Director Samir Mallal has joined bicoastal/international production house Smuggler for U.S. representation.
A native Canadian, Mallal studied communications at Concordia University in Montreal. Upon graduating, he interned at the National Film Board of Canada, a longstanding pioneer of documentary filmmaking. After a riot erupted at Concordia between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli activists, Mallal followed and filmed three students closely involved. The footage evolved into Discordia, his first of three collaborations with director Ben Addelman. Discordia was an unexpected hit on the documentary circuit and traveled the world as part of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival.
Mallal spent six months in India and followed a group of hard working and hard partying outsourced call-center employees for his next effort, Bombay Calling, also co-directed with Addelman. The documentary was nominated for a Canadian TV Academy Award (Gemini) and won the Grand Jury Prize at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles.
Nollywood Babylon, Mallal’s third film teaming him with Addelman, examines the explosive popularity of Nollywood, Nigeria’s burgeoning film industry. It was nominated for a Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. Nollywood Babylon was picked up by Lorber Films and was selected for special showcases at the British Museum, MOMA and the Smithsonian Institute.
Tropicana’s “Arctic Sun,” Mallal’s first commercial–produced by Radke Film Group, Toronto–won a Gold Lion at the 2010 Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. Also at the Cannes Ad Fest, Mallal was also selected for the Saatchi and Saatchi New Directors Showcase largely on the strength of “Arctic Sun.”
Martin Scorsese On “The Saints,” Faith In Filmmaking and His Next Film
When Martin Scorsese was a child growing up in New York's Little Italy, he would gaze up at the figures he saw around St. Patrick's Old Cathedral.
"Who are these people? What is a saint?" Scorsese recalls. "The minute I walk out the door of the cathedral and I don't see any saints. I saw people trying to behave well within a world that was very primal and oppressed by organized crime. As a child, you wonder about the saints: Are they human?"
For decades, Scorsese has pondered a project dedicated to the saints. Now, he's finally realized it in "Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints," an eight-part docudrama series debuting Sunday on Fox Nation, the streaming service from Fox News Media.
The one-hour episodes, written by Kent Jones and directed by Elizabeth Chomko, each chronicle a saint: Joan of Arc, Francis of Assisi, John the Baptist, Thomas Becket, Mary Magdalene, Moses the Black, Sebastian and Maximillian Kolbe. Joan of Arc kicks off the series on Sunday, with three weekly installments to follow; the last four will stream closer to Easter next year.
In naturalistic reenactments followed by brief Scorsese-led discussions with experts, "The Saints" emphasizes that, yes, the saints were very human. They were flawed, imperfect people, which, to Scorsese, only heightens their great sacrifices and gestures of compassion. The Polish priest Kolbe, for example, helped spread antisemitism before, during WWII, sheltering Jews and, ultimately, volunteering to die in the place of a man who had been condemned at Auschwitz.
Scorsese, who turns 82 on Sunday, recently met for an interview not long after returning from a trip to his grandfather's hometown in Sicily. He was made an honorary citizen and the experience was still lingering in his... Read More