Movies

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.

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

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

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

As a chef, Julia Child made no claims for herself as an innovator: Her mission was not to create new recipes, but to interpret and archive age-old French ones in ways the average American home cook could tackle without fear. Given her dual priorities of traditionalism and accessibility, then, she might well have appreciated “Julia,”

The crowds outside the historic Sale Grande theater were chanting the name of an American superstar in Italy like it was the Oscars. On Friday night, Warner Bros. premiered “Dune” at the 78th annual Venice Film Festival, with a star-studded movie premiere that brought to mind how Hollywood used to throw a party in the

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

“You’re a Terminator,” Tokyo teen Ani (Miku Patricia Martineau) gapes to Kate (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) after witnessing the bloodshed her kidnapper has brought down on two dozen yakuza now lying shot, stabbed, sizzled on a yakitori grill and very, very dead. Kate, the titular antihero of director Cedric Nicolas-Troyan’s vicious vengeance flick, is a grown-up

The Rockaway Film Festival in Queens, N.Y. has announced its 2021 lineup for the Sept. 12-19 edition.  Coinciding with the opening of a new outdoor theater, the first in Rockaway in over 20 years, the festival will play 12 feature films and 38 short films with a focus on highlighting filmmakers from the Rockaway Peninsula

Award-winning Slovak documaker Peter Kerekes (“66 Seasons,” “Cooking History,” “Velvet Terrorists”) dips a toe in the fiction world with his rigorously researched Venice Horizons competitor “107 Mothers,” set inside a women’s prison in Ukraine. Made over five years and 86 shooting days, it reveals a cloistered world populated only by women: inmates, nurses and wardens,

Denis Villeneuve’s science fiction masterclass “Dune” is looking like a prime candidate to follow movies like “Life of Pi,” “Mad Max: Fury Road” and “Gravity” that amassed numerous nominations in the technical achievements categories. Though it’s early days for the awards season, the epic could be a contender in nearly every technical category: production design

Amidst all the horrors of a war-torn decade that she would largely like to forget, one memory stands out for Kosovar filmmaker Kaltrina Krasniqi: the day her mother surprised the family with a VHS player. “We were so, so excited,” she tells Variety. “We really didn’t believe until she opened it that it was true.”

The first reviews for Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune” are in, and the reactions are split. Ravenous sci-fi fanatics waited with bated breath as cast members Timothée Chalamet, Oscar Isaac, Zendaya, Josh Brolin, Rebecca Ferguson and Javier Bardem walked down the Venice Film Festival red carpet before the first-ever screening on Friday. After being delayed for more

The work of “Dune” costume designers Jacqueline West and Bob Morgan has caught the attention of fashion writers as well as film fans. It was an epic undertaking for the veteran costume designers. “Well, we’ve worked together many times and when this came up — when it was so large — she said, ‘would you collaborate on this with me?’ And I said, ‘of course.’ I adore

Coming out the gate with his most personal and career topping achievement as a writer and director, Kenneth Branagh’s “Belfast” is a touching and moving portrait of childhood and family and the first movie I’ve seen this year that can be a best picture winner. Introducing the film with co-star Jamie Dornan, Branagh spoke about

Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana? You better believe it. Judging by the rapturous response at the premiere of “Spencer” at the Venice Film Festival on Friday afternoon, the 31-year-old actor has pulled off one of the most dazzling onscreen transformations of the year. As the closing credits of the dramatic film, which bills itself as

Thanks in part to his work with auteurs Benoit Jacquot, Claire Denis and Stéphane Brizé, Vincent Lindon had long become something of a festival-world habitué, a sturdy and reliable fixture on the international circuit. But even with well over two decades’ red carpet experience, nothing could quite prepare the French actor for what he cheekily

In “Dune,” Denis Villeneuve’s droolingly anticipated, eye-bogglingly vast adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 cult sci-fi novel, the characters fly around in airplanes that have three sets of wings, all of which flap very fast. The planes look like insects, and the film suggests that’s one way that a flying machine, in another planetary sphere, might

The French box office, hampered by an increasingly rigorous series of COVID health protocols, took a plunge in recent months, resulting in week-to-week falls of up to 41%. But for all their caveats, industry analysts talk about the current landscape in tones of cautious optimism. In France, a growing number of commercial spaces are prohibited

Venice Film Festival contender “Leave No Traces” will represent Poland at next year’s Academy Awards. A statement from New Europe Film Sales, handling the film’s sale, said, “We are happy to announce that Jan P. Matuszyński’s “Leave No Traces,” premiering in Venice Competition next week has just been selected as Poland’s Oscars entry for Best

Berlin-based sales agency Picture Tree International has boarded “Farha,” the debut feature from Jordanian writer-director Darin J. Sallam, which world premieres in the Discovery section of Toronto Film Festival. The company has shared the film’s trailer. [embedded content] Inspired by true events, the film tells the story of 14-year-old girl Farha in Palestine in 1948,

Interest in the royals has never been higher but in death, as in life, it’s Diana, Princess of Wales, who continues to nab the headlines. The princess, who would have turned 60 in July, died in a Paris car crash in 1997 alongside her then beau Dodi Fayed. She was only 36. While her sons,

Director Denis Villeneuve hopes that audiences will watch “Dune” in movie theaters. “At the end of the day these are difficult times for everybody, safety first, if the audience feels comfortable I encourage them to watch it on the big screen,” Villeneuve said at a press conference on Friday at the Venice Film Festival. “It

Jodie Comer will begin shooting Ridley Scott’s latest project, “Kitbag,” towards the new year, she confirmed to Variety. Comer will play Josephine opposite Joaquin Phoenix’s Napoleon Bonaparte in the historical drama about the military leader and emperor. The ‘Killing Eve’ actor is about to embark on promotion for Scott’s “The Last Duel,” another historical drama

A historical drama about two men duelling to determine the veracity of a woman’s rape in 14th century France doesn’t, at first glance, scream “feminism.” But in the deft hands of “Alien” director Ridley Scott, “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” scribe Nicole Holofcener and “Free Guy” star Jodie Comer, the woman in question — a

After winning the Platform prize in Toronto in 2018 with his “Cities of Last Things,” Malaysian director Ho Wi Ding’s latest effort “Terrorizers” will get its premiere at the Canadian festival this month. It boasts shock value, stylish delivery and a director who has done his time serving convention and is now desperate to break

Charles Gillibert, the thriving French producer behind Leos Carax’s Cannes prizewinning “Annette,” spoke to Variety about his recent acquisition of Les Films du Losange, one of France’s oldest and most revered auteur-driven production and distribution companies. Gillibert teamed up with French financier Alexis Dantec, former managing director of the film financing group Cofinova, to complete

Louis Wain painted cats, hundreds if not thousands of cats. He painted the critters with big googly eyes, gathered round the dinner table, serving tea or slurping at straws. He painted them standing on their hind legs, holding golf clubs and swinging Ping-Pong paddles, and he painted them seated, driving cars and smoking cigars. Premiering