Interview: 'Goddamned Asura' director Lou Yi-an on his multi-layered crime drama

by Juan Carlos Ojano

Inspired by a 2014 real-life killing, Goddamned Asura explores the lives of six people involved in a ramdom shooting in a night market, including the perpetrator - a troubled teenager named Jan Wen. The film follows not only the lead-up to the shooting incident, but also the aftermath of the characters as they face the repercussions of the actions of Jan Wen.The result is a somber exploration of class, isolation, and violence that is unfortunately still timely and universal.

Goddamned Asura is Taiwan's official submission for Best International Feature Film at the 95th Academy Awards. In this interview, co-writer and director Lou Yi-an expounds on the origins and themes of the story as well as explaining some terms with their cultural context compared to their English translation...

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"World War III" and other new titles join the Oscar race

Bosnia, Iran, Nepal, Portugal, and Romania have announced their submissions to the 95th Oscars. Here's a little info about those choices... 

🇮🇷 WORLD WAR III (Houman Seyyedi)
IRAN  (3 nominations, 2 wins, and 2 additional finalists from 28 submissions)

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TIFF: Austria’s Oscar entry ‘Corsage’ starring Vicky Krieps

By Abe Friedtanzer

Actress Vicky Krieps, who was introduced to American audiences in a big way in a performance that should have earned her an Oscar nomination for Phantom Thread, is getting a lot of work lately. She had a prominent role in M. Night Shyamalan’s Old and stars in Mathieu Amalric’s Hold Me Tight, which is now playing in theaters. Most notably, she tied for the best performance prize in the 'Un Certain Regard' section at Cannes this summer for Corsage. It's a movie she both conceived of and executive produced, and now it's become Austria’s official Oscar entry.

Krieps plays Elisabeth, the Empress of Austria in 1878. The popular royal figurehead is turning forty, and she’s also watching her life slip away as her husband, Emperor Franz Joseph (Florian Teichtmeister), relegates her to uninteresting duties that don’t serve any true purpose...

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7 new Oscar submissions for Best International Feature

We're now up to 40 submissions in the upcoming Oscar race for Best International Feature Film. You can see the full charts here but if that's too much all at once for you, here are the latest countries to announce from Armenia to Slovakia, some going with films that are currently playing at TIFF...

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Yes No Maybe So: "The Fabelmans" and "Glass Onion"

by Nathaniel R

It's hard to keep up in September with festival premieres, Oscar news, and fresh trailers arriving daily. The strangest thing about September though is how future-oriented everything is. It's not about what people have access to now (theaters start crawling out of their current wasteland Friday) but what they might be talking about in December and January. Which makes September feel like foreplay without pleasure. But October is just around the corner and things get significantly more in-the-moment the further into the last quarter we get. Still trailers have their own kind of anticipatory pleasure. So today let's talk The Fabelmans which is getting raves from the first responders at TIFF...

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