News

French mini-major Pathé has acquired Les Films des Tournelles, the production company founded by Anne-Dominique Toussaint whose recent credits include Louis Garrel’s Cesar-winning “The Innocent.”

Besides Garrel, Les Films des Tournelles has worked with a flurry of auteurs on some of their most successful films, including Riad Sattouf’s “The French Kissers,” which won the Cesar for best first film in 2010; Nadine Labaki’s “Caramel”; Emanuele Crialese’s “Respiro”; Valeria Golino’s “Miele”; and Mona Achache’s “The Hedgehog.” “The Innocent” won two prizes at last year’s Cesar Awards and screened at Cannes on the 75th anniversary of the festival.

Toussaint has also worked with Philippe Le Guay and Emmanuel Carrère. Toussaint, whose career spans over three decades, has produced 27 films so far, including iconic French movies such as Martine Dugowson’s “Mina Tannenbaum.”

As part of the deal, Pathé is acquiring Films des Tournelles’ full library while...

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.

Albert Brooks: Defending My Life (Rob Reiner)

One of the most brilliant comedic minds to ever live finally gets his due in Rob Reiner’s loving documentary. Framed around a conversation between the two, Brooks dives into all of his creative output while still proving he’s as witty as ever––and indeed, if you’ve never seen some of his early late-night bits, you’ll be howling along. And since you’ll be looking for more from Brooks to watch after watching, Lost in America and Defending Your Life are on Max, Modern Romance is on Tubi, and Real Life is on Kanopy.

Where to Stream: Max

Before, Now & Then (Kamila Andini)

In Before, Now & Then the social...

Report for Italy’s Association of Audiovisual Producers warns of impact of inflation on sector.

Spending on Italian audiovisual production jumped 20% to €1.8bn in 2022, up from €1.5bn in 2021, according to data compiled by research association EMedia for Italy’s Association of Audiovisual Producers (APA)

The study shows the number of high-budget productions in Italy rose thanks to increased investment by US streamers as well as government tax credits aimed at incentivising international shoots in Italy.

This has “generated an inflationary effect on the sector,” said the report, which warned of increasing costs and a dearth of production crews and support staff.

‘Gran Turismo’ makes a slow start with less than £1m opening.

Rank Film (distributor) Three-day gross (Aug 11-13) Total gross to date Week 1. Barbie (Warner Bros) £4.4m £78.2m 4 2. Oppenheimer (Universal) £3.2m £45.8m 4 3. Meg 2: The Trench (Warner Bros) £1.6m £7.6m 2 4. Haunted Mansion (Disney) £1m £1m 1 5. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (Paramount) £795,000 £5.7m 2

Greta Gerwig’s Barbie is approaching the £80m mark at the UK-Ireland box office, after a £4.4m weekend saw it hold top spot for the fourth consecutive session.

Barbie dropped 44.3% on its previous session – its biggest drop to date, but enough to propel it to an outstanding...

“Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” ruled the U.K. and Ireland box office for the third consecutive weekend with a combined £13.4 million ($17 million), per numbers from Comscore.

Warner Bros.’ “Barbie” topped the charts again with £7.9 million and now has a total of £67.5 million. In second place, Universal’s “Oppenheimer” collected £5.4 million for a total of £39.1 million.

In third position, Warner Bros.’ “Meg 2: The Trench” debuted strongly with £3.7 million, while Paramount’s “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” was close behind in fourth place with £3.6 million.

Rounding off the top five was Paramount’s “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One,” which earned £1.03 million in its fourth weekend for a total of £22.8 million.

Lionsgate’s “Joy Ride” debuted in seventh place with £389,935.

Moviegoers Entertainment’s Bollywood film “Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani” held strongly in its second weekend with £269,507. The film continues at 71 sites with a robust site average of £3,796. On Monday,...

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.

Asteroid City (Wes Anderson)

Wes Anderson has done it all: India by train, Rhode Island by foot, the Mediterranean by sub, France by bike, faux-Germany by hotel, apple-orchard America by fox, animated Japan by dog, motel Texas by friends, New York City by family. But––despite the feeling that this couldn’t possibly be true––he’s never told a story in western America. In setting he hasn’t gone further west than Houston. Until Asteroid City: Arizona desert by quarantine. – Luke H. (full review)

Where to Stream: VOD

Chile ’76 (Manuela Martelli)

Manuela Martelli’s debut film opens with a sequence that perfectly captures the tone and themes Chile ‘76 will explore. Carmen (played by Aline Kuppenheim) is at a paint shop,...

A selection at Venice Film Festival and Sundance Film Festival, Emanuele Crialese’s 1970s-set, Penélope Cruz-starring drama L’immensità opened in theaters earlier this summer from Music Box Films. Now, with the film arriving digitally today, we’re pleased to exclusively debut an alternate poster inspired by Federico Fellini classic. Along with the poster debut, we’re delighted to give away 10 digital codes to watch the film on AppleTV. To enter, sign up for The Film Stage’s free newsletter by July 16 (available to U.S. readers only).

Designed by Greenlight Creative, here’s their statement about the new poster: “The La Dolce Vita-inspired poster for L’immensità evolved out of the original design explorations for the film’s theatrical poster. We were looking to find a design style that would place the film in a vibrant mid-century or ’70s period setting, communicate a bittersweet, nostalgic tone, and provide a star platform for Penélope Cruz.

Emanuele Crialese, 58, director of the cult film Respiro (Critics’ Week Award at Cannes in 2002) was born in Rome to Sicilian parents, studied at NYU and made his debut with Once We Were Strangers in 1997. Before that, he had already transitioned from female to male, from Emanuela to Emanuele.

Respiro was a success in France and then worldwide, and Crialese followed it up, four years later, with Golden Door, which took the Revelation Silver Lion award in Venice in 2006. Five years after that, Crialese’s Terraferma won Venice’s special jury prize. Now, a decade later, Crialese is back with L’Immensità, an autobiographical story set in 1970s Rome of a child who does not identify with the gender assigned to them at birth. The child’s mother is played by a magnificent Penelope Cruz, the father by Crialese’s alter-ego, Vincenzo Amato. After last year’s Venice premiere, L’Immensità screened at...

Matt Johnson’s film BlackBerry about the rise and fall of the world’s first smartphone passed $1.7 million its second week out with an estimated three-day gross of $525k in 595 theaters.

The Canadian number — $250k from 200 theaters — was only a 13% drop from opening weekend. Stateside, the indie crossed $1 million with a estimated $257k at 375 locations and really popped on Saturday, outperforming the week earlier in a handful of theaters in top markets including New York, LA, and Boston.

It’s being handled by IFC Films in the U.S. and Elevation Pictures in Canada, where BlackBerry was launched and grew to near world dominance before being abruptly unseated by Apple and the touch screen. Starring Jay Baruchel as brainy Mike Lazaridus, who co-founded BlackBerry with his best friend Douglas Fregin, played by Johnson. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia‘s Glenn Howerton is Jim Balsillie, the aggressive executive who propelled...

Chicago – Patrick McDonald of HollywoodChicago.com audio film review for a 2022 foreign language film distributed in the U.S. by Chicago’s Music Box Films … and featuring Penélope Cruz … entitled “L’Immensitá.” In select theaters beginning May 19th, see local listings.

Rating: 4.0/5.0

Clara (Penélope Cruz) and her husband Felice (Vincenzo Amato) relocate to Rome, while raising three children. Their oldest child, nicknamed Andri (Luana Giuliani), was born female but desires a male’s life, and since this is the early 1970s the only explanation he can come up with is that he’s an alien from outer space. As Felice grows most distant from the family, Clara turns inward, and allows an acute depression to affect her profoundly, and the family starts to crumble as a result.

”L’Immensitá” is in select theaters beginning May 19th, see local listings, including Chicago’s (click link) Music Box Theatre. Featuring Penélope Cruz, Vincenzo Amato,...

Well-intentioned films about marginalized people face the pitfall of reducing characters’ lives to their experience of persecution. Black characters in Hollywood’s anti-racist parables tend to stand in for a monolithic Black experience, while gay characters have often been defined solely by their sexuality. Emanuele Crialese’s autobiographical L’Immensita, a drama about a transgender preteen, Adri (Luana Giuliani), in early-’70s Italy, skirts this trap by capturing the textures and tensions of a life that’s not defined solely by anti-trans oppression.

As the film depicts with a certain resigned whimsy, Adri not only copes with routine teenage angst, but is also caught within a web of intersecting inequities, including domestic abuse, sexual harassment, and class prejudice. By turns wry and tragic, but never glib or mawkish, this is a visually rich and evocative drama about navigating the often treacherous path to adulthood.

Giuliani’s character was born Adriana. He tells his adoring mother,...

A beloved ballplayer and an iconic consumer device join a Hollywood satire by Charlie Day, an Emanuele Crialese film with Penelope Cruz and debuts from Sundance and Venice in a potentially strong specialty weekend that will test the appetite for indie film with no new franchise wide releases.

Sony Pictures Classics opens Sean Mullin’s Yogi Berra documentary It Ain’t Over on 100 screens in NY and LA with a big regional push for the legendary Yankee, including complimentary plus-one tickets on Thursday and Sunday at Regal, AMC and City Cinemas in the New York Tri-State area. The intimate portrait of a baseball genius, master of aphorism, pitchman and endearing human being, Lawrence Peter “Yogi” Berra, premiered at Tribeca last year (100% Certified Fresh). Berra’s granddaughter Lindsay Berra, with Joe Torre, Derek Jeter, Don Mattingly, Bob Costas, Vin Scully, Billy Crystal and others are loving guides to Berra’s unparalleled accomplishments...

Throughout his career, director Emanuele Crialese has focused on telling stories about migration, both literal (his gorgeous Nuovomondo chronicles an Italian family’s journey to NYC during the turn of the century) and figurative. In L’immensità, he brings both dimensions into play by telling his most personal tale yet; an autobiography of sorts, set in 1970s Rome, in which the young Andrea (Luana Giuliani) begins to question their gender identity.

Andrea’s only aid is their mother Clara, played by Penélope Cruz, who herself is going through an existential crisis. A Spanish immigrant living in Italy, Clara lives with a husband (Vincenzo Amato) who demands the loyalty and compassion from his wife that he fails to provide. Cruz, who has built an impressive body of work in four languages, gives one of her finest performances yet as a woman trapped in an unhappy marriage, trying her best to take care...

Belgian directors Felix Van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch’s Italian-language drama The Eight Mountains and veteran Marco Bellocchio’s Exterior Night topped the 68th edition of Italy’s David di Donatello Awards on Wednesday evening.

The Eight Mountains won best film as well as best non-original screenplay, photography and sound.

Based on the novel of the same name by Paolo Cognetti, it stars Luca Marinelli and Alessandro Borghi as two men from different backgrounds who form a life-long bond during summers spent together as children in a remote mountain village.

The film world premiered in Competition at Cannes last year where it co-won the Jury Prize. Read the Deadline review here.

It is the second time in the history of the awards that a film by non-Italian directors has clinched the best film prize.

The last time was in 1971 when the Dino de Laurentiis-produced epic Waterloo by Russian director Sergei Bonderchuk,...

If you’ve perused our summer movie preview you may already have a sense of what films to keep on your radar this month, but it’s time to dig deeper into May. While much of our attention will be on the Cannes Film Festival, plenty of worthwhile offerings arrive stateside.

15. The Starling Girl (Laurel Parmet; May 12)

After breaking out in Babyteeth and Little Women, Eliza Scanlen finds an impressive new starring role with The Starling Girl. Michael Frank said in his review, “Scanlen shines as Starling, playing someone much younger than herself. She brings an assurance to the role. We belive in Jem. She’s naive-yet-overconfident, isolated-yet-connected, carefree-yet-shackled by a system designed to believe the word of men much older than her. Scanlen shows all of that and more. Her performance grounds a film that risks blending together with preceding pictures, raising it above any average trappings.”

14. L’immensita (Emanuele Crialese...

Sideshow/Janus Films is estimating a $36k gross or $18k per theater average for The Eight Mountains on two NYC screens, the strongest opening weekend to date for the team behind Drive My Car and Eo.

The Cannes co-Jury Prize-winning film by Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeesch follows the profound friendship over decades of Pietro (Luca Marinelli) from Turin, and Bruno (Alessandro Borghi), who grew up in an isolated village in the Alps. It was Film at Lincoln Center’s highest-grossing new release opening of 2023 and marks the biggest per screen average of any new European release so far this year.

It’s is also the best opening of an Italian move Stateside since The Great Beauty, said producer Ira Deutchman. The Fine Line Features founder and Columbia prof is the head of Cinema Made In Italy, a initiative sponsored by Cinecitta’ that contributes P&a funds to Italian films for U.

The summer season is upon us and, per each year, we’ve dug beyond studio offerings (though a few potential highlights remain) to present an in-depth look at what should be on your radar. From festival winners of the past year to selections coming straight from Cannes to genre delights to, yes, a few blockbuster spectacles, there’s more than enough to anticipate.

Check out our picks below and return for monthly updates as more is sure to be added to the calendar.

Riceboy Sleeps (Anthony Shim; May 2)

So-Young (Choi Seung-yoon) didn’t want to leave South Korea. She had no choice. The father of her newborn son committed suicide and, as an orphan who was never adopted, she had no other family. So, with nowhere to turn and a boy who couldn’t legally become a citizen due to being born out of wedlock, she immigrated to Canada to start anew.

How can happiness flourish amid domestic chaos and cultural intolerance? Emanuele Crialese’s film “L’immensità” explores a transgender youth’s journey toward acceptance. And now the movie hits US theaters after its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival last year.

Read More: ‘L’Immensità’ First Look Clip: Penelope Cruz Leads A Family In Emanuele Crialese’s Venice Competition Film

Here’s an official synopsis for “L’immensitá”:

Clara and her emotionally distant husband Felice relocate to Rome to raise a family.

Continue reading ‘L’immensità’ Trailer: Emanuele’s Crialese’s Exuberant Transgender Family Drama From Venice Hits Theaters In NYC/LA On May 12 at The Playlist.

A selection at Venice Film Festival and Sundance Film Festival, Emanuele Crialese’s 1970s-set drama L’immensità follows Clara (Penélope Cruz) and her emotionally distant husband Felice (Vincenzo Amato) as they relocate to Rome to raise a family. Their eldest child, Andrew, isn’t fully able to discuss his transgender identity in a traditional society, and the film captures a coming-of-age tale as he blossoms under the guidance of his mother. Ahead of a release this May from Music Box Films, the new U.S. trailer has arrived.

Jose Solis said in his review, “In films like Volver, Parallel Mothers, Everybody Knows, and now L’immensità, Penélope Cruz has cornered the market on playing mother figures that are both larger than life and movingly earthy. As Clara, the loving Spaniard expatriate trying to raise her children while staying married to an unfaithful man in 1970s Rome, Cruz does some of the best work of her already incredible,...

Starring a mother to a transgender boy living in 1970s Rome, Penélope Cruz appears as good as ever in the first trailer for Emanuele Crialese’s “L’Immensità.” The film will open in New York and Los Angeles on May 12 prior to a nationwide theatrical roll-out.

The preview slowly lays out its premise and openly presents the issue of dealing with a young child dealing with gender dysphoria well before a vocabulary or much of an understanding of such a thing existed. And it is refreshing to see a trailer for a non-English language film that actually has a fair amount of subtitle dialogue, as quite a few previews for “foreign” films tend to sell straight-up imagery and vibes over plot and conversational dialogue. That said, if you’re going to make a film set in the 1970s about a seemingly traditional family living realizing one of their children is trans,...

Sundance documentary “Stephen Curry: Underrated” and SXSW television premiere “I’m a Virgo” will open and close Sffilm, the 66th annual San Francisco International Film Festival.

Sffilm unveiled the full lineup for the fest along with the openers and closers. The Bay Area film festival, which screens in theaters across San Francisco as well as Oakland and Berkeley, will host 50 feature film programs (includes Workshop and “mid-lengths”), 46 shorts, and one TV screening (“I’m a Virgo”). Both directors behind “I’m a Virgo” and “Underrated” — Boots Riley and Peter Nicks — grew up in the Bay Area, more specifically in Oakland. Other films from Bay Area filmmakers whose projects will screen include W. Kamau Bell’s “1000% Me: Growing Up Mixed,” Savanah Leaf’s “Earth Mama,” and Babak Jalali’s “Fremont.”

“It is Sffilm Festival season once again and I cannot wait to share this year’s program with local audiences,” Jessie Fairbanks, Sffilm’s director of programming,...

In time, stories like “20,000 Species of Bees” will come to feel as commonplace within the coming-of-age genre as tales of first love or heartbreak: a young girl, unhappy in her skin and at odds with her family, finally recognizes her gender over the course of one pivotal summer, and persuades others to recognize it too. For now, Spanish writer-director Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren’s mellow, softly piercing debut feature joins the likes of Céline Sciamma’s “Tomboy” and Emanuele Crialese’s “L’Immensità” in a select but growing canon of trans or nonbinary childhood studies. Unassuming and meanderingly character-oriented, the film doesn’t assert itself as an issue drama — in large part because, as Solaguren presents her eight-year-old protagonist’s gradual steps toward self-realization, her film doesn’t see much of an issue to begin with.

“How come you know who you are and I don’t?” Simply phrased but far more complex to answer,...

L’Immensità Review — L’Immensità (2022) Film Review from the 45th Annual Sundance Film Festival, a movie directed by Emanuele Crialese, starring Penélope Cruz, Vincenzo Amato, Luana Giuliani, Patrizio Francioni, María Chiara Goretti, Alvia Reale, Mariangela Granelli, Carlo Gallo, Rita De Donato, and Clara Ponsot. Italian director Emanuele Crialese draws on his own experiences to [...]

Continue reading: Film Review: L’IMMENSITÀ: Intimate Story Sheds Bright Light on Family Issues in the Seventies [Sundance 2023]...

In films like Volver, Parallel Mothers, Everybody Knows, and now L’immensità, Penélope Cruz has cornered the market on playing mother figures that are both larger than life and movingly earthy. As Clara, the loving Spaniard expatriate trying to raise her children while staying married to an unfaithful man in 1970s Rome, Cruz does some of the best work of her already incredible, multilingual career.

To say director Emanuele Crialese’s camera falls in love with Cruz would be an understatement. She is lovingly shot and framed (even her Sophia Loren bob brings attention to her expressive eyes) and we don’t even need to hear her speak to know whoever’s gaze she’s under has completely fallen under her spell.

This adoration takes on a heartbreaking twist when we realize the camera is acting as a surrogate for Clara’s eldest, Adriana (Luana Giuliani) who was assigned female at birth,...

The fifth feature from Emanuele Crialese, L’Immensità, is a semi-autobiographical family drama that takes place amid the backdrop of ’70s Rome. The film premiered earlier this year at the Venice International Film Festival, and now arrives at Sundance as part of the festival’s “Spotlight” section. Filmmaker spoke to the film’s cinematographer Gergely Pohárnok, who’s collaborated with Crialese since his 2005 film Golden Door. See all responses to our annual Sundance cinematographer interviews here. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this […]

The post “For This Project, I Had a Collection of Over 1000 Images of Penélope Cruz”: Dp Gergely Pohárnok on L’Immensità first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

The fifth feature from Emanuele Crialese, L’Immensità, is a semi-autobiographical family drama that takes place amid the backdrop of ’70s Rome. The film premiered earlier this year at the Venice International Film Festival, and now arrives at Sundance as part of the festival’s “Spotlight” section. Filmmaker spoke to the film’s cinematographer Gergely Pohárnok, who’s collaborated with Crialese since his 2005 film Golden Door. See all responses to our annual Sundance cinematographer interviews here. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this […]

The post “For This Project, I Had a Collection of Over 1000 Images of Penélope Cruz”: Dp Gergely Pohárnok on L’Immensità first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

“L’Immensità,” the 1967 hit made famous by Don Backy and Johnny Dorelli, has the kind of lyrics that can make you cry just by reading them: “I am sure that in this great immensity/ someone thinks a little of me/ will not forget me./ Yes, I know it,/ all my life I won’t always be alone.”

It’s no wonder that the Italian filmmaker Emanuele Crialese (“Terraferma”) named his latest film after the song. “L’Immensità,” which Crialese co-wrote with Francesca Ranieri and Vittorio Moroni, is an aching and sumptuous ode to growing up and chafing against expectations. Making its North American premiere at Sundance after debuting in Venice, this is a film about adolescence and regression, defiance and surrender. By showing the tangled relationship between a mother and her dysphoric child, “L’Immensità” writes a love letter to the lonely.

The 13-year-old protagonist of “L’Immensità,” played by a stunning Luana Giuliani,...

After premiering at the 2022 Venice Film Festival, Italian director Emanuele Crialese’s latest feature L’Immensità makes its way Sundance in the festival’s “Spotlight” section. Co-written by Crialese alongside Francesca Manieri and Vittorio Moroni, the film is a semi-autobiographical account of the director’s coming of age in Rome during the ’70s. Editor Clelio Benevento discusses how he came to work on the film, the differences between his and the director’s work styles and the gratitude he has for his film school professors. See all responses to our annual Sundance editor interviews here. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the […]

The post “Emanuele Asked Me to ‘Undertake the Journey’ With Him”: Editor Clelio Benevento on L’Immensità first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

After premiering at the 2022 Venice Film Festival, Italian director Emanuele Crialese’s latest feature L’Immensità makes its way Sundance in the festival’s “Spotlight” section. Co-written by Crialese alongside Francesca Manieri and Vittorio Moroni, the film is a semi-autobiographical account of the director’s coming of age in Rome during the ’70s. Editor Clelio Benevento discusses how he came to work on the film, the differences between his and the director’s work styles and the gratitude he has for his film school professors. See all responses to our annual Sundance editor interviews here. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the […]

The post “Emanuele Asked Me to ‘Undertake the Journey’ With Him”: Editor Clelio Benevento on L’Immensità first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Kicking off this Thursday, the 2023 Sundance Film Festival gives us a first glimpse at the year in cinema. Ahead of the fest, we’ve highlighted the films we’re most looking forward to and now we’re providing a trailer round-up for those interested in a preview of the lineup.

Ahead of our coverage, bookmark this page for a continually updated round-up of trailers and clips, kicking off with Polite Society, A Common Sequence, Infinity Pool, Rye Lane, Slow, and more.

Check out the trailers below thus far in alphabetical order and we’ll be publishing reviews soon, so follow along here.

The Amazing Maurice (Toby Genkel)

Blueback (Robert Connolly)

A Common Sequence (Mary Helena Clark and Mike Gibisser)

Deep Rising (Matthieu Rytz)

Divinity (Eddie Alcazar)

The Eight Mountains (Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch)

L’immensità (Emanuele Crialese)

Infinity Pool (Brandon Cronenberg)

Joyland (Saim Sadiq)

Mamacruz (Patricia Ortega)

Other...

Goteborg will screen nearly 250 films in 700 screenings, making it the largest film festival in Scandinavia.

The 46th Goteborg Film Festival (Jan 27-Feb 5) will kick off with the world premiere of Exodus, directed by Abbe Hassan, about a smuggler who tries to save a Syrian girl; the closing film will be Camino, directed by Birgitte Stærmose, about a 30-year-old woman on a long hike with her father to honour her mother’s last wish.

Goteborg will screen nearly 250 films in 700 screenings, making it the largest film festival in Scandinavia.

About 50 of the films – including all in the International Competition – will be...

The Göteborg Film Festival has unveiled the competition titles selected for its 46th edition, which runs from January 27 – February 5. (Scroll down for the full list).

Göteborg is split into four competition strands. The main strand is the Nordic Competition, which features nine films from the Nordic region. The competition’s winner takes home the Dragon Award and a Sek 400 000 cash prize. The rest of the festival comprises the Nordic Documentary Competition, the Ingmar Bergman Competition for first-time filmmakers, and the International Competition.

Among the Nordic highlights is Swedish filmmaker Isabella Carbonell’s thriller Dogborn, starring Swedish rap star Silvana Imam. The pic debuted at Venice last year and follows two homeless twins and their struggle to survive. Hlynur Pálmason’s well-received period piece Godland also screens in competition. Set in the late 19th Century, the drama revolves around a young Danish priest who travels to a remote part of...

Italy in 2022 made several landmark strides in the international entertainment arena: an Italian play, Stefano Massini’s “The Lehman Trilogy,” garnered five Tony Awards, a prize the country had never conquered; Roman rock band Måneskin scored a Grammy nomination; and even as domestic box office plunged this year, Italian film exports mushroomed.

Massini’s five-hour play, which follows the three Lehman brothers from their arrival from Germany in New York in 1844 up to the 2008 bankruptcy of their global financial services company, prompted Sam Mendes to stage an English-language adaptation, which ultimately triumphed at the Tonys. Now a high-end TV series based on his play is being developed by producers Domenico Procacci and Lorenzo Mieli with Florian Zeller attached to direct. Procacci, speaking to Variety, praised Massini for managing “to tell so effectively a story that doesn’t have any Italian elements, since most of it takes place in the U.

Further titles include Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s ’The Beasts’ and Chie Hayakawa’s debut ‘Plan 75’.

Venice titles including Fyzal Boulifa’s Morocco-set drama The Damned Don’t Cry and Penelope Cruz-starring melodrama L’Immensità are among the prestige international titles on UK-Ireland distributor Curzon’s 2023 slate.

The line-up represents filmmakers from Italy, Spain, Japan, France and the UK.

“The past year has been a difficult one for international film in the UK,” said Louisa Dent, Curzon Film managing director, “but we remain absolutely committed to championing the best cinema from around the world.”

UK filmmaker Boulifa’s second feature, after debut Lynn + Lucy,...

L’immensità Trailer — Emanuele Crialese‘s L’immensità (2022) movie trailer has been released by Pathe. The L’immensità trailer stars Penélope Cruz, Vincenzo Amato, Luana Giuliani, Patrizio Francioni, and Maria Chiara Goretti. Crew Emanuele Crialese, Francesca Manieri, and Vittorio Moroni wrote the screenplay for L’immensità. Plot Synopsis L’immensità‘s plot synopsis: “Clara & Felice (Penélope Cruz & Vincenzo Amato) have just [...]

Continue reading: L’Immensita (2022) Movie Trailer: Penélope Cruz Struggles to Hold Her Family Together in a Loveless Marriage...

Premiering earlier this year at the 2022 Venice Film Festival was Emanuele Crialese‘s celebrated “L’Immensità,” a family drama starring Penélope Cruz. The film is about the story of love between Clara (Cruz) and her children, set in Rome in the ’70s.

The film co-stars Luana Giuliani, Vincenzo Amato, Patrizio Francioni, Maria Chiara Goretti, and was well received out of Venice (our review).

Continue reading ‘L’Immensità’ Trailer: Penélope Cruz Tries To Hold Her Family Together In Celebrated Venice Drama at The Playlist.

Click here to read the full article.

Music Box Films has picked up U.S. rights for L’Immensità, the new drama from Italian director Emanuele Crialese (Respiro) starring Oscar winner Penélope Cruz.

L’Immensità premiered in competition at the Venice Film Festival in September. Music Box is planning a theatrical bow in the U.S. next year.

Crialese’s largely autobiographical work is a portrait of a dysfunctional family in 1970s Rome. Cruz stars as Clara, an unhappily married mother of three coping with mental health issues. The core of the story involves her eldest child, Adriana (played by newcomer Luana Giuliani), a trans boy who lacks the language to describe his gender dysphoria and simply tells adults that he’s an alien from another galaxy.

L’Immensita is produced by Wildside, a Fremantle Company, and Chapter 2, and co-produced by Pathé, who are handling international sales.

The deal with...

Music Box Films has bought U.S. distribution rights to “L’Immensità,” Emanuele Crialese’s (“Respiro“) film starring Penelope Cruz.

Crialese’s movie, which competed at the Venice Film Festival, will hit U.S. theaters next year. Cruz stars as Clara, a Spanish woman who has relocated to Rome in the early 1970s to raise a family with Felice (Vincenzo Amato), her emotionally distant and frequently absent husband. From their new apartment, Clara sees a city in transition: the remnants of an old society washed away by the tastes of an emerging middle class. Even though the paint is fresh, and the appliances are new, the crushing expectations around family, desire and gender remain as traditional as ever.

Clara’s three children are likewise poised at a precipice, on the verge of adolescence and its myriad complications. Her eldest child, Adriana (played by newcomer Luana Giuliani), yearns for another life – an outsized,...

CEO Jennifer Mullin and group COO Andrea Scrosati address scripted push in Mipcom keynote.

Fremantle’s senior leadership has stressed the “great opportunity” and potential for “enormous upside” from investing in feature films.

In a keynote Mipcom interview, Fremantle CEO Jennifer Mullin and group COO Andrea Scrosati talked up the company’s growth in scripted TV and film.

Fremantle has invested heavily in the sector in recent years, acquiring companies such as Ireland and UK’s Element Pictures and Italy’s Lux Vide and Wildside.

In particular, the global production and distribution giant has ramped up its film slate, and...

Click here to read the full article.

Italy has picked Nostalgia, a Naples-set drama from director Mario Martone, as its best international feature Oscars submission.

The film, a modern-day adaptation of the Ermanno Rea novel, premiered to critical acclaim in Cannes this year. It stars Pierfrancesco Favino as Felice Lasco, who returns to his old neighborhood in Naples after 40 years of living in Egypt. But once back, his criminal youth begins to catch up with him. Francesco Di Leva co-stars as a local priest who helps Felice navigate the streets of modern-day Naples.

Nostalgia beat out a shortlist of Italian contenders including Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch’s Italian-language drama The Eight Mountains, which won the jury prize in Cannes this year, and Emanuele Crialese’s Penelope Cruz-starrer L’Immensità, which premiered in Venice. Bones and All from Italian Oscar winner Luca Guadagnino (Call Me by Your Name) is in English,...

Film is directed by Mario Martone and stars Pierfrancesco Favino.

Italy has selected Mario Martone’s Nostalgia as its entry for the best international feature film category at the 2023 Academy Awards.

Based on the novel by Ermanno Rea, Nostalgia is set in Martone’s hometown of Naples and stars Pierfrancesco Favino as a man who returns to his origins after four decades of being away.

The film premiered in competition at this year’s Cannes film festival. It is produced by Picomedia, Mad Enertainment and Medusa Film, with True Colours handling international sales.

The other 11 titles under consideration by the...

Gianni Amelio’s “Lord of the Ants,” a biopic of Italian poet and playwright Aldo Braibanti, who was jailed in 1968 due to a Fascist-era anti-gay law, has reached the top spot at Italy’s box office following its launch from the Venice Film Festival.

“Ants” on Monday reached the numero uno position at the local box office roster with a €483,474 intake from more than 300 screens following its September 8 release. While far from stellar in normal times, this result is being hailed as an encouraging sign for the country’s still sagging post-pandemic theatrical sector.

Amelio’s film is now ahead of Japanese anime pic “Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo,” which was released as an event on Monday for a three day run, and “Minions: The Rise of Gru,” which is at the end of its run, following it’s Aug. 18 Italian outing.

“After being excellently received at the Venice Film Festival,...

Pathé, which operates France’s leading cinema circuit, is planning to enter the Paris stock exchange in 2024, Variety has confirmed. The company’s president, Jérôme Seydoux, revealed the group’s long-gestated listing project in an interview with the French publication Les Echos.

Seydoux said the company suffered a loss of approximately €100 million during the financial years 2020 and 2021, mainly due to the fact that theaters in France were shut down for a total of 300 days during the pandemic. While it ruffled feathers by selling “Coda” to Apple at Sundance in 2021 in a splashy 25 million deal, the company was one of the rare French studios which maintained its release plans for major local productions during the health crisis, for instance Martin Bourboulon’s “Eiffel” with Romain Duris and Emma Mackey, and Jean-Jacques Annaud’s “Notre Dame on Fire.”

Entering the Paris stock exchange should allow Pathé to pursue its ambitious plans to...

Now, at the venerable age of 90, Venice is the oldest major film festival in the world. Founded in 1932, the event is still held on the balmy, beach-filled island of the Lido and has a faded elegance that other events such as Cannes and Berlin simply can’t emulate. In the 1930s, the controversies tended to be political. The main award was called The Mussolini Cup. There were furious rows over movies like Jean Renoir’s Grand Illusion, later banned in Italy for being too left wing, and German director Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia, which many saw as Nazi propaganda.

The 2022 edition has had plenty of talking points, too, but this time not to do with fascism. Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Look Now, which landed on the Lido midway through the festival like some dangerous UFO with Harry Styles inside, provoked a media feeding frenzy thanks to all the lurid advance...

The Film Circuit begins with Telluride, a small but perfect film festival in the mountains of Colorado as simultaneously Venice unfurls the films that will soon be released in the wonderful arthouse cinemas of Europe, followed closely by Toronto whose films foretell the coming year’s Oscars nominees. It is a very exciting time to be on the festival circuit.

And simultaneously with these great screenings are sidebars, panel discussions, workshops, master classes and all around great networking for filmmakers around the world.

Venezia 79 Competition

Il Signore Delle Formiche

Director Gianni Amelio

Main Cast Luigi Lo Cascio, Elio Germano, Leonardo Maltese, Sara Serraiocco / Italy / 134’

The Whale

Director Darren Aronofsky

Main Cast Brendan Fraser, Sadie Sink, Hong Chau, Samantha Morton, Ty Simpkins / USA / 117’

White Noise

Director Noah Baumbach

Main Cast Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig, Don Cheadle, Raffey Cassidy, Sam Nivola, May Nivola, Jodie Turner-Smith, André L. Benjamin and Lars Eidinger / USA / 136’

L’IMMENSITÀ

Director Emanuele Crialese

Main Cast Penélope Cruz, Luana Giuliani, Vincenzo Amato, Patrizio Francioni / Italy, France / 97’

Saint Omer

Director Alice Diop

Main Cast Kayije Kagame, Guslagie Malanda, Valérie Dréville, Aurélia Petit / France / 123’

Blonde

Director Andrew Dominik

Main Cast Ana de Armas, Adrien Brody, Bobby Cannavale, Xavier Samuel, Julianne Nicholson, Lily Fisher / USA / 166’

TÁR

Director Todd Field

Main Cast Cate Blanchett, Noémie Merlant, Nina Hoss, Sophie Kauer, Julian Glover, Allan Corduner, Mark Strong / USA / 158’

Love Life

Director Kôji Fukada

Main Cast Fumino Kimura, Kento Nagayama, Atom Sunada / Japan, France / 123’

Bardo, Falsa CRÓNICA De Unas Cuantas Verdades

Director Alejandro G. Iñárritu

Main Cast Daniel Giménez Cacho, Griselda Siciliani, Ximena Lamadrid, Iker Sanchez Solano, Andrés Almeida, Francisco Rubio / Mexico / 174’

Athena

Director Romain Gavras

Main Cast Dali Benssalah, Sami Slimane, Anthony Bajon, Ouassini Embarek, Alexis Manenti / France / 97’

Bones And All

Director Luca Guadagnino

Main Cast Taylor Russell, Timothée Chalamet, Mark Rylance, André Holland, Chloë Sevigny, Jessica Harper, David Gordon Green, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jake Horowitz / USA / 130’

The Eternal Daughter

Director Joanna Hogg

Main Cast Tilda Swinton, Joseph Mydell, Carly-Sophia Davies / UK, USA / 96’

Shab, Dakheli, Divar (Beyond The Wall)

Director Vahid Jalilvand

Main Cast Navid Mohammadzadeh, Diana Habibi, Amir Aghaee / Iran / 126’

The Banshees Of Inisherin

Director Martin McDonagh

Main Cast Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Kerry Condon, Barry Keoghan / Ireland, UK, USA / 109’

Argentina, 1985

Director Santiago Mitre

Main Cast Ricardo Darín, Peter Lanzani, Alejandra Flechner, Norman Briski / Argentina, USA / 140’

Chiara

Director Susanna Nicchiarelli

Main Cast Margherita Mazzucco, Andrea Carpenzano, Carlotta Natoli, Paola Tiziana Cruciani, Luigi Lo Cascio / Italy, Belgium / 106’

Monica

Director Andrea Pallaoro

Main Cast Trace Lysette, Patricia Clarkson, Adriana Barraza, Emily Browning, Joshua Close / USA, Italy / 113’

Khers Nist (No Bears)

Director Jafar Panahi

Main Cast Jafar Panahi, Naser Hashemi, Vahid Mobaseri, Bakhtiar Panjeei, Mina Kavani, Reza Heydari / Iran / 107’

All The Beauty And The Bloodshed

Director Laura Poitras

USA / 117’

Un Couple

Director Frederick Wiseman

Main Cast Nathalie Boutefeu / France, USA / 64’

The Son

Director Florian Zeller

Main Cast Hugh Jackman, Laura Dern, Vanessa Kirby, Zen McGrath, Anthony Hopkins, Hugh Quarshie / UK / 124’

Les Miens

Director Roschdy Zem

Main Cast Sami Bouajila, Roschdy Zem, Meriem Serbah, Maïwenn, Rachid Bouchareb, Abel Jafrei, Nina Zem / France / 85’

Les Enfants Des Autres

Director Rebecca Zlotowski

Main Cast Virginie Efira, Roschdy Zem, Chiara Mastroianni, Callie Ferreira / France / 104’

Toronto is in spite of itself in a civilized sort of way in competition for the premieres with Venice, though the sequential festivals are serving different constituencies. Still, The Whale, for example is premiering in Venice and then traveling to TIFF.

TIFF Gala Presentations:

The Whale directed by Darren Aronofsky, produced and to be distributed in U.S. and actng as international sales agent A24.

TIFF says: “Brendan Fraser gives a career-defining performance in Darren Aronofsky’s arrestingly intimate drama about a reclusive English professor struggling with personal relationships and self-acceptance, adapted from the stage play by Samuel D. Hunter.”

Alice, Darling by Mary Nighy

Also playing are Alice, Darling (Mary Nighy) in which Anna Kendrick captures the anxious psychology of a woman in an abusive relationship as her friends try to reconnect with her while on a cottage getaway.

Black Ice(Hubert Davis) about Black hockey players facing systemic racism in the sport.

The Greatest Beer Run Ever (Peter Farrelly) about man’s story of leaving New York in 1967 to bring beer to his childhood buddies in the Army while they are fighting in Vietnam. An Apple TV+ production.

Butcher’s Crossing (Gabe Polsky) is a frontier epic about an Ivy League drop-out as he travels to the Colorado wilderness, where he joins a team of buffalo hunters on a journey that puts his life and sanity at risk. Based on the highly acclaimed novel by John Williams. Isa Altitude

The Hummingbird (Francesca Archibugi)Hunt (Jung-jae Lee)A Jazzman’s Blues (Tyler Perry)Kacchey Limbu (Shubham Yogi)Moving On (Paul Weitz)Paris Memories (Alice Winocour)Prisoner’s Daughter (Catherine Hardwicke)Raymond & Ray (Rodrigo García)Roost (Amy Redford)Sidney (Reginald Hudlin)The Son (Florian Zeller)The Swimmers (Sally El Hosaini)What’s Love Got to Do With It? (Shekhar Kapur)The Woman King(Gina Prince-Bythewood)

Special PRESENTATIONSAllelujah (Sir Richard Eyre)All Quiet on the Western Front (Edward Berger)The Banshees Of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh)Blueback (Robert Connolly)The Blue Caftan (Maryam Touzani)Broker (Hirokazu Kore-eda)Brother (Clement Virgo)Bros (Nicholas Stoller)Catherine Called Birdy (Lena Dunham)Causeway (Lila Neugebauer)Chevalier (Stephen Williams)Corsage (Marie Kreutzer)Decision to Leave (Park Chan-wook)Devotion (Jd Dillard)Driving (Madeleine Christian Carion)El Suplente (Diego Lerman)Empire of Light...

A quick one this week from Venice, where at the big film festivals, the Movie Star is alive and well. This festival teaser for Emanuele Crialese's period set love story L'immensità, offers the visage of Penelope Cruz either deep in thought, or observing something interesting. Probably the latter. The photos is in close-up with a very shallow depth of field, where the details paradoxically suggest both iconic and relatable. The power of a movie star. Distressed eyeliner, and the chipped nail polish, as her fingers are raised to her lips; not as a shush, but rather a type of 'lean forward' engagement. Cinema. The title card is drawn in lipstick, while everything else, textually, is in a kind of design chaos. Various typesetting, sizes and...

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

Click here to read the full article.

Fremantle Group CEO Jennifer Mullin and Fremantle Group COO/CEO Continental Europe Andrea Scrosati, will give a keynote address at this year’s Mipcom international television market, which takes place in Cannes from Oct. 17-20.

Mullin and Scrosati will take the Mipcom stage on Tuesday Oct. 18 to provide insights into Fremantle’s future strategy as well as give their take on wider issues and trends impacting the global TV industry.

Fremantle has been on a buying spree of late, recently acquiring such premium production companies as Element Pictures (Conversations With Friends, Normal People), Lux Vide (Medici, Devils), Dancing Ledge Productions (The Salisbury Poisonings) and Eureka (Holey Moley, The Real Love Boat). The global production and sales giant has also joined together for film and TV projects with several A-list talents including Angelina Jolie, Jimmy Fallon, Kenneth Branagh, Simon Cowell, Penelope Cruz and directors Paolo Sorrentino,...

Last year Andrea Scrosati – who is group COO and continental Europe CEO of Fremantle – was at Venice with two films. This year Fremantle’s got six pics launching from the Lido, three of them in competition, which is a larger contingent than any of the U.S. studios or streamers.

Fremantle’s business model, which involves a cluster of companies mostly across Europe that they either fully own or are majority investors in, has been bearing fruit on their film side. Their output has grown “from 8 to 32 delivered movies in two years,” Scrosati says.

And the multi-pronged company’s Venice lineup – which includes Luca Guadagnino’s “Bones and All,” Emanuele Crialese’s “L’Immensità,” and Joanna Hogg’s “The Eternal Daughter” – is a reflection of that.

Scrosati spoke to Variety in Venice about his vision for how Fremantle is spawning a wide range of films from its organic agglomeration of companies.

by Cláudio Alves

The fifth day of competition finds three award-winning filmmakers vying for more golden plaudits. Rebecca Zlotowsky's directorial works have left strong impressions across some of Europe's biggest festivals, and this is her first time in Venice. Her new film, Other People's Children, stars Virginie Efira and Roschdy Zem – he's also in competition as a director with a different film. Next, Italy's Emanuele Crialese returns with L'immensità after nabbing nine prizes in past editions of the festival. Finally, there's Darren Aronofsky who is a former Venice champion whose new project, The Whale, is already enshrined in Best Actor Oscar buzz for Brendan Fraser.

So today we're looking back at Aronofsky's 2008 Golden Lion winner, Zlotowsky's sensual summer, and Crialese's voyage to the New World…...

Even before the title flashes up for Venice Film Festival competition entry L’Immensita, we know that Penelope Cruz is the most fun mom – most likely the only fun mom – in town. She doesn’t just set the table for dinner; she puts on music, leads the kids in a choreographed dance and singalong as they pass plates and cutlery, emoting into a passing fork as if it were a microphone. Adults bore her. At a birthday dinner for an ancient relative, she slips under the table to join her children in removing and mixing up everyone’s shoes. “I want to play!” she says, eyes gleaming.

Her eldest child, who is also reluctant to grow up for her own, very different reasons, urges her to get back on her chair. She can see where this is leading. Mothers aren’t supposed to play games; they are supposed to play cards and get their hair done.