Month: September 2019

The Venice Film Festival awards ceremony is getting under way, with “Joker” star Joaquin Phoenix and director Todd Phillips among the prospective winners in attendance. This post will be updated live with the winners as they are announced. HORIZONS COMPETITION (ORIZZONTI) Best Film:  “Atlantis,” Valentyn Vasyanovych Best Director: Théo Court, “White on White” Special Jury Prize: “Verdict,”

Producer Chelsea Winstanley heads to Toronto with “Jojo Rabbit,” a black comedy set in WWII from her husband Taika Waititi in which a lonely German boy must confront his blind nationalism when he discovers that his mom is hiding a Jewish girl. Oh, and he does that with the help of his imaginary friend, Hitler.

CAA Media Finance and production-sales company XYZ Films are set to co-represent, with Madrid-based Latido Films, the U.S. distribution rights to Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia’s “The Platform,” a Toronto Midnight Madness entry. CAA Media Finance and production-sales company XYZ Films are set to co-represent, with Madrid-based Latido Films, the U.S. distribution rights to Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia’s “The Platform”

“It: Chapter Two” is already scaring up ticket sales at the domestic box office as it heads toward a $90 million opening weekend. Following $37.4 million at Friday’s box office, the Warner Bros. horror film is now set to score the best opening since “The Lion King,” which premiered in July with $191.8 million. The

Six months after Poland unveiled a new 30% cash rebate at the Berlin Intl. Film Festival, a wave of applications have been approved for the incentive scheme, with the first projects to access the rebate going into production in recent weeks. “The cash rebate is a game-changer for the Polish film industry,” said Radosław Śmigulski, general director

After making her feature debut with the well-received film “Limbo” in 2010, Norwegian filmmaker Maria Sodahl is making a comeback with “Hope,” a drama based on what she went through after being diagnosed with terminal brain cancer years ago. Set to world premiere at Toronto in the discovery section and repped by TrustNordisk, the personal

September 7, 2019 7:28AM PT Brazil’s recent financial scandals are seen through the eyes of a rich family’s housekeeper in director Sandra Kogut’s laborious missed opportunity. Telling the story of Brazil’s ongoing money laundering and bribery scandal through the eyes of a rich family’s housekeeper is a capital idea that never fulfills its promise in

Mick Jagger and Donald Sutherland on Saturday supported environmental protesters on the Venice Film Festival red carpet as they promoted art-world thriller “The Burnt Orange Heresy,” the fest’s closer, in which they both star. The Rolling Stones frontman, who plays a demonic art collector in the film, was asked at its press conference about how

New Zealand-born filmmaker Daniel Borgman, whose latest film “Resin” (exclusive trailer above) world premieres at Toronto in the Contemporary World Cinema section, is developing a pair of high-concept projects: the crime thriller “The Shadows” and the supernatural drama “The Light.” “The Shadows” follows Amanda, a farmer whose reclusive life in the countryside gets turned upside

Wayne Wang’s “Coming Home Again” unfolds largely over the course of a single day as a young Korean-American man tries to prepare a New Year’s Eve feast using his ailing mother’s recipes. It’s a movie that celebrates the enduring connection that many of us feel between food and family. The film premieres Saturday night at

Variety has been given exclusive access to the first teaser for German actor-turned-director Ina Weisse’s second behind-the-camera feature “The Audition,” world premiering at the Toronto  Film Festival Discovery section on Sunday night. The film stars Germany’s internationally acclaimed Nina Hoss as a highly strung violin teacher still suffering under the yoke of her own overbearing parents

Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov, whose arrest and imprisonment in Russia has been a rallying cry for the entertainment industry and human-rights groups worldwide, has been sent back to Ukraine as part of a prisoner exchange Saturday, according to news reports. Sentsov is one of 35 Ukrainians who have been transferred from Moscow to Kiev in

In 2017 Swiss filmmaker Karim Sayad’s debut documentary feature “Of Sheep and Men” impressed at Toronto, and the director is back this year with his latest, “My English Cousin.” In 2010, Algerian-born Fahed moved to the U.K. with little by way of English language skills or a plan but overflowing with ambition. In 2018, besieged

Versatile Italian director Mario Martone was in the Venice competition last year with costumer “Capri-Revolution.” This year he made the Lido competition cut again with a very different type of film, a screen adaptation of a controversial piece by Neapolitan playwright Eduardo De Filippo about a local mob boss who has moral fibre. He spoke to

September 7, 2019 1:59AM PT Nepal has chosen a debut feature as its candidate for the Oscars’ international feature film category. Nepal’s academy award selection committee chose Binod Paudel’s “Bulbul.” Starring Swastima Khadka and Mukun Bhusal, the film follows the travails of a woman who drives a tempo truck in Kathmandu. “Bulbul” was released in

September 7, 2019 1:54AM PT Margaret Qualley’s performance as a mysteriously pregnant ingenue is the saving grace of this silly, overworked suburban thriller. The last few years have already afforded us multiple opportunities to reflect on the remarkable talents of Margaret Qualley, an actor who, since breaking out in TV’s “The Leftovers,” has delivered pure,

You’d think modern-day societies would have moved past the old-fashioned narrative about fathers by now, especially with the heteronormative idea of family increasingly and rightfully shifting, challenging long-standing gender stereotypes. But many still view dads as absent, bread-winning authority figures who leave a child’s day-to-day needs and emotional growth to women. With her feature debut

There’s a sequence in “Just Mercy” — one of many — that will shake you to your soul. It’s the late 1980s, and Bryan Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan), a young African-American lawyer in crisp gray suits and neckties, with a degree from Harvard, has come to stay in Monroe County, Alabama, to take on the

In 1895 Paris, Polish immigrant Maria Salomea Skłodowska (Rosamund Pike) was already headed toward a scientific breakthrough when she met fellow researcher Pierre Curie (Sam Riley). When the two physicists first collide, she’s a coiled mass of awkward tics. “Radioactive,” directed by Marjane Satrapi (“Persepolis,” “The Voices”), is the saga of how this blunt, fast-walking

Not many debuting directors are able to bring subtlety and depth to a heart-rending subject, which is just one reason why Mehdi M. Barsaoui’s superb “A Son” deserves significant attention. On the surface, the plot sounds like it could be taken from a hospital TV drama: When a young boy needs a liver transplant, his

In “Hope Gap,” Annette Bening plays a fiercely intelligent but not nearly independent enough English housewife who has been toiling away on a project for years. A lover of literature, and poetry in particular, Bening’s character Grace is compiling a book of verses for the full range of human experience. She intends to call it

Love is patient; love is kind. That much you’ve heard before. But death … Death is a nasty son a gun. Death is ugly; it stinks; it takes no prisoners and permanently scars all who witness it. Matthew Teague’s “The Friend: Love Is Not a Big Enough Word” tells the story of both those abstract

Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx could be headed to the Oscars. In what is already shaping up to be a fierce competition in the lead and supporting male acting categories, Jordan and Foxx just entered the race with the world premiere of their new real-life drama “Just Mercy” at the Toronto Film Festival. The

On Friday night at the Toronto International Film Festival, two high-profile Gala premieres were interrupted by medical emergencies involving audience members. A man fainted at the world premiere of “Sound of Metal” at the Winter Garden Theatre. And the screening of “Blackbird” at Roy Thomson Hall was paused for approximately five minutes toward the end