhollah Zamani won Venice’s Marcello Mastroianni Award for best young actor. The movie went on to win the best feature film award at the Doha Ajyal Film Festival. The film was produced by Amir Banan and Majid Majidi.

“Sun Children” tells the story of 12-year-old Ali and his three friends who work hard together to survive and support their families, doing small jobs in a garage and committing petty crimes to make fast cash. In a turn of events that seems miraculous, Ali is entrusted to find hidden treasure underground, but in order...

With the ongoing Covid 19-pandemic, the majority of our daily routine has been reduced to the bare minimum since the lockdown of many countries means closing down social life, from pubs to concert halls and even playgrounds, all in the name of social distancing. However, given humans are social by nature, this feature of the tragic year of 2020 is perhaps one of the most trying aspects and many people suffer from a state of isolation and loneliness at present, the concept of the quarantine has become a fact of life, even though you may be perfectly healthy. Considering his collaboration with actress Tilda Swinton “Memoria” has been delayed to 2021, Thai film director Apichatpong Weerasethakul has been going through the same emotions, with the craving for human connection resulting in a re-connection with nature, one of the core themes in his many works.

In his new short feature “October Rumbles” the...

Palme d’Or winning producer Luis Miñarro (“Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives”) is set to direct his fifth feature, ”Impalpable” (a working title), produced by Miñarro’s label, Barcelona-based Eddie Saeta, one of Spain’s most prominent arthouse shingles.

Written by Miñarro, “Impalpable” follows a series of characters who take a bus to an unspecified destination. The situation becomes gradually

stranger as the bus make no stops. Nor can the passengers descend.

“Impalpable”‘s cast will include Naomi Kawase, Geraldine Chaplin and Spain’s Lola Dueñas (“The Sea Inside”) and Francesc Orella (“Julia’s Eyes”), among others.

By chance, though with foresight, ”I first thought of this project before the pandemic. It’s a homage to Luis Buñuel’s ‘The Exterminating Angel,’” Miñarro told Variety. Over three days and two nights, its characters get to know one another, as the audience enters the minds of main characters, unleashing...

With readers turning to their home viewing options more than ever, this daily feature provides one new movie each day worth checking out on a major streaming platform.

To fill the void left by the absence of this year’s Cannes Film Festival, for the next two weeks, this column will be dedicated to films that premiered at the festival over the course of seven decades.

Ghost monkeys. Reincarnation. Catfish cunnilingus. The inspired weirdness is so off the charts with “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” it almost sounds like a lark. Instead, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s mesmerizing Palme d’Or winner redefines the notion of “movie magic,” by conjuring images and experiences that transcend the boundaries of the screen. Ten years later, it remains a haunting, wondrous incantation — a movie that gives new meaning to fantasy filmmaking by refusing to escape the world, and instead attempting to see...

Director Apichatpong Weerasethakul has, unsurprisingly, turned contemplative in quarantine, during which he’s been sheltered in Thailand, as IndieWire learned last month when the Thai filmmaker shared a thoughtful letter. The “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” and “Tropical Malady” director has another message for moviegoers, as revealed in a recent letter shared on Filmkrant. His utopian hope for the future of moviegoing is that the temporary pause put on the fast pace of life as it was before the coronavirus will inspire slower, more patient, and a more “stop and smell the roses” kind of film-watching. That’s exemplified, as he illustrates, in the films of Béla Tarr, Tsai Ming-Liang, Lucrecia Martel, Pedro Costa, and, of course, his own movies. Check out an excerpt from the letter below:

To keep our sanity, some of us have embraced mindfulness techniques. We try to observe our surroundings, emotions, actions,...

Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul has always been a filmmaker working outside the margins, so it seems appropriate that he’s found poetry in the isolation of the ongoing quarantine. That update comes courtesy of distributor Strand Releasing, which asked filmmakers, artists, and friends, how their lives were affected by the pandemic. The project is part of a collaboration with Criterion, which hosted the the “30/30 Vision” anthology celebrating Strand’s 30th anniversary last fall.

As shared exclusively with IndieWire, the “Tropical Malady” and “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” director has a message for fans from Thailand, where he lives and works. See below.

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I have a marian plum tree at my home. Previously I didn’t pay much attention to it because I was mostly away.

Tilda Swinton has arrived just when we need her most to share a list of 11 favorite movies. The Oscar winner teamed up with the British Film Institute this month to list a selection of films she wants every moviegoer to see. Even better news is that Swinton’s list is accompanied by captions in which the actress shares some personal thoughts on each of her selections. Topping the list is Yasujiro Ozu’s 1932 drama “I Was Born But…,” which Swinton hailed as “a beautiful silent masterpiece about childhood, brotherhood, and learning about how to negotiate fathers and learn the rules of the game.”

The most recent entry on the list is Alain Guiraudie’s 2013 gay romance thriller “Stranger by the Lake,” about a young man who falls in love with a mysterious stranger at a gay cruising beach in France. Swinton said of the movie, “Exquisitely atmospheric summer cruising. Boys...

Thai independent filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul has remained defiantly outside of any studio system, making the films he wants to make, from the beautiful and beguiling queer love story “Tropical Malady” to the Cannes Palme d’Or-winning, avant-garde folk tale “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives.” His next project, and first solo feature since 2015’s “Cemetery of Splendor,” is “Memoria.” Shot and set in Colombia with Tilda Swinton — who practically has always seemed fated to star in a Weerasethakul outing — the film is yet another rumination on memory from the “Syndromes and a Century” director. Now, the publication La Tempestad has shared exclusive first images from “Memoria,” and a new interview with the filmmaker, offering the first taste of what’s sure to be another cosmic mystery from Weerasethakul.

Filmed in the mountains of the municipality of Pijao and Bogotá, “Memoria” centers on Swinton as a woman from Scotland who,...

Neon has bought North American rights to Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s “Memoria,” starring Tilda Swinton, Jeanne Balibar, Daniel Giménez Cacho, Juan Pablo Urrego and Elkin Diaz.

The drama is produced by Weerasethakul’s Kick the Machine, Burning and Illuminations Films. Weerasethakul won the Cannes Palme d’Or in 2010 for “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives.”

The deal was announced Thursday at the American Film Market and negotiated by Jeff Deutchman on behalf of Neon and Thania Dimitrakopoulou of The Match Factory on behalf of the filmmakers. A year ago at Afm, Neon bought domestic rights to Bong Joon Ho’s Palme d’Or winner, “Parasite,” which has gone on to gross over $100 million worldwide.

Variety first reported in August that filming had kicked off in Colombia for “Memoria,” Weerasethakul’s first feature to be shot outside his home country of Thailand. While prepping the script, the filmmaker was particularly...

Neon has acquired the North American rights to Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s “Memoria,” which is one of the first deals to come out of the American Film Market (Afm).

The drama was written and directed Weerasethakul and stars Tilda Swinton, Jeanne Balibar, Daniel Giménez Cacho, Juan Pablo Urrego and Elkin Diaz. Weerasethakul’s production company Kick the Machine is producing, alongside Burning and Illuminations Films.

Weerasethakul previously won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2010 for his film “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives.”

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Details for the plot are being kept under wraps. The deal was negotiated by Jeff Deutchman on behalf of Neon and Thania Dimitrakopoulou of The Match Factory on behalf of the filmmakers.

At last year’s Afm, Neon acquired Bong Joon-Ho’s eventual Palme d’Or winner, “Parasite,...

Despite being a beloved figure on the international film circuit, Apichatpong Weerasethakul has mostly stayed in his own realm, crafting his dreamlike odysseys with a Thai cast and crew. For his next film, Memoria, he is casting a wider net, collaborating with the goddess Tilda Swinton, along with French actress Jeanne Balibar, Zama star Daniel Gimenez Cacho, Juan Pablo Urrego, and Elkin Diaz. With production beginning earlier this month in Colombia, it also marks the Palme d’Or-winning director’s first film shot outside Thailand.

Courtesy of Match Factory (via Variety), the first on-set images and a new synopsis have been unveiled:

In the film, Swinton plays an orchid farmer visiting her ill sister in Bogota. While there, she befriends a French archaeologist (Balibar) in charge of monitoring the construction project and a young musician (Diaz). Each night, she is bothered by increasingly loud bangs which prevent her from getting any sleep.

Filming kicked off in Colombia on August 19 for Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Tilda Swinton-led “Memoria,” the filmmaker’s first feature to be shot outside his home country.

Germany’s The Match Factory, which has represented several of Weerasethakul’s previous films on the international market including 2010 Cannes Palme d’Or winner “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives,” will do so again on “Memoria,” and have shared with Variety exclusive first images of Weerasethakul and Swinton on set.

Filling out the international cast for the film are César and San Sebastian best actress award-winner Jeanne Balibar, Daniel Gimenez Cacho – star of Lucrecia Martel’s 2018 Argentine Oscar submission “Zama,” Colombian TV star Juan Pablo Urrego and “Surviving Escobar’s” Elkin Diaz.

The eight-week shoot will split time between the mountain village of Pijao and the Colombian capital, Bogota.

While on vacation in Colombia, Weerasethakul was struck by the country’s natural beauty,...

Barcelona — David R. Romay’s feature debut “Beyond the Mountain” snagged Best Feature at Lleida’s 25th Latin America Film Festival of Catalonia, hosted in the world’s culinary capital for grilled snails, 84 miles west of Barcelona.

A dramatic thriller starring Benny Emmanuel (Gael García Bernal’s “Chicuarotes”), it follows Miguel, a young, solitary man whose routine existence working for a public typing service office is turned upside down when he finds his mother lying dead on the floor with a letter to his deadbeat dad in her hand. Tragic events force him to face a forgotten past and to seek out his father with murderous intent.

The award follows Guadalajara best actor and press awards this year.

“I wanted to involve the viewer in the plot without any kind of narrative tricks, without having to tell them what to feel,” Romay explained to Variety.

He added: “The music is discreet,...

Netflix may get most of the attention, but it’s hardly a one-stop shop for cinephiles who are looking to stream essential classic and contemporary films. Each of the prominent streaming platforms — and there are more of them all the time — caters to its own niche of film obsessives. From chilling horror fare on Shudder, to the boundless wonders of the Criterion Channel, and esoteric (but unmissable) festival hits on the newly launched Ovid.tv, IndieWire’s monthly guide will highlight the best of what’s coming to every major streaming site, with an eye towards exclusive titles that may help readers decide which of these services is right for them.

Here’s the best of the best for June 2019.

Amazon Prime

Amazon Prime isn’t offering its subscribers much in the way of exclusives this month, and — for reasons that aren’t entirely clear — the brunt of the platform...

This coming weekend, the 2019 Cannes Film Festival will hand out its annual awards, capped by the cover Palme d’Or prize. Taking this award can sometimes set a movie off on a path towards Oscar love. To be fair, Academy Award attention is hardly guaranteed when it comes to feted Cannes titles. Still, some early hardware can never hurt a potential contender. With some high profile filmmakers at the festival this year like Pedro Almodovar, Bong Joon-ho, the Dardenne Brothers, Jim Jarmusch, Terrence Malick, and of course, Quentin Tarantino, A-listers could very well end up with some gold before the weekend is out. As a reminder, here is what is in competition this year at the Cannes Film Festival: In Competition “Pain and Glory,” Pedro Almodovar “The Traitor,” Marco Bellocchio “The Wild Goose Lake,” Diao Yinan “Parasite,” Bong Joon-ho “Young Ahmed,” Jean-Pierre Dardenne & Luc Dardenne “Oh Mercy!,” Arnaud Desplechin “Atlantique,...

The final months of 2019 will see an onslaught of lists naming the best movies and performances of the decade, but World of the Reel got a jump on the bandwagon by publishing this week the first massive critics’ poll devoted to figuring out the most beloved titles released since January 1, 2010. The publication asked 250 critics, programmers, academics, and filmmakers to list their five favorite movies of the decade. Any film released between January 2010 and April 2019 was eligible. Pollers included IndieWire’s own Eric Kohn, Christian Blauvelt, Michael Nordine, and Tom Brueggemann.

Topping the list in first place was George Miller’s “Mad Max: Fury Road,” starring Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron. The universally beloved “Mad Max” film was the rare studio blockbuster to make a killing at the Academy Awards, winning six Oscars and scoring major nominations for Best Picture and Best Director. IndieWire recently named “Fury Road” the greatest action film of the 21st century.

One of the major winners at last year’s Berlin Film Festival — and widely distributed worldwide — was a quiet, intimate Paraguayan drama, “The Heiresses,” one of the latest fruits of the World Cinema Fund, a program nurtured by festival chief Dieter Kosslick.

Kosslick is being honored at the Berlin Film Festival with Variety‘s Achievement in International Film Award.

This year there are a record six Wcf-supported films in the Berlin festival, including South Africa’s “Flatland,” which opens the Panorama section. In addition, nine Wcf films will screen at the European Film Market as part of the Wcf Screenings.

Films supported by the fund are not obliged to premiere at Berlin, nor do they receive preferential treatment at the festival. Many premiere at other events, such as Thailand’s “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall his Past Lives,” which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes.

When Kosslick set up...

Hale County This Morning, This Evening director RaMell Ross on Apichatpong Weerasethakul: "His editing consultation was more about grand emotional feeling or the way in which the film could be distilled into certain ideas, you know." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

At the Cinema Eye Awards last week, Yance Ford, the director of the last year's Oscar-nominated Strong Island, presented to RaMell Ross the Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking Award for his Oscar-shortlisted film Hale County This Morning, This Evening.

Quincy Bryant

RaMell Ross has an impressive producing team with Joslyn Barnes and Danny Glover of Louverture Films to Laura Poitras (Citizenfour) and Charlotte Cook of Field of Vision, Susan Rockefeller (Oceana), Tony Tabatznik, Lynda Weinman, Su Kim, and co-writer Maya Krinsky.

Ross's subjects Daniel Collins and Quincy Bryant, a scene with Bert Williams from Edwin Middleton and T. Hayes Hunter's Lime Kiln Club Field Day (1913), the atmosphere of the local community in Hale County,...

Barcelona — Paris-based Reel Suspects has acquired world rights on the second fiction feature as a director of multi-prized Spanish producer Luis Miñarro, “Love Me Not.” It is produced by Miñarro and Mexican producer Julio Chavezmontes at Piano, whose recent credits take in Sebastian Hoffmann’s Sundance winner “Time Share” and Venice competition player “The Accused.”

“Love Me Not” will have its world premiere at the upcoming Rotterdam Film Festival in its Signatures showcase, which is devoted to cutting-edge movies from preeminent auteurs.

A producer of over 30 films, including Cannes Palme d’Or laureate “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives,” Karlovy Vary Crystal Globe winner “The Mosquito Net” and “Finisterrae,” which took a Rotterdam Festival Tiger, Miñarro’s movies as a director have established him as one of Spain’s most accessibly non-conformist filmmakers frequently featured at larger festivals.

Lauded by many Spanish critics – one, Carlos Losilla, has called...

A version of this story first appeared in the Foreign Language issue of TheWrap magazine.

South Korea has never received an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language film and never even been shortlisted in the category, despite 29 previous entries and an abundance of world-class filmmakers. The country, which is in the race this year with Lee Chang-dong’s acclaimed “Burning,” is one of the more striking examples of a country whose filmmakers have been unable to land an Oscar nomination despite sustained critical praise.

But it is far from the only country in that boat. And the further east you go, the more the Academy’s foreign-language voters seem to have difficulty with foreign cinema.

Over the last 20 years, more than half the nominations that have gone to countries in Asia have been for Middle Eastern countries like Iran, Israel and Palestine. If you focus on East Asia, South Asia and Southeast Asia,...

Mexico City — In what is already an extraordinary year for Mexican filmmaking, Piano, the Mexico City-based production-distribution house, has boarded “Memoria,” from Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul who dazzled the Cannes Festival in 2010 with Palme d-Or winner “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives.”

The move comes after Piano, founded by Julio Chavezmontes and Sebastián Hofmann, has also pacted to co-produce Mia Hansen-Løve’s “Bergman Island.” Coming in a year when Guillermo del Toro won the best picture Academy Award and Alfonso Cuarón the Venice Festival’s Golden Lion, Piano’s two co-production accords underscore another way that Mexican filmmakers are making an impact on the world stage – joining a highly select clutch of production houses who support the most robust and original directorial voices from around the globe.

That is far more than a commercial play for foreign markets. “We see ourselves as part of an international community of filmmakers that believes in openness,...

When acclaimed Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul discovered he had ‘exploding head syndrome’, he let the condition feed into the film about trauma and memory he was making with Tilda Swinton

APichatpong Weerasethakul’s house in northern Thailand is a luscious jungle paradise full of polished concrete and teak, palm trees and bamboo. Even the air smells zen. The house’s three gatekeepers, Dracula, King Kong and Vampire, do little to disturb the peace. They are pugs – named because Weerasethakul loves horror movies – who have a proclivity for tenderly licking human toes, further adding to the sense of being biblically cleansed on arrival.

Weerasethakul, 49, is filled with the same soft stillness that pervades his films. In 2010, the director won the Palme d’Or at Cannes for his eerie mouthful of a film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. His 2015 follow-up Cemetery of Splendour won huge critical acclaim. Equally embraced...