The Palm Springs International SHORTFEST is on the way and will have its closing night on Sunday June 23rd. The Palm Springs International SHORTFEST, two times winner of Cinema Without Borders Seal Of Excellence Award — celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. SHORTFEST is the largest short film event in North America A highly competitive festival, festival receives 5,000± submissions from over 100 countries around the globe. Approximately 325 shorts are selected and screened in 90-minute themed programs, with many of the remaining titles available for viewing in the Market. An Oscar, BAFTA and Los Premios Goya-qualifying festival, ShortFest has…
Browsing: Festivals
2019 HOLA Mexico Film Festival will run from May 31st to June 8th in Los Angeles. The 11th edition of HOLA Mexico will open with the Los Angeles premiere of THE GOOD GIRLS (LAS NIÑAS BIEN). The film, directed by Alejandra Márquez Abella and will close with the Los Angeles premiere of MIRREYES VS GODINEZ (MIRREYES CONTRA GODINEZ), in addition to announcing the programing for its sections Documental, MX Ahora, and Nocturno. MIRREYES VS GODINEZ directed by Chava Cartas is a comedic social critique on Mexico’s polarized society. The film stars Regina Blandón and Daniel Tovar and is produced by Francisco…
Shown as part of the 2019 Wisconsin Film Festival, Tito and the Birds is one of those animations that can appeal to a wide range of audience. Its surface message can easily get to children, and at the same time, adults can pick up on the hidden images and deeper messages. But before getting to the messages, we should praise its visual style. A combination of oil painting and computer graphics have given a uniquely dynamic and otherworldly look to this animation. The backgrounds and landscapes are especially very dynamic in the way that they smoothly transform to different images…
When I am not touched by a film, I prefer to avoid writing about it and share a critic’s review with our visitors. Tehran, City Of Love, with no doubt is a well made film by a talented film director, it follows the life of three depressed characters all through the film with dark humor. One of the characters is a middle-aged man who is a body building instructor and fails in romantically attracting a young man that is his student. The other character is a depressed man that sings in memorial ceremonies and finds the opportunity of becoming a…
Bomb, a Love Story is about love and war, or better to say, how cruelty of war helps blossoming of a love. The story of Bomb, a Love Story happens during the Tehran bombardments during Iran/Iraq war and creates the atmosphere and mood of the city on those dark and unforgettable days quite faithfully. Bomb, a Love Story will be screened on May 10, 2019 – 7:30 pm at Billy Wilder Theater as part of UCLA Celebration of Iranian Cinema. Iraj (Payman Maadi) and Mitra (Leila Hatami) are a couple that have troubled relationship. Iraj is bothered by the fact that his wife, before their marriage…
Kamran Heidari creates the genre of his own. His films are new kind of dacudrama and dacufiction, while he never leaves his real characters and real events, he turns them masterfully to an impressive drama. One of his latest films, Ali Agha, reminds me the Italian Neorealist cinema and specially films like Vittorio De Sica’s Umberto D, where the main character in both films are struggling for survival, they are old and they both have a deep affection for their animal companions. Umberto has a hard time to let his little dog go and Ali Agha can’t leave his pigeons.…
Marcus Lindeen’s new documentary confronts its viewers with their obsession with sex and violence. Santiago Genovés, a Mexican anthropologist, decided to isolate and study a group of people on a raft while crossing the Atlantic ocean for 3 months in 1973. He got the idea for this study when, in November 1972, he was flying to a conference on violence and his plane was hijacked by a group of terrorists. Santiago was hoping that by this isolation and confronting the participants with harsh situations, he would find the root of the human conflicts. After many people volunteered to participate in…
Right out of the theater and both hyped up and disturbed by this important film. A great work of investigative journalism, Cold Case Hammarskjiöld is a must-see for everyone to see the dark history of the genocide of Africans by white supremacists. Shown as part of the Wisconsin Film Festival, the film starts with a black-and-white animation showing a plane being blown up in the sky. Soon, we find out the plane belonged to Dag Hammarskjiöld, the second secretary general of the United Nations. Mads Brügger adopts a combination of animation, photos, and live-action to make a breathtaking thriller, an…
The following French films are included in the lineup of 2019 San Francisco International Film Festival: A FAITHFUL MAN (L’HOMME FIDELE), directed by Louis Garrel, screening on April 12 (6:30pm, Roxie Theater) and April 17 (6pm, YBCA Screening Room) Louis Garrel stars in his own buoyant romantic farce as Abel, sweetly passive and buffeted by others’ whims. His lover, Marianne (Laetitia Casta), dumps him for his friend Paul, only to come back into the picture years later, while Paul’s winsome younger sister Eve (Lily-Rose Depp) acts out on a years-in-the-making obsessive crush. Garrel wrote the screenplay with the legendary Jean-Claude Carrière (Belle…
DC Independent Film Festival has announced the Award winners for its 20th edition. One of the winners is Sedika Mojadidi that has received Best Film by a Woman Director Inaugural Award for her film FACING THE DRAGON. https://youtu.be/UVSRq1KWpfo Sedika Mojadidi, director/producer/cinematographer, is an Award winning independent filmmaker, Sedika Mojadidi has directed two feature documentaries, “Motherland Afghanistan,” (2006, PBS< Independent Lens) and “Facing the Dragon”, (PBS, 2018). Some of her television work includes: the critically acclaimed ABC News documentary series, “Boston Med” and television/documentary projects for PBS, The Discovery Channel, TLC, A&E, Guardian Multi Media and Human Rights Watch. Her writing is published…