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This year, women directors – and their women-centric subjects – swept the awards at Sundance Film Festival. Three women directors – Madeleine Gavin, Maryam Keshavarz, and Noora Niasari – won Audience Awards for their films on North Korea (“Beyond Utopia”), intergenerational motherhood (“The Persian Version”), and custody in diaspora (“Shayda”). Portraits of masculinity were also celebrated as well. First-time feature filmmaker Sing J. Lee won the Directing Award for his touching portrait of masculinity and fatherhood in “The Accidental Getaway Driver,” while Sauvnik Kaur’s intimate documentary on brotherhood “Against The Tide” took home a Special Jury Award. After two years of isolation and virtual festival-ing, it seems that stories of tenderness appealed over aggressive storytelling at Park City this year.

“This year’s Festival has been an extraordinary experience,” said Joana Vicente, Sundance Institute CEO. “The artists that comprise the 2023 Sundance Film Festival have demonstrated a sense of urgency and dedication to excellence in independent film.

2020 will go down in history for many things. The pandemic. The US elections. Rat-filled sinkholes. But 2020 will also go down in history as the year of Asian cinema: when Bong Joon-ho’s “Parasite” (2019) became the first non-English language film to win the coveted Academy Award for Best Picture; when Ann Hui was recognized with the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement Award at Venice Film Festival; when Mohammad Rasoulof’s Iranian drama “There Is No Evil” (2020) won Berlinale’s Golden Bear. And this is not even to mention the stellar achievements we’ve had at Asian Movie Pulse as well – including a new partnership with Mubi, a curated arthouse streaming service, and 1000 followers on Instagram. Now, we just want to take a step back to reflect on this year.

Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah — arguably the first major event to kick off the film festival circuit — gave us a...

Killer Ratings: Bakhshi Brings Reality Television Gimmickry to Morbid, Potential Levels

To err is human, to forgive divine—or so we’ve come to accept as a given. But the privilege and erstwhile sanctimonious hue of forgiveness is examined at fever pitch in Iranian director Massoud Bakhshi’s sophomore production Yalda, a Night for Forgiveness, a co-production with France, Germany, Switzerland and Luxembourg which took home the Grand Jury Prize in Sundance’s 2020 World Dramatic Competition. Reality television makes for cerebral gladiatorial sport in this troubling, entirely feasible conception, and promises to elevate the profile of Bakhshi, whose well-received 2012 debut, A Respectable Family, premiered in Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes.…...

Film Movement has taken U.S. rights to Naomi Kawase’s “True Mothers” which is Japan’s entry for the international feature film race at the Oscars.

The affecting family drama was part of Cannes 2020’s Official Selection and went on to play at Toronto, San Sebastian and Chicago film festivals. “True Mothers” will have a theatrical rollout in 2021, followed by release on all home entertainment and digital platforms.

Penned by Kawase and based on Mizuki Tsujimura’s bestselling novel of the same name, “True Mothers” tells the story of a young couple, Satoko and her husband Kiyokazu, who after a long and painful experience with fertility treatment decide to adopt a child. Six years later, they get a threatening phone call from a woman pretending to be the biological mother of the child and threatening to extort money from them.

“We’re thrilled to acquire Naomi’s latest masterwork,...

Yalda, A Night For Forgiveness Film Movement Reviewed for Shockya.com & BigAppleReviews.net linked from Rotten Tomatoes by: Harvey Karten Director: Massoud Bakhshi Writer: Massoud Bakhshi Cast: Sadaf Asgari, Behnaz Jafari, Fereshteh Sadre Orafaiy, Babak Karimi, Faghiheh Soltani, Arman Darvish Screened at: Critics’ link, NYC, 11/6/20 Opens: December 11, 2020 If you think that the United […]

The post Yalda, A Night For Forgiveness Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

The initiative is a good pointer to next year’s festival favourites.

International festival directors, sales agents, distributors and producers tuned in online to the Coming Soon pitch event at the auspicious TorinoFilmLab (Tfl) this week.

Of the eight feature projects, six were unfinished, in post-production or never seen before.

Unusually for Coming Soon and due to unprecedented circumstances of this year, a further two had already played at festivals: El Father Plays Himself (Visions du Réel) and The Salt In Our Water (Busan and London).

Previous Coming Soon selections of recent years have included Massoud Bakhshi’s Yalda...

The initiative is a good pointer to next year’s festival favourites.

International festival directors, sales agents, distributors and producers tuned in online to the Coming Soon pitch event at the auspicious Torino Film Lab this week.

Of the eight feature projects, six were unfinished, in post-production or never seen before. Unusually for Coming Soon and due to unprecedented circumstances of this year, a further two had already played at festivals: El Father Plays Himself ( Visions du Réel) and The Salt in Our Water ( Busan and London).

Previous Coming Soon selections of recent years have included Massoud Bakhshi’s...

Iranian multi-hyphenate Babak Karimi is an actor, film editor, and academic who won the Berlin Silver Bear in 2011 for playing the judge in “A Separation,” one of several films in which he stars directed by his friend Asghar Farhadi.

Karimi also appears in the drama “Yalda, a Night for Forgiveness” by Massoud Bakhshi, which has circulated widely after winning a prize at Sundance earlier this year, and in Shahram Mokri’s “Careless Crime,” which since launching from Venice has sold to several countries including Germany and Italy. He recently also performed with Sophia Loren in “The Life Ahead,” an experience that Karimi “never imagined fate would have me live,” he says.

Karimi, who has close ties to Italy, is being honored with a lifetime achievement award by Rome’s MedFilm Festival. He spoke exclusively to Variety from Tehran about how Iran’s film community is reacting to Donald Trump’s...

The 9th edition of the Dharamshala Film Festival is going online for the first time. Its highlights include the Indian premiere of Massoud Bakhshi’s Sundance grand jury prize winner “Yalda, a Night for Forgiveness,” and a conversation with Oscar-winner Asif Kapadia (“Amy”).

Nestled in the foothills of the Himalayas, Dharamshala is best known internationally as the seat of the Dalai Lama, who has been based there since being exiled from Tibet in 1959. The festival directors Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam are filmmakers in their own right. Their chronicles of the Tibetan condition like 2005’s “Dreaming Lhasa,” 2010’s “The Sun Behind the Clouds: Tibet’s Struggle for Freedom” and 2018’s “The Sweet Requiem” have received considerable festival play, including at Toronto and Manila.

The Dharamshala festival directors will be in conversation with Kapadia and also with Chaitanya Tamhane, director of this year’s Venice and Toronto award-winning title “The Disciple.

Jasmila Žbanić’s “Quo Vadis, Aida?” and Azra Deniz Okyay’s “Ghosts” won best film in the international and national competitions, respectively, at Turkey’s Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival, the 57th edition of which concluded on Saturday.

Unable to attend the festival due to the pandemic, Žbanić sent a video message in which she said: “This film came about through the collaboration of nine different countries. I emphasize this because I think now, more than ever, we need to show that we’re trying to understand each other better by telling our different stories together. This award will help the film to be watched by more people, as well as bringing us together through our love of cinema and for each other.”

Iranian director Massoud Bakhshi won best director for “Yalda, a Night for Forgiveness.” Natasa Stork won best actress for “Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time.

Read about all the leading titles coming to cinemas.

France, opening Wednesday October 7

Mainstream French comedies and dramas topped the release schedule in France once again this week, in the absence of US studio titles.

The biggest release of the week was romantic comedy The ABCs Of Love for Ugc Distribution on some 480 prints. Rising star Vincent Dedienne plays a thirtysomething babysitter, who unwittingly gets entangled in the parent teacher association of the school that his nine-year-old charge attends but finds love along the way.

Other local features included long triangle drama Dreamchild, starring Jalil Lespert, Louise Bourgoin and Mélanie Doutey...

The Pingyao International Film Festival, founded by Chinese helmer Jia Zhangke and former Venice head Marco Muller, has released its full lineup of global and local films. The selections in the two main sections focus on first or second features.

The festival is set to take place from Oct. 10-19 in the ancient city of Pingyao in central Shanxi province, not far from Jia’s own hometown. Few foreigners will be present, as China continues to maintain travel and quarantine restrictions for those entering the country, despite lifting some measures.

A dozen films are set to compete in the international “Crouching Tigers” section. They include a number of titles that first bowed at Venice: “Residue,” from American director Merawi Gerima, which debuted to a special mention earlier this month in the independent Venice Days section before being picked up by Ava DuVernay’s film company and released on Netflix; “The Book of Vision,...

Turkey’s 57th Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival is forging ahead with a hybrid edition this year that will feature a mix of the best new Turkish features and cherry-picked international titles.

The storied event being held Oct. 3-10 in the bustling resort city on Turkey’s Southern coast has been through a spell of politically-prompted turbulence that led to the appointment last year of new fest chief Ahmet Boyacıoğlu and artistic director Başak Emre, who both stated that “Return to Roots” would be their mantra as they took the helm.

That’s because the 2017 and 2018 editions, headed by British-Irish producer Mike Downey, had done away with the national competition, historically the backbone of Turkey’s oldest and most prominent film event.

Therefore lots of locals during those two years “boycotted the festival” since Turkish cinema, which had been folded into the international lineup, “was practically out,” says Boyacıoğlu, who...

Film Movement has acquired North American rights to “Rose Plays Julie,” an Irish psychological thriller directed by Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor. The movie world premiered at the London Film Festival.

Starring Ann Skelly (“The Nevers”), Orla Brady and Aidan Gillen, “Rose Plays Julie” revolves around young woman seeking her biological mother who journeys into dangerous territory. The movie follows Rose, a young student who has enjoyed a loving relationship with her adoptive parents but feels the urge to travel from Dublin to London to confront her biological mother who has no wish to have any contact.

The movie will be released theatrically by Film Movement during the first quarter of 2021, followed by a release on all home entertainment and digital platforms. The announcement was made by Michael Rosenberg, president of Film Movement and Carl Clifton, president of Hyde Park International, which is handling worldwide rights.

“Rose Plays Julie” is...

Massoud Bakhshi was born in Tehran in 1972. Before he rose to international fame with his first feature “A Respectable Family” (2012), he had already made a name for himself as the director of many short features as well as documentaries. In his stories, he tackles themes of Iranian life and society.

In his 2019 feature “Yalda” he tells the story of two women, one convicted of murder and the other one the daughter of her victim, put in an unusual situation when the case is re-opened during the broadcast of a live TV show, in which the victim may be forgiven.

On the occasion of “Yalda” cinematic release in Germany, we talked with the director about the inspiration of the film, how it reflects the Iranian society, the casting process and other topics.

To begin with, could you tell us something about Shab-e Yalda and its significance for your film?

Shab-e Yalda is a pre-Islamic celebration,...

Shab-e Yalda or Shab-e Chelleh takes place in the night of winter solstice and is an old traditional festivity, practiced in Afghanistan, Iran and Tajikistan. It is a time to celebrate with the family, to get together, read traditional poetry and connect to the lighting of a big fire which should resemble light and hope in this night which is supposed to be the longest and darkest. According to Iranian director Massoud Bakhshi, the custom has always held a certain fascination for him, rooting back to his childhood when he celebrated Shab-e Yalda with his family in Tehran. The idea of hope as symbolized by the event was also a main inspiration for his 2019 feature “Yalda”, a story about forgiveness, but also how tradition creates a front for repression, antiquated concepts of gender and revenge as well as the exploitation of misery performed by the media.

On the night of...

Drama also nominated for Generation 14-plus Crystal Bear in Berlin.

Film Movement has picked up all Us rights from Pyramide International to Yalda, A Night For Forgiveness, winner of this year’s world cinema dramatic competition grand jury prize at Sundance.

The distributor plans to release Iranian director Massoud Bakhshi’s second dramatic feature theatrically in the fourth quarter of this year, followed by home entertainment and digital launches.

Yalda was also nominated for the Generation 14-plus Crystal Bear at the Berlinale and takes place almost entirely within the studio of Iran’s most popular reality TV show, Joy Of Forgiveness.

The firm’s line-up boasts 13 films, including four new, forthcoming titles, plus the Sundance winner Yalda, a Night for Forgiveness and Sow the Wind in the selection. Always in a very strong position when it comes to quality arthouse films, French international sales agent Pyramide International (headed up by Eric Lagesse) will have myriad trump cards to negotiate deals for at the European Film Market of the 70th Berlinale (20 February-1 March). Standing out among them are two films selected for the festival programme itself, particularly the captivating Yalda, a Night for Forgiveness by Iran’s Massoud Bakhshi, a mostly European production that was recently crowned with the Grand Jury Prize in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at the Sundance Film Festival and which will be screened as part of the Berlinale’s Generation programme. Pyramide will also be pinning its hopes on a title that will be world-premiered in Panorama: Sow.

The way religious law penetrates every aspect of Iranian life, from a murder case to how a TV show is run, is probably the most striking aspect of Yalda, a Night for Forgiveness. The perverse logic of temporary marriage, inheritance laws favoring boys and homicide laws stacked against wives, not to mention the practice of paying one’s way out of a hanging with “blood money” to the victim’s relatives, become casual plot elements in this well-shot, cleverly scripted melodrama. Filmmaker Massoud Bakhshi (A Respectable Family), who wrote and directed, took home the Grand Jury Prize in the World ...

The way religious law penetrates every aspect of Iranian life, from a murder case to how a TV show is run, is probably the most striking aspect of Yalda, a Night for Forgiveness. The perverse logic of temporary marriage, inheritance laws favoring boys and homicide laws stacked against wives, not to mention the practice of paying one’s way out of a hanging with “blood money” to the victim’s relatives, become casual plot elements in this well-shot, cleverly scripted melodrama. Filmmaker Massoud Bakhshi (A Respectable Family), who wrote and directed, took home the Grand Jury Prize in the World ...

Minari Photo: Courtesy of Sundance Institute As the 2020 edition of the Sundance Film Festival, there was consensus between the audience and jury, with Lee Isaac Chung's Minari taking home the Us Grand Jury Prize and the section's Audience Award. The film, which is semi-autobiographical, tells the story of a young Korean-American boy who moves to rural Arkansas with his family, including his quirky grandma.

The Us Documentary Grand Jury Prize went to Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine's Boys State, which charts an experiment to build a representative government among Texas teenagers, while the Audience Award in the category was taken home by disability rights documentary Crip Camp, directed by Jim LeBrecht and Nicole Newnham.

I Carry You With Me - charting a decades-spanning love story and  directed by Heidi Ewing - won the Next Audience and Innovator award.

In the World Competitions, the Grand Jury Prize went to Yalda,...

World Cinema Dramatic entries Surge, Cuties among winners.

Mexican missing persons drama Identifying Features has won the World Cinema Dramatic audience award and the section’s juried screenplay prize for director Fernanda Valadez and co-writer Astrid Rondero at the Sundance awards ceremony.

Saturday’s (February 1) event in Park City, Utah, also honoured the UK’s Ben Whishaw with the World Cinema Dramatic special jury award for acting for Aneil Karia’s Surge, which Protagonist Pictures sells internationally, while Cuties on the Netflix slate from director Maïmouna Doucouré won the World Cinema Dramatic directing award.

Kino Lorber acquired North American rights...

The narrative feature “Minari” and the documentary “Boys State” have won the top prizes from the U.S. jury at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, which announced its winners at an awards ceremony on Saturday night. “Minari,” director Lee Isaac Chung’s coming-of-age story about a Korean-American boy, also won the festival’s audience award.

The only other films to win more than one award were “Identifying Features” (“Sin Senas Particulares”), Fernanda Valadez’s drama about a Mexican woman searching for a son who disappeared while attempting to cross the border; and “I Carry You With Me,” in which documentary director Heidi Ewing makes her narrative feature debut about an aspiring Mexican chef whose life changes when his sexuality becomes public. “Identifying Features” won the audience award in the World Cinema Dramatic section and a jury award for its screenplay, while “I Carry You With Me” won the audience award in...

The Sundance Film Festival concluded with the announcement of its grand jury awards, honoring Lee Isaac Chung’s “Minari,” a semi-autobiographical glimpse into the Korean American director’s Arkansas upbringing, and “Boys State,” an immersive vérité look at an impassioned class of politically inclined Texas teens who participate in an annual mock-government competition.

Ethan Hawke and his fellow U.S. dramatic competition jurors Wash Westmoreland and Rodrigo Garcia gave the directing prize to Radha Blank for her “The 40-Year-Old Version.”

Caught off-guard by the award, Blank riffed, “Anybody who feels there’s an expiration on a passion, f— that shit. If it’s in you to be a rapper, a parent, a director in your 40s, do that sh–.” Many of the night’s speeches reflected similar attitudes, as directors who’d confronted discrimination in order to make their films shared their experiences from the podium.

The U.S. dramatic...

As I hinted at in my first dispatch, co-creation has been buzzy in documentary circles of late, with gatekeepers and filmmakers both interested in finding ways of working that challenge the decision-making processes of nonfiction filmmaking. This year’s Sundance was also chock full of filmmakers who started out in documentary and have recently moved into fiction; Canon even sponsored a panel featuring Matt Heineman on this very topic. One of these films was Yalda, a Night of Forgiveness, an ingeniously conceptualized, impeccably acted and tightly shot single location piece, it both buys into and subverts crucial elements of thriller, reality […]...

As I hinted at in my first dispatch, co-creation has been buzzy in documentary circles of late, with gatekeepers and filmmakers both interested in finding ways of working that challenge the decision-making processes of nonfiction filmmaking. This year’s Sundance was also chock full of filmmakers who started out in documentary and have recently moved into fiction; Canon even sponsored a panel featuring Matt Heineman on this very topic. One of these films was Yalda, a Night of Forgiveness, an ingeniously conceptualized, impeccably acted and tightly shot single location piece, it both buys into and subverts crucial elements of thriller, reality […]...

Imagine a high-ratings, high-stakes game show that trivializes a convict’s life-or-death fate for public consumption. As wild as it sounds, a version of this reality TV entertainment apparently really exists in modern-day Iran, where writer-director Massoud Bakhshi’s “Yalda, a Night for Forgiveness” is set, and where a wildly popular edition of it has been airing for nearly a decade. Using that as an inspiration, Bakhshi unfolds “Yalda” entirely within one such controversial televised program, while navigating concepts like male entitlement, social order and media exploitation with mixed results. Even though there are multifarious ideas here around penitence and forgiveness as linchpins of Islam, “Yalda” eventually neglects the darker avenues of these themes wrapped inside an eye-for-an-eye justice model, guided by a firm religious code.

It’s a shame, since “Yalda” gets off to an absorbing start with the story of Maryam (Sadaf Asgari), a vulnerable young woman on...

Final titles revealed for the Generation Kplus and Generation 14plus strands.

The Berlin International Film Festival (Feb 20-Mar 1) has revealed the final raft of titles that will comprise its Generation strand and confirmed that 58% of the features and shorts in the youth section are directed by women.

Scroll down for full list of titles

It follows a recent announcement that more than 50% of the films in the official project selection of the Berlinale Co-Production Market are from female directors.

The 43rd edition of Berlin’s Generation sidebar will comprise 59 competition entries from 34 countries, including 29 world premieres.

After revealing 20 films in the strand last month,...

Massoud Bakhshi’s second feature, “Yalda, a Night for Forgiveness,” has its world premiere in Sundance’s World Cinema Dramatic Competition, to be screened without the director.

The pic’s production company, Jba Production, and sales outfit, Pyramide International, issued a joint statement on Jan. 14 explaining that the director won’t be attending due to the U.S.-Iran crisis, adding that Bakhshi’s “position is delicate, given the current tensions between the two countries.”

In an exclusive interview with Variety, Jba Production’s Jacques Bidou and Marianne Dumoulin, chronicled the complex task of producing Bakhshi’s second feature. They also produced his 2012 Cannes-player, “A Respectable Family,” about corruption in his country, which is still banned in Iran.

Bidou and Dumoulin have been working together for 27 years and as joint producers at Jba Production for the past 20 years. They have produced 44 feature films, shot in 22 countries, and have enjoyed a...