Interview with Olaf de Fleur Johannesson, the grand Icelandic director of Polite People (2010) and City State (2011). Olaf speaks in depth about both films and being a filmmaker far north, in Iceland.   ME: First, can you speak about how you got into writing and directing and producing for film?   OLAF: I was depressed, probably because I always take life much more seriously than needed. Out of that depression came a longing to create something and film...

For its 38th edition, the International Film Festival Rotterdam 2009 will present 43 world premieres as well as 35 international and 34 European premieres of feature length films. A strong year for Eastern European film is led by ROOM AND A HALF, a fictional biopic about poet Joseph Brodsky by Andrey Khrzhanovsky; MORPHIA, Alexei Balabanov’s latest film, based on a M. Bulgakov adaptation by the late Sergei Bodrov Jr. and acclaimed Armenian director Harutyun Khachatryan’s BORDER. Throughout t...

The 38th International Film Festival Rotterdam opens on Wednesday evening 21 January 2009 with the world première of the American feature THE HUNGRY GHOSTS. This is the film directing debut of scriptwriter, theatre director and actor Michael Imperioli, who came to fame in his role as Christopher Montisanti in the TV series The Sopranos. THE HUNGRY GHOSTS has also been selected in the VPRO Tiger Awards Competition. In THE HUNGRY GHOSTS, Imperioli’s characters float like ghosts through life, ...

FESTIVAL DO RIORio de Janeiro Film FestivalSeptember 25 to October 9, 2008 Commencing this Thursday, September 25, the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, embarks on a 15 day celebration of cinema with the start of Festival do Rio, the Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival.In presenting over 350 films selected from 60 countries at over 30 different venues across Rio, Festival do Rio digs deep into a rich catalogue of world premieres, Brazil and Latin premieres and tributes and retrospectives â...

Sandrine Bonnaire, Bernd Eichinger and Stephen Frears on BiopicsThey show the life stories of historical or contemporary personalities and have recently grown more and more successful: Biopics. Why are they so popular? Is it perhaps because audiences prefer the real, complex characters featured in Biopics to the more simple, fictional ones created for feature films? Is it because they enable audiences to establish an emotional bond with the story and its characters – or is it simply the larger...

Sandrine Bonnaire, Bernd Eichinger and Stephen Frears on BiopicsThey show the life stories of historical or contemporary personalities and have recently grown more and more successful: Biopics. Why are they so popular? Is it perhaps because audiences prefer the real, complex characters featured in Biopics to the more simple, fictional ones created for feature films? Is it because they enable audiences to establish an emotional bond with the story and its characters – or is it simply the larger...