Latest in Contenders International

Deadline on Monday launched its streaming site for Contenders Film, featuring all panels from the ambitious two-day virtual awards-season event that took place over the weekend. The annual kickoff highlighting movies in the conversation for kudos put the spotlight on 49 films from 16 distributors, streamers and…

UPDATED with video: In I’m No Longer Here (Ya no estoy aquí), filmmaker Fernando Frias puts the spotlight on Kolombia counterculture in the region of Northern Mexico. Following the story of 17-year-old Ulises (played by breakout Juan Daniel Garcia Treviño), the film, Mexico’s submission in the International Feature…

UPDATED with video: Director and co-writer Edoardo Ponti brought along his mother for my conversation about his movie, Netflix's The Life Ahead, as part of Deadline's Contenders International awards-season event. That mother happens to be a true screen legend, Sophia Loren, who has been directed by her son (their…

UPDATED with video: Dea Kulumbegashvili's feature directorial debut Beginning was a part of the official selection of the Cannes Film Festival's 2020 edition, even receiving a special in-person screening during the event's abridged celebration in October. The drama further was invited to the Toronto, San Sebastian…

UPDATED with video: "I wanted to do this project for a long time, I had this story in mind for years and years," says director Filippo Meneghetti about Two of Us, France's Oscar entry this year, adding that he also spent an additional five years writing the screenplay with his co-writer Malysone Bovorasmy. The story’s…

UPDATED with video: Romanian director Alexander Nanau joined Deadline’s Contenders International awards-season event to talk about his searing documentary Collective, one of the year's most acclaimed films as winner of the European Film Award for documentary. It is also Romania’s official entry to the International…

UPDATED with video: Finnish author Tove Jansson is most known for creating the enduringly popular children's characters the Moomins, which have spanned comics, books and TV series since she first came up with them in the 1940s. She is now the subject of a biopic, Tove, which is Finland's submission for the…

UPDATED with video: Preparations to be Together for an Unknown Period of Time, Hungary's contender this year for the International Feature Film Oscar, hinges on a moment around seven minutes into the movie. Brain surgeon Márta Visy, played beguilingly by Natasa Stork, travels home to Budapest from New York for a…

UPDATED with video: Drawing attention to the colorful and challenging lives of the elderly, genre-bending The Mole Agent is a film that changed completely from initial concept to final product. "[It] started as a film noir documentary," director Maite Alberdi said during the film’s panel at Deadline’s Contenders Intern…

UPDATED with video: In La Llorona, writer-director Jayro Bustamante blends elements of folklore, magical realism and horror to engage audiences, while also bringing attention to the genocide of native Mayans in 1980s Guatemala. Reinterpreting the legend of the titular Weeping Woman, the Shudder title centers on…

UPDATED with video: Scary stories and urban legends are always fun and at times can haunt you for the rest of your life. For filmmaker Joko Anwar, it was a scary story that was the inspirational seed that would bloom into Impetigore, Indonesia’s official entry for the Oscar International Feature race. Written and…

UPDATED with video: This year's International Oscar entry for Switzerland, My Little Sister, follows a woman who has largely given up on her ambition to be a playwright and returns to Berlin to look after her twin brother, a famous actor with a terminal illness. It is directed by long-term collaborators and…