Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi used an appearance at the Rio Film Festival to deliver an unusually direct criticism of Hollywood’s portrayal of countries such as Iran, arguing that films like Argo perpetuate an American “white savior” mentality and reflect a broader assumption that the United States occupies a position above the rest of the world. Farhadi, who was in Rio to present…

Cinema Without Borders jury announced the winners of the Bridging The Borders Award for 2026 Lucas International Film Festival for Young Film Lovers in Germany.  ILUMINADA (Belgium) By Nicolás Rincón Gille wins 2026 Bridging The Borders Award . Bridging the Borders Award is offered by Cinema Without Borders Foundation and sponsored by The Lonely Seal Company Group  Hamed Soleimanzadeh, one of our jury members announced the winner of the Bridging The Borders Award at the closing ceremony of the festival.

SILENCED NIGHTS directed by Lawrence Fajardo is Set in a slum in Manila’s infamous Tondo district, SILENCED NIGHTS follows an ordinary laborer whose life is transformed when he becomes the lone witness to the extrajudicial killing of a teenage boy by police officers.  As fear spreads through his community and silence becomes a means of survival, the laborer is forced to confront the devastating personal cost of choosing between self-preservation and justice.

Eighty years have passed since the end of the Second World War, and cinema has returned again and again to Nazism, occupation, concentration camps, mass killing, displacement, and the greatest catastrophes of that era. Yet one of the most important qualities of Woman Unknown, for me, is that May el-Toukhy, eighty years later, still finds an angle from which to look at the postwar period that does not simply repeat established narratives, but returns to a less-seen part of history: a history that remained not on the battlefield, but in the body, the home, class, memory, silence, and the everyday relationships of ordinary people.

“The greatest riches a man can have in his life – la familia.” – José Sánchez Gregory Nava’s Mi Familia/My Family is a golden tribute to the complex, loving, tragic, angry, thoughtless, joyful, forgiving tangle of relationships found in practically any family. But in this 1995 feature film the focus is on the Sánchez family – José and María and their children, Paco, Irene, Chucho, Toni, Memo, and Jimmy – and their lives in La Villa de Nuestra Señora de Los Angeles, otherwise known as L.A.

I am astonished and fascinated by Asghar Farhadi’s new film, Parallel Tales. It is something genuinely fresh and strikingly different from this great filmmaker, who in his latest work gradually draws the viewer into the trap of an unfamiliar story. At first, it is not clear where you are being led, and you may begin to wonder what could possibly happen in this interwoven world, where the characters and spaces seem to have little or nothing to do with one another.

On the Occasion of Iran’s National Cinema Day Iran’s National Cinema Day offers us an opportunity to look again at the long road Iranian cinema has traveled—a road filled with rises and falls, brilliant periods and difficult years, failures and achievements, hopes and disappointments. Yet when we look back at this history, one essential part of it has sometimes received less attention than it deserves: the presence of women actors and the role they have played in shaping the identity of Iranian cinema.

Paolo Strippoli’s L’estranea (The Spiral), presented in competition at the Venice Film Festival, begins with the face of a working woman’s young son, setting into motion the spiral that will define the film. It is the face of a child absorbing the pain of his mother’s humiliation. In the middle of a party, Anna shouts at the woman who works for her, but rather than remaining on Anna, the camera follows the child’s reaction.

There is something wonderfully appropriate about sending the Minions back to the silent era of Hollywood. These characters have always depended far more on movement, expression, timing and physical comedy than on anything they actually say, so placing them among the visual comedians of early cinema feels less like a gimmick and more like discovering where they should have been all along.

Working in animation changes the way you look at children’s entertainment because you begin to notice things that most viewers are not supposed to think about consciously, from the shape of a character’s eyes and the softness of a silhouette to the color palette, the rhythm of a voice and the way a smile is designed to make a child feel safe before a single word has been spoken.

After four films, several of which ended with such emotional finality that audiences had already said goodbye more than once, returning to Woody, Buzz, Jessie and the rest of the gang inevitably carries the suspicion that nostalgia has become too valuable for Hollywood to leave alone. Pixar has built one of the most beloved series in animation history, but affection can become a trap.

Four years after directing his vitriolic, self-reflexive film Ahed’s Knee, Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid turned to satire with Yes in 2025. The earlier film focused on Y, a controversial director (much like Lapid) invited to present one of his films in a small village in southern Israel. When confronted with a list of approved discussion topics which he is required to sign, he realizes that the national Ministry of Culture has begun a campaign to limit free expression.

Hammad Zaidi, a Pakistani-American filmmaker, has built a career that moves easily  between filmmaking, distribution, festivals, streaming, education, technology, and  sports. He founded The Lonely Seal Company Group, which includes Lonely Seal  Releasing, The Lonely Seal International Film, Screenplay, and Music Festival, The  Lonely Seal Impact Fund, Lonely Seal Streaming, Film Bite, and The Story Oasis Fund.  Hammad also joined the Board of Directors of Cinema Without Borders and is an  Advisory Council Member of MELM - The Masters in Entertainment Leadership and  Management at Loyola Marymount University (LMU).  

A tiny stage, barely two by three meters. Two amateur actors lounging on comfortable armchairs with a small round table between them, performing before a few dozen spectators seated at café tables, sipping different kinds of coffee with brownies or cheesecake. And just like that, you have a theatrical event. It is theater created with minimal expense, without having to wrestle with the lengthy process of obtaining permits from the Ministry of Culture or renting a formal performance venue.

Fatal Distraction has reached the No. 1 spot among documentaries on Amazon, bringing renewed attention to one of the most controversial criminal cases in recent American history. The documentary examines the widely publicized Georgia murder trial of Justin Ross Harris, who was convicted in connection with the 2014 hot-car death of his 22-month-old son. Harris was originally found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

At the 32nd Sarajevo International Film Festival, acclaimed Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi will receive the Honorary Heart of Sarajevo, one of the festival's highest distinctions. The award recognizes Farhadi's outstanding contribution to world cinema and the profound humanism reflected throughout his body of work. He will accept the award in person in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the festival will also present a retrospective of his films as part of its…

Walking through the exhibition halls of SIGGRAPH 2026 at the Los Angeles Convention Center, one quickly realizes that the computer graphics industry has entered a new era. Artificial intelligence is no longer presented as a futuristic promise—it has become an integral part of virtually every creative workflow, from concept design and animation to visual effects, simulation, scientific visualization, and filmmaking. This year's conference brings together researchers, artists, engineers, and technology companies from around the world to explore the next generation of digital storytelling and interactive experiences.

What follows is my conversation with Sohrab Khosravi, an editor whose professional journey began in animation before he became one of the key figures in Iran's transition from film-based editing to the digital era. Over the years, he has collaborated with filmmakers such as Ebrahim Hatamikia, Majid Majidi, Kamal Tabrizi, and many others, building a body of experience that has become part of the living memory of contemporary Iranian cinema.

The winners of the Short Film and Short Script Competitions at the 3rd Koker International Short Film Festival have been revealed. The festival’s top honor, the Golden Cherry Award, was presented to the Chinese film No One Knows I Disappeared. The 3rd Koker International Short Film Festival concluded with its awards ceremony. Formerly known as the Abbas Kiarostami Short Film Festival, the event took place from July 1 to 3, 2026, at Klick Kino in Berlin, Germany.

The Palm Springs International ShortFest is the largest short film festival in North America. Its 32nd edition ran June 23–29, 2026, at the Festival Theaters in Palm Springs, with support from the City of Palm Springs. The festival showed 329 short films from 71 countries across 50 themed programs, including 52 world premieres and 79 California premieres. More than 7,000 films were submitted from 145 countries.

Cinema Without Borders has announced its jury members to decide on the winner of 2026  Bridging The Borders Award at the LUCAS International Festival for Young Film Lover in Germany. LUCAS programmers have also announced the nominees for the Cinema Without Borders’ Bridging The Borders Award A jury of five, formed by CWB will decide on the winning films at the closing night of the festival.

Every major technological breakthrough in the history of cinema has been greeted with fear. When synchronized sound arrived in the late 1920s, many filmmakers believed it would destroy the visual poetry of silent cinema. Some of the greatest silent film stars saw their careers disappear almost overnight, and critics warned that movies would become little more than photographed theater. When color became widespread, there were filmmakers who insisted that black-and-white cinematography represented the true artistic language of cinema. 

There are very few annual events that I regret missing as much as SIGGRAPH. For those of us who have spent our lives writing about cinema, following technological innovation has become almost as important as following the films themselves. Every major transformation in filmmaking—from sound to color, from digital cinematography to computer-generated imagery—began with artists and scientists who dared to imagine a different future.

For more than half a century, SIGGRAPH has been the annual gathering where the future of visual storytelling is unveiled. While many filmmakers still think of it primarily as a conference for computer graphics engineers or software developers, that perception is decades out of date. Today, SIGGRAPH has become one of the most important creative events in the world for directors, producers, cinematographers, animation artists, visual effects supervisors, production designers, game developers, virtual production specialists, and anyone interested in the future of cinema.

Reha Erdem’s quietly beautiful film examines the lives of children in a small Turkish village poised on a mountainside near the sea. Nature is all around them with winds rising and falling, the sun and moon rising and setting, sudden rains, bright sunny days, crisp nights, and the sounds of sheep, goats, donkeys, dogs, and chickens. To the romantic outsider the village might seem idyllic with its timeless lifestyles, homegrown vegetables, fresh baked bread, warm cups of tea, sturdy stone houses with whitewashed walls, rock strewn pathways passing walls of stacked rocks, and an abundance of green trees, plants, and occasional flowers, all with a stunning view of the sea from hilltops.