Congratulations to Wim and the entire cast and crew!

Read Wenders’ reaction to being nominated below:

“It’s fantastic to be nominated for Best Documentary for the second time after Buena Vista Social Club, especially as it is the first time for a 3D film to be given that honor. All the dancers and collaborators of the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, together with the crew and the production company Neue Road Movies, are extremely honored. With our journey into the magical kingdom of the great German choreographer Pina Bausch we wanted to raise a monument to this pioneer of modern dance. The worldwide success of Pina and now this Oscar nomination are fantastic rewards and recognition of our common work.”
PINA continues to expand to theaters nationwide in 3D.

It is love at first sight when Juliette (Valérie Donzelli) locks eyes with a stranger across a crowded room in the French domestic drama “Declaration of War.”

The man’s name is Romeo (Jérémie Elkaim), and so their meeting seems fated, although they wonder if some kind of tragic future awaits them. The relationship is, in fact, idyllic, and what brings the pair crashing back to earth is not passion giving way to the banality of daily life but a diagnosis of brain cancer that befalls their infant son.

Directed by Donzelli and written by her and Elkaim, it is a subject the two know well. Their own son, Gabriel Elkaim, similarly battled life-threatening illness as a tot while his parents could only stand by helplessly. The family’s experience inspired “Declaration of War,” but Donzelli and Elkaim are firm in their assertion that their film does not tell their story.

“We wanted to make a fiction film,” Donzelli says during a recent phone conversation.

“To bring more fiction to the movie, it started with the names we gave the characters, Romeo and Juliette,” Elkaim adds. “We wanted people to identify very strongly with them being lovers in a kind of collective fashion.”

While Gabriel’s illness was something Donzelli and Elkaim lived through, the inspiration for their story came more from the way they could use it as a springboard for a more universal tale. Through the story of this couple, they could comment on something they had observed in society that had nothing to do with a child’s illness.

“We wanted to talk about a generation that has never lived through a war, that has not really been affected by a war and, in fact, is a really spoiled generation, and we wanted to talk about that through this story,” Elkaim says.

“What we’re really interested in is what’s going to happen. It’s the path, the road that we took that we lived through during this experience. At the beginning, Valérie wanted to do an action movie, but her desire initially was to create something that was really a comedy, that was much more comedic, in fact.”

“Declaration of War” does have its fair share of humor, a lot of romance and even a musical interlude. What is perhaps most surprising is how it sidesteps pathos when so much of it is about a baby fighting for his life. Elkaim likens Donzelli to a sculptor, molding and reinventing the film at each phase of production: writing, shooting and editing.

“She’s like pounding into her block of granite, and the film is emerging as it’s going along. She has a hands-on intelligence,” he says, praising Donzelli for her fearlessness in making a film with such an unexpectedly light tone.

Surprise and action

“The idea was not make a film where we were going to throw in a variety of elements,” she says, adamant that the disparate elements simply arose from the demands of the tale they were telling. “It was to be able to tell the story as best as we could, and so by bringing in all those things, that was our way of doing it and doing it with surprise and action and the rest.”

“Valérie is not afraid to jump one tone to another. The comedy was a way of bringing a certain sort of modesty to the film,” Elkaim adds. “In a way, when characters go through something like this, it was having them not accept this kind of injection of despair and unhappiness that automatically kind of comes with subject matter like this. We were able to tell a story where even in moments like that there is the opportunity of blossoming and growth, because we know what we’re fighting against.”

Donzelli also notes that although there is a sick baby in the film, the film is not about a sick baby. The focus is really on the couple, and the calamity that befalls their family is just another factor for them to deal with as they navigate their relationship.

“We knew from the get-go that it was going to be a love story we were telling. That was the most important thing,” she says.

The pair knew from the start that even though they were writing a fictional story, it would still be close in certain aspects to their own reality, simply because they were drawing on the lives they’ve led, but they did not want that to color their characters’ journey. Remaining objective was a crucial aim while working out their script.

“Our motivation was not an exorcism of our experience,” Elkaim says. “In fact, what we were concerned about was finding the appropriate distance, because we didn’t want it to be a hostage taking.”

Making things a little bit easier was their discovery that they could in fact divorce themselves from Romeo and Juliette’s story even as it veered so close to their own.

“It wasn’t like revisiting it,” Donzelli says. “The work itself kept it from feeling like we were revisiting the subject. So it was not too painful to work on the movie.”

Intermingling life and fiction

There is one aspect of “Declaration of War” where real life and fiction happily intermingle. Donzelli did not want the audience obsessed with whether the baby lives or dies, and so she bookends the movie with scenes of the now 8-year-old little boy. When his parents told him about their new movie, Gabriel Elkaim wanted to know who would play the child.

“He was the one who wanted to act in it,” Donzelli says.

“He forced us to hire him,” Elkaim laughs. “We were really pleased, because it was a really joyous experience to shoot together.”
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/19/PKP41MOD1G.DTL#ixzz1kPWzc05z

CLICK HERE FOR INFO, SCHEDULE AND TICKETS- which are going fast!

Program includes Ben Wheatley’s KILL LIST, Wim Wenders’ PINA in 3D,the Dardenne’s THE KID WITH A BIKE, Justin Kurzel’s SNOWTOWN, Joshua Marston’s THE FORGIVENESS OF BLOOD, Mia Hanson-Love’s GOODBYE FIRST LOVE, Julia Leigh’s SLEEPING BEAUTY and Bertrand Bonello’s HOUSE OF PLEASURES!

The committee includes Nik Powell, director of the NFTS and deputy chairman of the EFA Board; EFA Board Member Despina Mouzaki; EFA Member Francine Brücher; Claas Danielsen (International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film); Ally Derks (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam); Jacques Laurent; and ARTE-observer Martin Pieper.

And the nominees are:

“Pina,” Germany
WRITTEN & DIRECTED BY: Wim Wenders
PRODUCED BY: Gian-Piero Ringel & Wim Wenders

“Stand Van De Sterren” (Position Among the Stars), the Netherlands
DIRECTED: Leonard Retel Helmrich
WRITTEN BY: Leonard Retel Helmrich & Hetty Naaijkens
PRODUCED BY: Hetty Naaijkens

”¡Vivan Las Anitpodas!,” Germany / the Netherlands / Argentina / Chile
WRITTEN & DIRECTED BY: Victor Kossakovsky
PRODUCED BY: Heino Deckert

New York, NY (October 11, 2011) – Sundance Selects announced today that the company is acquiring North American rights to director Julia Loktev’s drama THE LONELIEST PLANET. The film, with a screenplay also by Loktev, stars Gael Garcia Bernal, Hani Furstenberg and Bidzina Gujabidze. Jay Van Hoy, Lars Knudsen, Marie Therese Guirgis, and Helge Albers served as producers on theproject. The film has recently been screened at the Locarno, Toronto, and New York film festivals.

THE LONELIEST PLANET marks the second time the company has teamed up with Loktev; sister division IFC Films previously released her narrative debut film, DAY NIGHT DAY NIGHT.

In the film, a young couple backpacking in the Caucasus mountains finds their love tested when the threat of violence enters their idyllic journey.

Jonathan Sehring, President of Sundance Selects, said: “It’s a great honor to be able to continue to work with Julia Loktev with THE LONELIEST PLANET. She’s made a phenomenal film that further establishes her as one of the most exciting talents working in world cinema today. We’re also happy to be working with a great team that includes Lars Knudsen, Jay Van Hoy, and Marie Therese Guirgis.”

Noted Loktev: “I’m really excited to work with Sundance Selects. I know they’ll put as much heart into distributing the film as we put into making it.”

The deal for THE LONELIEST PLANET was negotiated by Arianna Bocco, Senior Vice President of Acquisitions & Productions, and Jeff Deutchman, Director of Acquisitions, for Sundance Selects with Dana O’Keefe at Cinetic Media on behalf of the filmmakers.

Sundance Selects is a sister division to IFC Films and IFC Midnight, and is owned and operated by AMC Networks, Inc.

New York, NY (October 11, 2011) – Sundance Selects announced today that the company is acquiring North American rights to director Julia Loktev’s drama THE LONELIEST PLANET. The film, with a screenplay also by Loktev, stars Gael Garcia Bernal, Hani Furstenberg and Bidzina Gujabidze. Jay Van Hoy, Lars Knudsen, Marie Therese Guirgis, and Helge Albers served as producers on theproject. The film has recently been screened at the Locarno, Toronto, and New York film festivals.

THE LONELIEST PLANET marks the second time the company has teamed up with Loktev; sister division IFC Films previously released her narrative debut film, DAY NIGHT DAY NIGHT.

In the film, a young couple backpacking in the Caucasus mountains finds their love tested when the threat of violence enters their idyllic journey.

Jonathan Sehring, President of Sundance Selects, said: “It’s a great honor to be able to continue to work with Julia Loktev with THE LONELIEST PLANET. She’s made a phenomenal film that further establishes her as one of the most exciting talents working in world cinema today. We’re also happy to be working with a great team that includes Lars Knudsen, Jay Van Hoy, and Marie Therese Guirgis.”

Noted Loktev: “I’m really excited to work with Sundance Selects. I know they’ll put as much heart into distributing the film as we put into making it.”

The deal for THE LONELIEST PLANET was negotiated by Arianna Bocco, Senior Vice President of Acquisitions & Productions, and Jeff Deutchman, Director of Acquisitions, for Sundance Selects with Dana O’Keefe at Cinetic Media on behalf of the filmmakers.

Sundance Selects is a sister division to IFC Films and IFC Midnight, and is owned and operated by AMC Networks, Inc.

“****.  SPELLBINDING.  ONE OF THE DAMNEDEST FILMS ERROL MORRIS HAS EVER MADE.”  Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

“A GUARANTEED GOOD TIME AT THE MOVIES.”  Ty Burr, The Boston Globe

“ASTONISHING.  An impossible and perfect embodiment of just how curious our species can be”  A.O. Scott, The New York Times

“INTENSELY PLEASURABLE.  We laugh like mad…What a treasure trove.  With each event, one’s jaw drops further and further.  TABLOID is candy for voyeurs.”  David Edelstein, New York Magazine

“MESMERIZING.  A MUST-SEE.”  Michael O’Sullivan, Washington Post

“DELIRIOUSLY ENTERTAINING.  A GIFT FROM THE MOVIEMAKING GODS.”  Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“GRADE A.  Succulent, Fascinating, Bizarrely touching.  Pure Movie Candy.”  Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly

“IRRESISTIBLE.  Morris is a storyteller of the highest order, and within seconds, he draws us into his subject, doling out details, making us wonder what will happen next and dropping bombs for maximum impact.”  Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

“ASTONISHING.  THOROUGHLY ENTERTAINING.”  Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times

“A delirious enigma.  Another of Morris’ alternately hilarious and disturbing inquiries into the slippery nature of truth.”  Andrew O’Hehir, Salon

“WILDLY ENTERTAINING.  One hell of a yarn.”  Scott Tobias, The Onion AV Club

“A sharp, runaway RASHOMON parable inside one of the most thoroughly entertaining films of the year.”  Eric Hynes, The Village Voice

“A playful, voyeuristic guilty pleasure, an exploration of the wacky and tacky and our compulsive need to feed on such tales.  It’s consistently a kick, and it couldn’t be more relevant.”  Christy Lemire, Associated Press

“Irresistible.  Endlessly entertaining.  When Errol Morris decides he wants to entertain the hell out of us, he delivers.”  Tom Carson, GQ

With deadpan wit and an ability to examine large topics by focusing on his subjects with unflinching scrutiny, documentary filmmaker Errol Morris has created a vivid, often comical, often disturbing portrait of America through his films. He has also bridged the gap between art and reportage. His films are deceptive; though Morris seems to be stepping back from his subjects and letting them speak for themselves, his editorial and artistic intelligence is apparent in every frame.

With his 1981 instant-cult debut, Gates of Heaven, Errol Morris began a career of film portraits that interrogate different aspects of American life, ranging from pet cemeteries to crime to artistic obsession to war—each of them treated with the same measure of interest and intellectual curiosity. “After twenty years of reviewing films, I haven’t found another filmmaker who intrigues me more,” wrote film critic Roger Ebert, an early champion of Morris’s films. The Thin Blue Line, which questioned the conviction of death-row prisoner Randall Adams, who was wrongly accused of killing a police officer, was not just a surprise arthouse hit, it became a news story itself when it resulted in the reopening of Adams’s case and the eventual overturning of conviction. (Adams’ death last fall in Oregon at age 61 was just revealed in the media.) In some ways Morris’s most artistically ambitious film, Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control is a kaleidoscopic inquiry into the nature of obsession with four brilliantly interwoven portraits, edited by the late Karen Schmeer, Morris’s longtime editor who was killed last year in Manhattan by a car speeding from a robbery. The Fog of War, released during the first year of the current war in Iraq, is built around a startling in-depth interview with Robert S. McNamara, who was Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War.

IFC Films will open Tabloid in theaters on July 15.

Press Contact: Tomoko Kawamoto / tkawamoto@movingimage.us / 718.777.6830

SCHEDULE FOR ‘ERROL MORRIS’S AMERICA,’ JULY 9–AUGUST 7, 2011
All screenings take place at Museum of the Moving Image, 36-01 35 Avenue, Astoria, NY, and are included with Museum admission unless otherwise noted.

Tabloid
Preview screening and discussion with Errol Morris
Tuesday, July 12, 7:00 p.m.
Dir. Errol Morris. 2010, 85 mins. 35mm print courtesy IFC Films. Morris digs deeply into a sensation and salacious news story about Joyce McKinney, a former beauty queen turned tabloid queen whose alleged kidnapping and rape of a Mormon in England in 1977 made her a pop culture sensation. Morris examines McKinney’s own account of her life and her fame, uncovering the workings of obsession and scandal.
TICKETS: $15 public / $10 Museum members / Free for Silver Screen and above. Call 718 777 6800 or order online at movingimage.us

The Thin Blue Line
Saturday, July 16, 5:00 p.m.
Sunday, July 17, 5:00 p.m.
Dir. Errol Morris. 1988, 106 mins. 35mm. This artfully stylized documentary, which uses dramatic recreations and a Philip Glass soundtrack, investigates the case of a death row prisoner who may have been wrongly convicted of a police officer’s murder. The film became a news story when the case was reopened.

Gates of Heaven
Saturday, July 23, 5:00 p.m.
Sunday, July 24, 5:00 p.m.
Dir. Errol Morris. 1978, 85 mins. 35mm. Morris’s debut documentary feature reveals the bizarre world of pet cemeteries and the people who operate them. Morris’s straight-faced interviewing style only enhances the film’s surreal comic quality.

Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control
Saturday, July 30, 5:00 p.m.
Sunday, July 31, 5:00 p.m.
Dir. Errol Morris. 1997, 82 mins. 35mm. In his most experimental film, brilliantly edited by the late Karen Scheer, Morris interweaves portraits of four obsessed individuals, as he films a lion tamer, a topiary artist, a robot engineer and a photographer with a love for rodents. Morris brilliantly turns the portraits into a broad philosophical and artistic inquiry.

The Fog of War
Saturday, August 13, 5:00 p.m.
Sunday, August 14, 5:00 p.m.
Dir. Errol Morris. 2003, 106 mins. 35mm. This Academy Award-winning documentary is built around a stunning in-depth interview with the highly controversial Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War. Morris divides McNamara’s stories into segments that each serve as a lesson about war.

MUSEUM INFORMATION

Hours: Tuesday-Thursday, 10:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Friday, 10:30 to 8:00 p.m. Saturday-Sunday, 10:30 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. (Closed on Monday except for holiday openings).
Film Screenings: See schedule above.
Museum Admission (as of July 16): $12.00 for adults; $9.00 for persons over 65 and for students with ID; $6.00 for children ages 3-18. Children under 3 and Museum members are admitted free. Admission to the galleries is free on Fridays, 4:00 to 8:00 p.m. Paid admission includes film screenings (except for special ticketed events and Friday evenings) Tickets for special screenings and events may be purchased in advance by phone at 718.777.6800 or online.
Location: 35 Avenue at 37 Street in Astoria.
Subway: R or M trains (R on weekends) to Steinway Street. N or Q trains to 36 Avenue.
Program Information: Telephone: 718.777.6888; Website: http://movingimage.usThe Museum is housed in a building owned by the City of New York and its operations are made possible in part by public funds provided through the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the New York City Economic Development Corporation, the New York State Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and the Natural Heritage Trust (administered by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation). The Museum also receives generous support from numerous corporations, foundations, and individuals. For more information, please visit http://movingimage.us.

Our friends over at indieWIRE have the details on these amazing numbers:

http://www.indiewire.com/article/holiday_box_office_terri_tops_indies_in_debut_buck_and_beginners_lead_stron/

Thursday, June 23
4:00 Paranoid Park (See Monday, June 20, 6:30).
6:30 Tillsammans (Together) (See Wednesday, June 22, 8:00).
8:45 Daremo Shiranai (Nobody Knows). 2004. Japan. Written and directed by Hirokazu Koreeda. With Yuya Yagira, Kimura Hiei, Kitaura Ayu, Momoko Shimizu. This heartbreaking tale of abandonment and loyalty is based on the true story of four siblings, aged 14 to 2 years old, left alone by their mother in a small Tokyo apartment. The eldest brother’s (Cannes Best Actor–winner Yagira) tragic failure to fend for his younger siblings would seem to overshadow his valiant attempts to provide for the family, but the film retains a sense of innocence and admiration for the children’s determination. In Japanese; English subtitles. 140 min.
Friday, June 24
4:30 Daremo Shiranai (Nobody Knows) (See Thursday, June 23, 8:45).
8:00 Tabloid. 2010. USA. A film by Errol Morris. Academy Award-winner Errol Morris’ Tabloid follows the much stranger-than-fiction adventures of Joyce McKinney, a former ‘beauty queen’ whose single-minded devotion to the man of her dreams leads her across the globe and directly onto the front pages of the British tabloid newspapers. Equal parts love story, film noir, brainy B-movie, and demented fairy tale, Tabloid is a delirious meditation on hysteria both public and personal from a filmmaker who continues to break down and blow open the documentary genre with his penetrating portraits of eccentric and profoundly complex characters. (Sundance Selects). 88 min.
Press Contact: Sarah Jarvis, (212) 708-9757, sarah_jarvis@moma.org
For downloadable high-resolution images, register at the MoMA Press Image Center.
Hours: Films are screened Wednesday-Monday. For screening schedules, please visit our Film Exhibitions.
Film Admission: $10 adults; $8 seniors, 65 years and over with I.D. $6 full-time students with current I.D. (For admittance to film programs only.) The price of a film ticket may be applied toward the price of a Museum admission ticket when a film ticket stub is presented at the Lobby Information Desk within 30 days of the date on the stub (does not apply during Target Free Friday Nights, 4:00–8:00 p.m.). Admission is free for Museum members and for Museum ticketholders.
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Public Information:
The Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53 Street, New York, NY 10019, (212) 708-9400
MoMA.org

Hours: Wednesday through Monday: 10:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Friday: 10:30 a.m.-8:00 p.m. Closed Tuesday.