Thessaloniki Film Festival’s AGORA Co-Production Forum Sets 2023 Selection

Cailee Spaeny dazzles while promoting her new film Priscilla at the 2023 BFI London Film Festival on Monday (October 9).

Dear Jassi arrives with echoes of Madonna’s 1989 hit “Dear Jessie” and its sugary promise of pink elephants and lemonade, but none of that turns out to be forthcoming in Tarsem Singh Dhandwar’s beautiful and brutal sixth feature. Instead, we have perhaps the most disturbing bait-and-switch since George Sluizer’s original iteration of The Vanishing, a Punjabi Juliet-meets-Romeo story that’s much harsher that any so-far-filmed version of West Side Story and a whole lot funnier. This dissonance takes a while to reveal itself, but when it does, the shock is visceral. The fact that almost everything is true is the killer blow, and the shockwave of that reverberates through the poignant final credits, a static shot that forces the audience, or maybe just simply dares them, to think about what they’ve just seen.  

The Cannes Film Festival has admitted six filmmakers, five women and one man, to its 2024 residency program. 

Dumfries and Galloway’s Wild Goose Festival is set to take flight with an even bigger reach.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Egypt’s El Gouna Film Festival is back after a one-year hiatus with a rich mix of Arabic and international titles launching into the Middle East and plenty of promising projects from Arab countries set to be unveiled to prospective partners at its CineGouna industry side. The event launched in 2017 by Egyptian telecom billionaire Naguib Sawiris – whose brother Samih built the El Gouna resort in a swathe of desert near the tourist town of Hurghada 250 miles south of Cairo – was put on pause in 2022 ostensibly due to the country’s economic crisis following five editions during which fest co-founder Amr Mansi and chief Intishal Al Timimi had managed to rapidly put El Gouna on the international festival map while also making it a favourite with the local crowd.

Naman Ramachandran A total of 39 European companies, surpassing 2022, will promote and sell films from the continent at Busan International Film Festival‘s accompanying Asian Contents & Film Market (ACFM). Of these, 32 will be onsite while seven more will participate online.

Sharareh Drury Miami Dade College’s Miami Film Festival GEMS has announced the full lineup for its 2023 festival, which will run from Nov. 2-5. The 10th edition of the fest will feature 26 films from 14 countries, all taking place at MDC’s Koubek Center and Silverspot Cinema.

One of the most significant strands at Rome’s MIA market is its Co-Production Market and Pitching Forum, which has fast become one of the leading co-production forums in the industry calendar. 

International execs from Unifrance, MK2 and TrustNordisk kicked off the annual Zurich Summit on Saturday to discuss the importance of film festivals when promoting a title and if fests are drifting away from what works in cinemas. 

EXCLUSIVE: The London Indian Film Festival is expanding. 

K.J. Yossman Beloved 2004 comedy “13 Going On 30,” which featured Jennifer Garner in the title role, is set to get a musical adaptation from the film’s original writers. Josh Goldsmith and Cathy Yuspa are working on a stage reimagining of the movie, which also starred Mark Ruffalo as the boy next door as well as Andy Serkis as Garner’s boss and Judy Greer as her best friend.

The Tokyo Film Festival has set the lineup for its bumper 2023 edition, running October 23 to November 1. Scroll down for the full list. 

Baz Luhrmann has been named president of the Features Competition jury at the upcoming Red Sea International Film Festival. This third edition of the event runs from November 30-December 9 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

EXCLUSIVE: The UK Jewish Film Festival (November 9 – 22) has revealed its lineup of 2023 gala screenings and premieres, including special presentations of the Anthony Hopkins pic One Life and Mario Bellochi’s Cannes competition title Kidnapped. 

Maja Hoffmann has been officially confirmed as President of the Locarno Film Festival following a vote at an Extraordinary General Assembly on Wednesday.

The BFI London Film Festival has unveiled the full lineup for its revamped “Industry Forum,” which will feature keynote sessions with Jennifer Lee, chief creative officer of Disney Animation Studios, and Bill Kramer, CEO of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts (AMPAS).

Naman Ramachandran India’s Film Heritage Foundation (FHF), which enjoys the support of cinema greats Martin Scorsese and Amitabh Bachchan, is conducting the third edition of the Biennial Audio-Visual Archival Summer School in partnership with the International Federation of Film Archives. The global film preservation training workshop is coming to India for the first time and will be held at the India International Centre in Delhi Oct.

A first-time filmmaker has claimed the top prize at the 19th Annual Camden Film Festival in Maine, one of the country’s foremost all-documentary festivals.

Naman Ramachandran Horace Ové, director of “Pressure” (1976), the first full-length Black British film, died on Sept. 16. He was 86.

Organizers of the Camden International Film Festival in coastal Maine are moving ahead with regular programming today, as Hurricane Lee – downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone – aims further north towards Nova Scotia.