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Noch bis 1. November laufen die Dreharbeiten zu einem neuen Film aus der Zdf-Samstagkrimireihe „Ein starkes Team“.

Am Set von „Ein starkes Team: Abgeschleppt“ (At): die Darsteller Stefanie Stappenbeck, Florian Martens und Rosa Falkenhagen (v.l.n.r.) (Credit: Zdf / Hardy Spitz)

Nach einem Drehbuch von Leo P. Ard inszeniert Sven Fahrensen noch bis 1. November in Berlin und Brandenburg den Film „Abgeschleppt“ (At) aus der Zdf-Samstagskrimireihe „Ein starkes Team“.

In ihrem 102. Fall müssen die Hauptkommissare Otto Garber (Florian Martens) und Linett Wachow (Stefanie Stappenbeck) den Tod des Abschleppunternehmers Klaus Bröser (Hilmar Eichhorn) aufklären, der eines morgens tot auf dem Grundstück seines Unternehmens aufgefunden worden war. Nachdem die Verletzungen darauf hindeuten, dass Bröser ermordet wurde, nehmen die beiden Kommissare die Ermittlungen auf und stoßen sowohl in Brösers privatem als auch beruflichem Umfeld auf eine Vielzahl an Verdächtigen.

Dazu zählen seine Stieftochter Nicole Bröser (Anja Schneider), der Bröser die Unternehmensführung offenbar wieder entziehen wollte,...

Das Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg hat aktuell Fördermittel in Höhe von 6,7 Mio. Euro für 39 Film- und Serienprojekte beschlossen. Allein zwei Millionen Euro gehen an die fünfte und letzte Staffel von „Babylon Berlin“.

„Babylon Berlin“ wird vom Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg mit zwei Mio. Euro gefördert (Credit: Ard/Frédéric Batier/X Filme Creative Pool/Ard Degeto/Sky/Beta Film)

6,7 Mio. Euro für 39 neue Film- und Serienprojekte – so lautet die Bilanz der jüngsten Förderrunde des Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg.

Allein zwei Mio. Euro erhält X Filme Creative Pool für die fünfte und letzte Staffel von „Babylon Berlin“, die ab Oktober unter der Regie von Henk Handloegten, Achim von Borries und Tom Tywer, die auch für die Drehbücher verantwortlich zeichnen gedreht werden soll.

600.000 Euro gehen an zero one film für die Romanverfilmung „The Noise of Time“ mit August Diehl in der Rolle des russischen Komponisten Dimitri Schostakowitsch und Andrea Riseborough in der seiner Ehefrau Nita. Regie führt Jan Komasa...

Germany’s impressive crop of crime drama, mystery, suspense, apocalyptic catastrophe, royal intrigue and tales of the supernatural is certain to attract buyers at this year’s MipTV in Cannes.

The selections of series, TV movies and unscripted shows offer a wide range of content but also remain heavy on crime — a favorite German genre.

Among the new offerings is Beta Film’s fact-based title “I am Scrooge.” Produced by Zeitsprung Pictures, the Cologne-based company behind the hit Netflix spy thriller “Kleo,” “I am Scrooge” chronicles the true story of Arno Funke, a frustrated artist who found fame as a bombmaking extortionist in the early 1990s.

Identifying himself as Dagobert Duck — the German name for the Disney character Scrooge McDuck — Funke targeted some of Germany’s biggest department stores, beginning with Berlin’s KaDeWe in 1988, while continually outwitting police and even becoming a local folk hero. The six-part series stars Friedrich Mücke,...

Matthias Luthardt with Anne-Katrin Titze on his cello musicianship inspiring Clemens Berg’s role in Pingpong: “I used to play a lot when I was a teenager. I was playing intensely.”

My first interaction with Matthias Luthardt, the director of the upcoming Dh Lawrence adaptation of The Fox (Der Fuchs), written by Sebastian Bleyl, starring Luise Aschenbrenner (Dominik Graf’s Erich Kästner adaptation of Fabian: Going to the Dogs) and Christa Théret (Olivier Assayas’s Non-Fiction) was when I sent in a question during the Face to Face with German Films in 2022 filmmakers' panel in Berlin: “Which film you saw did you particularly like in 2021?” His response was Joachim Trier’s Oscar nominated The Worst Person In The World, starring Cannes Best Actress winner Renate Reinsve and Anders Danielsen Lie.

Sebastian Urzendowsky and Clemens Berg in Pingpong

Autumn 1929 - Shadows above Babylon and Pingpong,...

New jurors join International jury announced earlier this month.

Nine new jurors have been announced for next month’s online Berlin International Film Festival (March 1-5), with three each for the Encounters, Generation and Shorts sections.

The new jurors are in addition to the six-person International Jury that was revealed at the beginning of February, composed of six former Golden Bear winning directors.

The Encounters jury consists of French programmer Florence Almozini, who works as senior programmer at large for New York’s Film at Lincoln Center venue; Cecilia Barrionuevo, artistic director of Argentina’s Mar del Plata International Film...

The German festival is still set to take place in two stages, in March and in June. Update (18 February 2021): The festival has also announced the Encounters section jury, the Generation section jury and the International Short Film jury./ (1 February 2021) With the Berlinale industry event scheduled to unspool from 1-5 March 2021 – followed by the “summer special” (9-20 June) – the international juries will still decide on the prizewinners in the Competition, Berlinale Shorts, Encounters and Generation in the spring. For the Competition, it will be up to the directors of six Golden Bear-winning films to decide after viewing the movies on the...

Looking for horror to love this February? Shudder has you covered with their eclectic lineup of original series, new releases, and totally rad films from the VHS era, including Night of the Comet, Child's Play (1988), The Dead Lands, 3 From Hell, My Bloody Valentine (2009), the Horror Noire: Uncut podcast, a "Love Sick" collection that's perfect for Valentine's Day, and much more!

Below, you can check out the full list of titles coming to Shudder in the Us in February, and visit Shudder online to learn more about the streaming service.

Press Release: Good thing 2020 is a leap year, since you’ll need to find room to stream all the amazing movies, series and podcasts we’re serving up this month: new episodes of supernatural mythic adventure series, The Dead Lands; must-see Shudder original/exclusive movies Rob Zombie’s 3 From Hell, Fantastic Fest Best Picture winner Dog’S Don’T Wear Pants,...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options–not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and an archive of past round-ups here.

Goodbye First Love (Mia Hansen-Løve)

One of the best coming-of-age films of the decade, what begins as a fairly standard, but intimately captured story of young passion quickly blossoms to one of the most mature takes on such an event thanks to Mia Hansen-Løve’s remarkably natural style and a script that’s conscious of time and its effects on love. Praise must also go to Lola Creton and Sebastian Urzendowsky for seemingly organic chemistry from such material. – Jordan R.

Where to Stream: Mubi (free for 30 days)

The Man From London (Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky)

Upon the release of The Man from London, one might...

Beta Film and Oscar-winning director Florian Gallenberger are continuing their partnership with WWII drama, The Turncoat. Described as being in the tradition of International Emmy winner Generation War, the limited series is based on the novel by Siegfried Lenz that centers on a young Wehrmacht soldier who is stranded in the no man’s land of the Polish forests, surrounded by partisans, questioning the meaning of duty, conscience, friendship and love. Jannis Niewöhner (Maximilian And Marie De Bourgogne) stars alongside Malgorzata Mikolajczak, Sebastian Urzendowsky (The Counterfeiters), Rainer Bock (Never Look Away) and Ulrich Tukur (The Lives Of Others). Gallenberger is helming from a script by Bernd Lange (The Vanishing). Shooting is underway in Poland and Germany on the Dreamtool production for public broadcaster Ndr, Ard Degeto and Swr. Beta Film handles world sales and will present first images at Mipcom in Cannes this fall.

Four-hour Second World War series is shooting now in Poland and Germany.

Beta Film and producers Dreamtool have started shooting Second World War drama series The Turncoat, directed by Oscar-winner Florian Gallenberger.

Bernd Lange (The Vanishing) adapts the script from the novel by Siegfried Lenz about Walter, a young Wehrmacht soldier in the summer of 1944 who is stranded in the no man’s land of the Polish forests, surrounded by partisans, questioning the meaning of duty, conscience, friendship and love.

Broadcast partners are Ndr, Ard Degeto and Swr. Backers also include the Polish Film Institute, the FilmFernsehFonds Bayern, and the Mfg Filmförderung Baden-Württemberg.

Following “Colonia,”Beta Film and Oscar-winning director Florian Gallenberger are set to re-team on “The Turncoat,” a WW2 mini-series based on Siegfried Lenz’s bestselling novel by the same name.

Currently shooting in Poland and Germany, “The Turncoat” will boast a high-profile German cast including Jannis Niewöhner (“Maximilian and Marie de Bourgogne”), Malgorzata Mikolajczak, Sebastian Urzendowsky (“The Counterfeiters”), Rainer Bock (“Never Look Away”) and Ulrich Tukur (“The Lives of Others”).

Dreamtool is producing “The Turncoat” for public broadcaster Ndr, Ard Degeto and Swr. Written by Gallenberger and Bernd Lange (“The Vanishing”), “The Turncoat” depicts the story of young Wehrmacht soldier Walter who is stranded in the no man’s land of the Polish forests starts questioning the meaning of duty, friendship and love.

“These are stormy times, even though we are the generation which has everything – peace, freedom and prosperity. We want to create a touching film that shows us...

Exclusive: Here’s some distinctive first footage of sci-fi-thriller Jessica Forever, which is getting its European premiere in Berlin’s Panorama strand after closing Toronto’s Platform section last year.

The English and French-language film from first-time directors Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel centers on a woman and her makeshift family of rehabilitated marauders fighting for peace in a dystopian world where violent misfits reign supreme.

Shudder, the AMC Networks genre streaming service, picked up North American and Australia/New Zealand rights last year. International sales rep MK2 has also closed deals for China with DDDream International, Japan with Klockworx and Mexico with Canibal Networks. Le Pacte will release in France.

The pic drew praise from critics out of Tiff last year and looks to bring an auteur take to a tried and tested genre premise. Aomi Muyock (Love), Sebastian Urzendowsky (The Counterfeiters), Lucas Ionesco and Paul Hamy star. Emmanuel Chaumet produces.

Redemption is a tricky concept. Can you be redeemed without forgiveness from those you wronged? Are our actions in the aftermath enough to achieve some semblance of peace if they show we’ve learned through remorse? Everyone has a different opinion on the matter whether victim, loved one, stranger, or corporation. Rehabilitation only goes so far when you find yourself free without any opportunities to prove to yourself that change was worth the trouble. There’s a reason so many criminals find themselves right back in jail and it’s not simply due to them being inherently evil because few people are. They’re marked, reduced to their worst day, treated like a second-class citizen, and worst of all haunted by the memories of what they did. Good intentions are never enough.

Now if things are that bad today, how much worse can they get in the future? Caroline Poggi...

Exclusive: Shudder, the AMC Networks genre streaming service, has jumped in to acquire North American rights to Jessica Forever, the dystopian thriller that will have its world premiere as the closing-night film of the Platform section at next month’s Toronto Film Festival. The film from first-time directors Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel will now bow exclusively on Shudder in 2019.

The pic, in English and French, centers on a woman and her makeshift family of rehabilitated marauders fighting for peace in a dystopian world where violent misfits reign supreme. Aomi Muyock, Sebastian Urzendowsky, Lucas Ionesco and Paul Hamy star.

“Jessica Forever is a visionary and surprising movie from two amazing first-time filmmakers that we can’t wait to share with Shudder members,” Shudder Gm Craig Engler said.

The deal was made by Shudder and MK2 Films, which is repping worldwide sales.

The Toronto Film Festival runs September 6-16. The Platform...

Arri Worldwide secures North American deal ahead of the Efm, where it will showcase two market premieres.

Arri Worldsales has sealed a North American deal ahead of this week’s European Film Market (Efm) with Vertical Entertainment for Alain Gsponer’s family film The Little Ghost.

Santa Monica-based Vertical acquired all Us and Canadian rights for the adaptation of Otfried Preussler’s internationally bestselling children’s classic, which has been sold to 24 countries worldwide to date.

Vertical Entertainment, which was launched last year by industry veterans Rich Goldberg and Mitch Budin, has previously released such family films as the animated feature Freedom Force and the Russian 3D animated film The Snow Queen. produced by Timur Bekmambetov.

Market premieres

Frederik Steiner’s award-winning Zurich (Und Morgen Mittag Bin Ich Tot) is one of two market premieres being presented by Arri Worldsales at the Efm in Berlin this week.

The film about a young woman suffering from cystic fibrosis...

Arri Worldwide secures North American deal ahead of the Efm, where it will showcase two market premieres.

Arri Worldsales has sealed a North American deal ahead of this week’s European Film Market (Efm) with Vertical Entertainment for Alain Gsponer’s family film The Little Ghost.

Santa Monica-based Vertical acquired all Us and Canadian rights for the adaptation of Otfried Preussler’s internationally bestselling children’s classic, which has been sold to 24 countries worldwide to date.

Vertical Entertainment, launched last year by industry veterans Rich Goldberg and Mitch Budin, had previously acquired Tim Fehlbaum’s apocalyptic thriller Hell from Arri.

Market premieres

Frederik Steiner’s award-winning Zurich (Und Morgen Mittag Bin Ich Tot) is one of two market premieres being presented by Arri Worldsales at the Efm in Berlin this week.

The film about a young woman suffering from cystic fibrosis who travels to Switzerland to end her life received the prize in the Newcomer category at this...

Nancy Buirski [pictured], Valeria Golino and Hernán Musaluppi to decide on the Best First Feature Award; 18 films are in contention.

Berlinale has unveiled the three-person jury for its Best First Feature Award.

Us director and producer Nancy Buirski, Italian actress and director Valeria Golino and Argentinian producer Hernán Musaluppi will decide the award, with the winner announced at the official award ceremony in the Berlinale Palast on Feb 15.

The award comes with a €50,000 prize, donated by the Gwff, and will be split between the producer and director of the winning film, while the director will also be awarded with a high-quality viewfinder.

A total of 18 directorial debuts have been nominated by the heads of the Competition, Panorama, Forum, Generation and Perspektive Deutsches Kino section.

They are:

Competition

´71 - United Kingdom

By Yann Demange

With Jack O’Connell, Sean Harris, Richard Dormer

Historia del miedo (History of Fear) – Argentina / Uruguay / Germany / France

By Benjamin Naishtat

With Jonathan Da Rosa, [link...

A total of 24 world premieres are included in the Berlinale’s Panorama selection, which has added a number of Asian productions.

Some 36 films from 29 countries will feature in the Panorama section of the Berlin International Film Festival (Feb 6-16), of which 24 will be world premieres.

Most recently invited are works from Norway, Ethiopia, Mexico, India, Iran, Georgia, Greece, Hungary and Austria – with returning filmmakers Elfi Mikesch and Umut Dağ, who opened Panorama 2012 with Kuma, his directorial debut.

New titles include a number of Asian productions. In Ieji (Homeland) by Japan’s Nao Kubota, a farmer’s son, who first fled to the city, explores his home village in the Fukushima district, an area that is actually still a no-go zone following the disaster at the region’s nuclear power plant.

In the South Korean film Night Flight, LeeSong Hee-il presents a duel between two schoolmates. LeeSong previously showed the films No Regret and White Night in Panorama...

Reviewer: James van Maanen

Ratings (out of five): ***

What's in a name -- or more to the point, in a title? The original French title of Mia Hansen-Løve's third feature (after the Ok All Is Forgiven and the much better Father of My Children), Goodbye First Love, is the much simpler Un amour de jeunesse, which translates to "Young Love," or maybe "A Love in Youth." The point of this talented writer/filmmaker's latest movie -- if I am anywhere close to understanding it -- concerns how difficult it is for her heroine, Camille, to actually bid good-bye to this first love. Instead she allows herself to become utterly obsessed with it and its vessel, the hunky young man named Sullivan (Sebastian Urzendowsky), who keeps telling her, by word and deed, to cool it. ...

★★★☆☆ French director Mia Hansen-Løve has managed to collate substantial critical goodwill over the course of her short career, thanks in part to the success over her previous film, 2009's Father of My Child. Hansen-Løve returned earlier this year with the loosely autobiographical Goodbye First Love (2011), a more sedate, at times watery account of the fledgling romance between 15-year-old Camille (rising star Lola Créton) and her slightly older boyfriend Sullivan (Sebastian Urzendowsky).

Read more »...

Un amour de jeunesse (English title: Goodbye First Love)

directed by Mia Hansen-Løve

Written by Mia Hansen-Løve

France/Germany, 2011

There is a common belief among many people that one’s first love is the one remembered most vividly. It is the one that shapes us the most, that taught us the most, and so on and so forth. The exuberance of finding love for the first time is clearly a pivotal moment in everyone’s lives, in particular if that love is experienced during the formative teenage years. Just how much control does a person have over the intensity with which that first experience shapes them? What might occur if the focus of one’s affections during that pivotal episode in one’s life re-emerges out of the past? What emotions might emerge and how might they influence that individual’s current life? Such is the subject matter which Mia Hansen-Løve...

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Hollywood’s romantic cinema is quite rightly derided for its sexlessness and its emotional disingenuousness, mistaking Hallmark truisms and cloying, ham-fisted musical montages for real emotional depth. A stereotypical argument it is perhaps, but one which has been proven time and again by the comparative honesty of European cinema’s approach. Goodbye First Love, a passionate and affecting Franco-German drama, offers uncommonly insightful observations of young adult relationships with everything that this entails.

Camille (Lola Créton) and Sullivan (Sebastian Urzendowsky) are young and very much in love. But despite this, their differing expectations are a source of considerable friction; Camille, the younger of the two, favours a dependent, all-encapsulating love, while Sullivan tends towards a more disconnected sense of self-sustainability. When he decides to travel away, Camille feels her life disintegrating, and the two of them, over a sprawling time period, struggle to come to terms with it.

American Pie: Reunion (15)

(Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg, 2012, Us) Jason Biggs, Seann William Scott, Eugene Levy, Alyson Hannigan. 113 mins

It's rare to see teen-movie characters all grown up, and this illustrates the reason why: they just make us feel old. The gang's all here, reverting to their old non-pc habits even as they mourn their lost youth. It's patchy and often dodgy comedy, but there's still something heartening about Stifler's defiant idiocy and Jim's dad's middle-age second chance.

Safe (15)

(Boaz Yakin, 2012, Us) Jason Statham, Catherine Chan. 94 mins

Triads, Russian mobsters, cops and everyone else in New York falls foul of Statham in another ludicrous but fast-moving actioner.

Two Years At Sea (U)

(Ben Rivers, 2012, UK) Jake Williams. 90 mins

Extraordinary, otherworldly observation of a modern-day Scottish hermit.

Goodbye First Love (15)

(Mia Hansen-Løve, 2011, Fra/Ger) Lola Créton, Sebastian Urzendowsky. 111 mins

Heartfelt study of a young teen's formative romantic fortunes.

The Lucky One (12A)

(Scott Hicks,...

Mia Hansen-Løve's second film is a clever, persuasive examination of the meaning of first love – and it has a clear streak of autobiography

The 32-year-old film-maker Mia Hansen-Løve began her career acting, notably for Olivier Assayas, whose partner she became. Then, as a director herself, she impressed audiences deeply with her breakthrough feature Father of My Children, in 2009. Un Amour de Jeunesse is a delicate love story, tender and erotic, and drenched in the idealism and seriousness of its central character, Camille (Lola Créton), looking like a very young Penélope Cruz. It is released here under the English title Goodbye First Love, which I think is slightly wrong, pre-empting audience expectations and misreading the film's ambiguity.

This is a fluent, confident and deeply felt movie: unmistakably, if not exactly nakedly, autobiographical. As ever with this kind of personal work, there is an extra pleasure in pondering how and why...

Love stories can go either one of two ways: the long, sweet and syrupy route or the honest, gritty and realistic route. Goodbye First Love takes the latter road and the results are absolutely charming. Spoken in French and subtitled in English, expect to pay close attention to the film’s dialogue. The actors give lovely performances and the lighting and photography are truly gorgeous. Goodbye First Love is a bittersweet tale of romance that sheds light on a very tender subject: young love.

The film begins in Paris 1999 and follows young, sweet Camille (Lola Créton), a 15 year-old girl who has a lustful relationship with a boy named Sullivan (Sebastian Urzendowsky). Their romance is very physical but with sincere moments of tenderness. All of this captured in the first few minutes of the film quite well. They appear naked and chase one another throughout a house. They galavant in the...

The great Maurice Pialat reportedly claimed to edit his films by paring away all the footage that didn’t strike him as true. This may account for the sustained emotional intensity of his work, his jarring transitions between scenes (it’s rarely easy to gauge how much time passes from one sequence to the next), and the way his movies accurately capture the feeling of being alive even when their content departs from strict realism. A similarly cryptic logic governs Mia Hansen-Løve’s The Father of My Children (2009), a film that portrays both coming-of-age and the legacy of art as a steady accumulation of observations. The movie’s timeframe encompasses about a year, though Hansen-Løve avoids any strategies that may give the story any recognizable pattern. Yes, it’s divided more or less in half, but there’s no marked change in the tone of the storytelling: impactful, even joyous...

Spring is here, folks! New love and life are upon us now that the dreary, ice-cold fingers of winter have withdrawn. Loosely translated into the logic of releasing films, this means documentaries and romance melodramas abound! They pop up from studios like daisies from freshly hoed lawns. Head to theaters this weekend and take in the sweet love of soldiers, vampires, Rastafarians, and even chimpanzees. And don’t forget to stop and smell the flowers on your way.

Zac Efron is “The Lucky One” in the adaptation of Nicholas Sparks’ novel opening in theaters this weekend. A marine stationed in Iraq, Efron’s Logan is saved from certain death when a photo of the beautiful Beth (Taylor Schilling) distracts him. Though he originally plans to find and thank her for unknowingly saving his life, Logan ultimately keeps the story to himself once they meet, but hangs around just, well, ‘cause.

The subject of one’s first love is a tricky thing to capture on film. There’s a mystical tint to the days, months, or even years that one spends ensconced in the presence of the first person to whom the word “love” first attaches itself in one’s mind. Places, songs, foods, people, ideas… they all become branded with the name of the person we shared them with, and as such become entwined with the emotional attachments as well.

Goodbye First Love is a film that understands that the concept of a first love is not a simple matter of person and time. It goes far beyond that, and the emotional echoes of those moments will last for long after the relationship itself is over. Love doesn’t die, it just hides and bides its time, waiting for the moment where it can finally remind you of how it felt to be there.

The French coming-of-age drama "Goodbye First Love" is a film for anyone who's ever had their heart broken. By that, we mean pretty much everyone.

Written and directed by filmmaker-on-the-rise Mia Hansen Love ("The Father of My Children"), "Goodbye First Love" centers on Camille (startling newcomer Lola Creton), a teenager who's head-over-heels in love with her boyfriend Sullivan (Sebastian Urzendowsky).

Although they're only in their teens, Camille believes Sullivan is The One. So you can imagine her state of mind when her man breaks the news that he's been planning a yearlong trip to South America with his buds. She tries her best to make him stay, threatening that her life can't go on without him, but he -- being a young man -- ups and takes off, leaving her devastated.

Lucky for us, our heroine is not beyond repair. Rather than just wallow in her misery, Camille embarks on...

Title: Goodbye First Love Director: Mia Hansen-Love Starring: Lola Créton, Sebastian Urzendowsky, Magne-Havard Brekke, Valérie Bonneton, Serge Renko, Ozay Fecht, Max Ricat There’s no one way to tell a love story. Often, romances are recounted on the big screen out of order, to present the happiest of times and the low points without explicitly distinguishing the two. Cinematic examples range from Annie Hall to 500 Days of Summer to Peter and Vandy, and many, many more. That tactic effectively captures what makes the relationship work, the spark and the connection, by citing instances of true delight and weaving them into a grander universe in which these two people exist just [ Read More ]...

We all remember our first kisses and heartbreaks, the alternating agony and ecstasy. Mia Hansen-Løve (All is Forgiven, Father of my Children), the gifted French writer/director tackles the delicate subject head on in Goodbye First Love and the result is one of the most truthful and heartfelt films about first love.Camille (Lola Créton, first seen as a child bride in Catherine Breillat's Bluebeard) and Sullivan (Sebastian Urzendowsky) are a young couple very much in love. Naturally, for Camille, their love is the greatest love ever existed in the history of mankind. So when Sullivan decides to quit school and embark on a journey to self discovery in South America, she is devastated. Their affair ends in Camille's failed suicide attempt.Five years pass by and...

Television and movies love to indulge us in pre-adulthood nostalgia. Whether the bait is loose (young hooligans causing a ruckus) or more specific and event-oriented (prom, which we've seen less of lately because, well, prom sucks), the powers that be tug at our heartstrings and force us to look back at a time free of major responsibilities and full of fresh experiences. The glazed schmaltz can be off-putting for some, but occasionally sincerity shines through, and we get something that captures the emotions extraordinarily well (for this writer's money, "The Virgin Suicides" and "The Girl" are uneven but nail certain feelings on the head). But if we look back without this fondness, what are these stories? Are they merely happenings that somehow affected the person we become, or are they just the product of naive children that didn't know better? Mia Hansen-Løve's "Goodbye First Love" attempts a critical look...

Title: Goodbye First Love Director: Mia Hansen-Løve Cast: Lola Créton, Sebastian Urzendowsky and Magne-Håvard Brekke One step from childhood to adulthood is to meet someone, have good chemistry with them, fall in love and have sex for the first time (not necessarily in that order). It’s the time of your life where it’s ok to be foolish, in love and reckless. Sometimes your first love will be your only love and you’ll live happily ever after, and other times, your first love turns out to be a horrible person, leaves you for something shinier, and to say the least, it just doesn’t work out with them. You get your first...

Mia Hansen-Løve's third feature, Goodbye First Love, "seems to advance by intuition," suggests Ben Sachs at Cine-File: "you can never predict where it's going. The story follows Camille (Lola Créton) and Sullivan (Sebastian Urzendowsky) from adolescence, when they're high-school sweethearts who go through a traumatic breakup, to their mid-20s, when they reunite after several years. Nothing happens comfortably or predictably: Hansen-Løve will devote several minutes to a seemingly mundane action, then bring the plot several months into the future with a simple, unassuming edit. (The greatest elisions, usually skipping over a few years at a time, are denoted by elegant fade-outs that suggest the line breaks in a poem.) Likewise, the movie generally seems tied to Camille's perspective, though it shifts at several critical moments to depict things that happen only to Sullivan. It's puzzling as to just whom or what is guiding the movie's attention; perhaps it's the characters' passion itself,...

Kurt here. Whereas the Nyff title My Week with Marilyn finds it necessary to blatantly announce that “first love is such sweet despair,” French writer-director Mia Hansen-Løve's third feature, Goodbye First Love, offers the same sentiment in a kind of long whisper, stretching out its meaning over 110 minutes and eight long years. The film would be even stronger if the whisper were fainter still, and if Hansen-Løve (The Father of My Children) were a touch less eager to reach out a helping hand, but as it stands, it's an earthy, sprightly, intuitive expression of how an indelible romance can affect the shape of a life.

Its chief subject is Camille (Brittany Murphy lookalike Lola Créton), a shy young lass not unlike a number of girls I know, who've had to redefine themselves after leaving the man who defined them. At the start of the film, 15-year-old Camille is inseparable...

Title: Berlin ’36 Director: Kaspar Heidelbach Starring: Karoline Herfurth, Sebastian Urzendowsky, Axel Prahl, August Zimer One needn’t be a fan of Mike Leigh to know that secrets and lies offer up rich narrative possibilities for filmmakers. So, too, do the allure of nonfiction tales. But not all true stories are created equal, as “Berlin ’36″ emply demonstrates. A German period piece embellishing of the nonfiction story of a transsexual Olympic athlete who stood the chance of greatly embarassing the Nazi regime during the country’s hosting of the quadrennial games, the movie unfolds with such a singular lack of dramatic heft as to almost defy logic. When high jumper Gretel Bergmann (Karoline...

#9. Goodbye First Love Director: Mia Hansen-Løve Cast: Lola Créton, Sebastian Urzendowsky, Magne Brekke, Valérie Bonneton, Serge Renko Distributor: IFC Films Buzz: Mia Hansen-Løve likely needs no introduction. Her first two features premiered in Cannes and left noticeable imprints and a healthy following on her tail. Releasing a new film for the first time as an anticipated director (IFC Films made a rare rights grab during production), the pressure is definitely hot and heavy. Picked up pretty decent word after its Locarno unveiling, the trajectory for this budding superstar is still aimed due north. The Gist: The detailed story of a young girl's first love - and there's probably no need to take bets on how it ends up. Typical of Hansen-Løve, though, it'll be the blissful structural shape that'll make this a complex and emotional punch in the gut. Tiff Schedule: Friday September 9 Scotiabank Theatre 3 6:45pmSaturday September 10 AMC 3 3:...

Title: Berlin 36 Directed By: Kaspar Heidelbach Written By: Lothar Kurzawa, story by Eric Friedler Cast: Karoline Herfurth, Sebastian Urzendowsky, Axel Prahl, August Zimer, Maria Happel Screened at: Critics’ DVD, NYC, 8/27/11 Opens: September 16, 2011 at New York’s Quad Cinema If you’ve ever had a fight with your family in your one-tv home-you want to watch the Jets game and Mom insists on seeing the 6.30 news with Scott Pelley-you’d get the idea that sports and politics exist in two separate worlds. And they do for the most part, but sometimes they intersect. In one motion picture example, Tony Richardson’s “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, a marathon...

The 49th New York Film Festival has announced their main slate which takes place September 30th thru October 16th at Lincoln Center. The closing night selection is Alexander Payne’s The Descendants which joins the gala screenings of opening night’s Roman Polanski’s Carnage, David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method, and the Almodóvar/Banderas reunion The Skin I Live In. Check out the lineup below along with a synopsis of each film:

Opening Night Gala Selection

Carnage

Director: Roman Polanski

Country: France/Germany/Poland

Centerpiece Gala Selection

My Week With Marilyn

Director: Simon Curtis

Country: UK

Special Gala Presentations

A Dangerous Method

Director: David Cronenberg

Country: UK/Canada/Germany

The Skin I Live In

Director: Pedro Almodóvar

Country: Spain

Closing Night Gala Selection

The Descendants

Director: Alexander Payne

Country: USA

Main Slate Selection

4:44: Last Day On Earth

Director: Abel Ferrara

Country: USA

The Artist

Director: Michel Hazanavicius...

Press Release:

New York, August 17, 2011 -The Film Society of Lincoln Center announced today that Alexander Payne.s The Descendants will be the Closing Night Gala selection for the 49th New York Film Festival (September 30-October 16). Nyff.s main slate of 27 feature films was also announced as well as a return to the festival stage of audience favorite, On Cinema (previously titled The Cinema Inside Me), featuring an in-depth, illustrated conversation with Alexander Payne.

The 2011 edition of Nyff will also feature a unique blend of programming to complement the main-slate of films, including: the Masterworks programs, additional titles added to the previously announced Ben-hur, Nicholas Ray.s We Can.T Go Home Again and Velvet Bullets and Steel Kisses: Celebrating the Nikkatsu Centennial, as well as Views from the Avant-Garde, and several special event screenings, all of which will be announced in more detail shortly.

.In many of the films in this year.s Festival,...

The New York Film Festival have officially announced their main slate, including the closing night film. The latter will be Alexander Payne‘s The Descendants starring George Clooney, which will also bow at Toronto. Their line-up includes a lot of Cannes holdovers including new films from the Dardenne brothers, Lars von Trier, Wim Wenders, Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, Joseph Cedar, as well as buzzed-about hits like The Artist, Le Havre, Once Upon a Time in Antatolia and Miss Bala. Out of the new films, we’ll be getting Martin Scorsese‘s George Harrison doc, Steve McQueen‘s Hunger follow-up Shame, as well as Abel Ferrara and Béla Tarr and Agnes Hranitzky films. I was also glad to see Sean Durkin‘s utterly excellent Martha Marcy May Marlene as part of the slate. Check out the full line-up below.

4:44: Last Day On Earth

Abel Ferrara, 2011, USA, 82min

How...

Mia Hansen-Løve's third semi-autobiographical film features an ill-fated teen affair – but can it win the Golden Leopard?

Of all film festivals, Locarno's is the most magical. You can't forget starlit nights spent amid an 8,000-strong crowd in front of a huge screen in the historic Piazza Grande. Nor the casual encounters with stars, directors and fellow-fans that often accompany a stroll between screenings across the campus-like Spaziocinema. Still, often magic is not enough, and in recent years a trip to the Swiss lakeside town has been seen as a jolly for self-satisfied Euro cineastes. Now, however, things are changing.

Director Olivier Père is out to streamline and beef up the £8.2m event by rediscovering its knack for blending new, forgotten or esoteric work with mainstream populist fare. This year, that means a cutting-edge international competition with 14 world premieres, including those of Nicolas Klotz's Low Life, about an Afghan...

Title: The Way Back Directed By: Peter Weir Starring: Jim Sturgess, Dragos Bucur, Colin Farrell, Ed Harris, Alexandru Potocean, Saoirse Ronan, Gustaf Skarsgard, Mark Strong, Sebastian Urzendowsky No, it’s not right to knock a film for a lengthy runtime, but if a movie is pushing two hours, it better be able to justify it. In The Way Back’s case it does - kind of. While the first portion of the film drags considerably despite impressively effective imagery, it isn’t until over an hour into it that things really become compelling. There’s nothing wrong with a film that saves the best for last, but it still needs to be entertaining while you’re [...]...

#21. Goodbye First Love Director/Writer: Mia Hansen-LoveProducers: David ThionDistributor: Rights Available. The Gist: Spring 1999. Camille 15 (Lola Creton), Sullivan 19, love each other passionately, but Sullivan wants to go to South America for a year and this project drives Camille to despair. In fall he leaves and slowly stops writing to her. After a suicide attempt, Camille ends up in hospital. 2003, four years have passed. Camille works, studies architecture and lives on her own...(more) Cast: Lola Créton, Sebastian Urzendowsky and Magne-Håvard Brekke List Worthy Reasons...: Extremely touched by her previous, searing and honest portrait (her third film was my introduction to the director), and so I'm looking forward in seeing what's next in store especially with what appears to be an emotionally gripping, adolescence and moving in adulthood type structure.  Release Date/Status?: Receiving a release in France at the top of June, this is Cannes bound and in North America,...

Seven years after directing Russell Crowe in Master and Commander, acclaimed director Peter Weir (The Truman Show) has retaken his place behind the camera for a dramatic journey of survival from within the Soviet Union's iron curtain.

Co-written with executive producer Keith Clarke, The Way Back, loosely based on a prominent memoir by Slavomir Rawicz, sketches the escape from a Siberian gulag by a gang of prisoners under the cover of a blizzard. The snow masks not only their disappearance, but also the personal wounds they each carrying courtesy of Communist authorities under Stalin’s Reign of Terror.

Led by kind-hearted former cavalry officer Janusz (Jim Sturgess), the motley gang includes his fellow Poles Tamasz (Alexandru Potocean) and Kazik (Sebastian Urzendowsky), the American Mr. Smith (Ed Harris), the Latvian Voss (Gustaf Skarsgård), and the comedian of the group, Zoran (Dragos Bucur). Tagging along, knife firmly in hand, is the murderous,...

Tina Mabry's "Mississippi Damned," an independent American production, won the Gold Hugo as the best film in the 2009 Chicago International Film Festival, and added Gold Plaques for best supporting actress (Jossie Thacker) and best screenplay (Mabry). It tells the harrowing story of three black children growing up in rural Mississippi in circumstances of violence and addiction. The film's trailer and an interview with Mabry are linked at the bottom.

Kylee Russell in "Mississippi Damned"

The win came over a crowed field of competitors from all over the world, many of them with much larger budgets. The other big winner at the Pump Room of the Ambassador East awards ceremony Saturday evening was by veteran master Marco Bellocchio of Italy, who won the Silver Hugo as best director for "Vincere," the story of Mussolini's younger brother. Giovanna Mezzogiorno and Filippo Timi won Silver Hugos as best actress and actor,...

Peter Weir's comprehensive profile at Senses of Cinema begins with:

Peter Weir helped to define the rebirth of Australian cinema, while addressing some of the most pressing concerns of the nation in the 1970s and 1980s. His intriguing images of Australia, evocative and transcendent, made an impact in the international art house scene, eager for compelling visions of geo-political areas and cultures overlooked by mainstream cinema. After achieving international recognition as an emblematic Australian filmmaker, Weir made his transition to Hollywood while maintaining a sense of experimentation and artistic exploration . . .[ read more ]

I have to say, Peter Weir's films are so diverse, it's hard to pinpoint exactly his focus as a filmmaker. That is, if he has any intention to focus on certain themes. He has done such an impressive list of movies in many genres - dramatic mystery-thrillers (Picnic at Hanging Rock), comedy-romance (Green Card), action-adventure (Master and Commander...

Peter Weir's comprehensive profile at Senses of Cinema begins with:

Peter Weir helped to define the rebirth of Australian cinema, while addressing some of the most pressing concerns of the nation in the 1970s and 1980s. His intriguing images of Australia, evocative and transcendent, made an impact in the international art house scene, eager for compelling visions of geo-political areas and cultures overlooked by mainstream cinema. After achieving international recognition as an emblematic Australian filmmaker, Weir made his transition to Hollywood while maintaining a sense of experimentation and artistic exploration . . .[ read more ]

I have to say, Peter Weir's films are so diverse, it's hard to pinpoint exactly his focus as a filmmaker. That is, if he has any intention to focus on certain themes. He has done such an impressive list of movies in many genres - dramatic mystery-thrillers (Picnic at Hanging Rock), comedy-romance (Green Card), action-adventure (Master and Commander...

Peter Weir's comprehensive profile at Senses of Cinema begins with:

Peter Weir helped to define the rebirth of Australian cinema, while addressing some of the most pressing concerns of the nation in the 1970s and 1980s. His intriguing images of Australia, evocative and transcendent, made an impact in the international art house scene, eager for compelling visions of geo-political areas and cultures overlooked by mainstream cinema. After achieving international recognition as an emblematic Australian filmmaker, Weir made his transition to Hollywood while maintaining a sense of experimentation and artistic exploration . . .[ read more ]

I have to say, Peter Weir's films are so diverse, it's hard to pinpoint exactly his focus as a filmmaker. That is, if he has any intention to focus on certain themes. He has done such an impressive list of movies in many genres - dramatic mystery-thrillers (Picnic at Hanging Rock), comedy-romance (Green Card), action-adventure (Master and Commander...

Peter Weir's comprehensive profile at Senses of Cinema begins with:

Peter Weir helped to define the rebirth of Australian cinema, while addressing some of the most pressing concerns of the nation in the 1970s and 1980s. His intriguing images of Australia, evocative and transcendent, made an impact in the international art house scene, eager for compelling visions of geo-political areas and cultures overlooked by mainstream cinema. After achieving international recognition as an emblematic Australian filmmaker, Weir made his transition to Hollywood while maintaining a sense of experimentation and artistic exploration . . .[ read more ]

I have to say, Peter Weir's films are so diverse, it's hard to pinpoint exactly his focus as a filmmaker. That is, if he has any intention to focus on certain themes. He has done such an impressive list of movies in many genres - dramatic mystery-thrillers (Picnic at Hanging Rock), comedy-romance (Green Card), action-adventure (Master and Commander...