Movie dystopias tend to cover similar themes: overprotective governments, corporations run amuck, personal freedoms stifled. Writer/director Valentin Hitz's Hidden Reserves imagines a world with many of these themes but with an added twist.
Set in Europe in the near future, Clemens Schick stars as Vincent, a corporate drone schilling for the biggest business in the land: insurance companies. You see, in Hitz's future, death has been commoditized. Death insurance isn't simply something you buy to ensure your family is taken care of, it's a necessity if you plan to stay dead. If you die without insurance, your body is reanimated and used as a workhorse; everything from databanks to surrogate mothers.
Vincent is really good at his job and he's given a new challenge: shut dow [Continued ...]...
Set in Europe in the near future, Clemens Schick stars as Vincent, a corporate drone schilling for the biggest business in the land: insurance companies. You see, in Hitz's future, death has been commoditized. Death insurance isn't simply something you buy to ensure your family is taken care of, it's a necessity if you plan to stay dead. If you die without insurance, your body is reanimated and used as a workhorse; everything from databanks to surrogate mothers.
Vincent is really good at his job and he's given a new challenge: shut dow [Continued ...]...
- 3/28/2017
- QuietEarth.us
Top brass at the 12th Zurich Film Festival have given the Golden Eye for international feature film to The Happiest Day In The Life Of Olli Maki, the debut feature by Juho Kuosmanen.
The film, which previously won Cannes’ Un Certain Regard prize and is Finland’s Oscar submission, is based on the true story of a Finnish boxer who is more concerned with his new girlfriend than winning a championship bout.
The Golden Eye in Zurich comes with a $25,700 (25,000 Chf) cash prize.
Kuosmanen told Screen that awards are “always nice” and added that he was especially delighted by the audience reception.
“It feels like the film is communicating with different people with different backgrounds. The audience feedback has been very good [in Zurich] and for me it’s important that the film is understood and people are communicating with it.”
The jury, which comprised Lone Scherfig, David Farr, Sibel Kekilli and Graham Broadbent, also gave three...
The film, which previously won Cannes’ Un Certain Regard prize and is Finland’s Oscar submission, is based on the true story of a Finnish boxer who is more concerned with his new girlfriend than winning a championship bout.
The Golden Eye in Zurich comes with a $25,700 (25,000 Chf) cash prize.
Kuosmanen told Screen that awards are “always nice” and added that he was especially delighted by the audience reception.
“It feels like the film is communicating with different people with different backgrounds. The audience feedback has been very good [in Zurich] and for me it’s important that the film is understood and people are communicating with it.”
The jury, which comprised Lone Scherfig, David Farr, Sibel Kekilli and Graham Broadbent, also gave three...
- 10/2/2016
- by wendy.mitchell@screendaily.com (Wendy Mitchell)
- ScreenDaily
European premieres for Peter Berg’s Deepwater Horizon and Garth Davis’ Lion are among highlights.
The Zurich Film Festival, which has revealed its full line-up today, will screen a total of 172 productions from 36 countries, including 43 debut works, 17 world premieres and a record number of Swiss films.
Among the highlights of this year’s festival are the European premieres of Garth Davis’ Lion starring Slumdog Millionaire’s Dev Patel alongside Rooney Mara and Nicole Kidman, which will open festival on Sept. 22; Peter Berg’s real-life oil catastrophe story Deepwater Horizon; and Lbj, Rob Reiner’s political biopic starring Woody Harrelson as the former Us president Lyndon Baines Johnson.
Among actors set to attend are Hugh Grant, Daniel Radcliffe, Woody Harrelson and Shailene Woodley while French director Olivier Assayas will be honored with a retrospective.
Deepwater Horizon producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura will also be honored with Zurich’s Golden Eye award for his life’s work. Regular guest Harvey Weinstein...
The Zurich Film Festival, which has revealed its full line-up today, will screen a total of 172 productions from 36 countries, including 43 debut works, 17 world premieres and a record number of Swiss films.
Among the highlights of this year’s festival are the European premieres of Garth Davis’ Lion starring Slumdog Millionaire’s Dev Patel alongside Rooney Mara and Nicole Kidman, which will open festival on Sept. 22; Peter Berg’s real-life oil catastrophe story Deepwater Horizon; and Lbj, Rob Reiner’s political biopic starring Woody Harrelson as the former Us president Lyndon Baines Johnson.
Among actors set to attend are Hugh Grant, Daniel Radcliffe, Woody Harrelson and Shailene Woodley while French director Olivier Assayas will be honored with a retrospective.
Deepwater Horizon producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura will also be honored with Zurich’s Golden Eye award for his life’s work. Regular guest Harvey Weinstein...
- 9/8/2016
- ScreenDaily
Austrian helmer Valentin Hitz offers up a satiric, dystopian view of the future in his coldly precise scifi film Hidden Reserves. Scifi in the same sense that works of speculative fiction such as Fahrenheit 451 or 1984 are - or a film such as underseen gem Carre Blanc - it would appear that Hitz offers up next to nothing in the way of vfx spectacle here, instead presenting a bleak vision of a possible near future. Insurance agent Vincent Baumann is a cold-hearted careerist and slave to a relentless system set in the future who falls victim to the corporations for whom he works. He is demoted to henchman and tries stubbornly to re-enter the job world and fight his way back up the corporate...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
- 8/4/2016
- Screen Anarchy
Exclusive: Camino Filmverleih, distributor of Berlinale Competition titles Stations of the Cross and Jack, is to make a foray into production this year.
Speaking exclusively to ScreenDaily, Camino head of distribution, acquisitions and sales Kamran Sardar Khan revealed that sci-fi drama Der Polder and the comedy Metal Train will be co-produced via Camino’s parent company Niama Film.
The Stuttgart-based distributor will be a minority partner on Samuel Schwarz’s Der Polder will be produced by Switzerland’s Dschoint Ventschr Filmproduktion, Kam(m)acher GmbH, and Niama Film with backing from broadcasters Swr and Srf and Bundesamt für Kultur (Bak) and Zürcher Filmstiftung.
Campaigns with an augmented reality game and a MP3 audiowalk based on the film’s storyline have already been running in various Swiss towns to generate interest in the project.
Principal photography is set to begin in Zurich this March, with theatrical release planned for spring 2015 by Camino Filmverleih in Germany and Stammfilm in Switzerland...
Speaking exclusively to ScreenDaily, Camino head of distribution, acquisitions and sales Kamran Sardar Khan revealed that sci-fi drama Der Polder and the comedy Metal Train will be co-produced via Camino’s parent company Niama Film.
The Stuttgart-based distributor will be a minority partner on Samuel Schwarz’s Der Polder will be produced by Switzerland’s Dschoint Ventschr Filmproduktion, Kam(m)acher GmbH, and Niama Film with backing from broadcasters Swr and Srf and Bundesamt für Kultur (Bak) and Zürcher Filmstiftung.
Campaigns with an augmented reality game and a MP3 audiowalk based on the film’s storyline have already been running in various Swiss towns to generate interest in the project.
Principal photography is set to begin in Zurich this March, with theatrical release planned for spring 2015 by Camino Filmverleih in Germany and Stammfilm in Switzerland...
- 2/18/2014
- by screen.berlin@googlemail.com (Martin Blaney)
- ScreenDaily
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