Ten Highlights from IndieLisboa

by Cláudio Alves

Dear reader, if you've noticed my relative absence in these early days of May, I can only apologize. I've been busy covering the 20th edition of the IndieLisboa film festival in the Portuguese capital. The event is a grand affair for the celebration of national and international independent cinema, with multiple competitive sections and prizes at the end of it all. This year's international competition winner was Juraj Lerotic's Safe Place, which I wrote about last year when reviewing various International Film Oscar submissions. Other titles should be less familiar to The Film Experience's readership, so this feels like an excellent opportunity to offer recommendations and spread the word on some nifty flicks. 

From an out-of-focus Hong Sang-soo experiment to an extensive Jan Švankmajer retrospective, from shorts to features, a little over 300 films made up the festival's program. Having watched roughly a third of those, here are ten highlights…

Click to read more ...

The complete Cannes jury is finally here

by Cláudio Alves

The 76th edition of the Cannes Film Festival is scheduled for this month, from the 16th to the 27th, featuring new films from many of the world's foremost auteurs. Following recent tradition, here at The Film Experience, Elisa Giudicci will be covering the festival at the Croisette, while I'll offer parallel programming through the Cannes at Home miniseries. It's always interesting to explore works from the competing directors, be they this year's offerings or past efforts. Another point of curiosity is the end of that competition when the festival's main jury will reward one of the 21 selected directors with the Palme d'Or. We might even see a past victor repeat their triumph.

That happened at the last edition when Ruben Östlund won his second Cannes with Triangle of Sadness. So, it's only logical that he was invited to preside over this edition's jury, something we've known for weeks. The rest of the jury, however, was only revealed today…

Click to read more ...

"Elemental" to close Cannes

by Nathaniel R

Pixar's Elemental will close the Cannes Film Festival this year (Out of Competition) on May 27th before hitting theaters on June 16th. If you missed the original Cannes lineup post, that's here. The only other Pixar features to premiere at Cannes were Up, Soul, and Inside Out. Elemental is directed by Peter Sohn (The Good Dinosaur) 

In other TFE-specific Cannes news, our favourite Italian Elisa Giudici will be covering the festival again for us this year and we couldn't be happier about that. Stay tuned for more on Cannes.

Michelle Yeoh for Meihodo

by Nathaniel R

Some people never sleep. Michelle Yeoh, recently Oscar crowned, must surely be one of them. The jetsetting movie star works on mutiple tv shows and movies each year and still has time for extra-curriculars. The latest is the Guest of Honor gig later this month in Japan (date TBA) at the fifth annual Meihodo Youth Visual Media Festival. The annual festival gives out medals as well as cash funding in three short film categories: Narrative, Documentary, and Music Video.

The press release is after the jump...

Click to read more ...

Discounts to "IFFF"

BEAUTIFUL BEINGS (Iceland's Oscar Submission)For those of you who like to be completists with Oscar's Best International Feature Film race there's a new virtual film festival you should know about. Being a completist or even seeing a good chunk of the movies is a tough thing to do within any Oscar season given the amount of submissions we generally get (90+) and the unpredictable distribution of those exact same movies. Rodrigo Gutierrez created "International Feature Film Festival" to help with this. About a third of the films on last season's Oscar submission list have been available at one time or another on demand, streaming, or in theaters in the US but the others have been more difficult to find.

For the first edition of IFFF (which runs April 6th-23rd) thirteen of the submissions that haven't yet been distributed in the US or Canada are showing. The list of the films and discounted ticket codes are after the jump... 

Click to read more ...