News

Trafalgar Releasing will bring Andrew Dominik’s This Much I Know to be True, featuring Nick Cave & Warren Ellis, to cinemas worldwide this May, following its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival. Tickets will go on sale on 23 March for the 11 May “global cinema event,” says the company.

David France’s new doc How to Survive a Pandemic will world premiere March 10 at Greece’s leading doc event. Blind Ambition, by Warwick Ross and Rob Coe, about the first-ever Zimbabwe team to compete in The World Wine Blind Tasting Championships, will close the festival.

EFA joins the Ukrainian Film Academy in the boycott of Russian Films and “unequivocally” condemns the war, the organisation writes in a statement March 1. “We are fully aware that several of our members are fighting with arms against the aggressor. The Academy will therefore exclude Russian films from this year's European Film Awards and we lend our support to each element of the boycott.”

76 world premieres and 59 competition titles among the 200 new films offered up within 6 international competitions. “CPH:DOX is ready to present the full film programme with a diverse selection of films of artistic quality and contemporary relevance,” says the fest. Several films focusing on Ukraine and Russia will premiere in CPH:DOX’s main competition, Dox:Award.

The dramatic portrait of volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft will kick off this year’s edition 7 April. “It is a pleasure to open the 53rd edition of Visions du Réel with a film that sends out such a strong signal. Indeed, we are working on a shimmering and sparkling festival, with a line-up that encompasses human existences and forms that are in tune with our audience’s expectations,” says fest chief Emilie Bujès.

“We stand with the Ukrainian people and ask that the response of the international community will be adequate and Putin's hostile act will not go unpunished. No country has the right to violate the borders of a sovereign state under the pretext of any lie. This is an attack on democracy,” the letter underlines.

The European Film Academy has written to all Ukrainian members to offer its support following the Russian invasion of February 24 2022. “On behalf of the community of over 4,200 members of the European Film Academy, we want to express our solidarity with you,” the organisation writes. “Rest assured we stand behind you, supporting your work in the best way we can.”

Sundance winner Simon Lereng Wilmont and Oscar-nominated producer Monica Hellström of Final Cut for Real are launching an appeal to support a local NGO helping kids in Eastern Ukraine. Their Distant Barking of Dogs was Oscar-shortlisted and A House Made of Splinters won Best Directing Award at the recent Sundance Film Festival. Both films feature Ukrainian children living near the frontline.

The International Coalition for Filmmakers at Risk (ICFR) has renewed its demand for Egyptian authorities to “immediately and unconditionally” release film producer Moataz Abdelwahab. The producer of Egypt’s official 2021 Oscars submission When We’re Born has now been in pre-trial detention for almost two years.

“Our audience will get the chance to explore the music of Leonard Cohen, Leonard Bernstein, Stockhausen and XXXTENTACTION, Sinéad O’Connor and the über-cool feminist metal band from Lebanon, just to mention some of the highlights” comments Niklas Engstrøm, Artistic Director of CPH:DOX (March 23-April 3) of the eighteen new music docs within the festival’s Sound & Vision programme.