News

Roberto Cicutto, former president of the Venice Biennale, has been elected president of Eurimages, the co-production fund of the Council of Europe.

Cicutto will succeed Catherine Trautmann, who has chaired the Eurimages board since 2017 and whose term of office comes to an end on December 31.

Venice-born Cicutto has worked in the film industry for over 40 years. He was president of the Venice Biennale from 2020 to 2024, and before that was president and CEO of Istituto Luce – Cinecittà, which manages the Italian studios, from 2009 to 2020.

Earlier in his career, Cicutto founded production company Aura Film, whose film The Legend Of The Holy Drinker...

Two-time Oscar nominated Italian cinematographer Dante Spinotti will receive this year’s Pardo Alla Carriera Achievement Award at August’s 74th Locarno Film Festival. Locarno will also host screenings of two of Spinotti’s standout films resulting from his long-time partnership with director Michael Mann: Oscar-nominated “The Insider” and classic heist thriller “Heat.” Spinotti will receive the prize in a ceremony at the Piazza Grande on Aug. 12, and hold an audience-led conversation the following day.

Spinotti’s prolific and consistent output has crossed genres and cinematic trends for four decades. His feature debut work was in Sergio Citti’s “Il minestrone” in 1981, but he was quickly off to Hollywood where he made an impact with the diversity and quality of his efforts, working on films like Sam Raimi’s Western “The Quick and the Dead,” Garry Marshall’s rom-com “Frankie and Johnny” starring Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer, and...

Swiss festival will screen Michael Mann’s The Insider and Heat for which Spinotti was Oscar-nominated.

Italian cinematographer Dante Spinotti will receive the Locarno Film Festival’s lifetime achievement award at its upcoming 74th edition running August 4 to 14, 2021.

Having spent the first 15-years of his career in his native Italy, Spinotti was given the opportunity to work in the US by compatriot producer Dino De Laurentis on Michael Mann’s 1986 mystery horror Manhunter.

It would mark the beginning of a long creative partnership with Michael Mann on a raft of titles including The Insider and Heat, for which Spinotti was Oscar-nominated.

Chicago – Cult character actor Rutger Hauer passed away late last month, but the mark he made with his array of performances carried through two generation of admirers, even receiving the honor of Best Dutch Actor of the (20th) Century in 1999. He died on July 19th, 2019, in his native Netherlands. He was 75.

He was born in Breukelen, the Netherlands, to actor parents. After a couple stints in the military, he graduated from the Academy for Theater and Dance in Amsterdam in 1967, and made his TV debut two years later when director Paul Verhoeven cast him in the Dutch medieval action drama “Floris.” His film debut came in 1973 with “Turkish Delight,” and he performed mostly in Dutch films during the 1970s, including work with Verhoeven again on “Solider of Orange” (1977) and “Spetters” (1980).

Although Hauer made one international English language film previously, his American debut came in 1981 with “Nighthawks.” His was unforgettable one...

People from the world of film are paying tribute on social media to Rutger Hauer, the Dutch actor who famously tormented Harrison Ford as the replicant Roy Batty in Blade Runner, and has died aged 75.

People from the world of film are paying tribute on social media to Rutger Hauer, the Dutch actor who famously tormented Harrison Ford as the replicant Roy Batty in Blade Runner, and has died aged 75.

Hauer passed away in the Netherlands last Friday (July 19) according to reports, following a short illness. His funeral took place on Wednesday (24).

Guillermo del Toro paid tribute on Twitter to “an intense,...

Hauer in his iconic role as Batty in "Blade Runner".

By Lee Pfeiffer

International film star Rutger Hauer has died at age 75 in his native Netherlands after what has been called "a short illness". Hauer had run away from home at age 15 and joined the merchant marines before turning his attention to acting. He gained stardom in the Netherlands in the 1960s through a TV series titled "Floris". He gravitated to feature films where his good looks and assertive personality made him a popular attraction. His first major hit in European cinema was the acclaimed 1973 film "Turkish Delight". Hauer, who frequently collaborated with director Paul Verhoeven, made a mark in Hollywood playing a memorable villain in the 1981 thriller "Nighthawks" starring Sylvester Stallone. In 1982, he landed his most iconic role as the villain Batty in director Ridley Scott's sci-fi classic "Blade Runner". The film was a critical and boxoffice disappointment...

Rutger Hauer, the actor who played the villainous Roy Batty in Ridley Scott’s sci-fi classic Blade Runner in a career in which he became a staple in genre films, died July 19 in his native the Netherlands after a long illness. He was 75.

A funeral was held today, Hauer’s agent Steve Kenis told Deadline.

Hauer was born January 23, 1944 in Breukelen in the Netherlands. He attended the Academy for Theater and Dance in Amsterdam before being drafted into the Royal Netherlands Army. He was part of an experimental theater troupe before being cast by Paul Verhoeven in the 1969 Dutch TV action drama Floris.

His first role stateside was in 1981 in the film Nighthawks opposite Sylvester Stallone, but it was his role as Roy Batty in the 1982 cult classic Blade Runner that put him in the spotlight and made him a formidable name amongst the cult fan community of the Ridley Scott film.

Rutger Hauer, the versatile Dutch leading man of the ’70s who went on star in the 1982 “Blade Runner” as Roy Batty, died July 19 at his home in the Netherlands after a short illness. He was 75.

Hauer’s agent, Steve Kenis, confirmed the news and said that Hauer’s funeral was held Wednesday.

His most cherished performance came in a film that was a resounding flop on its original release. In 1982, he portrayed the murderous yet soulful Roy Batty, leader of a gang of outlaw replicants, opposite Harrison Ford in Ridley Scott’s sci-fi noir opus “Blade Runner.” The picture became a widely influential cult favorite, and Batty proved to be Hauer’s most indelible role.

More recently, he appeared in a pair of 2005 films: as Cardinal Roark in “Sin City,” and as the corporate villain who Bruce Wayne discovers is running the Wayne Corp. in Christopher Nolan’s “Batman Begins.

Above: 1962 Czech poster for Il posto (1961). Designer: Jaroslav Zelenka.The great Italian director Ermanno Olmi, who passed away last year at the age of 86, made films for over 60 years and yet is best known, if at all, for his four masterpieces: Il posto (1961), I fidanzati (1963), his Palme d’Or winning Tree of the Wooden Clogs (1978) and The Legend of the Holy Drinker (1988), to the exclusion of almost everything else that he made. So the upcoming retrospective at New York’s Film at Lincoln Center, which starts next Friday, is most welcome. Unfortunately it does not include the many documentary short films that he made at Edison Volta in Milan in the early 1950s, but it does include all 19 feature films from his debut Time Stood Still (1959) through to his final fiction film Greenery Will Bloom Again (2014). Olmi has long been a personal favorite of mine and I can’t recommend...

Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Ermanno Olmi's The Legend of the Holy Drinker (1988) is showing July 19 - August 18, 2018 in the United States.Ermanno Olmi was not an artist ignored in his lifetime. A recipient of the Honorary Golden Lion in 2008 (a full decade before his passing earlier this year), Olmi managed acclaim not just in his home country of Italy, but also in the broader international eye. In 1978, he took the Palme d’Or for The Tree of Wooden Clogs, his best-known work. And although relatively less discussed, The Legend of the Holy Drinker, an adaptation of Austrian writer Joseph Roth’s 1939 novella of the same name, won him the Venice Golden Lion just a decade later. Given the unreliability of such awards nowadays, it’s fair to wonder whether Olmi’s film—a discursive, bibulous Parisian odyssey of a clochard, Andreas (Rutger Hauer...

Ermanno Olmi, a noted Italian neorealist director whose 1978 film The Tree of Wooden Clogs won the Palme d’Or in Cannes, has died at age 86.

No cause of death was given. Italian officials confirmed the passing of Olmi, whose films also include Il Posto, Walking, Walking, The Legend of the Holy Drinker and Long Live the Lady!

Tree of Wooden Clogs, which was the unanimous choice of the Cannes jury, depicts the rough-edged beauty of late-19th-century agrarian life in Italy. Unfolding in long, impressionistic takes, it tells the story of four families living and working on an estate run by a greedy landowner.

The Legend of the Holy Drinker, which starred Rutger Hauer, won the Golden Lion in Venice in 1988. The Venice festival also awarded Olmi a career Golden Lion in 2004. Initially, he refused it, saying he “still had feature films to make,” but he relented four years later.

Ermanno Olmi, the Italian director best known for winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1978 with his drama “The Tree of Wooden Clogs,” has died at 86. The director passed away in Asiago, Northern Italy, not far from where he ran the Ipotesi Cinema film school since the 1980s (via Variety). Olmi had reportedly been ill for some time, but the exact cause of death is not known at this time.

Olmi received his breakthrough with his 1961 drama “Il Posto,” an Italian Neorealism riff that made him a name at the Venice Film Festival and won him the best director prize at Italy’s David di Donatello Awards. “Wooden Clogs” took home the Palme in 1978, in addition to winning the César Award for best foreign film. Olmi’s other notable work is “The Legend of the Holy Drinker,” starring Rutger Hauer, which won the Golden Lion at the 1988 Venice Film Festival.

Italian director Ermanno Olmi, known for humanist dramas in which he explored spirituality and social themes such as “The Tree of Wooden Clogs,” which won the 1978 Cannes Palme d’Or, has died.

He was 87. Olmi died in a hospital in Asiago, Northern Italy, not far from Bassano del Grappa where since the 1980’s he had been running an innovative film school called Ipotesi Cinema. His wife and children were beside him. The exact cause of death is not know, but Olmi had reportedly been ill for some time.

Olmi, who began his career making short documentaries and often worked with non professional actors, also won the 1988 Venice Golden Lion for his “The Legend of the Holy Drinker,” starring Rutger Hauer. It’s based on a book by Austrian author Joseph Roth about a homeless man living under the bridges of Paris. After receiving a small loan by an anonymous stranger,...

Director Ermanno Olmi’s The Legend Of The Holy Drinker (1988) Starring Rutger Hauer will be available on Blu-ray from Arrow Academy September 26th

Winner of the prestigious Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival, The Legend Of The Holy DRINKERr is another classic from the great Italian director Ermanno Olmi (Il posto, The Tree of Wooden Clogs).

Adapted from the novella by Joseph Roth, the film tells the story of Andreas Kartack, a homeless man living under the bridges of Paris. Lent 200 francs by an anonymous stranger, he is determined to pay back his debt but circumstances – and his alcoholism – forever intervene.

Working with professional actors for the first time in more than 20 years, Olmi cast Ruger Hauer as Andreas and was rewarded with an astonishing performance of subtlety and depth. Hauer is joined by a superb supporting cast, including Anthony Quayle (Lawrence of Arabia), Sandrine Dumas (The Double Life of Veronique...

Above: Pedro Costa's Horse Money

The Locarno Film Festival has announced their lineup for the 67th edition, taking place this August between the 6th and 16th. It speaks for itself, but, um, wow...

"Every film festival, be it small or large, claims to offer, if not an account of the state of things, then an updated map of the art form and the world it seeks to represent. This cartography should show both the major routes and the byways, along with essential places to visit and those that are more unusual. The Festival del film Locarno is no exception to the rule, and I think that looking through the program you will be able to distinguish the route map for this edition." — Carlo Chatrian, Artistic Director

Above: Matías Piñeiro's The Princess of France

Concorso Internazionale (Official Competition)

A Blast (Syllas Tzoumerkas, Greece/Germany/Netherlands)

Alive (Jungbum Park, South Korea)

Horse Money (Pedro Costa,...

"Leave it to an old master to strip a complex question down to its basics, leave aside all the anxiety and handwringing, and discover compassion as a basic reflex, a core value of a Europe few seem to recall." Michael Sicinski for Cargo: "Ermanno Olmi's The Cardboard Village stars Michael Lonsdale (fresh from his turn in Xavier Beauvois's Of Gods and Men) as an elderly Italian priest in the final days before his retirement, watching as his church is deconsecrated, the pews pushed into a corner by a forklift, Christ deposed from the cross by a crane. In the night, the priest takes to the pulpit and addresses the absent congregation. 'Where have you all gone?' he asks? Unbeknownst to him, the town's North African immigrants, hunted by the carabinieri, take up in the back storeroom. Eventually they build a tent city in the empty nave. The...

#4. The Cardboard Village Director: Ermanno Olmi Cast: Michael Lonsdale, Rutger Hauer, Massimo De Francovich, Alessandro Haber Distributor: Rights Available Buzz: With his origins and legacy primarily dating back to the latter years of Italian Neorealism, Olmi has gone on to further iconic status via a Palme d'Or for The Tree of Wooden Clogs and his Golden Lion for The Legend of the Holy Drinker. He vowed that his 2007 film One Hundred Nails would be his final fictional feature, but lo and behold, here he is again. Playing modestly out of competition in Venice a few days prior to Tiff. The Gist: Confronting the recent surge in North African immigration that is rampant in Italy, Olmi's narrartive concerns a priest whose church-in-crisis become a shelter for illegal immigrants. Extracting great emotional power from the simplest of scenario's, this new film promises to be another strong entry in the aging maestro's personal...