Sanjeev Singh, Videovision Entertainment’s Director of Acquisitions announced today that eleven Videovision films will screen at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown. Heading the slate of films is Remember, while the other films are Suffragette, Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet, The Little Prince, Wolf Totem, Welcome To New York, White Bird In A Blizzard, Mommy, Pride, Strangerland and Free Angela Davis And All Political Prisoners.
Remember, Executive produced by Anant Singh and shot in Canada, stars Academy Award® Winners Christopher Plummer and Martin Landau. It is the contemporary story of Zev (Plummer), who discovers that the Nazi guard who murdered his family some 70 years ago is living in America under an assumed identity. Despite the obvious challenges, Zev sets out on a mission to find the guilty man and deliver long-delayed justice with his own trembling hand. What follows is a remarkable cross-continent road-trip with surprising consequences.
Suffragette which is made on the backdrop of the movement of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage in the United Kingdom where women fought for the right to vote, is directed by Sarah Gavron with a star studded cast which includes Carey Mulligan, Meryl Streep, Helena Bonham Carter, Romola Garai, Anne-Marie Duff, Brendan Gleeson and Ben Whishaw.
Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet, inspired by the beloved Kahlil Gibran classic, is a richly-animated tale of an unlikely friendship between a young, mischievous girl and an imprisoned poet. Interwoven with Gibran’s lyrical and inspiring words on the true nature of love, work, freedom and marriage, the film is written and directed by Roger Allers with the voices of Liam Neeson, Salma Hayek-Pinault, Quvenzhané Wallis, John Krasinski, Frank Langella and Alfred Molina. The Little Prince, based on Antoine De Saint-Exupery’s classic children’s book, is an animation adaptation which features a star studded voice cast which included Jeff Bridges, Rachel McAdams, James Franco, Benicio Del Toro, Ricky Gervais, Marion Cotillard, Paul Giamatti and Albert Brooks.
Wolf Totem, adapted from the Chinese best-seller by Jiang Rong, is a visually beautiful film helmed by the celebrated, award-winning French director Jean-Jacques Annaud. Starring Gérard Depardieu and Jacqueline Bisset, Welcome To New York follows a powerful French politician who lives his personal life on the edge, who puts himself in danger of losing it all in this intense drama. White Bird In A Blizzard directed by Gregg Araki, stars Shailene Woodley, Eva Green and Angela Bassett. This dramatic thriller, tells the story of a young woman discovering her own sexuality when her mother mysteriously disappears.
The multi award-winning, Mommy, from acclaimed director Xavier Dolan, is set in a fictional Canada, where a new law allows parents to abandon their troubled children to the hospital system. Pride, set in 1984 during Margaret Thatcher’s hard rule over Britain which prompted much political action, the film tells the story of what is perhaps the most amazing response of all which occurred when Welsh coal miners and London gays and lesbians found a common cause – an unlikely alliance; it was never obvious, but which ended up being a lot of fun.
Strangerland directed by Kim Farrant and starring Nicole Kidman, Hugo Weaving and Joseph Fiennes, is about a family that finds their dull life in a rural outback town rocked after their two teenage children disappear into the desert, sparking disturbing rumours of their past. The gripping documentary, Free Angela Davis And All Political Prisoners explores the social activism of college professor Angela Davis which implicates her in a botched kidnapping that ends with four people dead and her name on the FBI’s most-wanted list.
Sanjeev Singh commented, “Our slate represents some of the finest films released by ourselves, and includes critically acclaimed titles which have achieved international success. We are delighted to be continuing our relationship with South Africa’s premier arts festival with these films, which we believe will be appreciated by the festival audience.”
Trevor Steele Taylor, the National Arts Festival’s Film Curator confirms, “The festival’s relationship with Videovision Entertainment goes back over many years of fruitful collaboration. Their ground-breaking anti-apartheid film Place of Weeping was given pride of place at the festival and its director went on to win the coveted Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Film. Videovision Entertainment has always shown immense imagination in the films for which they acquire rights and every year the festival finds treasures amongst the company’s holdings. 2016 is a bumper year with eleven titles being selected for the programme.”
Zev (played by Christopher Plummer) holds the letter in a scene from ‘REMEMBER’. Director Atom Egoyan, Producers Robert Lantos and Ari Lantos, Executive Producer Anant Singh. Photo credit Sophie Giraud.
© 2014, Remember Productions Inc.
Nilesh Singh
Tel: 031 2046000
E-mail: nilesh@videovision.co.za
