The greatest cinema is often an exciting cocktail for the senses: sound and image in perfect harmony, intricately woven to create an immersive experience that transports us to another world. But what happens when one of those senses is numbed? Silent movies formed the foundations of visual grammar for audiences, and sound was a luxury audiences lived without for many years. Few films have attempted the inverse, plunging the viewer into darkness and relying on sound alone to guide them from one experience to another. Enter Galician filmmaker Lois Patiño's bold and beautiful “Samsara”, a meditative drama set between Laos and Zanzibar that tracks a soul moving between states of existence, and the lives that are touched in big and small ways by this cosmic rite of passage. The term ‘samsara' itself is the cycle of death and reincarnation as seen by Buddhism, and while it may sound familiar...
- 3/9/2024
- by Simon Ramshaw
- AsianMoviePulse
Drawing from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Lois Patiño’s film features a 15-minute light-and-sound interlude in which viewers can join the star on his journey to the afterlife
Lois Patiño had been thinking about phantoms when he came up with the idea for a film that people could watch with their eyes closed. The director’s first two features, 2013’s Coast of Death and 2020’s Red Moon Tide, showed the coastal landscape of his native Galicia in sweeping, spectral glory. Myths, ghosts and omens of death swirl as locals recall stories of shipwrecks, fishermen lost at sea, and rumours of a legendary sea monster.
“I’ve been digging into contemplative cinema,” says Patiño, 40, of his earlier work, “and wanted to go further into this idea of an introspective, meditative experience.” He began thinking about “the idea of the invisible in cinema. Suddenly, this very literal idea of making...
Lois Patiño had been thinking about phantoms when he came up with the idea for a film that people could watch with their eyes closed. The director’s first two features, 2013’s Coast of Death and 2020’s Red Moon Tide, showed the coastal landscape of his native Galicia in sweeping, spectral glory. Myths, ghosts and omens of death swirl as locals recall stories of shipwrecks, fishermen lost at sea, and rumours of a legendary sea monster.
“I’ve been digging into contemplative cinema,” says Patiño, 40, of his earlier work, “and wanted to go further into this idea of an introspective, meditative experience.” He began thinking about “the idea of the invisible in cinema. Suddenly, this very literal idea of making...
- 1/9/2024
- by Rebecca Liu
- The Guardian - Film News
Italy-based sales agent Lights On has acquired world rights for Dreaming & Dying, directed by Singaporean filmmaker Nelson Yeo, ahead of its world premiere in Locarno Film Festival’s Concorso Cineasti del presente.
Co-produced by Singapore’s Momo Film Co and Indonesia’s Kawankawan Media, the film is a drama fantasy about three middle-aged friends reuniting for the first time in many years. Each of them sets out to confess unexpressed feelings but their vacation takes a surprising turn when the undercurrent of their past lives threatens to resurface.
The film marks the feature directorial debut of Yeo and is produced by Tan Si En and Sophia Sim who previously worked with the filmmaker on award-winning shorts Dreaming, Plastic Sonata and Mary, Mary So Contrary.
Tan previously produced Anthony Chen’s Wet Season, which played at the Toronto International Film Festival, and co-produced Arnold Is A Model Student, which premiered in Locarno last year.
Co-produced by Singapore’s Momo Film Co and Indonesia’s Kawankawan Media, the film is a drama fantasy about three middle-aged friends reuniting for the first time in many years. Each of them sets out to confess unexpressed feelings but their vacation takes a surprising turn when the undercurrent of their past lives threatens to resurface.
The film marks the feature directorial debut of Yeo and is produced by Tan Si En and Sophia Sim who previously worked with the filmmaker on award-winning shorts Dreaming, Plastic Sonata and Mary, Mary So Contrary.
Tan previously produced Anthony Chen’s Wet Season, which played at the Toronto International Film Festival, and co-produced Arnold Is A Model Student, which premiered in Locarno last year.
- 7/5/2023
- by Liz Shackleton
- Deadline Film + TV
Spain boasts a bullish presence at the Berlinale. Following, short profiles of its features that have made the festival cut and a selection of top titles being moved at the European Film Market:
20,000 Species Of Bees
Director: Estíbaliz Urresola
Spain’s Berlin competition player is from Urresola, director of Cannes Critics’ Week short “Chords.” Film takes place in a Basque Country village and is a celebration of female sexual diversity. Catalonia’s Inicia Films (“La Maternal”) produces with Gariza Films (“Nora”).
Sales: Luxbox
21 PARAÍSO
Director: Nestor Ruiz Medina
A couple in love grapples with the realities of making a living through OnlyFans. Set in an Andalusian idyll, a rich portrait of the challenges of love. Screened at Seville and Tallinn.
Sales: Begin Again Films.
Anqa
Director: Helin Celik
A Forum doc feature from Vienna-based Kurd Celik, the films tells the harrowing story of three Jordanian women, survivors of male near-fatal violence.
20,000 Species Of Bees
Director: Estíbaliz Urresola
Spain’s Berlin competition player is from Urresola, director of Cannes Critics’ Week short “Chords.” Film takes place in a Basque Country village and is a celebration of female sexual diversity. Catalonia’s Inicia Films (“La Maternal”) produces with Gariza Films (“Nora”).
Sales: Luxbox
21 PARAÍSO
Director: Nestor Ruiz Medina
A couple in love grapples with the realities of making a living through OnlyFans. Set in an Andalusian idyll, a rich portrait of the challenges of love. Screened at Seville and Tallinn.
Sales: Begin Again Films.
Anqa
Director: Helin Celik
A Forum doc feature from Vienna-based Kurd Celik, the films tells the harrowing story of three Jordanian women, survivors of male near-fatal violence.
- 2/17/2023
- by John Hopewell, Douglas Wilson and Pablo Sandoval
- Variety Film + TV
Spanish sales company to handle Spanish director’s third feature.
Spanish sales company Bendita Films has acquired international rights to Lois Patiño’s third feature Samsara, which plays in the Berlinale’s Encounters section
Samsara is a Sanskrit word referring to the cycle of birth, life, death and re-incarnation. Patiño’s film travels from the temples of Laos to the beaches of Zanzibar, accompanying a soul in transit from one body to another.
Patiño’s Red Moon Tide premiered in the Berlinale Forum in 2020 while Coast of Death won the best emerging director prize at Locarno in 2013. His short film...
Spanish sales company Bendita Films has acquired international rights to Lois Patiño’s third feature Samsara, which plays in the Berlinale’s Encounters section
Samsara is a Sanskrit word referring to the cycle of birth, life, death and re-incarnation. Patiño’s film travels from the temples of Laos to the beaches of Zanzibar, accompanying a soul in transit from one body to another.
Patiño’s Red Moon Tide premiered in the Berlinale Forum in 2020 while Coast of Death won the best emerging director prize at Locarno in 2013. His short film...
- 2/7/2023
- by Emilio Mayorga
- ScreenDaily
Executive producer Nuria Landete and Spanish production-distribution company Elamedia are teaming to co-produce the feature debut of Ainhoa Menéndez, “In the Flesh,” a romantic drama with dashes of terror.
The project is being developed at Spain’s Incubator platform, a six-month producer mentorship initiative, which is part of The Screen industry program at the Madrid Film and Audiovisual School (Ecam).
“Flesh” follows Mara, a woman almost in her thirties, working as a stock girl in a supermarket, who grew up in foster homes. Throughout her life all the people she has loved have abandoned her, so to get them to stay with her, she decides to eat them. Mara will have to face her cannibal instincts when she meets Sandra and falls in love with her.
“I think what makes ‘In The Flesh’ original is the treatment of its characters, the terrifying impulse that Mara suffers which is just a...
The project is being developed at Spain’s Incubator platform, a six-month producer mentorship initiative, which is part of The Screen industry program at the Madrid Film and Audiovisual School (Ecam).
“Flesh” follows Mara, a woman almost in her thirties, working as a stock girl in a supermarket, who grew up in foster homes. Throughout her life all the people she has loved have abandoned her, so to get them to stay with her, she decides to eat them. Mara will have to face her cannibal instincts when she meets Sandra and falls in love with her.
“I think what makes ‘In The Flesh’ original is the treatment of its characters, the terrifying impulse that Mara suffers which is just a...
- 9/20/2021
- by Emilio Mayorga
- Variety Film + TV
Mexican distributor Salón De Belleza has picked up Lois Patiño’s second feature, “Red Moon Tide” (“Lúa Vermella”), from the film’s Italy-based sales agent, Lights On.
Lights On’s Flavio Armone said that the company is also in talks with distributors in France, Germany and Colombia for theatrical rights and Mubi for SVOD.
Felipe Lage, the film’s executive producer and the cofounder of new Galician cinema champion Zeitun Films added that he hoped that the Mexican deal would be the first of many.
“Lights On is a young sales agency with which we already collaborated on a short film. As they were planning to move ahead into feature film sales, it was only natural that we worked together again,” he said.
“Needless to say this year has been very complicated, but with Lights On we feel we are in good hands. A distribution deal was secure for México – with more to follow,...
Lights On’s Flavio Armone said that the company is also in talks with distributors in France, Germany and Colombia for theatrical rights and Mubi for SVOD.
Felipe Lage, the film’s executive producer and the cofounder of new Galician cinema champion Zeitun Films added that he hoped that the Mexican deal would be the first of many.
“Lights On is a young sales agency with which we already collaborated on a short film. As they were planning to move ahead into feature film sales, it was only natural that we worked together again,” he said.
“Needless to say this year has been very complicated, but with Lights On we feel we are in good hands. A distribution deal was secure for México – with more to follow,...
- 11/18/2020
- by Ann-Marie Corvin and Emilio Mayorga
- Variety Film + TV
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