Canadian Screen Awards Nominations

by Nathaniel R

Nominations have been announced for the annual Canadian Screen Awards (formerly known as the Genies for film, and Geminis for TV).

Best Motion Picture  

• DRUNKEN BIRDS (6 nominations) - a Mexican man tries to find a lost love in Montréal
• NIGHT OF THE KINGS (2 nominations) - In the Ivory Coast's most dangerous prison, a new convict tries to survive the night by entertaining the prisoners with a story. [Streaming on Hulu]
• NIGHT RAIDERS  (11 nominations) - a mom joins a vigilante group to rescue her daughter [Available to rent online]
• SCARBOROUGH (11 nominations) - three poor children become friends
• WILDHOOD  (6 nominations) - a two-spirit teen runs away from home in this LGBTQ coming of age film.

Full list of nominees and a few comments after the jump...

Click to read more ...

Podcast: "Nomadland" and "The Nest"

with Nathaniel R & Murtada Elfadl

We're back for weekly podcasting now as the season revs up.

Index (58 minutes)
00:01 Virtual festivals pros & cons and blurry lines between film and TV
13:00 NYFF - Frances McDormand in Chloe Zhao's Nomadland
27:00 Ivory Coast's Night of Kings and the documentary Time
40:22 Sean Durkin's The Nest starring Jude Law and Carrie Coon 
49:00 Boys in the Band in brief
56:00 Wrap up: French Exit is soon! Eeeeeee

Related Reading:
• Nathaniel's Review of Night of Kings
• All posts on Nomadland
• Murtada's Review of Boys in the Band

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you? 

The Nest and Nomadland

NYFF: "Night of Kings"

Our coverage of the New York Film Festival -- you can buy virtual tickets to most of these films -- continues.

by Nathaniel R

The prison movie is its own specific subgenre, holding close to its own tropes, structural familiarity, and character types. Though we've never been imprisoned, we imagined these are culled from reality as much as imagined from collective nightmare. As a general rule, we long for escape from well worn genres, but in some cases it's useful shorthand. Such it is with Philippe LaCôte's Night of Kings, the buzzy Ivory Coast Oscar submission which we suspect might have been too confusing to resonate for Western audiences, were if not for these familiar, even universal, elements...

Click to read more ...

"Night of the Kings" is our third International Oscar submission

by Nathaniel R

Director Philippe Lacôte and a still from "Night of the Kings" his second feature

We have our third reported Oscar submission for Best International Feature at the 2020 Oscars and this one is a rarity. Ivory Coast, a West African country, has only ever submitted two previous films to the race. Though Ivory Coast, a former French colony, became independent in 1960, their first submission Black and White in Color (1976), which won the Oscar, was the debut of French filmmaker Jean-Jacques Annaud who was quickly snapped up by Hollywood. Ivory Coast didn't submit again until they had their own debut director, Philippe Lacôte. His first film, a crime drama called Run, was submitted to represent the country in 2015 and his sophomore feature will represent the country again. Screen Daily recently spoke with the filmmaker about why there are so few African films at A-list festivals and how this new film came into being.

Night of the Kings which premiered this past week in Venice, is a Scheherazade-like story about a thief (Bakary Koné, pictured above) who becomes a storyteller in order to survive in the infamous MACA jail in the city of Abidjab (Lacôte's home town). The story the thief is telling is a true one about a crime lord called Zama King but  Lacôte wasn't interested in making a traditional biopic (bless him!). French actors Steve Tientcheu (from last year's Oscar nominated Les Miserables) and the always incredible Denis Lavant (Holy Motors) co-star.

Previously
Poland selects Never Gonna Snow Again
Switzerland selects My Little Sister