Latest news with #Directors'Fortnight
CairoScene
17 hours ago
- Entertainment
- CairoScene
Award-Winning ‘East of Noon' to Premiere in Egypt at Zawya Cinema
Following its Cannes debut and international festival run, 'East of Noon' by Hala Elkoussy will screen in Egypt for the first time at Zawya Cinema starting June 25th. Jun 20, 2025 Hala Elkoussy's award-winning debut feature 'East of Noon' will make its Egyptian premiere at Zawya Cinema on June 25th. The opening night will include a Q&A session with Elkoussy following the 7 PM screening, marking the film's first local showing since its international festival debut. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival's Directors' Fortnight, where it won the Société des Auteurs award, and was later selected for the Berlin International Film Festival. 'East of Noon' has since earned multiple accolades for its striking visual language and layered, allegorical narrative. Set in a timeless fictional world, the film follows 19-year-old Abdo, a gifted musician challenging an inert system governed by the ageing showman Shawky and the enigmatic storyteller Jalala. Through its symbolic framework, 'East of Noon' reflects on themes of power, resistance, and the role of creative expression under oppressive systems.
The Age
06-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
Sharks, a serial killer and Cannes glory. This Aussie film bites deep
There was pandemonium in the Theatre Croisette, home of the Cannes Film Festival's Directors' Fortnight, before and after the screening of Australian film Dangerous Animals, announced as the first 'shark movie' ever to screen at the festival. Admittedly, the audience was stacked with mates – you could tell, because clustered cheers went up for the various production companies credited at the beginning – but there were also a lot of horror fans, including press colleagues who live for jump scares, gore and villains getting their comeuppance. A journalist and critic from Poland, who is one of those horror buffs, told me she was sitting next to the woman who screamed loudly enough to fill the auditorium every time we saw a fin or fang. That just added to the joy, as far as she was concerned. Like everyone, she had clapped for a full nine minutes when the final credits rolled and Sean Byrne, the Tasmanian director, brought his cast up on stage. Dangerous Animals delivers on a popular menu of genre expectations, starting with the maxim that Australia is full of creatures that can kill you. It is set on the Gold Coast, where ostentatiously Ocker skipper Bruce Tucker (Jai Courtney) takes tourists out to swim with sharks, protected inside a metal cage. From the first minute, it's clear that Tucker is too much like a carbon copy of Steve Irwin to be true. Of course, he's a serial killer who preys on backpackers away on their own, ties them up and dangles them over the water in a harness of his own design and films them as they're torn to bits. Tucker himself was mauled by a Great White as a boy. Now he sees himself as a victorious apex predator. His big mistake is picking on Hassie Harrison's Zephyr, a surfer who has purposefully drifted a long way from her American home. When she hooks up with Moses (Sydney actor Josh Heuston), something clicks between them – so that when she goes missing, there is someone local who is looking for her. She is also a fighter. 'It's so fun to play a character with that badass-ery and swagger,' says Harrison. 'It comes pretty close to home for me, growing up spending a lot of time in nature. I'd already been to Australia about 10 times. Being a Texan, I feel we're very kindred spirits.' You can anticipate fatal turns in the plot, which is part of the pleasure; there is also fun to be had spotting those conventions and the sprinkling of quotes from other films. There are plenty of jokes and grisly bits of ick. 'Music to my ears,' says Byrne of that screamer in the audience. 'You work so hard on these moments, giving the audience permission to be scared, but also to have a good time.' It was always supposed to be fun. Byrne's previous features, The Loved Ones and The Devil's Candy, were lower-budget US horrors. 'This was a big step-up in terms of budget and logistics, with underwater filming,' he says. 'I'm a massive fan of '80s action cinema like Die Hard and Speed. A lot of horror films are slow-burn or mood pieces, but mine tend to be fast-paced, so it's almost kind of action horror. Survival horror, in this case.' With some romance and comedy tropes, he adds; he likes the mix of genres. Until this festival, I had no idea that 'shark films' constituted a sub-genre in themselves, with Steven Spielberg's Jaws as the daddy. 'There's no bigger cinematic shadow than Jaws,' Byrne agrees. 'But at the same time, what a great reference point! I kept coming back to Jaws and the power of the fin. Shooting in the middle of the night, open sea, and there's a young person screaming for his or her life, it can creep through the armour. Jai Courtney The fin is almost the definition of suspense. If you see a fin above water, moving around, that is foreshadowing terror. Then, when the fin goes underwater, you are anticipating the attack, but the audience can't see what's happening. You've got them! I feel that has been lost a little bit in shark films recently, where you see dozens of sharks underwater, sometimes with their faces animated in an angry human way. I wanted something more like documentary reality.' Loading Most importantly, the sharks in this movie are not the villains. Humans are cruel, possibly psychotic, sometimes just criminally negligent. Sharks are beautiful, stately princes of the sea, albeit princes with a lot of teeth. 'I've never seen that in a shark film, so that was an incredibly exciting opportunity,' enthuses Byrne. Nick Lepard, who wrote the script, is married to a marine biologist; the film is full of facts about sharks, including the news that they don't actually like the taste of human flesh. 'I think it's such a breath of fresh air that the sharks are not the monster,' says Byrne. 'A man is the monster.' Heuston says his impression, when he read the original script, was that Dangerous Animals would be more arthouse fare. 'When we started filming though, it became much more of a genre film.' He puts this largely down to Courtney, who brought an outsize dynamism and humour to the character of Tucker. Harrison agrees. 'There's a levity he brings to the table. When I came on, they were talking about casting other people ... another actor would have taken it to a really dark place, whereas [Courtney's] performance is so funny I was often laughing on the other side of the camera.' Courtney found it quite dark enough. 'Some of the acts Tucker commits, some of the way he does things, we have young actors hanging on a hook over the open water and when you're ... shooting in the middle of the night, open sea out on a boat, and there's a young person screaming for his or her life, it can occasionally creep through the armour of separating that from reality. And there were definitely moments in this film when I was saying right, can we get this done?' Filming on water is difficult enough. Cameras rock along with the boat, actors and crew get seasick, the space is confined. Byrne didn't want to film in a tank, however. For a start, he says, the tank cost a prohibitive $80,000 a day. Secondly, he says tanks feel sterile. They're just big bathtubs, after all. 'Whereas filming at sea is really hard but exciting as well. It's really hard to replicate Mother Nature, with wind and salt and water hitting you in the face. Also, when we put the actors up on the crane and swung them out over the water, doing it for real gave it an immediacy and a primal quality we would never have got in a tank. But it was difficult. I think I'm one and done as far as shooting a film on water goes.' He never imagined, he says, that they would end up in Cannes. It is true that a diverse bunch of successes, ranging from Wolf Creek to The Babadook to Talk to Me, have put Australian horror on the international map. 'We've got some great genre filmmakers,' says Byrne. 'And I think Australia is getting a reputation internationally for being attacking.' He had thought they would do well in the market. 'That combination of shark film and serial killer film, I sensed that would sell well. This is a risk-averse industry, but you are ticking two very popular boxes.' He had a handle on its demographic. 'But I didn't expect it to end up in the festival,' he says. 'Because when you think of Cannes, you just don't think of shark films.'
Sydney Morning Herald
06-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Sharks, a serial killer and Cannes glory. This Aussie film bites deep
There was pandemonium in the Theatre Croisette, home of the Cannes Film Festival's Directors' Fortnight, before and after the screening of Australian film Dangerous Animals, announced as the first 'shark movie' ever to screen at the festival. Admittedly, the audience was stacked with mates – you could tell, because clustered cheers went up for the various production companies credited at the beginning – but there were also a lot of horror fans, including press colleagues who live for jump scares, gore and villains getting their comeuppance. A journalist and critic from Poland, who is one of those horror buffs, told me she was sitting next to the woman who screamed loudly enough to fill the auditorium every time we saw a fin or fang. That just added to the joy, as far as she was concerned. Like everyone, she had clapped for a full nine minutes when the final credits rolled and Sean Byrne, the Tasmanian director, brought his cast up on stage. Dangerous Animals delivers on a popular menu of genre expectations, starting with the maxim that Australia is full of creatures that can kill you. It is set on the Gold Coast, where ostentatiously Ocker skipper Bruce Tucker (Jai Courtney) takes tourists out to swim with sharks, protected inside a metal cage. From the first minute, it's clear that Tucker is too much like a carbon copy of Steve Irwin to be true. Of course, he's a serial killer who preys on backpackers away on their own, ties them up and dangles them over the water in a harness of his own design and films them as they're torn to bits. Tucker himself was mauled by a Great White as a boy. Now he sees himself as a victorious apex predator. His big mistake is picking on Hassie Harrison's Zephyr, a surfer who has purposefully drifted a long way from her American home. When she hooks up with Moses (Sydney actor Josh Heuston), something clicks between them – so that when she goes missing, there is someone local who is looking for her. She is also a fighter. 'It's so fun to play a character with that badass-ery and swagger,' says Harrison. 'It comes pretty close to home for me, growing up spending a lot of time in nature. I'd already been to Australia about 10 times. Being a Texan, I feel we're very kindred spirits.' You can anticipate fatal turns in the plot, which is part of the pleasure; there is also fun to be had spotting those conventions and the sprinkling of quotes from other films. There are plenty of jokes and grisly bits of ick. 'Music to my ears,' says Byrne of that screamer in the audience. 'You work so hard on these moments, giving the audience permission to be scared, but also to have a good time.' It was always supposed to be fun. Byrne's previous features, The Loved Ones and The Devil's Candy, were lower-budget US horrors. 'This was a big step-up in terms of budget and logistics, with underwater filming,' he says. 'I'm a massive fan of '80s action cinema like Die Hard and Speed. A lot of horror films are slow-burn or mood pieces, but mine tend to be fast-paced, so it's almost kind of action horror. Survival horror, in this case.' With some romance and comedy tropes, he adds; he likes the mix of genres. Until this festival, I had no idea that 'shark films' constituted a sub-genre in themselves, with Steven Spielberg's Jaws as the daddy. 'There's no bigger cinematic shadow than Jaws,' Byrne agrees. 'But at the same time, what a great reference point! I kept coming back to Jaws and the power of the fin. Shooting in the middle of the night, open sea, and there's a young person screaming for his or her life, it can creep through the armour. Jai Courtney The fin is almost the definition of suspense. If you see a fin above water, moving around, that is foreshadowing terror. Then, when the fin goes underwater, you are anticipating the attack, but the audience can't see what's happening. You've got them! I feel that has been lost a little bit in shark films recently, where you see dozens of sharks underwater, sometimes with their faces animated in an angry human way. I wanted something more like documentary reality.' Loading Most importantly, the sharks in this movie are not the villains. Humans are cruel, possibly psychotic, sometimes just criminally negligent. Sharks are beautiful, stately princes of the sea, albeit princes with a lot of teeth. 'I've never seen that in a shark film, so that was an incredibly exciting opportunity,' enthuses Byrne. Nick Lepard, who wrote the script, is married to a marine biologist; the film is full of facts about sharks, including the news that they don't actually like the taste of human flesh. 'I think it's such a breath of fresh air that the sharks are not the monster,' says Byrne. 'A man is the monster.' Heuston says his impression, when he read the original script, was that Dangerous Animals would be more arthouse fare. 'When we started filming though, it became much more of a genre film.' He puts this largely down to Courtney, who brought an outsize dynamism and humour to the character of Tucker. Harrison agrees. 'There's a levity he brings to the table. When I came on, they were talking about casting other people ... another actor would have taken it to a really dark place, whereas [Courtney's] performance is so funny I was often laughing on the other side of the camera.' Courtney found it quite dark enough. 'Some of the acts Tucker commits, some of the way he does things, we have young actors hanging on a hook over the open water and when you're ... shooting in the middle of the night, open sea out on a boat, and there's a young person screaming for his or her life, it can occasionally creep through the armour of separating that from reality. And there were definitely moments in this film when I was saying right, can we get this done?' Filming on water is difficult enough. Cameras rock along with the boat, actors and crew get seasick, the space is confined. Byrne didn't want to film in a tank, however. For a start, he says, the tank cost a prohibitive $80,000 a day. Secondly, he says tanks feel sterile. They're just big bathtubs, after all. 'Whereas filming at sea is really hard but exciting as well. It's really hard to replicate Mother Nature, with wind and salt and water hitting you in the face. Also, when we put the actors up on the crane and swung them out over the water, doing it for real gave it an immediacy and a primal quality we would never have got in a tank. But it was difficult. I think I'm one and done as far as shooting a film on water goes.' He never imagined, he says, that they would end up in Cannes. It is true that a diverse bunch of successes, ranging from Wolf Creek to The Babadook to Talk to Me, have put Australian horror on the international map. 'We've got some great genre filmmakers,' says Byrne. 'And I think Australia is getting a reputation internationally for being attacking.' He had thought they would do well in the market. 'That combination of shark film and serial killer film, I sensed that would sell well. This is a risk-averse industry, but you are ticking two very popular boxes.' He had a handle on its demographic. 'But I didn't expect it to end up in the festival,' he says. 'Because when you think of Cannes, you just don't think of shark films.'
Boston Globe
05-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
‘Dangerous Animals': DoorDash for sharks
However, I must mention that Stuart Gordon's grisly splatter masterpiece, 'Re-Animator' also played at Cannes 40 years ago. But that film didn't run in the esteemed 'Directors' Fortnight' section like this one. Considering that the violent, gory genre mashup ' Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Jai Courtney as Tucker in 'Dangerous Animals.' (AMC) Mark Taylor/AMC Advertisement Byrne takes his time with screenwriter Nick Lepard's story. We don't discover Tucker's sadistic execution method of choice until around the 40-minute mark. To keep us on edge, there's a cheeky pre-credits sequence that establishes Tucker's murderous credentials. That opening scene introduces us to Heather (Ella Newton), a naïve tourist talked into going on Tucker's 'Swimming With Sharks' tour by the hunky guy accompanying her. When Tucker asks if they're a couple, Heather's hesitant reaction reveals that the guy is what the folks Down Under refer to as 'her bonk.' Advertisement There's something off about Tucker. He seems amiable, but he asks questions that imply that Heather and her hook-up might be in danger. During the pre-boat conversation, he establishes that no one will miss these two people if they suddenly disappear. There's just enough menace mixed in to make observant people uneasy. He even makes the children's song 'Baby Shark' more terrifying than it already is. Unfortunately for Heather, she can't hear the audience screaming 'Don't get on that boat, you fool!' After the duo visit the sharks in the typical shark-diving cave, Tucker stabs the guy to death and takes Heather hostage out on the open seas. Hassie Harrison as Zephyr and Josh Heuston as Moses in 'Dangerous Animals.' AMC Next, we meet our hero/Final Girl, Zephyr (Hassie Harrison). She's a blonde surfer girl loner who fled to Australia for the tasty waves and the solitude. Her introduction is timed with a hilarious needle drop I won't reveal. And her Meet Cute with real estate agent Moses (Josh Heuston) hinges on blackmail: Either she'll allow Moses to use her jumper cables to restart his car, or he'll tell the 7-Eleven clerk she shoplifted. 'Trust me, I'm not a serial killer,' he tells her. Since the movie only has room for one madman, Zephyr believes him. Then she jumps his bones in her massive van. After ghosting him the next morning as he's making her breakfast, Zephyr runs afoul of Tucker. He knocks her out, and she wakes up handcuffed on his boat next to Heather. Since she rocked his world so splendidly the night before, Moses becomes obsessed with finding out where Zephyr disappeared to in the morning. Like Heather, he's about to do something dumb simply because the sex was good. Advertisement Once Zephyr is captured, 'Dangerous Animals' becomes a cat and mouse game between her and Tucker. Since they're both loners, he sees a connection. 'You're a fighter,' he tells her, which makes his sadistic game more fun. Hassie Harrison as Zephyr and Jai Courtney as Tucker in 'Dangerous Animals.' AMC The film was shot on a real boat, so the location's interiors are claustrophobic but visually dull. But cinematographer Shelley Farthing-Dawe does wonders when we're not stuck inside. There are gorgeous images of the beach and the ocean. Tucker's boat is framed like an ugly orange aberration interrupting the blue majesty of sea and sky. The actors are often shot in close-up, which adds to the trapped feeling. At one point, Farthing-Dawe's lighting gives Tucker's hair a spiky halo as he's monologuing to one of his victims. The cinematography can't help the CGI sharks, though. They look faker than 'Jaws''s infamous star, Bruce the Shark. Kasra Rassoulzadegan's playful yet ominous editing is effective, even if the jump scares become redundant. And Michael Yezerski's rumbling score, while occasionally reminiscent of 'Dangerous Animals' falters by never gives Tucker a reason for his extreme, shark-based misogyny, nor does it make Zephyr an especially compelling Final Girl. Though Courtney and Harrison give their all, this is a slick-looking yet routine exercise that wastes an ideal premise. ★★1/2 DANGEROUS ANIMALS Directed by Sean Byrne. Written by Nick Lepard. Starring Jai Courtney, Hassie Harrison, Josh Heuston, Ella Newton. At AMC Boston Common, Alamo Drafthouse Seaport. 98 min. R (brutal shark violence, steamy human sex) Odie Henderson is the Boston Globe's film critic.
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Sony Pictures Classics Takes North America & Multiple Territories For Cannes Caméra D'Or Winner ‘The President's Cake'
Sony Pictures Classics has acquired all rights in North America, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia and India for Cannes Caméra d'Or winner The President's Cake by Iraqi director Hasan Hadi. The film, which debuted in Directors' Fortnight, also proved a crowdpleaser in the Cannes parallel section, winning its People's Choice audience award. More from Deadline Janus Films Acquires Bi Gan's Cannes Prize-winner 'Resurrection' For North America Sergei Loznitsa's 'Two Prosecutors' Scores Fresh Deals For Coproduction Office - Cannes Netflix Buys Richard Linklater's 'Breathless' Homage & Love Letter To Cinema 'Nouvelle Vague' In Record Domestic Deal For A French-Language Movie Deadline critic Pete Hammond also fell for the film describing it as a 'a true gem and a real discovery'. Check out his review here. New York-based Hadi has tapped into his own childhood in southern Iraq in the 1990s, growing up under the regime of President Saddam Hussein and the socio-economic crisis provoked by international sanctions, for the film. The drama follows nine-year-old Lamia who gets the short straw of having to provide a birthday cake for her classmates to celebrate the president's birthday. Gathering the ingredients for the mandatory cake at a time of shortages is a monumental task but failure to deliver could lead to prison or death for her family. The movie is produced by Leah Chen Baker with executive producers including award-winning screenwriter Eric Roth (Forrest Gump) and director Marielle Heller (Nightbitch, Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood). The film is made in association with Missing Piece Films, Working Barn Productions, Maiden Voyage Pictures and Spark Features. 'Winning the Caméra d'Or in a year with so many formidable directorial debuts and winning the Audience Award in the Directors' Fortnight, Hasan Hadi's The President's Cake is the surprise hit of this year's festival. In the tradition of major Cannes discoveries, these ovations and critical acclaim mark the beginning of a fresh voice destined to thrill audiences everywhere,' said Sony Pictures Classics. 'Since childhood, Sony Pictures Classics has been the go-to name for quality cinema and original storytelling. It's a dream come true—and a true honor—to now be part of that legacy. Their incredible history of championing international films and commitment to theatrical releases makes them the perfect home for The President's Cake,' added Hadi. The film was negotiated between UTA Independent Film Group, WME Independent and Sony Pictures Classics. Films Boutique represents international sales. Hadi is repped by UTA and Jonathan Gardner. The Sundance Film Institute and Doha Film Institute are among the many supporters of the film. Best of Deadline 'Hacks' Season 4 Release Schedule: When Do New Episodes Come Out? Everything We Know About 'Hacks' Season 4 So Far 'The Last Of Us': Differences Between HBO Series & Video Game Across Seasons 1 And 2
