Latest news with #Reedland
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Storyboard Media Re-Teams With ‘Maybe It's True What They Say About Us' Director Camilo Becerra on Coming-of-Age Drama ‘The Sky That We Paint' (EXCLUSIVE)
Storyboard Media, one of Chile's most established production companies, has joined Chilean director Camilo Becerra's coming-of-age drama 'The Sky That We Paint' as co-producer, teaming up once again with Becerra following their successful collaboration on his last film, 'Maybe It's True What They Say About Us.' Following its 2024 world premiere at the San Sebastián International Film Festival and subsequent screenings in Göteborg, Chicago and Havana, Becerra's previous feature earned critical acclaim and was later picked up by Prime Video for distribution across Latin America. His new project, 'The Sky That We Paint,' is shaping up to be equally ambitious. More from Variety 'Reedland' Review: Outstanding Slow-Burn Thriller Announces Potentially Major New Dutch Director Sven Bresser Beta Reveals Sales for 'Let It Rain,' 'The Physician II,' 'The Light' 'Case 137' Director Dominik Moll on Exploring the Gilets Jaunes Riots in His Cannes-Premiering Political Drama: 'These Divisions Still Exist' in French Society The film tells the story of three troubled teenagers – siblings Ana (15) and Matías (16) and Iggy (16) – as they navigate adolescence, trauma and taboo. United by grief and a desire for escape, their bond deepens into an intense and ultimately destructive relationship that leaves lasting scars. Years later, Ana and Iggy reunite to seek out Matías and reclaim a lost sense of innocence, only to find that time has changed everything. The lead roles will be played by rising Chilean stars Clemente Rodríguez ('El Conde') and Octavia Bernasconi ('La Jauría'). Set in late-1990s Santiago, the film is both a deeply personal story and a critique of Chile's authoritarian, neoliberal past. Director Camilo Becerra, known for his focus on social and familial dysfunction, draws from his own adolescence and cultural memory to deliver a raw and reflective portrait of youth. Storyboard Media will co-produce with La Jauría Comunicaciones, bringing significant creative and logistical support to the film, which is currently in development. The company, led by Carlos Núñez and Gabriela Sandoval, is known for championing socially conscious cinema and has a strong record of international co-productions. The duo tells Variety, 'We worked together on his previous film 'Perhaps What They Say About Us Is True,' and we think he is one of the most talented directors in the film scene today. Without a doubt, this new project will be much talked about as it has international commercial quality. It will also feature a great cast that will give a very important dimension to the film's story.' With cinematography by Sergio Armstrong ('No'), editing by Andrea Chignoli ('Neruda') and post-production by Colorhaus and CPM Sonido, 'The Sky That We Paint' promises to be a visually rich and emotionally charged experience. The film is currently seeking financing for pre-production, production and post-production phases, with plans to bring this haunting and poetic narrative to audiences worldwide. Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Emmy Predictions: Talk/Scripted Variety Series - The Variety Categories Are Still a Mess; Netflix, Dropout, and 'Hot Ones' Stir Up Buzz Oscars Predictions 2026: 'Sinners' Becomes Early Contender Ahead of Cannes Film Festival
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Reedland' Review: Outstanding Slow-Burn Thriller Announces Potentially Major New Dutch Director Sven Bresser
Johan (Gerrit Knobbe) is a reed-cutter. As 'Reedland' opens, we meet him in his natural habitat, surrounded by hissing, shivering reeds shot in close-up, then in wide shot. It's a sonic and visual maze, the natural world's equivalent of TV static: earth-bound, mud-rooted and subtly threatening in its hypnotic, fluttering illusion of uniformity. Reeds are the perfect hiding place for horrors, as will shortly become abundantly clear, when a girl's body is revealed in the dirt, in all its helplessness. A violent crime fracturing a tight-knit community is hardly a new subject for arthouse cinema, but it is handled here by freshman writer-director Sven Bresser with an original eye and a keen sense of how to generate a persistent atmosphere of foreboding. It was filmed in Weerribben-Wieden in the Netherlands, and the landscape is integral to this finely calibrated mood. 'Whispering' is probably the adjective most associated with reeds, giving the land the stark sense of harboring infinite witnesses who cannot speak of the crimes they have seen — at least, not in any language we can understand. More from Variety Beta Reveals Sales for 'Let It Rain,' 'The Physician II,' 'The Light' 'Case 137' Director Dominik Moll on Exploring the Gilets Jaunes Riots in His Cannes-Premiering Political Drama: 'These Divisions Still Exist' in French Society Breaking Through the Lens Co-Founder Daphne Schmon on What Has to Change for Gender Equity in Film: 'We Need Actions to Speak Louder Than Words' Well-chosen place-name titles are more than just a convenient piece of orientation for an audience. When used judiciously, they plant a flag in that location, forever binding the place and the film together. 'Reedland' is not the name of a town or road, but a terrain that provides the physical and psychological setting for an eerily poetic character study. Knobbe is an extraordinary presence as Johan, a widower who has worked at his job for decades, and is now also an attentive grandfather. As the camera studies Knobbe's weather-beaten face, you watch him, trying to place which Ingmar Bergman film you might know him from. But he isn't an actor, and you've never seen him before. He is an actual reed-cutter, discovered by Brasser during the process of researching and building the film, which makes his tightly controlled performance all the more impressive, and provides persuasive evidence of Brasser's aptitude as both talent-spotter and performance coach. Knobbe's face is shaped by his work in the outdoors, in a way that you simply don't see with actors nowadays, when a high proportion of both men and women seem to be engaged in counterintuitive quests to make their faces, the primary tool of an actor, less capable of expression. Knobbe's, by contrast, gives lived experience — it is its own craggy, fathomless landscape. In addition to Bergman, the lineage of European filmmakers into which this dark, finely judged film slots includes the likes of Michael Haneke and Thomas Vinterberg. But 'Reedland' also recalls Japanese director Kaneto Shindō's 1964 masterpiece 'Onibaba' with its hints of supernatural evil. There, as here, reedland is presented as a breeding ground for more than just mosquitoes: It contains madness and murder. The two films share some visual strategies, with reeds-as-labyrinth shots just as effective a motif now as they were 60 years ago. Not to suggest that DP Sam du Pon's camera only gets landscapes to work with. Numerous vignettes of the small community's existence both in public and private afford Bresser and du Pon the opportunity to explore how people reconcile their public and private selves, on one occasion via the precise framing of a shot where Johan engages with pornography on his laptop, and we glimpse artwork by his granddaughter pinned to a wall in the background. With a tight runtime, magnetic central performance and bleak but compelling subject matter, theatrical prospects could be potentially rewarding for an appropriate arthouse distributor. This is a film designed to be seen on the big screen, and while it should certainly have appeal for high-class streamers, it'd be a pity to see it skip cinemas. For audiences looking to take a step up from standard Scandi-noir murder fare on TV while staying firmly within the realm of accessible narrative cinema, 'Reedland' is an outstanding discovery. Best of Variety The Best Albums of the Decade
