Movies

The Playmaker Munich has released the first teaser for upcoming sci-fi movie “Rubikon,” which is one of seven international genre projects selected for this year’s Frontières Buyers Showcase, which is running during the Cannes Film Festival. “Rubikon,” directed by Magdalena Lauritsch and written by Jessica Lind and Lauritsch, is in post-production. Johannes Mücke, a longtime

Ventana Sur, Latin America’s biggest film-TV market, is adding a video games forum, Las Maquinitas, to its powerful arthouse, genre and animation focuses. Launching at this year’s Ventana Sur, which runs Nov. 29 to Dec. 3 onsite in Buenos Aires, the video game focus looks set to split two ways, Bernardo Bergeret, Ventana Sur co-executive

The Pop Up Film Residency, a mentorship program founded by former TorinoFilmLab artistic director Matthieu Darras and Slovak producer Juraj Krasnohorsky, will be the exclusive and creative partner of Munich Film Up!, a new initiative by Munich’s University of Film and Television in partnership with the Munich Intl. Festival of Film Schools and the Munich

Musical biopic “Rebellion” has wrapped after a four-week shoot in Bogota, Colombia, making it one of the few pics to have filmed in the country since the COVID-19 pandemic breakout in 2020. The film about Afro-Colombian salsa icon Joe Arroyo is directed by Jose Luis Rugeles, whose previous drama “Alias María,” about a pregnant 13-year-old

Paris-based Mediawan Rights has taken international rights to the animated documentary  feature “Flavors of Iraq” from director Léonard Cohen. “Flavors of Iraq” is a co-production between France’s animation-focused Miyu Productions (Pierre Földes’ “Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman”) and documentary-specialized Nova Production (Marie Linton’s “Prison life: Justice in Japan”). Culture channel Arte France is also on board

Nicolas Cage isn’t just an actor; he’s a state of mind. Having transcended meme status with evocative performances in director-driven genre fare like “Mandy” and “Color Out of Space,” the Oscar winner delivers his best performance in years as a chef-turned-recluse who briefly reenters society in writer-director Michael Sarnoski’s “Pig.” His return isn’t a happy

Three years after his musical drama “Leto” bowed on the Croisette, Kirill Serebrennikov returns to Cannes’ main competition with “Petrov’s Flu,” a deadpan, hallucinatory romp through a post-Soviet Russia in the grips of a mysterious flu epidemic. The acclaimed director spoke to Variety about living with fear and making the most out of solitude. How

Cannes Film Festival delegates attending a dinner hosted by luxury goods firm Kering kept their eye on the ball during one of the annual bash’s most memorable editions to date. The late-evening Women in Motion event on Sunday (July 11) at the impeccably decorated Le Place de la Castre coincided with the UEFA Euro Championship

It’s been exactly 20 years since Nanni Moretti won the Palme d’Or at Cannes with “The Son’s Room,” a graceful, humane and often surprisingly witty drama about a family regathering itself in the wake of shattering tragedy. That’s a long time ago, and it feels longer by the minute as you watch the Italian writer-director’s

“Bergman Island,” the lyrical and absorbing new drama written and directed by Mia Hansen-Løve (“Things to Come,” “Eden”), tells the story of two filmmakers who are a couple: Tony (Tim Roth), the more famous of the two, and Chris (Vicky Krieps), who has carved out her own independent niche in world cinema. They have a

Following his 2016 Un Certain Regard win with “The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki,” Finnish director Juho Kuosmanen is back in Cannes with “Compartment No. 6,” and this time, in the main competition. Inspired by Rosa Liksom’s book, it follows two strangers on a train to Murmansk, Russia: a young Finnish woman,

Building on what has come before, the opening act of Kornél Mundruczó and Kata Wéber’s “Evolution” recalls a monologue from the Hungarian duo’s previous film, “Pieces of a Woman,” when a Holocaust-hardened Jewish matriarch played by Ellen Burstyn repeats the mythology of her own survival — the idea that she somehow chose to live when

Not every child with nascent paranormal abilities gets scooped up into Professor Xavier’s school for incipient X-Men. Some, like those in Eskil Vogt’s superbly atmospheric, deftly crafted horror “The Innocents,” live in massive Norwegian tower blocks — concrete jungles set in deep forests bathed in cool, endless Nordic summer sun — and hone their powers

French icon Catherine Deneuve was visibly moved at the Cannes Film Festival’s press conference for Emmanuelle Bercot’s “Peaceful” (“De son vivant”) in which she stars as a grieving mother helping her terminally-ill son (Benoit Magimel) accept his fate along with a doctor (Dr. Gabriel Sara) and a nurse (Cecile de France). The movie, produced by

The FilmPhilippines Office of the Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP) has trebled its annual filming incentives budget from $1 million to $3 million, effective from 2022. The Philippines offers a range of incentives, including rebate schemes for local and international projects. “Electric Child” by Swiss Simon Jaquemet, produced by Switzerland’s 8horses GmbH with

Madrid-based Avalon is transforming from a prestige producer-distributor into an industrial force. Founded by CEO Stefan Schmitz in 1996, Avalon has carved a reputation most recently for producing and releasing in Spain Carla Simon’s “Summer 1993,” a Berlin 2017 First Feature Award winner. It produced Clara Roquet’s Cannes Critics’ Week entry “Libertad.” The shingle, set

While the Cannes Film Festival has served up punishing 80-plus degrees weather every day so far, that heat has yet to translate to the iconic festival’s film market. At the halfway point, Cannes 2021 has not seen the expected flurry of deals at the festival’s concurrent Marché du Film. The only significant sales have come

Jodie Turner-Smith was a victim of jewelry theft Friday in Cannes, a local source tells Variety. On Sunday afternoon in France, Turner-Smith — who attended the festival for the premiere of her latest film, “After Yang” — tweeted: “didn’t think i would be spending 2.5 hours in the police station on my final day in

Haruki Murakami’s short story “Drive My Car” is a sleek, streamlined slip of a thing that nonetheless, in the author’s signature style, packs an awful lot into its lean sentences. It’s a grief-stricken marriage story enfolded in a corrupted friendship study, related in turn via a separate tale of odd-couple companionship, all told in fewer

In “Medusa,” the latest film from Brazilian director Anita Rocha da Silveira, the main character and a gang of her female friends don creepy white masks to attack other women in the street whom they deem to be “promiscuous.” Silveira draws amply from both fictional and real tales of women-on-women violence to portray a snake

Saudi Arabia’s Ithra Film Productions banner has teamed up with prominent Egyptian producer Mohamed Hefzy (“Clash”) who will serve as a creative consultant on two upcoming projects by Saudi directors backed by the company, one of which Hefzy will produce through his Film Clinic shingle.  The two projects which were unveiled in Cannes by Ithra

On Sunday morning at the Cannes Film Festival, “Queen & Slim’s” Jodie Turner-Smith spoke out about the lack of opportunities and support afforded to women and people of color in the film industry, both above and below the line. “I want to make my life about not only working with incredible directors, but working with

Didier Lupfer, the former CEO of Studiocanal, has launched the Paris-based production banner The Media Company with a lineup comprising high-concept films and series, including “The Quest of Fire” and “Front Row.” The outfit is also developing about 10 feature films, including Russian helmer Michael Idov’s “Aspiration,” which is co-produced with Artem Vassiliev at Métrafilms,

Radar Films, the Mediawan-owned production banner, is reteaming with “The Deep House” filmmakers Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo on “North Sentinel.” The well-established company, which is headed by Clement Miserez and Matthieu Warter, is developing several other English-language projects including a genre twist on “The Phantom of the Opera” directed by Xavier Gens (“The Divide”).

Michael Gentile’s Paris-based The Film, the banner behind Julie Delpy’s upcoming show “On the Verge,” is developing a string of projects with emerging filmmakers, notably Yaël Cojot-Goldberg’s “Farewell Caracas” and Mehdi Fikri’s drama “Et maintenant, le feu.” The company is also producing Danielle Arbid’s “Des châteaux qui brûlent,” based on Arno Bertina’ book, and Delpy’s

International sales, distribution and production company Axxon Media have closed a pair of deals with WarnerMedia for Latin America and the Caribbean, one for a finished feature and the other a project, both announced at this year’s Cannes Marché du Film. WarnerMedia has picked up Mireia Gabilando’s Spanish comedy “The Hive” and will bring the

In the midst of debuting a new movie at the first pandemic-era Cannes Film Festival, director Sean Penn had strong words about the Trump administration’s handling of the global health crisis. The longtime artist and activist — who donned a mask when not speaking at a Sunday press conference — discussed the past year he’s

It’s hard to imagine two more charming and personable filmmakers than the Bulgarian directing-producing-writing duo Mina Mileva and Vesela Kazakova of the production company Activist38. Although slightly punchy with fatigue, they took a short break from post-production in Paris to talk to Variety about “Women Do Cry,” their second fiction feature after the Locarno fest

French actor Judith Chemla, the 37 year-old French star of “Mes freres et moi,” will not attend the world premiere of the film “Mes freres et moi” at Cannes’ Un Certain Regard on July 12 after an alleged incident involving the director of her film throwing a cell phone at her, Variety has learned. Chemla

Moroccan producer Khadija Alami and Nigerian producer and Africa Intl. Film Festival founder Chioma Ude have announced a 50-50 partnership in Morocco’s Oasis Studios, a thriving production hub that they aim to use as a launching pad for the next generation of African filmmakers. Sitting on the fringes of the Sahara Desert, the sprawling Oasis