Search results for: Samuel Maoz

Wedged between Sundance and Berlin is the extremely important Rotterdam film festival. Rotterdam functions as Europe's first major film fest of the year, but it seconds as a premiere destination for filmmakers such as Andrei Zvyagintsev (The Return), Amat Escalante (Sangre) and Juraj Lehotsky (Blind Loves) who make the kind of films that need a "helping hand". This list is of obvious interest because we'll be talking about this projects-turned-into-films down the road - we only need to look at Venice/TIFF for recent examples such as Samuel Maoz's Lebanon and Shirin Neshat's Women without Men to see the quality of films that got their start here.

Playing the role of a scared shi*less person in the fire-position in an uncomfortable tank, Lebanon is Yoav Donat's big screen debut. While this is very much a piece that features a foursome about to explode, Samuel Maoz makes a point out of emphasizing his character named Shmulik - in all of the chaos that reigns in this personal account.

Look for IFC's Arianna Bocco and SPC's Michael Barker and Tom Bernard to be battling it out for Samuel Maoz's Lebanon. It just received its world premiere in Venice yesterday. The verdict so far: Three reviews. Three thumbs up.

I'd focus on Maren Ade's Everyone Else (Kent Jones wrote an essay in this month's Film Comment about this German film and comparable on-screen relationships citing Cassavetes and Bergman examples), Zhao Dayong's three hour documentary film (Ghost Town) about how China's Cultural Revolution didn't benefit everyone and (see pic) Samuel Maoz's circa 1982 film (Lebanon) which will screen at Venice, TIFF and at the Lincoln Center - not bad for a first time filmmaker!

Kneedful Things: Lapid Highlights Complex Conflicts in Indignant Screech The entirety of Ahed’s Knee, the fourth film from Israel’s Nadav Lapid, is formatted to aggravate...