Movies

Mirsad Purivatra has stepped down as Sarajevo Film Festival director after a 27-year run, and has been replaced by Jovan Marjanović, who was the festival’s co-director, and was previously in charge of its industry department. Purivatra, the founder of the festival, will assume the role of president of the Obala Art Centar Association, the umbrella

Thrown into uncertainty by the tragic death of star Gaspard Ulliel, production on Betrand Bonello’s “The Beast” will still go forward, the director confirmed to Variety. Bonello and Ulliel recently collaborated on the hybrid, essay film “Coma,” which premiered in Berlin’s Encounters sidebar. A sci-fi melodrama set in 1910, 2014 and 2044 and dealing with

Four years after the death of his brother Vittorio, with whom he shared a celebrated career, Paolo Taviani is back in the Berlin competition solo, with “Leonora Addio.”  The brothers won the Golden Bear in 2012 with “Caesar Must Die,” about high-security inmates performing Shakespeare. The free-form film he made –– screening on Feb. 15

Training their lens on the largely untold story of the atrocities committed against Thessaloniki’s Jewish population during World War II, Syllas Tzoumerkas and Christos Passalis will bow “The City and the City” Feb. 15 in the Berlin Film Festival’s competitive Encounters strand. Unspooling in six fragmented chapters, the film tells the story of Thessaloniki’s Jewish

Acclaimed Nepalese filmmaker Deepak Rauniyar has cast Indian actor Tannishtha Chatterjee as one of the leads in his upcoming feature “The Sky Is Mine.” Chatterjee’s credits include “Brick Lane” (2007), for which she scored a best actress nomination at the British Independent Film Awards, “Parched” (2015) and “Lion” (2016). She won the Asia Star Award

Indian filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali, renowned for his epic cinematic vision, now trains his sights on women’s empowerment tale “Gangubai Kathiawadi,” playing as a Berlinale Special Gala on Feb. 16. Starring Alia Bhatt (2019 Berlinale selection “Gully Boy”) in the titular role, the film is based on the book, “Mafia Queens of Mumbai,” written by

Image Nation Abu Dhabi and low-budget U.S. genre label Spooky Pictures have announced “Late Night With the Devil,” the second title under their multi-picture deal following Chloe Okuno’s  “Watcher,” which made a splash at Sundance. “Late Night With the Devil” will be helmed by Australian writing/directing duo Colin and Cameron Cairns (“100 Bloody Acres,” “Scare

The comedy community and “Ghostbusters” fans everywhere are remembering Ivan Reitman, who died Saturday at 75. Actors and filmmakers, including several people who worked closely with Reitman, paid tribute to the Canadian director and producer who directed the megahit “Ghostbusters” and helped ignite the movie careers of comedians including Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd. Reitman

Producer-director Ivan Reitman, whose wildly successful comedies of the ‘70s and ‘80s included the blockbuster spookfest “Ghostbusters,” died in his sleep on Feb. 12 in Montecito, Calif., his family confirmed to the Associated Press. He was 75. The cause of death was not released. “Our family is grieving the unexpected loss of a husband, father,

A later-life love story of the gentlest kind, Li Ruijun’s “Return to Dust” is an absorbing, beautifully framed drama that makes a virtue — possibly too much a virtue — of simplicity. The story is straightforward: Two lonely middle-aged people, each barely tolerated by their more worldly family members, are pushed into an arranged marriage,

The exhilarating, Bible-inspired, pitch-black comedy “Redemption of a Rogue” centers on a prodigal son returning to his rural Ireland hometown to seek redemption for his sins. Based on this ambitious, sardonic feature debut, writer-director Philip Doherty (who is also a playwright and theater director) scores as a promising talent, one who might be the spiritual

Marvel has released a second trailer for “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” which is set to come to theaters on May 6. Many new secrets were aired, including a peek at Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch potentially breaking bad, and a brief audio cameo from what sure sounded like Patrick Stewart reviving his role

It takes perhaps a billion years to make a diamond, and just 87 minutes to shatter so many of the misconceptions audiences have about them in “Nothing Lasts Forever.” Make that eight minutes. That’s roughly the point at which jewelry designer (and “Stone” author) Aja Raden — the only woman interviewed in Jason Kohn’s wild,

Nordic production powerhouse Miso Film, which looks to make a splash at the Berlinale Series with its daring HBO Max show “Lust,” is developing high-end international dramas with Scandinavian creatives such as Pilou Asbæk (“Borgen”), Ole Bornedal (“Nightwatch”) and Fenar Ahmad (“Darkland”). The company is part of Fremantle. Ahead of the Berlinale, Miso founders Peter

Mere months after Tom Holland ignited box office charts with “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” the 25-year-old British actor is swinging back to movie theater marquees with “Uncharted.” Ahead of its domestic debut on Feb. 18, Sony’s big-screen adaptation of its popular video game series opened at the international box office to a solid $21.5 million

Charades has unveiled a sexy first pic of Margaret Qualley playing a dominatrix in Zachary Wigon (“The Heart Machine”)’s buzzy film “Sanctuary.” The “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” actor stars in the film opposite Christopher Abbott. Set over the course of one night in a single hotel room, “Sanctuary” tells the story of Rebecca

The Oscars are the culmination and celebration of the year in cinema, just as the Super Bowl is the pinnacle for football season. As the nation pauses for a long day of gridiron action, it seems long overdue for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences to start treating the Oscars as the Super

Imagining what “In the Mood for Love” might have been like had Apichatpong Weeraserhakul directed it will land you somewhere in the vicinity of “Before, Now & Then,” Kamila Andini’s beguiling drama set in 1960s Indonesia. Anyone familiar with that country’s history, even if only through Joshua Oppenheimer’s devastating companion documentaries “The Act of Killing”

When developing films like 2008’s “Home” and 2012’s “Sister,” French-Swiss director Ursula Meier began by focusing on geography, imaging what stories may spring from a forgotten stretch of highway or how a remote mountaintop might shape the lives of those living upon it. But when she began work on “The Line,” which premiered on Friday

In spite of a disastrous box office situation, the Italian film industry is staying buoyant thanks to increased exports, a friendly rapport with streaming giants and support from the government of Prime Minister Mario Draghi that is pumping money into a revamp of Rome’s Cinecittà Studios. “Production never stopped and ailing movie theaters have been

Italy’s robust 2022 Berlinale representation of a half-dozen titles runs the gamut from the latest works by venerable veterans Paolo Taviani and Dario Argento to pics by fresh new Cinema Italiano voices including Chiara Bellosi, whose first film, “Ordinary Justice,” launched from Berlin in 2020. Taviani, who is 91, is returning to Berlin but alone

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

“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

Black History Month has always been about abolition for me. I may not have known the word abolition as a young girl, but I understood abolition in my spirit. At my core, I witnessed a community ravaged and decimated by police and prisons, and I wanted more for us. I would stay up for hours

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

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

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

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