Month: February 2022

“Death on the Nile” collected $12.8 million in its opening weekend. Those ticket sales wouldn’t buy enough Champagne to fill the Nile, but they are sufficient to lead domestic box office charts. The star-studded murder mystery, from Disney and 20th Century Studios, arrived on par with expectations, which had projected a debut in between $11

Nanni Moretti is set to start shooting unconventional comedy “Il Sol Dell’Avvenire” in March. Pic will star French actor-director Mathieu Amalric and feature a cast comprising Polish multi-hyphenate Jerzy Stuhr.  Stuhr appeared in Moretti’s “We Have a Pope” and “The Caiman,” and appears in “Il Sol Dell’Avvenire” — which translates as “The Sun of the

The title is a bit misleading in German writer-director Nicolette Krebitz’s offbeat romantic comedy “AEIOU — A Quick Alphabet of Love.” Despite its promise of deeper meaning attached to all the vowels in the alphabet, it’s ‘A’ on which it fixates: Said aloud and elongated, we are told, the first letter vocalizes a spectrum of

Victoria Bedos, the creator and co-writer of “La Famille Belier,” the hit French movie that was remade into Sian Heder’s Oscar-nominated “CODA,” is getting ready to make her feature debut with Focus Features/Universal in France. For her directorial debut, “Leo et moi,” Bedos will once tell the bittersweet story of a teenager set against an

Pretty well from when he started out in 2002, melding fiction, recreation and direct reportage in films that won him two San Sebastián Golden Shells but bamboozled more mainstream critics, Spain’s Isaki Lacuesta has maintained that he wanted to make larger audience movies. With his tenth feature, Berlin competition player “One Year, One Night,” taking

Bolivian-Mexican filmmaker Natalia López Gallardo enjoyed tandem careers in editing (“Jauja,” “Post Tenebras Lux”) and acting (“Nuestro Tiempo”), as she made her debut as auteur with the short film “En el cielo como en la tierra.” In her first feature-length project, “Robe of Gems,” she tackles the parallel individual struggles of three women against a

The Berlin Film Festival, whose scaled-down edition kicked off on Thursday evening with strict COVID measures, has recorded only eight positive cases among the film teams, the festival spokesperson confirmed to Variety. Unlike at Cannes or Venice, the Berlinale is requiring guests and audience members to take a daily test if they’ve only been vaccinated

Jordan Peele’s new nightmare is coming soon to a theater near you. ‘Twas the night before the Super Bowl that Universal Pictures suddenly dropped the first trailer for “Nope,” the upcoming third feature film from the acclaimed director behind “Get Out” and “Us.” The studio released the first extended look at the upcoming thriller early

Few things will have you longing for an end to the pandemic like “Coma,” an experimental lockdown project from French provocateur Bertrand Bonello. If you’re the type to dread being alone with your thoughts, try being locked in a room with Bonello’s: The “Nocturama” director’s ruminations on free will, dreams and the deeper meaning of

As well as providing a showcase for international films, the Berlinale is also a platform for German cinema. There are more than 130 German films and co-productions screening across the festival and the European Film Market. Pre-pandemic, in 2019, 237 German films were produced a year, but only 10 to 20 a year perform well

Chiara Bellosi, whose first work, “Ordinary Justice,” launched from Berlin’s Generation 14plus section in 2020, is back with “Swing Ride” (“Calcinculo”) about an overweight 15-year-old named Benedetta pining for attention in an Italian province where she falls in love with the skinny non-binary Amanda. A key difference between the two films is that while “Ordinary Justice,”

Fresh from appearing in Netflix hit Adam McKay’s “Don’t Look Up,” Mark Rylance’s latest big screen outing is “The Outfit,” in which he stars as Leonard, a 1950s tailor. It is a role that could not be more dissimilar to the fictional megalomaniac billionaire Peter Isherwell, whom Rylance plays in McKay’s disaster movie. Written and

Acclaimed Bangladeshi director Rubaiyat Hossain, known for her powerful women-centric films, has a new project participating in the Berlinale Co-Production Market and is launching a female filmmaker grant. Her Berlinale co-production market project, “The Difficult Bride,” follows Novera, a bride-to-be in present-day Dhaka who is in love with the groom and the idea of a

Germany’s Sola Media has closed a wave of international sales for the animated feature “Finnick,” produced by Riki Group, which will be released by Sony Pictures Russia in Russia and CIS on March 24. The CGI-animated comedy follows the adventures of 13-year-old Christine, who befriends the young prankster Finnick – one of the furry and

TrustNordisk has closed a flurry of sales on a pair of 3D-animated family features, “Little Allan — The Human Antenna” and “Just Super,” underscoring the market appeal of independent youth-skewing movies. “Little Allan – The Human Antenna” marks Danish film Amalie Naesby Fick’s follow up to her commercially successful debut “The Incredible Story of The

RAI Com is launching sales at the online EFM on Giuseppe Piccioni’s Fascist-era drama ‘L’Ombra del giorno,” starring Italian A-lister Riccardo Scamarcio (“Three Floors”) and Benedetta Porcaroli (“Baby,” “The Catholic School”). Pic, which Scamarcio produced, is a love story with a thriller twist set in 1938, two years before Italy entered World War II. It

MK2 Films, the banner behind Joachim Trier’s “The Worst Person in the World,” has boarded “Love Life,” the anticipated next film of laureled Japanese director Koji Fukada. Fukada’s credits include the 2016 movie “Harmonium” which won the jury prize at Cannes’ Un Certain Regard, as well as “A Girl Missing” which played at Toronto. His

Adding to its notable lineup in Latin American movies, Paris-based sales agent MPM Premium has taken international sales rights to “Fogaréu,” from writer-director Flávia Neves, part of Brazil’s new wave of female filmmakers, which is one of the most exciting developments the country’s cinema currently has going for it. MPM Premium is introducing the film at

Ahead of Sunday’s world premiere of documentary “1341 Frames of Love and War,” which plays in Berlinale Special, Variety spoke to the film’s writer-director Ran Tal, and Israeli war photographer Micha Bar-Am, who is the subject of the film. In some ways “Frames” continues Tal’s interest in Israeli history evident in his previous work, “What

Shortlisted for the Academy Awards in the international feature film category, Fernando León de Aranoa’s “The Good Boss” capped a record 20 Spanish Academy Goya nominations by scoring best picture and actor for Javier Bardem at Saturday’s Goya prize ceremony.  The prizes marked both Leon and Bardem’s seventh Goya wins. Produced by El Reposado and The

“Fire” begins in water: a wide, rippling expanse of Mediterranean blue under a cloudless sky, displaced and disrupted by two whirling human bodies. Sara (Juliette Binoche) and Jean (Vincent Lindon) tussle in the otherwise empty ocean as though they’ve just discovered weightlessness, while Eric Gautier’s camera lingers on skin touching skin under the shimmer. The

Emma Thompson says the physicality of her performance in “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande” pushed her into uncharted waters as an actor learning to accept her body on screen. In the Sundance-premiering movie, which enjoys its European bow at the Berlinale on Saturday night, the British actor plays widow and former teacher Nancy, who

Let’s start with something most of us can agree on: Jimmy Kimmel, who I’m a fan of, is probably not the ideal messenger for how to fix the Oscars, if indeed they need fixing. Kimmel hosted the Academy Awards in 2017, and did a lively enough job of it that he was asked back to

Amélie van Elmbt and Maya Duverdier’s documentary “Dreaming Walls,” about the legendary Chelsea Hotel in New York and its controversial renovation, has unveiled a trailer. The film world premieres in the Panorama section of the Berlinale on Saturday. The Chelsea Hotel, an icon of 1960s counterculture, was a haven for famous artists and intellectuals including

Juliette Binoche (“The English Patient”) and Vincent Lindon (“Titane”) who co-starred for the first time together in Claire Denis’ “Both Sides of the Blade” explained the emotionally draining experience of making the film at the Berlinale press conference. The highly anticipated film, which was acquired by IFC Films ahead of the festival, is world premiering