Movies

Following 2017’s “Las Cinéphilas,” about retired women who go to the cinema every day, and this year’s “Le Temps Perdu,” which just had its world premiere in IDFA’s feature-length documentary competition, Argentinian director Maria Alvarez is already developing the third part of her trilogy focusing on elderly people. In “Close” (“Las Cercanas”), which will see

Feature debutant Rezwan Shahriar Sumit’s “The Salt in Our Waters,” bows Nov. 29 at the Singapore International Film Festival’s Asian Visions strand after successful festival screenings at London, Busan and Torino. The project was supported by the Spike Lee Fellowship, which offered the film’s preliminary writing grants, France’s CNC aide aux cinemas du monde, the

Stuck inside on Black Friday, stuffed with turkey (or else deprived of that feast for the first time in ages, out of an abundance of caution), what are Americans supposed to do to distract themselves? All year, it’s been a battle of the streamers to fill the void left by cinemas, and this week finds

More than two years after filming wrapped, “Superintelligence,” the latest joint effort of Melissa McCarthy and her director husband Ben Falcone, has finally popped up on a streaming platform — specifically, HBO Max — which arguably is the natural habitat for a lightweight, undemandingly engaging comedy that can be enjoyed either entirely in one sitting,

HBO and HBO Max are rounding out the universally despised year with the long-awaited premieres of popular shows and movies. “Wonder Woman 1984,” the hotly anticipated sequel to 2017’s “Wonder Woman,” will be debuting simultaneously on HBO Max and in theaters on Christmas Day. Gal Gadot faces off against a new enemy with superhuman strength

Kiev-based Alina Gorlova vividly remembers the first time she saw the disputed region of Donbass, in the east of Ukraine and to the southwest of Russia. “I saw this nature in black-and-white,” she says, “because there was a lot of slag heaps in these industrial landscapes.” A graduate of the Karpenko-Kary Kyiv National University of

Paris-based MPM Premium has picked up “The Pink Cloud,” a banner title that’s part of a slate of first features from a new generation of young female Brazilian directors. The films are set to become one of the talking points of next week’s Ventana Sur. A sci-fi thriller from writer-director Luli Gerbase shot in 2019

Some filmmakers can take years finding the right subject for their documentary, but in the case of Diane Sara Bouzgarrou and Thomas Jenkoe, the directors of “The Last Hillbilly” – which plays Friday in IDFA’s Competition for First Appearance – theirs just walked up and introduced himself. The French director couple from Lille were eating

Paris-based company Alba Films has acquired French distribution rights to Sabrina Van Tassel’s timely social justice documentary “The State of Texas vs. Melissa.” The documentary premiered at the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival and recently made its U.K. debut at the Raindance Film Festival where it won the best documentary award. FilmRise holds theatrical and digital

One of EnergaCamerimage Film Festival’s most closely watched sections in a world where streaming shows rule the roost is the First Look TV Pilots Competition and this year’s winner, the Amazon Original “Hunters,” kept veteran cinematographer Frederick Elmes on his toes, he says. Elmes, with more than 60 director of photography credits spanning five decades,

U.K.-based distribution company Alief has secured global sales and remake rights for “Nocturna,” sides A and B, from writer-director Gonzalo Calzada. The British distributors have also shared with Variety an exclusive trailer from the film’s upcoming marketing campaign, set to kick off on Dec. 1 at the multi-city Ventana Sur market. The “Nocturna” films are

London-based sales outfit Jinga Films has announced deals on a raft of Latin American genre titles during the American Film Market, securing sales across Europe, Asia and the U.S. Sales come in the run-up to next week’s Ventana Sur market where genre is one of its main focuses, thanks to a dedicated Blood Window genre

The 28th EnergaCamerimage International Film Festival this year found itself – like many fests worldwide – saddled with sobering restrictions, in this case added to the already daunting agenda of getting the globally feted cinematography event fully up to speed only a year after moving back to its original location in Torun, Poland. Festival director

Hong Kong has picked youth drama “Better Days” as the territory’s contender for the Academy Awards’ best international feature film race. The announcement was made on Friday by the Hong Kong Film Producers Association. Directed by Derek Tsang, and adapted from the novel “Young and Beautiful,” the China-Hong Kong co-production tells the story of a

Simone Bitton, a Paris-based, French-Moroccan director whose work has primarily concentrated on the history and cultures of North Africa and the Middle East, makes her debut in the Masters section at IDFA—arguably the most prestigious of the documentary festival’s strands—with the world premiere of “Ziyara.” Bitton herself has mixed feelings about the accolade, as she

Chinese action film “The Rescue” has pulled forward its local and international release plans. It will now go out in a plum pre-Christmas slot on Dec. 18 in mainland China, North America and major English-language territories. The $80 million tentpole is directed by Hong Kong’s Dante Lam, who previously delivered a slew of other muscular

Inspiration can strike at any time, but for first-time director Natalija Yefimkina it came from an unlikely source. “In the garage, I found everything,” says the 37-year-old, a Russian-speaking Ukrainian now based in Germany. Presented in IDFA’s Best of Fests strand, following its debut at the Berlin Film Festival and more recent AFM screening, her

Oscar-winning filmmaker Ron Howard’s “Thirteen Lives,” based on the 2018 Thai caves rescue mission, will start filming in March in Queensland, Australia. Australia will provide A$13 million ($9.6 million) to MGM and Imagine Entertainment towards the production, with Queenland’s Gold Coast hinterland doubling up for Thailand. Produced by Oscar-winner Brian Grazer, P.J. van Sandwijk, Gabrielle

With six films from Morocco in this year’s program, documentary festival IDFA put a spotlight on the North African country’s documentary film scene and its artists. For those wanting an introduction to the cinematic history of Morocco, an excellent place to start is “Before the Dying of the Light,” the latest film from cinema historian

“Jurassic World: Dominion,” “War of the Worlds,” “First Day: On Set” and “The Pursuit of Love” were among the productions commended at the 2020 Production Guild of Great Britain (PGGB) Innovation Awards on Thursday. Presented in association with Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden, the awards recognize the achievements of PGGB members working in film and high-end

Taylor Swift’s music has always been the most interesting thing about Taylor Swift, and she’s rarely more interesting than when she’s talking about her music. You would think this would be obvious, considering she’s one of the defining singer-songwriters of her generation, but for large portions of her decade and a half career, the conversations

Emily J. Hoe took over as executive director of the Singapore International Film Festival just as the world was waking up to the coronavirus as a full-on pandemic. A calm head helped prevail and deliver a slimmed down, but still familiar, event that is presented in physical form and partially online. Variety: You have a

Indian arthouse filmmaker Pushpendra Singh’s latest effort, feminist fable “The Shepherdess and the Seven Songs” (Laila Aur Satt Geet) is bowing at the Singapore International Film Festival after plaudits at Berlin, Hong Kong and Jeonju. The film, based on renowned Rajasthani writer Vidaydan Detha’s story of a woman discarding all identities society wants to impose

Fanny Chotimah’s Indonesian documentary “You and I,” which won the Asian Perspective Award at Korea’s DMZ Docs Festival, is one of the highlights of the Singapore International Film Festival’s Asian Vision strand. The film tells the story of the friendship between Kaminah and Kusdalini, which existed for more than 50 years since they met as

When his students express their weariness of constant lockdown drills, a sympathetic New York City math teacher offers them some cold comfort. Statistically, he says, they’re likelier to be hit by a car than they are to die in a school shooting. But traffic collisions don’t get constant media coverage, counters a teenage girl: Vigilant

Iranian director Firouzeh Khosrovani has won the IDFA award for best feature-length documentary with “Radiograph of a Family,” a film that uses an intimate study of her parents’ marriage—her father was secular, Westernized and progressive, while her mother was a devout, traditional Muslim—to explore the divisions in Iranian society both in the run-up and aftermath

In the animated feature “The Croods: A New Age,” which bowed Nov. 25 in select theaters, the first prehistoric family encounters the Bettermans, a family a few steps evolved beyond the cave people. When the Croods stumble on their lush treehouse compound, it looks like paradise to them. It’s so appealing, in fact, that even

Italian actor and screenwriter Daria Nicolodi, who played the prying journalist Gianna Brezzi in the Dario Argento cult classic “Deep Red”(Profondo Rosso), and was herself a cult figure, has died. She was 70. The cause of her death, announced by her daughter Asia Argento and Italian news reports, was not disclosed. Born in Florence in

Andy Samberg gets raw and has a strong message for the Academy voters who have an issue with the Academy’s new diversity and inclusion standards set to take effect in 2024.  Samberg recently spoke to Variety’s Awards Circuit podcast about his film “Palm Springs” – listen below! Samberg says “the parameters if you look at

The Bangladesh Oscar Committee has selected acclaimed anthology film “Sincerely Yours, Dhaka” as the country’s entry to the 2021 Oscars’ international feature film category. “Dhaka” is a collection of 11 shorts set in Bangladesh’s capital city by 11 emerging filmmakers: Nuhash Humayun, Syed Ahmed Shawki, Rahat Rahman Joy, M.D. Robiul Alam, Golam Kibria Farooki, Mir