“Desert of Namibia,” about a caustic 21-year-old Japanese wanderer, embodies its protagonist’s listlessness to a fault. Director Yôko Yamanaka was still a teenager when she made her debut feature “Amiko” in 2017, a sharply funny high school film with the jagged, quick-cut energy of a YouTube travel vlog. It marked her as a Gen Z voice to watch. “Desert of Namibia” similarly follows a young woman trying to find herself, but it swings stylistically in the opposite direction, holding and zooming for hilariously, sometimes painfully long. Your mileage may vary, as the film has a tendency to meander off course, but that is exactly its intention.
Actress Yuumi Kawai is immediately magnetic as Kana, a young Tokyo woman hinted to have roots in a different city or country, but the film is often opaque about important details. While shot with straightforward clarity, its narrative, like its protagonist’s mood, feels enveloped by fog.
Actress Yuumi Kawai is immediately magnetic as Kana, a young Tokyo woman hinted to have roots in a different city or country, but the film is often opaque about important details. While shot with straightforward clarity, its narrative, like its protagonist’s mood, feels enveloped by fog.
- 5/27/2024
- by Siddhant Adlakha
- Variety Film + TV
Mohammad Rasoulof’s ‘The Seed of the Sacred Fig’ Wins Fipresci Award at Cannes: ‘A Courageous Story’
Mohammad Rasoulof’s “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” won the Fipresci award at Cannes.
The jury of the International Federation of Film Critics called it “a courageous story set in modern-day Iran that deals with the conflict between tradition and progress, depicted in a very powerful and imaginative way.”
Following a rapturous screening and 2024 record 12-minute standing ovation, the film became a Palme d’Or frontrunner, reported Variety.
“The only reason I left Iran – and that was what made me take that decision – was to go on telling the stories of my land. That was really my only motivation.”
“I need to go on telling stories, creating stories. However, this does not mean that I have left the narratives of Iran. Iran is still inside me, and I still can go on telling Iranian stories and conveying them to the rest of the world,” Rasoulof told Variety’s Nick Vivarelli two days ago.
The jury of the International Federation of Film Critics called it “a courageous story set in modern-day Iran that deals with the conflict between tradition and progress, depicted in a very powerful and imaginative way.”
Following a rapturous screening and 2024 record 12-minute standing ovation, the film became a Palme d’Or frontrunner, reported Variety.
“The only reason I left Iran – and that was what made me take that decision – was to go on telling the stories of my land. That was really my only motivation.”
“I need to go on telling stories, creating stories. However, this does not mean that I have left the narratives of Iran. Iran is still inside me, and I still can go on telling Iranian stories and conveying them to the rest of the world,” Rasoulof told Variety’s Nick Vivarelli two days ago.
- 5/25/2024
- by Marta Balaga
- Variety Film + TV
IndieWire has published its Cannes 2024 Cinematography Survey. We analyzed the data to explore (again and again) that the nine-year-old camera, Arri Alexa Mini, is the most popular camera among Cannes filmmakers. Furthermore, interestingly, in its first appearance on the Cannes Cinematography Chart and jumped straight to second place, is the Arri 35.
The main cameras of Cannes 2024 are the Arri Alexa Mini and the 35. Cannes 2024 cinematography
The 77th annual Cannes Film Festival is taking place from 14 to 25 May 2024. IndieWire has reached out to the filmmakers behind 59 films screened in various categories in the festival. The DPs elaborated on the tools they utilized to tell their stories. Read the entire survey here.
Official poster of the 77th Cannes Film Festival featuring a still image from the movie Rhapsody in August by Akira Kurosawa (1991)
As the tradition calls, we took the data and filtered it to the cameras used, to explore tendency. Based on the info,...
The main cameras of Cannes 2024 are the Arri Alexa Mini and the 35. Cannes 2024 cinematography
The 77th annual Cannes Film Festival is taking place from 14 to 25 May 2024. IndieWire has reached out to the filmmakers behind 59 films screened in various categories in the festival. The DPs elaborated on the tools they utilized to tell their stories. Read the entire survey here.
Official poster of the 77th Cannes Film Festival featuring a still image from the movie Rhapsody in August by Akira Kurosawa (1991)
As the tradition calls, we took the data and filtered it to the cameras used, to explore tendency. Based on the info,...
- 5/21/2024
- by Yossy Mendelovich
- YMCinema
Mitsuhiro Mihara’s Takano Tofu won two awards including the top Golden Mulberry prize at the closing of Far East Film Festival (Feff) in Udine, Italy, where the honours were dominated by titles from Japan and South Korea.
The family drama centres on a father and daughter who run a tofu store, and stars Tatsuya Fuji and Kumiko Aso. It received its European premiere at Feff, where director Mihara accepted the award, decided by audience votes, on Thursday (May 2).
The film also won the Purple Mulberry Award, selected users of Italian film fan platform MYmovies. The online component of Feff,...
The family drama centres on a father and daughter who run a tofu store, and stars Tatsuya Fuji and Kumiko Aso. It received its European premiere at Feff, where director Mihara accepted the award, decided by audience votes, on Thursday (May 2).
The film also won the Purple Mulberry Award, selected users of Italian film fan platform MYmovies. The online component of Feff,...
- 5/3/2024
- ScreenDaily
“Takano Tofu” claimed double honors on the closing night of the Far East Film Festival in Udine, Italy. It won the Golden Mulberry audience award and the MyMovies Purple Mulberry award.
Directed by Mihara Mitsuhiro, “Takano Tofu” is a melodrama about an elderly tofu-making craftsman, who is stuck in his ways but is also experimental and who is kindly, but whose stubbornness brings suffering on those around him. Udine’s Japan selector, Mark Schilling compared the work to that of master director Ozu Yasujiro.
The prizes were handed out in the early hours of Friday after a marathon day of celebratory activity that started with Chinese director Zhang Yimou on hand for a screening of his “Raise the Red Lantern,” continued with a generous-spirited masterclass and in the evening continued with the handover of Zhang’s lifetime achievement award. Two more films – Zhang’s “To Live” and the premiere of...
Directed by Mihara Mitsuhiro, “Takano Tofu” is a melodrama about an elderly tofu-making craftsman, who is stuck in his ways but is also experimental and who is kindly, but whose stubbornness brings suffering on those around him. Udine’s Japan selector, Mark Schilling compared the work to that of master director Ozu Yasujiro.
The prizes were handed out in the early hours of Friday after a marathon day of celebratory activity that started with Chinese director Zhang Yimou on hand for a screening of his “Raise the Red Lantern,” continued with a generous-spirited masterclass and in the evening continued with the handover of Zhang’s lifetime achievement award. Two more films – Zhang’s “To Live” and the premiere of...
- 5/3/2024
- by Patrick Frater
- Variety Film + TV
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