Month: September 2021

Women filmmakers from Afghanistan made a powerful and emotional plea for international intellectual support at a panel at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday. Fighting back tears, Sahraa Karimi, who wrote a hard-hitting open letter about the impact of her country being taken over again by the Taliban, did not mince her words about the

From the second that benefits office worker Kate makes charged eye contact with the flirty, scuzzily charismatic claimant across the desk from her, you’re torn between pulling her back, as a sensible best friend would, and urging her to go for it, as we might secretly do ourselves. The man has red flags practically pinned

Rare home movie footage shot in Poland in 1938 becomes a priceless historical artifact, documenting people and places obliterated by the Holocaust in Dutch writer-director Bianca Stigter’s haunting and provocative documentary essay “Three Minutes – A Lengthening.” She utilizes the three minutes and some-odd seconds of 16mm film shot by American visitor David Kurtz in

Producers Adam Mirels and Robbie Mirels of 141 Entertainment, the team behind Ana Lily Amirpour’s hotly anticipated “Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon,” which plays Sunday in competition at the Venice Film Festival, have signed an option to remake director-writer Sameh Zoabi’s 2018 Venice Horizons Award entry “Tel Aviv on Fire.” The adaptation will be

Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page didn’t hold back in detailing why the band has refused to participate in a single documentary until now. Bernard MacMahon’s “Becoming Led Zeppelin” premieres at the Venice Film Festival Saturday afternoon, and tickets for all 12 press and public screenings of the film have sold out — easily making it

Matt Dillon (“The House That Jack Built”) and Charlotte Gainsbourg (“Antichrist,” “Nymphomaniac”) are attached to star in Fred Garson’s “An Ocean Apart,” a period drama about the romantic affair between French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir and American writer Nelson Algren. The film is being developed by French producer Olivier Delbosc at Curiosa Films, which is

MK2 Films has boarded “Blaze,” the feature directorial debut of award-winning Australian painter Del Kathryn Barton, which stars Simon Baker (“High Ground”) and Julia Savage (“Sweet Tooth”). Now in post-production, the film stars Savage as Blaze, a teenager who is the sole witness to a shocking crime. Struggling to make sense of what she saw,

“True Things,” which world premieres Saturday in Venice’s Horizons section, is the fruit of a collaboration between the production companies of two stars, Jude Law and Ruth Wilson, the first feature film that she has produced, as well as The Bureau, a production company with a stellar track-record for delivering arthouse hits. When literary agent

Mexico’s Michel Franco is back in Venice after his triumphant Silver Lion win last year for his dystopian thriller “New Order.” His new film “Sundown” is in competition at the Lido where it world premieres on Sunday. Variety spoke to the director and the film’s star Tim Roth. While “New Order” used thousands of extras

English audiences have long been partial to Romeo and Juliet, but in this critic’s outside-the-box opinion, Edmond Rostand’s “Cyrano de Bergerac” is the more romantic play. For starters, its tragedy hinges not on teenage impatience and suicide, but deep, long-unrequited affection. Convinced that his physical appearance makes him unworthy of his beloved Roxanne, the chivalrous

Rising Italian star Michele Riondino, who is on the Lido with Venice Days pic “I Nostri Fantasmi,” is set to play a priest sent by the Vatican to Holland to investigate a crying statue of the Virgin Mary in “The Man From Rome,” from Dutch director Jaap van Heusden (“In Blue”). This English, Dutch and

For over 25 years, Emmy-award winning directors/producers Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine have jointly created multi-character documentary narratives that use the personal stories of their protagonists to paint a larger portrait of the human experience. They are especially known for meticulous archival research, which made works such as “Ballets Russes” (2005) and “Isadora Duncan: Movement

As one of the oldest and most prestigious film festivals in the world, the Venice Intl. Film Festival has been launching films that have gone on to grab top awards and discoveries of emerging filmmakers, and now, after several years as a leader in the VR space, the 78th edition is poised to do the

With seven titles selected for Venice VR Expanded at this year’s film festival, Taiwan has once again demonstrated its potential as a global leader in virtual reality content production. But this time, the tech hub in Asia has more to offer: it aims higher than just flaunting its technological advancement and the quality of locally

Films from Asia are struggling to compete at this year’s major film festivals. That’s not necessarily a reflection on their artistic merits, but a symptom of a painful 2021 divide between the film industry’s East and West. A full-sized Cannes festival was noticeably light on Asian selections, and the same goes for the Venice Film

Norway’s famous landscapes will be gracing screens around the world in a fresh crop of blockbusters and domestic productions set to be released internationally. Premiering in Venice out of competition, Denis Villeneuve’s long-awaited “Dune” features scenes shot on the West Cape plateau, one of the most spectacular view points on the coast of Norway. The

Eighteen months after the outbreak of the COVID crisis, the Norwegian film industry has never been busier. A combination of strict protocols, generous government programs and film-friendly measures has enabled the industry to resume production to answer the ever-growing demand for both domestic content and international co-productions. Norway’s cinematic landscapes have become a prized destination

Rising Russian director Vladimir Bitokov’s sophomore effort, “Mama, I’m Home,” bows this week in the Horizons sidebar of the Venice Film Festival. Following on the heels of his 2018 Karlovy Vary premiere “Deep Rivers,” it’s produced by two-time Academy Award nominee Alexander Rodnyansky (“Loveless,” “Leviathan”) and Sergey Melkumov. Wild Bunch Intl. is handling world sales.

From an immersive look at female immigrants in 17th century Amsterdam to a forensic analysis of a pre-World War II home movie, approaching history from different angles is a key theme among the Dutch films selected for Venice’s 78th edition. Running in Venice Days, “Three Minutes — A Lengthening” is a poetic documentary that centers

A perfect storm of titles previously delayed by the pandemic combined with features set to launch on the back of the Netherlands Film Festival later this month means that a bumper harvest of home-grown films is set for release in Dutch theaters this autumn. Anticipated titles include Alex van Warmerdam’s latest feature “No. 10,” which

Reinaldo Marcus Green’s sports drama “King Richard” is shaping up to have the same advantage that propelled “The Blind Side” to a best actress Oscar for Sandra Bullock. Its centerpiece is Will Smith, who’s now at the forefront of what is going to be a cutthroat best actor race. “King Richard” is the “Rocky” of

SPOILER WARNING: Do not read this story if you haven’t seen “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” currently playing in theaters. While “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” is one of the most stand-alone movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in years, the movie does contain one memorable callback to a

Ecommerce grocer Thrive Market has launched a new movie theater-style popcorn, sourced from farmers who were left with a massive surplus of kernels after cinemas began to shut down during the pandemic. Now, Thrive members are able to purchase butterfly kernels, a fluffier variety typically only found at the movies, instead of the mushroom kernels

First a little girl goes missing, then her doll, in “The Lost Daughter,” a daring psychological drama in which what should have been an idyllic summer vacation on the Greek island of Spetses instead becomes a kind of overdue emotional workout for Olivia Colman’s character, Leda, who collapses on the beach, bleeding from her abdomen