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Fall festival favorites including “Manta Ray,” Jinpa,” and “Cities of Last Things” will line up in the main competition of next month’s Tokyo Filmex festival. The event runs Nov. 17-25 at venues in the Hibiya and Yurakucho suburbs of Tokyo.

Directed by Phuttiphong Aroonpheng “Manta Ray” recently won the Horizons award at the Venice festival. Pema Tseden’s “Jinpa” won the best screenplay award in the same section. Ho Wi Ding’s “Cities” won the best film prize in the Platform section at Toronto.

Other films making up the ten title competition section include: “Sibel,” by Turkey’s Cagla Zenkirci and Guillaume Giovanetti; “Ayka,” by Russia’s Sergei Dvortsevoy; Yeo Siew Hua’s Locarno Golden Leopard winner “A Land Imagined”; “A Family Tour,” by Ying Liang; “Long Days Journey Into Night,” directed by China’s Bi Gan, which had its premiere in Un Certain regard at Cannes; “An Elephant Sitting Still,...

Exclusive: Magic Lantern is billed as a story of love, obsession and cinema and is the first La-shot movie from influential Iranian filmmaker Amir Naderi. The official Venice Film Festival screening is tomorrow here on the Lido where Naderi won the Jaeger-LeCoultre Glory to the Filmmaker Award in 2016. It’s running in the Sconfini section.

Magic Lantern is exec produced by Ramin Bahrani with whom Naderi co-wrote HBO’s Fahrenheit 451 and feature 99 Homes. The story follows Mitch (newcomer Monk Serrell-Freed), a young film projectionist in Los Angeles who becomes haunted by the movie he’s showing. He sees himself on screen as the protagonist, falling in love with a mysterious girl (Vox Lux‘s Sophie Lane Curtis) who suddenly disappears.

Mitch embarks on a mission to find the girl, making his way through an increasingly dreamlike La, and encountering an array of strange characters — including a glamorous former film star played by Jacqueline Bisset.

Non-FictionThe programme for the 2018 edition of the Venice Film Festival has been unveiled, and includes new films from Tsai Ming-liang, Frederick Wiseman, Sergei Loznitsa, Olivier Assayas, the Coen Brothers, and many more.COMPETITIONFirst Man (Damien Chazelle)The Mountain (Rick Alverson)Non-Fiction (Olivier Assayas)The Sisters Brothers (Jacques Audiard)The Ballad of Buster ScruggsVox Lux (Brady Corbet)Roma (Alfonso Cuarón)22 July (Paul Greengrass)Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino)Werk ohne autor (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck)The Nightingale (Jennifer Kent)The Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos)Peterloo (Mike Leigh)Capri-revolution (Mario Martone)What You Gonna Do When the World's On Fire? (Roberto Minervini)Sunset (László Nemes)Frères ennemis (David Oeloffen)Where Life is Born (Carlos Reygadas)At Eternity's Gate (Julian Schnabel)Acusada (Gonzalo Tobal)Killing (Shinya Tsukamoto)Out Of COMPETITIONFeaturesThe Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles)They'll Love Me When I'm Dead (Morgan Neville)L'amica geniale (Saverio Costanzo)Il diario di angela - noi...

The Venice Film Festival is celebrating its 75th year in 2018 with a star-studded lineup that includes world premieres from Damien Chazelle, Bradley Cooper, Luca Guadagnino, and Alfonso Cuarón. The festival takes place August 29 to September 8 and marks the official kickoff of the 2018 fall awards season.

As has been previously announced, Damien Chazelle will open the festival with the world premiere of “First Man.” The space race drama stars Chazelle’s “La La Land” Oscar nominee Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong and recounts the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. The world premiere will be Chazelle’s second Venice opener after “La La Land.” Also confirmed prior to the announcement lineup was Bradley Cooper’s “A Star Is Born,” which marks the actor’s directorial debut.

Check out the full lineup for the 2018 Venice Film Festival below. This year’s competition jury is led by Guillermo del Toro, who won the...

The festival runs from August 29 – September 8.

The line-up of the 75th Venice Film Festival (August 29 – September 8) is being announced today at around 10am GMT.

The titles will be revealed at a press conference which is being live-streamed.

As previously announced, Damien Chazelle’s ‘First Man’ will open the festival in competition.

Bradley Cooper’s directorial debut A Star Is Born will also have its world premiere out-of-competition at the event.

We’ll update this story with the films as they are announced below. Refresh the page to get the latest titles.

Orizzonti

Sulla Mia Pelle (Alessio Cremonini) Kraben Rahu/Manta...

In today’s film news roundup, Tony Kaye is attached to a crime drama, Brandon Sklenar gets a role in “Indigo Valley,” Orion Classics buys “Clara’s Ghost,” and romcom “Paper Friends” has started shooting in New York City.

Director Attachment

British director Tony Kaye has come on board to helm the independent crime drama “Honorable Men,” Variety has learned exclusively.

The film is being produced by Life Entertainment with producers Sam Khoze, Justin Steele, and Patrick McErlean along with the Film House and producer Ryan R. Johnson.

Kaye’s directing credits include “American History X,” “Black Water Transit,” and “Detachment.” He did not approve of the final cut of “American History X” and tried unsuccessfully to have his name removed as director of the movie, for which Edward Norton received an Oscar nomination.

Kaye also received six Grammy nominations for music videos such as Johnny Cash’s “God’s...

The Magic Lantern is a device that dates back to the 1600s — and possibly the 1400s — and was used to project static images. According to the modern day Magic Lantern Society, Danish mathematician Thomas Rasmussen Walgensten was the first person to use the term “Laterna Magica” in the mid-1600s to describe his image projection device. Magic lanterns were routinely used to put on “super-natural” shows, such as projecting images of ghosts onto smoke; and an illustration from 1420 shows a lantern-like device projecting an image of the devil.

In the early 1900s, occultist Aleister Crowley founded the religion Thelema and used the word “magick” to differentiate his occult rituals from the more common concept of performance “magic.”

Marrying these two concepts together, avant-garde filmmaker Kenneth Anger has used the phrase “Magick Lantern Cycle” to collect his separate short films under a unifying connective umbrella.

The Underground Film Journal has been...