Mad Celebrity — the talent management subsidiary of the pan-Arab film and TV company Mad Solutions — has signed Tunisian actor and writer Majd Mastoura, French Lebanese actor Isabelle Zighondi, and Saudi actor, producer and director Amawri Ezayah to the roster of its Mad Rising Celebrity unit, and visual artist, producer and Dop Mostafa El Kashef, who will be joining Mad Crew Celebrity.
Mastoura is best known for his work on Mohamed Ben Attia’s “Hedi” — for which he received a Silver Bear for best actor from the Berlin Film Festival, making him the first-ever Arab actor to receive the award — and Léonor Serraille’s “Mother and Son,” which world premiered in Competition at the Cannes Film Festival.
His most recent project is Ben Attia’s surreal Tunisian drama feature “Behind the Mountains,” which world premiered in the Horizons Section of this year’s Venice Film Festival and is holding its Arab...
Mastoura is best known for his work on Mohamed Ben Attia’s “Hedi” — for which he received a Silver Bear for best actor from the Berlin Film Festival, making him the first-ever Arab actor to receive the award — and Léonor Serraille’s “Mother and Son,” which world premiered in Competition at the Cannes Film Festival.
His most recent project is Ben Attia’s surreal Tunisian drama feature “Behind the Mountains,” which world premiered in the Horizons Section of this year’s Venice Film Festival and is holding its Arab...
- 12/5/2023
- by Leo Barraclough
- Variety Film + TV
French film critic and historian Michel Ciment, the long-time publishing director of film magazine Positif, has died Monday, French media reported. He was 85.
Ciment first started writing for the Lyon-based magazine in 1963, when he contributed a piece about the cinema of Orson Welles.
The magazine was launched in 1952 shortly after Les Cahiers du Cinéma by Bernard Chardère, who also died this year.
In a talk at Paris’s Forum Des Images in 2022, marking Positif’s 70th anniversary, Ciment recounted how he started reading the magazine in the 1950s as a teenager, while hanging around the Le Minotaure bookshop in the Paris quarter of Saint-Germain-des-Près.
“It was an amazing place where you’d bump into other cinephiles like Jean-Claude Romer, who went on to create [the cinema magazine] Midi Minuit Fantastique,” recounted Ciment.
“There were a lot of people from Les Cahiers and Positif… You couldn’t find the cinema revues in kiosks then.
Ciment first started writing for the Lyon-based magazine in 1963, when he contributed a piece about the cinema of Orson Welles.
The magazine was launched in 1952 shortly after Les Cahiers du Cinéma by Bernard Chardère, who also died this year.
In a talk at Paris’s Forum Des Images in 2022, marking Positif’s 70th anniversary, Ciment recounted how he started reading the magazine in the 1950s as a teenager, while hanging around the Le Minotaure bookshop in the Paris quarter of Saint-Germain-des-Près.
“It was an amazing place where you’d bump into other cinephiles like Jean-Claude Romer, who went on to create [the cinema magazine] Midi Minuit Fantastique,” recounted Ciment.
“There were a lot of people from Les Cahiers and Positif… You couldn’t find the cinema revues in kiosks then.
- 11/13/2023
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- Deadline Film + TV
Duo are behind Dominik Moll’s ’The Night of the 12th’
Haut et Court’s Carole Scotta and Barbara Letellier were named best producers of the year at the 16th annual edition of France’s Academy of Film Arts & Sciences’ Daniel Toscan du Plantier Prize held on Monday night (February 14) in Paris.
The duo are notably behind Dominik Moll’s investigative drama The Night Of The 12th, which has been sweeping awards season in France, winning the Best Film Lumiere Award and nominated for 10 César awards.
A swanky gala dinner celebrated the winning pair along with the finalists for the prize,...
Haut et Court’s Carole Scotta and Barbara Letellier were named best producers of the year at the 16th annual edition of France’s Academy of Film Arts & Sciences’ Daniel Toscan du Plantier Prize held on Monday night (February 14) in Paris.
The duo are notably behind Dominik Moll’s investigative drama The Night Of The 12th, which has been sweeping awards season in France, winning the Best Film Lumiere Award and nominated for 10 César awards.
A swanky gala dinner celebrated the winning pair along with the finalists for the prize,...
- 2/14/2023
- by Rebecca Leffler
- ScreenDaily
Though it feels like the phrase “generational trauma” is everywhere these days, it’s only in the past decade that growing mental health awareness has made such terms ubiquitous. Though scientists have long studied the ways inherited trauma can actually alter our DNA, only recently have epigenetics filtered into everyday usage. But artists do not need science to tell them what they feel in their bones, and film is a powerful tool to illustrate the ephemeral memories one stores in the body.
Set between present-day Montreal and 1980s Beirut, “Memory Box” actualizes a treasure trove of unprocessed trauma in the form of a mysterious box of letters, scrapbooks, and tapes. When a curious daughter discovers a vast archive of her mother’s distant past, she begins to understand the difficult woman who raised her in new ways. As cassette recordings fade into voice memos, the work of filmmakers Joana Hadjithomas...
Set between present-day Montreal and 1980s Beirut, “Memory Box” actualizes a treasure trove of unprocessed trauma in the form of a mysterious box of letters, scrapbooks, and tapes. When a curious daughter discovers a vast archive of her mother’s distant past, she begins to understand the difficult woman who raised her in new ways. As cassette recordings fade into voice memos, the work of filmmakers Joana Hadjithomas...
- 8/5/2022
- by Jude Dry
- Indiewire
Sony blockbuster is seventh-highest-grossing film of all time in the territory.
Rank Film (Distributor) Three-day gross (Jan 21-23) Total gross to date Week 1 Spider-Man: No Way Home (Sony) £2.3m £87.4m 6 2 Belfast (Universal) £2.2m £2.3m 1 3 Scream (Paramount) £1.3m £4.8m 2 4 Nightmare Alley (Disney) £549,831 £549,831 1 5 The King’s Man (Disney) £398,508 £7.1m 4
Gbp to Usd conversion rate: 1.35
Spider-Man: No Way Home held off the challenge of Belfast to top this UK-Ireland box office for a sixth consecutive weekend.
The Sony blockbuster grossed £2.3m from Friday to Sunday, a drop of just 27% on its previous session. It now has £87.4m in the territory – the seventh highest-grossing film of all time,...
Rank Film (Distributor) Three-day gross (Jan 21-23) Total gross to date Week 1 Spider-Man: No Way Home (Sony) £2.3m £87.4m 6 2 Belfast (Universal) £2.2m £2.3m 1 3 Scream (Paramount) £1.3m £4.8m 2 4 Nightmare Alley (Disney) £549,831 £549,831 1 5 The King’s Man (Disney) £398,508 £7.1m 4
Gbp to Usd conversion rate: 1.35
Spider-Man: No Way Home held off the challenge of Belfast to top this UK-Ireland box office for a sixth consecutive weekend.
The Sony blockbuster grossed £2.3m from Friday to Sunday, a drop of just 27% on its previous session. It now has £87.4m in the territory – the seventh highest-grossing film of all time,...
- 1/24/2022
- by Ben Dalton
- ScreenDaily
Guillermo del Toro’s ‘Nightmare Alley’, Sony’s ‘A Journal For Jordan’ also new.
Kenneth Branagh’s awards season contender Belfast is playing in all 30 open cinemas in Northern Ireland this weekend, as one of the leading new titles at the UK-Ireland box office.
Released by Universal Pictures, Belfast is opening in a huge 704 sites across the UK and Ireland – the eighth-widest release of all time in the full territory.
Shot in autumn 2020 in a gap between Covid-19 lockdowns, Belfast is inspired by Branagh’s childhood, and tells the story of a young boy and his working-class family in the tumultuous late 1960s.
Kenneth Branagh’s awards season contender Belfast is playing in all 30 open cinemas in Northern Ireland this weekend, as one of the leading new titles at the UK-Ireland box office.
Released by Universal Pictures, Belfast is opening in a huge 704 sites across the UK and Ireland – the eighth-widest release of all time in the full territory.
Shot in autumn 2020 in a gap between Covid-19 lockdowns, Belfast is inspired by Branagh’s childhood, and tells the story of a young boy and his working-class family in the tumultuous late 1960s.
- 1/21/2022
- by Ben Dalton
- ScreenDaily
Sony’s “Spider-Man: No Way Home” spent a fifth consecutive weekend at the top of the U.K. and Ireland box office, collecting £3.2 million ($4.3 million), according to numbers provided by Comscore.
With a mighty total of £84.1 million ($114.2 million), “Spider-Man” has swung past “Titanic” (£80.2 million) and “Star Wars: The Last Jedi (£82.7) to claim seventh position in the all time U.K. and Ireland box office chart and now has its sights set on the sixth position held by “Avengers: Endgame” (£88.7 million).
Paramount’s horror reboot “Scream” debuted in second place with a strong £2.4 million. In its third weekend, Disney prequel “The King’s Man” collected £627,445 in third place and now has a total of £6.4 million.
In its sixth weekend, eOne’s “Clifford The Big Red Dog” took £525,107 in fourth place and now has £7.9 million.
Rounding off the top five was Universal’s “Licorice Pizza” with £393,988 and has now collected £1.5 million.
Over the...
With a mighty total of £84.1 million ($114.2 million), “Spider-Man” has swung past “Titanic” (£80.2 million) and “Star Wars: The Last Jedi (£82.7) to claim seventh position in the all time U.K. and Ireland box office chart and now has its sights set on the sixth position held by “Avengers: Endgame” (£88.7 million).
Paramount’s horror reboot “Scream” debuted in second place with a strong £2.4 million. In its third weekend, Disney prequel “The King’s Man” collected £627,445 in third place and now has a total of £6.4 million.
In its sixth weekend, eOne’s “Clifford The Big Red Dog” took £525,107 in fourth place and now has £7.9 million.
Rounding off the top five was Universal’s “Licorice Pizza” with £393,988 and has now collected £1.5 million.
Over the...
- 1/18/2022
- by Naman Ramachandran
- Variety Film + TV
Mexican director Joaquin del Paso’s coming-of-age drama “The Hole in the Fence,” set in an all-male religious camp in rural Mexico, scored the Cairo Film Festival’s top prize, the Golden Pyramid, on Sunday capping a vibrant 43rd edition of the preeminent Arab event, which was held in person despite the impending threat of the coronavirus Omicron variant.
Though there were some last minute cancellations, most international attendees made the trek to Cairo undeterred, including jury president Emir Kusturica, U.S. producer Lawrence Bender and Cannes topper Thierry Fremaux – dubbed the “King of the Croisette” by the master of ceremonies. The latter two were honored with lifetime achievement awards during the glitzy closing ceremony in Cairo’s opera house.
“Hole in the Fence,” which world premiered in Venice, is Del Paso’s second work after “Panamerican Machinery,” which had made a splash after launching from Berlin in 2016. “Hole” explores...
Though there were some last minute cancellations, most international attendees made the trek to Cairo undeterred, including jury president Emir Kusturica, U.S. producer Lawrence Bender and Cannes topper Thierry Fremaux – dubbed the “King of the Croisette” by the master of ceremonies. The latter two were honored with lifetime achievement awards during the glitzy closing ceremony in Cairo’s opera house.
“Hole in the Fence,” which world premiered in Venice, is Del Paso’s second work after “Panamerican Machinery,” which had made a splash after launching from Berlin in 2016. “Hole” explores...
- 12/6/2021
- by Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
The 39th edition of Torino Film Festival, Italy’s preeminent event for young directors and indie cinema, kicks off Friday with the international premiere of “Sing 2.” It is the country’s first festival held in venues with 100% seating capacity since Covid-19 struck, and it will also be the first in-person edition assembled by artistic director Stefano Francia di Celle, who debuted last year with an online event, due to the pandemic. Di Celle is now rebooting Torino for the present-day digital age.
The festival, which rose to international prominence under current Venice topper Alberto Barbera, has always been geared toward giving visibility to promising newcomers. These have included Luca Guadagnino, Michelangelo Frammartino (“Il Buco”) and Pietro Marcello (“Martin Eden”), who got a crucial early boost from their launches there. Di Celle’s vision going forward, he told Variety, is rooted in what he calls its “militant” tradition, but he...
The festival, which rose to international prominence under current Venice topper Alberto Barbera, has always been geared toward giving visibility to promising newcomers. These have included Luca Guadagnino, Michelangelo Frammartino (“Il Buco”) and Pietro Marcello (“Martin Eden”), who got a crucial early boost from their launches there. Di Celle’s vision going forward, he told Variety, is rooted in what he calls its “militant” tradition, but he...
- 11/24/2021
- by Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
The international premiere of animated musical comedy “Sing 2” will open the upcoming Torino Film Festival, Italy’s preeminent event for young directors and indie fare, which will be honoring Monica Bellucci with a lifetime achievement award.
Director Garth Jennings will be on hand in Torino for the overseas festival bow of his sequel to 2016’s “Sing,” which follows a koala named Buster Moon, voiced by Matthew McConaughey, as he and his cast of performing animals prepare for their biggest concert yet in Redshore City, and must convince a reclusive rockstar (Bono) to join them.
Bellucci, besides coming to be celebrated and to hold a masterclass, will also be attending the fest to launch her latest film “The Girl in the Fountain,” directed by Italy’s Antongiulio Panizzi, in which she plays the iconic Anita Ekberg, a role for which she died her hair blonde.
Charlotte Gainsbourg will also be...
Director Garth Jennings will be on hand in Torino for the overseas festival bow of his sequel to 2016’s “Sing,” which follows a koala named Buster Moon, voiced by Matthew McConaughey, as he and his cast of performing animals prepare for their biggest concert yet in Redshore City, and must convince a reclusive rockstar (Bono) to join them.
Bellucci, besides coming to be celebrated and to hold a masterclass, will also be attending the fest to launch her latest film “The Girl in the Fountain,” directed by Italy’s Antongiulio Panizzi, in which she plays the iconic Anita Ekberg, a role for which she died her hair blonde.
Charlotte Gainsbourg will also be...
- 11/9/2021
- by Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
Sydney Film Festival has revealed the first 22 titles on its line-up for this year, which will see the festival return to cinemas around the city after 2020’s virtual iteration.
Leading the pack are a contingent of local docos including Philippa Bateman’s Wash My Soul in the River’s Flow; Amanda Blue’s Step into Paradise and Eddie Martin’s The Kids, recently selected for Tribeca.
Sff will also boast the Nsw premiere of Kiwi film The Justice of Bunny King, Gaysorn Thavat’s debut feature led by Essie Davis and Thomasin McKenzie; and Nz-Canadian co-production, NIght Raiders, directed by Danis Goulet and executive produced by Taika Waititi.
Festival director Nashen Moodley is excited to return to an in-person event come August, noting the festival already had a “incredible” response to its summer season in January at the State Theatre, when it screened High Ground, Firestarter, Girls Can’t Surf, Minari and Another Round.
Leading the pack are a contingent of local docos including Philippa Bateman’s Wash My Soul in the River’s Flow; Amanda Blue’s Step into Paradise and Eddie Martin’s The Kids, recently selected for Tribeca.
Sff will also boast the Nsw premiere of Kiwi film The Justice of Bunny King, Gaysorn Thavat’s debut feature led by Essie Davis and Thomasin McKenzie; and Nz-Canadian co-production, NIght Raiders, directed by Danis Goulet and executive produced by Taika Waititi.
Festival director Nashen Moodley is excited to return to an in-person event come August, noting the festival already had a “incredible” response to its summer season in January at the State Theatre, when it screened High Ground, Firestarter, Girls Can’t Surf, Minari and Another Round.
- 6/8/2021
- by Jackie Keast
- IF.com.au
The distributor has also picked up a SXSW drama.
Eve Gabereau’s Modern Films has acquired UK and Ireland rights to three dramas set to screen at the Berlinale’s Summer Special and a title first seen at SXSW.
The London-based firm has picked up Memory Box, directed by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, from The Playtime Group; Anna Zohra Berrached’s Copilot from The Match Factory; and Jacqueline Lentzou’s Moon, 66 Questions from Luxbox
Modern Films has also added Leah Purcell’s The Drover’s Wife to its release slate, following its debut at SXSW, in a deal with Memento International.
Eve Gabereau’s Modern Films has acquired UK and Ireland rights to three dramas set to screen at the Berlinale’s Summer Special and a title first seen at SXSW.
The London-based firm has picked up Memory Box, directed by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, from The Playtime Group; Anna Zohra Berrached’s Copilot from The Match Factory; and Jacqueline Lentzou’s Moon, 66 Questions from Luxbox
Modern Films has also added Leah Purcell’s The Drover’s Wife to its release slate, following its debut at SXSW, in a deal with Memento International.
- 6/4/2021
- by Michael Rosser
- ScreenDaily
Some movies spoof a sub-genre on their own. There is the term “Big Chill clone” that brings together the films about a group of school friends that went their separate ways gathering again to mourn the untimely death of one of their buddies and to take a walk down the memory lane. The Berlinale competition title “Memory Box” might eventually end up in that familiar territory, but the road to it is quite particular and with a number of side topics woven into the film’s fabric.
There are multiple reasons for it, one of them being the focus on the three generations of women of a Quebecois family of Lebanese immigrants, the second being the background of the Lebanese Civil War and the traumas it left, while the third one is the fact that this co-operation by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige is based on the material from Hadjithomas’ personal collection of memories.
There are multiple reasons for it, one of them being the focus on the three generations of women of a Quebecois family of Lebanese immigrants, the second being the background of the Lebanese Civil War and the traumas it left, while the third one is the fact that this co-operation by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige is based on the material from Hadjithomas’ personal collection of memories.
- 3/18/2021
- by Marko Stojiljković
- AsianMoviePulse
With a two-part structure featuring an online press and industry component that’s just concluded, followed by physical screenings this summer, the Berlin International Film Festival is unveiling a selection of the year’s finest films. Along with our extensive coverage of the festival (with a few reviews still to come), we’ve asked our Berlinale contributors to share their personal favorites. Check out their lists below, with links to coverage where available.
Ed Frankl
Memory Box
1. Petite Maman (Céline Sciamma)
2. Memory Box (Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige)
3. Brother’s Keeper (Ferit Karahan)
4. Ballad of a White Cow (Behtash Sanaeeha & Maryam Moghaddam)
5. Ninjababy (Yngvild Sve Flikke)
Honorable Mentions: The Fam, Language Lessons, Natural Light, Taste, and Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy.
Leonardo Goi
Taste
1. Taste (Lê Bảo)
2. Petite Maman (Céline Sciamma)
3. The Scary of Sixty-First (Dasha Nekrasova)
4. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Ryûsuke Hamaguchi)
5. Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (Radu Jude...
Ed Frankl
Memory Box
1. Petite Maman (Céline Sciamma)
2. Memory Box (Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige)
3. Brother’s Keeper (Ferit Karahan)
4. Ballad of a White Cow (Behtash Sanaeeha & Maryam Moghaddam)
5. Ninjababy (Yngvild Sve Flikke)
Honorable Mentions: The Fam, Language Lessons, Natural Light, Taste, and Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy.
Leonardo Goi
Taste
1. Taste (Lê Bảo)
2. Petite Maman (Céline Sciamma)
3. The Scary of Sixty-First (Dasha Nekrasova)
4. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Ryûsuke Hamaguchi)
5. Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (Radu Jude...
- 3/10/2021
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
One of two films at the 2021 Berlinale about the lasting trauma of the Lebanese Civil War (along with the superior Miguel’s War), Memory Box follows three generations of Lebanese women, now living in Montreal, whose lives are uprooted when a literal box of memories lands on their doorstep. “It’s bad memories,” Téta (Clémence Sabbagh) tells her curious granddaughter, Alex (Paloma Vauthier), when she sees the box is from a woman named Liza Haber. It’s Christmas Eve, and these “bad memories” aren’t the kind of present Téta wants to give her daughter, Maia (Rim Turki). So she stuffs them away in a cupboard, to be dealt with at a later date.
Memory Box is “freely adapted” (as a title card states) from the real-life correspondences of its co-writer-director Joana Hadjithomas, who made the film with her husband, Khalil Joreige. As a young woman living in Beirut, Hadjithomas...
Memory Box is “freely adapted” (as a title card states) from the real-life correspondences of its co-writer-director Joana Hadjithomas, who made the film with her husband, Khalil Joreige. As a young woman living in Beirut, Hadjithomas...
- 3/6/2021
- by Orla Smith
- The Film Stage
Three years after the first movie theater reopened in Saudi Arabia – following removal of a religion-related ban – the kingdom has become the top theatrical market in the Middle East and is turning into a major driver for Arabic film production.
“At the moment Saudi is on a different path from the rest of the world,” says David Hancock, an analyst at London-based Omdia, which sees this new market as having the potential to be ranked among the top 10-15 territories for box office worldwide by 2024.
By 2024 Omdia estimates there will be 1,400 screens in Saudi Arabia, up from a current count of less than 300 screens in 2020 with more than 600 screens expected in 2021. In 2020 Saudi box office was up 3% to $115 million, bucking the downward trend in the rest of the world.
But besides growing box office and screen count, just like in other parts of the world such as China where there is moviegoing growth,...
“At the moment Saudi is on a different path from the rest of the world,” says David Hancock, an analyst at London-based Omdia, which sees this new market as having the potential to be ranked among the top 10-15 territories for box office worldwide by 2024.
By 2024 Omdia estimates there will be 1,400 screens in Saudi Arabia, up from a current count of less than 300 screens in 2020 with more than 600 screens expected in 2021. In 2020 Saudi box office was up 3% to $115 million, bucking the downward trend in the rest of the world.
But besides growing box office and screen count, just like in other parts of the world such as China where there is moviegoing growth,...
- 3/4/2021
- by Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
Four titles have landed on the first edition of the grid.
Dominik Graf’s period drama Fabian – Going To The Dogs has set the early pace on Screen’s Berlin 2021 Competition jury grid, with a score of 3.1.
The result came from seven of the eight critics, and included three “excellent” scores of four stars from Die Zeit’s Katja Nicodemus, Sight & Sound’s Nick James and Screen’s own critic.
The Morning Star’s Rita di Santo and Anton Dolin of Meduza and Film Art awarded it an “average” mark of two stars each.
Set in Berlin during the Weimar Republic,...
Dominik Graf’s period drama Fabian – Going To The Dogs has set the early pace on Screen’s Berlin 2021 Competition jury grid, with a score of 3.1.
The result came from seven of the eight critics, and included three “excellent” scores of four stars from Die Zeit’s Katja Nicodemus, Sight & Sound’s Nick James and Screen’s own critic.
The Morning Star’s Rita di Santo and Anton Dolin of Meduza and Film Art awarded it an “average” mark of two stars each.
Set in Berlin during the Weimar Republic,...
- 3/2/2021
- by Ben Dalton
- ScreenDaily
When directors Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige uncovered a trove of photographs, journals and audio recordings they had made while growing up in Beirut of the 1980s, they knew these personal archives would fuel their next film. Acclaimed artists and documentarians, the creative duo opted to develop these archives into a narrative feature that tells the story of two generations of mothers and daughters.
Set in present-day Canada and 1980s Lebanon, Berlin competition title “Memory Box” focuses on an adolescent girl who stumbles upon her mother’s own personal archives — and through them discovers her mother at a wholly different age.
Why did you want to develop this as fiction feature — your first in over a decade?
Hadjithomas: We had so much material that we didn’t want to go into a documentary. For us, it was clear to take those existing documents, those pictures and tapes, and work them into narrative fiction.
Set in present-day Canada and 1980s Lebanon, Berlin competition title “Memory Box” focuses on an adolescent girl who stumbles upon her mother’s own personal archives — and through them discovers her mother at a wholly different age.
Why did you want to develop this as fiction feature — your first in over a decade?
Hadjithomas: We had so much material that we didn’t want to go into a documentary. For us, it was clear to take those existing documents, those pictures and tapes, and work them into narrative fiction.
- 3/2/2021
- by Ben Croll
- Variety Film + TV
Analogue Chronicles: The Past is Present in the Latest Memory Exercise from Hadjithomas & Joreige
A veritable remembrance of things past catalyzes the semi-autobiographical narrative from celebrated Lebanese directing duo Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige in Memory Box, their first narrative offering since the 2008 Catherine Deneuve led I Want to See. That title is itself a repeated sentiment in their new project, which is freely adapted from Hadjithomas’ own journals and tapes from 1982 to 1988 in this examination of a young woman’s traumatic memories as a teenager in war-torn Beirut, left behind in her family’s flight to Montreal.…...
A veritable remembrance of things past catalyzes the semi-autobiographical narrative from celebrated Lebanese directing duo Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige in Memory Box, their first narrative offering since the 2008 Catherine Deneuve led I Want to See. That title is itself a repeated sentiment in their new project, which is freely adapted from Hadjithomas’ own journals and tapes from 1982 to 1988 in this examination of a young woman’s traumatic memories as a teenager in war-torn Beirut, left behind in her family’s flight to Montreal.…...
- 3/1/2021
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
Perhaps it’s because “Memory Box” is freely adapted from co-director Joana Hadjithomas’ teenage letters and diaries that this is the most affectingly Proustian of the filmmaker’s works made with Khalil Joreige. “Perhaps” because it would be wrong to treat this richly multi-layered exploration of memory and how it’s processed across generations as a standard fictionalized memoir. Well-known for how they organically incorporate experimental techniques into films tackling the traumas of Lebanese society since the Civil War, the duo here weave together what starts as an almost too-traditional mother-daughter struggle today with visualizations of life in Beirut during the early 1980s. The combination becomes an intoxicating cocktail of recollections while also addressing how different generations process the touchstone triggers of memory.
Through an ingenious blend of image and music, Hadjithomas and Joreige’s creative treatment of the image, including meaningful juxtaposition of different gauges and textures, has never...
Through an ingenious blend of image and music, Hadjithomas and Joreige’s creative treatment of the image, including meaningful juxtaposition of different gauges and textures, has never...
- 3/1/2021
- by Jay Weissberg
- Variety Film + TV
The tragedy of the Lebanese civil war extends far beyond the 1980s and into the third generation of a family resettled in Canada in the affecting drama Memory Box. It marks the first film in nine years from the award-winning team Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, whose work has ranged freely over feature films, docs, installations and performance art.
Though Memory Box shows the sophisticated modernity of their artistic approach, it is also one of the most accessible of their films, thanks to a winning cast of fine actresses and an engrossing back-and-forth timeline that jumps from wartime Beirut under the bombs ...
Though Memory Box shows the sophisticated modernity of their artistic approach, it is also one of the most accessible of their films, thanks to a winning cast of fine actresses and an engrossing back-and-forth timeline that jumps from wartime Beirut under the bombs ...
The tragedy of the Lebanese civil war extends far beyond the 1980s and into the third generation of a family resettled in Canada in the affecting drama Memory Box. It marks the first film in nine years from the award-winning team Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, whose work has ranged freely over feature films, docs, installations and performance art.
Though Memory Box shows the sophisticated modernity of their artistic approach, it is also one of the most accessible of their films, thanks to a winning cast of fine actresses and an engrossing back-and-forth timeline that jumps from wartime Beirut under the bombs ...
Though Memory Box shows the sophisticated modernity of their artistic approach, it is also one of the most accessible of their films, thanks to a winning cast of fine actresses and an engrossing back-and-forth timeline that jumps from wartime Beirut under the bombs ...
A co-production uniting France, Lebanon and Canada, this film by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige dazzles up front in the sales agent’s top-notch line-up. After 2019’s By the Grace of God and Irradiated which was released last year, the French international sales agent Playtime will once again see a title from its line-up competing in the Berlin Film Festival, in the form of Memory Box by Lebanese directors Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige. The group will also get the chance to work on a great many highly appealing, future secret weapons at the European Film Market (running 1-5 March) unfolding within the German festival’s 71st edition. Memory Box is the 5th feature film to come courtesy of the filmmaking duo, following on from Around the Pink House (1999), A Perfect Day (which battled it out for the Fipresci Prize in Locarno’s 2005 competition), Je veux voir (unveiled in Cannes’ Un.
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