All Middle East articles – Page 201
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Corneau's Second Wind to open Rome Film Fest competition
Second Wind (Le Deuxieme souffle) directed by Alain Corneau will open the Rome Film Fest's competition section on the Fest's opening day, the Rome Film Festival announced Tuesday. The film is based on a book by the same name by Jose Giovanni. In a statement, the Rome Film Fest called ...
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Oliver Stone's Iranian biopic gets blocked by government
The 'not making of' Oliver Stone's latest film would make a good script in itself. In 2006, the US director approached Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's people, hoping to make a film about the Iranian president's rise to power. Unsurprisingly, he was turned down - albeit a year later, via the media, and ...
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Spike Lee's Italian project St. Anna to boast $45m budget
Director Spike Lee and the Italian On My Own Production have announced new details on Lee's new Tuscany-set film project.The film will have a $45m budget, is to be produced 50% by On My Own - the new independent production company launched by ex-Mikado founders and owners Roberto Cicutto and ...
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Buena Vista partner on fifth outing of Wild Soccer Bunch
The German outpost of Buena Vista International will also distribute the fifth film of The Wild Soccer Bunch franchise which begins shooting today at locations in Saarland and Munich. With the working title of DWK5 - Die Wilden Kerle: Hinterm Horizont, the SamFilm production by Joachim Masannek sees the cast ...
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German sales company Cine-International to close its doors
Munich-based world sales company Cine-International Filmvertrieb has announced that it will be shutting down operations as of tomorrow (Wednesday). Rumours had been circulating within the film industry in Germany that the company was having problems, and speculation was fuelled further when Cine-International did not attend the MIP-TV in April or ...
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Tornatore's The Unknown wins best director in Moscow
The ten-day 29th Moscow International Film Festival ended on Saturday, with Italian director Giuseppe Tornatore winning the festival's Best Director award for his film The Unknown (La Sconosciuta). The film stars Russian actress Ksenia Rappoport as a young Ukrainian woman in today's Italy working as domestic help and trying to ...
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Alexander McCall Smith adaptation marks Botswana first
The Weinstein Company (TWC) and Mirage Productions will begin filming on July 9 in Botswana on The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency based on Alexander McCall Smith's bestseller. This marks the first time a major film will be shot entirely in Botswana. The project, which is being made for television ...
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Lemhagen's gay adoption story among Swedish-backed projects
Swedish director Ella Lemhagen, who had her international break with the award-winning Tsatsiki, Mum and the Policeman (1999), is readying her new project, Patrik 1,5, with $1m (Euros 800,000) production support from the Swedish Film Institute.Scripted by Lemhagen from Swedish dramatist Michael Druker's play, Patrik 1,5 is the story of ...
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Arts Alliance signs content deal with HP's Video Merchant arm
Arts Alliance Media (AAM) has signed a deal to become the international content provider for HP's new Video Merchant Services business. HP will now offer AAM's film content to distribution partners around the world, including North America. HP Video Merchant Services powers online video web stores and provides content fulfilment ...
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Bavaria Film International picks up The Anarchist's Wives
Bavaria Film International has picked up international distribution rights to Marie Noelle and Peter Sehr's new feature The Anarchist's Wives which begins its German shoot at the MMC Studios in Cologne today (Friday). The German-Spanish-French co-production between Noelle and Sehr's P'Artisan Filmproduktion, ZIP Films (Barcelona), KV Entertainment/Ibarretxe & Co. (Bilbao), ...
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Screenwriting: odds even.
Initiated at Sundance, screenwriters' group 1.3.9 hopes to work directly with actors and directors on film projects. So how will the arrangement work' John Hazelton reportsChristopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects) and Erik Jendresen (TV series Band Of Brothers) hatched the idea for 1.3.9, their recently launched writers' co-operative, after stints ...
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European screenwriters' manifesto: world in motion
Signatories from the US and Europe have backed a manifesto to give more rights to writers. John Hazelton reportsLaunched at this year's Berlin International Film Festival, the European Screenwriters' Manifesto had around 2,000 signatories as of late May.Most of them were writers, but the document has also been endorsed by ...
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Writers' co-op: singular vision
John Wells' Writers' Co-Op draws together a stable of veteran writers to generate scripts and share in a project's upside. Unveiled three months ago, John Wells' Writers' Co-Op has been in the works for several years.For Wells (writer of ER and producer of movies including White Oleander and Doom) and ...
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Abu Dhabi to establish branch of New York Film Academy
The Abu Dhabi government has signed a deal to establish a branch of the New York Film Academy (NYFA), the first film and acting school in the Gulf. Mohamed Khalaf Al Mazrouei, the director-general of the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage (ADACH), Jerry Sherlock, Director, President and Founder ...
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International projects take the lead with new German fund
International co-productions shooting in Germany have received more than half of the $28m (Euros 20.9m) allocated by the new German Federal Film Fund (DFFF) in its first six months of operation. Speaking at a review of the DFFF's first six months at this week's Munich Film Festival, project manager Christine ...
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Serbia to host first national film festival with two competitions
Film Center Serbia and State of Exit, the company responsible for creating huge European music festival Exit, are organising the first Film Festival of Serbia, to be held July 3-8 in Novi Sad. The organisers wanted to promote national cinema. In former Yugoslavia, the national competition festival was Pula, which ...
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European Producers Club elects new board of directors
The European Producers Club (EPC) has announced the election of a new board of directors. In their posts for the next two years are: Jean Cazes (Initial Productions, France), Antoine de Clermont-Tonnerre (MACT, France), Patrick Quniet (Artemis Productions, Belgium), Antonio Saura (Zebra Producciones, Spain) and Ruth Waldburger (Vega Film, Switzerland). ...
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France's Fete du Cinema ticket sales hold steady at 2.8m
The 23rd Fete du Cinema wrapped Tuesday night in France to tie last year's results with 2.8m tickets sold. The reduced-price ticket scheme, organized by the National Cinema Federation (FNCF), offers free entry to all films over three days after a one-time $2.70 (Euros 2) ticket purchase. Tuesday's figures jumped ...
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Lichtmeer moves into production with Angelopoulos project
Munich-based distributor Lichtmeer Filmverleih has relaunched itself as the Cologne/Berlin production company Lichtmeer Film, which will have Theo Angelopoulos's next feature Dust Of Time as its first project. The co-production with Italy's Classic and Albachiara and the director's own company Angelopoulos Film, will star Harvey Keitel, Bruno Ganz, Willem Dafoe ...
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Thessaloniki competitors to include Jonas Cuaron's Year Of The Nail
Thessaloniki Film Festival director Despina Mouzaki has announced the first films selected for the 14-film competition section of 46th edition of the event (Nov 16-25). The competition is reserved to first and second features and the films already earmarked have a strong Spanish-language flavour, coming from Mexico, Colombia and Spain. ...