Durban–Cologne-based Rushlake Media has acquired world sales rights for “The Sound of Masks,” by Portuguese filmmaker Sara Gouveia, and “In Search,” by Kenyan director Beryl Magoko. The announcement was made Thursday at the Durban Intl. Film Festival, where both documentaries are screening.
Rushlake’s Philipp Hoffmann says the two films will bolster the company’s growing slate of premium African content. “Both ‘In Search’ and ‘The Sound of Masks’ perfectly fit our focus of high quality African films and African stories,” he says. “I’m really proud I can help to bring these outstanding films to the international markets and audiences.”
“In Search” (pictured) is Magoko’s highly personal exploration of female circumcision, a life-threatening ritual undergone by many girls across Africa. Evoking her own experiences as a child in Kenya, where circumcision was considered a rite of passage, she embarks on a journey that simultaneously leads her into the past and the future.
Rushlake’s Philipp Hoffmann says the two films will bolster the company’s growing slate of premium African content. “Both ‘In Search’ and ‘The Sound of Masks’ perfectly fit our focus of high quality African films and African stories,” he says. “I’m really proud I can help to bring these outstanding films to the international markets and audiences.”
“In Search” (pictured) is Magoko’s highly personal exploration of female circumcision, a life-threatening ritual undergone by many girls across Africa. Evoking her own experiences as a child in Kenya, where circumcision was considered a rite of passage, she embarks on a journey that simultaneously leads her into the past and the future.
- 7/18/2019
- by Christopher Vourlias
- Variety Film + TV
Durban–Dudu Nyakama is an aging boxer whose best fighting days are behind him. But for a man whose only glory has come in the ring, a big prize fight offers the one shot at saving his family, dragging him into the criminal underbelly of the gritty township he’s spent his whole life trying to escape.
In “Knuckle City,” by South African director Jahmil X.T. Qubeka, there are only three ways out of a place known as South Africa’s boxing Mecca: through the ring, in a pine box, or in the back of a squad car. For his fourth feature, Qubeka returns to his childhood home of Mdantsane to explore how poverty and toxic masculinity perpetuate the cycle of violence that ensnares so many of its inhabitants. Inspired by classics like “Raging Bull” and “Mean Streets,” “Knuckle City” opens the 40th edition of the Durban Intl. Film Festival on Thursday night.
In “Knuckle City,” by South African director Jahmil X.T. Qubeka, there are only three ways out of a place known as South Africa’s boxing Mecca: through the ring, in a pine box, or in the back of a squad car. For his fourth feature, Qubeka returns to his childhood home of Mdantsane to explore how poverty and toxic masculinity perpetuate the cycle of violence that ensnares so many of its inhabitants. Inspired by classics like “Raging Bull” and “Mean Streets,” “Knuckle City” opens the 40th edition of the Durban Intl. Film Festival on Thursday night.
- 7/18/2019
- by Christopher Vourlias
- Variety Film + TV
A grand, desolate expanse of hessian-rough desert, subject to unforgiving seasonal extremes of heat and ice, and whose scattered residents have mostly learned to live hard and die harder, South Africa’s Great Karoo is a region that really ought to have housed a thousand horse operas by now. It hasn’t, but an ambitious new generation of filmmakers is catching up to its possibilities. That atmospheric backdrop was the best thing last year’s overworked, Oscar-submitted period adventure “Sew the Winter to My Skin” had going for it; leaner, meaner and altogether more exciting is “Flatland,” an exhilarating fusion of contemporary western, policier and girls-gone-wild road movie that kicked off this year’s Berlinale Panorama program with a wallop.
The third feature from distinctively voiced writer-director Jenna Bass — who also co-wrote last year’s Kenyan Cannes headline-grabber “Rafiki” — “Flatland” represents something of a feminist milestone for a national cinema...
The third feature from distinctively voiced writer-director Jenna Bass — who also co-wrote last year’s Kenyan Cannes headline-grabber “Rafiki” — “Flatland” represents something of a feminist milestone for a national cinema...
- 2/14/2019
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
For the second straight year, a record eight African films were submitted to the Academy for consideration, vying for a chance to bring home just the third statue for the continent in the nearly 50 years since Costa-Gavras won for the Algerian-French political thriller “Z.”
This year’s submissions aren’t likely to get the buzz of 2017 hopefuls “Felicité,” which won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize in Berlin for Franco-Senegalese helmer Alain Gomis, or fest darling “The Wound,” by South Africa’s John Trengove. Both were shortlisted for the Oscar but failed to make the final cut.
Related Content Critical Analysis: Prior Nominees Canada and Australia
Even as recent years have showcased a wealth of burgeoning talent in sub-Saharan Africa, moviemaking on the continent remains a challenge, and few countries find the resources to produce Oscar-worthy candidates year after year. Tellingly, it took funding from five countries to power “Felicité...
This year’s submissions aren’t likely to get the buzz of 2017 hopefuls “Felicité,” which won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize in Berlin for Franco-Senegalese helmer Alain Gomis, or fest darling “The Wound,” by South Africa’s John Trengove. Both were shortlisted for the Oscar but failed to make the final cut.
Related Content Critical Analysis: Prior Nominees Canada and Australia
Even as recent years have showcased a wealth of burgeoning talent in sub-Saharan Africa, moviemaking on the continent remains a challenge, and few countries find the resources to produce Oscar-worthy candidates year after year. Tellingly, it took funding from five countries to power “Felicité...
- 11/8/2018
- by Christopher Vourlias
- Variety Film + TV
In his second year at the helm as artistic director of the Africa Intl. Film Festival (Afriff), Newton Aduaka said his goal when curating this year’s edition, which unspools Nov. 11-18 in Lagos, was “to present a rigorously selected program with an international gaze.”
It’s an acknowledgment by the Paris-based filmmaker, who was born in Lagos but left more than 30 years ago, that the inward-looking Nigerian industry stands to benefit from exposure to “a wider international aesthetic of filmmaking.” Said Aduaka, “There has to be room for other kinds of cinema, other kinds of voices.”
Eight years after Afriff’s founding, the festival will present more than 140 features, shorts, documentaries and animated films from across Africa and the rest of the world. For Nigerian filmmakers, said Aduaka, the selection presents an opportunity to “shift the gaze” away from cinema as a means of popular entertainment – as evidenced by...
It’s an acknowledgment by the Paris-based filmmaker, who was born in Lagos but left more than 30 years ago, that the inward-looking Nigerian industry stands to benefit from exposure to “a wider international aesthetic of filmmaking.” Said Aduaka, “There has to be room for other kinds of cinema, other kinds of voices.”
Eight years after Afriff’s founding, the festival will present more than 140 features, shorts, documentaries and animated films from across Africa and the rest of the world. For Nigerian filmmakers, said Aduaka, the selection presents an opportunity to “shift the gaze” away from cinema as a means of popular entertainment – as evidenced by...
- 11/8/2018
- by Christopher Vourlias
- Variety Film + TV
When the organizers of the Ion Intl. Film Festival decided to bring their traveling event to Port Harcourt, Nigeria, nearly a decade ago, they called on Chioma Ude – then managing director of a local logistics company – to help it take flight. It didn’t matter that a fest founded in Hollywood was unspooling in the heart of the country’s restive Niger Delta region. Things went smoothly, and a year later, the state governor called Ude with a simple proposition: why not do the same thing for Nigeria?
“I’m a film lover…[and] I always thought I could do something for the industry,” Ude told Variety ahead of the latest edition of the Africa Intl. Film Festival (Afriff), the pan-African film showcase that was launched in Port Harcourt in 2010. “I felt I could help in that respect.”
Eight years later, as Nigeria’s dynamic entertainment industry continues to grow, Afriff...
“I’m a film lover…[and] I always thought I could do something for the industry,” Ude told Variety ahead of the latest edition of the Africa Intl. Film Festival (Afriff), the pan-African film showcase that was launched in Port Harcourt in 2010. “I felt I could help in that respect.”
Eight years later, as Nigeria’s dynamic entertainment industry continues to grow, Afriff...
- 11/8/2018
- by Christopher Vourlias
- Variety Film + TV
The admirable ambition to frame the film with all the iconoclastic, outlaw verve of its rogue antihero is both the making and the unmaking of “Sew the Winter to my Skin,” the proto-Western sophomore feature from rising South African powerhouse Jahmil X.T. Qubeka. As shown in his well-received noir-indebted debut “Of Good Report,” Qubeka has filmmaking energy to burn, but this time it sparks and flares over much broadened horizons — often literally, in the form of returning Dp Jonathan Kovel’s striking landscape photography, featuring vistas so huge they have visibly different weather on one side than the other.
But the narrative enlargement is less successful: While the project of infusing a local legend with grandly cinematic, mythic status is a worthy one, the film can’t quite get out of its own way, and the result is incoherently at odds with itself, with two outsized personalities — the hero John...
But the narrative enlargement is less successful: While the project of infusing a local legend with grandly cinematic, mythic status is a worthy one, the film can’t quite get out of its own way, and the result is incoherently at odds with itself, with two outsized personalities — the hero John...
- 10/6/2018
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
Screen’s regularly updated list of foreign language Oscar submissions.
Nominations for the 91st Academy Awards are not until Tuesday January 22, but the first submissions for best foreign-language film are now being announced.
Last year saw a record 92 submissions for the award, which were narrowed down to a shortlist of nine. This was cut to five nominees, with Sebastián Lelio’s transgender drama A Fantastic Woman ultimately taking home the gold statue.
Screen’s interview with Mark Johnson, chair of the Academy’s foreign-language film committee, explains the shortlisting process from submission to voting.
Submitted films must be released theatrically...
Nominations for the 91st Academy Awards are not until Tuesday January 22, but the first submissions for best foreign-language film are now being announced.
Last year saw a record 92 submissions for the award, which were narrowed down to a shortlist of nine. This was cut to five nominees, with Sebastián Lelio’s transgender drama A Fantastic Woman ultimately taking home the gold statue.
Screen’s interview with Mark Johnson, chair of the Academy’s foreign-language film committee, explains the shortlisting process from submission to voting.
Submitted films must be released theatrically...
- 9/24/2018
- by Ben Dalton
- ScreenDaily
Screen’s regularly updated list of foreign language Oscar submissions.
Nominations for the 91st Academy Awards are not until Tuesday January 22, but the first submissions for best foreign-language film are now being announced.
Last year saw a record 92 submissions for the award, which were narrowed down to a shortlist of nine. This was cut to five nominees, with Sebastián Lelio’s transgender drama A Fantastic Woman ultimately taking home the gold statue.
Screen’s interview with Mark Johnson, chair of the Academy’s foreign-language film committee, explains the shortlisting process from submission to voting.
Submitted films must be released theatrically...
Nominations for the 91st Academy Awards are not until Tuesday January 22, but the first submissions for best foreign-language film are now being announced.
Last year saw a record 92 submissions for the award, which were narrowed down to a shortlist of nine. This was cut to five nominees, with Sebastián Lelio’s transgender drama A Fantastic Woman ultimately taking home the gold statue.
Screen’s interview with Mark Johnson, chair of the Academy’s foreign-language film committee, explains the shortlisting process from submission to voting.
Submitted films must be released theatrically...
- 9/24/2018
- by Ben Dalton
- ScreenDaily
Jahmil X.T. Qubeka’s “Sew the Winter to My Skin,” about a real mid-century outlaw and his Robin Hood-style exploits, is South Africa’s submission for the foreign-language Oscar race. The movie, which world premiered in the Toronto Intl. Film Festival, was selected by the National Film & Video Foundation (Nfvf) on Friday.
Written and directed by Qubeka, “Winter” is an adventure epic inspired by the story of John Kepe, who eluded authorities in South Africa’s rugged Boschberg Mountains for 12 years as he stole from wealthy white landowners and gave to the black poor. His exploits made him a folk hero to his own people and a public enemy in the eyes of the apartheid government.
The selection committee lauded what it described as “an unmistakable, bold South African voice that tackles historical and contemporary issues, in both South Africa and the world.” Describing Qubeka’s cinematic technique as “visionary and bold,...
Written and directed by Qubeka, “Winter” is an adventure epic inspired by the story of John Kepe, who eluded authorities in South Africa’s rugged Boschberg Mountains for 12 years as he stole from wealthy white landowners and gave to the black poor. His exploits made him a folk hero to his own people and a public enemy in the eyes of the apartheid government.
The selection committee lauded what it described as “an unmistakable, bold South African voice that tackles historical and contemporary issues, in both South Africa and the world.” Describing Qubeka’s cinematic technique as “visionary and bold,...
- 9/21/2018
- by Christopher Vourlias
- Variety Film + TV
A strong showcase of German cinema was on offer at the Toronto Film Festival with a slew of films tackling such timely issues as sexual violence, the plight of refugees, the end of the Soviet Union and Germany’s recent turbulent history.
This year’s selections included works from such prominent names as Werner Herzog, Margarethe von Trotta, Christian Petzold, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck and Sven Taddicken.
In Herzog and André Singer’s doc “Meeting Gorbachev,” the prolific filmmakers offer a portrait of Mikhail Gorbachev, the last president of the Soviet Union, and his lasting impact on world politics.
In “Searching for Ingmar Bergman,” which also unspools in the Tiff Docs sidebar, von Trotta explores the Swedish director’s cinematic legacy.
Von Donnersmarck, who won the foreign-language film Oscar for 2006’s “The Lives of Others,” revisits East Germany in “Never Look Away,” which follows the life of an artist struggling...
This year’s selections included works from such prominent names as Werner Herzog, Margarethe von Trotta, Christian Petzold, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck and Sven Taddicken.
In Herzog and André Singer’s doc “Meeting Gorbachev,” the prolific filmmakers offer a portrait of Mikhail Gorbachev, the last president of the Soviet Union, and his lasting impact on world politics.
In “Searching for Ingmar Bergman,” which also unspools in the Tiff Docs sidebar, von Trotta explores the Swedish director’s cinematic legacy.
Von Donnersmarck, who won the foreign-language film Oscar for 2006’s “The Lives of Others,” revisits East Germany in “Never Look Away,” which follows the life of an artist struggling...
- 9/17/2018
- by Ed Meza
- Variety Film + TV
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