Demetrios Matheou in The Guardian:
"The Amazonas film festival, whose flagship venue is that same opera house in crestfallen Manaus, is a much gentler affair [than Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo], of course, whose guests could not be more mollycoddled. In its way, though, the festival is just as bizarre as Herzog's mythic-mad films. Here we are, 150 film-makers and journalists from all over the world, congregated in a luxurious hotel, fed succulent fruits with impossibly beautiful names – the cupuacu, caju, abacaxi, the pupunha and the jambo – and connected to intravenous drips of caipirinha, looking across the inky-black waters of the aptly named Rio Negro, the river that will take us into the Amazon. Here we are, ostensibly, to discuss the end of the world.
"That is to say, the environment. …
"The introduction of a film festival with such an important theme is welcome. But what that means, in practice, is difficult to grasp here. And the reason for that lies in the Brazilian personality. From red carpets and nightly parties, to a trip into the jungle where we enjoy a spectacular beach carnival and swim with river dolphins, these are unadulterated good times, fuelled by ebullience that no human with a pulse could resist. How it will lead to informed pieces about the environment, however, is a puzzle."
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Among the 2008 Amazonas Film Festival award winners were, in the best narrative feature category, Arash T. Riahi's Ein Augenblick Freiheit / For a Moment, Freedom (photo), about a group of Iranians trying to flee that country, and in the best documentary feature category, Robert Nugent's Tout l'or du monde / End of the Rainbow, which focuses on the consequences of the arrival of industrialized gold-mining in Guinea.
Penélope Cruz, Kristin Scott Thomas, Clint Eastwood at the Santa Barbara Film Festival 2009
MARY AND MAX to Open Sundance 2009
Sundance, Prop. 8, and Boycotts
Danny Boyle, GOMORRAH, WALTZ WITH BASHIR: AFI FEST 2008
THE WRESTLER, EVERLASTING MOMENTS, LA RABIA: AFI FEST 2008
Tilda Swinton, Juliette Binoche, Bill Plympton: AFI FEST 2008
THE DESERT WITHIN, TWO-LEGGED HORSE, Documentary Shorts: AFI FEST 2008
ACHILLES AND THE TORTOISE, THE BROTHERS BLOOM: AFI FEST 2008
POUNDCAKE, WITCHHUNT, KASSIM THE DREAM, OF ALL THE THINGS: AFI FEST 2008
THE BAADER MEINHOF COMPLEX, JOHNNY MAD DOG: bfi London Film Festival 2008