Movies

A cross-section of works from revered masters and fresh faces will take center stage at Poland’s American Film Festival (AFF), whose 13th edition takes place Nov. 8 – 13 in Wrocław, Poland. Established in 2010 as the sister event of the New Horizons Film Festival, a showcase of independent and arthouse cinema launched in 2001,

Building a bridge between American independent filmmakers and the European market is the goal of U.S. in Progress, which is hosted each year during the American Film Festival (AFF) in Wrocław, Poland. The event presents a carefully curated selection of roughly half a dozen American indie titles in the final stages of production to sales

If Colin Farrell doesn’t get an Oscar nom this year for “The Banshees of Inisherin,” he never will. That was all I could think after watching his work in Martin McDonagh’s latest dark comedy. And who would have thought that Farrell and Brendan Gleeson would become the perfect comedic duo of our day? I thought

On Monday night, Florence Pugh and Olivia Wilde both attended the world premiere of the drama “Don’t Worry Daring” at the Venice Film Festival, but they kept their distance — almost as if they weren’t even in the same film together. Pugh had skipped the press conference for the film earlier in the day. When

Ben Stiller and Sean Penn have been permanently banned from entering Russia, the Kremlin announced Monday. The actors are listed among 23 other United States citizens newly barred from the country, including Senators Kirsten Cinema, Richard Scott, Patrick Toomey Jr. and Mark Kelly, as well as Deputy Ministers of Trade Matthew S. Alexrod, Don Graves,

“Tár” is a musical, but not in the way you might think. Set to a rhythmic beat of classical orchestration, writer and director Todd Field triumphantly returns to the director’s chair some 16 years after “Little Children” (2006) and 21 years after his debut “In the Bedroom” (2001). In the process, Field proves the third

From “Nomadland” to “Birdman,” Searchlight Pictures always finds itself in the thick of the awards race, and the indie studio may have just secured itself another ticket to the Oscars with “The Banshees of Inisherin.” The darkly comic fable from Martin McDonagh had a sensational debut on Monday at the Venice Film Festival, where it

Olivia Wilde’s “Don’t Worry Darling” is a movie that, in recent weeks, has been besieged and consumed by offscreen dramas, none of which I’ll recount here, except to note that when a film’s lead actress seems actively reluctant to publicize the film in question, that’s a sign of some serious discord. Yet it would be

SPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not watched “Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.” After playing Randall Pearson on NBC’s “This Is Us” for six seasons, Sterling K. Brown was ready to play a completely different character. So, he took on Lee-Curtis Childs, a closeted pastor accused of sexual misconduct who’s relaunching his church,

Last year Andrea Scrosati – who is group COO and continental Europe CEO of Fremantle – was at Venice with two films. This year Fremantle’s got six pics launching from the Lido, three of them in competition, which is a larger contingent than any of the U.S. studios or streamers.  Fremantle’s business model, which involves

“Tequila, Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll,” from Goya Award-winning producer-helmer Alvaro Longoria, has been acquired for international sales by Latido Films.  Set up at Madrid’s Morena Films, which Longoria co-founded, doc marks a return to directing for Longoria, whose 2012 debut, “Sons of the Clouds,” produced by Javier Bardem, scored a Spanish Academy Goya

Friendships can be as changeable and temperamental and outright dramatic as grand romances, though they tend to get a bland rap on screen — with friends, for most screenwriters, merely convenient constants, there to support protagonists through matters of supposedly more consequence. If substantial platonic relationship studies are rare, ones about men are rarer still.

Just how polished does a career-spanning documentary about the anarchic underground filmmaker behind “Greaser’s Palace” and “Putney Swope” need to be? If you’ve seen any of Robert Downey’s films, the answer is obviously: not very. You might even say, the scrappier the better. So goes the thinking behind “Sr.,” a loose seemingly seat-of-your-pants portrait of

Pop star Harry Styles may be in one of the most hotly anticipated movies at the Venice Film Festival, but he still considers himself a newbie in the acting world. The musician told journalists in Venice: “Music I’ve done a little longer so I’m a bit more comfortable. What I like about acting is I

The Venice Film Festival blocked a journalist from asking a question about Shia LaBeouf at a press conference for Olivia Wilde’s “Don’t Worry Darling” on Monday. LaBeouf was set to star in “Don’t Worry Darling,” but he exited the project in the fall of 2020 and was replaced by Harry Styles. The back and forth

Olivia Wilde isn’t commenting on alleged tensions between her and Florence Pugh, the star of her movie “Don’t Worry Darling.” When asked at a Venice press conference whether Wilde can “clear the air” about the alleged falling out with Pugh, the director said: “Florence is a force. We are so grateful she’s able to make

Czech folk hero Jan Zizka’s story has been dramatized — and mythologized — in various forms many times, including a mid-1950s celluloid trilogy by Otakar Vavra that was arguably the local industry’s most ambitious production in those somewhat stodgy, pre-New Wave days. Purportedly the Czech Republic’s most expensive feature to date, Petr Jakl’s new “Medieval”

Coinciding with its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, Warsaw-based New Europe Film Sales has provided Variety with an exclusive peek at the trailer for Chilean writer-director Fernando Guzzoni’s (“Jesus”) thriller, “Blanquita.” Based on the young witness at the center of the Spinak case, a scandal involving Chilean pedophilia and prostitution networks that rocked the country,

The Unifrance cocktail event at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday, held in partnership with Variety, saw a heady mix of film executives and artists mingle at the sea terrace of the plush Excelsior hotel. Presiding over proceedings was Unifrance executive director Daniela Elstner and artists present included director Romain Gavras and actor Ouassini Embarek,

Netflix has snapped up “The Anthrax Attacks” from BBC Studios, a feature-length doc about the 2001 anthrax threat that paralyzed the U.S. in the wake of 9/11 and sparked one of the largest FBI investigations in history. The doc will star Marvel’s Clark Gregg (“Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D”) in scripted scenes recreating some of the events

Berlin-based Picture Tree Intl. has added “This Place,” by Canadian debut director V.T. Nayani, to its lineup. The film is to have its world premiere at Toronto Film Festival on Sept. 9 as part of the Discovery and Next Wave Selects sections. The film stars Devery Jacobs, who was the lead actor in “Reservation Dogs”

Spoken English evolved such useful phrases as “blah blah blah” and “yada yada yada” so that in conversation we don’t have to suffer through numbingly repetitive descriptions of the perfectly obvious. Sadly, no such shorthand exists in the “After” universe, which, now on its fourth instalment, seems dedicated to spinning the already vanishingly wispy romance

Prolific Indonesian producer KawanKawan Media, which has Makbul Mubarak’s “Autobiography” in competition at the Venice Film Festival’s Horizons strand, has a raft of projects on its slate. The company, led by Yulia Evina Bhara, scored a hat trick of wins at Locarno over the last few years with Yosep Anggi Noen’s “The Science of Fictions”

MK2 Films has scored key territory deals on Japanese director Koji Fukada’s “Love Life,” which makes its world premiere in competition at the Venice Film Festival. Set in contemporary Japan, “Love Life” is a character-driven film revolving around Taeko and her husband, Jiro, who are living a peaceful existence with her young son, Keita. When a

Iranian cinema is having a great year despite the many impediments film directors face there, including being jailed. Reflecting this burst of irrepressible cinematic energy, after strong showing of Iranian cinema at Berlin, Cannes and Karlovy Vary, Venice has five films from the country, two of which are in competition. Also, Leila Hatami, star of

Lionsgate India Studios is producing its first feature film, an as-yet-untitled coming-of-age story. Directed by Milind Dhaimade (2016 London Film Festival selection “You Are My Sunday”), the Hindi-language film is a comedy revolving around a mother and son relationship. It stars Neetu Kapoor (“Jug Jugg Jeeyo”), Sunny Kaushal (“The Forgotten Army – Azaadi Ke Liye”)

Rukmini Maitra (“Sanak”) will play the lead in Ram Kamal Mukherjee’s Bengali-language film “Binodiini – Ekti Natir Upakhyan” (“Binodiini – Tale of a Theater Artist”). The film will be a biopic of Binodini Dasi, also known as Nati Binodini, who had a flourishing career as an theater actor in 19th century Bengal between the ages

South Korea’s cinema box office slipped to its lowest level since mid-May as local film “6/45” took the top spot with just $3.06 million over the weekend in its second week of release. Comedy “6/45” was released a week earlier and scored $2.74 million in its opening weekend, according to data from Kobis, the tracking

Bollywood A-lister Kartik Aaryan will headline “Aashiqui 3,” the third instalment in the hit franchise, with Anurag Basu (“Barfi!”) to direct. The franchise was launched in 1990 by T-Series and Vishesh Films with hit film “Aashiqui,” directed by Mahesh Bhatt and starring Rahul Roy and Anu Aggarwal. The franchise was revived in 2013 with “Aashiqui

On Sunday night, an hour before the hotly anticipated Sept. 5 world premiere of “Don’t Worry Darling” on the Lido, Variety celebrated director Olivia Wilde with a cocktail party hosted at the posh Danieli Hotel in Venice. Wilde, who is unveiling her second feature as a director out of competition at the festival, graces the