SUNDANCE SELECTS TAKES NORTH AMERICAN RIGHTS TO DAVID FRANCE’S HOW TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE

Park City, UT (January 26, 2012) – Sundance Selects announced today from the 2012 Sundance Film Festival that the company is acquiring North American rights to David France’s documentary HOW TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE. The film, with a screenplay by France, T. Woody Richman, and Tyler H. Walk, was produced by France and Howard Gertler. Joy Tomchin and Dan Cogan executive produced the project, which was made in association with Ford Foundation/JustFilms, Impact Partners, and Little Punk.

Faced with their own mortality, an improbable group of mostly HIV-positive young men and women broke the mold as radical warriors taking on Washington and the medical establishment. How to Survive a Plague is the story of two coalitions—ACT UP and TAG (Treatment Action Group)—whose activism and innovation turned AIDS from a death sentence into a manageable condition. Despite having no scientific training, these self-made activists infiltrated the pharmaceutical industry and helped identify promising new drugs, moving them from experimental trials to patients in record time. Having pursued and unearthed a treasure trove of never-before-seen archival footage from the 1980s and ’90s, filmmaker France puts the viewer smack in the middle of the controversial actions, the heated meetings, the heartbreaking failures, and the exultant breakthroughs of heroes in the making.

Jonathan Sehring, President of Sundance Selects/IFC Films, said: “This is a towering film in the history of cinema about social activism. It’s astonishing use of archival material to reconstruct an era of political indifference in the face of an unimaginable health crisis helps to create a new blueprint for modern activists. David France has made a deeply powerful and unforgettable film which we look forward to bringing to the widest audience possible.”

“I am thrilled we’re beginning this film’s journey with Sundance Selects, whose impressive track record promoting important films has found new audiences for documentaries,” said France. “We couldn’t be in better hands.”

“Their passion and vision for releasing the film has wowed us,” added Gertler.

Executive Producer Joy Tomchin commented: “With Sundance Selects this remarkable story of heroism will have the long life it deserves.”

The deal for the film was negotiated by Arianna Bocco, Senior Vice President of Acquisitions & Productions for Sundance Selects/IFC Films and Betsy Rodgers, Senior Vice President of Business and Legal Affairs for Sundance Selects/IFC Films with Josh Braun, David Koh, Dan Braun and Dan O’Meara of Submarine on behalf of the filmmakers.

Sundance Selects is a sister division to IFC Films and IFC Midnight, and is owned and operated by AMC Networks Inc.

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About SUNDANCE SELECTS

Established in 2009 and based in New York City, Sundance Selects is a leading U.S. distributor of prestige films focusing on American independents, documentaries and world cinema.  Its unique distribution model makes independent prestige films available to a national audience by releasing them in theaters as well as on cable’s Video On Demand (VOD) platform, reaching nearly 50 million homes. Some of the company’s successes include Sundance audience award-winner and one of NBR’s top five films of 2011, BUCK, Academy Award® winner Errol Morris’ documentary TABLOID, and Werner Herzog’s 3D documentary CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS, which at $5.2 million and counting has become the company’s biggest grossing success since MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING and the number one indie documentary of the year. The film also was named Best Documentary by the New York Film Critics Circle, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, Washington D.C. Film Critics, and the NY Film Critics Online.  The distributor is also behind Sundance award-winning THE BLACK POWER MIXTAPE: 1967-1974, SXSW award-winner WEEKEND, director Wim Wenders’ 3D PINA which is Germany’s Official entry to the 2012 Academy Awards, Werner Herzog’s acclaimed documentary INTO THE ABYSS, Cannes Grand Prix winner THE KID WITH A BIKE directed by the Dardennes brothers, and Maiwenn’s Cannes Prix du Jury winner POLISS. Sundance Selects is a sister division to IFC Films and IFC Midnight, and is owned and operated by AMC Networks Inc.

IFC FILMS TAKES NORTH AMERICAN RIGHTS TO

ANTONIO CAMPOS’ SIMON KILLER

Park City, UT (January 27, 2012) – IFC Films announced today from the 2012 Sundance Film Festival that the company is acquiring North American rights to director Antonio Campos’ SIMON KILLER. The film, with a screenplay also by Campos, stars Brady Corbet, Mati Diop, Michael Abiteboul, Constance Rousseau, and Lila Salet. The picture was produced by Josh Mond and Sean Durkin of Borderline Films and Matt Palmieri, who also financed through his FilmHaven Entertainment banner. The two companies previously collaborated on the critical sensation, MARTHA, MARCY, MAY, MARLENE.

In SIMON KILLER, a recent college graduate goes to Paris after breaking up with his girlfriend of five years. His life should be open-ended and full of promise, but he can’t shake his feelings of loss. Being a stranger in a strange land only aggravates his situation. When he falls in love with a young mysterious prostitute, a fateful journey begins, though we soon learn that Simon is the one with deeper secrets.

Jonathan Sehring, President of Sundance Selects/IFC Films, said: “SIMON KILLER is powerful, visceral filmmaking that confirms Antonio Campos as one of the most exciting young directors working today. The film is powered not only by his incredible style but also by a tour-de-force performance by Brady Corbet. We really look forward to working with the powerhouse team of Antonio, Brady, Josh Mond, Sean Durkin, and Matt Palmieri to reveal this amazing film to audiences all over North America.”

Noted Campos: “I’m very excited that Simon Killer has found a perfect home at IFC Films. They will give the film a theatrical release in its original, uncensored form, and their passion and enthusiasm has really moved us. They released our first film, AFTERSCHOOL, and it is an honor to once again be in the company of such a distinguished group of filmmakers who have called IFC their home.”

The deal for the film was negotiated by Arianna Bocco, Senior Vice President of Acquisitions & Productions for Sundance Selects/IFC Films with CAA and UTA Independent Film Group on behalf of the filmmakers.

IFC Films is a sister division to IFC Midnight and Sundance Selects, and is owned and operated by AMC Networks Inc.

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About IFC FILMS

Established in 2000 and based in New York City, IFC Films is a leading U.S. distributor of quality talent-driven independent film.  Its unique distribution model makes independent films available to a national audience by releasing them in theaters as well as on cable’s Video On Demand (VOD) platform, reaching nearly 50 million homes. Some of the company’s successes over the years have included My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Y Tu Mama Tambien, Touching the Void, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Gomorrah, Che, Summer Hours, Antichrist, In the Loop, Antichrist, Wordplay, Cairo Time, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, Tiny Furniture and Carlos.  Over the years, IFC Films has worked with established and breakout auteurs, including Steven Soderbergh, Gus Van Sant, Spike Lee, Richard Linklater, Miranda July, Lars Von Trier, Gaspar Noe, Todd Solondz, Cristian Mungiu, Susanne Bier, Olivier Assayas, Jim McKay, Larry Fessenden, Gregg Araki, Jacques Rivette, Claude Chabrol, as well as more recent breakouts such as Andrea Arnold, Mia Hansen Love, Corneliu Porombiou, Joe Swanberg, Barry Jenkins, Lena Dunham, Aaron Katz, Daryl Wein and Abdellatif Kechiche. IFC Films is a sister division to Sundance Selects and IFC Midnight, and is owned and operated by AMC Networks Inc.

IFC MIDNIGHT TAKES NORTH AMERICAN RIGHTS TO

WRITER-DIRECTOR NICHOLAS MCCARTHY’S THE PACT

Park City, UT (January 26, 2012) – IFC Midnight announced today from the 2012 Sundance Film Festival that the company is acquiring North American rights, to writer-director Nicholas McCarthy’s THE PACT. The film, which premiered in the festival’s Midnight section on January 20, stars Caity Lotz, Casper Van Dien, Haley Hudson, Kathleen Rose Perkins, Sam Ball, and Agnes Bruckner. The film was produced by Preferred Content’s Ross M. Dinerstein, and executive produced by Jamie Carmichael at Content, as part of a new multi-film financing deal between Preferred Content and Content Film.

THE PACT follows sisters Nicole and Annie who reluctantly return to their childhood home when their mother passes away to pay their last respects. While staying overnight in the house, the sisters sense a mysterious presence in their midst: noises startling them in the night, objects moving about, a fallen picture of an unknown woman posed next to their mother. Annie begins experiencing a series of intense and disturbing dreams ­ visions that lead her to uncover something terrible about her mother’s past that is finally revealing itself. This feature film was inspired by an acclaimed 2011 Sundance Film Festival short of the same name directed by McCarthy. It is one of the first films to be conceived, and premiere, as a narrative short, and just one year later return to the festival feature film.

President of Sundance Selects/IFC Films Jonathan Sehring said: “Nicholas McCarthy makes a bold directorial debut here, and turns the vintage haunted house story into a modern and terrifying film. McCarthy also offers up an exciting young cast led by Caity Lotz who, deservedly so, has been one of the breakout stars of this year’s festival. It’s also great to see Casper Van Dien here.”

“I am psyched to be working with IFC Midnight on this film,” says McCarthy. “After meeting with their team, we all knew they are the perfect home for our film.”

Content’s Carmichael said, “This is just such a fantastic way to start our deal with Preferred. It’s been such a pleasure working with Nick and Ross on The Pact, and to have IFC Midnight joining our team is the icing on the cake.”

The deal for the film was negotiated by Arianna Bocco, Senior Vice President of Acquisitions & Productions for Sundance Selects/IFC Films, and Jeff Deutchman, Director of Acquisitions, with Kevin Iwashina and Christine D’Souza of Preferred Content along with Rick Kwak of Content Media Corporation on behalf of the filmmakers. Content handles international sales and will screen the film at the upcoming Berlin market.

IFC Midnight is a sister division to IFC Films and Sundance Selects, and is owned and operated by AMC Networks Inc.

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About IFC MIDNIGHT

Established in 2010 and based in New York City, IFC Midnight is a leading U.S. distributor of genre entertainment including horror, science-fiction, thrillers, erotic art house, action and more.  Its unique distribution model makes independent genre films available to a national audience by releasing them in theaters as well as on cable’s Video On Demand (VOD) platform, reaching nearly 50 million homes. Some of the company’s successes have included Tom Six’s controversial horror film The Human Centipede (First Sequence), Johnnie To’s Hong Kong revenge thriller Vengeance, and James Gunn’s Super starring Rainn Wilson, Ellen Page and Kevin Bacon. Upcoming IFC Midnight releases include Alexandre Courtes THE INCIDENT and Adrian and Romero Garcia Bogliano’s PENUMBRA. IFC Midnight is a sister division to Sundance Selects and IFC Films, and is owned and operated by AMC Networks Inc.

About Content Film, a division of Content Media Corporation plc

Content Film is the worldwide film and library sales arm of Content Media Corporation plc. Content specializes in high quality and commercial feature films, and is able to assist film producers in securing finance. Content handles worldwide sales, marketing, and publicity on all titles. The Feature Film Library arm also manages international sales on over 200 titles.

Content titles include THE NUMBERS STATION starring John Cusack and Malin Akerman; NOTHING TO FEAR first of a slate of horror films produced by Slash; Mike Figgis’ erotic psychological thriller SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF; THE DALLAS BUYERS CLUB starring Matthew McConaughey and Hillary Swank HICK starring Chloe Moretz, Blake Lively, Eddie Redmayne, Alec Baldwin and Juliette Lewis; Eduardo Sanchez’s horror LOVELY MOLLY; action thriller, the cult genre sequel OUTPOST: BLACK SUN, SXSW Winner 96 MINUTES starring Brittany Snow and the crime thriller HARD BOILED SWEETS; Nick Broomfield’s latest documentary SARAH PALIN – YOU BETCHA! and post-apocalyptic war action thriller THE DAY.

Content attends all major markets and festivals including Cannes, Venice, Toronto, AFM, Sundance and Berlin. Content Film is being managed in an executive capacity by Jamie Carmichael, President - Film Division.

About Preferred Content

Founded in January 2010 by former CAA agent Kevin Iwashina and independent film producer Ross Dinerstein, Preferred Content is a film, television and digital production, sales and finance company. Its production expertise lies in theindependent financing and production of film and television content. Its sales efforts have resulted in it being one of the premiere brokers of worldwide rights for film, television, DVD and digital distribution.  Its finance expertise allows it to represent corporations, privately held companies and high net worth individuals needing counsel in the area of film finance and distribution.

IFC FILMS TAKES NORTH AMERICAN RIGHTS

TO JOSH RADNOR’S LIBERAL ARTS

Park City, UT (January 25, 2012) – IFC Films announced today from the 2012 Sundance Film Festival that the company is acquiring North American rights to Josh Radnor’s LIBERAL ARTS. Radnor also wrote the screenplay, produced and stars in the film. In addition to Radnor, the film was produced by Jesse Hara and BCDF partners Brice Dal Farra, Claude Dal Farra, and Lauren Munsch, and it co-stars Elizabeth Olsen (Martha Marcy May Marlene), Academy Award nominee Richard Jenkins (The Visitor), four-time Emmy Award winner and five-time Screen Actors Guild Award winner Allison Janney (Juno, The Help), Elizabeth Reaser (The Family Stone, Twilight) and John Magaro (The Brave One). The film made its world premiere at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival on January 22^nd. IFC plans to release the film theatrically later this year.

In the film, bookish and newly single Jesse Fisher (Radnor) returns to his alma mater for his favorite professor’s retirement dinner. A chance meeting with Zibby (Olsen) – a precocious classical music-loving sophomore – awakens in him long-dormant feelings of possibility and connection.

President of Sundance Selects/IFC Films Jonathan Sehring said, “There is a reason this is one of the hottest films at Sundance right now. Josh Radnor delivers a poignant and smart comedy, with incredible acting and a terrific screenplay.  We are also very happy to be continuing our relationship with the great people at BCDF Pictures.”

BCDF states, “We have really enjoyed working with Josh Radnor and this incredible cast on Liberal Arts.    IFC’s collaborative spirit and passion for the film makes them the perfect distributor.    We are pleased to be continuing our relationship with Jonathan Sehring, Arianna Bocco, and the entire IFC team.”  Producer Jesse Hara, Tom Sawyer Entertainment, adds, “Josh has crafted a beautiful film that is both moving and incredibly funny.   As someone who grew up watching and loving IFC films, I am so excited to partner with them in bringing this movie to audiences.”

BCDF Pictures has also produced Higher Ground (Sundance 2011), Peace, Love, & Misunderstanding (Toronto 2011), Bachelorette (Sundance 2012), and Predisposed (Sundance 2012). IFC Films recently acquired North American rights to distribute Bruce Beresford’s Peace, Love, & Misunderstanding, and will release the film this summer. The film stars Jane Fonda, Catherine Keener, Chace Crawford, and Elizabeth Olsen.

The deal for the film was negotiated by Arianna Bocco, Senior Vice President of Acquisitions & Productions for Sundance Selects/IFC Films, with Jay Cohen and Jen Dana at The Gersh Agency on behalf of the filmmakers.

Radnor previously wrote, directed, and starred in the 2010 Sundance Film Festival Audience Award–winning film happythankyoumoreplease. Radnor is best known for his starring role on the television program How I Met Your Mother. His theatre work includes The Graduate on Broadway, opposite Kathleen Turner and Alicia Silverstone.

IFC Films is a sister division to IFC Midnight and Sundance Selects, and is owned and operated by AMC Networks Inc.

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About IFC FILMS

Established in 2000 and based in New York City, IFC Films is a leading U.S. distributor of quality talent-driven independent film.  Its unique distribution model makes independent films available to a national audience by releasing them in theaters as well as on cable’s Video On Demand (VOD) platform, reaching nearly 50 million homes. Some of the company’s successes over the years have included My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Y Tu Mama Tambien, Touching the Void, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Gomorrah, Che, Summer Hours, In the Loop, Antichrist, Wordplay, Cairo Time, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, Tiny Furniture and Carlos.  Over the years, IFC Films has worked with established and breakout auteurs, including Steven Soderbergh, Gus Van Sant, Spike Lee, Richard Linklater, Miranda July, Lars Von Trier, Gaspar Noe, Todd Solondz, Cristian Mungiu, Susanne Bier, Olivier Assayas, Jim McKay, Larry Fessenden, Gregg Araki, Jacques Rivette, Claude Chabrol, as well as more recent breakouts such as Andrea Arnold, Mia Hansen Love, Corneliu Porombiou, Joe Swanberg, Barry Jenkins, Lena Dunham, Aaron Katz, Daryl Wein and Abdellatif Kechiche. IFC Films is a sister division to Sundance Selects and IFC Midnight, and is owned and operated by AMC Networks Inc.

Congratulations to Wim and the entire cast and crew!

Read Wenders’ reaction to being nominated below:

“It’s fantastic to be nominated for Best Documentary for the second time after Buena Vista Social Club, especially as it is the first time for a 3D film to be given that honor. All the dancers and collaborators of the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, together with the crew and the production company Neue Road Movies, are extremely honored. With our journey into the magical kingdom of the great German choreographer Pina Bausch we wanted to raise a monument to this pioneer of modern dance. The worldwide success of Pina and now this Oscar nomination are fantastic rewards and recognition of our common work.”
PINA continues to expand to theaters nationwide in 3D.

It is love at first sight when Juliette (Valérie Donzelli) locks eyes with a stranger across a crowded room in the French domestic drama “Declaration of War.”

The man’s name is Romeo (Jérémie Elkaim), and so their meeting seems fated, although they wonder if some kind of tragic future awaits them. The relationship is, in fact, idyllic, and what brings the pair crashing back to earth is not passion giving way to the banality of daily life but a diagnosis of brain cancer that befalls their infant son.

Directed by Donzelli and written by her and Elkaim, it is a subject the two know well. Their own son, Gabriel Elkaim, similarly battled life-threatening illness as a tot while his parents could only stand by helplessly. The family’s experience inspired “Declaration of War,” but Donzelli and Elkaim are firm in their assertion that their film does not tell their story.

“We wanted to make a fiction film,” Donzelli says during a recent phone conversation.

“To bring more fiction to the movie, it started with the names we gave the characters, Romeo and Juliette,” Elkaim adds. “We wanted people to identify very strongly with them being lovers in a kind of collective fashion.”

While Gabriel’s illness was something Donzelli and Elkaim lived through, the inspiration for their story came more from the way they could use it as a springboard for a more universal tale. Through the story of this couple, they could comment on something they had observed in society that had nothing to do with a child’s illness.

“We wanted to talk about a generation that has never lived through a war, that has not really been affected by a war and, in fact, is a really spoiled generation, and we wanted to talk about that through this story,” Elkaim says.

“What we’re really interested in is what’s going to happen. It’s the path, the road that we took that we lived through during this experience. At the beginning, Valérie wanted to do an action movie, but her desire initially was to create something that was really a comedy, that was much more comedic, in fact.”

“Declaration of War” does have its fair share of humor, a lot of romance and even a musical interlude. What is perhaps most surprising is how it sidesteps pathos when so much of it is about a baby fighting for his life. Elkaim likens Donzelli to a sculptor, molding and reinventing the film at each phase of production: writing, shooting and editing.

“She’s like pounding into her block of granite, and the film is emerging as it’s going along. She has a hands-on intelligence,” he says, praising Donzelli for her fearlessness in making a film with such an unexpectedly light tone.

Surprise and action

“The idea was not make a film where we were going to throw in a variety of elements,” she says, adamant that the disparate elements simply arose from the demands of the tale they were telling. “It was to be able to tell the story as best as we could, and so by bringing in all those things, that was our way of doing it and doing it with surprise and action and the rest.”

“Valérie is not afraid to jump one tone to another. The comedy was a way of bringing a certain sort of modesty to the film,” Elkaim adds. “In a way, when characters go through something like this, it was having them not accept this kind of injection of despair and unhappiness that automatically kind of comes with subject matter like this. We were able to tell a story where even in moments like that there is the opportunity of blossoming and growth, because we know what we’re fighting against.”

Donzelli also notes that although there is a sick baby in the film, the film is not about a sick baby. The focus is really on the couple, and the calamity that befalls their family is just another factor for them to deal with as they navigate their relationship.

“We knew from the get-go that it was going to be a love story we were telling. That was the most important thing,” she says.

The pair knew from the start that even though they were writing a fictional story, it would still be close in certain aspects to their own reality, simply because they were drawing on the lives they’ve led, but they did not want that to color their characters’ journey. Remaining objective was a crucial aim while working out their script.

“Our motivation was not an exorcism of our experience,” Elkaim says. “In fact, what we were concerned about was finding the appropriate distance, because we didn’t want it to be a hostage taking.”

Making things a little bit easier was their discovery that they could in fact divorce themselves from Romeo and Juliette’s story even as it veered so close to their own.

“It wasn’t like revisiting it,” Donzelli says. “The work itself kept it from feeling like we were revisiting the subject. So it was not too painful to work on the movie.”

Intermingling life and fiction

There is one aspect of “Declaration of War” where real life and fiction happily intermingle. Donzelli did not want the audience obsessed with whether the baby lives or dies, and so she bookends the movie with scenes of the now 8-year-old little boy. When his parents told him about their new movie, Gabriel Elkaim wanted to know who would play the child.

“He was the one who wanted to act in it,” Donzelli says.

“He forced us to hire him,” Elkaim laughs. “We were really pleased, because it was a really joyous experience to shoot together.”
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/19/PKP41MOD1G.DTL#ixzz1kPWzc05z

Check out the Sundance Channel’s studio interview with the team here!

This Friday, the film will open in Los Angeles at the Landmark and the Arclight Hollywood, and expand in the weeks following to audiences nationwide.

http://www.thewrap.com/awards/column-post/pina-aims-unprecedented-oscar-double-play-33925?page=0,0

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/11/movies/wim-wenders-on-pina-his-film-on-pina-bauschs-dances.html?_r=2

Adolescence is and always will be a time of intense emotional confusion, especially if you spend it in a closed environment. That’s the case with Rebecca (Bolger), a young girl haunted by her father’s suicide, who is a student at an exclusive female boarding school. She pours her heart out in a diary, much of it focused on Lucy, her beloved roommate. Their relationship changes drastically with the arrival of a mysterious new student, Ernessa (Cole). As Lucy abandons her for this new girl, Rebecca becomes consumed with thoughts of jealousy and suspicion–Ernessa is dangerous, evil, a vampire. Is there any truth to all this or is Rebecca slipping into insanity?

Jonathan Sehring, President of Sundance Selects/IFC Films, said: “We are thrilled to be in business with Mary Harron who has made a very entertaining gothic tale that delivers chills while also managing to get at the heart of teenage relationships. We look forward to working with her and her entire team behind the film.”

Said Harron: “I am delighted to be working with IFC, who have such a wonderful track record and have released so many of my favorite films of the last few years.”

Noted Martin: “Mary’s film is a rare look at female teenage relationships veering into the extreme. I’m thrilled Jonathan and his team at IFC will introduce THE MOTH DIARIES to audiences.”

“Having collaborated with Mary on AMERICAN PSYCHO, I knew she would be able to successfully capture the psychological intensity of these young girls coming of age. I jumped at the opportunity to work with her again and to have Jonathan Sehring and the team at IFC distribute this darkly passionate tale of adolescence,” commented Pressman.

The deal for the film was negotiated by Arianna Bocco, SVP of Acquisitions & Productions for Sundance Selects/IFC Films with Bart Walker at Cinetic Media on behalf of the filmmakers.

IFC Films is a sister division to IFC Midnight and Sundance Selects, and is owned and operated by AMC Networks, Inc.

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About IFC FILMS
Established in 2000 and based in New York City, IFC Films is a leading U.S. distributor of quality talent-driven independent film.  Its unique distribution modelmakes independent films available to a national audience by releasing them in theaters as well as on cable’s Video On Demand (VOD) platform, reaching nearly 50 million homes. Some of the company’s successes over the years have included My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Y Tu Mama Tambien, Touching the Void, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Gomorrah, Che, SummerHours, Antichrist, In the Loop, Antichrist, Wordplay, Cairo Time, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, Tiny Furniture and Carlos.  Over the years, IFC Films has worked with established and breakout auteurs, including Steven Soderbergh, Gus VanSant, Spike Lee, Richard Linklater, Miranda July, Lars Von Trier, Gaspar Noe, Todd Solondz, Cristian Mungiu, Susanne Bier, Olivier Assayas, Jim McKay, Larry Fessenden, Gregg Araki, Jacques Rivette, Claude Chabrol, as well as more recent breakouts such as Andrea Arnold, Mia Hansen Love, Corneliu Porombiou, Joe Swanberg, Barry Jenkins, Lena Dunham, Aaron Katz, Daryl Wein and AbdellatifKechiche. IFC Films is a sister division to Sundance Selects and IFC Midnight, and is owned and operated by AMC Networks, Inc.

Press Contact:
Katelyn Bogacki
Strategy PR/Consulting
Katelyn.Bogacki@StrategyPR.net<mailto:Katelyn.Bogacki@StrategyPR.net>

BRITISH INDEPENDENT FILM AWARDS
Best Supporting Actor: Michael Smiley, KILL LIST
Most Promising Newcomer: Tom Cullen, WEEKEND
Best Achievement in Production: Weekend
EUROPEAN FILM AWARDS 2011
Best Screenplay: Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardennes, THE KID WITH A BIKE
Best Documentary: PINA

INDEPENDENT SPIRIT AWARDS 2011
Best Foreign Film: NOMINEE - THE KID WITH A BIKE

LOS ANGELES FILM CRITICS ASSOCIATION AWARDS 2011
Best Documentary: CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS

NEW YORK FILM CRITICS CIRCLE AWARDS 2011
Best Nonfiction Film: CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS
NEW YORK FILM CRITICS ONLINE AWARDS 2011
Best Documentary: CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS
SAN FRANCISCO FILM CRITICS ASSOCIATION AWARDS 2011
Best Foreign Film:  CERTIFIED COPY
Best Documentary: TABLOID

WASHINGTON FILM CRITICS ASSOCIATION AWARDS 2011
Best Documentary: CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS
Nominees - BUCK, INTO THE ABYSS

by Anthony Lane December 19, 2011

Performers from the Tanztheater Wuppertal in Wim Wenders’s new documentary.

BRITISH INDEPENDENT FILM AWARDS

Best Supporting Actor
WINNER - Michael Smiley, KILL LIST

Most Promising Newcomer
WINNER - Tom Cullen, WEEKEND

Best Achievement in Production
WINNER - Weekend
EUROPEAN FILM AWARDS 2012

Best Screenplay
WINNERS - Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardennes, THE KID WITH A BIKE

Best Documentary
WINNER - PINA
INDEPENDENT SPIRIT AWARDS 2012

Best Foreign Film
NOMINEE - THE KID WITH A BIKE

NEW YORK FILM CRITICS CIRCLE AWARDS 2012

Best Nonfiction Film
WINNER - CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS

WASHINGTON FILM CRITICS ASSOCIATION AWARDS 2012

Best Documentary
WINNER - CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS
Nominees - BUCK, INTO THE ABYSS

DECLARATION debuted at Critics Week this last summer in Cannes and is also France’s Official Entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards.

YOUR SISTER’S SISTER stars Emily Blunt, and was met with critical raves at Toronto this last fall.

After twenty-five years in prison, Foley (Jackson) is finished with the grifter’s life. When he meets an elusive young woman named Iris (Negga), the possibility of a new start looks real. But his past is proving to be a stubborn companion: Ethan (Kirby), the son of his former partner, has an ingenious plan and he wants Foley in. The harder Foley tries to escape his past, the tighter he is ensnared in Ethan’s web of secrets, until it becomes all too clear to Foley that some wrongs can never be made right.

THE SAMARITAN was produced with the participation of Telefim Canada, OMDC and the Harold Greenberg Fund.  Producers are Hamori and Weaver with Suzanne Cheriton and Tony Wosk, Executive producers are Mark Musselman with Lacia Kornylo, Mark Horowitz, Jackson, Eli Selden, Geoffrey Brant, James Atherton and Jan Pace.

Jonathan Sehring, President of Sundance Selects/IFC Films, said: “We’re very excited to be working with Samuel L. Jackson and director David Weaver on this neo-noir, high-stakes thriller with a twist no one will see coming. We’re sure it will electrify audiences everywhere.”

“We are looking forward to our collaboration with IFC Films on THE SAMARITAN.  IFC is known for edgy,independent yet commercial movies: the ideal home for our film,” commented Weaver and Hamori.

The deal for the film was negotiated by Arianna Bocco, SVP of Acquisitions & Productions for Sundance Selects/IFC Films with Maren Olson and Doug Stone at Traction Media and Mark Horowitz on behalf of H2O Motion Pictures and Quickfire Fims.

H2O Motion Pictures sells foreign rights to the movie, which was so far sold to eOne in Canada, ARD/Degeto in Germany, Nordisk in Scandinavia, Ascot Elite in Switzerland, Video Vision in South Africa, Pris in Portugal, Frontrow in the Middle East, Audiovisual in Greece and Prorom in Romania.

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About IFC Films
Established in 2000 and based in New York City, IFC Films is a leading U.S. distributor of quality talent-driven independent film.  Its unique distribution modelmakes independent films available to a national audience by releasing them in theaters as well as on cable’s Video On Demand (VOD) platform, reaching nearly 50 million homes. Some of the company’s successes over the years have included My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Y Tu Mama Tambien, Touching the Void, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Gomorrah, Che, Summer Hours, Antichrist, In the Loop, Antichrist, Wordplay, Cairo Time, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, Tiny Furniture and Carlos.  Over the years, IFC Films has worked with established and breakout auteurs, including Steven Soderbergh, Gus Van Sant, Spike Lee, Richard Linklater, Miranda July, Lars Von Trier, Gaspar Noe, Todd Solondz, Cristian Mungiu, Susanne Bier, Olivier Assayas, Jim McKay, Larry Fessenden, Gregg Araki, Jacques Rivette, Claude Chabrol, as well as more recent breakouts such as Andrea Arnold, Mia HansenLove, Corneliu Porombiou, Joe Swanberg, Barry Jenkins, Lena Dunham, Aaron Katz, Daryl Wein and Abdellatif Kechiche. IFC Films is a sister division to Sundance Selects and IFC Midnight, and is owned and operated by AMC Networks, Inc.

About H2O Motion Pictures
H2O Motion Pictures World Sales is the foreign sales division of  H2O Motion Pictures, a international independent  production company with offices in London, Toronto, Los Angeles and New York.  H2O’s recent titles include ‘The Waiting City’, starring Radha Mitchell, which premiered as a Special Presentation at the Toronto International Film Festival,and ‘Bibliotheque Pascal’, an official selection at the 2010 Berlin Film Festival.

About Quickfire Films
Quickfire Films is a sales and acquisition company run by James Atherton and Jan Pace that sources and buys international sales rights.  Quickfire has recently completed work on Mateo Gil’s critically acclaimed Blackthorn, adding to a strong 2010-2011 slate which included the acquisition of the comedies A Few Best Men, by Stephen Elliott and John Landis’ Burke and Hare, and UK thriller Retreat with Jamie Bell and Cillian Murphy. Its most recent acquisition has been Welcome to the Punch, a film by Eran Creevy starring James McAvoy and Mark Strong.

The Telegraph – 5 Stars

“UNMISSABLE..could be the most accomplished film of the year..Kurzel’s searing technique and expertise with actors get so far under your skin..Astonishing newcomers.”

Financial Times – 5 Stars
“A NEAR MASTERPIECE..Snowtown presents a world of moral nightmare and sits us right inside it, to feel the pulse  and processes of evil as if they were our own.”

The Times – 4 Stars
‘In this stunning debut, the first time director Justin Kurzel racks up fear and tension to a get-me-out-of-here state of sheer panic..It’s A MUST-SEE!”

The Guardian – 4 Stars
“What Snowtown does is create a social-realist horror story showing the killer as parodic paterfamilias…Henshall and Pittaway give very good performances as the cornerstone of this degraded family unit.”

Friday, 11.11
THE ARCLIGHT HOLLYWOOD
7PM & 9:45Pm shows

TICKETS

Saturday, 11.12
THE LANDMARK
7:20PM & 10PM Shows

TICKETS

AFI FEST 2011 presented by Audi
ANNOUNCES AUDIENCE AND JURY AWARD-WINNING FILMS

LOS ANGELES, CA, November 10, 2011 – AFI FEST 2011 presented by Audi announced today the
features and short films that are the recipients of this year’s Audience and Jury Awards. The films will
screen today in an encore run at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, CA.
“It has been an exciting year for world cinema and emerging international filmmakers,” said
Jacqueline Lyanga, Director of AFI FEST presented by Audi. “We’ve had incredibly enthusiastic
audiences for all of the screenings at AFI FEST. It is wonderful to discover the films that resonate with
audiences and put a spotlight on filmmakers as part of awards season critical acclaim.”
“It has been eight fantastic days of screenings here in Los Angeles with over 150 filmmakers from
around the world attending to present their works,” said Lane Kneedler, Associate Director of
Programming for AFI FEST presented by Audi. “What a wonderful way to end AFI FEST’s 25th Edition
by acknowledging the films our distinguished juries and esteemed audiences have bestowed on these
talented filmmakers.”
AUDIENCE AWARDS
Breakthrough Section (award accompanied by a $5,000 cash prize)
WITH EVERY HEARTBEAT by Alexandra-Therese Keining
New Auteurs Section
BULLHEAD by Michaël R. Roskam
World Cinema Section
A tie: JIRO DREAMS OF SUSHI by David Gelb and KINYARWANDA by Alrick Brown
Young Americans Section
WUSS by Clay Liford
LIVE ACTION AND ANIMATED SHORT FILM SECTION JURY AWARDS
As in previous years, a jury determines the AFI FEST 2011 Live Action and Animated Short Film
Section Awards. The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences recognizes each winner as a
qualifier for the annual Academy Awards®. The Short Film Jury – comprised of filmmakers Barry
Jenkins and Gerardo Naranjo (AFI Conservatory Class of 2001) and festival programmer Kim Yutani –
announced the awards with their statements.
Live Action Short Film Section
Grand Jury Prize: FROZEN STORIES from Grzegorz Jaroszuk “for its world of meta-reality suffused
with enough context to rend a beautifully nuanced story for the most heightened elements.”
2
Honorable Mention: BABYLAND by Marc Fratello “for its assured direction, stunning lead performance
and the ability to balance humor and pathos all the way up to its shocking conclusion.”
Animated Short Film Section
Grand Jury Prize: THE EAGLEMAN STAG by Michael Please “for its ambitious and elegant storytelling,
both narrative and aesthetically, in which the bigness of life and the concept of time are deftly
unpacked in a moving nine minutes.”
Honorable Mention: THE VOYAGERS by Penny Lane “for its skillful juxtaposition of archival footage
and personal narrative to tell a moving story of exploration, romance and space travel.”

NEW AUTEURS SECTION CRITIC’S PRIZE
This year AFI FEST debuts its New Auteurs Critic’s Prize selected by an esteemed panel of international critics: Justin Chang (Variety), Mike Goodridge (Screen International), Mark Olsen (The Los Angeles Times) and Jean Oppenheimer (American Cinematographer).

Grand Jury Prize: THE LONELIEST PLANET by Julia Loktev “for its bold exploration of societal structures
and gender roles, set against a landscape that conveys both profound beauty and profound
alienation.”

Special Jury Prize: ATTENBERG by Athina Rachel Tsangari “for its wit, distinct voice and playful sense
of storytelling.”

Acting Award Prize: BULLHEAD’s Matthias Schoenaerts “for his nuanced and intensely physical
embodiment of bruised masculinity.”

BEST ACTION FILM

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

MOST THRILLING FILM!

Full list of TAD Audience Award-winners: http://torontoafterdark.com/2011/award-winners-2011/

A leader the pack, the Dardenne’s THE KID WITH A BIKE landed nominations for Best Picture, Director, Screenplay and Best Actress: Cecile de France

Nanni Moretti’s HABEMUS PAPAM was nominated for Best Production Design and Best Actor: Michel Piccoli

And, as previously reported, Wim Wenders PINA is nominated for Best Documentary.

Complete list of Nominees below:

EUROPEAN FILM 2011
THE ARTIST, France
WRITTEN & DIRECTED BY: Michel Hazanavicius
PRODUCED BY: Thomas Langmann & Emmanuel Montamat

LE GAMIN AU VELO (The Kid with a Bike), Belgium/France/Italy
WRITTEN & DIRECTED BY: Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne
PRODUCED BY: Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, Denis Freyd & Andrea Occhipinti

HÆVNEN (In a Better World), Denmark
DIRECTED BY: Susanne Bier
WRITTEN BY: Anders Thomas Jensen
PRODUCED BY: Sisse Graum Jørgensen

THE KING’S SPEECH, UK
DIRECTED BY: Tom Hooper
WRITTEN BY: David Seidler
PRODUCED BY: Iain Canning, Emile Sherman, Gareth Unwin

LE HAVRE, Finland/France/Germany
WRITTEN & DIRECTED BY: Aki Kaurismäki
PRODUCED BY: Aki Kaurismäki, Fabienne Vonier & Reinhard Brundig

MELANCHOLIA, Denmark/Sweden/France/Germany
WRITTEN & DIRECTED BY: Lars von Trier
PRODUCED BY: Meta Louise Foldager & Louise Vesth

EUROPEAN DIRECTOR 2011
Susanne Bier for HÆVNEN (In a Better World)
Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne for LE GAMIN AU VELO (The Kid with a Bike)
Aki Kaurismäki for LE HAVRE
Béla Tarr for A TORINOI LO (The Turin Horse)
Lars von Trier for MELANCHOLIA

EUROPEAN ACTRESS 2011:
Kirsten Dunst in MELANCHOLIA
Cécile de France in LE GAMIN AU VELO (The Kid with a Bike)
Charlotte Gainsbourg in MELANCHOLIA
Nadezhda Markina in ELENA
Tilda Swinton in WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN

EUROPEAN ACTOR 2011:
Jean Dujardin in THE ARTIST
Colin Firth in THE KING’S SPEECH
Mikael Persbrandt in HÆVNEN (In a Better World)
Michel Piccoli in HABEMUS PAPAM
André Wilms in LE HAVRE

EUROPEAN SCREENWRITER 2011:
Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne for LE GAMIN AU VELO (The Kid with a Bike)
Anders Thomas Jensen for HÆVNEN (In a Better World)
Aki Kaurismäki for LE HAVRE
Lars von Trier for MELANCHOLIA

CARLO DI PALMA EUROPEAN CINEMATOGRAPHER AWARD 2011:
Manuel Alberto Claro for MELANCHOLIA
Fred Kelemen for A TORINOI LO (The Turin Horse)
Guillaume Schiffman for THE ARTIST
Adam Sikora for ESSENTIAL KILLING

EUROPEAN EDITOR 2011:
Tariq Anwar for THE KING’S SPEECH
Mathilde Bonnefoy for DREI (Three)
Molly Malene Stensgaard for MELANCHOLIA

EUROPEAN PRODUCTION DESIGNER 2011:
Paola Bizzarri for HABEMUS PAPAM
Antxón Gómez for LA PIEL QUE HABITO (The Skin I Live in)
Jette Lehmann for MELANCHOLIA

EUROPEAN COMPOSER 2011:
Ludovic Bource for THE ARTIST
Alexandre Desplat for THE KING’S SPEECH
Alberto Iglesias for LA PIEL QUE HABITO (The Skin I Live in)
Mihály Vig for A TORINOI LO (The Turin Horse)

EUROPEAN DISCOVERY 2011 - Prix FIPRESCI:
ADEM (Oxygen), Belgium/the Netherlands
written & directed by Hans Van Nuffel

ATMEN (Breathing), Austria
written & directed by Karl Markovics

MICHAEL, Austria
written & directed by Markus Schleinzer

SMUKKE MENESKER (Nothing’s All Bad), Denmark
written & directed by Mikkel Munch-Fals

TILVA ROŠ, Serbia
written & directed by Nikola Ležaić

EUROPEAN FILM ACADEMY DOCUMENTARY 2011 - Prix ARTE:
PINA, Germany
written & directed by Wim Wenders
produced by Gian-Piero Ringel & Wim Wenders

STAND VAN DE STERREN (Position Among the Stars), the Netherlands
directed by Leonard Retel Helmrich
written by Leonard Retel Helmrich & Hetty Naaijkens
produced by Hetty Naaijkens

¡VIVAN LAS ANTIPODAS!, Germany / the Netherlands / Argentina / Chile
written & directed by Victor Kossakovsky
produced by Heino Deckert

EUROPEAN FILM ACADEMY ANIMATED FEATURE FILM 2011:
LE CHAT DU RABBIN (The Rabbi’s Cat), France
directed by Antoine Delesvaux & Joann Sfar

CHICO & RITA, Spain/Isle of Man
directed by Tono Errando, Javier Mariscal & Fernando Trueba

UNE VIE DE CHAT (A Cat in Paris), France/Belgium
directed by Jean-Loup Felicioli & Alain Gagnol

EUROPEAN FILM ACADEMY SHORT FILM 2011:
EFA Short Film Nominee Ghent:
BERIK by Daniel Joseph Borgman
EFA Short Film Nominee Valladolid.
SMÅ BARN, STORA ORD (Little Children, Big Words) by Lisa James-Larsson
EFA Short Film Nominee Cork:
HÄNDELSE VID BANK (Incident by a Bank) by Ruben Östlund
EFA Short Film Nominee Bristol:
DERBY by Paul Negoescu
EFA Short Film Nominee Angers:
JESSI by Mariejosephin Schneider
EFA Short Film Nominee Rotterdam:
I LUPI (The Wolves) by Alberto de Michele
EFA Short Film Nominee Berlin:
ÅTERFÖDELSEN (The Unliving) by Hugo Lilja
EFA Short Film Nominee Tampere:
APELE TAC (Silent River) by Anca Miruna Lăzărescu
EFA Short Film Nominee Cracow:
PAPARAZZI by Piotr Bernas
EFA Short Film Nominee Grimstad:
LA GRAN CARRERA (The Great Race) by Kote Camacho
EFA Short Film Nominee Vila do Conde:
DIMANCHES by Valéry Rosier
EFA Short Film Nominee Sarajevo:
TSE (Out) by Roee Rosen
EFA Short Film Nominee Locarno:
OPOWIESCI Z CHLODNI (Frozen Stories) by Grzegorz Jaroszuk
EFA Short Film Nominee Venice:
HYPERCRISIS by Josef Dabernig
EFA Short Film Nominee Drama:
THE WHOLLY FAMILY by Terry Gilliam

A packed house at Werner Herzog’s Into the Abyss: A Tale of Death, A Tale of Life kicked off the second annual DOC NYC.

The film, shown for the first time in New York, explores the human consequences of a triple homicide in Texas. Herzog interviewed the victims’ families and the convicted killers, including a 28-year-old man on death row, eight days before his execution. But despite the controversial nature of the death penalty, Herzog deftly avoided making a political film.

“I didn’t want this to be an ‘issue’ movie,” Herzog said in the post-screening discussion.

Herzog’s producer, Erik Nelson, added, “It’s like the death penalty is the big rock that got tossed into the lake, and this movie is about the ripples that spread out from that. It’s not about the rock, it’s about the ripples.”

Herzog, a German citizen, is against the death penalty, but said, “I am a guest in your country, how would it sound for me to come here and tell you how to improve things? I just say, ‘I respectfully disagree. Period.’”

http://www.docnyc.net/featured/herzogs-into-the-abyss-launches-doc-nyc-festival/

BEST BRITISH INDEPENDENT FILM

Sponsored by Moët & Chandon

SENNA

SHAME

TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY

TYRANNOSAUR

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN

BEST DIRECTOR

Sponsored by The Creative Partnership

Ben Wheatley – KILL LIST

Steve McQueen – SHAME

Tomas Alfredson – TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY

Paddy Considine – TYRANNOSAUR

Lynne Ramsay – WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN

THE DOUGLAS HICKOX AWARD [BEST DEBUT DIRECTOR]

Sponsored by 3 Mills Studios

Joe Cornish – ATTACK THE BLOCK

Ralph Fiennes – CORIOLANUS

John Michael McDonagh – THE GUARD

Richard Ayoade – SUBMARINE

Paddy Considine – TYRANNOSAUR

BEST SCREENPLAY

Sponsored by BBC Films

John Michael McDonagh – THE GUARD

Ben Wheatley, Amy Jump – KILL LIST

Abi Morgan, Steve McQueen – SHAME

Richard Ayoade – SUBMARINE

Lynne Ramsay, Rory Kinnear – WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN

BEST ACTRESS

Sponsored by M.A.C

Rebecca Hall – THE AWAKENING

Mia Wasikowska – JANE EYRE

MyAnna Buring – KILL LIST

Olivia Colman – TYRANNOSAUR

Tilda Swinton – WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN

BEST ACTOR

Brendan Gleeson – THE GUARD

Neil Maskell – KILL LIST

Michael Fassbender – SHAME

Gary Oldman – TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY

Peter Mullan – TYRANNOSAUR

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Felicity Jones – ALBATROSS

Vanessa Redgrave – CORIOLANUS

Carey Mulligan – SHAME

Sally Hawkins – SUBMARINE

Kathy Burke – TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Michael Smiley – KILL LIST

Tom Hardy – TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY

Benedict Cumberbatch – TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY

Eddie Marsan – TYRANNOSAUR

Ezra Miller – WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN

MOST PROMISING NEWCOMER

Sponsored by STUDIOCANAL

Jessica Brown Findlay – ALBATROSS

John Boyega – ATTACK THE BLOCK

Craig Roberts – SUBMARINE

Yasmin Paige – SUBMARINE

Tom Cullen – WEEKEND

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN PRODUCTION

Sponsored by Deluxe142

KILL LIST

TYRANNOSAUR

WEEKEND

WILD BILL

YOU INSTEAD

BEST TECHNICAL ACHIEVEMENT

Chris King, Gregers Sall – Editing – SENNA

Sean Bobbitt – Cinematography – SHAME

Joe Walker – Editing – SHAME

Maria Djurkovic – Production Design – TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY

Seamus McGarvey – Cinematography – WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN

BEST DOCUMENTARY

HELL AND BACK AGAIN

LIFE IN A DAY

PROJECT NIM

SENNA

TT3D: CLOSER TO THE EDGE

BEST BRITISH SHORT

0507

CHALK

LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT

RITE

ROUGH SKIN

BEST FOREIGN INDEPENDENT FILM

ANIMAL KINGDOM

DRIVE

PINA

A SEPARATION

THE SKIN I LIVE IN

THE RAINDANCE AWARD

Sponsored by Exile Media

ACTS OF GODFREY

BLACK POND

HOLLOW

LEAVING BAGHDAD

A THOUSAND KISSES DEEP

THE RICHARD HARRIS AWARD (for outstanding contribution by an actor to British Film)

Sponsored by Working Title

To Be Announced

THE VARIETY AWARD

To Be Announced

THE SPECIAL JURY PRIZE

Announced at the Moët British Independent Film Awards on Sunday 4 December.

Just announced from the UK, KILL LIST has been nominated for a whopping 6 British Independent Film Awards:

BEST DIRECTOR
Ben Wheatley

BEST SCREENPLAY
Ben Wheatley, Amy Jump

BEST ACTRESS
MyAnna Buring

BEST ACTOR
Neil Maskell

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Michael Smiley

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN PRODUCTION
KILL LIST

Additionally, this week in VARIETY Peter Debruge  talks KILL LIST’s unique scare-tactics:

For Halloween chills, try ‘Kill List’
U.K. scarer finds new ways to unnerve viewers
By PETER DEBRUGE

It takes a lot to scare a film critic. We’ve seen too much; we know nearly all the tricks. So when a horror movie comes along and demonstrates a new way to unsettle, it’s not something to be taken lightly.

I’m thinking of “Kill List,” an insidiously effective stunner that seriously unnerves you in the moment, seeps into your subconscious over time and continues to haunt you in the months to follow. Here in the States, the South by Southwest breakout is still doing the festival rounds (Angelenos can catch it at AFI this weekend) before opening next February from IFC Midnight.

A modestly budgeted, cunningly constructed chiller from U.K. director Ben Wheatley, “Kill List” uses the raw kitchen-sink naturalism of his debut, “Down Terrace” (what “Reservoir Dogs” might have looked like had it been directed by Ken Loach), to make its twisted universe seem real, serving up irritable, entirely believable characters in situations that spiral increasingly far out as the picture unfolds.

Where other horror movies lean heavily on exposition, “Kill List” carves out all that context and plunges auds directly into its high-strung scenario. The film runs a tight 95 minutes, more or less evenly divided into three parts.

The first third feels a bit like one of those taxing “mumblecore” movies, where two middle-class white couples gather around a dinner table and vent their various frustrations. Then, roughly half an hour in, the mood changes. The two men branch off and go to work — which just so happens to be contract killing. But some hint of the opening segment lingers, providing an uneasy subtext to what should be a series of clean, professional hits.

One of the guys, Jay (Brit character actor Neil Maskell, who’s played many a hothead before), seems to enjoy the job a bit too much. A husband and father, he’s the closest thing to a hero the film has, presumably carrying out this series of increasingly brutal executions to support his family. The victims thank Jay before they die, connected in some way we can’t quite fathom.

That conspiracy takes over the final third, which carries the movie into its most frightening territory yet. Though horror fans will surely recognize aspects from countless British pics that have come before, the format has never been this scary. What Wheatley has done over the course of the preceding hour is establish a foundation of both brutality and believability for the insanity that follows.

Generically speaking, horror is by far the best platform for up-and-coming directors to showcase their abilities. For the last dozen years, the big innovators were “The Blair Witch Project,” which transcended its no-budget constraints through sheer ingenuity, and the so-called torture porn strain, characterized by unblinkingly graphic depictions of violence.

The former was like a gift to hopefuls, who recycled the fake found-footage gimmick in everything from “Paranormal Activity” to “Rec” to “The Last Exorcism” (and personal favorite “The Troll Hunter,” if only because it delivered the suspense and the spectacle others lacked). The latter sort attracted more criticism than praise, rarely justifying its bad taste with anything resembling social commentary (both “Hostel: Part II” and “The Human Centipede II: Full Sequence” were reviled for trying, tastelessly attacking fans of the originals).

Each style spawned many imitators, but few innovators, which makes “Kill List” all the more impressive. Wheatley synthesizes aspects of both techniques — unvarnished naturalism and dispassionate objectivity in the face of unspeakable horrors — to make the film’s incredible finale credible, showing precisely the right details for it to seem real while leaving enough to the imagination that the feeling actually follows you out of the theater.

The Forgiveness of Blood

Part of the BAMcinématek series Sneak Previews from IFC Films & Sundance Selects

Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 6:50pm
Q&A with director Joshua Marston

NY Premiere

Directed by Joshua Marston
With Refet Abazi, Tristan Halilaj

(2011) 109min

“The contrasts between unspoiled countryside and urban development and the clash between rural intransigence and youthful impatience add depth to an accomplished and suspenseful drama.” —Hollywood Reporter

Winner of the Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival, Marston’s follow-up to the critically acclaimed Maria Full of Grace follows Albanian teen Nik and his brother as they become the targets of a blood feud (a six-centuries-old law in Albania, still in place today) when their father kills their neighbor and goes into hiding. With the brothers unable to leave the house for fear of death, their 15-year-old sister takes over their father’s business, while Nik struggles with his incarceration. This tense, superbly acted drama is a plangent exploration of the clash of traditional values and those of the modern world. A Sundance Selects release.

Opens Friday, February 24, 2012

BAM Rose Cinemas
General Admission: $12
BAM Cinema Club Members: $7
Movie Moguls: Free
Seniors: $9

Visit the festival’s website here for a full list of winners.

CLICK HERE FOR INFO, SCHEDULE AND TICKETS- which are going fast!

Program includes Ben Wheatley’s KILL LIST, Wim Wenders’ PINA in 3D,the Dardenne’s THE KID WITH A BIKE, Justin Kurzel’s SNOWTOWN, Joshua Marston’s THE FORGIVENESS OF BLOOD, Mia Hanson-Love’s GOODBYE FIRST LOVE, Julia Leigh’s SLEEPING BEAUTY and Bertrand Bonello’s HOUSE OF PLEASURES!

8:15 PM SHOW WED-THURS
8:15 PM & 10:30PM SHOWS FRIDAY

The New York Times on THE CATECHISM CATACLYSM:

A Priest and His Buddy on a Downstream Journey

By PAUL BRUNICK and DAVID DEWITT
Published: October 18, 2011

“The Catechism Cataclysm”: did you repeat that twisty little title until you tripped over your tongue? Or, better yet, did you just challenge someone near you to say it three times in a row? The answer may be a good indicator of whether you’ll find this regressively oddball buddy picture infectiously playful or just plain irritating.

A lot of the fun in “The Catechism Cataclysm,” a horror-comic head trip from the writer-director Todd Rohal (“The Guatemalan Handshake”), comes in the form of silly, strange line deliveries: nonsense songs in strained falsetto, crisply over-articulated cuss words, syllables distended into schoolyard taunts.

By the time two baby-talking Japanese tourists arrive to steer the film even further into left field, our two heroes — Robbie (Robert Longstreet), an Ice Capades spotlight operator, and Father Billy (Steve Little), a man-child Roman Catholic pastor — have refined their snake-hissing Satan voice and skillful simulation of flatulence.

“Tell me a story, man,” Father Billy repeatedly pesters Robbie, which reminds me that I should get to the plot. There isn’t much of one, really, beyond the premise — the weekend reunion of two childhood friends who were never actually friends, just loosely connected by an older sister the other once dated — and the drifting trajectory of their canoe down a river. (Beware the melancholy undercurrent of life’s disappointments.)

Mostly, there are lots of stories within the story: priestly parables, absurdist fables, campfire horror yarns. If any thread holds this weird and well-acted film together, it’s a kind of sustained riff on the idea of narrative: our difficulty arranging story events into artful plots or our overriding desire for the closure of a coherent ending, which “Catechism” spectacularly thwarts in a literally mind-blowing surrealist finale.

“Poems are just stories without endings,” Father Billy explains. If you’re feeling thoroughly confused but still sort of curious, “The Catechism Cataclysm” was made for you.

The committee includes Nik Powell, director of the NFTS and deputy chairman of the EFA Board; EFA Board Member Despina Mouzaki; EFA Member Francine Brücher; Claas Danielsen (International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film); Ally Derks (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam); Jacques Laurent; and ARTE-observer Martin Pieper.

And the nominees are:

“Pina,” Germany
WRITTEN & DIRECTED BY: Wim Wenders
PRODUCED BY: Gian-Piero Ringel & Wim Wenders

“Stand Van De Sterren” (Position Among the Stars), the Netherlands
DIRECTED: Leonard Retel Helmrich
WRITTEN BY: Leonard Retel Helmrich & Hetty Naaijkens
PRODUCED BY: Hetty Naaijkens

”¡Vivan Las Anitpodas!,” Germany / the Netherlands / Argentina / Chile
WRITTEN & DIRECTED BY: Victor Kossakovsky
PRODUCED BY: Heino Deckert

New York, NY (October 11, 2011) – Sundance Selects announced today that the company is acquiring North American rights to director Julia Loktev’s drama THE LONELIEST PLANET. The film, with a screenplay also by Loktev, stars Gael Garcia Bernal, Hani Furstenberg and Bidzina Gujabidze. Jay Van Hoy, Lars Knudsen, Marie Therese Guirgis, and Helge Albers served as producers on theproject. The film has recently been screened at the Locarno, Toronto, and New York film festivals.

THE LONELIEST PLANET marks the second time the company has teamed up with Loktev; sister division IFC Films previously released her narrative debut film, DAY NIGHT DAY NIGHT.

In the film, a young couple backpacking in the Caucasus mountains finds their love tested when the threat of violence enters their idyllic journey.

Jonathan Sehring, President of Sundance Selects, said: “It’s a great honor to be able to continue to work with Julia Loktev with THE LONELIEST PLANET. She’s made a phenomenal film that further establishes her as one of the most exciting talents working in world cinema today. We’re also happy to be working with a great team that includes Lars Knudsen, Jay Van Hoy, and Marie Therese Guirgis.”

Noted Loktev: “I’m really excited to work with Sundance Selects. I know they’ll put as much heart into distributing the film as we put into making it.”

The deal for THE LONELIEST PLANET was negotiated by Arianna Bocco, Senior Vice President of Acquisitions & Productions, and Jeff Deutchman, Director of Acquisitions, for Sundance Selects with Dana O’Keefe at Cinetic Media on behalf of the filmmakers.

Sundance Selects is a sister division to IFC Films and IFC Midnight, and is owned and operated by AMC Networks, Inc.

• Michael Winterbottom’s THE TRIP, this summer’s sleeper hit starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon

• Bertrand Tavernier’s THE PRINCESS OF MONTPENSIER, starring Melanie Thierry, Lambert Wilson and Gaspard Ulliel

• Michael Tully’s SEPTIEN

Find this action/romance in a special pre-theatrical window a month before it hits theaters via via Comcast, Cox, Cablevision, Time Warner, and Bright House!

SUNDANCE SELECTS TAKES NORTH AMERICAN RIGHTS TO BESS KARGMAN’S DANCE DOC FIRST POSITION

New York, NY (October 6, 2011) – Sundance Selects announced today that the company is acquiring North American rights to director Bess Kargman’s documentary FIRST POSITION. The film, which was also produced by Kargman, features some of the world’s most talented aspiring ballet dancers. FIRST POSITION made its world premiere last month at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival and won the audience choice first runner up award for best documentary. The movie will be screening at several festivals this fall including the Vancouver International Film Festival, the Hamptons International Film Festival and DOC NYC.

FIRST POSITION is a documentary that follows six young dancers as they compete for elite scholarships and job contracts at one of the most prestigious student ballet competitions in the world: the Youth America Grand Prix. Dancers from around the globe travel to New York each year for this hard-earned chance to compete in the finals. Eleven-year-old Aran lives in Naples, Italy, with his United States– military family and travels two hours every morning to practice with his French ballet teacher in Rome. Adopted from an orphanage in Sierra Leone when she was very young, fourteen-year-old Michaela dreams of going to the American Ballet Theatre’s JKO School. Seventeen-year-old Rebecca is finishing high school, looks like the quintessential classical ballet dancer and hopes to find a paid position with a corps de ballet, even though opportunities are slim. In a ballet-driven family, ten-year-old Jules and twelve-year-old Miko train together daily, but differ in their passion and commitment to the art form. Born in Colombia but separated from his family because of training, sixteen-year-old Joan Sebastian works tirelessly in the hopes of landing a scholarship with The Royal Ballet School in London. Director Kargman interviews the competitors, their families, their ballet teachers and choreographers, and we learn of the many sacrifices — physical, emotional and financial — all for the sake of ballet. The kids’ love for dance helps them struggle through bloodied feet, near exhaustion and debilitating injuries, all while navigating the drama and changes that come with adolescence.

Jonathan Sehring, President of Sundance Selects, said: “This is a touching and inspirational documentary with great suspense that will keep audience riveted.  Bess Kargman has made a beautiful film that captures the grace of these phenomenal performers.  We think it’s really going to connect with audiences nationwide and look forward to working with her and our good friends at Submarine.”

Added Kargman: “After the remarkable response in Toronto, I am excited to team up with Sundance Selects in releasing FIRST POSITION, and thrilled that my film will have the opportunity to contribute to their amazing run of success in documentary releases.”

The deal for FIRST POSITION was negotiated by Arianna Bocco, Senior Vice President of Acquisitions & Productions, and Betsy Rodgers, Vice President of Business and Legal Afffairs, for Sundance Selects with Josh Braun at Submarine on behalf of the filmmaker with counsel from Marc H. Simon at Cowan DeBaets Abrahams & Sheppard LLP. The film also closed a six-figure deal with Hopscotch for distribution in Australia and New Zealand.

Sundance Selects is a sister division to IFC Films and IFC Midnight, and is owned and operated by AMC Networks, Inc.

Michael Phillips Movie critic

12:00 a.m. CDT, September 29, 2011

Credits: Written and directed by Andrew Haigh; produced by Tristan Goligher. A Sundance Selects release. Running time: 1:36.

Two days. So much can happen to change two lives in two days. “Weekend,” one of the year’s very best in any genre, reminds you that a so-called “relationship movie” needn’t bother with conscious attempts to strike chords of universality.

All a filmmaker can do is burrow into the relationship at hand and trust that its depiction will mean something to other people.

This is what the British writer-director Andrew Haigh achieves, brilliantly, with a story of two days in the intersecting lives of Russell and Glen. A municipal pool lifeguard who is cautiously, selectively out of the closet, Russell is godfather to the daughter of his oldest and best friend (Jonathan Race), with whom he has never really discussed his romantic life.

“You’ve been keeping a low profile recently. Anything to tell?” his friend asks, knowing he won’t get any details.

Soon enough, there’s a lot to tell. Russell picks up the combustible, militant Glen at a gay bar one night. A gallery employee heading off to the U.S. in a couple of days, Glen is a series of defense maneuvers disguised as a human being — manic, sarcastic, a relentless objectifier, terrified of real intimacy.

What seems destined for a quick morning-after coffee and then goodbye develops, unexpectedly, into a more complicated and vulnerable proto-relationship. Shot on unusually supple digital video by cinematographer Ula Pontikos, “Weekend” was filmed quickly, in 16 days, in Nottingham, England, near the same East Midlands urban landscapes stalked by a dissatisfied Albert Finney in “Saturday Night and Sunday Morning” back in 1961. The subject matter’s very different here, and fairly explicit. But Haigh’s training as an editor serves him superbly as he charts the landscape of this newfound territory. The atmosphere is reminiscent of the social realist milieu of director Andrea Arnold (”Red Road,” “Fish Tank”), but Haigh gives “Weekend” his own unpredictable rhythms and moments of revelation, always with an eye toward the honest detail.

Haigh certainly scored with the casting. Tom Cullen reveals the tender side of Russell, a man who is not yet comfortable in his own skin, at least publicly. Chris New follows the screenplay’s lead and resists turning Glen into an obvious foil. We’re never really sure if Glen would be any good for Russell in the long run; by the end, though, we have observed, from an intimate perspective, what these two bring out in each other, and why. If this lovely movie proffers a thesis or a moral, it’s a simple one. A more open, fully integrated and passionate life feeds the soul no less than air and water. Or coffee the morning after.

mjphillips@tribune.com

‘Weekend’ — 4 stars

No MPAA rating (nudity, explicit sexual content, language)

Cast: Tom Cullen (Russell); Chris New (Glen); Jonathan Race (Jamie); Laura Freeman (Jill)

Read Anne Thompson’s interview with the legendary director now on indieWIRE!

Available now on Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/LAmour-Fou-Yves-Saint-Laurent/dp/B00561BN8Q/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1317158925&sr=8-1

WINNER OF THE BEST FOREIGN FILM from the New YOrk Film Critics Circle, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, National Society of Film Critics.
WINNER OF BEST DIRECTOR Los Angeles Film Critics Association.
WINNER GOLDEN GLOBE - BEST MINISERIES

“EXCITING, EPIC… Edgar Ramirez swaggers like a star.”
-Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

“*****! A LANDMARK. YOU WILL NEVER BE BORED, EVER. NO MORE IMPORTANT MOVIE WILL BE RELEASED THIS YEAR.”
-Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out New York
From Criterion’s website:

Carlos, directed by Olivier Assayas, is an epic, intensely detailed account of the life of the infamous international terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez—also known as Carlos the Jackal. One of the twentieth century’s most wanted fugitives, Carlos was committed to violent left-wing activism throughout the seventies and eighties, orchestrating bombings, kidnappings, and hijackings in Europe and the Middle East. Assayas portrays him not as a criminal mastermind but as a symbol of seismic political shifts around the world, while the magnetic Édgar Ramírez brilliantly embodies him as a swaggering global gangster. Criterion presents the complete, uncut, director-approved, five-and-a-half-hour version of Carlos.

Disc Features

DIRECTOR

-
APPROVED

SPECIAL

EDITION

:

High-definition digital transfer, supervised by cinematographers Denis Lenoir and Yorick Le Saux (with
DTS

-HD Master Audio on the Blu-ray edition)

New video interviews with director Olivier Assayas, actor Édgar Ramírez, and Lenoir

Selected-scene commentary featuring Lenoir

Carlos: Terrorist Without Borders, an hour-long documentary on the career of Carlos

Archival interview with Carlos associate Hans-Joachim Klein, by Jean-Marcel Bougreau and Daniel Leconte

Maison de France, a feature-length documentary on a Carlos bombing not included in the film

Twenty-minute making-of documentary on the film’s
OPEC

raid scene

Original theatrical trailer

PLUS

: A booklet featuring essays by critics Colin MacCabe and Greil Marcus, as well as a timeline of Carlos’s life and biographies of selected figures portrayed in the film, written by Carlos’s historical adviser, Stephen Smith
Film Essays

Carlos: What the Film Wanted
http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/1999-carlos-what-the-film-wanted )
By Greil Marcus
Carlos: Sudden Death
http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/1998-carlos-sudden-death
By Colin MacCabe

ROTTEN TOMATOES: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/weekend_2011/

MUBI: http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/andrew-haighs-weekend

Modern Love, the Real Thing, Over 48 Hours in Weekend

Naturalistic without being ineloquent, heartfelt yet unsentimental, Weekend is the rarest of birds: a movie romance that rings true. After spending an evening with his domesticated straight friends, Russell goes dancing and then home with the object of his desire. But before they can part on customarily awkward morning-after terms, Glen (Chris New) whips out a tape recorder and asks Russell to narrate the night’s events, from first sight to last sigh. Jump-started by Glen’s impersonal art project, they begin a free-form, increasingly intimate dialogue, exchanging ideas, confessions, and come-ons. Per the title, there’s a proscribed duration to what transpires, but we’re so hooked on the moment that the shape of the affair never plays as structure. Veteran editor Andrew Haigh proves adept at scripting characters with full, compelling personalities, facilitating fearless and beguiling performances from his two young leads, and working with DP Urszula Pontikos to devise a visual scheme that’s both organic and evocative. Perhaps the loveliest film to ever show a jizzed belly, Weekend manages to have universal appeal without muting its gayness. It’s a film in which love and sex aren’t fetish objects but negotiable aspects in a developing relationship. Each man has his limits and is only more appealing for having the wherewithal to know and accept what they are.

SUNDANCE SELECTS GRAB ALL NORTH AMERICAN RIGHTS TO MICHAEL WINTERBOTTOM’S TRISHNA

Toronto, CANADA (September 15, 2011) – Sundance Selects announced today from the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival that the company is acquiring North American rights to Michael Winterbottom’s critically-acclaimed TRISHNA. The film, with a screenplay also by Winterbottom, stars Freida Pinto and Riz Ahmed. Winterbottom and Melissa Parmenter produced the project, with Bankside Films handling international sales. Bankside Films and UK Film Council financed the film in conjunction with VTR Media Investments, Bob Film Sweden and Film I Vast with the support of the Swedish Film Institute. Additionally, A Film (Benelux), Madman (Australia and New Zealand), Bac Films (France), Shooting Stars (Middle East), and Video Vision (South Africa) obtained rights to the film. TRISHNA marks IFC’s fourth collaboration with Winterbottom and fifth with Revolution Films, with previous titles including RED RIDING TRILOGY, THE SHOCK DOCTRINE, THE KILLER INSIDE ME and THE TRIP.

Based on Thomas Hardy’s classic novel Tess of the D’Urbervilles, TRISHNA tells the story of one woman whose life is destroyed by a combination of love and circumstances. Set in contemporary Rajasthan, Trishna (Pinto) meets a wealthy young British businessman, Jay Singh (Ahmed) who has come to India to work in his father’s hotel business. After an accident destroys her father’s Jeep, Trishna goes to work for Jay, and they fall in love. But despite their feelings for each other, they cannot escape the conflicting pressures of a rural society which is changing rapidly through industrialization, urbanization and, above all, education. Trishna’s tragedy is that she is torn between the traditions of her family life and the dreams and ambitions that her education has given her.

Jonathan Sehring, President of Sundance Selects, said: “TRISHNA is Michael Winterbottom’s most beautiful and sensual film and features a truly sublime performance by Frieda Pinto.  We couldn’t be happier to continue our relationship with Michael, Andrew Eaton and Melissa Parmentier at Revolution Films and working with Bankside Films.”

Noted Winterbottom: “I’ve worked with IFC before on THE KLLER INSIDE ME and THE TRIP and I am delighted to be working with them again on TRISHNA.”

The deal for TRISHNA was negotiated by Arianna Bocco, Senior Vice President of Acquisitions & Productions for Sundance Selects with Stephen Kelliher, Head of Sales & Acquisitions for Bankside Films, on behalf of the filmmakers.

Sundance Selects is a sister division to IFC Films and IFC Midnight, and is owned and operated by AMC Networks, Inc.

Duplass is the emotionally volatile Jack who’s still having a hard time dealing with his brother’s death of a year ago. His best friend (and brother’s former girlfriend) Iris (Blunt) offers a temporary recovery plan: Go spend a week alone at her dad’s cabin on the Puget Sound. Once he gets there, however, he discovers Iris’ sister Hannah (DeWItt) is also using the space to get over a painful breakup. A bottle of tequila later, things are complicated—and they only get worse when Iris makes her surprise arrival the next morning.

“We fell in love with ‘Your Sister’s Sister,’ Lynn Shelton’s incredibly funny, moving and wise film featuring terrific performances by Emily Blunt, Rosemarie DeWitt and Mark Duplass,” said IFC Films/Sundance Selects president Jonathan Sehring. “This will be a traditional release for us and we look forward to getting it out to the largest possible audience next summer.”

Written by Shelton, the film was produced by Steven Schardt.

“Your Sister’s Sister” also closed deals with Studio Canal in the UK and with Madman for Australia and New Zealand.

Shelton and Duplass first teamed on “Humpday,” which premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, was acquired by Magnolia Pictures, screened in Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes and received the John Cassavetes Award at the 2010 Independent Spirit Awards. Shelton’s first feature, “We Go Way Back,” won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Narrative Feature at Slamdance 2006. Her second feature, “My Effortless Brilliance,” premiered at SXSW 2008 and earned her the Independent Spirit “Someone to Watch” Award. Shelton also directed an episode of AMC’s “Mad Men,” “Hands & Knees,” which aired last September.

The deal for the film was negotiated by Arianna Bocco, senior VP acquisitions & productions for Sundance Selects/IFC Films, with Submarine and UTA Independent Film Group rejig the filmmakers. Shelton is represented by UTA and Anonymous Content.

Toronto, CANADA (September 14, 2011) – IFC Films announced today from the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival that the company is acquiring North American rights to Abel Ferrara’s 4:44 LAST DAY ON EARTH. The film, with a screenplay also by Ferrara, stars Willem Dafoe, Shanyn Leigh, Paz de la Huerta, and Natasha Lyonne and was produced by Fabula, Funny Balloons, and Wild Bunch. The film premiered earlier this month at the Venice Film Festival and is also set to screen at the upcoming New York Film Festival.

How would we spend our final hours on Earth? And what does how we choose to die say about how we have chosen to live? In the hands of the inimitable Ferrara, 4:44 LAST DAY ON EARTH is a thought experiment that takes on a visceral immediacy. With the planet on the verge of extinction, a New York couple (Dafoe and Leigh) cycle through moments of anxiety, ecstasy, and torpor. As they sink into the havens of sex and art, and Skype last goodbyes in a Lower East Side apartment filled with screens bearing tidings of doom and salvation, the film becomes one of Ferrara’s most potent and intimate expressions of spiritual crisis. An apocalyptic trance film, 4:44 LAST DAY ON EARTH is also a mournful valentine to Ferrara’s beloved New York: the director’s first fiction feature to be filmed entirely in the city in over a decade, and coming 10 years after the September 11 attacks, a haunting vision of doom in the lower Manhattan skyline (NYFF Catalog.)

Jonathan Sehring, President of Sundance Selects/IFC Films, said: “Abel Ferrara is not only a friend but also one of the filmmakers we’ve wanted towork with most.  With 4:44 LAST DAY ON EARTH, he has made one of his best and most personal films and after 10 years, New York City has one of its most iconic filmmakers back. We’re thrilled to be in business with him, Wild Bunch and his wonderful cast led by Willem Dafoe and Shanyn Leigh.”

The deal for 4:44 LAST DAY ON EARTH was negotiated by Arianna Bocco, Senior Vice President of Acquisitions & Productions for Sundance Selects/IFC Films with Carole Baraton at Wild Bunch on behalf of the filmmakers.

IFC Films is a sister division to Sundance Selects and IFC Midnight, and is owned and operated by AMC Networks, Inc.

Toronto, CANADA (September 14, 2011) – IFC Midnight announced today from the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival that the company is acquiring North American rights to Alexandre Courtès’s THE INCIDENT. The film, with a screenplay by Jérôme Fansten, stars Rupert Evans, Kenny Doughty, Joseph Kennedy, Dave Legeno, Marcus Garvey, and Richard Brake and was produced by Wassim Béji, Yannick Bolloré and Emilie Chatel. Roy Lee and Doug Davison executiveproduced the project. The film premiered Monday night as part of the festival’s Midnight Madness lineup.

In THE INCIDENT, George (Evans), Max (Doughty) and Ricky (Kennedy) play in a band together, struggling to record their first album and performing small gigs between shifts cooking for the inmates of the high-security asylum where they all work. Their kitchen is separated from the cafeteria by a large window with a small slot, through which they’re able to observe the patients from a safe vantage point. Except for the dispatching of food and medication, their average workday requires little interaction with the disturbed men, who veer between violent outbursts and near catatonia. This banal routine is interrupted just before dinner one evening, when a storm knocks out the power in the hospital, trapping the three young men in the kitchen and disabling the security systems that keep them safe from the precarious lunatics on the other side of the glass. Help should be on its way, but until it comes, the bandmates must protect themselves from the raging psychopathy that threatens to crack the barrier.

The deal for THE INCIDENT was negotiated by Jeff Deutchman, Manager of Acquisitions & Productions for Sundance Selects/IFC Films with Ben Weiss of Paradigm and Charlotte Boucon, Sales Manager at SND M6, on behalf of the filmmakers.

IFC Midnight is a sister division to IFC Films and Sundance Selects, and is owned and operated by AMC Networks, Inc.

NORTH AMERICAN RIGHTS TO CHRISTOPHE Honoré’S BELOVED GO TO SUNDANCE SELECTS

Toronto, CANADA (September 10, 2011) – Sundance Selects announced today from the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival that the company is acquiring North American rights to Christophe Honoré’s BELOVED. The film, with a screenplay also by Honoré, stars Catherine Deneuve, Chiara Mastroianni, Ludivine Sagnier, Louis Garrel, Paul Schneider and Milos Forman and was produced by Why Not Productions, France 2 Cinéma, Sixteen Films, Negativ with the Participation of Canal + France.

BELOVED was the closing night film of the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and will be a Gala Presentation at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival. This marks the fifth film Sundance Selects have done with Honoré. The previously partnered on DANS PARIS, LOVE SONGS, LA BELLE PERSONNE, and MAKING PLANS FOR LENA.

Starring Catherine Deneuve and (her real-life daughter) Chiara Mastroianni, this sly and exquisitely romantic musical drama from (Love Songs, Dans Paris) spans over three decades as it follows a mother and daughter’s misadventures in love. In the ‘60s, Madeleine (Ludivine Sagnier) leaves Paris to re-join her Czech husband  Jaromil (Rasha Bukvic) in Prague, but his infidelities and the arrival  of Russian tanks in the city lead her back to France. Thirty years later we follow the romance of Madeleine’s daughter, Vera, who falls in love with a musician in London who is incapable of devoting himself to her. Meanwhile in Paris, a re-married Madeleine (Deneuve) has rekindled her love affair with Jaromil (Milos Forman). Louis Garrel and Paul Schneider also star in this light-hearted but ultimately moving exploration of the changing nature of relationships, with music by Alex Beaupain.

Jonathan Sehring, President of Sundance Selects, said: “BELOVED is a one-of-a-kind film featuring some of the world’s great actors including the phenomenal pairing of Catherine Deneuve, her daughter Chiara Mastroianni and Ludivine Sagnier. Christophe Honore has made his most accomplished film filled with the joy of cinema. We’re happy to be working with him for the 5th time and with Pascal Caucheteaux and Why Not Productions and believe this will be his most successful film.”

The deal for the film was negotiated by Arianna Bocco, Senior Vice President of Acquisitions & Productions for Sundance Selects with Hengameh Panahi of Celluloid Dreams on behalf of the filmmakers.

In its first year, Sundance Selects films included: Herzog’s CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS, Sundance Film Festival Audience Award winner BUCK and Abbas Kiraostami’s CERTIFIED COPY for which Juliette Binoche won the Best Actress award at Cannes.  The new label will also present 7 films at the upcoming Toronto International Film Festival including Wim Wender’s PINA, Joshua Marston’s Berlin Silver Bear winner THE FORGIVENESS OF BLOOD and the Dardennes’ Cannes Grand Prix winner THE KID WITH A BIKE.  Other upcoming releases include SXSW Audience Award winner WEEKEND, Sundance award winner THE BLACK POWER MIXTAPES 1967-1975 and Cannes Jury Prize winner POLISS.

Sundance Selects is a sister division to IFC Films and IFC Midnight, and is owned and operated by AMC Networks, Inc.

Screen Daily’s Allan Hunter raves:

Screen Daily
9 September, 2011 | By Allan Hunter

Dir: Werner Herzog. US. 2011. 106mins

The capital punishment debate excites heated passion on both sides of the argument. Into The Abyss by contrast is distinguished by a sense of measured, levelheaded compassion as director Werner Herzog explores the human cost of crime and its consequences. The result is a poignant, lyrical documentary that ranks among the director’s finest and leaves the viewer with plenty to reflect upon and digest.

Herzog draws no clear-cut conclusions. That is the power and the profundity of his film.

A traditional talking heads approach might ordinarily have limited the film to a non-theatrical future but the subject matter and Herzog’s assured handling should ensure theatrical viability in all the territories that have welcomed his recent run of documentary work from Grizzly Man to Cave Of Forgotten Dreams.

Herzog’s own position in the capital punishment debate is clear. He believes that it is wrong to take a human life. It is not an agenda that he forces upon the viewer. Instead, he lets the issues find a voice in the stories of a wide range of individuals touched by a triple homicide case in Conroe, Texas in 2000 that led to the convictions of teenagers Michael Perry and Jason Burkett.

Herzog approaches the case with a forensic thoroughness that suggests a cinematic equivalent of Truman Capote’s masterwork In Cold Blood. His interest is much less in the grisly details of what happened and more in the legacy it left for the families of the victims, the convicted killers themselves and their loved ones.

Baby-faced Perry is on Death Row and just eight days away from his execution date of July 1st, 2010 when Herzog interviews him. He tells Perry that he may not necessarily like him but he will respect his humanity. It could be the guiding philosophy of the film.

Everyone interviewed is treated with dignity. Herzog is scrupulously honest with his subjects and never less than well mannered in his gentle, insistent probing. He neither judges nor ridicules but allows them the luxury of being heard in their own words and their own time. The film still has a taste of the idiosyncratic flavour one might expect from Herzog (there is even a mention of alligators) but more often than not he concentrates purely on the facts and the stark emotions.

After a prologue, the film unfolds in chapter headings  (The Crime, The Dark Side Of Conroe etc). Police lieutenant Damon Hall recalls the details of the investigation as crime scene video footage provides evidence of bloody murder in which a woman was killed ostensibly over the theft of a red Chevrolet Camaro car. Such cases are the backbone of weekly television drama but have a much more chilling impact when we know that real people were involved.

Herzog interviews the first victim’s daughter Lisa Stolter-Balloun, a woman who carries her grief like a boulder. A young man recalls the brother he lost. Herzog also meets Perry’s conspirator in crime Jason Burkett and the father Delbert Burkett whose emotional plea for clemency may have been all that saved him from Death Row.

Burkett is currently serving a life sentence that should see him eligible for parole in 2041 when he will be 59 years old. The more we learn about Perry and Burkett the more we are encouraged to accept that they never had a fighting chance at a decent life.Sympathy is generously extended without ever developing into a means of excusing their actions.

The film has no doubts about their guilt or that their acts were cruel and wanton. Herzog constantly balances the argument; Lisa’s sense of release after Perry’s execution leaves her believing that some people don’t deserve the gift of life. Captain Fred Allen oversaw more than a hundred executions before the blinding realisation that what he did was morally indefensible. His spellbinding memory of what changed his mind offers a powerful rebuttal of Lisa’s view.

Herzog draws no clear-cut conclusions. He presents his evidence and challenges the viewers to form their own opinion. That is the power and the profundity of his film.

Kim Voynar of MOVIE CITY NEWS raves:

Movie City News
September 9, 2011
By Kim Voynar

http://moviecitynews.com/2011/09/tiff-11-review-pina/
TIFF ’11 Review: Pina

One of my favorite films of this year’s TIFF so far is Wim Wenders terrific 3-D documentary, Pina, a visually evocative, stunningly lovely tribute to legendary German choreographer Pina Bausch.

If you are inclined to enjoy the language of dance, and you like to see terrific, creative choreography that utilizes all the subtleties of movement to both tell story and convey emotion in the way that a master wordsmith crafts a novel, you will not want to miss seeing this film, even if you’ve never heard of Pina Bausch and her dance troupe, Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch.

Bausch revolutionized expressionist dance with her meticulously choreographed and intimate works, including “Rites of Spring” and “Cafe Muller,” both seen here. As we learn in the film, Pina’s choreography tended to use objects like tables and chairs (“Cafe Muller”) and things of nature — water, large rocks, even dirt laid out on the stage (as with “Rites of Spring”) for her dancers to interact with, move over, around and through.

Repetition was a frequent Pina stylistic motif as well, and Wenders shows us this in ways that drive home why this repetition works so effectively, book-ending the film with her dancers walking peacefully, repeating hand gestures symbolizing spring … summer … autumn … winter, with blissful facial expressions that reminded me of the way people look when they’re chanting Buddhist chants at a Tibetan monastery.

It’s as if through their gestures, symbolizing and acknowledging the life-and-death cycle of the seasons, they are ritualistically saying farewell to their beloved leader, who died suddenly of cancer in 2009. And they look, all of them, as if they — and Pina — are in on some secret rhythm of life and nature that they’re letting the rest of us in on. Repetition is used frequently in other Pina works to evoke different emotions, particularly when the gestures or movements start out slowly and then cycle, faster and faster and faster, or slower and slower and slower, conveying a sense of urgency or intimacy among her players.

Pina was also interested in exploring relationships between men and women, and much of her choreography is built around these ideas: dancers moving together, moving apart, or two of them clinging desperately to each other while a third rhythmically separates them; or sensually rolling around the dirt in “Rites of Spring,” tossing it onto each others’ bodies, or moving through and around chairs and tables angrily, emphatically, in “Cafe Muller.” Every nuance of facial expression, every subtlety of hand gesture, every tiny movement, means something; Pina defied convention, defined dance as more than just dance, but as theater in which every small part matters to the whole.

Mostly, though, Pina is just a beautiful, moving film that’s as much about the expressionist dance form into which the choreographer breathed life as it is about the woman herself. Every choice Wenders makes as a director here is about keeping dance at the center of the story; there are no interviews with people who knew Pina in her childhood talking about how she started dancing at an early age, or what her passions were outside the theater of the stage. Pina’s life work was about dance, and so Wenders chooses to keep the focus on what she did, on the legacy she left behind, allowing the work itself to speak for who she was and the audience to discern from that the whys and  wherefores of what drove her passion.

Simple, flowing costumes that don’t detract from the movements of bodies abound, and where much of the dance world seems to focus on youth and on female dancers, in particular, who present a certain body type, Pina’s dancers span the ages, with dancers who were a part of her troupe for decades dancing alongside younger members who wish, perhaps, that they’d had more years to learn from her how to find and express themselves through the joy of moving those bodies in very particular ways to evoke very particular emotions.

It’s worth mentioning that while I’m not generally much of a fan of 3-D, Wenders puts it to good use here in making you feel as though you are right there watching these dancers perform live. He also very smartly forgoes the typical “talking head” interviews, instead keeping his camera tight on the faces of the dancers as they reminisce in voice-over about what it was like to work with Pina. The love with which they speak of her, the ways in which they tell their stories of Pina helping them to find the emotion in the movement, to find ways to express joy and fear and sorrow through dance, is far more effective than a more pedestrian film would have been at evoking that dance is about tapping into emotion by being bold and courageous, about laying bare your soul and allowing the world a glimpse inside you, and perhaps most of all, about conveying the universality of the experience of being human by expressing those emotions and relationships through dance.

In some ways, Pina reminded me of John Turturro’s Passione, which I caught here at TIFF last year. Where Passione told the story of a a place through music and dance, though, Pina tells the story of a woman whose unique vision and passion transformed what “dance” means, transforming movement into theatrical, poetic explorations of love, intimacy and relationships.

Wenders has made a fitting tribute to an icon with this terrific, stunningly beautiful film. Immerse yourself in the imagery and wonder of Pina’s dancers bringing her choreography to life before you, sit back and allow the emotion each dance evokes to wash over you and fill your soul. This, my friends, is what dance is supposed to do, and Wenders succeeds quite brilliantly in conveying the unique contribution Pina made to the art form through this film. Making film about someone as legendary to her field as Pina was (and is) requires telling this story in a way that’s as rigorously demanding, relentlessly intelligent, and passionatelly creative as its subject, and that is exactly what Wenders has done here. Bravo.

A Tumultuous Time, Captured by Outsiders

By A. O. SCOTT

“The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975,” among other things an extraordinary feat of editing and archival research, takes up a familiar period in American history from a fresh and fascinating angle. In the late 1960s and early ’70s, Swedish television journalists traveled to the United States with the intention of “showing the country as it really is.” Some of the images and interviews they collected have been assembled by Goran Hugo Olsson into a roughly chronological collage that restores a complex human dimension to the racial history of the era.

he film begins at a moment when the concept of black power was promoted by Stokely Carmichael, a veteran of the freedom rides early in the decade, who, like many young black activists, had grown frustrated with the Gandhian, nonviolent philosophy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Carmichael, who later moved to Guinea and took the name Kwame Ture, is remembered for the militancy of his views and his confrontational, often slashingly witty speeches, but the Swedish cameras captured another side of him. In the most touching and arresting scene in “Mixtape,” he interviews his mother, Mable, gently prodding her to talk about the effects of poverty and discrimination on her family.

That quiet conversation is a reminder that the inflammatory rhetoric of the black power movement, with its talk of revolution, national liberation and armed struggle, had its roots in bitter experience. And while “The Black Power Mixtape” tells a story of defiance and pride, it is also a tale of defeat, frustration and terrible destruction. The assassination of Dr. King, the grinding toll of the Vietnam War, the Attica prison uprising, the spread of heroin in the ghettoes of northern cities: these are not chapters in a tale of triumph.

At one point a camera crew goes to visit the editor of TV Guide, which had published an article accusing the European news media — and Sweden’s in particular — of presenting an overly negative view of American society. Mr. Olsson’s film does not entirely refute that charge, but the impression it leaves is of a compassionate curiosity, a willingness to listen that Americans have not always, then or now, afforded one another. The voices of contentious, well-known figures like Angela Davis and Louis Farrakhan are heard, as are those of ordinary residents of Harlem, Brooklyn and Oakland, Calif.

As its title suggests, “The Black Power Mixtape” is not a comprehensive history. Its impressionistic visual record of recent history is accompanied by the present-day reflections of participants in that history and younger people who have been influenced by it. Ms. Davis, the poet Sonia Sanchez and Abiodun Oyewole of the Last Poets muse on the meaning and legacy of black power, as do the musicians Erykah Badu, Questlove, John Forté and others.

Their words sometimes deepen the viewer’s appreciation of what is on screen, though at other times the nuances and contradictions of the past outstrip the didacticism of the commentary. But the fact that the speakers’ faces are never seen produces a feeling of estrangement that is crucial to the film’s effectiveness. You become acutely aware of gaps and discontinuities: between slogans and realities, between political ideals and stubborn social problems, between then and now.

And you are left in a bracing state of confusion, wondering how much has changed and how the change took place. How did we get from the America of Stokely Carmichael to the America of Barack Obama, who represents a very different kind of black power? To what extent is it the same America? Perhaps there are some visitors from Sweden out there who can help us make sense of it all.

BELOVED
directed by Christophe Honoré
starring: Catherine Deneuve, Chiara Mastroianni, Ludivine Sagnier, Rasha Bukvic, Milos Forman, Paul Schneider, Louis Garrel, Omar Ben Sellen
Gala, North American Premiere
A Sundance Selects release - opening 2012

Starring Catherine Deneuve and (her real-life daughter) Chiara Mastroianni, this sly and exquisitely romantic musical drama from Christophe Honoré (Love Songs, Dans Paris) spans over three decades as  it follows a mother and daughter’s misadventures in love. In the ‘60s, Madeleine (Ludivine Sagnier) leaves Paris to re-join her Czech husband Jaromil (Rasha Bukvic) in Prague, but his infidelities and the arrival of Russian tanks in the city lead her back to France. Thirty years later we follow the romance of Madeleine’s daughter, Vera, who falls in love with a musician (Paul Scneider) in London who is incapable of devoting himself to her. Meanwhile in Paris, a re-married Madeleine (Deneuve) has rekindled her love affair with Jaromil (Milos Forman). Louis Garrel and Paul Schneider also star in this light-hearted but ultimately  moving exploration of the changing nature of relationships, with music by Alex Beaupain (Love Songs).
The film was the closing night selection of the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.

THE FORGIVENESS OF BLOOD
directed by Joshua Marston
starring: Tristan Halilaj, Sindi Laçej
Contemporary World Cinema (North American Premiere)
A Sundance Selects release - opening 2012

Winner of the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay at the Berlin Film Festival, the powerful and richly textured second feature from Joshua Marston (Maria Full of Grace) focuses on an Albanian family caught up in a blood feud. Nik (Tristan Halilaj) is a carefree teenager in a small town with a crush on the school beauty and ambitions to start his own internet café. His world is suddenly up-ended when his father and uncle become entangled in a land dispute that leaves a fellow villager murdered. According to a centuries-old code of law, this entitles the dead man’s family to take the life of a male from Nik’s  family as retribution. His uncle in jail and his father in hiding, Nik is the prime target and confined to the home while his younger sister Rudina (Sindi Laçej) is forced to leave school and take over their father’s business. Working with non-professional Albanian actors and a local co-writer, Marston boldly contrasts antiquated traditions with the lives of the young people whose future is put at risk by them.

GOODBYE FIRST LOVE
directed by Mia Hansen-Løve
starring Lola Créton, Sebastian Urzendowsky, Magne Brekke
Contemporary World Cinema (Canadian Premiere)
A Sundance Selects Release - opening late 2011/early 2012

French filmmaker Mia Hansen-Løve returns to Toronto after her critically acclaimed The Father of My Children with an acutely perceptive portrait of a bright young woman in the wake of her first  romance. Fifteen-year-old Camille (Lola Créton) is a serious, intensely focused girl who has fallen in love with cheerful Sullivan (Sebastian Urzendowsky), an older boy who reciprocates her feelings, mostly, but wants to be free to explore the world. When he leaves her to travel through South America, she is devastated. But over the next eight years, she develops into a more fully formed woman, with new interests and a new love—and the possibility that she’ll be less defenseless when Sullivan enters her life again. Filled with scenes that showcase her extraordinary ability to evoke moods and feelings, Hansen-Løve takes the story of a girl’s first romance and makes it into a singular experience, familiar in its broad strokes and yet so specific that it feels uniquely personal.
The film garnered a Special Mention at the 2011 Locarno International Film Festival and will play at the 2011 New York Film Festival.

HABEMUS PAPAM
written and directed by Nanni Moretti
starring Michel Piccolo, Nanni Moretti, Jerzy Stuhr
Special Presentations, North American Premiere
A Sundance Selects release - opening 2012

Nanni Moretti (THE SON’S ROOM, CARO DIARIO) joins forces with the great French actor Michel Piccoli (CONTEMPT, I’M GOING HOME) to tell the story of Melville, a cardinal who suddenly finds himself elected as the next Pope.  Never the front runner and completely caught off guard, he panics as he’s presented to the faithful in St. Peter’s Square.  To prevent a world wide crisis, the Vatican’s spokesman calls in an unlikely psychiatrist who is neither religious or all that committed, played by Moretti, to find out what is wrong with the new Pope. As the world nervously waits outside, inside the therapist tries to find a solution. But Cardinal Melville is adamant: he does not want the job, or at least needs time to think it over. What follows is a marvelous insight into the concept of a human being existing behind the title of God’s representative on Earth.  HABEMUS PAPAM is the latest film by Moretti to make wonderful use of humor while dealing with serious issues and continue to showcase his deep humanism.
An official selection of the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.

HOUSE OF TOLERANCE
written and directed by Betrand Bonello
starring Hafsia Herzi, Celine Sallette and Jasmine Trinca
Visions, North American Premiere
An IFC Midnight release -  opening Nov 2011

For his fifth film, Bertrand Bonello (TIRESIA) depicts a highly cinematic and atmospheric look at the final days of a turn of the century brothel when much of the Parisian sex trade was confined to grand maisons, populated by elegant madams and vetted clientele (including French filmmakers Jacques Nolot (BEFORE I FORGET) and Xavier Beauvois (OF GODS AND MEN)).  Within L’Apollonide’s walls, Bonello tracks the lives of the Madam (Noemie Lvovsky) and close to a dozen girls among them:  Madeline (Alice Barnole) who is horribly disfigured by a client and becomes known as “the woman who laughs”, Clotilde (Celine Sallette) the veteran who longs to be a “respectable woman” and Pauline (Iliana Zabeth), the newcomer whose eyes are quickly opened to reality.  Despite the fact that desire often mixes with danger and disease rears its ugly head, the film is filled with moments of intimacy and camaraderie amongst the girls.  Using a bag of cinematic techniques which include split screen, time shifts and a modern soundtrack, Bonello has made a provocative and beautiful film on not only the world’s oldest profession but also a commentary on history as remembered by art and literature.
An official selection of the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.

INTO THE ABYSS
directed by Werner Herzog
Real to Reel (Canadian Premiere)
A Sundance Selects release opening 2012

In his fascinating exploration of a triple homicide case in Conroe, Texas, master filmmaker Werner Herzog (Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Grizzly Man) probes the human psyche to explore why people kill—and why a state kills. In intimate conversations with those involved, including 28-year-old death row inmate Michael Perry (scheduled to die within eight days of appearing on-screen), Herzog achieves what he describes as “a gaze into the abyss of the human soul.” Herzog’s inquiries also extend to the families of the victims and perpetrators as well as a state executioner and pastor who’ve been with death row prisoners as they’ve taken their final breaths. As he’s so often done before, Herzog’s investigation unveils layers of humanity, making an enlightening trip out of ominous territory.

THE KID WITH A BIKE
directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
starring: Thomas Doret, Jérémie Renier, Cécile de France
Masters (Canadian Premiere)
A Sundance Selects release opening 2012

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, the deeply moving new film by the Dardenne brothers (L’enfant, Rosetta) delves into the emotional life of troubled 11-year-old Cyril (newcomer Thomas Doret). When his father (Jérémie Renier) abandons him, Cyril obsessively tries to find his bicycle—after all, his father must have cared about him enough not to sell that off, he reasons.  Almost by accident, he becomes the ward of a kind hairdresser (Cécile de France), a woman who seems surprised to find herself so determined to help him. With his wild, unpredictable behavior and his disastrous search for father figures, Cyril risks losing her—though she refuses to give up without a fight. Full of heartbreaking betrayals and unexpected grace, THE KID WITH A BIKE is a film about a child, abandoned to the elements, learning to become good.
An official selection of the 2011 New York Film Festival.

KILL LIST
written and directed by Ben Wheatley
starring Neil Maskell, MyAa Buring, Harry Simpson
Midnight Madness, Canadian Premiere
An IFC Midnight release opening 2012

Eight months after a botched job in Kiev, Jay (Neil Maskell) is an out-of-work hitman with no job, money, health insurance and a wife constantly on his case. But when his business partner Gal (Michael Smiley) comes over for dinner and pressures Jay into taking a new assignment, Jay quickly finds himself back in the game with the promise of a big payoff after three assassinations. Although the hits start off without incident, soon things begin to unravel and Jay’s paranoia reveals itself  as he is plunged into the heart of darkness.

The second feature from British director Ben Wheatley (DOWN TERRACE) KILL LIST (which premiere at the 2011 SXSW Film Festival) features incredibly natural rich performances, jet black humor and nail-biting suspense that work to keep the audience always off-guard. Moving from kitchen-sink drama to character study to crime thriller, KILL LIST ends up at something more fundamentally profound and wonderfully disturbing.

PINA
directed by Wim Wenders
Masters (Canadian Premiere)
A Sundance Selects release opening December 2012

In his exhilarating new film, German master Wim Wenders (Wings of Desire, The Buena Vista Social Club) shoots in 3D to capture the brilliantly inventive dance world of legendary choreographer Pina Bausch. Wenders had conceived with Bausch a dance film like none seen before, one which would take the fullest advantage yet of new 3D technology to put the viewer deep inside Bausch’s playful, thrillingly unpredictable pieces. After her untimely death in 2009, Wenders continued with the project, turning it into the most exciting tribute he could imagine. Sensual and visually stunning, PINA uses 3D to remarkable effect, taking the audience into Bausch’s work in her imaginative sets (a gliding monorail, a bare stage covered with chairs, a towering man-made waterfall) and powerfully rendering the beauty and sheer physicality of the dances and dancers of her Tanztheater Wuppertal ensemble. Also in the NY Film Festival. Opens in the US on December 21, 2011 through Sundance Selects. (106 min.)

SLEEPING BEAUTY
written and directed by Julia Leigh
starring Emily Browning, Rachael Blake and Ewen Leslie
Special Presentations, North American Premiere
An IFC Films release opening December 2012 (VOD November 2012)

SLEEPING BEAUTY, which premiered in competition at this years’ Cannes Film Festival, is a fascinating depiction of a young woman’s reckless decent into a shocking world of erotic desires. Lucy (Emily Browning) is a young university student possessed by a kind of radical passivity.  She lets a flip of a coin decide the outcome of a random sexual encounter and she displays an uncomplaining patience when facing the repetitions of her various menial jobs that fund her studies. One day she answers an ad in the student newspaper and interviews for a job to be a lingerie waitress.  But she is secretly being initiated into a world of strange new work; one where she will have to give into absolute submission to her clients by being sedated; becoming a Sleeping Beauty.  Eventually this unnerving experience begins to bleed into her daily life and she finally develops the will to break the spell by discovering what happens to her while she sleeps.  With a fearless performance by Browning, Leigh creates a bold cinematic vision; one where Lucy, both in her clandestine sexual adventures and in her mundane daily existence, lives with the same unflinching and brutal honesty.

SNOWTOWN
directed by Justin Kurzel
starring Daniel Henshall, Lucas Pittaway and Craig Coyne
Vanguard, North American Premiere
An IFC Midnight release opening 2012

Based on the horrifying crimes discovered in Snowtown, Australia in 1999, where police found dismembered bodies rotting in barrels, SNOWTOWN, which marks Justin Kurzel’s directorial debut is a stark journey into the feral subculture of welfare dependence, addiction, domestic violence, brutality and sexual abuse.

Elizabeth Harvey (Louise Harris) is raising her three boys in Adelaide’s poor northern suburbs. After her latest boyfriend displays pedophilic tendencies she takes up with a new man, hoping for security but instead winds up welcoming an even more vicious predator into her home.

John Bunting (Daniel Henshall) is the moral compass among a circle of friends who hold self-appointed neighborhood watch meetings at the kitchen table. Fueled by cigarettes and beer they cast judgments on those living around them. Bunting enlists his crew in acts of sadistic vigilantism on those he considers deviants takes Elizabeth’s son Jamie (Lucas Pittaway) under his wing. In a mix of misdirected hero worship and terror, Jamie becomes an accomplice to a spree of torture and murder.

SNOWTOWN is an uncompromising film, focused on the relationship between vulnerable teenager and a father figure who is revealed to be the worst kind of bully.
Winner of the Jury Prize at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.

Saturday 17 Sept – 11.59pm - RYERSON – Public 1

Sunday 18 Sept – 3.15pm  - SCOTIABANK THEATRE 4 – Public 2

Eight months after a disastrous job in Kiev left him physically and mentally scarred, ex-soldier turned contract killer Jay, is pressured by his partner Gal, into taking a new assignment. As they descend into the dark, disturbing world of the contract, Jay begins to unravel once again - his fear and paranoia sending him deep into the heart of darkness.

“Fantastic — one of the best British thrillers in years.” - The Daily Mirror

“INTENSE, JAW-DROPPING. A strong contender for best British film of the year.”  - Time Out

“A STUNNING blend of thrills, chills and pagan rituals…Kill List is one of the best British films in years!”- Sunday Mirror

“***** (HIGHEST RATING)! Authentic dialogue, pitch-perfect performances and seductively scuzzy images comprise a film funny and bleak, tender and cruel, serious-minded and ‘out-there’. British horror has rarely hit these heights since the mid-‘70s.” - Total Film

“***** (HIGHEST RATING)! The most original, unsettling and cerebrally menacing British film to emerge so far from this young and troubled decade.” - Financial Times

“Wheatley has a very British version of David Lynch’s knack for that disturbing twilight area which exists between the crime movie and the horror film.” - Empire magazine

Christine showers her protégée with encouragement, gifts and kisses that land in a gray area between collegial affection and something riskier. Isabelle, for her part, accepts plum work assignments and tries at once to please her boss and to imitate her. Dispatched to Cairo at the last minute along with Philippe (Patrick Mille), a business associate who is also Christine’s lover, Isabelle negotiates an important deal. She also sleeps with Philippe, which may have been part of Christine’s plan.

But Isabelle is angry when Christine takes credit for her work, and tries, with the help of a loyal co-worker named Daniel (Guillaume Marquet), to get some revenge. She and Christine wage a stealthy war, each trying to undermine the other while maintaining at least a minimum of professional decorum. But things quickly escalate, and icy looks and poisonous whispers give way to forged memos, brutal humiliations and, finally, outright violence.

Through it all, Mr. Corneau makes witty use of the contrasting faces and temperaments of the two main actresses. Ms. Thomas, her manner as impeccable and dry as her French, is all angles and edges, most terrifying when she seems most at ease. Ms. Sagnier, soft and skittish and visibly struggling to maintain her composure, turns out to be even scarier.

At a certain point, though — to say exactly when would ruin a fairly stunning surprise — the cat-and-mouse psychology is jettisoned in favor of something more procedural. The two halves of “Love Crime” divide according to the words of the title: the first explores the knotty, feverish, ambiguous bond between Christine and Isabelle, while the second is all about guilt, innocence, evidence and motive. It is interesting and ingenious, even if some of the kinky, queasy fascination that had been so intoxicating in the earlier scenes ebbs away.

But “Love Crime” also works — like some of the later films of Claude Chabrol — as a devilish satire on power and eros in the executive suite. Christine and Isabelle work in the Paris office of an American-based multinational company, and their moneyed world is sleek, attractive and also absurd. It becomes hilariously so whenever the American bosses show up, either for quick on-scene meetings or video conferences. Then the dialogue switches to English, and to an idiom of upbeat management boilerplate captured with devastating accuracy.

This is not the first time that Mr. Corneau explored the sado-masochistic elements of relations between women in the modern global workplace. In his 2003 film, “Fear and Trembling,” Sylvie Testud played a young Belgian woman living in Tokyo, squirming under the stiletto heel of her supervisor. And in that film, as in “Love Crime,” sympathy for the underdog was balanced, or perhaps undermined, by detached, amused prurience. You can’t help rooting for Isabelle, but at the same time you are hoping for things to get really nasty.

LOVE CRIME

Opens on Friday in New York and Los Angeles.

Directed by Alain Corneau; written by Mr. Corneau and Natalie Carter; director of photography, Yves Angelo; edited by Thierry Derocles; music by Pharoah Sanders; production design by Katia Wyszkop; costumes by Khadija Zeggaï; produced by Saïd Ben Saïd; released by Sundance Selects. In French and English, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. This film is not rated.

WITH: Ludivine Sagnier (Isabelle), Kristin Scott Thomas (Christine), Patrick Mille (Philippe), Guillaume Marquet (Daniel), Gérald Laroche (Gérard), Julien Rochefort (Lawyer), Olivier Rabourdin (Judge) and Marie Guillard (Claudine).

It regards a group of miserable lives, and in finding a few glimmers of hope only underlines the sadness.

The documentary centers on two young men in Texas, one on Death Row, the other spared death but facing a life sentence.  There is no reason to pity these two.  They were responsible for murders distinguished by their stupidity and mindless cruelty.  The film doesn’t argue they were wrongly convicted.

Herzog keeps a lower profile than in many of his documentaries.  He is not seen, and his off-camera voice quietly asks questions that are factual, understated, simply curious.  His subjects talk willingly.  One speaks within days of his scheduled execution.

Why was the other one spared?  We meet his father, also in prison for life.  His testimony at his son’s trial, at which he blamed himself for the boy’s valueless upbringing, apparently influenced two women jurors to pity the boy - or perhaps even more the father.  This father seems today a decent and reflective man.  He bitterly regrets that he failed to take advantage of a college scholarship, dropped out of high school, and went wrong.  He sees his mistake clearly now - too late.

The young men are uneducated, rootless, without personal resources.  The father perhaps has benefited from prison, as his son may.  We meet relatives, a wife, relatives of their victims, a minister, police, and the remarkable Captain Fred Allen, who was long in charge of the guard detail on Death Row.  What he has to say during a long introspective memory of one event in his life is one of the most profound statements I can imagine about the death penalty.

The people in this film, I think without exception, cite God as a force in their lives.  The killers, the relatives of their victims, the police, everyone.  God has a plan.  It is all God’s will.  God will forgive.  Their lies are in His hands.  They must accept the will of the Lord.  Condemned or bereft, they all apparently find comfort.

Opposition to the death penalty, I suppose, comes down to this:  Although the convicted may not deserve to live, no one deserves to be given the task of executing them.  I think that’s what Herzog is saying, although he doesn’t say it out loud.  In some of his films he freely shares his philosophy and insights.  In this film, he simply looks.  He always seems to know where to look.

By Roger Ebert

SECRET SUNSHINE is now available on Criterion Collection DVD and Blu-ray, order here!

Buy tickets HERE.

7:00PM Screening
Visit http://www.filmlinc.com/films/series/latinbeat for TICKETS and INFO.

Official Selection: Cannes Film Festival,

Toronto International Film Festival

TALES FROM THE GOLDEN AGE

Darkly Comic Collection from the Director of 

4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days and Up-and-Coming Filmmakers 

Satirizes the Surreal End of Communist Romania;

Exclusive Engagement Opens Friday, Aug. 26 at IFC Center

TALES FROM THE GOLDEN AGE, a satirical look at the dark days of Communist Romania from Cristian Mungiu (4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days) and other filmmakers of the acclaimed Romanian new wave, opens for an exclusive engagement at IFC Center Friday, August 26.

TALES FROM THE GOLDEN AGE combines several true stories into a portrait of an era during which food was more important than money, freedom more important than love and survival more important than principles. The final 15 years of the notorious Ceauşescu regime were the worst in Romania’s history. Nonetheless, the propaganda machine of that time insisted upon referring to the period as “The Golden Age.” TALES brings to the screen some of the most popular and persistent urban legends of the period—comic, bizarre, surprising myths that drew on the often surreal events of everyday life under the communist regime. Humor is what kept Romanians alive, and TALES FROM THE GOLDEN AGE re-captures that mood, portraying the survival of a nation living under the twisted logic of a dictatorship.

“TALES FROM THE GOLDEN AGE offers an unconventional subjective history, told through Romania’s urban myths from the perspective of ordinary people,” says Mr. Mungiu. “Romanians consider urban legends to be true stories that were passed from mouth to mouth. They were the main topic of gossip and debate in the long queues for food in the Communist era. The film re-creates the times of our youth during the eighties, through music, language, objects and stereotypes of that age.”

TALES FROM THE GOLDEN AGE is composed of six episodes, directed by various filmmakers, that are connected by mood, narrative pattern and period detail. “I decided to open up the project to different Romanian directors, enlisting filmmakers old enough to remember the period,” Mr. Mungiu explains. “I chose the stories, wrote the screenplays, and got involved in the casting and editing to ensure that ultimately it’s one film, but each director was free to use his own cinematic language.”

SUNDANCE SELECTS TAKES NORTH AMERICAN RIGHTS TO

JONATHAN CAOUETTE’S WALK AWAY RENEE

New York, NY (July 19, 2011) – Sundance Selects announced today that the company is acquiring all North American rights to director Jonathan Caouette’s documentary WALK AWAY RENEE from Wild Bunch.  The film continues the story Caouette began with his award winning, ground breaking documentary TARNATION. Caouette once again appears with his mother Renee LeBlanc, Aldolph Davis, David Sanin Paz, Joshua Caouette, and Rosemary David. Caouette, Gerard Lacroix, and Pierre-Paul Puljiz produced and Catherine Rouault executive produced the project. WALK AWAY RENEE premiered at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival’s Critics Week, where it screened as a work-in-progress. Caouette is currently spending the summer finishing the film, the final version of which will have a premiere at a major upcoming festival.

In the film, Caouette embarks on a road trip to move his mentally ill mother Renee across the country. As they encounter roadblocks in the present, we begin to flash back to moments from the past, giving us insight into this anything-but-ordinary mother/son relationship. Through musical montage, psychedelic sequences and real and imagined circumstance, WALK AWAY RENEE raises questions about love, sacrifice, and the reality in which we live.

Jonathan Sehring, President of Sundance Selects/IFC Films, said: “We were deeply moved by Jonathan Caouette’s WALK AWAY RENEE which continues to document not only his relationship with his mother Renee LeBlanc but also shows him making great strides as a filmmaker.  We’re thrilled to be in business with him and continue our relationship with Agnes B’s Love Streams and Wild Bunch.”

Noted Caouette: “I’m really looking forward to working with Sundance Selects on the release of WALK AWAY RENEE. It’s also very nice to be working with key people who worked on TARNATION. The film screened at this years Cannes and is being re edited into another version that will include more backstory and texture than the Cannes version.”

The deal for WALK AWAY RENEE was negotiated by Arianna Bocco, Senior Vice President of Acquisitions and Productions, and Betsy Rodgers, Senior Vice President of Business and Legal Affairs for Sundance Selects/IFC Films with Carole Baraton of Wild Bunch on behalf of the filmmakers.

WALK AWAY RENEE is the follow-up to Caouette’s festival hit TARNATION, which won the National Society of Film Critics Best Documentary and topped many top 10 lists in 2003. TARNATION will screen in New York on Wednesday, July 20th at 7:30pm at 92Y Tribeca as part of indieWIRE’s 15th anniversary celebration. Jonathan Caouette will do a Q & A and also screen a few scenes from WALK AWAY RENEE.

Sundance Selects is a sister division to IFC Films and IFC Midnight, and is owned and operated by AMC Networks, Inc.

“****.  SPELLBINDING.  ONE OF THE DAMNEDEST FILMS ERROL MORRIS HAS EVER MADE.”  Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

“A GUARANTEED GOOD TIME AT THE MOVIES.”  Ty Burr, The Boston Globe

“ASTONISHING.  An impossible and perfect embodiment of just how curious our species can be”  A.O. Scott, The New York Times

“INTENSELY PLEASURABLE.  We laugh like mad…What a treasure trove.  With each event, one’s jaw drops further and further.  TABLOID is candy for voyeurs.”  David Edelstein, New York Magazine

“MESMERIZING.  A MUST-SEE.”  Michael O’Sullivan, Washington Post

“DELIRIOUSLY ENTERTAINING.  A GIFT FROM THE MOVIEMAKING GODS.”  Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“GRADE A.  Succulent, Fascinating, Bizarrely touching.  Pure Movie Candy.”  Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly

“IRRESISTIBLE.  Morris is a storyteller of the highest order, and within seconds, he draws us into his subject, doling out details, making us wonder what will happen next and dropping bombs for maximum impact.”  Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

“ASTONISHING.  THOROUGHLY ENTERTAINING.”  Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times

“A delirious enigma.  Another of Morris’ alternately hilarious and disturbing inquiries into the slippery nature of truth.”  Andrew O’Hehir, Salon

“WILDLY ENTERTAINING.  One hell of a yarn.”  Scott Tobias, The Onion AV Club

“A sharp, runaway RASHOMON parable inside one of the most thoroughly entertaining films of the year.”  Eric Hynes, The Village Voice

“A playful, voyeuristic guilty pleasure, an exploration of the wacky and tacky and our compulsive need to feed on such tales.  It’s consistently a kick, and it couldn’t be more relevant.”  Christy Lemire, Associated Press

“Irresistible.  Endlessly entertaining.  When Errol Morris decides he wants to entertain the hell out of us, he delivers.”  Tom Carson, GQ

IFC MIDNIGHT NABS NORTH AMERICAN RIGHTS TO CHRIS PECKOVER THRILLER UNDOCUMENTED

New York, NY (July 13, 2011) – IFC Midnight announced today that the company is acquiring all North American rights to director Chris Peckover’s feature debut UNDOCUMENTED. The film, which was also penned by Peckover along with Joe Peterson, stars Scott Mechlowicz (WAITING FOR FOREVER, EUROTRIP), Alona Tal (COLLEGE), Yancey Arias (KNIGHT RIDER), Greg Serano, and Kevin Weisman. Snoot Entertainment’s Keith Calder and Jessica Wu alongside Josh Finn produced the project, which world premiered at Fantastic Fest in 2010.

In UNDOCUMENTED, a small group of documentary filmmakers chronicle the trials and inequities faced by Mexican illegal immigrants. When they join a group of families illegally crossing the border to record the experience firsthand, their truck is pulled over and detained. What happens next plunges their group into unimaginable horror.

President of IFC Films/Sundance Selects, Jonathan Sehring, said: “UNDOCUMENTED is part of the great tradition of political horror flicks that find the scariest things don’t have to be made up, because they exist within our society.  We’re thrilled to introduce it to the world.”

Added producer Keith Calder, “UNDOCUMENTED is a film that grabs the viewer with its intense style and thought provoking subject matter, and we’re excited to be working with IFC Midnight who has introduced audiences to so many awesome groundbreaking genre films.”

The deal for UNDOCUMENTED was negotiated by Arianna Bocco, Senior Vice President of Acquisitions & Productions for Sundance Selects/IFC Films with Josh Braun at Submarine on behalf of the filmmakers.

IFC Midnight is a sister division to Sundance Selects and IFC Films, and is owned and operated by AMC Networks, Inc.

*                      *                      *                      *

About IFC MIDNIGHT

Established in 2010 and based in New York City, IFC Midnight is a leading U.S. distributor of genre entertainment including horror, science-fiction, thrillers, erotic art house, action and more.  Its unique distribution model makes independent genre films available to a national audience by releasing them in theaters as well as on cable’s Video On Demand (VOD) platform, reaching nearly 50 million homes. Some of the company’s successes have included Tom Six’s controversial horror film The Human Centipede (First Sequence), Johnnie To’s Hong Kong revenge thriller Vengeance, and James Gunn’s Super starring Rainn Wilson, Ellen Page and Kevin Bacon. Upcoming IFC Midnight releases include Miguel Angel Vivas’ powerful and shocking home invasion flick Kidnapped and Tom Six’s highly anticipated frightfest The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence). IFC Midnight is a sister division to Sundance Selects and IFC Films, and is owned and operated by AMC Networks, Inc.

http://www.movingimagesource.us/dialogues/view/338

July 12–August 13, 2011

Errol Morris, whose incisive interviewing technique has made him one of the most accomplished documentary filmmakers of his time, will be the subject of an onstage interview at Museum of the Moving Image on Tuesday, July 12, following a preview screening of his new film Tabloid. A provocative, entertaining, and complex study of crime, celebrity, and scandal, Tabloid digs into the story of Joyce McKinney, a former beauty queen whose alleged kidnapping and rape of a Mormon in 1977 made her a pop culture sensation. The screening is part of a five-film retrospective, Errol Morris’s America that will be presented on weekends through August 13.

With deadpan wit and an ability to examine large topics by focusing on his subjects with unflinching scrutiny, documentary filmmaker Errol Morris has created a vivid, often comical, often disturbing portrait of America through his films. He has also bridged the gap between art and reportage. His films are deceptive; though Morris seems to be stepping back from his subjects and letting them speak for themselves, his editorial and artistic intelligence is apparent in every frame.

With his 1981 instant-cult debut, Gates of Heaven, Errol Morris began a career of film portraits that interrogate different aspects of American life, ranging from pet cemeteries to crime to artistic obsession to war—each of them treated with the same measure of interest and intellectual curiosity. “After twenty years of reviewing films, I haven’t found another filmmaker who intrigues me more,” wrote film critic Roger Ebert, an early champion of Morris’s films. The Thin Blue Line, which questioned the conviction of death-row prisoner Randall Adams, who was wrongly accused of killing a police officer, was not just a surprise arthouse hit, it became a news story itself when it resulted in the reopening of Adams’s case and the eventual overturning of conviction. (Adams’ death last fall in Oregon at age 61 was just revealed in the media.) In some ways Morris’s most artistically ambitious film, Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control is a kaleidoscopic inquiry into the nature of obsession with four brilliantly interwoven portraits, edited by the late Karen Schmeer, Morris’s longtime editor who was killed last year in Manhattan by a car speeding from a robbery. The Fog of War, released during the first year of the current war in Iraq, is built around a startling in-depth interview with Robert S. McNamara, who was Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War.

IFC Films will open Tabloid in theaters on July 15.

Press Contact: Tomoko Kawamoto / tkawamoto@movingimage.us / 718.777.6830

SCHEDULE FOR ‘ERROL MORRIS’S AMERICA,’ JULY 9–AUGUST 7, 2011
All screenings take place at Museum of the Moving Image, 36-01 35 Avenue, Astoria, NY, and are included with Museum admission unless otherwise noted.

Tabloid
Preview screening and discussion with Errol Morris
Tuesday, July 12, 7:00 p.m.
Dir. Errol Morris. 2010, 85 mins. 35mm print courtesy IFC Films. Morris digs deeply into a sensation and salacious news story about Joyce McKinney, a former beauty queen turned tabloid queen whose alleged kidnapping and rape of a Mormon in England in 1977 made her a pop culture sensation. Morris examines McKinney’s own account of her life and her fame, uncovering the workings of obsession and scandal.
TICKETS: $15 public / $10 Museum members / Free for Silver Screen and above. Call 718 777 6800 or order online at movingimage.us

The Thin Blue Line
Saturday, July 16, 5:00 p.m.
Sunday, July 17, 5:00 p.m.
Dir. Errol Morris. 1988, 106 mins. 35mm. This artfully stylized documentary, which uses dramatic recreations and a Philip Glass soundtrack, investigates the case of a death row prisoner who may have been wrongly convicted of a police officer’s murder. The film became a news story when the case was reopened.

Gates of Heaven
Saturday, July 23, 5:00 p.m.
Sunday, July 24, 5:00 p.m.
Dir. Errol Morris. 1978, 85 mins. 35mm. Morris’s debut documentary feature reveals the bizarre world of pet cemeteries and the people who operate them. Morris’s straight-faced interviewing style only enhances the film’s surreal comic quality.

Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control
Saturday, July 30, 5:00 p.m.
Sunday, July 31, 5:00 p.m.
Dir. Errol Morris. 1997, 82 mins. 35mm. In his most experimental film, brilliantly edited by the late Karen Scheer, Morris interweaves portraits of four obsessed individuals, as he films a lion tamer, a topiary artist, a robot engineer and a photographer with a love for rodents. Morris brilliantly turns the portraits into a broad philosophical and artistic inquiry.

The Fog of War
Saturday, August 13, 5:00 p.m.
Sunday, August 14, 5:00 p.m.
Dir. Errol Morris. 2003, 106 mins. 35mm. This Academy Award-winning documentary is built around a stunning in-depth interview with the highly controversial Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War. Morris divides McNamara’s stories into segments that each serve as a lesson about war.

MUSEUM INFORMATION

Hours: Tuesday-Thursday, 10:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Friday, 10:30 to 8:00 p.m. Saturday-Sunday, 10:30 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. (Closed on Monday except for holiday openings).
Film Screenings: See schedule above.
Museum Admission (as of July 16): $12.00 for adults; $9.00 for persons over 65 and for students with ID; $6.00 for children ages 3-18. Children under 3 and Museum members are admitted free. Admission to the galleries is free on Fridays, 4:00 to 8:00 p.m. Paid admission includes film screenings (except for special ticketed events and Friday evenings) Tickets for special screenings and events may be purchased in advance by phone at 718.777.6800 or online.
Location: 35 Avenue at 37 Street in Astoria.
Subway: R or M trains (R on weekends) to Steinway Street. N or Q trains to 36 Avenue.
Program Information: Telephone: 718.777.6888; Website: http://movingimage.us

The Museum is housed in a building owned by the City of New York and its operations are made possible in part by public funds provided through the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the New York City Economic Development Corporation, the New York State Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and the Natural Heritage Trust (administered by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation). The Museum also receives generous support from numerous corporations, foundations, and individuals. For more information, please visit http://movingimage.us.

Our friends over at indieWIRE have the details on these amazing numbers:

http://www.indiewire.com/article/holiday_box_office_terri_tops_indies_in_debut_buck_and_beginners_lead_stron/

Buck Brannaman will be in person at the following theaters this weekend doing Q&As, so get your tickets now:

NEW YORK
FRIDAY, 7/1
Lincoln Plaza Cinemas — 5:25PM Show
IFC Center — 7:05PM Show

SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA
SATURDAY, 7/2
Smith Rafael Center, San Rafael — 2:15PM Show
Kabuki Theater, San Francisco — 4:4oPM Show, 7:30PM Show
Embarcadero Theater, San Francisco — 7:20PM Show

PORTLAND, OR
SUNDAY, 7/3
Cinema 21 — 4:45PM, 7:00PM Shows

DIRECTOR Cindy Meehl will be at the Bow Tie Cinema in New Haven, CT for the 7:30PM show, Saturday, July 2nd!

PRODUCER Andrea Meditch will be at the CCA Ciema in Santa Fe, NM for the 7:30PM show, Sunday, July 3!
Saturday, 7/2:

also Producer Andrea Meditch at CCA in Santa Fe after 7:30show Sunday, July 3

Check out Betsy Sharky’s thoughts in full below:

Movie Review: ‘Buck’

Cindy Meehl’s documentary is deeply moving yet never maudlin in telling the hard-knocks-but-hope-infused story of horse whisperer Buck Brannaman.

June 17, 2011|By Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times Film Critic

“Buck,” the story of the real horse whisperer Buck Brannaman, comes at you with the understated eloquence of the man himself — a soft-spoken cowboy philosopher changing lives as he gentles horses, an aw-shucks hero who never claims to be more than an ordinary man. What a relief in times saturated with news of the worst of humanity to see something of the best.

In her first documentary, which won the coveted audience award at the Sundance Film Festival this year, director Cindy Meehl mirrors that sensibility. The film is deeply moving yet never maudlin in telling this hard-knocks-but-hope-infused story.

It would have been tempting given the broad strokes of Buck’s life: A childhood marked by early stardom — he and his older brother were young trick-roping sensations — and vicious beatings at the hand of his father, the early death of his mother, the foster family that rescued him and the safety and solace he found in horses. Instead, Meehl allows the facts, simply told, to carry the weight.

The idea for the documentary came after Meehl attended one of the horse clinics Buck runs, a business that keeps him on the road most of the year. The fashion designer shelved her couture work for filmmaking, pushed, she says in production notes, by a story she felt compelled to tell.

The images — both beautiful and evocative — are culled from more than 300 hours of footage, much of it shot over two years by cinematographers Guy Mossman (”Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work”) and Luke Geissbuhler (”Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan”). The filmmaker and editor Toby Shimin rely on a mix of old film clips, current interviews and lots of day-in-the life shots to build a remarkably candid and intimate look at Buck and his world.

The film opens with a shot of horses running free, manes flying in the wind, dust kicking up in their wake, an endless stretch of sky overhead. It is a smart setup that underscores the beauty and power of the animal — at the same time reminding us that the very act of owning and riding a horse takes away that freedom.

Then the camera shifts to Buck, who is introduced without a word. Long before you see his face, you get a measure of the man — solitary; a steady stride that is confident without being cocky; the cowboy hat, the chaps, the boots and the rest worn for utility, not style.

Later in the film, Robert Redford, who brought him on as a consultant during the filming of “The Horse Whisperer,” recalls Buck walking into his Santa Monica production office for a meeting, dressed exactly like that. But what Redford first took as affect he soon realized was authentic and adopted the essence of that authenticity for his character on-screen.

There is a funny story of the eight hours spent by the movie’s horse trainer trying to get the trick horse to do what was required for one scene, and the 15 or so minutes it took Buck to get his horse to step in and pull it off when the filmmakers finally turned to him for help. His take on Hollywood is ironic, humorous and says as much about the ways and whims of Hollywood as the horse and the scene in question.

But most of the voices in the documentary, other than Buck’s, are the people whose lives he has touched. They are an eclectic mix — some competing and showing thoroughbreds, other raising and refining working cattle horses, some riding for pleasure, nearly all coming into his workshops thinking there is little he can teach them. And then he does.

He’s a natural in the training ring, as much raconteur as resource. As he walks his classes through what a rider is actually asking of the horse — from the halter on his head to the stranger climbing on his back — you come to understand the core of his philosophy, that horses are a mirror of the person riding them. Though he suggests anyone can learn his techniques, just watching him work with a horse, it’s hard not to believe there is a mystical connection that no workshop can pass along.

It is a connection that comes at some cost. As he drives from one ranch to another, you see the tug between home and work, softened during the summer months, when his youngest daughter travels with him.

These days, Buck has an easy smile, which by the end of the film you know was hard won. He has a loving family, longtime friends, a thriving business, but mostly he has the horses. They remind him of who he is and where he came from.

Together, thanks to the equally gentle touch of the filmmaker, they transport us into a better world, if only for a bit.

Jun 13 2011 05:15 PM ET

‘Cave of Forgotten Dreams’ is the highest-grossing indie doc of the year. How did that happen?

Cave of Forgotten Dreams is not exactly the catchiest title in the history of incredibly thematic art-film documentaries. And the eight-word description of the movie — impenetrable German filmmaker films cave paintings, experiences philosophical ecstasy — doesn’t exactly sound like it would play in Peoria. But Cave of Forgotten Dreams wasn’t made by just any impenetrable German filmmaker; it was made by the impenetrable German filmmaker. Werner Herzog’s decision to shoot the 32,000-year-old Chauvet cave paintings in 3-D has resulted in a genuine art-house sensation: Two months after its April opening, the film has grossed $3.7 million, making it the highest-grossing independent documentary of the year according to the Los Angeles Times. (Of course, it was outgrossed by that other 3-D documentary, Justin Bieber: Never Say Never.) So how has Cave, which features little more than long shots of immobile cave paintings, become such an indie-success? Let’s count down the main reasons.

1. The 3-D actually makes sense. Recently, there has been an emerging feeling among moviegoers and pundits alike that the 3D format might be reaching its oversaturation point. (Check out my colleague John Young’s state-of-the-medium analysis of 3D cinema for a full report on the controversy.) Ironically, people might be turning against the format right as the format starts stretching: Filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and Peter Jackson are all filming their next projects in 3-D. You could say that Cave‘s impressive gross isn’t entirely fair, since the price of the 3-D tickets can be practically double the cost of a regular ticket admission. But Cave justifies the 3-D in a way that most films haven’t. With one noteworthy exception — a hilarious scene where a dude throws a spear towards the camera — Herzog uses the 3-D subtly, to give you the feeling of the microscopic contours of the Chauvet caves. Even better, he films in long, slow, unbroken takes, using mostly wide-angles — a far less headache-inducing style than a typical 3-D action movie, which cuts epileptically between various shots until all sense of onscreen spatial realism has dissolved.

2. It’s a desperately pretentious documentary that also has a sense of humor. Cave of Forgotten Dreams is filled constant deep-thought meditations on the nature of humanity; if you want to really freak your kids out about the potential meaninglessness of our existence, show them Cave and The Tree of Life in the same day. But Cave also features hilarious digressions — the director asks one scientist about his past as a juggler in a circus, interviews a strange man who claims to be a perfumist, and ends the film with a hilariously unexpected epilogue about albino crocodiles that may or may not be entirely fictitious.

3. Werner Herzog has become a box office superstar. Or at least an art-film box office superstar. Herzog has arguably eclipsed Morgan Freeman in the pantheon of Great Narration Artists, having developed a hilariously particular voiceover style — somewhere between evil James Bond villain, thoughtful middle-European hippie, and ancient-world philosopher. And since he’s willing to do pretty much anything — voice a plastic bag, guest-star on The Simpsons, make a movie that is apparently a David Lynch spoof that happened to be produced by David Lynch — he’s also become one of the most likable artist-philosophers in cinema today. Now if only he could get around to making that remake of Justin Bieber: Never Say Never starring albino crocodiles…

Thursday, June 23
4:00 Paranoid Park (See Monday, June 20, 6:30).
6:30 Tillsammans (Together) (See Wednesday, June 22, 8:00).
8:45 Daremo Shiranai (Nobody Knows). 2004. Japan. Written and directed by Hirokazu Koreeda. With Yuya Yagira, Kimura Hiei, Kitaura Ayu, Momoko Shimizu. This heartbreaking tale of abandonment and loyalty is based on the true story of four siblings, aged 14 to 2 years old, left alone by their mother in a small Tokyo apartment. The eldest brother’s (Cannes Best Actor–winner Yagira) tragic failure to fend for his younger siblings would seem to overshadow his valiant attempts to provide for the family, but the film retains a sense of innocence and admiration for the children’s determination. In Japanese; English subtitles. 140 min.
Friday, June 24
4:30 Daremo Shiranai (Nobody Knows) (See Thursday, June 23, 8:45).
8:00 Tabloid. 2010. USA. A film by Errol Morris. Academy Award-winner Errol Morris’ Tabloid follows the much stranger-than-fiction adventures of Joyce McKinney, a former ‘beauty queen’ whose single-minded devotion to the man of her dreams leads her across the globe and directly onto the front pages of the British tabloid newspapers. Equal parts love story, film noir, brainy B-movie, and demented fairy tale, Tabloid is a delirious meditation on hysteria both public and personal from a filmmaker who continues to break down and blow open the documentary genre with his penetrating portraits of eccentric and profoundly complex characters. (Sundance Selects). 88 min.
Press Contact: Sarah Jarvis, (212) 708-9757, sarah_jarvis@moma.org
For downloadable high-resolution images, register at the MoMA Press Image Center.
Hours: Films are screened Wednesday-Monday. For screening schedules, please visit our Film Exhibitions.
Film Admission: $10 adults; $8 seniors, 65 years and over with I.D. $6 full-time students with current I.D. (For admittance to film programs only.) The price of a film ticket may be applied toward the price of a Museum admission ticket when a film ticket stub is presented at the Lobby Information Desk within 30 days of the date on the stub (does not apply during Target Free Friday Nights, 4:00–8:00 p.m.). Admission is free for Museum members and for Museum ticketholders.
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Public Information:
The Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53 Street, New York, NY 10019, (212) 708-9400
MoMA.org

Hours: Wednesday through Monday: 10:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Friday: 10:30 a.m.-8:00 p.m. Closed Tuesday.

MOURIR AUPRES DE TOI
(To Die by Your Side)
Has U.S. Theatrical Premiere at IFC Center

Following Cannes Debut, Short Plays before
IFC Center’s Regular Features Starting June 10
In Ongoing “Short Attention Span Cinema” Program

Co-Directed with Simon Cahn,
Film Is Inspired by French Designer Olympia Le-Tan

Acclaimed director Spike Jonze’s MOURIR AUPRES DE TOI (To Die by Your Side), a new short film that premiered in the 2011 Cannes Film Festival’s Critics’ Week, makes its US theatrical premiere on Friday, June 10 at IFC Center. The short will screen for two weeks before the theater’s regular features as part of its ongoing “Short Attention Span Cinema” program.

A collaboration between Jonze (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation., Where the Wild Things Are) French designer Olympia Le-Tan and filmmaker Simon Cahn, the whimsical, humorous and poignant MOURIR AUPRES DE TOI was inspired by Ms. Le-Tan’s accessory designs-embroidered felt adaptations of first editions of classic books. “I just loved them and loved the world she was making,” Mr. Jonze explained “So I asked if I could have one. And she said yeah, if you want to make a film for it.”

Set in Paris’s storied Shakespeare and Co. bookstore, the film concerns the adventures of a skeleton (voiced by Jonze) who springs off the cover of “Macbeth” and falls for a damsel from “Dracula.” Filmed in painstaking stop-motion animation, the film required a new stitched felt character for each shot-some 3,000 felt parts in total. “Felt is not the easiest thing to animate,” Mr. Jonze noted. “It’s very flimsy.”  A “making-of” video of the short is viewable online at http://www.vimeo.com/21352791 <http://www.vimeo.com/21352791>

IFC Center’s “Short Attention Span Cinema” program screens short films before the theater’s regular features, every day of the year. Past editions have spotlighted shorts from festivals such as Slamdance and Doxita, as well as work by DA Pennebaker, Jeff Scher, Emily Hubley, Guy Maddin, James Nares, Isabela Rossellini, the shorts from R.E.M.’s “Collapse into Now Film Project” and others.

For information, contact Harris Dew at 212 924-6789 or hdew@ifccenter.com <mailto:hdew@ifccenter.com>

IFC Center, 323 Avenue of the Americas at West 3rd Street, box office:  212 924-7771.
For showtimes, advance tickets and more information, visit ifccenter.com.

SUNDANCE SELECTS TAKES U.S. RIGHTS TO

CANNES CRITICS’ WEEK OPENER DECLARATION OF WAR

New York, NY (May 25, 2011) – Sundance Selects announced today, on the heels of the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, that the company is acquiring all U.S. rights to Valérie Donzelli’s DECLARATION OF WAR from Wild Bunch. Produced by Edouard Weil (Demonlover, Frontier of Dawn), the film was written by Donzelli and Jérémie Elkaïm, who both star in the film, which is based on their own real-life experiences. The film made its world premiere at last week’s Cannes Film Festival as the Critics’ Week Opening Night film.

A great love story, DECLARATION OF WAR follows a couple named Romeo and Juliette, a child named Adam, his illness, and their battle.

Jonathan Sehring, President of Sundance Selects, said: “Our entire company fell in love with DECLARATION OF WAR. Valérie Donzelli, along with her collaborator Jérémie Elkaïm, won us over with their completely heartfelt, life affirming film that announces them as major new talents.  We are confident that this is a film that will inspire ardent love once we begin to screen it for American audiences.”

The deal for the film was negotiated by Arianna Bocco, Senior Vice President of Acquisitions & Productions, and Betsy Rodgers, Senior Vice President of Business and Legal Affairs for Sundance Selects with Carole Baraton of Wild Bunch on behalf of the filmmakers.

Sundance Selects is a sister division to IFC Films and IFC Midnight, and is owned and operated by Rainbow Media.

THE KID WITH A BIKE was awarded the festival Grand Prix, shared with Nuri Bilge Ceylon’s ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA.

POLISS took home the festival Jury Prize.

Both films are Sundance Selects releases, stay tuned for more info on when you can see them stateside.

SUNDANCE SELECTS GRABS JEAN-PIERRE AND LUC DARDENNE’S THE KID WITH A BIKE

Cannes, FRANCE (May 19, 2011) – Sundance Selects announced today from the 2011 Cannes Film Festival that the company is acquiring all U.S. rights to master filmmakers’ Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s THE KID WITH A BIKE from Wild Bunch. The film made its world premiere in Competition at this week’s festival. The Dardenne’s have won an award for every film they have ever shown in Cannes, which includes two prior Palme d’Or prizes.

The film tells the story of an 11-year old boy named Cyril (Thomas Doret) who clings to a woman named Samantha (Cecile de France), a local hairdresser, after his father abandons him. As Cyril begins a path of self-destruction, THE KID WITH A BIKE becomes both a tender and at times violent exploration of a child’s quest for love.

Jonathan Sehring, President of Sundance Selects, said: “We are honored and thrilled to be able to present THE KID WITH A BIKE to American audiences.  We believe the Dardenne’s are among the best filmmakers working today and that this film is one of the high points of a peerless career.  We are thrilled to be in business with our friends at Wild Bunch on this film.”

The deal for the film was negotiated by Arianna Bocco, Senior Vice President of Acquisitions & Productions, and Betsy Rodgers, Senior Vice President of Business and Legal Affairs for Sundance Selects with Wild Bunch on behalf of the filmmakers.

Sundance Selects has also picked up several other titles at this week’s festival including U.S. rights to Julia Leigh’s SLEEPING BEAUTY; all North American rights to writer/director Bertrand Bonello’s HOUSE OF TOLERANCE; and a pre-buy of all U.S. rights to writer/director Mia Hansen Love’s GOODBYE FIRST LOVE.

Sundance Selects is a sister division to IFC Films and IFC Midnight, and is owned and operated by Rainbow Media.

COMPANY PICKS UP COMPETITION FILM HOUSE OF TOLERANCE & PRE-BUYS GOODBYE FIRST LOVE

Cannes, FRANCE (May 18, 2011) - Sundance Selects announced today from the 2011 Cannes Film Festival that the company is acquiring all North American rights to writer/director Bertrand Bonello’s HOUSE OF TOLERANCE (which made its world premiere in Competition at this week’s festival) and pre-bought all U.S. rights to writer/director Mia Hansen Love’s GOODBYE FIRST LOVE.  The films were both acquired by Sundance Selects from Films Distribution.

Jonathan Sehring, President of Sundance Selects, said: “We’re thrilled to continue our relationship with Nicolas Brigaud Robert and Francois Yon at Films Distribution with these two beautiful films.  Bertrand Bonello has made a stunning movie with HOUSE OF TOLERANCE and we are looking forward to bringing him his largest American audience. We are also very happy to follow-up Father of My Children with Mia Hansen Love’s new film GOODBYE FIRST LOVE. She’s one of the most exciting and talented new filmmakers.”

HOUSE OF TOLERANCE follows a group of sex workers at a Paris brothel at the beginning of the 20th Century. In telling the story of twelve women treated like prisoners by their brothel keeper, Bonello takes the audience into a secret world that is at times seductive and erotic, and at other times violent and disturbing.

GOODBYE FIRST LOVE chronicles the passionate romance and love affair between Cammile and Sullivan, which begins in their adolescence.
The deal for the film was negotiated by Arianna Bocco, Senior Vice President of Acquisitions & Productions for Sundance Selects with Nicolas Brigaud-Robert at Films Distribution on behalf of the filmmakers.

Earlier this week, Sundance Selects picked up U.S. rights to Julia Leigh’s SLEEPING BEAUTY, another title that made its world premiere at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Sundance Selects is a sister division to IFC Films and IFC Midnight, and is owned and operated by Rainbow Media.

Cannes, FRANCE (May 15, 2011) – Sundance Selects announced today from the 2011 Cannes Film Festival that the company is acquiring all U.S. rights to Julia Leigh’s SLEEPING BEAUTY. The film, with a screenplay by Leigh, stars Emily Browning, Rachael Blake, Ewen Leslie, Peter Carroll, Chris Haywood, and was produced by Jessica Brentnall. The film premiered this week in Competition at the festival.

SLEEPING BEAUTY is a haunting portrait of Lucy, a young university student drawn into a mysterious hidden world of unspoken desires.

Jonathan Sehring, President of Sundance Selects, said: “For the last 5 days, people throughout Cannes have been discussing SLEEPING BEAUTY. We are thrilled to introduce Julia Leigh and her arresting debut to American audiences, and to continuing the discussion.”

“Along with the entire SLEEPING BEAUTY team, I’m extremely pleased that the film will be getting a release in the U.S. through such a fine distributor as Sundance Selects, especially under a label that has featured films from so many directors we admire,” said Leigh.

The deal for the film was negotiated by Arianna Bocco, Senior Vice President of Acquisitions & Productions for Sundance Selects with UTA on behalf of the filmmakers.

Sundance Selects is a sister division to IFC Films and IFC Midnight, and is owned and operated by Rainbow Media.

by Peter Knegt (May 15, 2011)

As most of the industry was busy at the Cannes Film Festival, a slew of indie films hit theaters Stateside this weekend. The widest release among them, Roadside Attractions got mild results from the first weekend of Dan Rush’s “Everything Must Go.” The film - which had premiered at the 2010 Toronto Film Festival - stars Will Ferrell in a largely dramatic role of a man who simultaneously loses his wife and his job. The film grossed $825,100 from 218 screens according to estimates provided by Rentrak earlier today, averaging $3,784 per theater. Considering the star power of Ferrell, it’s a weak number.  To put that into perspective, Ferrell’s last attempt at a relatively dramatic lead role, 2006’s “Stranger than Fiction,” averaged $5,923 in its first weekend of release. Except that film had debuted on over 2,000 screens, making it comparably much more impressive.

For a list of the 10 best per-theater-averages of those reporting indies, click here.

Spencer Susser’s “Hesher” - released through Wrekin Hill Entertainment - didn’t fare any better.  Despite the presence of Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Natalie Portman, the 2010 Sundance Film Festival alum grossed only $126,811 from 42 screens.  That amounted to a $3,019 average. By no means disastrous, but certainly not promising as it expands.

The best per-theater-average came care of Sundance Selects’ release of Yves Saint Laurent doc “L’Amour Fou.” On 2 New York screens, the film grossed $36,000 - which amounted in a strong $18,000 average.

National Geographic released Justin Chadwick’s “The First Grader” on 7 screens. The film - based on the true story of an 84 year-old Kenyan villager and ex Mau Mau freedom fighter who fights for his right to go to school for the first time - grossed $22,568 gross for a so-so $7,523 per-theater average.

The lowest per-theater-average among reporting openers came care of Anthony Burns’s “Skateland,” which Freestyle releasing debuted on 2 screens. The film - set in a skating rink in 1980s Texas -
grossed $5,165 and averaged just $2,583.

Check back with indieWIRE for updates on openers that have yet to report estimates, including “City of Life and Death,” “Neds,” and “Cameraman: The Work and Life of Jack Cardiff.”

As far as holdovers went, Jodie Foster’s “The Beaver” continued to perform poorly as it expanded from 22 to 105 screens in its second weekend. Starring PR nightmare Mel Gibson as a clinically depressed toy company CEO who finds solace through a beaver hand puppet, the film grossed an estimated $158,000 over the weekend, averaging just $1,505. With a budget of $21 million, “The Beaver” was not a costly endeavour and will break even with foreign sales. However, these numbers are still very poor and suggests North American audiences are not up for seeing Gibson back on the big screen. After 10 days, “The Beaver” has now taken in $308,357.

Much better news came with regard to Werner Herzog’s “Cave of Forgotten Dreams,” which expanded from 50 to 83 screens in its third frame, crossing the $1 million mark along the way. The doc, which screened in both 2-D and 3-D versions, grossed an estimated $477,900 for distributor Sundance Selects. That amounted to a strong $5,900 per-theater-average and a new total of $1,322,100 “Dreams” follows an exclusive expedition into the nearly inaccessible Chauvet Cave in France, home to the most ancient visual art known to have been created by man. Sundance Selects picked up the film out of the Toronto Film Festival last fall and will expand the film to the top 50 markets by the end of May.

Right now, registered SundaceNOW users can access a sneak preview of the erotic thriller The Ledge starring Liv Tyler, Patrick Wilson, Charlie Hunnam and Terrence Howard before it’s available anywhere else. After embarking on a passionate affair with his evangelical neighbor’s wife (Tyler), Gavin (Sons of Anarchy‘s Hunnam) soon finds himself in a battle of wills that will have life or death consequences. As a nonbeliever, Gavin is lured by his lover’s husband (Insidious‘ Wilson) to the ledge of a high rise and told he has one hour to make a choice between his life or the one he loves. Without faith in an afterlife, will he be able to make a decision? It’s up to police officer Hollis (Howard) to save both their lives, but the clock is ticking in this edge-of-your-seat film that will leave you gasping until the final frame.

The Ledge is our very first digital premiere. The exclusive window lasts for two weeks before the film makes its way to more traditional VOD platforms. A theatrical release is planned for July. Get it while you can.

And don’t take our word for it:

“The cast is excellent. Charlie Hunnam, Terrence Howard, and Liv Tyler turn in fine performances.”
-Michael Dunaway, Paste Magazine

“A unique hybrid: part thriller, part philosophical treatise, part forbidden love story.”
Eric Ditzian, MTV Movies Blog

True Tale of Horse Whisperer Catching Buzz

Buck Brannaman Sundance Select/IFC Films The real-life horse whisperer who inspired the 1998 fictional movie “The Horse Whisperer” is now the star of his own film. Called “Buck,” the documentary follows the life of the cowboy-philosopher Buck Brannaman, as he works his magic with horses and their owners. (And yes, Robert Redford even appears.)

The movie was directed by Cindy Meehl, who shot 300 hours of film to put together the narrative, which won the Documentary Audience Award at Sundance this year.

Its first fans seem to be on to something, as the film is starting to pick up buzz. On Yahoo! in the last month alone, searches on the horse trainer have jumped 700%.

The true tale follows the horse tamer, who was raised in Idaho and suffered an abusive childhood at the hands of his father. That led him and his brother into foster care. The young Buck found solace in horses, and training them became his calling.

The horse tamer practices the methods of “natural horsemanship,” and his background of abuse led him to reject violence. In one scene, Brannaman stands near a clearly nervous horse, and looks over at the owner as he bluntly tells her, “This horse tells me a lot about you.” The woman nods, in tears, and confesses she feels like a “fool” and a “failure” as he hugs her and tells her, “It’s all right.” It’s a poignant moment, one of many in the movie.

The married father of three daughters shows deep empthy toward damaged creatures, both human and animal. As the trainer explains on his website: “I started to realize that things would come much easier for me once I learned why a horse does what he does.”

Brannaman travels the country sharing this gentle path to gentling horses. As he explains, “A lot of times, rather than helping people with horse problems, I’m helping horses with people problems.” And that theme has already touched the most cynical audience of all: critics.

The Los Angeles Times says “Buck” is “an exceptional slice of Americana about the charismatic real-life horse whisperer.” The reviewer noted that the “up-by-the-bootstraps” story has the potential popularity of “The Blind Side.” The movie blog SlashFilm gushed, “This is the kind of heartstring-puller that really gets me.”

From GUEST OF A GUEST.

Box Office: 3-D “Dreams” Gives Werner Herzog His Best Debut (UPDATED)

Werner Herzog’s “Cave of Forgotten Dreams.” IFC Films.

IFC Films descended into Werner Herzog’s “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” this weekend with five theaters in New York, LA and Chicago and the result was a very strong debut.  The doc, which screened in both 2-D and 3-D versions, grossed an estimated $127,500 for a strong $25,500 per-theater-average (among the 10 best so far this year). Its top performing theaters were New York’s IFC Center and LA’s Arclight, where in both venues it took in roughly $33,000 on Friday and Saturday alone (note this article initially had erroneously reported that as a full weekend number).

“We are thrilled with the opening weekend numbers,” IFC Films’ Mark Boxer told indieWIRE today. “‘Cave of Forgotten Dreams’ in 3D played to sold-out shows all weekend as the film received glowing reviews in opening markets. We will aggressively roll out the film in May and open top the 15 markets this weekend.”

“Dreams” follows an exclusive expedition into the nearly inaccessible Chauvet Cave in France, home to the most ancient visual art known to have been created by man. IFC picked up the film out of the Toronto Film Festival last fall and, unlike most of its films, did not release “Dreams” day-and-date on VOD.

Its debut is the best debut ever for Herzog, topping the per-theater-averages of his 2008 Antarctica doc “Encounters at the End of the World,” which grossed $17,730 from a single screen; 2007’s Vietnam narrative “Rescue Dawn,” which averaged $18,387 from six theaters; and 2005’s self-explanatory doc “Grizzly Man,” which averaged $9,280 from 29 theaters.

Of course, “Cave” also benefitted from the higher ticket prices that came with its 3-D screenings, making its numbers hard to compare with Herzog’s other films. “Rescue” and “Grizzly” remain his top-grossing efforts, eventually taking in $5,490,423 and $3,178,403, respectively. Those are dreamy final totals for “Cave” and clearly the next few weeks should be the true suggestion of whether of not that’s possible. But so far, so good.

Read Manohla Dargis’ full review from THE NEW YORK TIMES below, and check out a selection of other quotes from writers nationwide!

What a gift Werner Herzog offers with “Cave of Forgotten Dreams,” an inside look at the astonishing Cave of Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc   — and in 3-D too. In southern France, about 400 miles from Paris, the limestone cave contains a wealth of early paintings, perhaps from as long ago as 32,000 years. Here, amid gleaming stalactites and stalagmites and a carpet of animal bones, beautiful images of horses gallop on walls alongside bison and a ghostly menagerie of cave lions, cave bears and woolly mammoths. Multiple red palm prints of an early artist adorn one wall, as if to announce the birth of the first auteur.

Surely there were other, previous artists — those who first picked up a bit of charcoal, say, and scraped it on a stone — but the Chauvet paintings are among the earliest known. The cave was discovered in December 1994 by three French cavers, Jean-Marie Chauvet, Éliette Brunel Deschamps and Christian Hillaire. Following an air current coming from the cliff, they dug and crawled their way into the cave, which had been sealed tight for some 20,000 years. After finally making their way to an enormous chamber, Ms. Deschamps held up her lamp and, seeing an image of a mammoth, cried out, “They were here,” a glorious moment of discovery that closed the distance between our lost human past and our present.

The French government soon took custody of the cave, and ordinary visitors were barred to protect it, as Mr. Herzog explains in his distinctive voice-over, from the kind of damage done to other prehistoric caverns. Being not remotely ordinary, he persuaded the government to allow him and a tiny crew to join the researchers who visit the cave to plumb its secrets. A late-act revelation in the movie that a Chauvet attraction is in the works suggests that tourist dollars might explain why he was allowed in. The cave is already a regional attraction (there is an exhibition nearby), and certainly the movie is a fabulous bit of advertising that may even help France’s bid to have Chauvet designated a Unesco World Heritage site.

Whatever the reason, it’s a blast to be inside the cave, to see these images, within 3-D grabbing reach. As the smooth-handed director of photography Peter Zeitlinger wields the camera, Mr. Herzog walks and even crawls for your viewing pleasure. He’s an agreeable, sometimes characteristically funny guide, whether showing you the paintings or talking with the men and women who study them. As evident from his other documentaries, like “Encounters at the End of the World” set in Antarctica, he also has a talent for tapping into the poetry of the human soul, finding people who range freely in this world and others, like the circus performer turned anthropologist here who night after night dreamed of lions after visiting the cave.

Much like this anthropologist and Ms. Deschamps, the explorer who cried out, “They were here” on seeing a painted mammoth, many of the researchers in the documentary seem deeply moved by the cave. In some ways they are communing with the dead, summoning up the eternally lost. For his part, Mr. Herzog uses the paintings to riff on the origin of art, at one point connecting overlapping images of horses — some of which, with their open mouths, convey a sense of movement — to cinema itself. At times he drifts away from the cave, tagging along, for instance, with a perfumer who tries to sniff out caves and isn’t half as interesting as those anthropologists who dream of, and happily live with, these uncommon ghosts.

In archaeology circles there has been debate on whether the earliest Chauvet paintings date from 32,000 to 30,000 BP (or “before present,” in the charming parlance of archaeology) or are actually somewhat younger. Whatever the case, even one of the critics of the earlier dating, a German archaeologist, Christian Züchner, has agreed on their beauty, enthusing in one 2001 paper that, “Even if Chauvet Cave is not as old as assumed it remains one of the outstanding highlights of cave art!” Mr. Herzog doesn’t address the conflict, which partly turns on whether the radiocarbon dating was sufficient, but then again, he isn’t a journalist. As the wistful title of the documentary indicates, he moves in a realm beyond empiricism, in a world of dreams and stories.

It takes a big subject to upstage Mr. Herzog, an often brilliant filmmaker of fiction and nonfiction who has mellowed into a borderline self-parodying figure, disarming (and famous) enough for a guest turn on The Simpsons. The cave largely keeps his more indulgently shticky side in check, save for a needlessly obfuscating coda set in a freaky research center where albino crocodiles swim in the runoff from nuclear reactor plants. “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” is certainly an imperfect reverie. The 3-D is sometimes less than transporting, and the chanting voices in the composer Ernst Reijseger’s new-agey score tended to remind me of my last spa massage. Yet what a small price to pay for such time traveling!

“A Herzogian masterpiece. More than a triumph: I’m pretty sure it’s one of the best 3-D movies ever made.”
-Daniel Engber, Slate

“AWESOME. The 3D actually enhances the viewing experience.”
-Christy Lemire, AP

“Astonishing.”
-Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly

“Awe-inspiring.”
“Herzog’s 3D study is surely the next best thing to an in-person visit.”
-Cheryl Eddy, SF Bay Guardian

New York, NY (April 21, 2011) - IFC Midnight announced today that the company has acquired U.S. distribution rights from sales and production outfit XYZ Films for director Dick Maas’ evil Santa film SAINT. The deal includes a theatrical component and was made prior to the movie’s North American premiere in the Cinemania section at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival. Maas wrote the screenplay for the picture and produced with Tom de Mol. Starring Huub Stapel, Egbert-Jan Weeber, Caro Lenssen, Bert Luppes and Escha Tanihatu, the Dutch film will premiere tonight at 9:00pm at the AMC Loews Village 7.

An original and delightfully gruesome slasher film, SAINT re-imagines jolly old Saint Nick as a murderous bishop fulfilling a grisly prophecy under the December full moon. Packed with creative yuletide horror, SAINT is a fun chiller that follows local teen Frank (Weeber) as he sets out on a bloody, high-energy battle to save Amsterdam from the wrathful “Sinterklaas” and his minions.

Jonathan Sehring, President of Sundance Selects/IFC Films, said: “Dick Maas has created a high-octane, extraordinarily chilling film that is truly unlike anything we’ve seen before. It’s sure to make a huge splash with audiences at the Tribeca Film Festival.”

The deal for SAINT was negotiated by Arianna Bocco, Senior Vice President of Acquisitions & Productions for Sundance Selects/IFC Films with Nate Bolotin of XYZ Films on behalf of the filmmakers.

Additional Tribeca Film Festival screenings:

• Saturday, April 23, 11:59 p.m. - Clearview Chelsea Cinemas
• Sunday, April 24, 12:00 p.m. - AMC Loews Village 7
• Wednesday, April 27, 11:30 p.m. - AMC Loews Village 7

At Tribeca, XYZ Films is also representing North America rights on the narrative competition film THE LAST RITES OF JOE MAY starring Dennis Farina and written and directed by Joseph Maggio; BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW, the feature film debut of writer and director Panos Cosmatos and featuring a hypnotic analog synthesizer score by Jeremy Schmidt of Sinoia Caves and Black Mountain; RABIES from Israeli filmmakers Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado; and U.S. rights on the feature documentary THE SWELL SEASON.

IFC Midnight is a sister division to Sundance Selects and IFC Films, and is owned and operated by Rainbow Media.

*                      *                      *                      *

About IFC MIDNIGHT

Established in 2010 and based in New York City, IFC Midnight is a leading U.S. distributor of genre entertainment including horror, science-fiction, thrillers, erotic art house, action and more.  Its unique distribution model makes independent genre films available to a national audience by releasing them in theaters as well as on cable’s Video On Demand (VOD) platform, reaching nearly 50 million homes. Some of the company’s successes have included Tom Six’s controversial horror film The Human Centipede (First Sequence) and Johnnie To’s Hong Kong revenge thriller Vengeance. Upcoming IFC Midnight releases include Miguel Angel Vivas’ powerful and shocking home invasion flick Kidnapped and Tom Six’s highly anticipated frightfest The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence). IFC Midnight is a sister division to Sundance Selects and IFC Films, and is owned and operated by Rainbow Media.

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Official Press Release.

From THE NEW YORKER:

by Bruce Diones

From our friends at DREAD CENTRAL, an interview with director Jim Mickle:

Exclusive: Director Jim Mickle Talks Stake Land

By thehorrorchick

It’s hard to believe it’s been about five years since writer/director Jim Mickle released his impressive feature film debut Mulberry Street, which was his exploration of the darker side of humanity amidst a zombie outbreak. Now Mickle is back with his haunting take on the vampire subgenre of horror, Stake Land.

The film stars Nick Damici (with whom Mickle co-wrote the script), Connor Paolo, Kelly McGillis, and Danielle Harris.

Dread Central recently had the opportunity to talk with Mickle about how he managed to create a completely unique spin on vampires during a time where the bloodsuckers seem to be everywhere, his experiences putting Stake Land together, and why story sometimes matters more than the monsters in horror.

Even though vampires are huge business for Hollywood these days, Mickle said that wasn’t something that influenced him and Damici (who also co-wrote and starred in Mulberry Street) when they originally began working on the follow-up project to their 2006 indie breakout film. “We had started working on Stake Land before all the vampire buzz started up everywhere. There were only Twilight books at that point, and Let the Right One In had just been released so I had no idea there would be this huge influx of vampire movies coming out these days.”

“It was Nick’s idea to explore the vampire mythology. We had done zombies in Mulberry Street so it seemed like an interesting way to go for our next film. I wanted to get vampires back to being actually scary again, and the vampire mythology taps into a lot of universal fears, which is why they’re timeless creatures. That’s why there will always be vampire movies so the fact that there are so many these days really doesn’t make me worry too much- we’ve done something different here with Stake Land,” Mickle added.

Part of Mickle and Damici’s approach to Stake Land (review here) was to make a story that could stand the test of time even if there weren’t any vampires in the film.

“I get bored when movies are just one-trick ponies and there isn’t much going besides the creatures or whatever it is that is the focus of the movie so with Stake Land I made sure there was a lot to think about with this film beyond just the vampire plague,” said Mickle. “For me as a storyteller, I always ask myself if the movie would still work if we took the horror elements out, and I think we achieved that in this film.”

“Horror movies don’t always have to be about kids running in a forest and getting killed by a faceless slasher. Movies that resonate are often about other things at their core, and that’s true in the horror genre as well. That’s what I hope we did here,” added Mickle.

In Stake Land the survivors of the vampire outbreak have more to worry about than whether or not they will become lunch for the bloodthirsty creatures lurking everywhere. There were also deadly religious zealots, the politics of other survivors left to fend for themselves, and rumors of cannibals destroying surviving communities. Mickle discussed how the 2008 election served as inspiration for many of these themes in the film.

Mickle said, “At the time we wrote this film, it was at the same time as the 2008 election, and I saw how divided the country was so there’s a lot of that reflected in Stake Land. There were a lot of intense things happening in the world at that time, too, like the economy, and I think that spilled over into our script. One other element we added into Stake Land was the idea of organized religion and how truly scary it can be so that’s where the Brotherhood came into play. There’s a scary kind of power associated with religious leaders, and I would say that’s a big part of our film, too.”

Pawn, Prize and Beauty, So Submit She Must

By MANOHLA DARGIS

Published: April 14, 2011

The movie’s opening image — a traveling shot of dying and dead men scattered across a field — shows a darker, more somber side of Mr. Tavernier. It’s an eerily calm scene, at once ugly and visually striking, and almost too handsomely composed for the carnage. Immediately, however, Mr. Tavernier brings the horrors of war within ghastly close distance with a skirmish in a nearby barn that leaves a pregnant woman dead, a sword in her belly, and a soldier of God, Comte de Chabannes (Lambert Wilson, wonderful), renouncing the righteousness of a religious war. Dropping to his knees in wordless horror, he busily tries to clean a blade as bloodied as Macbeth’s.

Mr. Tavernier, whose earlier films include “Captain Conan” and “Safe Conduct,” wrote this one with François-Olivier Rousseau and Jean Cosmos, adapting it from the 1662 novel of the same title by Madame de Lafayette. Set against civil war — the Wars of Religion (1562-98) — the story turns on Marie of Mézières, an heiress who, while she loves the heroic Henri de Guise (Gaspard Ulliel), is married off by her father, the Marquis of Mézières (Philippe Magnan), to another, more politically expedient war hero, the Prince of Montpensier (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet). The prince’s scheming father, the Duke of Montpensier (Michel Vuillermoz), clinches the deal with the marquis when he throws in a parcel of land.

Marie enters the story after her fate is sealed, a delay that reflects Mr. Tavernier’s oblique narrative approach and her true place — or rather her worth — in war-ravaged 1562 France. Like the country itself (“la France,” a feminine word), Marie de Mézières is contested territory in a conflict that as Roman Catholic fights Protestant on the battlefield, and cousin fights cousin in the bedroom, Mr. Tavernier brings to life with racing cameras, sweeping vistas, lofty words, bawdy deeds and some hard truths. When Marie learns of her father’s plans, she dares to defy him. “I’ve tamed worse than you,” he answers, slapping her hard. Her mother intercedes. “Control yourself, proud child,” she advises. “And submit.” And so Marie does.

“The Princess of Montpensier” is a story about submission: of man to God and king, and wife to husband and to other men of high rank. Yet while the larger backdrop is the religious war, the battle that consumes so much attention onscreen is that between wife and husband. Forced to yield to her father — and to the other men engaged in that transaction known as her marriage — Marie is handed from one player to the next in a struggle in which she is pawn and prize alike. Once married, the prince takes her to a family castle, one distant enough from the war to keep her safe but also secluded enough to keep her isolated. Almost shortly after, though, he departs again for the war, leaving his former tutor, Chabannes, to watch over her.

Like an action painter, Mr. Tavernier likes big, bold gestures, and he regularly fills the screen with slashes of exciting motion, the galloping horses streaking across the image with the camera in pursuit. But among the hard-ridden horses, the arriving and departing messengers, the smoke that wafts over the battlefields and the intrigues that race through the castles like a lethal virus, he makes room for Marie. A pouty, neo-Bardot beauty, Ms. Thierry is hypnotically transfixing, but she takes a while to warm to, partly because it’s some time before her character comes into focus. This isn’t her fault; as Jessica Rabbit would say, she’s been drawn that way: young, spoiled, only rudimentarily educated, Marie is a beautiful blur.

Eventually, a person emerges from the haze, but however agreeable, she never becomes the scintillating companion that so many men, Chabannes included, insist she is. It doesn’t help that Ms. Thierry is out-acted by the rest of the terrific cast, including by Raphaël Personnaz as the Duke of Anjou (and future king) and Judith Chemla as his mother, the queen, who with eyebrows as bushy as caterpillars, amusingly takes the story hostage briefly. This doesn’t diminish the film’s pleasures, yet it may explain why although it’s called “The Princess of Montpensier” Mr. Tavernier lavishes so much time on Chabannes, a dashing figure, a master of the sword and pen both, who can find medicinal herbs, read the stars and strum a lute. He’s strong enough for a man, but French enough for a woman.

From the Los Angeles Times:

Movie review: ‘The Princess of Montpensier’

Bertrand Tavernier’s 16th century costume drama is an entertaining and intelligent return to moviemaking of yore.

Epic and intimate, historical and contemporary, moving and thought-provoking, the impressive “The Princess of Montpensier” has something for all and sundry but especially for those who like to believe that films can be as boldly intelligent as they are entertaining.

As directed and co-written by the veteran French filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier with an expert cast of familiar and unfamiliar faces, “Princess” is a costume production rich in all manner of classic dramatic elements. Say hello to selfish schemes, bitter rivalries and the complexities of power and dynastic relationships at a time when France was divided by a bloody religious war between Catholics and Protestant Huguenots

But past the politics, what holds us absolutely is this film’s unsentimental, far from conventional love story about that 16th century princess named Marie and the four very different men who became intoxicated — and not without reason — by this beautiful, intelligent and passionate woman.

This complicated tale holds us absolutely because, burdened with too much attractiveness and too little power, the princess of Montpensier (played with spirit and conviction by Melanie Thierry) is never in a position to enjoy her advantages.

As the intricate psychological interplay with these men ebbs and flows, the princess finds herself constricted by the emotional minefield of her precarious position. Not just because she’s a woman in a chauvinistic age but because she’s a person who values genuine feelings in a brutally cynical world.

As impressive as all this is (and credit goes to co-writer Jean Cosmos and the original 17th century novella by Madame de La Fayette), it’s matched by the vividness of the film’s bracing physical re-creation of France circa 1562.

Fluidly shot by Tavernier veteran Bruno de Keyzer, “Princess” is awash in strong and compelling wide-screen visuals, including chaotic battle scenes involving disturbing hand-to-hand combat and elegant swordplay. Both physically and psychologically (especially with its scenes of a wedding night as family spectacle), this film immerses us completely in that long-gone world.

“Princess” opens not with anything romantic but rather with a fierce sequence of combat in which the Comte de Chabannes, acting on battlefield reflex, destroys a family. The event so unnerves Chabannes, played with gravity and dignity by Lambert Wilson (the head monk in “Of Gods and Men”), that he quits the war right then and there. “No more barbarity for me,” he says, adding later, “How can people kill each other and worship the same god?”

Chabannes has spent much of his life, apparently, as a tutor to higher nobility, and he now finds himself once again serving a former pupil, the upright and decent Philippe, the prince of Montpensier (Gregoire Leprince-Ringuet).

As the men get reacquainted, Philippe’s father, the ruthless Duc de Montpensier (gifted Comedie-Francaise veteran Michel Vuillermoz), is involved in intense negotiations to marry his son to Marie, the kingdom’s richest heiress and someone Philippe has never so much as met.

Marie, meanwhile, is engaged in heavy flirtation with another nobleman, the hot-tempered, hot-looking Henri de Guise (Gaspard Ulliel), whose motto is “I do not reason, I feel.” She insists she will not marry Philippe, but then her father roars “this marriage suits me. You will agree or enter a convent.”

A woman out of time who is troubled by contemporary concerns, Marie finds she must adjust as best she can to an age when women were chattel and whose thoughts no one cares to examine, let alone pay attention to.

When Philippe goes back to the war, he leaves Marie in the care of his old mentor Chabannes, asking him to instruct her in arts and poetry. Marie’s gifts and her beauty inevitably attract this mature gentleman, as they do the visiting Duc d’Anjou (Raphael Personnaz), a cold-blooded schemer who is also the brother of French King Charles IX. (Though this story is fiction, both d’Anjou and De Guise were real people.)

With all this going on, and more, we are fortunate to have a director of Tavernier’s experience and skills. After more than 20 features, including “‘Round Midnight” and “A Sunday in the Country” and nearly 40 years of work, his immaculate touch sees to it that the film’s strongly feminist themes, its vibrant historical re-creation and its involving, emotionally realistic story never get out of balance. This is not only about a time that is no more, it’s filmmaking the way it used to be.

SUNDANCE SELECTS TAKES NORTH AMERICAN RIGHTS TO

ACCLAIMED DOCUMENTARY LAST DAYS HERE

New York, NY (April 14, 2011) – Sundance Selects announced today that the company is acquiring North American rights to directors Don Argott (ROCK SCHOOL, THE ART OF THE STEAL) and Demian Fenton’s documentary LAST DAYS HERE. Produced by Sheena M. Joyce, the film studies the storied and tumultuous life of heavy metal legend Bobby Liebling and features the music of Liebling’s band Pentagram, along with appearances by Sean “Pellet” Pelletier, Geof O’Keefe, and Greg Mayne, amongst others. LAST DAYS HERE premiered earlier this year at the 2011 South by Southwest Film Festival. Sundance Selects will release the film theatrically and on its Video-on-Demand (VOD) platform.

Rock and Roll’s history is littered with stories of once promising musicians who crashed and burned after giving into their demons. LAST DAYS HERE tells the story of Bobby Liebling, the lead singer of the cult 1970’s heavy metal band Pentagram. Now in his 50’s and wasting away in his parents’ basement from decades of drug use and self loathing, Bobby’s music is finally discovered by the heavy metal underground. With the help of his friend and manager Sean “Pellet” Pelletier, Bobby attempts to overcome years of addiction, loneliness and broken dreams. Made over 4 years and tracking the most unlikely of friendships, the film becomes a riveting, unexpectedly funny and moving portrait of the ultimate fan’s act of faith when all hope looks lost. Directors Don Argott and Demian Fenton working again with producer Sheena Joyce invest the film with the same sort of suspenseful filmmaking as in their acclaimed THE ART OF THE STEAL and unforgettable characters found in their debut ROCK SCHOOL.

Jonathan Sehring, President of Sundance Selects, said: “LAST DAYS HERE is a wild ride that we all found deeply moving. We look forward to working with Don Argott, Demain Fenton and Sheena Joyce again after our successful collaboration on THE ART OF THE STEAL.”

“Demian, Sheena and I could not be happier to be, once again, in the skilled hands of Sundance Selects.  We’re thrilled to partner with them on this story of an unbelievable journey, and look forward to continuing down the path by their side,” said Argott, the film’s Co-Director with Fenton.

The deal for LAST DAYS HERE was negotiated by Arianna Bocco, Senior Vice President of Acquisitions & Productions for Sundance Selects and Submarine’s Josh Braun on behalf of the filmmakers.

Sundance Selects is a sister division to IFC Films and IFC Midnight, and is owned and operated by Rainbow Media.

“The Princess of Montpensier”: A delicious French bodice-ripper

A gorgeous cast and a vivid glimpse of 16th-century love and life make “Princess of Montpensier” a delight

by Andrew O’Hehir

Every name-brand French director has to take on the historical costume drama sooner or later — and don’t start groaning about it, either. You only think you don’t like this kind of movie, and as Bertrand Tavernier’s “The Princess of Montpensier” reminds us, when it’s done well this is a uniquely satisfying genre. Freely adapting a well-known 17th-century novella by Madame de La Fayette (which is set almost a century earlier, during the devastating civil war between French Catholics and Protestant reformers), Tavernier has created a sweeping and intimate spectacle that’s rich with bodice-ripping passion, grim and bloody battle scenes, fascinating historical detail and the peculiar romantic philosophy of the Renaissance.

There’s something wonderful to see in almost every shot (the masterful cinematography is by Bruno de Keyzer, who also shot such Tavernier classics as “A Sunday in the Country” and “‘Round Midnight”); I kept wanting to stop the camera and take in the fragments of late medieval commerce, agriculture, medicine and domestic life happening at the edges of the frame. And then there are the faces and bodies in the middle of the frame, where Tavernier has assembled one of the most gorgeous ensembles in recent film history, beginning (but certainly not ending) with the luminous Mélanie Thierry, a 29-year-old with a stunning complexion and regal disposition who may be on her way to superstardom. She plays the eponymous Princess Marie de Montpensier, who has married an awkward young aristocrat (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet) she barely knows, but still keeps a torch burning for the roguish, scarred Comte de Guise (Gaspard Ulliel), her childhood love.

Then there’s the smirking, arrogant Duc d’Anjou (Raphaël Personnaz, who perfectly captures the odd effeminacy of lady-killer aristocrats in that era), brother to the king, who is used to taking what he wants. Observing all this is Marie’s husband’s one-time tutor, the shadowy Comte de Chabannes (played by French screen legend Lambert Wilson), a shadowy figure who serves as this story’s Nick Carraway. Chabannes has betrayed both the Catholic crown forces and the reformers, and is in grave danger of losing his head. That isn’t enough to stop him from falling in love with Marie himself, and using his privileged position in her household to steer her through the shoals of romantic danger.

Tavernier and writer Jean Cosmos, his frequent collaborator, have preserved the dense courtly intrigue of La Fayette’s original story but also go much further, opening up the bizarre world of 16th-century aristocratic France to anthropological inquiry (after the fashion of Roberto Rossellini’s didactic history films, or Patrice Chéreau’s terrific “Queen Margot,” to which this can almost serve as a prequel). Adulterous affairs are carried out carelessly, almost in public; Queen Catherine de Médicis (whose flatulence was legendary) receives visitors in a chamber crowded with food, children and dogs; counts and princes crash for the night wherever they find themselves, sometimes two and three to a bed. Most striking of all is the scene where the naked Marie is inspected by her father before being delivered to her husband for deflowering, while a bevy of servants wait by the bed to claim the blood-stained sheet that will prove her virginity. We complain today that the Internet has robbed us of privacy, but this richly absorbing work of time travel demonstrates that our ancestors never had it in the first place.

“The Princess of Montpensier” is now playing in New York and Los Angeles, with other cities to follow. Beginning April 20, it will also be available on-demand from many cable and satellite providers.

SUNDANCE SELECTS TAKES U.S. RIGHTS TO JOSHUA MARSTON’S

BERLIN WINNER THE FORGIVENESS OF BLOOD

New York, NY (April 6, 2011) – Sundance Selects announced today that the company is acquiring all U.S. rights to acclaimed director Joshua Marston’s (MARIA FULL OF GRACE) THE FORGIVENESS OF BLOOD, which won the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay at the 2011 Berlin International Film Festival. Marston also wrote the screenplay for the film alongside Andamion Murataj. Paul Mezey produced the project, which stars Tristan Halilaj, Sindi Laçej and Refet Abazi. Janine Gold, Eric Abraham, Domenico Procacci, Hunter Gray and Tyler Brodie executive produced the picture. THE FORGIVENESS OF BLOOD is a Fandango Portobello presentation in association with Artists Public Domain and Cinereach, and Lissus Media of a Journeyman Pictures production.

Sundance Selects sister label, IFC Films, previously collaborated with Fandango Portobello on the release of their award-winning production GOMORRAH which was presented by Martin Scorsese and directed by Matteo Garrone. IFC Films also worked with Paul Mezey on the production and release of films such as Jim McKay’s ‘OUR SONG and Tom Gilroy’s SPRING FORWARD.

The film follows Nik, an energetic 17-year-old in his last year of high school in Northern Albania. Embarking on his first romance with a girl in his class, he plans to open his own internet café after graduation. His sister, Rudina, is a bright, mature fifteen-year-old who aspires to go to college. When a local land dispute results in their father Mark being accused of murder, the family is drawn into a deadly blood feud. The rules of the Kanun, a centuries-old Albanian code of law, force Nik, his 7 year old brother and the other male members of his family into virtual house arrest. With Mark hiding in the mountains and Nik unable to leave the house, the family must rely on Rudina, who has to leave school and take over Mark’s business in order to provide for them. While Rudina flourishes in her newfound responsibility, Nik’s frustration and anger at his isolation drive him to try to end the feud, even though it may cost him his life.

Jonathan Sehring, President of Sundance Selects, said: “THE FORGIVENESS OF BLOOD is an absolutely riveting and flawlessly directed film.  Joshua Marston is the perfect addition to our growing slate of filmmaker driven work for our Sundance Selects label which includes films by Werner Herzog, Errol Morris, Wim Wenders, Abbas Kiarostami and Bertrand Tavernier.  We look forward to working with him and are happy to continue our relationship with Janine Gold and Paul Mezey.”

Director Marston said: “I am extremely pleased to have Sundance Selects releasing the film. They bring a real passion for the movie along with a very smart plan for distribution. This is a very moving and human film that looks into a world that hasn’t been seen on screen before, and Sundance Selects understands that.”

The deal for THE FORGIVENESS OF BLOOD was negotiated by Arianna Bocco, Senior Vice President of Acquisitions & Productions for Sundance Selects with Janine Gold of Fandango Portobello on behalf of the filmmakers.

Sundance Selects is a sister division to IFC Films and IFC Midnight, and is owned and operated by Rainbow Media.

By STEPHEN HOLDEN

Bam! Ka-pow! The exclamatory cartoon balloons that pop up during a scene of gruesome vigilante justice late in James Gunn’s “Super” are supposed to remind us that at heart the movie is a harmless live-action satire of comic-book revenge fantasies. But is it?

Along the way this subversively funny, tonally twisted film morphs from something playful with dark undercurrents into the opposite. This sudden whiplash back to an attitude of false innocence registers as a slap in the face.

The film’s schlubby antihero, Frank (Rainn Wilson), is a glowering short-order cook driven by a lifetime of victimization and curdled outrage. He is a seething mass of righteous self-pity who adopts the persona and costume of a superhero he names the Crimson Bolt.

The type of repressed creep who is often described as “a ticking time bomb,” Frank adopts his avenging alter ego after his wife, Sarah (Liv Tyler), a recovering drug addict and alcoholic whom he helped lead to sobriety, is stolen from him by her former boyfriend Jacques (Kevin Bacon). The proprietor of a local strip club, Jacques immediately enslaves her to heroin.

One of Frank’s inspirations is a television show, “The Holy Avenger,” a ridiculous superhero series on the fictional All-Jesus Network that suggests a “South Park” parody. In an amusingly outlandish scene Frank has a vision in which his head is attacked by giant sucking worms that irradiate his brain; a moment later he is touched by the finger of God. From then on there is no turning back.

The plot of “Super” has a lot in common with “Kick-Ass,” in which the title character, a high-school dweeb and his sidekick, Hit-Girl, wreak gory havoc. Mr. Gunn, who wrote and directed “Super,” is an alumnus of the B-movie studio Troma, for whom he wrote the screenplay for the midnight cult hit “Tromeo and Juliet.” That movie and his 2006 comic horror movie, “Slither,” have a facetious, let-the-chips-fall-where-they-may attitude and fondness for excess; the more splatter is better.

Initially Frank’s attempts to right the world’s wrongs using only his fists and ungainly body are ludicrous, foolhardy exercises that end in cuts and bruises at the hands of stronger and more ruthless foes. Realizing he needs weapons, Frank consults Libby (Ellen Page), an eager, fresh-faced clerk in a comic-book store, for appropriate tools. She guesses his alter ego after news reports of the Crimson Bolt’s antics, and the two become a team.

Frank returns to action wielding a pipe wrench, which he uses to bash people in the face. The smallest rudeness can trigger a violent reaction. A man who cuts in line outside a movie theater winds up in intensive care. An acquaintance of Libby’s who may or may not have defaced a friend’s car is savagely attacked in his home.

“Super” doesn’t pretend to be realistic. Violent acts go unpunished. It thrashes about in a comic-book limbo where basic laws of cause and effect don’t necessarily apply.

The Crimson Bolt eventually commands a formidable arsenal of firepower that includes bombs and grenades as he and Libby, now nicknamed Boltie and appropriately costumed, lay siege to Jacques’s lair.

“Super” rides on the carefully bent performances of its stars. Mr. Wilson’s Frank is a psychotic chip off the blockhead, Dwight, he plays in “The Office.” The film magnifies the quietly fuming, injustice-collecting Dwight into an avenger of monstrous grandiosity. Flashbacks to Frank’s persecution during childhood and adolescence trick you into sympathizing with him long after he has gone around the bend.

A nervous, fidgety crybaby who in moments of abject self-loathing falls on his knees and prays for deliverance from his miserable condition, Frank is ultimately abhorrent despite a mawkish soft ending. You can see exactly why Sarah left him for the loathsome Jacques. There is no getting around the fact that slithery bad boys are sexier than crazy goody-goods. And Mr. Bacon’s sleaze ball oozes an oily reptilian charm.

Even more disturbing is Ms. Page’s transformation from helpful eager beaver to demented vixen whose perky enthusiasm escalates into manical bloodlust. Together Frank and Libby become the newest screen incarnation of those archetypal cinematic lovebirds known as natural-born killers.

SUNDANCE SELECTS ACQUIRES U.S. RIGHTS TO WIM WENDERS’

3D DOCUMENTARY PINA

New York, NY (March 31, 2011) – Sundance Selects announced today that the company is acquiring all U.S. rights to celebrated director Wim Wenders’ (WINGS OF DESIRE, BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB) 3D documentary PINA. Wenders also wrote the screenplay for the picture and produced it along with Gian-Piero Ringel (PALERMO SHOOTING, ORLY). PINA, an in-depth look into the work of iconic dancer and choreographer Pina Bausch, world-premiered at the 2011 Berlin Film Festival where it became the most discussed film of the festival.

In addition, HanWay Films has licensed PINA in over 40 territories internationally.

Dancer Pina Bausch is legendary. As celebrated as Isadora Duncan and Martha Graham, she transformed the language of dance. Designed to ignite emotion in the viewer, her unique multi-media creations offered a visual experience like no other. Now we can experience the synesthesia of her elemental choreography as if performed for us in the flesh. Filmed by the great European pioneer of 3D photography, Alain Derobe, this revolutionary 3D film captures the thrilling aesthetic of Pina Bausch’s greatest productions.

Jonathan Sehring, President of Sundance Selects, said: “Since the Berlinale ended, our team has remained completely mesmerized by Wim Wenders tribute to the legendary late choreographer Pina Bausch.  This one-of-a-kind spectacle is going to knock out not only dance fans but anyone interested in great cinema.  This is Wim Wenders at the top of his game, and we couldn’t be happier to be in business with him and our friends at Hanway Films again.”

The deal for PINA was negotiated by Arianna Bocco, Senior Vice President of Acquisitions & Productions for Sundance Selects with Tim Haslam, CEO of Hanway Films on behalf of the filmmakers.

PINA has so far grossed in excess of $4 million in Germany in its first four weeks and premieres in France on April 6^th and in the UK on April 12^th ahead of its April 22^nd theatrical bow.

Sundance Selects is a sister division to IFC Films and IFC Midnight, and is owned and operated by Rainbow Media.

Mark Damon, Patrick Dempsey, and Peter Safran
, the film stars Dempsey (GREY’S ANATOMY), Ashley Judd (CROSSING OVER), Jeffrey Tambor (WIN WIN, ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT), and Tim Blake Nelson (LEAVES OF GRASS). Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, the writers behind THE HANGOVER, penned the screenplay. FLYPAPER premiered earlier this year at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.

IFC Films will release the film theatrically and on its Video-on-Demand (VOD) platform.

Tripp Kennedy (Dempsey) ambles into a bank near closing time, just as two different gangs unwittingly converge to rob it. A shoot-out erupts, and Tripp tackles the smart, pretty teller, Kaitlin (Judd), to protect her. The gangs—one clearly made up of pros and the other a couple of buffoons named Peanut Butter (Nelson) and Jelly (Pruitt Taylor Vince) —have deadlocked themselves in a Mexican standoff. The bank’s security system starts the end-of-day lockdown and seals everyone into the building. As the night evolves, a hilarious game of cat and mouse ensues as Tripp and Kaitlin try to save the day, escape being killed, and avoid falling in love . . . almost.

Jonathan Sehring, President of Sundance Selects/IFC Films, said: “Since FLYPAPER premiered at Sundance, we have been truly excited about it. Jon Lucas and Scott Moore’s recent success with THE HANGOVER is a testament to their comedic talents, and we could not ask for a better cast to back up their hilarious script.”
Mark Damon, CEO of Foresight Unlimited, said: “With the acquisition of FLYPAPER. IFC Films will now be the U.S. distributor of both of our Sundance selections - THE LEDGE being the other one - which makes it doubly clear the faith we have in the IFC Films team. We are delighted that FLYPAPER has found the right theatrical distributor.”

The deal for FLYPAPER was negotiated by Arianna Bocco, Senior Vice President of Acquisitions & Productions for Sundance Selects/IFC Films and UTA’s Independent Film Group and Traction Media on behalf of the filmmakers and Foresight Unlimited.

IFC Films is a sister division to Sundance Selects and IFC Midnight, and is owned and operated by Rainbow Media.

SUNDANCE SELECTS TAKES NORTH AMERICAN RIGHTS AND MULTIPLE FOREIGN RIGHTS TO

ANDREW HAIGH’S WEEKEND

Film Premiered This Week at SXSW and Took Emerging Visions Audience Award

Austin, TEXAS (March 17, 2011) – Sundance Selects announced today from the 2011 South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival that the company is acquiring North American rights to writer/director Andrew Haigh’s WEEKEND. Additionally, Sundance Selects picked up broadcast and digital rights in France, Benelux, Spain, Portugal, East-Central Europe, Turkey, and Greece. The film, which stars Tom Cullen and Chris New, was produced by Tristan Goligher. On the heels of its world premiere at this week’s festival, WEEKEND was awarded the SXSW Emerging Visions Audience Award. Sundance Selects will release the film theatrically and on Video-on-Demand (VOD).

WEEKEND begins on a Friday night. After hanging out with his straight mates, Russell heads out to a gay club, alone and on the pull. Just before closing time he picks up Glen and that weekend, in bars and in bedrooms, getting drunk and taking drugs, telling stories and having sex, the two men get to know each other. It is an encounter that will resonate throughout their lives.

Jonathan Sehring, President of Sundance Selects, said: “Over the years, we’ve discovered great new talents at SXSW like Lena Dunham, Aaron Katz, Joe Swanberg, Barry Jenkins and the Safdies.  This year was no exception.  We were completely moved by Andrew Haigh’s WEEKEND, a universal story about the perils and joys of falling in love.  It was one of the most exciting films we saw at this year’s festival.  We really look forward to working with Andrew and his producer Tristan Goligher and The Film Collaborative on bringing this to a big audience.”

“The reputation and personality of Sundance Selects makes them an ideal partner to release WEEKEND. After the enthusiasm and reception the film has received, this caps an incredible experience at SXSW. We look forward to working with the entire Sundance Selects team,” said Goligher and Haigh.

The deal for the film was negotiated by Arianna Bocco, Senior Vice President of Acquisitions & Productions for Sundance Selects, and Jeff Deutchman, Manager of Acquisitions & Productions for Sundance Selects, with Orly Ravid, Founder of of The Film Collaborative, on behalf of the filmmakers.

After working in editing on films as diverse as GLADIATOR and MISTER LONELY, Haigh has concentrated on directing. Haigh’s fourth short film premiered at Berlinale in February 2009 and his first feature GREEK PETE was released in UK theaters in 2009.

Sundance Selects is a sister division to IFC Films and IFC Midnight, and is owned and operated by Rainbow Media.

For stills or more information on The Film Collaborative, visit www.TheFilmCollaborative.org.

IFC MIDNIGHT TAKES NORTH AMERICAN RIGHTS TO

BEN WHEATLEY’S KILL LIST

Austin, TEXAS (March 14, 2011) – IFC Midnight announced tonight from the 2011 South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival that the company is acquiring North American rights to director Ben Wheatley’s KILL LIST. The film, with a screenplay by Wheatley and Amy Jump, stars Neil Maskell, Michael Smiley, and MyAnna Buring and was produced by Claire Jones and Andy Starke. Barry Ryan co-produced the film for Warp X. KILL LIST is a Warp X/Rook Film production for the UK Film Council and Film4 in association with Screen Yorkshire.

KILL LIST is screening at the SXSW Film Festival in the SX Fantastic section, a sidebar programmed by the team behind the Fantastic Fest.

Eight months after a disastrous job in Kiev left him physically and mentally scarred, ex-soldier turned contract killer Jay (Maskell), is pressured by his partner Gal (Smiley), into taking a new assignment. The film follows as they descend into the dark, disturbing world of the contract, Jay begins to unravel once again - his fear and paranoia sending him deep into the heart of darkness.

KILL LIST is Wheatley’s second feature film. His debut, DOWN TERRACE, won numerous awards, including Best Feature at Fantastic Fest, Raindance and Boston.

Jonathan Sehring, President of Sundance Selects/IFC Films, said: “Our team was blown away by KILL LIST. It is a relentless, stylish, brilliantly directed journey into darkness that confirms Ben Wheatley as a major director.  This is a film that is destined to be discussed for years and we are honored to begin the conversation with audiences across the country.  We are happy to be working with our friends at Protagonist, Warp X and Film4 once again.”

“It’s an amazing way to end a fantastic festival,” said director Wheatley.

Katherine Butler, executive producer of the film for Film4, said: “We are absolutely delighted to be working with IFC on this coruscating film from the wildly talented Ben Wheatley following its hugely successful premiere here in SXSW.”

The deal for the film was negotiated by Arianna Bocco, Senior Vice President of Acquisitions & Productions for Sundance Selects/IFC Films with Ben Roberts, CEO of Protagonist Pictures on behalf of the filmmakers.

IFC Midnight is a sister division to Sundance Selects and IFC Films, and is owned and operated by Rainbow Media.

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About IFC MIDNIGHT

Established in 2010 and based in New York City, IFC Midnight is a leading U.S. distributor of genre entertainment including horror, science-fiction, thrillers, erotic art house, action and more.  Its unique distribution model makes independent genre films available to a national audience by releasing them in theaters as well as on cable’s Video On Demand (VOD) platform, reaching nearly 50 million homes. Some of the company’s successes have included Tom Six’s controversial horror film The Human Centipede (First Sequence) and Johnnie To’s Hong Kong revenge thriller Vengeance. Upcoming IFC Midnight releases include James Gunn’s Super starring Rainn Wilson, Ellen Page and Kevin Bacon; Miguel Angel Vivas’ powerful and shocking home invasion flick Kidnapped and Tom Six’s highly anticipated frightfest The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence). IFC Midnight is a sister division to Sundance Selects and IFC Films, and is owned and operated by Rainbow Media.

On the Road, Packing Querulous Erudition

By STEPHEN HOLDEN

Published: March 10, 2011

The Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami’s delicious brain tickler, “Certified Copy,” is an endless hall of mirrors whose reflections multiply as its story of a middle-aged couple driving through Tuscany carries them into a metaphysical labyrinth.

The travelers are a beautiful, high-strung woman, identified only as Elle or She (Juliette Binoche), who runs an antiques shop in Arezzo, and a British author, James Miller (the operatic baritone William Shimell), whom she meets after he gives a lecture on his new book, “Certified Copy.”

James’s treatise, a tricky, erudite consideration of artistic authenticity, ponders why a reproduction is not considered as good as the original, then takes that question of copies and originals in any number of directions to illustrate his conviction that nothing is ever really new.

Elle, a single mother with a 10-year-old son, has eyes for James. After the lecture, the two drive in her car to the village of Lucignano and along the way debate aesthetics and begin to bicker. When they stop at a trattoria in Lucignano, the cafe owner assumes that they are a long-married couple and shares her traditional views of men, women and marriage. A statue in the village square of a woman serenely resting her head on a man’s shoulder is scrutinized for its fundamental truth about the sexes. After the meal, during which James has a hissy fit about the wine, he and Elle slowly fall into the roles the waitress has assigned them.

By the time they visit a hotel in which Elle insists they spent their wedding night, you are uncertain whether they are collaborating in mutual playacting or if their initial meeting was actually a reunion after a long separation. If their 15-year “marriage” is just a facsimile, then the game they are playing, in which emotional darts are tossed, seems less and less frivolous.

Before the trattoria the main topic of conversation — authenticity in art — is a continuation of James’s lecture, during which Elle pointedly challenged his ideas. Artworks that were presumed to be originals and later found out to be forgeries are discussed.

The debate leaps into a broader contemplation of art versus life. Isn’t the Mona Lisa a reproduction of its model? Why does an everyday object as depicted by Jasper Johns or Andy Warhol take on value when exhibited in a museum? Aren’t we all DNA “replicas” of our ancestors? What does it imply about art and reality that not one of the gorgeous cypress trees lining the road they travel is like any other? Does that make each an original work of art?

“Certified Copy,” Mr. Kiarostami’s first feature film made outside his native Iran, is such a conspicuous leap from neo-Realism to European modernism, it sometimes feels like a dry comic parody. As the movie goes along, it begins to deconstruct itself by posing as a cinematic homage, or copy, if you will, of European art films of the 1950s and ’60s, with contemporary echoes.

Roberto Rossellini’s “Journey to Italy,” in which a couple played by George Sanders and Ingrid Bergman travel to Naples to sell a house, is the most obvious forerunner. Also alluded to are Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Avventura,” with its stark juxtapositions of ancient and modern images, and Alain Resnais’s elegant, memory-obsessed mind bender, “Last Year at Marienbad.” It has also been suggested that more recent antecedents like Wong Kar-wai’s “In the Mood for Love” and Richard Linklater’s “Before Sunrise” and “Before Sunset” are role models. In any case, “Certified Copy” virtually announces itself as a deliberate stylistic composite.

Despite its modernist sensibility, there is little reason to be intimidated, unless you find the character of James abhorrent. An arrogant, short-tempered blowhard flaunting a cultivated charm, he fatuously declares at one point that human beings are the only species to have forgotten that pleasure is the purpose of existence.

Yet he dwells inside his head. The concept for his book, he remarks, was just an idea that occurred to him during a visit to Florence. Moving through one of the world’s most beautiful landscapes, he is unable to see what is in front of him or to begin to live in the moment. He is so out of touch with sensuous reality that in the restaurant he fails to notice when Elle disappears to put on lipstick and dangling earrings and returns all aglow.

The voluptuous appeal of Lucignano, a village where young couples flock to marry in a local chapel, is lost on him. His first impulse is to sneer at the naïveté of newlyweds who believe that their happiness will never end. The place is a vibrant paradise of stunning architecture, ringing church bells and cooing pigeons; the scented, sun-drenched atmosphere overflows with romantic promise.

Ms. Binoche, whose performance won the Cannes Film Festival award for best actress last spring, humanizes the film and lends its theoretical substructure flesh and blood and emotional weight. For all her prickliness, Elle, who speaks fluent English, French and Italian, may be at home in the world of ideas but she is also a woman of deep feeling. She brings “Certified Copy” to intense, pulsing life.

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From THE LOS ANGELES TIMES:

Father Billy (Little), a young priest, is forced to take a sabbatical by his superiors when he is discovered telling inappropriate parables to his flock. Billy tracks down his high-school idol Robbie (Longstreet), who begrudgingly agrees to a canoe trip. On the water, the two men reminisce about Billy’s days as the keyboardist in a Christian band and Robbie’s as a guitarist for a metal band. When night approaches, they realize they have lost their way–and that’s when things get weird.

President of IFC Films/Sundance Selects, Jonathan Sehring, said: “CATACLYSM CATECHISM is one of the funniest films we have seen in ages.  It features one of the funniest campfire scenes in the history of cinema.  It’s a film that is destined for cult status.  We can’t wait to work with Todd Rohal and his fantastic cast on this film.”

Noted Rohal: “It’s been a blast making this film, premiering it at Sundance and working with Cinetic to find us a home at IFC Midnight. We’re thrilled that IFC Midnight is embracing our mix of Christian values and Satanic ritualism and unleashing it into this troubled world. It’s going to be a fun ride.”

The deal for THE CATECHISM CATACLYSM was negotiated by Arianna Bocco, Senior Vice President of Acquisitions & Productions for Sundance Selects/IFC Films and Jeff Deutchman, Manager of Acquisitions & Productions for Sundance Selects/IFC Films with Debra Fisher at Cinetic Media on behalf of the filmmakers.

John Cassavettes Award - DADDY LONGLEGS, Josh & Benny Safdie, Casey Neistat, Tom Scott

Best First Screenplay - TINY FURTNITURE, Lena Dunham

The complete list of winners from the 2011 Independent Spirit Awards:

BEST FEATURE (Award given to the Producer)
Black Swan

BEST DIRECTOR
Darren Aronfosky, “Black Swan”

BEST FIRST FEATURE (Award given to the director and producer)
Get Low

JOHN CASSAVETES AWARD
(Given to the best feature made for under $500,000; award given to the writer, director, and producer)
Daddy Longlegs

BEST SCREENPLAY
“The Kids Are All Right”

BEST FIRST SCREENPLAY
“Tiny Furniture”

BEST FEMALE LEAD
Natalie Portman, “Black Swan”

BEST MALE LEAD
James Franco, “127 Hours”

BEST SUPPORTING FEMALE
Dale Dickey, “Winter’s Bone”

BEST SUPPORTING MALE
John Hawkes, “Winter’s Bone”

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Black Swan

BEST DOCUMENTARY (Award given to the director)
Exit Through The Gift Shop

BEST FOREIGN FILM (Award given to the director)
The King’s Speech

ROBERT ALTMAN AWARD
(Given to one film’s director, casting director, and its ensemble cast)
“Please Give”

PIAGET PRODUCERS AWARD
Anish Savjani (“Meek’s Cutoff”)

SOMEONE TO WATCH AWARD
Mike Ott (“Little Rock”)

TRUER THAN FICTION AWARD
Jeff Malmberg (“Marwencol”)