Movies

Michelle Salcedo will direct “The Body,” a new thriller from Catalyst Studios. The film boasts a script from “Inside Man” and “Righteous Kill” writer Russel Gewirtz. Salcedo previously directed “Woman of the House.” Catalyst is the new banner from social entrepreneur Holly Levow, Mark Pennell and Paul Kampf. It was formed to produce compelling, high-quality,

Things were moving so slowly at the Cannes Film Festival that the pace of deals was almost as glacial as the amount of time it takes to get your check at a restaurant in the south of France. But then, sacré bleu, Netflix struck, shelling out more than $50 million for the rights to “Pain

“Rebel,” from Belgian directors Adil & Bilall, follows the story of a young Muslim boy called Nassim who longs to be reunited with his elder brother Kamal, who goes to Syria to help victims of the war before being forced to join a militia. Radical recruiters spot Nassim as an easy target, promising they can

Sam Neill is returning to the “Jurassic Park” franchise as paleontologist Alan Grant in the upcoming “Jurassic World Dominion,” but there’s a huge difference between the new installment and Steven Spielberg’s 1993 original. Neill recently told The Sunday Times that “Dominion” is nearly wall-to-wall action, which stands in direct contrast with Spielberg’s slow burn. The

Focus Features has released the first trailer for “Vengeance,” the upcoming directorial debut from “The Office” star B.J. Novak. Novak stars in the film as Ben Manalowitz, a successful but conceited radio host from New York who flies to Texas for the funeral of Abilene, a girl he hooked up with a few times, after

Marc Recha, director of “Pau and His Brother,” which played in Cannes competition, is initiating post-production on “Wild Road,” a thriller produced by Barcelona-based director label Parallamps. Heaed by Montse Germán, a star in Cesc Gay’s “Fiction” and Sergi López” (“Pan’s Labyrinth”), “Wild Road” follows 50-year Ona, who is about to fulfill her dream of

The best movie involving a boat since “Titanic” with the best vomiting sequence since “Team America: World Police,”  Ruben Östlund’s “Triangle of Sadness” is an energetic and wacky examination of class, gender norms and culture, woven into a dynamite script. After debuting at Cannes, Östlund’s English-language debut will finally introduce the Swedish writer and director

Financial tech operation FilmHedge has closed on $100M in debt financing, Variety has learned. The Atlanta-based company offers short-term loans for film, television and other media productions — as well as products that track production spending in real-time and automate performance reports for content investors. FilmHedge has helped fund 14 feature productions thus far, including

Casting films is an unlikely path to writing and directing them, but Lise Akoka and Romane Guéret didn’t only succeed on that journey, they made the experience the basis of their first feature, “Les Pires (The Worst Ones),” earning a berth in Un Certain Regard. The French filmmakers met on the set of Rudi Rosenberg’s

Iranian-Danish director Ali Abbasi insists that his Cannes competition film “Holy Spider” is not intended to be a controversial truth telling. Rather, he is telling the truth through a fictional interpretation of real events. The film chronicles a killing spree in the streets of the religious city of Mashhad, where 16 prostitutes were found dead

Principal photography has wrapped on “The Storyteller,” directed by Ananth Narayan Mahadevan (Busan title “Bittersweet”). The film is based on Indian Oscar winner Satyajit Ray’s short story “Golpo Boliye Tarini Khuro.” In the story about originality versus plagiarism, Ray was raising the question: “What is more important – the story or the storyteller?” A restored

Studio Soho International has acquired worldwide rights to “A Bird Flew In” and has launched sales at the Cannes Film Market. “Quant” producer Kirsty Bell, the founder of production company Goldfinch Entertainment, makes her directorial debut with the film, which stars Sadie Frost, Derek Jacobi, Morgana Robinson, Jeff Fahey, Frances Barber, Julie Dray, Sophie Kennedy

Sales agency Beta Cinema has revealed the casting of further lead roles for action thriller “The Climb”: Hero Fiennes Tiffin, star of the global box office franchise series “After,” as well as the upcoming Sony/Tristar feature “The Woman King,” and IMDB break-out star Hannah John-Kamen, best known for her performances in “Resident Evil: Welcome to

London-based The Production Headquarters, founded in 2010 by Mohaan Nadaar, has unveiled an extensive slate of features that are complete or in production. The company focuses on U.K. and India centric projects. Its most recent ventures include British filmmaker Nathalia Syam’s Birmingham-set immigration drama “Footprints on Water,” starring Adil Hussain (“Star Trek: Discovery”), Nimisha Sajayan

Rising South African filmmaker Thati Pele, the director of the hit Netflix teen drama “Blood and Water” and the streamer’s new original series “Savage Beauty,” is preparing her first feature film, which will be produced by the team behind the Oscar-shortlisted LGBTQ drama “The Wound.” “Brace Yourself” unspools on a failed romantic island getaway, where

Turkish screenwriter and director Emin Alper, whose dystopian drama (“Frenzy”) in 2015 made a splash in Venice and who more recently helmed hit TV series “Aleph” about two detectives on the trail of a dervish-turned-serial killer in Istanbul, is in Cannes for the first time with incendiary drama “Burning Days” screening in Un Certain Regard.

EST Studios, a newly launched finance, production and sales company, has announced a co-production partnership with Taiwan-based Studio76. Together they are targeting an initial slate of six films across all genres aimed primarily at the Asian market. EST will help finance and distribute, with EST Studios representing sales on some selected projects at major global

It took the French police just five days to catch the men responsible for the Nov. 13, 2015, attacks on Paris. In the meantime, the country was put on high alert: President François Hollande declared war on Daesh (ISIS), and police were given carte blanche to bring the terrorists to justice. For those five days

In a British cinema scene increasingly dominated by multiplexes, Islington’s Screen on the Green remains something of a landmark. It may no longer be the independent it once was — having been bought 14 years ago by the boutique Everyman chain — but the North London stalwart still stands out, its quirky half-moon facade, red

Scandinavia is bringing talent old and new to the Cannes Film Market’s Cannes Docs sidebar this year, with a showcase of five feature length films-in-the-making pitched as part of the Scandinavian Showcase on Saturday. “Children of the Lowest Heaven” From Denmark, internationally acclaimed writer-director Birgitte Stærmose Mortensen (“Darling,” “Room 304”), who has been working on

IFC Films has nabbed North American rights to “Corsage,” Marie Kreutzer’s bold costume drama starring Vicky Krieps as the Empress Elisabeth of Austria known as Sissi. Represented in international markets by MK2 Films, the movie world premiered at Cannes’ Un Certain Regard and earned unanimous praise. It’s so far one of the most acclaimed films

“Holy Spider,” a gritty drama about a real-life Iranian serial killer, stunned the Cannes Film Festival at its premiere on Sunday afternoon, earning a thunderous seven-minute standing ovation and bringing a jolt of electricity to what’s been a sleepy festival so far. The film, from Iranian-Danish director Ali Abbasi (“Border”), chronicles a killing spree in

“1976,” the awaited first feature of Chile’s Manuela Martelli, has closed first new major territories for sales company Luxbox before its world premiere in Directors’ Fortnight later this upcoming week. The film is produced out of Chile by writer-directors Omar Zúñiga (“The Strong Ones”) and Dominga Sotomayor (“Too Late to Die Young”) at auteur-focused Chile-based

The Film Development Council of the Philippines on Sunday launched UniPhilippines, an incentive program that will reward overseas distributors of Philippines films. The FDCP also added to its stock of international cooperation agreements by promising to work with the new Mongolian National Film Council. UniPhilippines will provide up to $8,000 to distributors to underwrite their

SPOILER ALERT: This story discusses major plot points of Disney+’s “Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers” currently streaming on the platform. Do not read until you’ve seen the movie. “Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers” are back. Director Akiva Schaffer mixes live-action with animation as John Mulaney and Andy Samberg voice the beloved chipmunks who started a detective agency.

In April, Anette Novak took over as CEO at the Swedish Film Institute, a role previously held by the high-profile Anna Serner, champion of gender equality. A trained journalist, Novak was previously head of the Swedish Media Council, a government body responsible for film classification, children and youth protection. Earlier on, she was CEO of

A group of feminist protestors staged a dramatic scene at the Cannes Film Festival on Sunday, releasing plumes of smoke from handheld devices and displaying a long banner for the global press. At the premiere of “Holy Spider,” director Ali Abbasi’s female-centered thriller, roughly 12 women in formal wear gathered on the famed stairs of

Half a dozen Sweden pics and co-prods are set to storm the Croisette, flagships of the solid public support system in place, and fully or partly shot in a foreign language. Headlining the slate are the completion entries “Triangle of Sadness” by former winner Ruben Östlund (“The Square”), shot in the English language, and the

Top Bollywood star Deepika Padukone, who also has a Hollywood presence (“xXx: Return of Xander Cage”), is having the time of her life serving on the Cannes jury. “It gives me goosebumps every single time I walk into the Palais and we leave – it gives me goosebumps because every single person on that seat

It’s over six years since the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris that ruptured the country’s national consciousness and political agenda, but the events are only gaining currency for European filmmakers. This year’s Berlin festival brought us Isaki Lacesta’s “One Year, One Night,” an impressionistic reflection on survivor’s guilt in the long-term wake of the