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Following the announcement last week that Ana de Armas (Knock Knock) was added to the cast of the Blade Runner sequel, it’s now been revealed that Dutch actress Sylvia Hoeks (The Girl and Death, Overspel, The Best Offer) has joined the film’s ranks in a leading role:

Press Release: Dutch actress Sylvia Hoeks has been tapped for a leading role alongside Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, Robin Wright, Ana de Armas and Dave Bautista in Alcon Entertainment’s sequel to Ridley Scott’s 1982 masterpiece Blade Runner, it was announced by Alcon co-founders and co-ceo’s Andrew Kosove and Broderick Johnson.

Denis Villeneuve (Sicario, Prisoners) is directing. Principal photography is scheduled to begin July 2016. The film will be released by Warner Bros. in North America and Sony Pictures Releasing International will distribute in all media for all overseas territories.

Netherlands-born film, stage and television actress Hoeks has starred in numerous...

Alcon Entertainment have announced that Dutch actress Sylvia Hoeks ("The Best Offer," "Tirza") has been set for a leading role alongside Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, Robin Wright, Ana de Armas and Dave Bautista in the upcoming "Blade Runner" sequel at Warner Bros. Pictures.

The Blade Runner sequel is set several decades after the Ridley Scott-directed 1982 original, with Harrison Ford reprising his iconic role as Rick Deckard. Denis Villeneuve ("Sicario," "Prisoners") is directing the film from a script written by Hampton Fancher and Michael Green.

Andrew Kosove and Broderick Johnson are producing and filming is scheduled to begin in July.

Source: Alcon Entertainment...

Plus: Sylvia Hoeks joins Alcon’s Blade Runner sequel; Screen Media acquires Michel Gondry’s Microbe & Gasoline; and more…

Miramax announced on Tuesday that it has optioned film rights to Matthew Quick’s upcoming novel The Reason You’re Alive.

Allison Shearmur (Cinderella, the upcoming Rogue One: A Star Wars Story) will produce the story about a Vietnam veteran who undergoes brain surgery and sets out to atone for a past injustice affecting his son.

Quick’s previous book was The Silver Linings Playbook.

Dutch actress Sylvia Hoeks has been hired in a leading role alongside Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, Robin Wright, Ana de Armas and Dave Bautista in Alcon Entertainment’s Blade Runner sequel. Denis Villeneueve is scheduled to start shooting in July. Hoeks starred in local box office hit Tirza, the Dutch foreign-language Oscar submission in 2010. Warner Bros will distribute the sci-fi project in North America and Sony Pictures Releasing International in remaining global territories...

During Toronto International Film Festival, Bero Beyer announced his plans for the 45th International Film Festival Rotterdam (Iffr). One innovation is that eight films will compete in the Hivos Tiger Awards Competition for a single Hivos Tiger Award worth €40,000, to be shared by director and producer. In addition, a special jury award worth €10,000 will be presented to an exceptional artistic achievement within the competition. Previously, approximately 15 films competed for three equal awards of € 15,000.

'We aim to focus as much attention and as well as we can on the best, the most innovative, original and challenging works by filmmakers’, said Bero Beyer, who will be taking up the role of festival director at Iffr 2016. ‘This is why we have not only increased the prize money, but also chosen a structure in which we will put a new “Tiger” in the spotlight every day. At Iffr, we strive to celebrate and honor exceptional films and makers, and give them the maximum possible attention.’

The film "History's Future" by filmmaker and artist Fiona Tan is the first of eight films to be selected for the Hivos Tigers Award Competition. Beyer: ‘I am particularly happy that, with Fiona Tan’s "History's Future," we will be able to present the world premiere of such a cinematographically strong film. The maker’s unique way of working and distinct voice as an auteur make this a marvellous, engaging and intriguing film. The kind of envelope-pushing experience Rotterdam has always promoted.’ Tan’s screenplay, written with renowned film critic Jonathan Romney, attracted top acting talent including Mark O'Halloran ("Calvary"), Denis Lavant ("Holy Motors," "Beau Travail") and Johanna ter Steege ("Spoorloos," "Tirza"). Part fiction, documentary and an essay probing the world of today, "History's Future" is about a man’s odyssey through the turbulence of Europe – and his own spirit. The project had been selected by Iffr’s CineMart in 2013.

Iffr is proud that Hivos will once again be the main sponsor of the festival for the coming years. Through support for the Hubert Bals Fund and the Hivos Tiger Award, the organization contributes to the development of artistic film productions as a means of expressing social criticism. The Hivos Tiger Awards Competition was set up in 1995 with the aim of discovering, raising the profile of and recognising emerging international film talent. The awards are presented by an expert jury.

The streamlined Hivos Tiger Awards Competition will be part of a more contextualized program, in which films are selected and presented for their character and spirit. All of the films that will screen at Iffr 2016 will be included in one of four program sections.The first of these will present new film talent through innovative, daring and original films, some of which will be included in the competition. The second section will contain inspirational films by established makers. Often these films already have a distributor and will screen in arthouse cinemas after the festival and are aimed at a broad audience. Beyer: ‘Iffr has always played an important role in launching exceptional films and supporting distribution. In addition, we will be looking for ways to optimize this role, for example through the Iffr Live project, initiated in 2014, in which five titles were simultaneously screened in forty cinemas throughout Europe.’

The third program section will use master classes, retrospectives and special programs to go deeper into the world of cinema and provide more context.

And in the fourth section, filmmakers and critics will explore the landscape of film from various angles and the overlaps between film, television and other media will be investigated. The names of these sections and more film titles will be announced in the near future...

Rudolf van den Berg’s feature stars Tygo Gernandt [pictured] as the notorious art forger Han van Meegeren.

Leading Dutch production outfit Rinkel Film has revealed further details of its new feature about notorious art forger Han van Meegeren.

A Real Van Meegeren, as the project is called, will be directed by Rudolf van den Berg (Tirza, Süskind), who has cowritten the screenplay with Jan Eilander.

It is being produced by Rinkel Film (through Reinier Selen) together with Fu Works (San Fu Maltha) and Cadenza Films (Jeroen Koolbergen). The other partners are, in Luxembourg, Tarantula Luxembourg (Donato Rotunno), and, in Croatia, Nukleus Film Croatia (Sinisa Juricic).

Cineart will release in Benelux.

Van Meegeren is often called “one of the greatest art forgers of the Twentieth Century”. He was renowned for his fake Vermeers and for his forgeries of work by Seventeenth Century Dutch masters.

Among the clients he managed to hoodwink in his shady but illustrious career was leading...

Tirza is considered a huge success as an art house film in The Netherlands. It has over 175.000 admissions, is based on a very succesful book by a very succesful writer Arnon Grunberg and the director is very well known. Tastes differ in different parts of the world, and that’s also good. The academy members are not all against this film, some like it better then others but all of them agree it is an intriguing film and peole feel inclined to discuss it. That alone makes for a worthy film. In light of today's events in the U.S., as…...

Bill Skarsgård, Cecilia Forss in Andreas Öhman's Simple Simon (top); Heikki Färm and Jani Kumpulainen's Steam of Life (bottom) Tirza, Simple Simon, Steam of Life, and Angel are four potential 2011 Academy Award contenders in the Best Foreign Language Film category. Those are, respectively, the submissions from The Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, and Norway. Directed by Rudolf van den Berg after an eight-year hiatus, Tirza is a complex psychological drama in which a middle-aged Dutchman (Gijs Scholten van Aschat) comes unglued while attempting to find his missing daughter in Namibia. During his search he's befriended by a nine-year-old local girl who also happens to be a sex worker. Based on a novel by Arnon Grunberg, Tirza has received highly favorable reviews in the Dutch media. Whether the generally conservative Best Foreign Language Film-voting Academy members will go for the graphic dialogue and situations, the fragmented narrative (adapted by van den...

While I do not think that something as edgy or unusual as Giorgos Lanthimos' Dogtooth (pictured above) will make the 'final five' short list, but kudos to Greece for throwing it out there.  Perhaps something like Tetsuya Nakashima's Confessions will make the cut despite its similarly unsettling subject matter.  Either way, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences did put out a big release yesterday with all of their Foreign Language film submissions, 65 of them in total even Greenland, from various countries.  Many of these films have reviews in our archives.

Albania, East West East, Gjergj Xhuvani

Algeria, Hors la Loi ("Outside the Law"), Rachid Bouchareb

Argentina, Carancho, Pablo Trapero

Austria, La Pivellina, Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel

Azerbaijan, The Precinct, Ilgar Safat

Bangladesh, Third Person Singular Number, Mostofa Sarwar Farooki

Belgium, Illegal, Olivier Masset-Depasse

Bosnia and Herzegovina, Circus Columbia, Danis Tanovic

Brazil, Lula the Son of Brazil,...

I have been keeping track of all of the Foreign Language Oscar submissions in my "The Contenders" section of the site and today the official list of sixty-five films from sixty-five countries was unveiled by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for consideration for the 83rd Academy Awards. On January 20, 2011 a shortlist of nine contenders will be announced prior to the naming of the nominees on January 25, 2011.

I have included the complete list directly below, which includes first-time entrants Ethiopia and Greenland. The only film that was originally thought to be under consideration, but didn't show up on the Academy's final list was Afghanistan's entry, Black Tulip, directed by Sonia Nassery Cole. IMDb doesn't list a release date for the film, which means it may not have met the release requirements in time.

I have linked each film to their corresponding IMDb page for those films not included...

I'm not sure what the cutoff date is for from the individual countries for the Foreign Language Film nominations, but Sony Pictures Classics are glad to see Canada select Denis Villeneuve's Incendies. The company now has three horses in the race and once again, places the distributor in a pretty good position to grab the most of the spots in the final five nominations. Their solid trio so far includes: the Villeneuve film that played at Venice, Telluride and Tiff with Cannes items Xavier Beauvois' Of Gods and Men and Olivier Schmitz's Life, Above All. Having seen all three mentioned titles, I can say that this will please Academy voters. Cross your fingers for Dogtooth folks. Algeria: Outside the Law, Rachid Bouchareb Austria: La Pivellina, Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel Azerbaijan: The Precinct, Ilgar Safat Belgium: Illègal, Olivier Masset-Depasse Bosnia and Herzegovina: Circus Columbia, Danis Tanovic Bulgaria: Eastern Plays,...

Berlin – Rudolf van den Berg's "Tirza," a lost-child drama set in Africa, will be the official Dutch candidate for the 2011 best foreign language Oscar.

The film, which will open the Netherlands Film Festival in Utrecht Sept. 22, follows a Dutch man whose life is torn apart when his daughter Tirza disappears while on holiday in Namibia. He sets out to find her but the only one who can help him is Ibi, a child prostitute.

"Tirza" is Van den Berg's first Dutch-language film in more than two decades. His last four features -- "Snapshots" (2002)," "Goodnight Vienna" (1997), "The Cold Light of Day" (1996) and "The Johnsons" (1992) -- were in English with international casts.

"Tirza" is a co-production between San Fu Maltha's Fu Works, Jeroen Koolbergen's Cadenza Films and Belgian producer Prime Time.

The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences will announce the best foreign language nominees on Jan. 25. The...