Mad Solutions has acquired world sales rights to Osn’s first-ever original feature, “Yellow Bus,” which world premiered at the Toronto Film Festival.
As well as world sales, Mad Solutions will handle Middle East and North Africa theatrical distribution, while Osn will handle all other Mena rights. Sikhya Entertainment will handle distribution in the Indian subcontinent.
In U.S. filmmaker Wendy Bednarz’s feature debut, an Indian woman living in the Arabian Gulf embarks on a search for truth and accountability after her daughter is left to die on a school bus in the sweltering desert heat.
The film stars Syrian actress Kinda Alloush, alongside Indian star Tannishtha Chatterjee, who was nominated for best actress at the British Independent Film Awards for “Brick Lane,” as well as fellow prominent Indian actor Amit Sial, who is known for the series “Inside Edge,” and Aarushi Laud, who plays the daughter.
The film...
As well as world sales, Mad Solutions will handle Middle East and North Africa theatrical distribution, while Osn will handle all other Mena rights. Sikhya Entertainment will handle distribution in the Indian subcontinent.
In U.S. filmmaker Wendy Bednarz’s feature debut, an Indian woman living in the Arabian Gulf embarks on a search for truth and accountability after her daughter is left to die on a school bus in the sweltering desert heat.
The film stars Syrian actress Kinda Alloush, alongside Indian star Tannishtha Chatterjee, who was nominated for best actress at the British Independent Film Awards for “Brick Lane,” as well as fellow prominent Indian actor Amit Sial, who is known for the series “Inside Edge,” and Aarushi Laud, who plays the daughter.
The film...
- 12/6/2023
- by Leo Barraclough
- Variety Film + TV
From the beginning, there’s something disconcerting about the exuberance of Lendita Zeqiraj’s feature debut “Aga’s House.” We’re immediately plunked down into the middle of a circle of women sitting on a remote Kosovan hillside in the sunshine exchanging salty anecdotes while preparing food. They laugh, bicker and throw cruel little jabs at one another, referring to age, attractiveness, sexual experience or lack thereof. But the bawdiness and hilarity feels volatile and precarious, as though it could end at any moment, as though these women, in their exile from society, are living as loudly and brashly as they can to drown out the ticking of the unexploded mine of the past over which they dance.
Four of the women have been living in this so-called “refuge house” for some time: the pretty, flirtatious, unserious Emira (Rozafa Çelaj); her best friend and sparring partner Luma (Adriana Matoshi); Kumrija...
Four of the women have been living in this so-called “refuge house” for some time: the pretty, flirtatious, unserious Emira (Rozafa Çelaj); her best friend and sparring partner Luma (Adriana Matoshi); Kumrija...
- 9/11/2019
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
Elia Suleiman is in every scene of “It Must Be Heaven,” but he only speaks four words. The writer-director-star finds himself in a New York taxi cab in the midst of a globe-trotting journey after fleeing his drab routine back home. Asked where he comes from, he replies, “Nazareth,” then clarifies: “I am Palestinian.” And that’s pretty much all you need to know. For the rest of the movie, Suleiman’s deadpan stare says it all, as the slapstick auteur’s latest installment in his ongoing chronicle of Palestinian identity settles into his usual playful routine. Once again, the Chaplinesque Suleiman drifts through an ambivalent world, and his solemn expression does the bulk of the talking.
Suleiman’s always a reliable charmer, with a penchant for funneling the language of Jacques Tati and Buster Keaton into moving-image editorials about his troubled homeland. However, a decade has passed since his...
Suleiman’s always a reliable charmer, with a penchant for funneling the language of Jacques Tati and Buster Keaton into moving-image editorials about his troubled homeland. However, a decade has passed since his...
- 5/24/2019
- by Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
It Must Be Heaven
Palestinian director Elia Suleiman breaks a ten year hiatus from narrative features with his latest project, It Must Be Heaven, his fourth feature. In tradition with past films, Suleiman himself is the narrator and lead character, joined by Holden Wong, Sebastian Beaulac, Robert Higden, Alain Dahan and others, all playing characters known by occupation only. With Cesar winner (2014’s Timbuktu) Sofian El Fani behind the camera, the French-German-Turkish-Canadian co-production is produced by Edouard Weil and Laurine Pelassy (Rectangle Productions), Elia Suleiman through Nazira Films, Thanassis Karathanos and Martin Hampel (Pallas Film), Serge Noël (Possibles Media), Zeynep Atakan (ZeynoFilm).…...
Palestinian director Elia Suleiman breaks a ten year hiatus from narrative features with his latest project, It Must Be Heaven, his fourth feature. In tradition with past films, Suleiman himself is the narrator and lead character, joined by Holden Wong, Sebastian Beaulac, Robert Higden, Alain Dahan and others, all playing characters known by occupation only. With Cesar winner (2014’s Timbuktu) Sofian El Fani behind the camera, the French-German-Turkish-Canadian co-production is produced by Edouard Weil and Laurine Pelassy (Rectangle Productions), Elia Suleiman through Nazira Films, Thanassis Karathanos and Martin Hampel (Pallas Film), Serge Noël (Possibles Media), Zeynep Atakan (ZeynoFilm).…...
- 1/4/2019
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
Palme d’Or-winning director will work alongside The Lunchbox’s Ritesh Batra.
Romanian director Cristian Mungiu (Bacalaureat, the Palme d’Or-winning 4 Months, 3 Weeks And 2 Days) will be one of this year’s guest directors at the FeatureLab of the TorinoFilmLab.
Mungiu will work alongside Indian filmmaker and Tfl alumni Ritesh Batra (Our Souls At Night, The Lunchbox) to mentor the 2018 workshop participants.
The FeatureLab is a development program dedicated to 1st and 2nd feature film projects already at an advanced stage. It is organised in Sardinia with Fondazione Sardegna Film Commission.
During the six month programme, lab directors, screenwriters and...
Romanian director Cristian Mungiu (Bacalaureat, the Palme d’Or-winning 4 Months, 3 Weeks And 2 Days) will be one of this year’s guest directors at the FeatureLab of the TorinoFilmLab.
Mungiu will work alongside Indian filmmaker and Tfl alumni Ritesh Batra (Our Souls At Night, The Lunchbox) to mentor the 2018 workshop participants.
The FeatureLab is a development program dedicated to 1st and 2nd feature film projects already at an advanced stage. It is organised in Sardinia with Fondazione Sardegna Film Commission.
During the six month programme, lab directors, screenwriters and...
- 3/12/2018
- by Gabriele Niola
- ScreenDaily
Hungarian action-comedy Kills On Wheels and Icelandic-Danish coming of age story Heartstone take top prizes at Greek festival.Scroll down for full list of winners
Hungarian director Attila Till’s Kills On Wheels (Tiszta Szivvel) has been named best film at the 57th Thessaloniki International Film Festival (Nov 3-13) winning the “Theo Angelopoulos” Golden Alexander award.
The film beat out 16 first and second films screened in this year’s competition section.
Kills On Wheels’ three leading young actors, Zoltan Fenyvesi, SzaboIcs Thuroczy and Adam Fekete were jointly awarded the Best actor trophy.
The film, arriving from the Chicago film festival where it won the Roger Ebert award, deals with three wheelchair-using young adults who decide to offer their services to the mafia in an effort to overcome their daily routines. World sales are handled by the Hungarian Film Fund.
Icelandic-Danish co-production Heartstone (Hjartasteinn) by Icelandic director Gudmundur Arnar Gudmundsson, was awarded the Special Jury Prize, Silver Alexander...
Hungarian director Attila Till’s Kills On Wheels (Tiszta Szivvel) has been named best film at the 57th Thessaloniki International Film Festival (Nov 3-13) winning the “Theo Angelopoulos” Golden Alexander award.
The film beat out 16 first and second films screened in this year’s competition section.
Kills On Wheels’ three leading young actors, Zoltan Fenyvesi, SzaboIcs Thuroczy and Adam Fekete were jointly awarded the Best actor trophy.
The film, arriving from the Chicago film festival where it won the Roger Ebert award, deals with three wheelchair-using young adults who decide to offer their services to the mafia in an effort to overcome their daily routines. World sales are handled by the Hungarian Film Fund.
Icelandic-Danish co-production Heartstone (Hjartasteinn) by Icelandic director Gudmundur Arnar Gudmundsson, was awarded the Special Jury Prize, Silver Alexander...
- 11/14/2016
- by [email protected] (Alexis Grivas)
- ScreenDaily
One day, Sherwin (David Oyelowo) receives a call informing him that his wife, Fiona, was killed in a car accident. Devastated, Sherwin travels to Maine to see Fiona’s mother, Lucinda (Dianne Wiest), a stern woman he’s never met and who’s dying of cancer. We learn that Fiona and Lucinda shared a strained relationship, their last visit together having been particularly unpleasant. As the process of mourning plays out for Sherwin, he spends a few days puttering around Lucinda’s cottage with Ann (Rosie Perez), the old woman’s live-in nurse. Emotionally distant and light on plot, Five Nights In Maine is the sparse and ultimately underwhelming story of how all of this goes.
It’s a film with sincerely admirable intentions, a weepy, yet uplifting indie drama that employs a thoughtful and meditative visual approach. There’s nothing wrong with quiet stories about small reactions and even smaller revelations,...
It’s a film with sincerely admirable intentions, a weepy, yet uplifting indie drama that employs a thoughtful and meditative visual approach. There’s nothing wrong with quiet stories about small reactions and even smaller revelations,...
- 8/3/2016
- by Tony Hinds
- The Film Stage
David Oyelowo appears in his first leading role since "Selma" in writer/director Maris Curran's "Five Nights in Maine," one of the 16 world premieres in Toronto's Discovery program designed to introduce up-and-coming filmmakers to fest-goers. It will seek acquisition at the festival. The drama deals with the relationship that forms between a white mother (Dianne Wiest) and her black son-in-law (Oyelowo), who travels to Maine seeking answers, following her daughter's death in a car accident. Rosie Perez also stars. This international co-production was lensed by "Blue Is the Warmest Color" Dp Sofian El Fani. In a Filmmaker Magazine interview dating back to January, Curran said that the film deals with race "but not in a Hollywood, capital R way." "Five Nights in Maine" participated in Ifp's No Borders International Co-production Market and was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship, and was selected as one of the ten international projects to...
- 8/25/2015
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Thompson on Hollywood
Film is nominated for Oscar in foreign language category. Kristen Stewart and Sean Penn also win Césars.
Abderrahmane Sissako’s Timbuktu picked up seven awards at France’s César ceremony in Paris on Friday evening (February 20), including best film and best director.
The film, inspired by the stoning to death of an unmarried couple with children by Islamists in northern Mali in 2012, has gained fresh resonance in France following the deadly attack on satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in January.
The picture also picked up awards for its screenplay, sound, editing and cinematography while celebrated Tunisian composer Amine Bouhafa clinched the César for best original score.
Timbuktu is in the running for an Oscar in the foreign language category on Sunday night, alongside Ida, Leviathan, Tangerines and Wild Tales.
Another top winner at Friday’s ceremony was Thomas Cailley’s Love At First Fight (Les Combattants), about the relationship that blooms on an army assault course. It won for...
Abderrahmane Sissako’s Timbuktu picked up seven awards at France’s César ceremony in Paris on Friday evening (February 20), including best film and best director.
The film, inspired by the stoning to death of an unmarried couple with children by Islamists in northern Mali in 2012, has gained fresh resonance in France following the deadly attack on satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in January.
The picture also picked up awards for its screenplay, sound, editing and cinematography while celebrated Tunisian composer Amine Bouhafa clinched the César for best original score.
Timbuktu is in the running for an Oscar in the foreign language category on Sunday night, alongside Ida, Leviathan, Tangerines and Wild Tales.
Another top winner at Friday’s ceremony was Thomas Cailley’s Love At First Fight (Les Combattants), about the relationship that blooms on an army assault course. It won for...
- 2/21/2015
- ScreenDaily
With Timbuktu, director and co-writer Abderrahmane Sissako has created a film to test our understanding of what words such as "terrorist", "jihadist" and "Islamic extremists" mean as much as what they don't mean, offering a glimpse into a world I could never say I understand or even comprehend. Sissako's level of empathy for his characters is what gives the film its weight, opening your eyes as you just might find your morals tested in ways you couldn't have expected. Set during the takeover of the titular Malian city by self-described jihadists in 2012, the film is both horrifying and beautiful, managing to even merge dread with small doses of humor as a group of young people play soccer in a dusty field, but must halt their game so a donkey can pass through. The dread in this instance is far more lasting, coming from the fact they are playing without a ball.
- 2/20/2015
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
Designer biopic leads the pack with 10 nominations; Kristen Stewart, Marion Cotillard and Juliette Binoche in the running for actress awards.Scroll down for full list of nominees
Bertrand Bonello’s Saint Laurent and Olivier Assays’ Sils Maria are the hot favourites in France’s 40th annual Cesar awards.
France’s Academy of Cinema Arts and Sciences unveiled the nominations for this year’s César Awards at its traditional news conference at Le Fouquet’s restaurant on the Champs Elysées on Friday morning.
Biopic Saint Laurent - exploring fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent’s life from 1967 to 1976 - led the pack with 10 nominations including best film, best director for Bonello, best actor for Gaspard Ulliel and best supporting actor for Louis Garrel.
Jalil Lespert’s rival biopic, Yves Saint Laurent, secured seven nominations. While it missed out in the best film and director categories, it scored nods with Pierre Niney for best actor, Charlotte Le Bon for best...
Bertrand Bonello’s Saint Laurent and Olivier Assays’ Sils Maria are the hot favourites in France’s 40th annual Cesar awards.
France’s Academy of Cinema Arts and Sciences unveiled the nominations for this year’s César Awards at its traditional news conference at Le Fouquet’s restaurant on the Champs Elysées on Friday morning.
Biopic Saint Laurent - exploring fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent’s life from 1967 to 1976 - led the pack with 10 nominations including best film, best director for Bonello, best actor for Gaspard Ulliel and best supporting actor for Louis Garrel.
Jalil Lespert’s rival biopic, Yves Saint Laurent, secured seven nominations. While it missed out in the best film and director categories, it scored nods with Pierre Niney for best actor, Charlotte Le Bon for best...
- 1/28/2015
- ScreenDaily
The Oscars are just under a month away, and while many of the nominated films have already opened, some of the smaller – and foreign, especially – films are only now opening across the country. Case in point, the Mauritanian Best Foreign Language Film nominee “Timbuktu” is finally hitting theaters in the U.S. this week, and it has a brand new trailer. Very musical throughout, the nearly two-minute trailer showcases some of Sofian El Fani’s beautiful cinematography and does a great job of giving a taste of the unusual rhythms of Abderrahmane Sissako’s film. Set in the small titular town, the drama follows a family trying to survive while living under the thumb of Jihadists, who have banned everything from music to sports. We were quite fond of the film at Cannes – read our B+ review here – and we’re glad it’s finally getting out in the world...
- 1/27/2015
- by Cain Rodriguez
- The Playlist
Timbuktu, Abderrahmane Sissako's "first feature since 2007’s Bamako is a fleet, forceful response to the brief but traumatic few months in 2013 when foreign jihadists seized control of the northern Malian city and imposed Sharia law," writes Tom Charity in Cinema Scope. At the Av Club, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky notes that Sissako's "central point—that the militants are unreasonable, capricious, and cruel—is hardly new, but it’s bolstered by the fact that he frames his argument using a community of religious Muslims." At Filmmaker, Howard Feinstein adds that Sissako is "well served by Dp Sofiane El Fani, who captures the desert’s peculiar emptiness all the way through with brilliant use of widescreen." » - David Hudson...
- 10/1/2014
- Keyframe
Timbuktu, Abderrahmane Sissako's "first feature since 2007’s Bamako is a fleet, forceful response to the brief but traumatic few months in 2013 when foreign jihadists seized control of the northern Malian city and imposed Sharia law," writes Tom Charity in Cinema Scope. At the Av Club, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky notes that Sissako's "central point—that the militants are unreasonable, capricious, and cruel—is hardly new, but it’s bolstered by the fact that he frames his argument using a community of religious Muslims." At Filmmaker, Howard Feinstein adds that Sissako is "well served by Dp Sofiane El Fani, who captures the desert’s peculiar emptiness all the way through with brilliant use of widescreen." » - David Hudson...
- 10/1/2014
- Fandor: Keyframe
Cannes - It is the very nature of film festival scheduling to turn up odd juxtapositions, but even by the usual standards, the first two premieres of this year's Cannes Film Festival couldn't have been more gauchely incompatible. As if "Grace of Monaco's" fretting over the political liberties of a gilded tax-haven state weren't silly enough in isolation, its vapidity only intensifies when considered back-to-back with Abderrahmane Sissako's "Timbuktu" -- a breathing, bleeding response to a genuine human rights crisis that doesn't view tragedy as a zone exempt from beauty or humor. You'd probably have guessed that between the two films, "Timbuktu" would be the one containing more human suffering; less obvious was that it'd feature rather more joy too. Mauritanian-born, Mali-raised director Sissako is perhaps best known to arthouse audiences for "Bamako," an impassioned essay film of sorts that parsed Africa's social and economic imbalances with elegant complexity,...
- 5/15/2014
- by Guy Lodge
- Hitfix
Welcome back to Cannes Check, In Contention's annual preview of the films in Competition at this year's Cannes Film Festival, which kicks off on May 14. Taking on different selections every day, we'll be examining what they're about, who's involved and what their chances are of snagging an award from Jane Campion's jury. Next up, the Competition's only African entry: Abderrahmane Sissako's "Timbuktu." The director: Abderrahmane Sissako (Mauritanian/French, 52 years old). Another of this year's five newcomers, Sissako has established himself as one of Africa's premier auteurs, though he's been based in France since the early 1990s -- a background that complements his favored themes of globalization and outsider identity. Born in Mauritania, he moved with his family at an early age to Mali, where he completed his schooling, before studying film at Russia's Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography in Moscow -- an institution that also boasts Aleksandr Sokurov and Andrei Tarkovsky among its alumni.
- 5/12/2014
- by Guy Lodge
- Hitfix
In American cinema, fate is often presented as a path leading to success – especially when it comes to love. People meet, fall head-over-heels for one another, experience a setback or two, then live happily ever after. In films outside of Hollywood, love stories are often more realistic, and more in tune with subjective experiences of love. In real life, you have to learn how to love. You have to know who you are before turning to others for deep-seated romantic connection. Love at first sight, though, does exist in real life. Maybe not a long-lasting, grow old together, kind of love; but a life-altering spark, where you absolutely need to experience a particular person. Blue is the Warmest Color deals with this kind of love. Similar to both her and Stranger by the Lake, Blue revolves around a character who is lost. Unlike those films, though, Blue is epic in scope.
- 3/2/2014
- by Griffin Bell
- SoundOnSight
Not quite a year after its memorable premiere at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, where it would snatch the Palme d’Or from the Steven Spielberg headed jury, Criterion adds Blue is the Warmest Color to the collection, of which Abdellatif Kechiche’s 2007 film The Secret of the Grain is also a part of. Shortly after Cannes and throughout the remainder of 2013, we witnessed a very public drama play out in the media between the director and stars of the film. Both damned and praised for its graphic, and (to some, arguably) realistic portrayal of sexuality and identity in its portrayal of a lesbian relationship, the difficulty of filming behind the scenes should come as no surprised considering the achievement at hand. And while untoward comments flew back and forth, both between the cast and crew and rankled critics, there’s nothing that can demean the superlative end product.
Kechiche returns...
Kechiche returns...
- 2/25/2014
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
Blue is the Color of My True Love’s Hair: Kechiche Takes Us Deep Sea, Baby
For his latest film, Abdellatif Kechiche returns to themes of love and maturation with Blue Is the Warmest Colour (La Vie d’Adele, Chapters 1&2), based on the graphic novel by Julie Maroh. As with other entries in the actor turned director’s filmography, his latest masterpiece sports a lofty running time, at nearly three hours covering a relatively small amount of time in one character’s life in the length of time that most epic sagas run out of steam. But if you give Kechiche your time, he hardly tries your patience, once again creating a beautiful, engrossing film that manages to capture human emotion like few others films ever have. Inordinately simple on paper, as, in essence this is a coming out drama, Kechiche understands how to pace, guiding us expertly as he...
For his latest film, Abdellatif Kechiche returns to themes of love and maturation with Blue Is the Warmest Colour (La Vie d’Adele, Chapters 1&2), based on the graphic novel by Julie Maroh. As with other entries in the actor turned director’s filmography, his latest masterpiece sports a lofty running time, at nearly three hours covering a relatively small amount of time in one character’s life in the length of time that most epic sagas run out of steam. But if you give Kechiche your time, he hardly tries your patience, once again creating a beautiful, engrossing film that manages to capture human emotion like few others films ever have. Inordinately simple on paper, as, in essence this is a coming out drama, Kechiche understands how to pace, guiding us expertly as he...
- 10/25/2013
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
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