It was one more vintage year for Romanian films on the world cinema scene. The long-awaited film from Cristi Puiu in the Cannes' Un Certain Regard selected Aurora won over some critics (including two on our site) but those who didn;t give the film a glowing review accused the film which runs at 180 minutes of being too long. Despite this, the film has been sold to more than a dozen countries (including The Cinema Guild in the U.S.) and it will be released internationally next year, as well as domestically.
Over 295 films - this includes shorts, fiction and documentary, animation, retrospectives, tributes, professional panels, outdoor interactive installations, the festival which takes place between the 13th to the 24th of October, furiously promotes not only world talent, but local French Canadian filmmakers. Among the notable titles, we have Michelangelo Frammartino's Le Quattro volte, Olivier Assayas' Carlos and Alex de la Iglesia's The Last Circus and Wang Bing is doing a Master Class for Venice-winning The Ditch. His epic 9 hour film Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks will also be shown as part of a retrospective.
I'm glad to see that Kino Int. and film fest curators are seconding my opinion on My Joy - the road trip story from hell -- I recently wrote, I'm happy to see TIFF and NYFF programmers include this difficult film among their lineups, cuz if you like "the road less traveled" roadtrip type of movie, then you'll want to venture into documentarian Sergei Loznitsa's first narrative feature.
On the eve of it's North American NYFF premiere, Lorber Films have scooped up the rights to Tuesday, After Christmas, and are setting it up with a May release (at the Film Forum). For those who might be wondering why the portrait is showing in May, and say, not December, is because the Cannes-selected film isn't a holiday-themed picture but instead, a marriage drama.
Iconic director Ken Russell was in town to receive a lifetime achievement award from Fantasia for his 50-plus years in the business, a career that has spawned many genre classics including Altered States, Gothic, and The Lair of the White Worm. But it was the little-seen and hard to find The Devils from 1971 that proved to be Russell's most controversial work, and Fantasia managed to snag a copy to be screened on Russell's big night. In the video, Russell discusses the true story behind the film and receives his award with the grace befitting one of the great filmmakers of all time.