The 34th edition of the Montreal World Film Festival kicked off its celebrations last evening with a world premiere screening of local director Louis Belanger's ROUTE 132. Films from across the European continent dominate the Festival's main competition section....all in contention for Grand Prix des Ameriques, the Festival's highest honor. France is the country with the most films in the section, not surprising considering the Festival's love of French cinema and cinema stars. Lea...

  The calendar may still say August, but the busy Fall film festival season kicks off in earnest in Montreal later this week as the Montreal World Film Festival (MWFF) will celebrate its 34th edition. The Festival, one of the only FIAPF A-Class film festivals in North America, is the first in a marathon that will take film buffs and professionals to film events in Toronto, Venice, San Sebastian, New York, Woodstock, Deauville and Chicago (just to name a prominent few). The MWFF,...

  Don’t miss Club Positif’s monthly event this December at Le Grand Action! Tuesday, the 22nd of December at 8pm, Le Grand Action will be holding its monthly débat animé, this month lead by Pierre Eisenreich from Club Positif. Each month Club Positif shows a selected film and holds a discussion after the screening. The film of choice for this month: Gabrielle starring Isabelle Huppert and Pascal Greggory. In this film-adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s novel “The Retu...

The second Gala Opening of the 57th Mannheim-Heidelberg Film Festival took place on 7th November 2008, in the mother-ship, so to say.Even more crowds massed for the premiere of Helma Sanders-Brahms's (surely some relation) elegant menage `a trois  Clara (original title Geliebte Clara), an opulent opus on the turbulent amours 'twixt the  troubled Schumanns (energetically brought to life by Martina Gedeck and French star Pascal Greggory) and their younger protege Johannes Brahms (an intrigui...

The second Gala Opening of the 57th Mannheim-Heidelberg Film Festival took place on 7th November 2008, in the mother-ship, so to say.Even more crowds massed for the premiere of Helma Sanders-Brahms's (surely some relation) elegant menage `a trois Clara (original title Geliebte Clara), an opulent opus on the turbulent amours 'twixt the troubled Schumanns (energetically brought to life by Martina Gedeck and French star Pascal Greggory) and their younger protege Johannes Brahms (an intriguingly c...

"April is the cruelest month" wrote T.S.Eliot when having to choose between  invitations to fests in Istanbul, Nyon and elsewhere- then for FIPRESCI members it became September when the Fall season started to invigorate itself with Venice, Toronto, San Sebastian, Hamburg vying with each other for films and attention, and more recently October became the new September with London and Roma and Sitges and Gent clashing wildly and who gives a damn about Chicago...? Now November is...

The 65th Venice International Film Festival, organised by the Venice Biennale, will take place at Venice Lido from August 27th to September 6th 2008. The aim of the Festival is to encourage the awareness and the promotion of all the various aspects of international cinema as art, entertainment and industry, in a spirit of freedom and tolerance. Marco Müller will be the director of this edition, continuing the work he began in 2004. The line-up of the 65th Venice Film Festival includes the follo...

 Tuesday, July 1----------With the American economy in the crapper and the dollar at near record lows, a trip to the Cannes Film Festival has become an inexpensive indulgence, even for the media professionals who “must” be there. For the general public, who may be curious about what goes on along the famed shores of the Riviera, the difficulty of being part of the Cannes action is doubly difficult. Well, for the past month, Cannes has been made affordable and surprisingly accessible, with t...

19th International Film Festival Emden-Norderney from 4th – 11th June 2008 20 Feature Films in Competition at the Film Festival on the North Sea Coast The competition nominations for the 19th International Film Festival Emden-Norderney have been finalised. A total of 20 feature films from 13 countries will be competing for the three full-length film awards - the Bernhard Wicki Award, the DGB Film Award and the NDR Young Directors Award. 40 percent of the nominees are women. A further 9 films ...

40 new films, including 20 features (all premieres) and 20 new shorts, will be shown at the 11th Annual City of Lights, City of Angels (COL•COA). Acclaimed Berlin Film Festival opening film, “La Vie En Rose,” writer-director Olivier Dahan’s masterful biopic of Edith Piaf, starring Marion Cotillard and Gérard Depardieu, will open the showcase on Monday, April 16, 2007. Picturehouse will release the film on June 8th in New York and Los Angeles. The U.S. Premiere of “Michou D’Auber”...

Patrice Chereau’s Gabrielle based on The Return by Joseph Conrad is the story about an upper class woman, Gabrielle (Isabelle Hubert), who writes a letter to her husband that she is leaving him for another man. She later returns home to her husband Jean (Pascal Greggory)the same day. The decision to project letters and plot developments onscreen as mega texts is one of the problems of Chereau’s film. The other is the cinematography by Eric Gautier who tries to enhance the story with more vi...

Venice Festival competition August 31 September 10An international competition comprising of 20 feature films in 35mm and digital HD format Pupi AVATI La seconda notte di nozze Italy 103’Antonio Albanese, Katia Ricciarelli, Neri Marcorè João BOTELHO O Fatalista Portugal/France 99’Rogério Samora, André Gomes, Rita BlancoLaurent CANTET Vers le sud France/Canada 105’Charlotte Rampling, Karen Young, Louise PortalPatrice CHÉREAU Gabrielle France/Italy 90’Isabelle Huppert, Pascal Greggor...