European Film Awards: Festival Darlings score big in the Craft Categories

Cláudio Alves

Last month, the European Film Academy announced their nominations in the above-the-line categories, with The Zone of Interest and Fallen Leaves in the lead. Now, it was a time for the winners of their craft prizes, also known as the Excellence Awards. These honors are decided by a jury of eight from a pool of selected titles, and this year, there was some double-dipping afoot. Both The Promised Land and Society of the Snow scored two prizes, while the remaining awards were divided among pictures that premiered in competition at Cannes – Anatomy of a Fall, The Zone of Interest, La Chimera, and Club Zero…

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"Fallen Leaves" and "The Zone of Interest" lead the EFA nominations

by Cláudio Alves

Because of their specific focus and disconnection from the mainstream release calendar, the European Film Awards are rarely seen as part of the long road to Oscar. Then again, there's always the exception that proves the rule, and this year is exceptional, alright. Many Academy Award contenders showed up across the board, even beyond those submitted for the Best International Film category. Jonathan Glazer's The Zone of Interest and Aki Kaurismäki's Fallen Leaves, for instance, scored nominations for Picture, Director, Actress, Actor, and Screenplay. Sandra Hüller even managed to double-dip, getting recognized for this Nazi nightmare and her turn in Justine Triet's Palme d'Or winner, Anatomy of a Fall.

Discover the complete list of European Film Awards nominations, plus some additional commentary, after the jump…

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Middleburg 2023: Cannes holdovers and Sofia Coppola's "Priscilla"

by Lynn Lee

Hello TFE readers!  I’m back after some time away, having completed an intense one-year work assignment that left me barely enough time to keep up with the movies, let alone write about them.  To celebrate my return to normalcy, my husband and I spent a long weekend in Middleburg, VA, partly for relaxation (Middleburg’s a pretty little town in horse and wine country, ideal for a fall getaway) but mostly so I could get my fill of movies at the annual Middleburg Film Festival.  As Nathaniel’s reported in the past, for a relatively young, non-centrally located festival, Middleburg punches far above its weight.  It regularly manages to land many of the hot tickets out of Toronto, Telluride, Venice, and Cannes and has been a fairly reliable harbinger of what the Academy will like.  Like the other festivals, it was a bit less star-studded than usual this year due to the SAG-AFTRA strike, yet still generated plenty of excitement due to the sheer quality of the films.

Day One
The festival opened on a high note with this year’s Palme d’Or winner, Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall... 

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Gotham Awards Nominations: "Killers" Unsubmitted but Gladstone still IN

by Cláudio Alves

Though the Gotham Awards rarely correlate with the Academy, their nominations announcement often feels like the beginning of the awards season proper. That is especially true in a year like this, when the erstwhile champions of independent cinema have foregone budget caps, meaning studio productions are allowed into consideration. Still, some big Oscar contenders chose not to submit themselves for the Gothams, giving space for smaller pictures to thrive. Such was the case for Oppenheimer and Killers of the Flower Moon. Nevertheless, even with these limitations, the selection committee managed to honor Lily Gladstone…

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TIFF '23: Take a trip down to hell with "The Zone of Interest"

by Cláudio Alves

Jonathan Glazer's "The Zone of Interest"

For my first day at TIFF, I planned on starting things off with a Sandra Hüller double feature, the Palme d'Or-winning Anatomy of a Fall followed by The Zone of Interest. The first half of that plan went kaput soon enough, so instead I caught Warwick Thornton's The New Boy. Expect more thoughts on that title next week – for now, it's Glazer time. In any case, what started as a morning predicated on Croisette honors and a German superstar morphed into an extended exercise in how cinema confronts historical atrocities, how parallel realities can coexist within the same landscape, and how sound can force you to see what your eyes do not… 

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