Kebab Royal
Directors: Peter Brosens & Jessica Woodsworth
Writers: Peter Brosens & Jessica Woodsworth
Another Belgian directing duo we’re committed to championing is Peter Brosens and Jessica Woodsworth (who we also included prematurely on our 2015 list). Starting out as documentarians, they segued into narrative film with 2006’s Khadak, eventually spinning a loosely related trilogy with 2009’s Altiplano and 2012’s The Fifth Season (2012). While it’s possible to obtain copies of the first two, for some confounding reason, their last feature never received distribution in the Us even though it’s a fascinating, transfixing film. They filmed their latest, Kebab Royal, past March, which is now in post-production. Their films are often characterized by offbeat, surreal flourishes, and their latest concerns Nicolas II, the onerous Belgian King. Stuck on an economic mission in Istanbul, he learns of Flanders’ declaration for dependence while he’s away, and a simultaneous solar storm knocks out communication and airplanes.
Directors: Peter Brosens & Jessica Woodsworth
Writers: Peter Brosens & Jessica Woodsworth
Another Belgian directing duo we’re committed to championing is Peter Brosens and Jessica Woodsworth (who we also included prematurely on our 2015 list). Starting out as documentarians, they segued into narrative film with 2006’s Khadak, eventually spinning a loosely related trilogy with 2009’s Altiplano and 2012’s The Fifth Season (2012). While it’s possible to obtain copies of the first two, for some confounding reason, their last feature never received distribution in the Us even though it’s a fascinating, transfixing film. They filmed their latest, Kebab Royal, past March, which is now in post-production. Their films are often characterized by offbeat, surreal flourishes, and their latest concerns Nicolas II, the onerous Belgian King. Stuck on an economic mission in Istanbul, he learns of Flanders’ declaration for dependence while he’s away, and a simultaneous solar storm knocks out communication and airplanes.
- 1/13/2016
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
Top 100 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2015: #12. Peter Brosens & Jessica Woodworth’s Kebab Royal
Kebab Royal
Director: Peter Brosens and Jessica Woodworth // Writer: Peter Brosens and Jessica Woodworth
A Belgian directing duo that you may be unfamiliar with but shouldn’t be is Peter Brosens and Jessica Woodworth. Starting out as documentarians, they segued into narrative film with 2006′s Khadak, eventually spinning a loosely related trilogy with 2009′s Altiplano and 2012′s The Fifth Season (2012). While it’s possible to obtain copies of the first two, for some confounding reason, their last feature never received distribution in the Us even though it’s a fascinating, transfixing film. They’ve recently received another round of funding for their latest feature, Kebab Royal, descried as “a hair-raising quintessence of European fairy tales around the last king of the Belgians lost in the Balkans.”
Cast: Not available.
Production Co.: Bo Films’ Peter Brosens, Artémis’ Patrick Quinet (Almayer’s Folly), Topkapi Films’ Frans Van Gestel (Nude Area).
U.
Director: Peter Brosens and Jessica Woodworth // Writer: Peter Brosens and Jessica Woodworth
A Belgian directing duo that you may be unfamiliar with but shouldn’t be is Peter Brosens and Jessica Woodworth. Starting out as documentarians, they segued into narrative film with 2006′s Khadak, eventually spinning a loosely related trilogy with 2009′s Altiplano and 2012′s The Fifth Season (2012). While it’s possible to obtain copies of the first two, for some confounding reason, their last feature never received distribution in the Us even though it’s a fascinating, transfixing film. They’ve recently received another round of funding for their latest feature, Kebab Royal, descried as “a hair-raising quintessence of European fairy tales around the last king of the Belgians lost in the Balkans.”
Cast: Not available.
Production Co.: Bo Films’ Peter Brosens, Artémis’ Patrick Quinet (Almayer’s Folly), Topkapi Films’ Frans Van Gestel (Nude Area).
U.
- 1/9/2015
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
Despite the accolades (awards, festival prizes, and critical praise), sometimes a film that we’ve praised and seemingly has a very bright future ahead, will somehow be passed over, go unnoticed or for reasons unknown, may have fallen through the cracks. A play of words on the 1985 Madonna film, our monthly “Desperately Seeking Studio” is our way of bringing attention to a film that has yet to be picked up for distribution and deservingly should find an audience. This month we put the focus back on: Peter Brosens & Jessica Woodworth’s The Fifth Season (La cinquième saison)
The woefully underrated partnership of Belgian co-directors Peter Brosens and Jessica Woodworth have seen their previous collaborative features, Khadak and Altiplano, tour the festival circuit to critical acclaim, playing the likes of Sundance and Toronto International Film Festival (Tiff), taking home the Luigi De Laurentiis Award from Venice for best first feature along...
The woefully underrated partnership of Belgian co-directors Peter Brosens and Jessica Woodworth have seen their previous collaborative features, Khadak and Altiplano, tour the festival circuit to critical acclaim, playing the likes of Sundance and Toronto International Film Festival (Tiff), taking home the Luigi De Laurentiis Award from Venice for best first feature along...
- 3/28/2014
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
5. Low & Clear
The first of two self produced, crowd funded films on this list, Low & Clear announces Tyler Hughen and Kahlil Hudson as non-fiction filmmakers to keep a close eye on (Hudson also worked on the excellent Kumaré this year). Their gorgeously meditative film of fishing and fleeting friendship in the hands of time and distance is the pinnacle of this year’s affective documentary cinema. With a pair of clashing colloquial characters and nothing but the sublimely photographed reflective air of nature, we are left to ponder our own life decisions and whether or not we made the right ones.
4. The Fifth Season
Tragically unseen by most at Tiff, Peter Brosens and Jessica Woodworth’s Tarkovsky-esque vision of a fablistic world where crops cease to grow is about as grim as you’d expect, showing the degradation of civilization one face at a time. Maintaining the thematics involved with...
The first of two self produced, crowd funded films on this list, Low & Clear announces Tyler Hughen and Kahlil Hudson as non-fiction filmmakers to keep a close eye on (Hudson also worked on the excellent Kumaré this year). Their gorgeously meditative film of fishing and fleeting friendship in the hands of time and distance is the pinnacle of this year’s affective documentary cinema. With a pair of clashing colloquial characters and nothing but the sublimely photographed reflective air of nature, we are left to ponder our own life decisions and whether or not we made the right ones.
4. The Fifth Season
Tragically unseen by most at Tiff, Peter Brosens and Jessica Woodworth’s Tarkovsky-esque vision of a fablistic world where crops cease to grow is about as grim as you’d expect, showing the degradation of civilization one face at a time. Maintaining the thematics involved with...
- 12/31/2012
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
If Spring Never Comes: Woodworth and Brosens Expertly Conclude Their Trilogy
Directors Jessica Woodworth and Peter Brosens didn’t set out to conclude their trilogy of man’s relationship with nature, that includes their first two films together, Khadak and Altiplano, with an ominous sci-fi tinged art-horror film, but The Fifth Season takes elements of their previous work and canvases them with the bleakness that comes with the failure of agriculture. With recalled imagery of public ritual and naturalistic tones that still manage a fablistic air, the filmmaking couple prove themselves to be true auteurist visionaries capable of maintaining a consistent visual language while exploring seemingly simplistic, yet dense thematics.
Their story begins in a small Belgian village where the ragged townspeople are a tight knit community whose wealth resides in the personal relationships with their neighbors, but when changing seasons fail to yield the year’s expected harvest, society...
Directors Jessica Woodworth and Peter Brosens didn’t set out to conclude their trilogy of man’s relationship with nature, that includes their first two films together, Khadak and Altiplano, with an ominous sci-fi tinged art-horror film, but The Fifth Season takes elements of their previous work and canvases them with the bleakness that comes with the failure of agriculture. With recalled imagery of public ritual and naturalistic tones that still manage a fablistic air, the filmmaking couple prove themselves to be true auteurist visionaries capable of maintaining a consistent visual language while exploring seemingly simplistic, yet dense thematics.
Their story begins in a small Belgian village where the ragged townspeople are a tight knit community whose wealth resides in the personal relationships with their neighbors, but when changing seasons fail to yield the year’s expected harvest, society...
- 9/26/2012
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
Grace (Jasmin Tabatabai) is a war photographer who abandons her career after suffering from some terrible losses and Max (Olivier Gourmet), her husband, is an eye doctor who often works at a clinic in Peru. At the same time, we follow the story of Saturnina (Magaly Solier) and the village (Turumba) nearby that is being victimized by mercury contamination. The combination of sorrow, anger and hope takes hold of the film, essentially describing how people might be living separate lives but are coping with the same issues: the awakening of inner pain, the will to find peace within and find security in their own “land”. Validating the true meaning of what it is to see your own land being possessed by foreign hands, Peter Brosens and Jessica Woodworth's Altiplano is comprised of beautiful shots, symbolic imagery and carries a mood reminiscent of Alejandro Jorodowsky's films. While both filmmakers aren't of Peruvian descent,...
- 8/24/2010
- IONCINEMA.com
Peter Brosens and Jessica Woodworth's sumptuous looking Altiplano has been picked up by the First Run folks. Since it preemed in the Critic's Week section, the film has followed in the same path as their debut film Khadak - heavy festival play and multi-territory sales. - Peter Brosens and Jessica Woodworth's sumptuous looking Altiplano has been picked up by the First Run folks. Since it preemed in the Critic's Week section, the film has followed in the same path as their debut film Khadak - heavy festival play and multi-territory sales. War photographer Grace, devastated after a violent incident in Iraq, renounces her profession. Her Belgian husband, Max (played by Olivier Gourmet) is a cataract surgeon working at an eye clinic in the high Andes of Peru. Nearby, the villagers of Turubamba succumb to illnesses caused by a mercury spill from a local mine. Saturnina, a young woman in Turubamba,...
- 3/3/2010
- IONCINEMA.com
Following up her performances in Claudia Llosa's Madeinusa (2005) and The Milk of Sorrow (2009) with her characterization of Saturnina in Altiplano (2009)--directed by the Belgian filmmaking team of Peter Brosens and Jessica Woodworth (Khadak, 2006)--the beautiful Magaly Solier confirms her position as the cinematic icon of indigenous resistance. It is also the only film I've ever seen to chart the organic (i.e., political) process by which a Black Madonna is born. Hands down, Altiplano was my favorite film from the 2010 Palm Springs International Film Festival and I'm hoping to have the opportunity to watch it again soon at a Bay Area venue.
...
...
- 1/22/2010
- Screen Anarchy
- The section devoted to 1st and 2nd films is mostly going with newbies this year. With the exception of Altiplano starring (Olivier Gourmet) from director pairing of Peter Brosens and Jessica Woodworth (Khadak), in my opinion, the complete sidebar will be a like throwing a dart aimlessly and hoping to land on something worth your while. In the past couple of years they had Junebug, Me and you and everyone we know, Look Both Ways, Xxy, and my favorite film of the section in 2008 was Aida Begic's Snijep (Snow). This year they have stripped the section down, by perhaps five films less and there are no signs of the Fipresci "revelation of the year" pick - a one slot for a film the organization thinks deserves a second chance. This year, like previousyears they have films from a little bit everywhere - but this year they focused mostly
- 4/23/2009
- IONCINEMA.com
By Michael Atkinson
Perhaps, with the cataract of Dvd'd Méliès mania besetting us . the new comprehensive Flicker Alley box "George Méliès: First Wizard of Cinema (1896-1913)," the new, more modest and affordable Kino sampler "The Magic of Méliès," both piling atop Facets' standard "Méliès the Magician" disc . we can begin to consider the French pioneer as something other than a film history staple and an oddity for scholars. It'd be a brand new tact to take for films that, being over a century old, reach right back to the form's infancy, movies' equivalent of cave painting and hieroglyph carving. But there's something effervescent and seductive there, a spirit of high innocence and ceaseless invention that has made several of Méliès's elaborate images . most obviously, the man in the moon with the ship-bullet in his eye, from "A Trip to the Moon" (1902) . undying cultural icons, familiar to the masses who...
Perhaps, with the cataract of Dvd'd Méliès mania besetting us . the new comprehensive Flicker Alley box "George Méliès: First Wizard of Cinema (1896-1913)," the new, more modest and affordable Kino sampler "The Magic of Méliès," both piling atop Facets' standard "Méliès the Magician" disc . we can begin to consider the French pioneer as something other than a film history staple and an oddity for scholars. It'd be a brand new tact to take for films that, being over a century old, reach right back to the form's infancy, movies' equivalent of cave painting and hieroglyph carving. But there's something effervescent and seductive there, a spirit of high innocence and ceaseless invention that has made several of Méliès's elaborate images . most obviously, the man in the moon with the ship-bullet in his eye, from "A Trip to the Moon" (1902) . undying cultural icons, familiar to the masses who...
- 3/19/2008
- by Michael Atkinson
- ifc.com
SINGAPORE -- The Third Asian Festival of First Films tapped two productions for its best film award Monday night, jointly awarding the prize to India's "Dharm" and Australia's "Lucky Miles".
Director Bhavna Talwar's "Dharm" is about a devout Hindu priest who unknowingly adopts a young Muslim boy and the consequences that engenders. "Lucky Miles", Michael James Rowland's bittersweet comedy about the plight of illegal immigrants in Australia, also garnered the best producer award for Jo and Lesley Dyer.
The festival's directing nod went to Kabir Khan for his film "Kabul Express", also from India, about two Indian journalists in search of the ultimate news scoop in Afghanistan: meeting the Taliban. "Kabul Express" also scooped the Foreign Correspondents Assn. Purple Orchid Award.
The best male actor award went to Batzul Khayankhyarvaa for his role in "Khadak", as a young Mongolian nomad confronted with his destiny to become a shaman, while the award for top female performance went to India's Mamatha Bhukya for her role in "Vanaja" as a young girl who dreams of escaping her poverty through dancing but faces sexual abuse from her employer's son.
Director Bhavna Talwar's "Dharm" is about a devout Hindu priest who unknowingly adopts a young Muslim boy and the consequences that engenders. "Lucky Miles", Michael James Rowland's bittersweet comedy about the plight of illegal immigrants in Australia, also garnered the best producer award for Jo and Lesley Dyer.
The festival's directing nod went to Kabir Khan for his film "Kabul Express", also from India, about two Indian journalists in search of the ultimate news scoop in Afghanistan: meeting the Taliban. "Kabul Express" also scooped the Foreign Correspondents Assn. Purple Orchid Award.
The best male actor award went to Batzul Khayankhyarvaa for his role in "Khadak", as a young Mongolian nomad confronted with his destiny to become a shaman, while the award for top female performance went to India's Mamatha Bhukya for her role in "Vanaja" as a young girl who dreams of escaping her poverty through dancing but faces sexual abuse from her employer's son.
- 12/5/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Lifesize Entertainment
NEW YORK -- A magical realist fable that recalls the foreign cult films of the 1970s, the Mongolian-made Khadak is as visually stunning as it is ultimately bewildering. This tale of an epileptic young shepherd features enough subtext and symbolism to fuel a dozen features. The film is playing an exclusive engagement at New York's Cinema Village.
Bagi (Batzul Khayankhyavaa) enjoys a bucolic nomadic existence with his family until government forces arrive to inform them that a plague has struck the animals in their region. After their livestock is slaughtered, they are thus forced to relocate to nondescript worker housing in a bleak mining town filled with the remnants of Soviet-era architecture.
Working as a mail carrier while his grandfather sullenly sits in their apartment and his mother adapts to her new job as a heavy machine operator, Bagi meets the beautiful Zolzaya (Tsetsegee Byamba), a musician who moonlights as a coal thief. Falling in with her band of fellow traveling musicians, he soon becomes a part of their revolution against the government, which has fabricated the plague in order to destroy the nomads' way of life.
Co-directed by Belgian documentarians Peter Brosens and Jessica Woodworth, the film becomes more surreal as it progresses, with Bagi adopting the role of a shaman in his quest to battle the evil forces destroying the natural environment.
Although clearly well-intentioned, the filmmakers are unable to effectively transmit their avant-garde, apocalyptic vision to the screen. While there are many moments of stark beauty scattered throughout, the nonsensicality of the proceedings overwhelms the message being imparted, and the stylistic devices employed, including an incongruous musical number, are ultimately more distracting than revelatory.
NEW YORK -- A magical realist fable that recalls the foreign cult films of the 1970s, the Mongolian-made Khadak is as visually stunning as it is ultimately bewildering. This tale of an epileptic young shepherd features enough subtext and symbolism to fuel a dozen features. The film is playing an exclusive engagement at New York's Cinema Village.
Bagi (Batzul Khayankhyavaa) enjoys a bucolic nomadic existence with his family until government forces arrive to inform them that a plague has struck the animals in their region. After their livestock is slaughtered, they are thus forced to relocate to nondescript worker housing in a bleak mining town filled with the remnants of Soviet-era architecture.
Working as a mail carrier while his grandfather sullenly sits in their apartment and his mother adapts to her new job as a heavy machine operator, Bagi meets the beautiful Zolzaya (Tsetsegee Byamba), a musician who moonlights as a coal thief. Falling in with her band of fellow traveling musicians, he soon becomes a part of their revolution against the government, which has fabricated the plague in order to destroy the nomads' way of life.
Co-directed by Belgian documentarians Peter Brosens and Jessica Woodworth, the film becomes more surreal as it progresses, with Bagi adopting the role of a shaman in his quest to battle the evil forces destroying the natural environment.
Although clearly well-intentioned, the filmmakers are unable to effectively transmit their avant-garde, apocalyptic vision to the screen. While there are many moments of stark beauty scattered throughout, the nonsensicality of the proceedings overwhelms the message being imparted, and the stylistic devices employed, including an incongruous musical number, are ultimately more distracting than revelatory.
- 11/1/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
- Quick Links Complete Film Listing: Premieres: Dramatic Comp: Docu Comp: World Docu Comp: Spectrum: Park City at Midnight: New Frontier: Short Film Programs January 18 to 28, 2007 Counting Down: updateCountdownClock('January 18, 2007'); Blame It On Fidel (France), directed and written by Julie Gavras, which takes the point of view of a 9-year-old girl whose parents become political radicals in early '70s Paris. Drained (Brazil), directed by Heitor Dhalia and written by Marcal Aquino and Dhalia, about the life change of a devious pawnbroker.Driving With My Wife's Lover (South Korea), directed by Kim Tai-sik and written by Kim Joen-han and Kim, which describes the long taxi journey of a man and the cab driver he's learned is having an affair with his wife.Eagle Vs. Shark (New Zealand), directed and written by Taika Waititi, a portrait of two social misfits who try to find love. A Miramax release in its world premiere.
- 1/18/2007
- IONCINEMA.com
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.