Press

A first look into feature film,Virginia Woolf’s Night & Day, as production begins in Newcastle. Announced cast includes Haley Bennett, Timothy Spall, Lily Allen, Elyas M’Barek, Jack Whitehall, Jennifer Saunders and Sally Phillips.

Review of feature film, Freud's Last Session. "This tension between comfort and discomfort is the main fulcrum of the film. All of us are stereotypers, who we present at the outset is what we most believe we are. It is with comfort that we lay down our outer-layers and allow others to know us more intimately. Towards the start, we are introduced to the popular image of Freud, one of a cantankerous, cold, and neurotic man. Reversely, C.S Lewis is the British gentleman, christian, aloof, and endearing. As the day passes, both take off their defensiveness and ego like coats and hats, more alike, more human."

Review of feature film, Freud's Last Session. "Harvard psychiatrist Armand Nicholi taught a popular course on 'The Question of God,' examining Sigmund Freud’s atheism and C.S. Lewis’s faith. Now a related Sony theatrical film imagines that the two met in London shortly before Freud’s death. The result is a fascinating historical drama probing their intellectual, emotional, psychological, and spiritual development. Anthony Hopkins is masterful as Freud. Matthew Goode plays Lewis."

A look with Anthony Hopkins about his career, discussing his mortality and new film, Freud's Last Session.

Review of feature film, Freud's Last Session. "Freud’s Last Session excels in asking such questions—difficult ones for both believer and agnostic. It leans into the paradoxes that its two prime characters embody, and it thus may help us see our own internal inconsistencies. But this film is more than just an intellectual exercise. It’s a gripping, entertaining story with a couple of powerhouse performances, particularly from Anthony Hopkins as Freud."

Conversation with Matthew Brown, director of feature film, Freud's Last Session, about working with Anthony Hopkins and Matthew Goode.

Praise for actors Anthony Hopkins and Matthew Goode for their performances in Freud's Last Session. "Hopkins is once again, you guessed it, awards worthy. What a complete pleasure it continues to be to watch this great actor at the top of his game. Goode is equally fine, even with the less showy role as he perfectly balances Hopkins as well as Moore, his frustrated lover."

A dive into Anthony Hopkins's career to explain his role in Freud's Last Session. "Inevitably, these elder roles have provoked head-on confrontations with mortality, and Hopkins hasn’t shied away from the theme in his work. Yet none of those dramas can quite prepare viewers for what he brings to Freud’s Last Session, a film explicitly about preparing for the end of one’s life—and reflecting on all that came before it."

Introducing the trailer for Freud's Last Session.

Introducing the trailer for Freud's Last Session.

In memoriam Terence Davies, director of Benediction.

A first look into feature film, Freud's Last Session, as it reaches its final stages of filming in Ireland.

The New Yorker's 2022 in Review: The Best Movies of 2022 includes feature film, Benediction, at the top of the list.

Interview with Terence Davies. "Sassoon is played by Jack Lowden, who elegantly embodies a disillusioned man’s artistic journey, and is given a one-take final shot that would make 'Call Me By Your Name' jealous."

Review of feature film, Benediction, after its screening at the San Francisco International Film Festival. "If you like tragedies, hop on board the Benediction train. I say this somewhat facetiously, but I was drawn to the aimless character of Siegfried Sassoon. He was a man looking for happiness, but his sour demeanor toward life seemed to attract all the wrong people, leading him to chase the idea of happiness rather than being happy."

Announcement of partnership between European cinema giant Vue and the British Film Institute with feature film Benediction kicking off the programming.

The New Yorker's list of upcoming films, with inclusion of feature film, Benediction.

The Associated Press's rundown of notable films coming out this summer, with inclusion of feature film, Benediction.

List of upcoming films by BBC Culture, with inclusion of feature film, Benediction.

The official trailer for feature film, Benediction, has dropped in the US. "Benediction is remarkable for its strikingly evocative cinematography, especially as we see Siegfried – played with an anxious intensity by Jack Lowden – ambling through the lavish salons of a postwar England, his writing having afforded him a certain level of notoriety."

The official trailer for feature film, Benediction, has dropped for its US release. "Starring Jack Lowden and Peter Capaldi as the younger and elder versions of the tortured artist, Benediction was hailed as another triumph from the outstanding storyteller when it premiered during last year's Toronto International Film Festival, and it continues to impress audiences as it makes its way into theaters and other festivals around the globe."

The official trailer for feature film, Benediction, has dropped. "Every year, we are fortunate enough to see films at festivals that don’t actually get released until a year or so later. One of the standout pictures from last year is 'Benediction,' which is finally about to arrive in theaters."

Feature film, Benediction, is included on the BAFTA Longlists for its 2022 Film Awards for Outstanding British Film.

Feature film, Benediction, is nominated for Best Screenplay Sponsored By BBC Films and Best Costume Design at the 2021 British Independent Film Awards.

Feature film, Benediction, is picked up for North American distribution by Roadside Attractions.

Announcement of the opening of M.Y.R.A.'s Singapore office. "M.Y.R.A. Entertainment, the film financing company that has credits including Terence Davies’ recent Toronto premiere Benediction, screening in San Sebastian this week, and Call Me By Your Name, is opening an office in Singapore as it eyes a move into Asian projects."

Review of feature film, Benediction during its run at TIFF. "The camera flashes, we see the black-and-white photo, and then a fade transitions us to the future, where it rests on their bedside while Hester looks at their newborn child. The sequence is an encapsulation of what Davies does best: observing life with one’s head facing backwards, the cumulative weight of the past bearing down on every moment of the present."

Interview with Terence Davies about feature film, Benediction. "Ahead of the film’s debut on Sept. 12, Davies spoke with Variety about what draws him to a project, his hatred for films based on Jane Austen novels and his general amazement that he has managed to build an audience thanks to an uncompromising resume of masterworks that includes 'The Deep Blue Sea,' 'The Long Day Closes,' and, now, 'Benediction.'”

A first look clip of upcoming feature film, Benediction, was released ahead of its premiere at TIFF. "Dunkirk and Fighting With My Family star Jack Lowden leads cast as WWI poet and soldier Sassoon. As we previously revealed, Peter Capaldi will play Sassoon in his later years."

Announcement of the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival Lineup, including feature film, Benediction, who will have its North American premiere at the 2021 TIFF.

Review of feature film, The World to Come. "Pride month may be over, but it’s turning into a banner summer for LGBTQ+ stories at the cinema, and this gorgeous, heart-crushing period love story from director Mona Fastvold –finally making it to screens after a long pandemic delay – is among the best of them."

Review of feature film, The World to Come. "The World to Come is a tragedy and a love story – and also a puzzle, courtesy of the title. Does it mean the afterlife, the entry into paradise that will be recompense for all the hardship and injustice we’ve suffered here? Or does it mean the future: that progressive yearned-for place in which current bigotries will be abolished, and in fact the place from which we, in the 21st century, are looking back on this tale from the 19th, confident that we are freed from these bygone characters’ constraints, content that we understand what is going on and they may not?"

Review of feature film, The World to Come. "Loneliness and isolation have been pretty common themes in all of our lives over the past year, thanks to a pandemic that's kept us largely indoors and alone. The characters in The World to Come are farmers (and their wives), so they don't spend much time indoors and they're not entirely alone, either, but they're certainly isolated when the film begins against the harsh backdrop of the frontier of 19th Century upstate New York."

Early coverage of the 2021 San Sebastián International Film Festival, with mention to feature film, Benediction. "The 69th San Sebastian Film Festival has confirmed its first crop of Competition titles, including Terence Davies’ Benediction starring Jack Lowden and Peter Capaldi. The movie chronicles different moments in the life of Siegfried Sassoon, a soldier and anti-war poet who survived the First World War. This will be British director Davies’ third time competing for the Golden Shell – San Seb’s top award – following The Deep Blue Sea in 2011 and Sunset Song in 2015."

Interview with Director Mona Fastvold about feature film, The World to Come. "I thought the text was beautifully written and interesting. I thought we have a lot of stories about really brave people, who do big things and this is a story about a brave person who does a big thing in her life, but a small thing in the larger scope of it all. Being led into the richness of her internal life, when she struggles so much to express herself – that’s a character that it’s worth spending some time with."

Indiewire's list of the best movies of 2021 so far, including feature film, The World to Come. "As coldly drawn as an atlas yet no less capable of enflaming the imagination, Mona Fastvold’s 'The World to Come' is a hard and brittle period love story that thaws into something much warmer — what its hyper-literate heroine would call 'astonishment and joy' — as a merciless 19th-century winter blushes into a most unexpected spring."

Interview with actor Katherine Waterston about feature film, The World to Come. "Waterston recently talked about researching medieval lesbian nuns for the role; how, even though she appreciates all the lesbian love she's getting for playing Abigail on Twitter, she doesn't understand Twitter; and why she thinks that, actually, the making of all these lesbian period dramas highlights 'a problem, not a pattern.'"

Coverage of an interview, with video, with actors Vanessa Kirby and Katherine Waterston about feature film, The World to Come. "'It's more than a kind of first love. It's a first everything. First friendship, first real companion, intellectual companion,' Waterston says of Abigail and Tallie’s abiding connection."

Coverage of an interview, with video, with actor Casey Affleck with mention of feature film, The World to Come. "I don’t think it’s quite fair to call this just a, the term people have used has been lesbian love story or an LGBTQ story or those kinds of things, and it seems to pigeonhole it. I hope that there will be a time when it’s just a love story. It doesn’t matter, really, if it’s two men or two women or a man and a woman or two couples. That isn’t really what this movie was about."

Review of feature film, The World to Come. "The World to Come is leisuerly paced and provides a strong sense of time and place.  The film generates most of its interest in the tender scenes between the two women."

Coverage of an interview, with video, with director Mona Fastvold and actor Casey Affleck about feature film, The World to Come. “Affleck and Fastvold talked about why everything was built for the film rather than using soundstages, if they tried to arrange the schedule to film certain things at the beginning or end of the shoot, the long road to getting the film made, how Affleck and Ron Hansen got involved in this project, and more.”

Coverage of feature film, The World to Come. “As the seasons change in 1856 in upstate New York, Abigail and Tallie find themselves inextricably linked. Liberated by their passionate devotion to each other, both women discover that their intimate bond is able to fill a void in their lives that they never knew existed, even if they do not have a framework to navigate their newfound love.”

Coverage of President's Day Weekend film releases, including feature film, The World to Come. “Bleecker Street had the 19th century lesbian romance The World to Come at 278 venues in 81 markets. The pic starring Vanessa Kirby, Katherine Waterston, Casey Affleck and Christopher Abbott grossed $48.9K over four days and $42.5K over threedays.”

Profile of Katherine Waterston in feature film, The World to Come. “Waterston was drawn to Abigail the minute she read the first page of Jim Shepard and Ron Hansen’s script, based on Shepard’s short story of the same name. 'I was so struck by the density of the script and the efficiency of the writing,' Waterston told HuffPost in a phone call this week."

Coverage of feature film, The World to Come. “Kirby and Waterston are truly captivating, portraying the romance between the two women in a way that is so tender and pure. There’s a consideration for their characters and the situations they’re in that shows in how they navigate difficult scenes, particularly in quiet and tense moments when you can tell Abigail and Tally are on the edge of breaking.”

The trailer for feature film The World to Come has dropped.

Interview with Katherine Waterston in regards to feature film, The World to Come. “Based on Jim Shepard's story of the same name, The World to Come is a story of forbidden love. Set in the 19th Century, the film follows two neighboring couples played by Katherine Waterston, Vanessa Kirby, Christopher Abbott, and Casey Affleck. As both couples battle hardships, Tally (Kirby) and Abigail (Waterston) begin to fall in love."

The Film Stage's list of 100 most anticipated films of 2021, with mention to feature film, Benediction at 5th place.

Indiewire's list of 2021 films to look forward to, with mention to feature film, The World to Come.

Coverage of 2021's most anticipated films, with mention of feature film, Benediction. “A Quiet Passion and Sunset Song filmmaker Terence Davies is helming this story about English poet and solider Siegfried Sassoon, with Jack Lowden and Peter Capaldi playing the main character at different ages. Backers include the BBC, BFI and Creative England. Bankside is handling sales."

Variety's list of 2021 Oscar Best Picture contenders, with mention to feature film, The World to Come. "The film boasts strong reviews and won the Queer Lion for best LBGTQ-themed movie from the Venice Film Festival. Stars Katherine Waterston and Vanessa Kirby are earning raves for their chemistry and performances."

Coverage of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, with mention to feature film, The World to Come. “The Spotlight section, which often features favorites of the recent festival circuit, contains just two films: Bleecker Street’s lesbian romance ‘The World to Come’ starring Vanessa Kirby and Katherine Waterston, and Ivory Coast Oscar submission ‘Night of the Kings,’ from Neon, which is also debuting Ben Wheatley’s UK virus thriller ‘In the Earth.’”

Announcement of the 2021 Sundance lineup, with mention to feature film, The World to Come.

Announcement of the 2021 Sundance lineup, with mention to feature film, The World to Come.

Announcement of the 2021 Sundance lineup, with mention to feature film, The World to Come.

Announcement of the 2021 Sundance lineup, with mention to feature film, The World to Come.

Announcement of the 2021 Sundance lineup, with mention to feature film, The World to Come.

Announcement of the 2021 Sundance lineup, with mention to feature film, The World to Come.

Indiewire’s list of 13 Best Film Performances by Actresses in 2020, with mention to Vanessa Kirby in feature film, The World to Come. “Her star is rising: Kirby also scored Venice kudos for her supporting role in Mona Fastvold’s lesbian love story 'The World to Come' (Bleecker Street).”

Profile and list of upcoming projects starring Vanessa Kirby, with mention to feature film, The World to Come. “Like Vanessa Kirby's other soon-to-be-released project, The World to Come had its initial debut at the Venice International Film Festival in September 2020, where it was picked up Bleecker Street for U.S. distribution, according to Variety.”

Profile of Vanessa Kirby, with mention of feature film, The World to Come. “In an interview with The Talks, the actress explained that in the 2020 film The World to Come, she used the same technique she learned in that school production of Hamlet — she imagined what the character would think. ‘If you think the character's thoughts, the camera can read it,’ she explained.”

IONCinema predicts the 2021 Sundance Film Festival lineup and includes feature film, The World to Come. “With Katherine Waterston and Vanessa Kirby toplining, Mona Fastvold’s sophomore film was in the official competition at the Venice Film Festival. Bleecker Street Media landed the rights to The World to Come and have pegged it with a February 12th release which means Sundance could be the lieu of the North American premiere.”

Variety’s List of 2020 Producers to Watch includes Margarethe Baillou and mentions feature film, The World to Come. “…based on a screenplay by Ron Hansen and Jim Shepard that Baillou describes as ‘nonviolent, destination-driven, inclusive and rich in language, which pretty much sums up the mission of MYRA — a solid match.’”

Coverage of feature film, Benediction. “The film, which had to go on a lengthy hiatus caused by the pandemic, has wrapped on locations in the West Midlands. Bankside has world sales rights and will be showing a promo to buyers at the upcoming AFM.”

Variety’s 2021 Oscar Predictions, with mention of feature film, The World to Come.

Variety’s 2021 Oscar Predictions, with mention of feature film, The World to Come.

Variety’s 2021 Oscar Predictions, with mention of feature film, The World to Come.

Variety’s 2021 Oscar Predictions, with mention of feature film, The World to Come.

Announcement of feature film, The World to Come. “Bleecker Street has acquired the North American rights to ‘The World to Come,’ a period drama and romance starring Katherine Waterston and Vanessa Kirby that made its premiere at the Venice Film Festival. ‘The World to Come’ is directed by Mona Fastvold and won the Queer Lion Award at the festival and the Fanheart3 Award. Bleecker Street has yet to set release plans.”

Announcement of feature film, The World to Come. “Bleecker Street has bought U.S. rights to Mona Fastvold’s ‘The World to Come,’ a period romance with Katherine Waterston and Vanessa Kirby, rolling off its critically acclaimed premiere in competition at the 77th Venice Film Festival.”

Announcement of feature film, The World to Come. “Bleecker Street has acquired US rights from to Vanessa Kirby period drama The World To Come following its recent world premiere in Venice. The distributor has not set a release date.”

Announcement of feature film, The World to Come. “Bleecker Street has acquired U.S. rights to Mona Fastvold’s “The World to Come,” Variety reports. The period romance premiered to rave reviews at Venice Film Festival earlier this month.”

Profile of Katherine Waterston, with reference to feature film, The World to Come. “She’s worked with every kind of director, on every kind of budget, including her upcoming feature The World to Come, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival last week to rave reviews. Starring alongside Vanessa Kirby, Christopher Abbot, and Casey Affleck, Waterston once again slips into a character and completely disappears.  Like Third Day, The World To Come, based on Jim Shepard’s book by the same name and directed by Mona Fastvol, is about isolation and loneliness.”

Review of feature film, The World to Come.  “In the fall festival derby, everyone was expecting the Kate Winslet-Saoirse Ronan romance ‘Ammonite’ to follow up ‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire’ as the next must-see Sapphic bodice-ripper. (It plays Toronto later this week.) But the lesbian love story to break out first in Venice is actress-writer-director Mona Fastvold’s second movie, ‘The World to Come,’ a grim yet achingly beautiful 1850s pioneer drama about two isolated farm wives (Katherine Waterston and Vanessa Kirby) who escape from their domestic drudgery with each other.

Review of feature film, The World to Come. “As coldly drawn as an atlas yet no less capable of enflaming the imagination, Mona Fastvold’s ‘The World to Come’ is a hard and brittle period love story that thaws into something much warmer — what its hyper-literate heroine would call ‘astonishment and joy’ — as a merciless 19th-century winter blushes into a most unexpected spring.”

Review of feature film, The World to Come. “The World to Come is crafted with care by the Norwegian film-maker Mona Fastvold, lovingly built on ground previously settled by Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire. Arguably, the film is too neatly tailored (both in terms of its fashions and its narrative) and maybe even a little too modern in its sensibility, to the point where one wonders whether these rustic 19th-century farmers would have been quite so open and articulate about their innermost feelings – or so bluntly insightful in tackling others’ feelings. But these are quibbles; Fastvold’s romance casts a spell.”

Review of feature film, The World to Come. “Fastvold’s film leans into the measured vernacular and daily routine of the mud-stained 19th-century lives it depicts, finding a satisfying kinship between the hard, gradual blossoming of its chosen landscape and the formal, subtly expressive language of writer Jim Shepard — who has gracefully adapted his own 2017 short story with fellow heartland novelist Ron Hansen (‘The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford’). The exquisite result, premiering in competition at Venice, straddles its own mountain somewhere between the peaks of Cold and Brokeback. Discerning arthouse distributors should take the climb.”

Review of feature film, The World to Come. “The setting is stunning (the film was shot on 16mm in Romania), but The World to Come never succumbs to period-drama prettifying. Nature is a seen as a wild, threatening force — Tallie's trek through a blizzard is captured with cacophonous nightmarishness — wielding as much power over the characters' lives as their own choices.”

Review of feature film, The World to Come. “It would be easy to sell The World to Come as ‘the female Brokeback Mountain’, but that would be to traduce the richness, singularity and command of Mona Fastvold’s beautifully executed and acted drama. The story of female friendship blossoming into passionate love in a severe 1850s American rural setting, this is an austere but lyrical piece underwritten by a complex grasp of emotional and psychological nuance, and a second feature of striking command by Norwegian-born director Mona Fastvold, following up her 2014 debut The Sleepwalker (she has also collaborated as writer on Brady Corbet’s features).”

Coverage of feature film, The World to Come, at the 2020 Venice International Film Festival. “Framed by the four seasons, The World To Come centers on Abigail (Waterston), a farmer’s wife, and her new neighbor Tallie (Kirby) find themselves powerfully, irrevocably drawn to each other.”

Interview with Mona Fastvold about feature film, The World to Come. “Ron Hansen and Jim Shepard’s script was beautiful. Rich in historical detail, it is both a precise chronicle of farm life in the 19th century, as well as an engrossing character study of four second-generation Americans. The characters jumped out at me and I felt compelled to tell their story.”

Coverage of Vanessa Kirby and her films at the 2020 Venice Film Festival, one of which is The World to Come. “With The World to Come and Piece of a Woman, filmed almost back-to-back in late 2019 and early 2020, the British star, 32, has the rare honor of having two films compete against each other in the Biennale, the first A-list film festival to physically take place since cinemas — and much beyond — shut their doors. Appearing alongside Katherine Waterston and Casey Affleck in The World to Come — a frontier romance set against the rugged and patriarchal terrain of the mid-19th century American Northeast — Kirby plays flame-haired Tallie, who sparks an intense and liberating affair with a farmer’s wife, played by Waterston.”

Coverage of the 2020 Venice Film Festival, with an interview with The World to Come’s director Mona Fastvold. “Based on a Jim Shepard story, Fastvold’s ‘The World to Come’ is about two women, married to farmers, who fall in love in the 1850s New York. ‘It’s about this very intense intellectual and emotional and physical connection between two women (played by Kirby and Waterston),’ Fastvold said. ‘People would ask me, why do you want to tell the story about normal women falling in love with one another. And I said, well, I do think that there should be a place in history for the quiet ones as well. Not just the great icons. Not just the Napoleons.’”

Interview with Vanessa Kirby, who has two films at the 2020 Venice Film Festival, one of which is The World to Come. “I ignorantly didn’t know that life was like that in some parts of America in the 1800s. It isn’t that long ago when things were just so tied in. You were literally owned by your household, by the man that you happened to be married to. I just found it so moving, and it touched me so deeply, and the thought that you can’t choose who you love and you can’t even choose to do what you like, to love who you want. I also love the title The World To Come, because it was from those foundations that we’re still coming out of, really. And I found it beautifully poetic.”

Coverage of the 2020 Venice Film Festival, with reference to feature film, The World to Come. “Against the odds, Barbera has pulled together an impressive selection of new films for Venice 2020. Searchlight Pictures’ Nomadland, the Chloé Zhao-directed road movie starring Frances McDormand and David Strathairn, and Sony’s The World to Come, from director Mona Fastvold and featuring Casey Affleck, Vanessa Kirby and Katherine Waterston, both will have their world premieres on the Lido.”

Coverage of the 2020 Venice Film Festival, with reference to feature film, The World to Come. “Although the slimmed-down line-up is short on Hollywood heavyweights (2019’s, for instance, included Marriage Story and Joker), it’s packed with indie darlings, awards hopefuls and boundary-pushing arthouse gems from around the world. Significantly, 44 per cent of the films competing for its top prize, the Golden Lion, have been directed by women.”

Coverage of the 2020 Venice Film Festival, with reference to feature film, The World to Come. “Women directors are behind some of the most buzzworthy titles in Venice this year, including Nomadland from Chloé Zhao, a road movie starring Frances McDormand; period drama The World to Come by Mona Fastvold, featuring Vanessa Kirby, Katherine Waterston, Casey Affleck and Christopher Abbott; and Never Gonna Snow Again from acclaimed Polish filmmaker Malgorzata Szumowska (co-directed with Michal Englert). Nicole Garcia's French drama Lovers, Susanna Nicchiarelli's Miss Marx, Le Sorelle Macaluso from Emma Dante, Julia Von Heinz's And Tomorrow the Entire World, and Quo Vadis, Aida? from Bosnian filmmaker Jasmila Zbanic (Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams) complete the list.”

Coverage of the 2020 Venice Film Festival, with reference to feature film, The World to Come. “Kirby's Venice movies are director Mona Fastvold's The World to Come and Kornél Mundruczó's Pieces of a Woman. The World to Come, which also stars Casey Affleck, Katherine Waterston and Christopher Abbott, is about two neighboring couples battling the hardship of life on the frontier in 19th century America.”

Coverage of the 2020 Venice Film Festival, with reference to feature film, The World To Come. “Films in contention for the festival’s top prize, the Golden Lion, include Chloé Zhao’s 'Nomadland,' produced by and starring Frances McDormand as a woman living as a nomad after the recent recession; Mona Fastvold’s 'The World to Come,' starring Vanessa Kirby and Casey Affleck, which explores the love between two farmers’ wives in 19th-century America; and 'Pieces of a Woman,' a family drama directed by Kornel Mundruczo and starring Shia LaBeouf.”

Coverage of the 2020 Venice Film Festival, with reference to feature film, The World to Come. “The much smaller — and way more indie — American presence this year will also include the world premiere of a buzzy new film by Brooklyn-based Mona Fastvold (The Sleepwalker) who will launch her second feature, 'The World To Come,' a period drama with two women at its center and a starry cast comprising Katherine Waterston (Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,) Vanessa Kirby (The Crown) and Casey Affleck, who is also one of the pic’s main producers.”

Coverage of feature film, Benediction. “BAFTA-winning filmmaker, Terence Davies (The House of Mirth) was only three days from start of shoot on passion project Benediction when the film was shut down due to the coronavirus. Writer-director Davies had been in development on the movie for five years since the success of his 2016 Emily Dickinson biopic A Quiet Passion.”

Coverage of feature film, Benediction. “Bankside Films has taken worldwide sales rights to Terence Davies’ upcoming biopic Benediction, which will see Jack Lowden star as First World War poet Siegfried Sassoon.”

Announcement of feature film, The World To Come. “Academy Award winner, Casey Affleck, has unveiled its new feature film project The World To Come, a mid-19th-century American frontier story starring BAFTA winner, Vanessa Kirby, Katherine Waterston and Christopher Abbott. Norwegian filmmaker, Mona Fastvold, is to direct. French sales and production company Charades has come on board to handle international rights, launching the project at this year’s EFM. Endeavor Content, ICM Partners and UTA Independent are handling domestic rights.”

Announcement of feature film, Welcome to the Tempest Hotel. “Academy Award nominee, Robin Swicord (The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button), will write and direct a modern Bermuda-set adaptation of William Shakespeare’s final play, The Tempest.”

Interview with Margarethe Baillou about violence on screen and how she wants their own projects to challenge how brutality is portrayed. “’We’ve grown so accustomed to onscreen gruesomeness that we’ve become immune to it,’ [Baillou] says. “The indifference to violence as entertainment is dangerously toxic.’”

Coverage of feature film, Change in the Air. “Screen Media has picked up worldwide rights to Change In The Air, a drama from first-time director Dianne Dreyer and starring recent Golden Globe-winning actress Rachel Brosnahan (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), Mary Beth Hurt, Aidan Quinn, Macy Gray, M. Emmet Walsh, Seth Gilliam, and Olympia Dukakis. After finalizing the deal during EFM in Berlin, Screen Media will release the pic in theaters sometime this year.”

Coverage of feature film, Call Me By Your Name. “First optioned 10 years ago, André Aciman’s romantic novel Call Me By Your Name had a bumpy journey to the screen before being triumphantly realised by filmmaker Luca Guadagnino.”

Review of feature film Drawing Home. “Drawing Home somewhat behaves like it’s some kind of postcard for Canada… If Canada’s government wants to increase tourism, showing Drawing Home movie to potential visitors would be a perfect way to go about it. Plus the music is equally inviting.”

Review of feature film Drawing Home. “Director Markus Rupprecht and his co-writer Donna Logan were not about to give us a static biopic of the sort that’s shown in high school auditoriums on a snowy day, so out with museum lore and in with a picture of Catharine, who wanted more than the affluence of her parents and the even increased wealth that would fall into her lap with J. D. Rockefeller III. She was a free spirit as shown here by the German director in his freshman, full-length feature... The picture is acted by a sprightly Julie Lynn Mortensen, a Danish-Canadian who grew up in Alberta […] For his part, Juan Riedinger is Banff-born and –bred […]”

Review of feature film, Call Me By Your Name. “It’s also a story of queer love that isn’t tinged with horror or tragedy, a gay romance about a genuine attachment. At the same time, Call Me by Your Name doesn’t attempt to sanitize itself as a bland, ‘universal’ film in hopes of appealing to a wider audience. It’s both intensely erotic and intensely contained, acknowledging the very private lives gay men were forced to lead in the early 1980s, when the film is set. As a result, in Call Me by Your Name, virtually every bit of physical contact is crucial and electrifying.”

Review of feature film Drawing Home. “Inspired by a true story from the 1920s, this wonderful movie can be a perfect entertainer for the holidays... Drawing Home is a flawless blend of love, family, creativity, feelings and passion. It addresses the classic question of whether one should settle for a perfect ‘settled’ life or take risks to follow his/her passion... The movie is truly worth watching. Exchange of dialogues between Catharine and her mother or with her love interest Peter present the reality that many of us experience in our plot too. Talented cast, wonderful landscape, scenic beauty and charm of the golden era mark the highlights of the movie. Watch this feel-good slice of history for its passion, artistic approach and skillful pieces of arts. Drawing Home will definitely draw great doses of happiness, joy, pleasure and entertainment- truly perfect for the holidays!”

Review of feature film, Call Me By Your Name. “The lyricism seduces as does fragile, ecstatic Elio. Call Me by Your Name is less a coming-of-age story, a tale of innocence and loss, than one about coming into sensibility.”

Review of feature film, Call Me By Your Name. "To describe this as one of the year’s most pleasurable movies, in short, may be less a matter of critical insight than of simple observation. Pleasure isn’t just Guadagnino’s intended effect; it is one of his defining obsessions and guiding artistic principles. He has become one of world cinema’s great sensualists, a filmmaker whose sun-kissed surfaces and woozy rhythms produce an atmosphere of sweet, heady intoxication.”

Interview with Timothee Chalamet and Armie Hammer about feature film, Call Me By Your Name. “What also makes the story quietly remarkable, especially for a film that has traction in the awards race, is that it is simply about two young men who fall for each other, without menacing rednecks wanting to pulverize them or a ravaging disease lurking in wait. ‘It’s just a love story, and it’s really humanizing,’ Mr. Hammer said. ‘No one gets beat up, no one gets sick, no one has to pay for being gay.’”

Review of feature film, Call Me By Your Name. “As numerous are the ways in which Luca Guadagnino’s latest (and most personal) film, Call Me by Your Name, advances the canon of gay cinema, none impresses more than the fact that it’s not necessarily a gay movie at all — at least, not in the sense of being limited to LGBT festivals and audiences. Rather, the I Am Love director’s ravishingly sensual new film, adapted from André Aciman’s equally vivid coming-out/coming-of-age novel, is above all a story of first love — one that transcends the same-sex dynamic of its central couple, much as Moonlight has.”

Review of feature film, Call Me By Your Name. “Call Me By Your Name wears its intellectual credentials on its sleeve; it’s a film which sucks in references to art, literature, poetry, linguistics, Jewish identity, and exhales lengthy al-fresco lunches, meticulous production design and dripping over-ripe fruit, a luscious metaphor for the forbidden romance at its core. Adapted from André Aciman’s memoirs, this hot summer flush of first love in a milieu vacated by Bertolucci’s Stealing Beauty stakes its place in film history with Chalamet’s Elio, buffeted by the all-too-real confusion, pain and ecstasy of falling in love.

Coverage of feature film, Call Me By Your Name. "In advance of the Sundance Film Festival, Sony Pictures Classics has swooped in and scooped up worldwide rights to Call Me by Your Name, a gay love story directed by Italy’s Luca Guadagnino, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.”

TV coverage of feature film Drawing Home.

Interview with Margarethe Baillou, writer-director of live action short, Le Pardon. “[C]ollecting stories is a passion, and some stories are simply shorter than others. [This is] a short story, an audio-visual poem, a moving picture and a love letter to New Orleans which I visited in 2007, not long after Hurricane Katrina when the city was still hurting. At that point, the story had already been written, but I was still looking for the right setting. Experiencing how warmly New Orleans welcomed artists even after the nightmare it had been through was very touching, and I decided to shoot there. So, the location became a major motivator for telling the story.”

Interview with Rutger Hauer who plays the late German wildlife artist, Carl Rungius in the feature film, Drawing Home, and who wrote a poem for the film.  “I had been looking for a poem by an American Indian. I found a good one and tried to connect with the writer of this poem, but could never get a response from him. I decided to write a poem myself that expressed some of the same things. After I filmed, I went to the set to say goodbye to everyone, and I mentioned to the producers that I had written this poem. They asked if they could film me reciting it, so that’s what they did. It made sense being in the film and it was nice that it ended up in the final version.”

Interview with Margarethe Baillou and Allan Neuwirth about their feature film, Drawing Home, and their conscious decision to cast Canadian newcomers to play the leads. “Juan Riedinger who played Peter not only was […] Canadian, but he was born and grew up just blocks from where Peter Whyte lived. Julie [Lynn Mortensen] is from Calgary but she had spent an enormous amount of time in the Rockies. So they are both from there which is one of the main reasons why we connected with them aside from their acting abilities. We needed actors who shared the mentality of those people. These were fictional characters we were trying to bring to life. They were real and we wanted to honor them and we wanted to be respectful of their legacy. We wanted newcomers because it is a true story and we wanted that element of authenticity.”

Behind-the-scenes coverage of feature film Drawing Home. “In the winter of 2011, two very different film productions were underway in the Canadian Rockies. One was a unit shoot for Hollywood blockbuster, The Bourne Legacy. The other was Drawing Home, a low-budget biopic about Banff wildlife artists Peter and Catharine Whyte. The team producing Drawing Home was hoping for snow and plenty of it since there was no budget to produce it artificially. The folks behind Bourne Legacy? Not so much. So when a blizzard descended on the mountains, the two teams had very different reactions.”

Interview with Margarethe Baillou about feature film, Drawing Home. “When I learned of the real-life story of the late Peter and Catharine Whyte of Banff, I instantly saw a movie and I became determined to tell the story authentically, using factual Alberta locations and Canadian talent to portray the tale on screen to honor the cultural origin of the story.”

Coverage of animated short, Telling a You, by Margarethe Baillou. "[Baillou] chose the 1960s as time period for Telling A You because of her admiration of its fashion: feminine, elegant dresses and handbags for the ladies and handsome suits (‘or, in our case, suit jacket and Bermuda shorts’), ties and hats for men. Even the scooter and scooter helmet designs are based on 1960s originals… The Bermudian voices and setting make this project a true celebration of Bermuda, its people and its warm beauty. To make history on a project that is sure to welcome warm accolades and an enthusiastic audience is an extraordinary opportunity for the participants and the island as a whole.”

Coverage of feature film, Drawing Home. "The story of Peter and Catharine Whyte is the quintessential Banff story and an integral part of the community’s fabric and legacy. And when it comes to Drawing Home, a feature-length film about Peter and Catharine that is currently in production in the Banff-Bow Valley region, who better to play Peter, who was born in Banff in 1905 into the prominent Whyte family, than Banff-born actor Juan Riedinger?"

Coverage of video art installation, One After, by Margarethe Baillou, staged on October 10 in observance of the World Day Against the Death Penalty. “We set aside all textual and verbal narration for this work," says Ms. Baillou, a German filmmaker based in New York. "This leaves any opinions, personal interpretations and moral responses directly with the viewer, whom we recognize as a witness."

Review of documentary short, Body & Soul: Diana & Kathy, by Academy Award nominee Alice Elliott. “Watching Kathy and Diana live their lives often seems like an I-Ching guide to gratitude and appreciation for the gifts most of us receive simply by being in good health. When film can actually encourage and stimulate transformation, the art form transcends itself.”