Russia has arrested at least 400 people across the country for protesting the death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who was imprisoned in a Russian penal colony when he died suddenly on Friday. Among those detained is a priest, Father Grigory Mikhnov-Vaitenko, who was planning to lead a St. Petersberg memorial service in tribute to Navalny.
Human rights group Ovd-Info said that by Saturday night, police had detained at least 401 people across the country. More than 200 of those arrests took place in St. Petersberg, Russia’s second largest city. Mikhnov-Vaitenko, the...
Human rights group Ovd-Info said that by Saturday night, police had detained at least 401 people across the country. More than 200 of those arrests took place in St. Petersberg, Russia’s second largest city. Mikhnov-Vaitenko, the...
- 2/18/2024
- by Peter Wade
- Rollingstone.com
Davis Simanis’s period drama Marijas Klusums (Maria’s Silence) centers on a real-life silent movie star in Soviet-era Russia, Maria Leiko, who thought she was untouchable when tricked into moving to Moscow in 1937, only to be murdered a year later by Stalin’s secret police.
And the Latvian film director — who is no stranger to actors — sees parallels between Leiko in Stalin’s Russia and Hollywood and foreign celebrities who became high-profile friends in more recent times with Vladimir Putin, until some of them broke with the Russian leader after he invaded Ukraine two years ago.
“They know how to pretend, they know how to play characters. So if a regime gives you a role, that role sometimes becomes you in a way,” Simanis says of buddies of Putin, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and other autocrats around the world for whom make-believe comes easy as entertainers.
And the Latvian film director — who is no stranger to actors — sees parallels between Leiko in Stalin’s Russia and Hollywood and foreign celebrities who became high-profile friends in more recent times with Vladimir Putin, until some of them broke with the Russian leader after he invaded Ukraine two years ago.
“They know how to pretend, they know how to play characters. So if a regime gives you a role, that role sometimes becomes you in a way,” Simanis says of buddies of Putin, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and other autocrats around the world for whom make-believe comes easy as entertainers.
- 2/16/2024
- by Etan Vlessing
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Just days after the Russian blockbuster “The Master and Margarita” surged to the top of the domestic box office, Kremlin cronies, pro-war propagandists and an army of online trolls have waged a campaign to discredit the film and its director, Michael Lockshin, a U.S. citizen who was raised in the Soviet Union and has been outspoken in his opposition to the war in Ukraine.
A source close to the film, who asked not to be named out of fear of potential repercussions, tells Variety that the movie’s staggering success and pointed critique of authoritarian rule has struck a nerve in right-wing circles at a time when Russian President Vladimir Putin has cracked down on any form of dissent.
“The propagandists are both envious and also hateful that a movie with an anti-censorship, anti-totalitarian, anti-war message is getting so much popularity, that they have doubled down,” the source said.
A source close to the film, who asked not to be named out of fear of potential repercussions, tells Variety that the movie’s staggering success and pointed critique of authoritarian rule has struck a nerve in right-wing circles at a time when Russian President Vladimir Putin has cracked down on any form of dissent.
“The propagandists are both envious and also hateful that a movie with an anti-censorship, anti-totalitarian, anti-war message is getting so much popularity, that they have doubled down,” the source said.
- 2/2/2024
- by Christopher Vourlias
- Variety Film + TV
As awards season switches up a gear, with the handing out of the Golden Globes and the publication of the Bafta shortlists, one major title stands out in the International categories of both: Justine Triet’s Palme d’Or winning courtroom drama Anatomy of a Fall. It would be a reasonable bet for the Oscar win in any year — if it were actually eligible. In lieu of Triet’s film, which fell well within Academy rules in terms of the amount of English spoken, the French selection panel opted instead for period gourmet drama The Taste of Things to do battle for the country’s honor, a move that is sure to cause a lot of confusion in the coming weeks.
Otherwise, the release of the international shortlist came with very few surprises this year, but perhaps chief among them was an unexpected snub for the Palestinian entry Bye Bye Tiberias by Lina Soulem.
Otherwise, the release of the international shortlist came with very few surprises this year, but perhaps chief among them was an unexpected snub for the Palestinian entry Bye Bye Tiberias by Lina Soulem.
- 1/11/2024
- by Damon Wise
- Deadline Film + TV
Exclusive: Powder Hound Pictures and the Polish Film Institute have teamed to finance and co-produce the World War II feature Enemy of My Enemy written by Matt King. The film is based on the book Ochotnik (“The Volunteer”) by Marco Patricelli. Production will shoot in Poland and Italy.
Set during World War II, the story centers on one of the world’s greatest unsung heroes. Captain Witold Pilecki volunteered to be arrested and taken to Auschwitz, where he formed a resistance group and leaked information revealing conditions inside the camp to the Allies. Following his escape when Stalin replaced Hitler, he continued to fight for a free and independent Poland.
1917 producer Jayne-Ann Tenggren will produce along with Elizabeth Stillwell and work with a local production team and Pilecki’s family conducting extensive research for the project.
“I was thrilled to read the script and to be working with the filmmakers,...
Set during World War II, the story centers on one of the world’s greatest unsung heroes. Captain Witold Pilecki volunteered to be arrested and taken to Auschwitz, where he formed a resistance group and leaked information revealing conditions inside the camp to the Allies. Following his escape when Stalin replaced Hitler, he continued to fight for a free and independent Poland.
1917 producer Jayne-Ann Tenggren will produce along with Elizabeth Stillwell and work with a local production team and Pilecki’s family conducting extensive research for the project.
“I was thrilled to read the script and to be working with the filmmakers,...
- 8/15/2023
- by Justin Kroll
- Deadline Film + TV
Four years after tackling the Oscar-winning World War I drama “1917,” producer Jayne-Ann Tenggren is mounting the World War II epic “Enemy of My Enemy.”
Powder Hound Pictures and the Polish Film Institute are teaming up to finance and co-produce the film, which centers on one of the world’s great unsung heroes, Captain Witold Pilecki. During the Holocaust, the Polish cavalry officer volunteered to be arrested and taken to Auschwitz, where he formed a resistance group and leaked information revealing conditions inside the camp to the Allies. Following his escape from Auschwitz in April 1943, Pilecki continued to fight for a free and independent Poland in the wake of Stalin’s communist takeover of the country.
Matt King (“Boomtown”) wrote the screenplay based on the critically acclaimed book “Ochotnik” (“The Volunteer”) by Italian historian Marco Patricelli. Production will take place in Poland and Italy. Elizabeth Stillwell (“Lizzie”) is producing alongside Tenggren.
Powder Hound Pictures and the Polish Film Institute are teaming up to finance and co-produce the film, which centers on one of the world’s great unsung heroes, Captain Witold Pilecki. During the Holocaust, the Polish cavalry officer volunteered to be arrested and taken to Auschwitz, where he formed a resistance group and leaked information revealing conditions inside the camp to the Allies. Following his escape from Auschwitz in April 1943, Pilecki continued to fight for a free and independent Poland in the wake of Stalin’s communist takeover of the country.
Matt King (“Boomtown”) wrote the screenplay based on the critically acclaimed book “Ochotnik” (“The Volunteer”) by Italian historian Marco Patricelli. Production will take place in Poland and Italy. Elizabeth Stillwell (“Lizzie”) is producing alongside Tenggren.
- 8/15/2023
- by Tatiana Siegel
- Variety Film + TV
All through Fairytale (aka Skazka), characters recite the opening of the Divine Comedy and Dante’s preamble to his plunge into hell. But the black-and-white world Alexander Sokurov’s souls are stranded in feels closer to a kind of purgatory. A liminal wasteland of derelict buildings, rubble, and skeletal trees, it’s a nightmare yanked out of a Gustav Doré print, and no surprise one of its denizens—none other than Winston Churchill himself—should wonder early on if it is all a (very bad) dream. Churchill shares the hallucination with a number of other iconic figures from the twentieth century, a sordid cast that includes the likes of Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Joseph Stalin. But Fairytale has no cast, strictly speaking: these four play themselves. The film’s sleight of hand—and the source of its disquieting allure—lies in its technical wizardry. Brought to life by Sokurov...
- 8/7/2022
- by Leonardo Goi
- The Film Stage
Many people, when faced with the old question of who they’d invite to their dream dinner party, dutifully reel off a list of historical titans, which tends to prompt further, usually unasked questions: Would these undoubtedly interesting and consequential individuals make for great company together? Would they have much to say to each each other? And would it make for a better evening than, say, a gathering of your regular, undistinguished drinking buddies? Ever-experimental Russian formalist Alexander Sokurov drolly hints at the answer in his eccentric new film “Fairytale,” though not exactly in a dinner party context: Most of us aren’t hungry to spend an evening clinking glasses with Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, after all. Still, this brief, dreamlike musing assembles them — along with other daunting dead men of history, from Churchill to Mussolini to Jesus himself — in a kind of misty purgatory where they’re at liberty to converse.
- 8/6/2022
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
The Ninth Circle (1960).As with much of communist Eastern Europe, Yugoslavia’s film industry exploded in quality and international reach across the 1960s. With generous state investment in film in an era of social liberalization, Yugoslav filmmakers of the 1960s—or certainly those who fell under the Black Wave banner—were, at their best, politically radical and timeless, creating films that captured a unique historical moment and yet—60 years on—have lost none of their anger and impetus. But as a recent retrospective of Yugoslav cinema programmed by Mina Radović at Bologna’s Il Cinema Ritrovato shows, this radical Black Wave cinema did not emerge from nowhere, but rather had its roots in the earlier cinema of the postwar era. Earlier films, such as Zenica (1957) and The Ninth Circle (1960), looked forward to the radicalism of the forthcoming movement, while canonical Black Wave films such as Tri (1965) grew from the foundations...
- 8/4/2022
- MUBI
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