Winter Film Awards International Film Festival: Cinema Around the World On the Lower East Side

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Tuesday, 14 February 2023 13:14

Written by Brad Balfour

Featuring voices and visions from around the world, The Winter Film Awards International Film Festival is back from February 15th to the 25th. Running at Cinema Village (22 E 12th St, New York, NY) and NY Film Academy (17 Battery Pl), the Festival’s lineup includes 73 films from around the world from first-timers and seasoned directors alike. With works including animation, documentaries, comedies, romances, dramas, horror, music videos and web series, the WFA International Film Festival emphasizes diversity of voices, actors, and subject matter.

Cinema Village will feature several special blocks of films:

• Documentary Day – Saturday February 18th 12pm-11pm. All documentaries, all day!

• Bloody Sunday Horror Day – February 19th 4:30pm-11pm. Eleven frightening films from around the world!

• Weekday Matinee Shorts Screenings – February 20-23 afternoon.  Animation, Made in NY, Documentaries and Horror

Films include 10:35, directed by Alan Sánchez and Isabel Reyes. After the death of his mother, Nico is in a crematorium waiting for her ashes. Nico begins working on an experiment with a virtual reality glasses to travel to a parallel universe and see his mother once again. Just like an hourglass, Nico will depend on the last grain of sand to accomplish his purpose.

ŁOBYRA, directed by Natalie Plaskura, is a chapter of an ongoing gloomy tale about the rise of the grouse king. It tells of strange looming figures, who emerged under unknown circumstances, not revealing if their intentions are good or evil. Seemingly attracted by an invisible calling, they are steering towards the summit of a mountain and summon something, which was put to sleep for a long time.

Miss Viborg, a feature directed by Marianne Blicher, follows a former beauty queen and senior citizen Solvej living in a social housing area on the outskirts of Danish provincial town Viborg. Each day, she performs the same old routines roaming around on her scooter dealing her prescription drugs, dreaming of a world outside Viborg and reminiscing over old love letters from her past. When unforeseen circumstances bring her neighbour’s daughter, rebellious 17-year-old Kate into her life, an unlikely friendship forms and new hope for the future emerges.

The festival will also feature evening Education Sessions that are free to the public. These discussions and lectures cover everything from filmmaking on a budget and legal issues for film makers, to elevating trans voices in cinema.

To learn more, go to: https://winterfilmawards.com/wfa2023/

Winter Film Awards International Film Festival
February 16 - 25, 2023

Various Locations in NYC

2023 New York International Children’s Film Festival: Tales of Joy, Bravery & Growth

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Thursday, 09 February 2023 18:06

Written by Brad Balfour

Totem

New York’s premiere fest for children of all ages, the New York International Children’s Film Festival, is back again, running March 3 to the 19th. Held at theaters across NYC (SVA Theatre, Film Forum, DCTV’s Firehouse Cinema, Scandinavia House, Sag Harbor Cinema, and Alamo Drafthouse Brooklyn), the festival has been bringing quality and thought provoking films for younger movie goers since 1997. This year’s festival includes films from the US, Japan, Colombia, South Korea, France, Canada, Netherlands and more.

The festival features an extensive slate of animated films, including shorts such as Fur, directed by Madeleine Homan, in which a girl attempts to understand and comfort her sister after gray fur covers her body, making her feel miles away even as they sit right next to each other. For fans of vintage animation there’s 1972’s Panda! Go Panda!, directed by the legendary Isao Takahata (Only Yesterday, The Tale of the Princess Kaguya).

Also included are live action films and shorts such as Okthanksbye, directed by Nicole van Kilsdonk, a coming of age story in which two girls —one with a cochlear implant and one without—, make a trek by themselves across the French countryside to visit a hospitalized grandmother. In Totem, directed by Sander Burger, eleven-year-old Ama loves the water, and not only because she’s surrounded by the Rotterdam waterfront. She’s also a passionate swimmer, spending every spare minute in the pool training for the upcoming championships with her best friend, Thijs. Though she’s the daughter of Senegalese asylum-seekers, Ama feels Dutch, through and through. So it’s all the more unthinkable when her family members are unexpectedly detained, leaving Ama to find a solution. Harnessing the focus she learned in swim training and armed with the wisdom of her mother’s tales of their homeland, she must forge a path of her own. Fortunately, a gigantic spirit animal rooted in Senegalese tradition might just be of service.

The festival continues its annual Industry Forum “Toward an Inclusive Future,” which brings together creators at all stages of their careers to discuss children’s media on all sides of the camera. New this year is “NYICFF in Your Neighborhood,” free presentations of a NYICFF short film program for ages 3-8 taking place at venues citywide.

To learn more, go to: https://nyicff.org/

New York International Children’s Film Festival
March 3 - 19, 2023

Various venues in NYC

International Film Festival Rotterdam 2023: Cinema Around the World in the Netherlands

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Friday, 13 January 2023 16:24

Written by Brad Balfour

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

The International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) returns to The Netherlands, running January 25 to February 5, 2023. The festival is replete with features, shorts, documentaries, workshops, and more. IFFR opens with Munch, a biopic of painter Edvard Munch from  Norwegian maverick auteur Henrik Martin Dahlsbakken. In this film the painter of The Scream is played by different actors, in order to portray the many sides of Munch: that of a deliberate outsider, sexual adventurer, freethinker, genius and more. The festival closes with All India Rank from director Varun Grover, which looks at oppression, everyday corruption and the middle class’ chronic inability to communicate. This film is also part of the Bright Future program, which looks at bold new directors and debut films. Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, based on the novel by Haruki Murakami, and directed by Pierre Földes, sketches the lives of three Tokyo residents thrown into a whirlpool of anxiety and introspection following the 2011 earthquake in eastern Japan. The film is preluded by a lecture by one of the best lecturers of Erasmus University Prof. Sanneke de Haan

The Short Film Marathon challenges you to a six hour block of short films, while those of you who are single and/or ready to mingle can go to IFFR Blind Date, where the festival will set you up with a mystery partner. This year the IFFR introduces Art Directions: a multi-disciplinary section that expands the realm of cinema to installations, Immersive Media and live audio-visual performances. Alongside the IFFR-commissioned Steve McQueen artwork Sunshine State presented in collaboration with Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen, the Art Directions programme presents installations, its sound//vision programme of audio-visual performances at WORM, and a lineup of Immersive Media.

To learn more, go to: https://iffr.com/en

January 25 - February 5, 2023

Various Venues
Rotterdam, The Netherlands