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The last time most of us saw Tahar Rahim, he was making unorthodox use of razor blades in A Prophet. Now he's back in Free Men, a story about the French Resistance that has a slightly different emphasis to the usual. And here are a new trailer and poster for the film.The film sees Rahim as a young Frenchman of Algerian origin who survives in the early years of the German Occupation of Paris as a black marketeer. But his situation soon becomes more complicated: he's blackmailed by the Germans into spying on a Paris mosque and its leader (Michael Lonsdale) and becomes inspired to join the Resistance by the people he meets there. While this trailer is similar to others out there, there are a few new snippets included. brightcove.createExperiences();The film also stars Mahmud Shalaby and Lubna Azabal, and is directed by Ismaël Ferroukhi. Free Men...

Gurvinder Singh’s Anhey Ghore da daan (Alms for a blind horse) won Special Jury mention with a cash prize of Usd 50,000 at the 5th Abu Dhabi Film Festival. India born British director Gemma Atwal’s documentary on the wonder kid of Orissa– Marathon Boy bagged her award for Best New Director with a cash prize of Usd 50,000.

Alms for a Blind Horse was in the New Horizon Competition at the festival. The Jury for the competition was headed by Iranian-Kurdish filmmaker Bahman Gobadi (Half Moon, Turtles can fly). The award for Best Film in this section was bagged by Stories Only Exist When Remembered, a Brazilan, Argentinian and French co production directed by Julia Murat.

The best documentary award was won by The Tiniest Place, a Mexican film directed by Titiana Huezo. The jury was headed by Egyptian-Canadian director Tahani Rached, while New Delhi based documentary filmmaker Anwar Jamal also served on the jury.

A couple of years ago, the Toronto International Film Festival launched a new sidebar called City-to-City, devoted to focusing attention on a specific nation's cinema. They drew much criticism and protest over their inaugural selection of Tel Aviv, sparked by Toronto filmmaker John Greyson's withdrawal of his film from the short film competition. Tiff defended its decision, claiming it was an innocent selection based purely on cinema, rejecting that their were ill-advised political undertones with the choice. Cannes is starting up its own like-minded section this year, albeit smaller, simply calling their selected country a "Guest Country". They've picked Egypt to jumpstart this to-be annual feature. The selection of Egypt is politically motivated, for sure, but for obvious reasons it's unlikely to draw the same level of ire as Tiff's Tel Aviv pick. The January 25 uprising that led to a national revolution arose from a strenuous world-wide battle that...