All Middle East articles – Page 188
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News
Eagle takes Italian rights to Zanasi's $2.2m Venice Days comedy
Eagle Pictures has picked up Italian distribution rights to Italian Venice Days title Don't Think About It (Non Pensarci), directed by Gianni Zanasi.The Rome-based distributor picked up rights from France's PyramideInternational, which also made sales at Venice including Hopscotch forAustralia, Audiovisual for Greece, and Xenix for Switzerland. While Eagle has ...
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News
$3m Young Cleopatra begins Egyptian shoot
UKfilm, TV and theatre company Stagescreen Productions begins shooting The Young Cleopatra, the first in a series of historical features, in Egypt on November 4. The shoot will take place at the Egyptian Media Production City (EMPC), a partner in the project, and on locations in Alexandria and around the ...
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News
Nine films nominated for Nordic prize
Nine films have been nominated for the $65,000 (Eu47,000) Nordic Film Prize - Scandinavia's largest film award - with winners announced at the Nordic Council's session on Oct 31. The prize money is equally shared among a film's director, scriptwriter and producer; last year it went to Swedish director ...
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VIP strikes co-investment partnership with Brass Hat Films
German film production fund VIP has struck a strategic co-investment partnership with London-based financier Brass Hat Films whereby Brass Hat will now act as the manager of the fund's investments.VIP has completely restructured following German taxation law changes and the criminal proceedings against Andreas Grosch and Andreas Schmid, the former ...
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Persepolis opens Athens International Film Festival
The 13th Athens International Film Festival begins tomorrow night (Sept 19) with the gala presentation of Marjane Satrapi's and Vincent Paronnaud's French Oscar entry Persepolis. Todd Haynes' Venice Jury Prize winner I Am Not There, accompanied by its producer Christine Vachon, will be the closing film. The international jury for ...
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The Simpsons Moviemakes number one opening in Italy
The Simpsons Movie was the top film in Italy this weekend, openingwith $8.2m from 616 screens for a whopping $13,380 screen average.Fox International's animated adventure knocked Shrek The Third off the number one spot this weekend after two weeks at the top.Shrek, distributed by Universal Pictures International in Italy, fell ...
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Persepolis chosen to represent France in Oscar category
Cannes Jury Prize winner Persepolis has been selected to represent France in its bid to snag a nomination for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. France's CNC announced the selection of Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud's animated work on Monday evening.Each year, the CNC chooses France's Oscar entry by committee. ...
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Theodorakis to receive lifetime achievement honour
Mikis Theodorakis is to be presented with a lifetime achievement award at the World Soundtrack Awards at this year's Ghent International Film Festival (Oct 9-20).The Greek composer is best known for his iconic music for Michael Cacoyannis' Zorba The Greek. He also wrote the music for three other of the ...
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Russian box office to double in five years - report
Russian box officewill more than double over the next five years, according to a report from analyst Dodona Research.The study, Cinemagoing Russia, predictsthe 2006gross of US$412mwill top $850m by2011.The driving force will be multiplex building, tied to the boom in retail developments in the country. Shopping mall owners are themselves ...
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News
Rome Film Fest reschedules future to avoid London clash
In a move welcomed by exhausted sales agents, distributors and journalists, the London and Rome film festival dates are to set apart.This year, the events have an almost identical footprint - with Rome's festival running Oct 18 - 27 Oct and London's festival from Oct 17 - Nov 1.When Rome's ...
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News
Norwegian WWII hero Max Manus gets $8.4m treatment in war epic
Norwegian actor-director Aksel Hennie is to star in Norwegian directors Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg's Max Manus, a $8.4m (Euros 6.1m) World War II epic produced by John M Jacobsen and Sveinung Golimo for Filmkameratene.After his 2004 directorial debut, Uno, Hennie returned to acting in Danish director Jesper W Nielsen's ...
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Reviews
Cargo 200 (Gruz 200)
Dir: Alexey Balabanov, Russia 2007, 86minsAlexey Balabanov's eleventh feature is one of his bleakest. Set in provincial Russia in 1984 as the USSR enters its death throes, it portrays a society that is sickly, violent and cynical. The title refers to the name given to corpses of Russian soldiers being ...
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Reviews
Don't Think About It (Non Pensarci)
Dir: Gianni Zanasi Italy 2007. 108 mins.The real surprise of the 2007 Venice Days sidebar on the Lido , Don't Think About It is that rarest of things: an exportable Italian comedy that features neither Roberto Benigni nor Nanni Moretti. Directed with an admirable lightness of touch by Gianni Zanasi ...
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Reviews
The Sweet and the Bitter (Il Dolce e l'Amaro)
Dir: Andrea Porporati Italy 2007. 99 mins.The Italian Mafia film comes of age with The Sweet and the Bitter, a Sicilian Goodfellas that offers a refreshingly unheroic, sometimes darkly comic take on the grubby reality behind the rituals and myths of Cosa Nostra. Like another recent title, Stefano Incerti's L'Uomo ...
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Reviews
Exodus
Dir: Penny Woolcock UK 2007. 110 mins.As much community project as feature film, Exodus transplants the Biblical story of Moses and the children of Israel to the depressed British seaside resort of Margate, in a dystopian future where racist politicians hold sway and asylum seekers are fenced inside a refugee ...
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News
Hamburg's Douglas Sirk Award goes to David Cronenberg
Canadian director David Cronenberg will receive the Douglas Sirk Award at this year's Filmfest Hamburg, running Sept 27 to Oct 4. Festival opens with best-selling author Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt's directorial debut Odette Toulemonde. The award in recognition of Cronenberg's 'outstanding contribution to cinema' will be presented to the director on the ...
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News
Beta Film coproducing and selling animation projects
Beta Film is serving as a sales agent and co-producer on two animation feature films - Moonbeam Bear and Princess Lillifee - which are currently in production. Based on the books by Rolf Faenger and Ulrike Moeltgen which have been published in nine countries, the 3D animation film Moonbeam Bear ...
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Reviews
Mother of Tears
Dir/Scr: Dario Argento. Italy. 2007 98mins .The new work of Italian horror specialist Dario Argento, Mother of Tears forms a trilogy of the two macabre, hyper stylized works that made his international reputation: Suspiria (1977) and Inferno (1980). The time away from the material has certainly not dulled the director's ...
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Reviews
Buddha Collapsed Out Of Shame (Buda As Sharm Foru Rikht)
Dir: Hana Makhmalbaf. Iran / France , 2007. 81 min. Hana Makhmalbaf is the younger scion of the Makhmalbaf Film House factory. All of eighteen years old and already a veteran with a short film, a documentary and a book of poems to her credit, she handles this first feature ...
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News
Superman producer Pierre Spengler plans Luchadores 5
Spengler, who produced the live-action Superman films, returns to the comic book genre with Luchadores 5, the first of a 12-picture slate based on titles from graphic novel publisher Les Humanoïdes Associes/Humanoids.Former Humanoids chief executive F. Alexander Ciger, who is also Spengler's producing partner in Clubdeal, will produce.The live-action adaptation ...