Movies

Germany’s Sola Media has acquired sales rights across a host of territories for “Finnick,” an animated feature from leading Russian animation studio Riki Group, Variety has learned. The companies will be introducing the film to buyers during the Cannes Film Market. The CGI-animated comedy follows the adventures of 13-year-old Christine, who befriends the young prankster

It has been a rapid escalation on to the world stage for Abdullah Mohammad Saad, one of the brightest young filmmakers from Bangladesh, with his sophomore effort “Rehana” selected in the Un Certain Regard strand at the Cannes Film Festival. Saad debuted with the searing “Live From Dhaka” (2016), a portrayal of a man increasingly

Italian auteur Gianni Amelio (“Open Doors”) will shoot a biopic of Italian poet, playwright and director Aldo Braibanti, who was jailed in 1968 due to a Fascist-era anti-gay law. The Match Factory has boarded the pic and is launching international sales in Cannes. Amelio is best-known for the Oscar-nominated “Open Doors” (1990) and also “Stolen

Disney is making moves on Cannes market titles. The company has acquired the rights to the upcoming animated pic  “Dalia and the Red Book” across all of Latin America. Disney plans to release the film, which mixes CGI, stop-motion and 2D animation, in late 2022 or early 2023.“Dalia and the Red Book” hails from Argentine

Nothing says ‘Cannes is back’ like the glitzy annual Chopard Trophee Dinner, where Jessica Chastain and Maggie Gyllenhaal on Friday saluted the return of the festival while celebrating this year’s award recipients, U.K. actors Kingsley Ben-Adir and Jessie Buckley. Chastain — who doesn’t have a movie in Cannes but came along for the ride —

Lesbian couple Julie and Raphaëlle are on the brink of breaking up when the latter slips and smashes her elbow in “The Divide,” but if you zoom out, all of France seems to be at similar risk of shattering. The French title for “Replay” director Catherine Corsini’s 14th feature (her first to compete at Cannes

Victoria Justice and Joel McHale have joined the cast of “California King,” a comedy that mixes together a story of friendship, mattresses and a kidnapping gone terribly wrong. The Glickmania, Bombo and Vanishing Angle film is the feature directorial and writing debut of Eli Stern. It co-stars Travis Bennett (“Dave”) and Jimmy Tatro (“Home Economics”).

Racy sex in a convent? Explicit dreams about Jesus Christ? A coming-of-age lesbian love story? Paul Verhoeven’s “Benedetta” featured all that and more, leaving its premiere audience at the Cannes Film Festival searching for words to describe the movie they’d just seen. But in the end, the French approved. The period drama screened on Friday

Lest anyone think Paul Verhoeven’s latest shocker was intended to be a serious look at sexuality in religious service, the promotional poster for the film plastered around the Cannes Film Festival — where “Benedetta” bowed in competition — depicts actor Virginie Efira dressed as a 17th-century Italian nun, her white habit pulled open to reveal

Discovery and National Geographic’s annual battle for shark programming supremacy has crossed platforms to include both of their streaming services, with exclusive feature-length documentaries a notable part of their broader programming mix this summer. Together, the companies will air 66 hours of new shark programming through the remainder of summer, the most ever. Discovery’s Shark

By the time Patrick Fugit was ready to shoot an extended sequence where Stillwater, the fictional rock band at the center of “Almost Famous,” shows him the best of 1970s New York City, he was physically exhausted. It makes sense. Shooting came towards the end of the film’s five-month production and required the 16-year old

Cannes Film Festival’s general secretary Francois Desrousseaux squashed rumors swirling around the festival about skyrocketing coronavirus cases and told Variety Friday that four days into the festival, there is no Covid-19 cluster at Cannes. “Out of several thousand people getting testing here on a daily basis, there are an average of three cases per day,”

Hollywood loves a great sports story almost as much as it loves a story of overcoming the odds to find redemption. Oscar- and Grammy-winning artist Common’s upcoming movie will give audiences both. Common has teamed up with Steel Springs Pictures to produce “Rising Above,” a new movie based on the true story of Howard University’s

Based on the real-life experiences of a mother in Mexico, Romanian director Teodora Ana Mihai dives deep into the brutal and violent conditions surrounding life in Northern Mexico. Co-written by Habacuc Antonio De Rosario the film follows Cielo (Arcelia Ramírez) who, after the kidnapping of her daughter and lack of help from the authorities, ends

Australian-Lebanese journalist and filmmaker Daizy Gedeon is en route to Cannes where she will receive a prize Monday night at the Better World Fund gala. Her latest film, “Enough — Lebanon’s Darkest Hour,” is an expose of how the country has fallen into chaos. The darkest hour that she refers to is neither the 2020

SPOILER WARNING: Do not read if you haven’t seen “Black Widow,” now in theaters and on Disney Plus. “Black Widow” is full of layered surprises and heart, from Florence Pugh’s huge little-sister energy to Rachel Weisz’s stunning pig mind control. But truly the next breakout star in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is David Harbour as Alexei Shostakov,

Barry Diller is all for President Joe Biden’s efforts to rein in some of the more aggressive business tactics favored by Big Tech giants. As the sun rose on day three of the annual Allen & Co. moguls gathering here in the Idaho mountain resort, Diller, the veteran executive who has long straddled the world

Adele Lim, the writer of “Crazy Rich Asians” and “Raya and the Last Dragon,” will make her directorial debut helming an untitled comedy for Lionsgate and Point Grey Pictures. The R-rated comedy will star Tony and Grammy-nominated actress Ashley Park (“Emily in Paris,” “Girls 5Eva”) and follows four Asian American women as they travel through

When John Carpenter’s action classic “Escape from New York” premiered 40 years ago on July 10, 1981, moviegoers were treated to a dystopian nightmare unlike anything they’d seen before. Set in a grim future where the island of Manhattan has been converted into a giant maximum security prison, the film featured Kurt Russell in a

Totoral Media Lab, producers of Chilean docu “Bastard – the Legacy of a Criminal” (“Bastardo – la Herencia de un Genocida”), one of the four non-fiction features participating in Cannes’ Docs in Progress Showcase Chile, has inked a co-production pact at the Marché du Film with Stefilm, Stefano Tealdi’s Italian production house, and Sweden’s Laika

“Black Widow” marks the return of Marvel movies to cinemas after a long and arduous COVID-era absence. There’s clearly been a lot of pent-up demand for all things MCU. The film grossed a mighty $13.2 million in Thursday previews and is widely expected to dominate weekend ticket sales. “Black Widow” is projected to bring in

Swiss director Jela Hasler’s first fiction film “On Solid Ground,” one of the shorts to have been selected for Cannes’ sidebar Critics’ Week, charts the micro aggressions experienced by a woman living in a city, following her peaceful morning swim. While some of the incidents could be read as minor annoyances, a more dangerous encounter

Wes Anderson won’t be taking any questions in Cannes because “The French Dispatch” isn’t getting a press conference. Variety has confirmed with festival sources that the movie’s creative team won’t be made available to the press. The film has been missing from the press screening and conference schedule since Cannes kicked off earlier this week,

India’s Payal Kapadia is back at Cannes with her debut feature, “A Night of Knowing Nothing,” a Directors’ Fortnight selection. A graduate of the Film and Television Institute of India, Kapadia’s 2017 short “Afternoon Clouds” premiered at Cannes as a Cinéfondation selection. For “A Night of Knowing Nothing” Kapadia and the film’s cinematographer and editor

Matt Damon went deep into red state identity politics to build his character in Tom McCarthy’s Cannes premiere “Stillwater.” To portray Oklahoma oil rig worker Bill Baker — a father who sacrifices everything to help free his daughter from a French prison, after she is convicted of murdering her roommate while studying abroad —— Damon

“Postman” by Russian filmmaker Klim Tukaev has won the first prize at the sixth Nespresso Talents global short film competition. “Bagman,” by Jan Kellner, took the second prize, while “Speaking in Flowers,” by Nicolina Sterbet, took third. Both are from the Czech Republic. The winners were selected by the competition’s international jury, which includes actors

Black Swan Tales, a Blumhouse-inspired genre film label launched by French producer Noor Sadar and Belgian banner Entre Chien et Loup, is rolling out its first roster of four French- and English-language horror films. A Mediawan company, Black Swan Tales was also created in partnership with the sales company WTFilms. Black Swan has just wrapped

On the 30th anniversary of Creative Europe’s Media Programme, the European Commission in association with the advocacy group 50/50 is launching a big diversity and inclusion campaign aimed at ramping up the representation of women in the film and news media sector. Dubbed CharactHer, the campaign was designed to foster inclusion, empower women and highlight

Fabrice Aragno is sitting at a desk in his studio in Lausanne, Switzerland, pouring over images of a lake in which the water and the sky meet in dramatic fashion. The filmmaker and frequent Jean-Luc Godard collaborator is simultaneously preparing to pitch his feature directorial debut, aptly titled “Le Lac,” at Cinéfondation’s Atelier this week,

One of the biggest conundrums for many working in the fledgling XR sector is how to make money in the medium. As part this week’s Cannes XR program, Jingshu Chen, co-founder of VR entertainment platform VeeR will deliver a keynote that seeks to address the issue. Beijing-based VeeR distributes, produces and invests in narrative VR