Hungarian director Szabolcs Hajdu, whose gymnast drama Fehér tenyér (White Palms) premiered in the US on Friday, has finished shooting on his drama Adel versus Friday,  which was originally conceived as a TV film on a €270,000 budget and was shot on 16mm. It will premiere in Hungarian cinemas in autumn. With that film in postproduction, Hajdu is gearing up for the shoot of Gyöngéd kezelés (Smooth Operator, also known as Pascal's Library / Bibliothèque Pascal), which is eyeing an August start. The €3 million film follows the travels of a Hungarian girl from Transylvania and is a co-production involving Hungary, Germany and UK. Read last year's interview with the director  for more on both Fehér tenyér and Gyöngéd kezelés. (source: hungarianfilm.com)

More trailers have been added to european-films.net. First up is the upcoming coming-of-age story Beste Zeit (lit. The Best of Times), the new film from the young and prolific German director Marcus H. Rossenmüller. His bobsleigh comedy Schwere Jungs (Heavyweights) premiered only six months ago, while his latest film is scheduled for a July release in Germany. Beste Zeit is the third feature film of the director who shot to fame with the unexpected success of his debut, the Bavarian funeral comedy Wer früher stirbt, ist länger tot (Grave Decisions). Beste Zeit stars Anna Maria Sturm and Rosalie Thomas as two 17-year-old Bavarian girls who struggle with love and whether they should stay or leave their heimat to find happiness. Go to the German trailer of Beste Zeit.

Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci will be the first and likely sole recipient of a special award at the upcoming Venice Film Festival: the Leone d’Oro del 75° or "Golden Lion of the 75th anniversary". The festival will bestow the special prize on the director on September 8, during the closing ceremony of the 64th edition of the festival that started 75 years ago (it was not held every year). Bertolucci was nominated four times for an Oscar and won twice: for writing and directing the 1988 Best Picture winner The Last Emperor. He has presented many of his films at Venice, starting with Pier Paolo Pasolini's Accatone in 1961, on which he was an assistant director, and his directorial debut La commare secca (The Grim Reaper) in 1962. 

After their successful debut feature Tapas, which won them the Best New Director Goya and which was released across the continent, the Spanish directing duo José Corbacho and Juan Cruz have started working on their second feature Cobardes (lit. The Gutless). Principal photography on the film is scheduled to start on Thursday in Hospitalet de Llobregat in the Barcelona region. The film will reteam the directors with Elvira Mínguez, who won a Best Supporting Actress Goya for her role in Tapas. The story centres on harassment in school and follows the young boy Guille, who seems a good kid with decent grades, a love of sports and a loving family. Things start to change when he discovers that pummelling his classmates earns him a certain respect and he decides to pick on one red-haired boy especially.