Exclusive: Stefano Savona’s Samouni Road mixes live action and animation.
Doc&Film International will handle international sales for Samouni Road, a Gaza-set hybrid docu-drama with animation, to be directed by Stefano Savona.
The new project, which is the only one selected from Italy at this year’s Berlinale Co-Production Market, will see Savona’s French-based production outfit Picofilms being reunited with Rome-based Dugong after they worked together on the director’s award-winning documentary Tahrir Liberation Square in 2011.
Samouni Road is the true story of the Samouni family who survived almost 60 years of war and military occupation on their family land in Gaza until 29 members were killed during the Israeli military ground offensive in 2009.
According to Savona, the animated world being created by lead animator Simone Massi and his team will make up around half of the film
Jour2Fete is already in place as the French theatrical distributor for the project which is in Berlin at the...
Doc&Film International will handle international sales for Samouni Road, a Gaza-set hybrid docu-drama with animation, to be directed by Stefano Savona.
The new project, which is the only one selected from Italy at this year’s Berlinale Co-Production Market, will see Savona’s French-based production outfit Picofilms being reunited with Rome-based Dugong after they worked together on the director’s award-winning documentary Tahrir Liberation Square in 2011.
Samouni Road is the true story of the Samouni family who survived almost 60 years of war and military occupation on their family land in Gaza until 29 members were killed during the Israeli military ground offensive in 2009.
According to Savona, the animated world being created by lead animator Simone Massi and his team will make up around half of the film
Jour2Fete is already in place as the French theatrical distributor for the project which is in Berlin at the...
- 2/9/2015
- by screen.berlin@googlemail.com (Martin Blaney)
- ScreenDaily
"The Great Beauty," Paolo Sorrentino's splashy valentine to Roman high society, was the most lauded foreign-language film of the last awards season -- it ruled the European Film Awards, and scooped Best Foreign Language Film at the Golden Globes, BAFTAs and Oscars. (At all but the last of these, it beat out its Cannes conqueror, "Blue is the Warmest Color.") So you'd think it'd be a shoo-in at Italy's own Academy Awards, right? Wrong. At yesterday's David di Donatello Awards, handed out annually by the Academy of Italian Cinema, Sorrentino's film was the night's biggest winner in terms of numbers -- taking nine awards, including Best Director and Best Actor for Toni Servillo. But its other wins were limited to below-the-line categories -- trust the Italians to have separate awards for Best Makeup and Best Hairstyling -- as Paolo Virzi's "Human Capital" took Best Picture. Virzi's film, a blend...
- 6/11/2014
- by Guy Lodge
- Hitfix
Media coverage for the Arab Spring has slowed down in recent months, but that doesn't mean things in the Middle East have settled down. Egypt, for example, is facing election woes, and the President they toppled more than a year ago has just been given a verdict for his various crimes.
And so we look back to the beginnings of the Egyptian revolution, as “Tahrir: Liberation Square” opens in limited release this week. The film, a verite account of the protests leading up to the resignation of Hosni Mubarak, is a strong account of those tumultuous weeks, refusing to budge from the eponymous location as citizens call for a better tomorrow. It’s a captivating, highly focused documentary, a true pearl amongst similarly themed political/social-issue documentaries.
Prolific filmmaker Stefano Savona is behind the project (if you haven’t heard of him yet, you will), and we were able...
And so we look back to the beginnings of the Egyptian revolution, as “Tahrir: Liberation Square” opens in limited release this week. The film, a verite account of the protests leading up to the resignation of Hosni Mubarak, is a strong account of those tumultuous weeks, refusing to budge from the eponymous location as citizens call for a better tomorrow. It’s a captivating, highly focused documentary, a true pearl amongst similarly themed political/social-issue documentaries.
Prolific filmmaker Stefano Savona is behind the project (if you haven’t heard of him yet, you will), and we were able...
- 6/12/2012
- by Christopher Bell
- The Playlist
The "Arab Spring" -- a term frequently used to describe the various countries in the Middle East rising against their much-maligned leaders -- rages on in full force. Though the wave of revolution is powerful, the media tends to be very selective in its coverage, focusing on one country before quickly moving onto another. You can't blame someone if they just assumed Egypt was just dandy now given the lack of coverage, as Libya's the new paramour.
But let's avoid pointing fingers -- in their defense, the media can only give prime coverage to so many things and at a certain point we must take responsibility for ourselves to actively be in-the-know. At the moment, former President Hosni Mubarak is on trial for ordering the murder of demonstrators during the initial protests in January 2011. The people have become restless with the crawling political change and are generally suspicious of the...
But let's avoid pointing fingers -- in their defense, the media can only give prime coverage to so many things and at a certain point we must take responsibility for ourselves to actively be in-the-know. At the moment, former President Hosni Mubarak is on trial for ordering the murder of demonstrators during the initial protests in January 2011. The people have become restless with the crawling political change and are generally suspicious of the...
- 6/11/2012
- by Christopher Bell
- The Playlist
Title: Tahrir Director: Stefano Savona At the beginning of 2011, a small protest gathered in Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt with the hopes to oust President Hosni Mubarak out of office. The unemployment rate and living conditions in Egypt were on the decline and in contrast, the social awareness and anger inside of Egyptians were on the upswing. This small group became larger and larger, gathering for a call to the people using social networking platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Hundreds become thousands and soon enough, those thousands turned into one million people, all gathered together for one goal. This protest was at first peaceful and soon turned violent as...
- 10/4/2011
- by Rudie Obias
- ShockYa
At the top of its roundup of all things Farocki, Alt Screen notes that MoMA will be hosting An Evening with Harun Farocki tonight in conjunction with the exhibition Harun Farocki: Images of War (at a Distance), on view through January 2. Farocki will then be at Anthology Film Archives tomorrow night for the launch of their retrospective, running through October 10.
Ben Rivers will be at the Harvard Film Archive this evening for a double bill: Slow Action (2010) and Sack Barrow (2011). His latest, Two Years at Sea, premiered in Venice, and Neil Young wrote: "This Is My Land (2006) was an intimate portrait of Jake Williams and his hermit-like existence in the middle of Aberdeenshire's forests, and Two Years at Sea, Rivers's first feature-length work, is a 90-minute variation on similar themes, with only one line of audible dialogue ('chesty cough,' mumbles Jake, examining a bottle of expectorant.) A hoarder of old photographs,...
Ben Rivers will be at the Harvard Film Archive this evening for a double bill: Slow Action (2010) and Sack Barrow (2011). His latest, Two Years at Sea, premiered in Venice, and Neil Young wrote: "This Is My Land (2006) was an intimate portrait of Jake Williams and his hermit-like existence in the middle of Aberdeenshire's forests, and Two Years at Sea, Rivers's first feature-length work, is a 90-minute variation on similar themes, with only one line of audible dialogue ('chesty cough,' mumbles Jake, examining a bottle of expectorant.) A hoarder of old photographs,...
- 10/3/2011
- MUBI
The most striking emotion you experience watching Tahrir, the cinéma vérité-styled documentary directed and filmed by Stefano Savona, is joy. And not just when the Mubarak regime is toppled, ending thirty years of authoritarian rule, but from the very first time we enter Tahrir Square, joy is written over every face. In some ways, the act of congregating together, of shedding all the political shackles and sharing a dissenting opinion with each other, was a victory unto itself.
But that would shortchange a group of people acutely aware of what they were doing, of the goals they were going to achieve. This immersive experience puts you shoulder to shoulder, face to face, with the brave Egyptians who took to the square and claimed it their own. One person remarked, “Tahrir Square is our homeland,” and the film treats it as such. We are entrenched with the people on the ground...
But that would shortchange a group of people acutely aware of what they were doing, of the goals they were going to achieve. This immersive experience puts you shoulder to shoulder, face to face, with the brave Egyptians who took to the square and claimed it their own. One person remarked, “Tahrir Square is our homeland,” and the film treats it as such. We are entrenched with the people on the ground...
- 10/1/2011
- by jpraup@gmail.com (thefilmstage.com)
- The Film Stage
Michael C reporting from the New York Film Festival.
In years to come there will no doubt be countless documentaries made attempting to make sense of the world changing events in the Middle East in the first half of 2011. Yet for all the context and analysis they bring to bear on the complexities of the Arab Spring I doubt any will have the immediacy of Stefano Savona’s Tahrir.
When the people of Egypy took to the streets, filling Tahrir Square, Savona grabbed his camera and marched out with them. When assembling his film he afforded himself no additional perspective. No talking heads. No title cards. No voiceover narration. If the protesters don’t have the information neither does the audience.
Without those crutches to lean on Savona goes in the opposite direction, building a picture of those days through collage - the musical repetition of chanting, the urgent, unsure spread of information,...
In years to come there will no doubt be countless documentaries made attempting to make sense of the world changing events in the Middle East in the first half of 2011. Yet for all the context and analysis they bring to bear on the complexities of the Arab Spring I doubt any will have the immediacy of Stefano Savona’s Tahrir.
When the people of Egypy took to the streets, filling Tahrir Square, Savona grabbed his camera and marched out with them. When assembling his film he afforded himself no additional perspective. No talking heads. No title cards. No voiceover narration. If the protesters don’t have the information neither does the audience.
Without those crutches to lean on Savona goes in the opposite direction, building a picture of those days through collage - the musical repetition of chanting, the urgent, unsure spread of information,...
- 9/28/2011
- by Michael C.
- FilmExperience
Above Fscl's Richard Pena discusses (via Skype) the challenges of shooting amid the chaos of the Tahrir Square during the revolution in Egypt with "Tahrir" director Stefano Savona. The talk was part of one of the many press conferences at the Walter Reade Theater in New York, in anticipation of the upcoming New York Film Festival. The film is playing in the event's Special Events section. [Photo by John Wildman]...
- 9/23/2011
- Indiewire
The 49th New York Film Festival has announced their Masterworks and Special Anniversary screenings that will show between the festival’s seventeen days, September 30th – October 16th. The Masterworks program and the festival’s additional programming will provide audiences with exciting opportunities to explore new film-making styles and storytelling events. To learn more about the Masterworks and Anniversary films, please check out below for full synopsis and details.
Masterworks And Special Anniversary Screenings
Masterworks: The Gold Rush
Chaplin’s personal favorite among his own films, The Gold Rush (1925), is a beautifully constructed comic fable of fate and perseverance, set in the icy wastes of the Alaskan gold fields. Re-released by Chaplin in 1942 in a recut version missing some scenes, and with added narration and musical score, The Gold Rush will be presented in a new restoration of the original, silent 1925 version. In this frequently terrifying and always unpredictable universe of...
Masterworks And Special Anniversary Screenings
Masterworks: The Gold Rush
Chaplin’s personal favorite among his own films, The Gold Rush (1925), is a beautifully constructed comic fable of fate and perseverance, set in the icy wastes of the Alaskan gold fields. Re-released by Chaplin in 1942 in a recut version missing some scenes, and with added narration and musical score, The Gold Rush will be presented in a new restoration of the original, silent 1925 version. In this frequently terrifying and always unpredictable universe of...
- 8/28/2011
- by Christopher Clemente
- SoundOnSight
25 special programs and screenings have been added to the lineup for this year's New York Film Festival, running September 30 through October 26. The only secrets left are the 2011 Views from the Avant Garde lineup and a few free forums in the works.
Because this round is so heavy on the documentaries, I want to first revisit the lineup for Toronto's Real to Reel program in another entry and then return here to add further notes and linkage. For now, the Film Society of Lincoln Center's Eugene Hernandez has a few more details, but here's the gist of today's announcement:
Masterworks Screenings
Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush (1925), restored.
Hugo Santiago's Invasión (1969), restored.
Sara Driver's You Are Not I (1981), restored.
Special Presentations: Documentaries
Xan Aranda's Andrew Bird: Fever Year.
Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky's Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory.
Nelson Pereira dos Santos's Music According to Tom Jobim.
Because this round is so heavy on the documentaries, I want to first revisit the lineup for Toronto's Real to Reel program in another entry and then return here to add further notes and linkage. For now, the Film Society of Lincoln Center's Eugene Hernandez has a few more details, but here's the gist of today's announcement:
Masterworks Screenings
Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush (1925), restored.
Hugo Santiago's Invasión (1969), restored.
Sara Driver's You Are Not I (1981), restored.
Special Presentations: Documentaries
Xan Aranda's Andrew Bird: Fever Year.
Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky's Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory.
Nelson Pereira dos Santos's Music According to Tom Jobim.
- 8/24/2011
- MUBI
A welcome contrast to the Western media's bird's eye view of the seismic January revolution in Cairo's Tahrir Square, the energetic verité documentary "Tahrir: Liberation Square" dives right into the action. As directed and shot by Italian filmmaker Stefano Savona, its principle strength is the immediacy of the content: Assembling a collage of young and old Egyptians united by the prospects of a post-Mubarak future, Savona allows the revolution to ...
- 8/11/2011
- Indiewire
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