Movies

Lisa Jackson’s hybrid documentary feature project “Wilfred Buck,” which centers on the eponymous science facilitator, an expert in Indigenous lore about astronomy, won the Canadian Forum Pitch Prize at Hot Docs last week. Jackson tells Variety how she came to the project. Jackson – whose mother was Anishinaabe, an Indigenous group in North America –

Pandemic-born initiative Female Film Club (FFC) is expanding its global membership with a new campaign. The organization will encourage media and social media users to share an insta reel with the hashtag #FFCWORLDWIDE which explains the campaign. The aim is to reach every filmmaker in every country and give them an opportunity to get their

The Berlin Film Festival has confirmed that its in-person ‘Summer Special’ will go ahead as planned as an exclusively outdoor event. The decision comes just under a month after organizers revealed that staging the event in cinemas and outdoors was proving to be a “bigger challenge” than anticipated given worrying COVID-19 figures out of Germany.

“Captain Marvel” actor Gemma Chan, “Crazy Rich Asians” star Henry Golding and “Doctor Strange” actor Benedict Wong are throwing their support behind an initiative to help the U.K.’s East and South East Asian (ESEA) community amid a rise in hate crimes following the COVID-19 crisis. The launch comes after a U.S. initiative from GoFundMe raised

Newly released “The Croods: A New Age” jostled with two previously-released titles to form a triumvirate at the top of the South Korean box office over the weekend of May 7-9, 2021. But after a sprightly Wednesday, which was a national holiday, the weekend numbers were weak. Aggregate takings between Friday and Sunday were a

Seth Rogen has spoken out about his professional relationship with frequent co-star and collaborator James Franco, saying that he has no plans to work with him following allegations of sexually inappropriate behavior. In an interview with The Sunday Times, Rogen addressed the allegations, as well as his 2014 “Saturday Night Live” opening monologue, where he

In the opening scene of Chino Moya’s grimmer-than-Grimm dystopian fairy tale collection, “Undergods,” a pair of grungy near-future garbagemen scour the ruins of a ghostly former metropolis looking for bodies. Like the Black Plague cleanup crew in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” — the occasionally too-efficient “bring out your dead!” guys — it doesn’t

“Wrath of Man,” a heist thriller starring Jason Statham, is leading box office charts with its $8.1 million debut. It’s hardly the start to summer movie season, which typically kicks off the first weekend in May, that many theater owners were hoping would ignite with Marvel’s “Black Widow.” (Disney recently moved the release of its

Toei Animation, a leading Japanese animation house with a seven-decade history, has announced the release of a new “Dragon Ball Super” movie in 2022. Based on a comic by Toriyama Akira that debuted in the “Weekly Shonen Jump” magazine in 1984 and has sold 260 million paperback copies worldwide, the “Dragon Ball” franchise has long

“Citizen Penn” opens in Hollywood in 2019, with Jamie Foxx, in high spirits, introducing Sean Penn at a benefit gala for Haiti. It doesn’t take long for the spirits to come crashing down to earth, as Penn, founder and spokesman of the J/P Relief Organization, hits the audience with a Debbie Downer buzzkill. The Russians,

Some people express their gratitude with a thank you note. Others, like Jim Carrey, do so by gifting a new car. Carrey is in Vancouver, Canada to shoot “Sonic the Hedgehog 2” and wanted to show his appreciation for the crew’s hard work by holding a raffle, for which the grand prize was a Chevy

Scarlett Johansson has spoken out against the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, urging the industry to “step back” from the organization until it puts more substantial reforms in place. Amazon Studios has also issued a statement, echoing the recent criticism from Netflix, Time’s Up and others regarding the HFPA’s latest reform plan. The plan, which was

The announcement that Maya Rudolph would be joining “Disenchanted” — the sequel to Disney’s 2011 hit “Enchanted” — as a villain was exciting news, if not completely surprising. Rudolph has always had an eye — or more accurately an ear — for how music and comedy can combine. Speaking with Variety as one of 2021’s

Montreal filmmaker Emanuel Licha’s new film—which won the juried award for best Canadian feature at Hot Docs—takes its title from the nickname Haitians have given the Toyota Land Cruiser, a popular mode of transportation among the humanitarian aid organizations ubiquitous in the country since the 2010 earthquake. In “Zo Reken,” which means “shark bones,” a

Elo Company’s “You Are Not a Soldier,” which had its world premiere this week in Hot Docs’ Systems Down sidebar, is not just an ode to survival. It is also about coping with grief, about parenthood and the horrors of war. For Brazilian docu filmmaker, Maria Carolina Telles, it was by delving into war photojournalist

Svetlana Rodina and Laurent Stoop’s “Ostrov — Lost Island” and Emanuel Licha’s “Zo Reken” took the top Hot Docs jury awards at a special online ceremony webcast from Toronto Friday night. Eleven awards and $67,000 CAD ($55,200) in cash and prizes were presented to emerging and established Canadian and international filmmakers. Best International Feature Documentary

Irish public broadcaster RTE has acquired the rights to “Four Seasons in a Day,” director Annabel Verbeke’s documentary feature about the inhabitants straddling the post-Brexit divide between Northern Ireland and Ireland, Variety has learned exclusively. Cologne-based 3Boxmedia brokered the deal. “Four Seasons in a Day” offers a glimpse at the contentious Brexit debate through the

Three of Europe’s major film markets — France, Italy and the U.K. — are reopening doors for theatrical releases after an erratic year of high hopes and false starts. But the pipeline of new movies will enter a landscape forever altered by the pandemic. If you ask Tim Richards, CEO of European cinema giant Vue,

Colombia’s Germán Arango and Ana María Muñoz, the director-producer duo behind Hot Docs International Spectrum competition title “Songs That Flood the River,” are prepping a host of new documentary and fiction features focused on race, gender, violence and resistance in the South American nation, Variety has learned. Arango is developing “MC Silencio,” a Medellín-set musical

A group of more than 100 Hollywood publicity firms say they are concerned about the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s recently released plans to overhaul the ogranization. “We will continue to refrain from any HFPA sanctioned events, including press conferences, unless and until these issues are illuminated in detail with a firm commitment to a timeline

A pair of Oscar nominations for “Collective,” a blistering exposé of corruption in his native Romania, was certainly a triumph for Alexander Nanau, one of Europe’s most acclaimed documentary filmmakers. But it was a success story shared by co-producer HBO Europe, which has spent the past decade beefing up its documentary arm en route to

The theme at the heart of David Oyelowo’s directorial debut, “The Water Man,” is the strength of families. Opening May 7, the feature revolves around Gunner (Lonnie Chavis), a boy who ventures out to find the Water Man — a mythical figure with healing powers who might be able to cure his terminally ill mother,

Joel Bender, an editor, director, writer and producer who directed “Karla” and “Gas Pump Girls,” died in his sleep due to natural causes on April 24, his wife confirmed to Variety. He was 72. Throughout his career, Bender directed 11 independent features and numerous episodes of TV shows. He edited over 20 feature films, including

The Humane Society International’s #SaveRalphCampaign tackles the disturbing issue of animal testing. Directed by Spencer Susser, the short film “Save Ralph” features the voices of Taika Waititi, Ricky Gervais, Zac Efron and Olivia Munn. It shines a light on the plight of countless rabbits and other animals suffering at this very moment in laboratories around

British actor and model Poppy Delevingne, Chad Michael Collins, Casper Van Dien and Jeff Fahey are set to star in thriller-suspense film “Assailant,” from MSR Media and written and directed by Tom Paton (“400 Bullets”). The pic turns on a couple going through marriage counseling who decide to head to the Caribbean on a “make

In today’s Global Bulletin, Sky Cinema’s “The Amazing Maurice” rounds out its voice cast; the BFI launches a U.S. streaming platform for British cinema and renews its Bursary Award partnership with IWC Schaffhausen; and the Göteborg Film Festival announces funding for films from four territories where freedom of speech and expression are seen as being

On an official visit to lobby for international support of her beleaguered country amid the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, Queen Marie of Romania expresses her frustration that the press coverage is focused not on her efforts at diplomacy, but her extravagant wardrobe and packed social diary. “I suppose if I wish to be heard, I

A clever example of creativity thriving within the strict protocols of the coronavirus pandemic, tense confinement thriller “Oxygen” plays like “Buried” in outer space: a ticking-clock sci-fi survival drama centered on a single character (“Inglourious Basterds” star Mélanie Laurent) trapped in a spiffy, coffin-like cryochamber with critically low reserves of breathable air. The blank-brained “bioform”

Producer-director Margaret Byrne is developing an eight-part docuseries, “Fighting Time,” following a retired homicide detective and dozens of Latino and Black men who allege they were framed for murder, Variety has learned exclusively. Byrne’s latest feature, “Any Given Day,” screens this week in the International Spectrum competition at Hot Docs. The Chicago-born multi-hyphenate has spent

Veteran composer Vanraj Bhatia, who provided the soundtrack to India’s new age cinema movement of the 1970s and 1980s, has died in Mumbai. He was 93 and is understood to have been in poor health for some time. Born in Bombay, as the metropolis was known as then, in 1927, Bhatia studied at the Royal