International Cinema

Muslim father vs European son road movie has topped the Mar del Plata Film Festival, while Emmanuelle Devos and Laura Linney shared Best Actress honors.

Bruno Ganz Is an out-of-control Adolf Hitler and Corinna Harfouch is a coolly deranged Magda Goebbels in Oliver Hirschbiegel’s convoluted drama Downfall.

Movie festival news from around the world cover big-screen events from New York’s Tribeca to the century’s ‘biggest’ French cinema retrospective in Beijing.

A Bollywood ‘priest sex movie’ - about the affair between a clergyman (Shiney Ahuja) and a much younger woman - has infuriated Indian Catholic radicals.

The controversy surrounding the Meera Nazar kiss has the Pakistani actress vs. that country’s Ministry of Culture. Ashmit Patel is her Bollywood costar.

A Jacques Tati-inspired animated feature has been named the Genie Awards’ Best Film - its only win. Roy Dupuis and Pascale Bussières topped the acting categories.

Gianni Amelio’s acclaimed father-son drama was the Italian film journalists’ top Nastri d’Argento winner. Pedro Almodóvar and veteran Mario Monicelli were also honored.

A Carmen-inspired South African ‘dance movie,’ German anti-Nazi fighters and a Taiwanese watermelon sex tale are Berlin’s top Golden Bear winners.

An ASC first: The Best Cinematography Award has gone to a French-language World War I drama that unexpectedly beat big-name Hollywood product.

The British Academy Awards’ Oscar-focused new submission deadline rules have had unintended and ironically counterproductive consequences.

Mean Girls quotes have earned Tina Fey an unexpected Writers Guild Awards nomination, while animated + non-English-language movies again bypassed.

Darrell Roodt’s Oscar-nominated Zululand-set AIDS drama Yesterday is a must-see partly thanks to a sensational central performance by Leleti Khumalo.

Delaware’s Rehoboth Beach Film Society has had to fight (anti-gay?) puritanism, as a complaint about big-screen ‘explicit sex’ has led to a police investigation.

Producer Samuel Goldwyn Jr has publicly derided the Academy Awards’ arcane Best Foreign Language Film rules that keep prestigious work out of the running.

Set to open the Berlin Film Festival, Régis Wargnier’s ‘missing link movie’ starring Kristin Scott Thomas and Joseph Fiennes focuses on ‘science-based’ racism.

A superb Don Cheadle stars as Kigali hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina in Terry George’s absurdly ‘uplifting’ genocide drama Hotel Rwanda.

French film producer René Cleitman’s prestigious credits include Cyrano de Bergerac and several Prix César and Oscar-nominated titles.

The Golden Horse Awards’ surprise Best Film is an environmentally conscious Tibet-set ‘Western’ that beat an all-star international hit directed by Wong Kar-Wai.

Personal and political realms are inexorably intertwined in the Chilean coming-of-age drama Machuca, set at the time of that country’s 1973 military coup.

Shades of Hitchcock and Antonioni in the Rio de Janeiro-set Fernanda Montenegro showcase The Other Side of the Street / O Outro Lado da Rua.

In the brazenly ‘offensive’ satire The Perfect Crime, a phenomenal Mónica Cervera is a shy shopgirl who becomes an all-controlling, sexually insatiable Medusa.

Featuring attendees like Omar Sharif and Youssef Chahine, Tunisia’s Arab cinema showcase has bestowed top honors on a socially conscious Moroccan drama.

Award-winning Iraq War-themed drama gets US distribution + veteran Oscar winner has been hospitalized + Antarctica is getting its very first movie theater.

The low-key documentary Calling Hedy Lamarr offers a glimpse into the phone habits of one of Hollywood’s most glamorous stars.