Film production preview 2009

Right, that’s the tears and tantrums of the Oscars out of the way – time to concentrate on what matters: movies. Dave Calhoun and David Jenkins pick out the most promising UK, European, US and Asian films in production right now

UK anarchy

Morag McKinnon’s ‘Donkeys’
This is the second film in the Glasgow-set trilogy that began with Andrea Arnold’s ‘Red Road’. Kate Dickie and Martin Compston resume their roles.

Andrea Arnold’s ‘Fish Tank’
Arnold’s second film builds on her Oscar-winning short ‘Wasp’ and follows a girl whose mother brings home a stranger promising riches.

Samantha Morton’s ‘The Unloved’
The Nottingham-born actress makes her directorial debut with a story about kids in care written with Tony Grisoni (‘Red Riding Trilogy’).

Nicolas Roeg’s ‘Night Train’
Following his decidedly odd ‘Puffball’, veteran director Nicolas Roeg is to start filming this adaptation of Martin Amis’s hard-boiled 1997 detective novel.

Chris Morris’s ‘Four Lions’
Promising an insight into what it’s like to be a suicide bomber, our foremost screen satirist makes his feature debut with a farce about British extremists. ‘Terrorism is about ideology,’ he says. ‘But it’s also about berks.’

Shane Meadows’s ‘Le Donk’
Shane Meadows (‘Somers Town’ and ‘This Is England’) shot this film with Paddy Considine, who plays roadie Le Donk, over five days last year.

Ken Loach’s ‘Looking for Eric’
Eric Cantona stars as the figment of
a postman’s imagination in Loach’s new film (pictured below), his eighth with writer Paul Laverty. They’re calling it ‘magical social realism’. Out in June.

Andrew Kötting’s ‘Alexander Ivul’
Kötting’s first feature since ‘This Filthy Earth’ in 2001 will be a French-language drama – the artist-filmmaker failed to find funding from the conservative British film industry.

European élan

Pedro Almodovar’s ‘Broken Embraces’
One of the great directors of women reteams with Penélope Cruz (pictured left) for this complex meta-movie about a director recalling a relationship with one of his lead actresses.

Michael Haneke’s ‘The White Ribbon’
Haneke’s first film since ‘Funny Games US’ is set in a German village on the eve of World War I and features a large cast of children.

Lars Von Trier’s ‘Antichrist’
Early word on the latest from the great Dane – an English language horror starring Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe – is that it’s dark and disturbing. Business as usual then.

Jacques Rivette’s ‘36 Vues du Pic Saint-Loup’
The New Wave maestro returns with this literary biopic based on the life of dandy author Raymond Roussel.

Gaspar Noe’s ‘Enter the Void’
It would be no mean feat if Noe could trump the shock value of ‘Irréversible’ with this tale of a drug dealer in Tokyo.

Sylvain Chomet’s ‘The Illusionist’
This long-gestating follow-up to ‘Belleville Rendez-vouz’ sees Chomet creating a feature-length animation of a never-filmed script by Jacques Tati.

Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s ‘Micmacs à Tire-Larigot’
The new film from Jeunet (‘Amelie’) is a satire on the arms trade starring popular French actor Dany Boon.

Danis Tanovic’s ‘Triage’
Colin Farrell stars as a photo-journalist who returns home without his colleague in this film from the Bosnian director of ‘No Man’s Land’.

Bruno Dumont’s ‘Hadewijch’
The fifth film from Belguim’s always-interesting Dumont tells the story of a nun expelled from her convent.

Cristian Mungiu’s ‘Tales From the Golden Age’
The director of ‘4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days’ produces, writes and co-directs this suite of folk myths from late-communist Romania.

Patrice Chereau’s ‘Persecution’
Romain Duris and Charlotte Gainsbourg join Chereau for a follow-up to his excellent ‘Gabrielle’, which he describes as ‘a story of crazy love and emotional persecution’.

Alejandro González Iñárritu’s ‘Biutiful’
Iñárritu splits with writer Guillermo Arriaga and returns to Spanish language for this Barcelona-shot drama about a criminal confronted by an old friend. Javier Bardem stars.

American action

Jim Jarmusch’s ‘The Limits of Control’
Shot in Spain, starring Tilda Swinton and Bill Murray, this is a crime story, a road movie and a series of eccentric portraits.

John Hilcoat’s ‘The Road’
Postponed from last autumn, this Cormac McCarthy adaptation with Viggo Mortensen as a wanderer amid an unspecified apocalypse will finally see the light of day this year.

Steven Soderbergh’s ‘The Girlfriend Experience’/‘The Informant’
Two films coming soon from Soderbergh, one a rough DV drama starring adult film star Sasha Grey, the other a taut thriller about a corporate whistle-blower starring Matt Damon.

Michael Moore’s ‘Untitled’
What is the pop-doc Godhead to do now Bush is out of office? According to his website, he’s got his horn-rims on the Wall Street fat cats.

Joe Wright’s ‘The Soloist’
Wright follows ‘Atonement’ with a story of an LA journalist (Robert Downey Jr) who befriends a homelss musician (Jamie Foxx). Already in the can, its release shifts to September.

Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Inglourious Basterds’
Still unflappably ploughing the grindhouse furrow, Tarantino returns with this censor-baiting (watch the trailer) men-on-a-mission movie set in Nazi-occupied France.

Terrence Malick’s ‘Tree of Life’
The ever-reliable Mallick returns to the rhapsodic territory of ‘Days of Heaven’ with a film starring Brad Pitt (pictured below) and Sean Penn.

Michael Mann’s ‘Public Enemies’
Mann turns his diamond-hard gaze to the inner-workings of the FBI in the 1930s with this star-studded (Johnny Depp, Christian Bale) period thriller.

Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘Tetro’
Vincent Gallo heads up this drama, filmed in Argentina, about the artistic rivalries of an Italian immigrant family. Autobiographical, perhaps?

Alejandro Jodorowsky’s ‘King Shot’
The mad ‘El Topo’ director joins with producer David Lynch to make this metaphysical gangster film. Expect plenty of mystic symbolism.

Woody Allen’s ‘Whatever Works?’
Woody returns to New York for the first time since 2004 to make this comedy with Larry David. But not for long. He shoots in the UK this summer.

Coen Brothers’ ‘A Serious Man’
The Coens opt for a less-starry cast for this 1960s comedy about a professor whose marriage falters when his brother refuses to leave his house.

Asian artistry

Tsai Ming-liang’s ‘Face’
The Malaysia-born, Taiwan-based director of languorous art movies heads to France for this latest work about a director who travels to Paris to research his new film.

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s ‘Air Doll’
The Japanese director returns with this comedy about a man who falls in love with a sex doll. Also watch out for his superb ‘Still Walking’ later this year.

Bong Joon-Ho’s ‘Mother’
It’s been quiet since his horror yarn ‘The Host’, but South Korean Bong is set to return with this chilling mystery about a mother searching for a killer who framed her son.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s ‘Primitive’
Rumours suggest that Apichatpong is set to go into production on this latest experimental work about extinction and past lives.

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