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In the three years since the Sarajevo Film Festival launched its Heart of Sarajevo TV awards, much has changed in the Balkan region’s television sector thanks to investment from regional telecom companies in the local production space. Companies such as Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Bh Telecom, the main sponsor of this year’s Sarajevo Film Festival, and Telecom Serbia have been flexing their financial muscle in a space that undercapitalized public broadcasters and once confident-but-now-nervous global streamers are yet to enter.

Bh Telecom is behind three local productions up for nominations at the festival’s TV awards this year: Bosnian crime drama The Hollow, which was co-created by Oscar-winning director Danis Tanović; and comedies Tender and On the Edge of Reason directed by Srdan Vuletić and Elmir Jukić respectively. Meanwhile, Telecom Serbia has backed five drama nominees: The Fall, based on the true story of a young and popular...

Exclusive: Range Media Partners has signed actor Jack Kesy, who recently set the internet ablaze with his lead casting in Millennium Media’s Hellboy reboot, The Crooked Man.

Related Story ‘Hellboy’ Reboot ‘The Crooked Man’ Adds ‘Yellowstone’ Star Jefferson White & ‘Resident Evil’s Adeline Rudolph Related Story Jenji Kohan Signs With Range Media Partners Related Story TikTok Star Monet McMichael Inks With Range Media Partners

The film to be directed by Crank‘s Brian Taylor, which is currently gearing up for production, will have Kesy take on the demonic comic book character previously inhabited by Ron Perlman and David Harbour. Pic sees Hellboy stranded in 1950s rural Appalachia with a rookie Bprd agent. The pair there discover a small community haunted by witches, led by a local devil with a troubling connection to Hellboy’s past: the Crooked Man.

Kesy’s past film credits include the Lionsgate action-thriller Dark Web: Cicada 3301,...

Malum: "Malum is a bold and expanded reimagining of the 2014 horror cult classic, Last Shift. On a search to uncover the mysterious circumstances surrounding her father’s death, a newly appointed police officer, Jessica Loren (Jessica Sula) is assigned to the last shift in a decommissioned police station where a notoriously vicious cult saw their demise years prior. The lone officer at the station, she soon finds herself barraged by terrifying paranormal events, and in the process, is taken on a journey during which she learns the shocking truth behind her family’s entanglement with a demented cult leader. Malum takes the premise of the 2014 festival hit and flips it on its head, thrusting viewers into an unrelenting, adrenaline-fueled, bloody cult nightmare."

Title: Malum Director: Anthony Diblasi Screenwriters: Anthony Diblasi, Scott Poiley Producers: Scott Poiley, Dan Clifton Executive Producers: Mary Poiley, Luke Labeau, Eric Kleifield, Bonner Bellew, Justin Brown...

Millennium Media announced today that The Crooked Man has its Hellboy. Jack Kesy (12 Strong) will star as Hellboy. As previously announced, Brian Taylor (Crank) will be directing with a script penned by Hellboy comic book creator Mike Mignola and Chris Golden.

The Crooked Man will be the first film in the Millennium Media partnered development slate with leading German film and TV distributor, Telepool, a division of Westbrook Inc.

Stranded in 1950s rural Appalachia, Hellboy and a rookie Bprd agent discover a small community haunted by witches, led by a local devil with a troubling connection to Hellboy’s past: the Crooked Man.

“Jack Kesy is a dynamic actor who has the ability to morph into his roles. His talent and stature are perfect for this younger Hellboy. I was very impressed with him while working together on The Outpost.” Co-President of Millennium Media, Jonathan Yunger stated.

Jack Kesy...

Jack Kesy (Photo Credit: Chris Laszlo)

Jack Kesy (12 Strong) has landed the lead role in Millennium Media’s Hellboy: The Crooked Man. Mike Mignola, creator of the Hellboy comics, wrote the screenplay with Chris Golden, and Brian Taylor (Crank) is on board to direct.

“Jack Kesy is a dynamic actor who has the ability to morph into his roles. His talent and stature are perfect for this younger Hellboy. I was very impressed with him while working together on The Outpost,” stated Co-President of Millennium Media, Jonathan Yunger.

In addition to 12 Strong and The Outpost, Kesy’s credits include Dark Web: Cicadia 3301, Without Remorse, Mosquito State, Deadpool 2, Baywatch, and Eli Roth’s Death Wish. He recently wrapped up work on Murder at Hollow Creek and Sheroes.

Ron Perlman took on the character in 2004’s Hellboy and 2008’s Hellboy II: The Golden Army, both directed by Guillermo del Toro.

Scottish actor Alastair Mackenzie, recently spotted in “The Crown” and “Andor,” Jessica Frances Dukes and Debi Mazar have been added to the cast of Filip Jan Rymsza’s feature film “Object Permanence.”

They join previously announced star Millie Brady, who plays Brooke Brooks: a former supermodel who becomes a successful lifestyle mogul and is the first person to IPO herself.

Production is currently underway in Poland and will continue in Thailand and Germany. “Apples” DoP Bartosz Świniarski is lensing the film.

Set in the near future, “Object Permanence” is produced by Friends with Benefits Studio, with co-financing by the Polish Film Institute. Marta Lewandowska and Rymsza – the latter also behind “Mosquito State” – are producing, while CAA is handling North American sales.

“Filip’s script is an inspired study of the perils of celebrity and the conflictual relationships that exist within the system built up around it,” says Mackenzie, opening...

Millie Brady, known for the BBC/Netflix series “The Last Kingdom” and recently seen in Apple TV + offering “Surface,” will play the lead in Filip Jan Rymsza’s “Object Permanence,” Variety has learned exclusively.

The actor is cast as Brooke Brooks, a former supermodel who becomes a highly successful lifestyle mogul and the first person to ‘IPO’(Initial Public Offering) herself.

“Having commodified herself, Brooke is forced to confront her sense of self and the identity she has created,” said Rymsza, whose last film “Mosquito State” with Beau Knapp was shown at the Venice Film Festival, where it was noticed for Eric Koretz’s cinematography. He also produced acclaimed documentary “Hopper/Welles” and John Malkovich starrer “Valley of the Gods.”

“Millie is such a force: a transfixing union of vibrance, instinct and craft. I’m deeply inspired by the soulfulness of her interpretation,” Rymsza added.

Set in the near future, the...

After a two year absence Horrorant was back in Athens, Greece, ready to feed the needs of its audience.    Over eleven days attendees got to catch up on some of the best offerings from the international genre community these past two years. Favorites like Luz: The Flower of Evil, Post Mortem, The Sadness and Mosquito State came to town.    All four were winners at this year's festival. After careful consideration, the jury of festival- which I was honored to be a part of this year- chose Mosquito State for best picture with best director honors going to Filip Jan Rymsza.    The beauty of Luz: The Flower of Evil is still pretty unmatched two years later which is why we gave the Cinematography...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

“The Killing Fields” and “The Mission” director Roland Joffé is in talks to helm an epic drama spanning the two World Wars in a project set up with international film and media fund Apx Capital Group.

“L’Inverno” is the first pic to emerge from Apx’s new Music World Films & TV venture — a new division headed by Mathew Knowles (Beyoncé’s father), who sold his Music World Entertainment Group to Apx last month. As part of the deal, the film and TV division of Knowles’ company has been merged with the studio.

Apx will complete the financing on “L’Inverno,” with the 12-million budgeted movie starting principal photography in Rome, Italy, this fall. (Apx has a 10-year commitment to move productions to Italy.)

Spanning two World Wars, “L’Inverno” tells the story of former childhood friends SS Officer Nikolaus Führich and Jewish violinist Elisabeth Soloveichik, expressed through the eyes of Elizabeth’s brother,...

Paramount Pictures has acquired worldwide distribution rights to Little Dixie, an action thriller from writer-director John Swab, which stars Frank Grillo. Deadline hears that the studio will look to release the film in the second half of this year.

In the Roxwell Films title, Grillo portrays Doc, who facilitates a fragile truce between the Governor and a cartel, trading prosecutorial leniency for finance. When this truce dissolves, Doc is left to fend for himself and protect the one untainted thing in his life: his daughter, Little Dixie.

The actioner also stars Eric Dane, Beau Knapp and Annabeth Gish (Midnight Mass). Jeremy M. Rosen cast the project and produced with Swab and Robert Ogden Barnum for Roxwell Films, in association with Three Point Capital.

Mosquito State Review — Mosquito State (2020) Film Review, a movie directed by Filip Jan Rymsza, and starring Beau Knapp, Charlotte Vega, Jack Kesy, Olivier Martinez, Audrey Wasilewski, Daisy Bishop, Dominika Kachlik, Krystin Goodwin, Kelly Dean Cooper, Carolina Espiro, Mark McKinnon, and Blaise Corrigan. In Mosquito State, director/writer Filip Jan Rymsza offers a gorgeous but [...]

Continue reading: Film Review: Mosquito State (2020): Impressive Imagery with a Cryptic Story...

Now on Shudder, Filip Jan Rymsza’s Mosquito State is an interesting piece that uses body horror to tell a story of madness in the face of impending change. It’s a film as frustrating as it is fascinating, because for every solid moment, it has another that comes up a little short. But the moments that work, really work, and the feeling of doom that the story carries with it is undeniably effective.

The film opens as a lone mosquito finds its way into the posh party of a New York financial firm and lands on the neck of the office genius/weirdo, Richard Boca (Beau Knapp). Richard’s specialty is data trends and modeling. He has designed a program to help understand current market changes and predict how they will resolve. He’s the secret weapon that keeps the firm happy and making money. He is also very rigid,...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Black Film Archive

Created by Maya Cade, the newly-launched Black Film Archive is an essential resource featuring every Black film made between 1915 and 1979 that is currently available stream. With over 200 films indexed, if you’re looking for a place to start, check out Cade’s curator picks, ranging from Ousmane Sembène’s Black Girl to Perry Henzell’s The Harder They Come to Madeline Anderson’s I Am Somebody. Also, if you’re able to help the evolving, self-funded project, consider supporting their PayPal, Cash App, or their monthly Substack here.

Where to Stream: Black Film Archive

The Courier (Dominic Cooke)

Early on in The Courier, directed by Dominic Cooke, British salesman Greville Wynne (Benedict Cumberbatch) realizes he’s sitting at a...

This review of “Mosquito State” was first published in September 2020 after the film’s premiere at the Venice Film Festival.

On the film-festival circuit, Polish-American filmmaker Filip Jan Rymsza is best known for shepherding the unfinished, long-neglected Orson Welles movie “The Other Side of the Wind” to completion in 2018, and for producing two accompanying documentaries, Morgan Neville’s “They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead” and Ryan Suffern’s short “A Final Cut for Orson.”

“The Other Side of the Wind” and “They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead” both premiered two years ago at the Venice International Film Festival, so it makes sense that Rymsza’s debut as a feature director, “Mosquito State,” debuted at that same festival in 2020, alongside another Rymsza-produced Welles project, the documentary “Hopper/Welles.” The creepy, cerebral thriller is bold and weird and wildly unlike anything Welles might have done, though you could probably call it the “Citizen...

Grafting Cronenbergian body horror onto the 2008 financial crisis, Filip Jan Rymsza’s horror-tinged Mosquito State takes its title very literally, beginning with the up-close birth of a mosquito and ends, quite appropriately, with an insect apocalypse as the stock market collapses. In-between those potent images, however, is a work with plenty of grandiose ideas and little sense of how to communicate them. Thematically muddled but visually stunning, Rymsza’s film serves as a warning call for those who prioritize form over all else, elaborately staged shots doing little to hide the ever-growing narrative inconsistencies.

Its ostensible protagonist is Richard Boca (Beau Knapp), an investment-firm “golden goose” whose finance-bro colleagues openly disdain him. He’s awkward, introverted, and something of a wunderkind: his algorithm “Honeybee” is both incredibly lucrative for the firm and modeled on colony-collapse disorder, a phenomenon wherein the worker bees disappear, leaving the queen bee with outsize resources...

Mosquito State Is Now Streamingexclusively On Shudder! Check out the trailer:

Mosquito State was the 2020 Venice Film Festival Winner: Bisato d’Oro for Best Cinematography and the 2020 Sitges Film Festival Winner: Best Visual Effects**

The critics love Mosquito State:

“Knapp gives a terrific performance… This highly original, visually torrid take onWall Street and last decade’s global financial crisis celebrates the truemasters of the universe: mosquitoes.”– Phil Hoad, The Guardian

“A haunting show of financial-crisis body horror… Knapp gives a stylizedperformance that recalls Nicolas Cage.”– Chuck Bowen, Slant Magazine

“Cronenberg meets Kafka… Knapp commits fully to the hideous spectacle of a man steadily beaten by merciless nature.”– David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter

“You could probably call it the Citizen Kane of Wall Street insect movies. Then again, it’s the only Wall Street insect movie. Knapp, in a performance of unnerving calmand unblinkered insanity… manages to get under your skin.

"Isolated in his austere penthouse overlooking Central Park, obsessive Wall Street data analyst Richard Boca sees ominous patterns: His computer models are behaving erratically, as are the swarms of mosquitoes breeding in his apartment, an infestation that attends his psychological meltdown." After its award-winning festival run last year, Mosquito State is heading to Shudder on August 26th and we have an exclusive clip just for Daily Dead viewers!

Mosquito State was directed by Filip Jan Rymsza, written by Filip Jan Rymsza and Mario Zermeno, and produced by Filip Jan Rymsza, Włodzimierz Niderhaus, and Alyssa Swanzey. The film stars Beau Knapp, Charlotte Vega, Jack Kesy, and Olivier Martinez.

August 2007. Isolated in his austere penthouse overlooking Central Park, obsessive Wall Street data analyst Richard Boca (Beau Knapp) sees ominous patterns: His computer models are behaving erratically, as are the swarms of mosquitos breeding in his apartment, an infestation that attends his psychological meltdown.

"Welcome to the world, little guy." Shudder has unveiled an official US trailer for an indie horror thriller called Mosquito State, which originally premiered at last year's Venice Film Festival. It also played at the Sitges Film Festival and Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, and will debut streaming on Shudder starting this month. Set in 2007, the film is about a Wall Street analyst living in his apartment overlooking Central Park who brings back some strange mosquitos which begin to swarm inside of his apartment. It's a "weird" psychological thriller about a Wall Street worker slowly breaking down. "Finding common ground between Franz Kafka, David Cronenberg & Mary Harron’s American Psycho, director-screenwriter Filip Jan Rymsza emerges with a new kind of body horror, set during a single week of an exquisitely rendered pre-crash 2007 replete with signs of sociopolitical and economic rot." Starring Beau Knapp, with Charlotte Vega, Jack Kesy, and Olivier Martinez.

We know, we know. August hearkens the mid point of Summer and though there may still be an air of uncertainty around the end of Summer holidays one thing is for sure, Shudder will be there to help you get through it all.    Though the programming seems a little lighter than previous months there are still some very good titles coming to the AMC Network streaming service. The three main additions next month is the French werewolf horror flick, Teddy, Travis Stevens' SXSW midnighter, Jakob's Wife, starring Barbara Crampton and Larry Fessenden, and body horror flick Mosquito State.    Throughout the month look forward to additions of classic Vincent Price flick, Witchfinder General, Gareth Edwards' Monsters, Ben Wheatley's A Field in England, Borgman, cult fave...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Exclusive: Jack Kesy, who had breakout roles in The Strain and Deadpool 2 will lead the cast of indie drama Way Of The Warriors. John Montague will write and direct. Michael Tadross Jr, Jasmine Reid, and Arnold Rifkin will produce.

The story follows an authentic inspirational story about a hockey coach that unites his family, team and town to overcome adversity and achieve the impossible. Film is scheduled for a November start in Minnesota.

“It’s a message I think is important in these divided times. It’s about coming together through hardship and finding a way past our differences. I’m excited to bring it to the screen,” Reid said.

Kesy can currently be seen in The Outpost opposite Orlando Bloom. His film Mosquito State recently premiered at the Venice Film Festival. Kesy will soon be seen in Lionsgate’s comedy-thriller Cicada 3301 and the highly anticipated Amazon feature Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse,...

Polish-born filmmaker Filip Jan Rymsza, the producer of Venice Film Festival entry “Hopper/Welles,” which he is presenting this week at Egypt’s El Gouna Film Festival, will follow his latest directorial outing “Mosquito State” – also a Venice premiere this year – with “Object Permanence,” Rymsza tells Variety. Partially set in Berlin and shot in English, it will be another Polish co-production, most likely with Germany.

“’Object permanence’ is something that people were aware of already, they just didn’t know how to define it: It’s the understanding that objects continue to exist even if you can’t see them or hear them, or otherwise sense them,” he says, adding that while “Mosquito State” looked at the recent past, this will look into the near future.

With another project, set in Japan, currently put on hold due to Covid-19 travel restrictions, Rymsza will once again try to focus on one protagonist.

Brandon Cronenberg has proven to be an heir to his father, David, with his grisly sophomore feature, “Possessor Uncut,” which took home best film and director at Spain’s 53rd Sitges Film Festival on Saturday.

Running Oct.8-18, the fantastic film fest, Europe’s biggest, wrapped yesterday in Sitges, a picturesque seaside resort just south of Barcelona.

With these new honors, Brandon Cronenberg also suggests that his best new director award at 2012’s Sitges for debut feature, “Antiviral,” was no fluke.

A sci fi-horror hybrid, “Possessor Uncut” tracks an elite corporate assassin who uses brain-implant technology to take possession of other people’s bodies and slay prominent targets. The film first premiered at Sundance where Variety’s Peter Debruge described it as a “brilliant sci-fi puzzle” that was “more than just another bracingly extreme psychological thriller.”

Just Philippot’s “The Swarm” also snagged two awards: the Special Jury Prize and...

For almost 40 years, the 100 hours of surviving footage that Orson Welles shot in the early 1970s for the movie “The Other Side of the Wind” remained largely unseen. First the director struggled in vain to finish the film, then its rights were tied up after his death. But that four decades of frustration has turned into a flurry of activity: In the last two years, that footage has been used not only in the completed version of “The Other Side of the Wind” that finally premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2018, but in two different documentaries about the film, Morgan Neville’s “They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead” and Ryan Suffern’s short doc “A Final Cut for Orson.”

And now it’s serving as the basis for yet another side of “The Other Side of the Wind,” and another posthumous film on which Welles is credited as director.

The sound design of “Mosquito State” takes the title as a mission statement. Across much of its running time, the sonic backdrop is a veritable chorus of mosquitoes whining in high, overbearing harmony, providing their own sinister vocal track to a more conventionally orchestrated score. You have to be confident in your film’s power to transfix its audience even as it’s liable to drive any anopheliphobics in the room to delirium, and Polish-American director Filip Jan Rymsza seems to be: His body horror-tinged allegory for the global financial crisis of 2007 swaggers with slick, nasty formal showmanship designed to get under the viewer’s skin. But it’s all in service of pretty thin ideas about capitalist decline and masculinity in crisis, played out by thinner characters still: The longer it needles, the more one is inclined to swat it away.

As it happens, “Mosquito State” is the first...

, Filip Jan Rymsza’s scary-silly “Mosquito State” begs for some context before we can dive into its crepuscular plot.

It’s August 3, 2007. We’re standing on the precipice of the most dire financial crisis since the Great Depression, but no one seems to know it yet. Good things are happening. A young senator named Barack Obama is sparking a new breed of American hope. “No Country for Old Men” and “There Will Be Blood” are about to open within a few weeks of each other. The iPhone has just been invented. People feel immortal. Rich people, most of all.

Wall Street is convinced that it can predict the future, data is the most valuable currency on Earth, and quantitative analysts are valued as modern seers. Quants like Richard Boca (Beau Knapp), whose homemade algorithm has allowed his firm to amass a profane amount of money without any regard to where it came from,...

Atonement stings in Filip Jan Rymsza’s chilly Mosquito State, an elegant but increasingly tortured allegory for the unraveling of one unwitting architect of the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis. This obsessive fever dream opens with a predatory insect’s eye view of high-roller privilege then multiplies into a nightmarish infestation before vengefully claiming its sacrifice, in a poetic surrender that evokes Virginia Woolf. Juiced up with nods to Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and to classic David Cronenberg bug-outs, much of it set to insidious techno beats, this is commandingly creepy psycho-horror, even if its forbidding narrative loses momentum.

The title sequence,...

You wait the best part of 30 years for one and then two come along at once…Orson Welles movies.

Pieced together from the 1,083 reels of footage for The Other Side Of The Wind (which debuted in 2018), Hopper/Welles is the latest ‘new’ feature from the industry titan, who died in 1985.

Ahead of its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, we spoke to producer Filip Jan Rymsza about the backstory behind the movie, on which he re-teamed with The Other Side Of The Wind editor Bob Murawski (The Hurt Locker).

The intimate and revelatory documentary captures a 1970 meeting between the Citizen Kane director and the then-rising star Dennis Hopper, who had just made Easy Rider. The encounter came about when Hopper agreed to a cameo role in Welles’ troubled The Other Side Of The Wind. Welles flew Hopper from New Mexico to Los Angeles, where he cooked him a pasta...