News

European film and TV studio Vuelta Group’s international sales division Playtime has announced the full acquisition of subsidiary sales arm Film Constellation and merged it with Global Screen into a single entity called Global Constellation.

Fabien Westerhoff will take on the executive role of Managing Director of the theatrical film division bringing together the complementary strengths of both companies, with a strategic market focus on animation, family entertainment, and genre cinema. Ulrike Schroder, Managing Director of the TV division will head the exclusive hub for international TV distribution within Vuelta.

Global Constellation will collaborate closely with Vuelta Germany, the German film distribution arm born from the merger of SquareOne and Telepool. Vuelta said the operation positioned Global Constellation as the ‘go-to’ partner for German and International filmmakers seeking pan-European collaborations and international

First joint projects will be unveiled at the upcoming Cannes Market.

The current feature film slate includes...

The Quirino Awards, the prestigious trans-Atlantic ceremony recognizing excellence in Ibero-American animation, has officially unveiled its finalists for this year’s 8th edition.

With 26 nominated works across ten categories, this year’s competition highlights the creative strength of the Ibero-America’s animation industry. Spain, Brazil and Portugal have emerged as the frontrunners in nominations, setting the stage for a May 10th awards ceremony in the Spanish Canary Island co-capital of Tenerife.

Spain continues to dominate the competition, securing or sharing all nominations in the best feature film and best school short film categories. Meanwhile, Chile, Portugal and Argentina each boast two nominations in the best series, best short film, and best music video categories. Brazil leads in the technical categories, with five nominations across visual development, animation design, sound design and original music.

This year’s feature category includes “Buffalo Kids” – a high-grossing kids and family feature set in the...

I’m old enough to remember when Jacques Rivette films were the domain of dark-web networks and substandard DVD rips, a conspiratorial network worthy of his cinema. It’s still a little strange seeing that April will feature a 10-film, one-short Criterion Channel program that combines of his canonized masterpieces with decidedly lesser-seens––plus Va Savoir, which I really hope is the recently unearthed four-hour cut for which there’s no substitute. Penélope Cruz is also subject of a retrospective in April, which––more than making me pine for a Rivette collab that never was––will include both Abre Los Ojos and Vanilla Sky, some Almodóvar, and another in the Channel’s ongoing let’s-add-a-Woody-Allen-movie campaign, Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

For themed series, J. Hoberman has curated a series on the dangers of ’60s and ’70s New York that runs from Michael Roemer’s recently restored The Plot Against Harry and...

Over the last six years, thanks in the main to the SVOD revolution, Spain, once known for select auteurs – Pedro Almodóvar, J.A. Bayona, Fernando Trueba – has stepped fully onto the world stage as a European film and TV power.

Appropriately then, Spain is the Country in Focus 2025 at Berlin Festival’s European Film Market. Its movie strand says much about Spanish cinema, while Berlin, at large, points up Spain’s larger film industry challenges, shared by much of Europe.

The Focus’ biggest takeaway is Spain’s dramatic explosion of new talent, both producers and directors. In a Spain at the Forefront showcase, 10 Spanish producers making up a Producers Program will talk up their companies and current projects. Another 10 producers form part of Visitors Program at the Berlinale Co-Production Market.

Launched in 1995, Morena Films will unveil “8,” the latest from “Sex and Lucía” helmer Julio Medem. Avalon, producer of Berlin Golden Bear winner “Alcarràs,...

Marisa Paredes, the admired Spanish actress who collaborated with Pedro Almodóvar in such films as The Flower of My Secret, All About My Mother and The Skin I Live In, has died. She was 78.

Her death was announced Tuesday by the Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences of Spain, which called her one of the country’s “most iconic actors … her body of work was defined by women who were strong, ambivalent, broken, passionate, enigmatic, but who were, above all, very human.”

Almodóvar told Spanish public broadcaster Rtve that “it is as if I woke up from a bad dream … I am struggling to come to terms with Marisa’s death.” In their country, she was known as “an Almodóvar girl.”

Paredes also portrayed Roberto Benigni’s socialite mother-in-law in Life Is Beautiful (1997) and the head of the orphanage in Guillermo del Toro’s horror film The Devil’s Backbone (2001), set during the Spanish Civil War.

Marisa Paredes, a grand dame of Spanish cinema, died on Tuesday in Madrid from heart failure. She was 78.

While she acted in 75 movies, she will be best remembered for the five films she starred in directed by Pedro Almodóvar: “Dark Habits” (1983), “High Heels” (1991), “The Flower of My Secret” (1995), “All About My Mother” (1999) and “The Skin I Live In” (2011). Of all these, she thought she turned in one of her career-best performances in “The Flower of My Secret,” which marks the beginning of Almodóvar’s return to his roots and world of his mother, a re-connection which continues to this day.

In “The Flower of My Secret,” Paredes played a chic romantic novelist seemingly at first a fish out of water in the village where she was born.

In real life, Paredes had a natural elegance, compounded by her favouring dresses by Spain-based designer Sybille which J.A. Bayona noted, reacting to her death,...

Marisa Paredes, the star of Pedro Almodóvar’s High Heels and The Flower Of My Secret, has died aged 78.

Paredes’ extensive career spanned nearly 80 feature films and a similar number of television productions over six decades.

Paredes also served as president of the Spanish Film Academy from 2000-2003 and received the industry’s highest awards, including an honorary Goya for lifetime achievement in 2018, the National Cinematography Award in 1996, and the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts in 2007.

Her final film, road movie Emergency Exit, was directed by Luis Miñarro; it filmed earlier this year and is still to be released.

Thrillers set in exotic locations used to be a subgenre of their own, the likes of which have become rarer these days. Spanish director Fernando Trueba is unfortunately past his prime, or else he could have done justice to the picturesque Mediterranean settings he utilized as the backdrop for his latest romantic thriller, Haunted Heart. Despite the mix and match of these genres being the veteran director’s forte, his newest venture fails to evoke any strong sense of mystery or intimate intrigue. The simplistic style of narrative treatment adopted by the makers could have fared better had the movie been backed by better writing, the lack of which makes the build-up to the final resolution completely fall apart. For what it’s worth, Matt Dilon playing yet another antagonistic role is a delight to watch, and Aida Folch as her opposite lead shows off her acting chops as well—but once again,...

Except perhaps Souleymane’s Story‘s Abou Sangare biking away with the European Actor award (beating out Conclave‘s Ralph Fiennes) there were no surprises at last night’s European Film Awards with Jacques Audiard‘s Emilia Pérez winning four of the five prizes it was nominated for. Karla Sofía Gascón won Best Actress, Audiard won Best Screenwriter and Director while the film the top prize of the evening. Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal’s No Other Land continues to dominate the docu awards circuit which means here is a legit shot at a future Oscar. Here are the noms and winners:

European Director:

Winner: Jacques Audiard for Emilia PÉREZ

Andrea Arnold for Bird

Pedro Almodóvar for The Room Next Door

Mohammad Rasoulof for The Seed Of The Sacred Fig

Maura Delpero for Vermiglio

European Screenwriter:

Winner: Jacques Audiard for Emilia PÉREZ

Magnus von Horn & Line Langebek...

Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Pérez” won best film, director, screenwriter and actress at the 37th European Film Awards, which were held Saturday in Lucerne, Switzerland.

The best film nominees included narrative features “The Room Next Door,” “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” “The Substance” and “Vermiglio,” as well as documentaries “Bye Bye Tiberias,” “Dahomey,” “In Limbo,” “No Other Land” and “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat,” and animated films “Flow,” “Living Large,” “Savages,” “Sultana’s Dream” and “They Shot the Piano Player.”

The statuette for actress was won by Karla Sofía Gascón for “Emilia Pérez.” The other nominees were Renate Reinsve in “Armand,” Trine Dyrholm in “The Girl With the Needle,” Vic Carmen Sonne in “The Girl With the Needle” and Tilda Swinton in “The Room Next Door.”

The director award went to Audiard for “Emilia Pérez,” who beat Andrea Arnold for “Bird,” Pedro Almodóvar for “The Room Next Door,” Mohammad Rasoulof...

The European Film Awards is taking place in the Swiss city of Lucerne tonight (December 7) and Screen is revealing the winners live from the ceremony, which kicked off at 20.00 Cet.

Scroll down for winners

To read the winners as they are announced, you can refresh the page and scroll down to the full list below.

The ceremony is also being live-streamed below.

Emilia Pérez and The Room Next Door are the front-runners for this year’s awards with four nominations apiece.

Fifteen features compete for the best European film prize, up from five last year. This follows a recent rule...

From the day that Christopher Columbus set sail from Huelva to beach up in the Caribbean, the Spanish city has always had strong ties to Latin America.

With Spain still laboring under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, when a group of young film buffs at Huelva’s Film Club aimed to galvanize the city’s culture, “It was logical that we looked to the richness and plenitude of culture that came from abroad,” recalls José Luis Ruíz Díaz, Huelva’s first director. “It was also logical that we had a large interest in Latin America, adds Vicente Quiroga, its longtime head of press. Relaxing, censorship in Spain also allowed access to a suddenly broader sweep of foreign titles.

Huelva’s first 50 editions have proved a faithful reflection of the evolution of cinema in Latin America, Portugal and Spain. Some milestones:

1975: Ruíz Díaz launches Huelva’s first Ibero-American Film Week with Argentina’s “La Raulito.

Jacques Audiard‘s “Emilia Pérez” and Pedro Almodóvar‘s “The Room Next Door” topped Tuesday’s 37th European Film Awards nominations with four apiece.

Both are up for Best European Film, Best European Director, and Best European Screenwriter prizes, while their leads, Karla Sofía Gascón in “Emilia Pérez” and Tilda Swinton in “The Room Next Door,” will face off in Best European Actress.

Mohammad Rasoulof‘s “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” nabbed three nominations for film, director, and screenwriter. Coralie Fargeat‘s word-of-mouth hit “The Substance” scored two bids for film and screenwriter honors.

For the first time, films nominated for Best European Documentary and Best Animated Feature Film are eligible in the Best European Film category, leading to an expanded list of 15 nominees. Also making the cut for the top prize are Italy’s Oscar entry “Vermiglio,” Senegal’s entry “Dahomey,” and Latvia’s entry and animated film “Flow.

Emilia Pérez and The Room Next Door have emerged as the front-runners for the European Film Awards 2024, with four nominations apiece.

The nominations for the main categories of this year’s awards, which take place on December 7 in Lucerne, were announced this morning by the European Film Academy.

Scroll down for full list of nominations

Fifteen features compete for the best European film prize, up from five last year. This follows a recent rule change which means that films shortlisted for the best documentary and animation categories can also compete in the section.

Emilia Pérez is nominated in the best European film category,...

The nominees for this year’s European Film Awards have been unveiled, with “Emilia Pérez,” “The Substance” and “The Room Next Door” all up for best European film.

Movies also in the running for the ceremony’s top award — which was expanded this year to documentaries and animated features — include Lina Soualem’s “Bye Bye Tiberias”; Mati Diop’s “Dahomey”; Gints Zilbalodis’ “Flow”; Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Basel Adra and Hamdan Balla’s “No Other Land”; Mohammad Rasoulof’s “The Seed of the Sacred Fig”; and Maura Delpero’s “Vermiglio.”

“Emilia Pérez” and “The Substance” lead the nominees overall, with each film scoring four respective nominations. The winners will be revealed during an awards ceremony on Dec. 7 in Lucerne, Switzerland.

See all the nominees below.

European Film

“Bye Bye Tiberias” — documentary film, directed by Lina Soualem, produced by Jean-Marie Nizan, Guillaume Malandrin and Ossama Bawardi

“Dahomey” — documentary film, directed by Mati Diop,...

The Substance by Coralie Fargeat, Emilia Pérez by Jacques Audiard, The Room Next Door by Pedro Almodóvar, and The Seed of the Sacred Fig by Mohammad Rasoulof are among the nominees for the 2024 European Film Awards (EFAs), organizers unveiled on Tuesday.

Emilia Pérez and The Room Next Door earned four noms each, including for best European film and best director. Sacred Fig is up for the best film, best director, and best screenwriter prizes. The Substance is in the running for the best film and best screenwriter honors.

In the best actress race, Emilia Pérez star Karla Sofía Gascón faces Renate Reinsve, Tilda Swinton for her role in The Room Next Door, and The Girl With the Needle actresses Trine Dyrholm and Vic Carmen Sonne. For The Girl With the Needle, Magnus von Horn and Line Langebek are also nominated in the best screenwriter category.

Queer star Daniel Craig and...

Veteran actor Matt Dillon will receive the prestigious Golden Alexander award at the upcoming Thessaloniki Film Festival in Greece. Organizers will honor Dillon for his long acting career and diverse artistic contributions to cinema. The 65th annual festival runs from October 31 to November 10.

During the festival, Dillon will showcase several of his recent projects. This includes his portrayal of legendary actor Marlon Brando in the film “Being Maria.” The movie explores actress Maria Schneider’s experience filming the controversial 1972 film “Last Tango in Paris.” Dillon both acts in and directed “Being Maria,” which had its premiere earlier this year at the Cannes Film Festival.

Festival organizers will also honor Dillon by screening his 2002 directorial debut “City of Ghosts.” In addition, Dillon will participate in an experimental art installation called “Interfears.” The piece will use Mri scans to visualize Dillon’s brain activity while he performs a monologue. Both the installation...

Matt Dillon will be feted at the 65th edition of Greece’s Thessaloniki Film Festival, where he will present his recent film “Being Maria,” in which he plays Marlon Brando.

Dillon will receive the festival’s honorary Golden Alexander award on Nov. 4, before a screening of his 2002 film “City of Ghosts,” which was his debut as a film director and screenwriter.

Other honorees at the festival, which runs Oct. 31-Nov. 10, include Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes, as previously announced.

“Being Maria,” which will screen at Thessaloniki on Nov. 3, had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. Directed by Jessica Palud, it revolves around the troubled life of Maria Schneider, played by Anamaria Vartolomei.

When Schneider, a young, struggling actress with promise, is offered the lead role in “Last Tango in Paris,” playing opposite Brando, her dreams seem to be coming true. But what seems like a big break turns...

Exclusive: Vantage Media, the domestic distribution arm of sales firm Vmi Worldwide, is partnering with Chad A. Verdi’s Verdi Productions (Bleed For This) on a fund to acquire and distribute independent films.

Vantage has grown its slate in recent months with titles including What Remains (pictured), the true crime-thriller starring Andrea Riseborough and Stellan Skarsgård, Fernando Trueba’s Haunted Heart starring Matt Dillon, and The Ballad of Davy Crockett, starring William Moseley.

Vantage and Verdi are planning on an annual slate of twelve cast-driven titles and the former will be attending the upcoming American Film Market in Las Vegas to meet with sales agents and filmmakers.

The deal was negotiated by Chad A. Verdi, CEO of Verdi Productions, and Andre Relis, CEO of Vantage Media and Vmi Worldwide.

“Verdi and Vmi have been long standing partners working on countless pictures for over a decade. I am looking forward to...

The European Film Academy has revealed the nominations in the animated feature film category of the European Film Awards.

The nominated films are Gints Zilbalodis’ “Flow,” Kristina Dufková’s “Living Large,” Claude Barras’

“Savages,” Isabel Herguera’s “Sultana’s Dream,” and Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal’s “They Shot the Piano Player.”

“Flow” won the main jury and audience awards at Annecy, and the award for original music. It played in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard.

“Sultana’s Dream” won Annecy’s Contrechamp Award, while “Living Large” won the Contrechamp Jury Award.

“Savages” played in competition at Annecy and also screened at Locarno. Barras was Oscar nominated for “My Life as a Courgette.”

Mariscal and Trueba were Oscar nominated for “Chico & Rita.” Trueba’s live-action drama “Belle Epoque” won an Oscar for best foreign-language film.

The committee that decided on the nominations was comprised of representatives of the European Film Academy and Cartoon,...

The European Film Academy on Wednesday unveiled the 5 nominees for best animated feature for this year’s European Film Awards.

The 2024 animated nominees include Gints Zilbalodis Flow, a dialog-free eco-fable about a cat that bands together with other animals to try and survive a cataclysmic flood; Living Large, a coming-of-age tale from Kristina Dufková about a heavy-set 12-year-boy with a talent in the kitchen; Savages, Claude Barras’ Boreno-set drama about deforestation and a lost baby orangutan; Isabel Herguera’s Sultana’s Dream, about a Spanish artist who becomes obsessed with finding a female utopia where women can live in peace; and They Shot the Piano Player from directors Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal, a portrait of Francisco Tenório Júnior, a leading light of the thriving Brazilian music scene of the 1960s and ’70s who went missing in 1976.

Sultana’s Dream They Shot the Piano Player

All 5 nominees will also be...

Five animated features are in the running for the European Film Awards, which take place on December 7 in Lucerne.

The nominees in the category European Animated Feature Film are: Gints Zilbalodis’s Flow, Kristina Dufková’s Living Large, Claude Barras’ Savages, Isabel Herguera’s Sultana’s Dream, and Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal’s They Shot The Piano Player.

Gints Zilbalodis’s second feature Flow centres on an independent cat obliged to seek allies among the animal kingdom after a devastating flood. It premiered in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard and later won four prizes at Annecy including the Competition jury...

Quick Links Netflix's They Shot the Piano Player Honors the Genre They Shot the Piano Player Is a Study That Highlights the Artist

Streaming now on Netflix, They Shot the Piano Player is an unusual and captivating film that fuses history and fiction to explore the roots of Bossa Nova music while also serving as a beautiful tribute to a lost star. Narrated by Jeff Goldblum and directed by Javier Mariscal and Fernando Trueba, They Shot the Piano Player uses a fragmented style of animation to piece together the past and the present to honor the birth of the Bossa Nova style and the contributions of piano player Francisco Tenorio Jr.

Goldblum stars as Jeff Harris, a music fan and journalist who travels to Latin America to write a book on the Bossa Nova movement of music. From Brazil to Buenos Aires, Harris interviews noted musicians and becomes intrigued when,...

“Haunted Heart” is a new romantic thriller, directed by Fernando Trueba, starring Matt Dillon, Aida Folch, Jaun Pablo Urrego, Kika Georgiou, Polydoros Vogiatzis, Anthi Andreopoulou, Vassilis Halakatevakis, and Marina Argyropoulou, releasing September 27, 2024 in theaters:

“…set on a beautiful remote island in Greece, a young and spirited ‘Alex’ (Folch) joins the team of a boutique seaside restaurant as their new waitress.

“Despite her femme-fatale charm quickly winning the heart of the charismatic ‘Enrico’, she instead falls for the enigmatic restaurant manager ‘Max’ (Dillon), a reclusive American, who settled on the island decades ago.

“As the seasons pass, sexual tensions rise, and tourists come and go, Enrico begins to unearth disturbing clues about Max’s dark and mysterious past. Blinded by her feelings, Alex chooses to ignore his warnings, as the story slowly slides into a harrowing tale of survival.”

Click the images to enlarge…...

San Sebastian — At one of the biggest industry gatherings at this year’s San Sebastián Festival, Netflix has announced new Spanish movies from “Cable Girls” showrunner Ramón Campos and “Cross the Line” director David Victori, as it unveiled new talent details on four other banner titles.

Produced by Ramón Campos at his Madrid-based label Bambú Producciones, also behind “Grand Hotel,” “Velvet” and “Fariña,” and directed by Carlos Sedes “The Asunta Case,” “Cable Girls”), murder mystery “La Viuda Negra” begins with a body stabbed seven times is discovered in a car park in Valencia. The prime suspect for the city’s Homicide Group is Maje, the dead man’s Maje, young and kind widow to whom the deceased had been married for less than a year.

Billed as a psychological thriller, Victori’s “Cortafuego” is produced by Anxo Rodríguez y Ferrán Tomás of ESpotlight Media and stars a topnotch cast of Joaquín Furriel,...

Fernando Trueba is known for bringing life’s deepest emotions to the big screen. With films like Belle Époque and La niña de tus ojos, he’s captured hearts around the world and earned international acclaim, including an Oscar. So when rumors swirled of an English-language project starring Matt Dillon, expectations were high.

Haunted Heart whisks viewers to a Greek island paradise, where passions ignite between strangers. Dillon plays Max, a myster man running from his past. When young Alex arrives seeking work, her curiosity about Max grows into something more. But as secrets surface, it becomes clear there’s darkness in his history.

Trueba’s mastery shines in the stages of their relationship. Summer burns with new romance’s thrill. Autumn casts longing looks at what once was. And winter’s chills mirror the frost forming between them. Through it all, his lens soaks up the Mediterranean’s beauty...

Dillon plays a man with more red flags than a golf course and Aida Folch does her best stay above water in Fernando Trueba’s noir-adjacent film

Neither pulpy enough for the midnight movie crowd, nor classy enough for the arthouse, this alleged thriller about a young woman called Alex (Aida Folch), who travels to an idyllic Greek island where she meets mysterious restaurant owner Max (Matt Dillon), who is obviously repressing some sort of dark past, feels like a missed opportunity. Spanish director Fernando Trueba, working from an iffy script he co-wrote with Rylend Grant, gets most of the ingredients right – exotic location, good-looking leads, a few different narrative reveals up its sleeve – but flubs the execution, leaving his cast floundering.

You can see why the actors signed on, though. Dillon’s role is the sort of thing Humphrey Bogart used to do so well in films such as...

Your browser does not support the video tag. Haunted Heart is a noir thriller set in Greece, featuring a mysterious romance between Alex and Max. Trueba, known for award-winning films, directs Haunted Heart and returns to his past themes with a darker tone. Starring Matt Dillon and Aida Folch, the movie premieres on September 27 in select theaters and through On Demand platforms.

Screen Rant is pleased to present an exclusive first look at the new trailer for Haunted Heart, a noir thriller from renowned Spanish filmmaker Fernando Trueba. The movie takes place in Greece, on a remote island where a young and spirited woman named Alex (played by Aida Folch) takes a job at a boutique seaside restaurant. While there, she takes a liking to the mysterious and American restaurant manager Max (played by Matt Dillon), whose past is hidden behind lock and key.

Trueba has a storied history, both...

“The Other Way Around” from Spanish director Jonás Trueba has won the Europa Cinemas Label for best European film in the Directors’ Fortnight section at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

The film turns on Ale (Itsaso Arana – who co-wrote the screenplay with Trueba) and Alex (Vito Sanz), who have been together for 15 years. Now, though, the duo is ready to split, but not without throwing a hell of a fiesta to celebrate their time together.

“The idea of a ‘separation party’ can be scary, but I just kept hearing about it,” Trueba told Variety in a recent interview. “I even suggested it to a friend of mine, but every time, people’s faces just drop. You can see fear creeping in. It’s crazy and silly, and at the same time, it could be something beautiful. It’s a great idea for a film, if not for real life.

Spanish director Jonás Trueba wants you to celebrate the endings, not just the beginnings.

That includes the demise of a serious relationship, because Ale and Alex (Itsaso Arana and Vito Sanz) have been together for 15 years. Now, they want only two things: to go their separate ways and to have a proper fiesta.

“The idea of a ‘separation party’ can be scary, but I just kept hearing about it. I even suggested it to a friend of mine, but every time, people’s faces just drop. You can see fear creeping in. It’s crazy and silly, and at the same time, it could be something beautiful. It’s a great idea for a film, if not for real-life.”

In “The Other Way Around,” premiering at Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight, the couple in question still has a lot of affection for each other.

“It’s a love story, but another kind of love story,...

Exclusive: Vmi Releasing, the North American distribution arm of Vmi Worldwide, has picked up North American rights to Spanish filmmaker Fernando Trueba’s latest pic Haunted Heart, starring Matt Dillon.

Vmi acquired the pic from Film Constellation. Oscar-winner Trueba directs the film from a screenplay he co-wrote with Rylend Grant. Starring alongside Dillon are Goya-nominated Aida Folch (The Artist and the Model) and Juan Pablo Urrego (Memoria).

Set on a beautiful remote island in Greece, a young and spirited Alex (Folch) joins the team of a boutique seaside restaurant as their new waitress. Despite her femme-fatale charm quickly winning the heart of the charismatic Enrico, she instead falls for the enigmatic restaurant manager Max (Dillon), a reclusive American, who settled on the island decades ago. As the seasons pass, sexual tensions rise, and tourists come and go, Enrico begins to unearth disturbing clues about Max’s dark and mysterious past.

Update: Bleecker Street has picked up the film for a 2025 release.

Following up Driveways and Fire Island, Andrew Ahn is nearing production on his next feature, a remake of Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet. First confirmed to kick off production this May in Vancouver, The Cinemaholic reports the cast features Lily Gladstone, Bowen Yang, Kelly Marie Tran, Joan Chen, and Youn Yuh-jung. James Schamus, who co-wrote and produced the original 1993 rom-com, returned to script with Ahn.

Here’s the synopsis: “The plot revolves around Min, whose marriage proposal is rejected by his boyfriend Chris (Yang). Min then convinces his best friend Angela (Marie Tran) to marry him for his green card and offers to pay for the IVF treatment of the latter’s partner, Liz (Gladstone), in return. Although Min and Angela plan a “subtle city hall elopement,” their lives are turned upside down when the former’s grandmother...

The Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival is coming off a successful — and at times turbulent — 26th edition, wrapping “amidst an explosive ambiance with episodes of violence and intolerance.”

In a post-festival report, TiDF says 66,000 spectators and visitors participated in the event this year, an increase of 16 percent over 2023. The festival ran from March 7-17 in Greece’s second largest city, nestled in a gulf of the Aegean Sea.

“This year’s TiDF hosted a great number of premieres, exciting talks and special events, and welcomed the internationally acclaimed artist Dimitris Papaioannou,” the festival noted in its report. “Moreover, it bestowed honorary Golden Alexanders to the Academy Award-winning Spanish filmmaker Fernando Trueba and the Greek film director, screenwriter, author and translator Panayotis Evangelidis.”

TiDF hosted more than 300 in-person screenings at several venues, as well as showcasing 133 documentaries through the festival’s online platform. The concurrent Agora film market played host to the...

Chicago – Patrick McDonald of HollywoodChicago.com audio film review for “They Shot the Piano Player,” an animated epic written and co-directed by Fernando Trueba that combines the Bossa Nova sound, a music reporter and a mystery about a long lost pianist. Currently in select theaters. See local listings.

Rating: 5.0/5.0

Jeff Goldblum voices the real-life Jeff Harris, a music journalist who goes to Argentina to research a book on the Bossa Nova sound, which was a worldwide sensation in the 1960s and ‘70s, only to be repressed by a dictatorship in Argentina that began in 1974. Swept up in that coup was the pianist Tenorio Jr., a major force both in Bossa Nova and his own unique approach to the instrument. In Harris’ research, Tenorio’s name comes up again and again, to the point where the journalist’s new mission is to solve the mystery of the piano player’s disappearance.

My Stolen Planet by Farahnaz Sharifi won the €12,000 Golden Alexander prize of the international competition of the 26th Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival (Tidf), which closed on March 17.

The intimate family portrait is a Germany-Iran co-production and made its world premiere in the Berlinale’s Panorama programme last month.

At Tidf, it also won the Fipresci award and a place in the pre-selection shortlist for the best documentary Osar. France’s Cat&Docs is handling international sales.

Lidia Duda’s Forest, won the €5,000 international competition special jury prize, the Silver Alexander. The Poland-Czech Republic co-production, also about a family, this...

The 26th Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival (TiDF) is underway in the historic Greek port city, after an opening night ceremony that honored Spanish filmmaker Fernando Trueba.

Trueba, the Oscar-winning director of Belle Époque, received the festival’s honorary Golden Alexander, recognizing his contributions to cinema and culture. The honor was presented to him by Katerina Sakellaropoulou, president of Hellenic Republic, the first time a Greek head of state has launched the international event.

“Great documentaries profoundly move us, broaden our understanding of the world, challenge our beliefs, prejudices, or our established assumptions,” President Sakellaropoulou said from the stage at the Olympion cinema. “An artistic portrayal of reality, or a creative handling of an otherwise unseen aspect of it, a poetic depiction of a documented truth, or a subjective documentation of some of its dimensions, documentary is a film genre requiring cultural sensitivity, journalistic integrity, moral rectitude, conceptual purity, and political discernment.

Taking place just weeks after the historic passage of a bill legalizing same-sex marriage in Greece, the 26th edition of the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival — which runs March 7 – 17 — pays tribute to that watershed moment in the long-running fight for equal rights for the country’s LGBTQ community, while also issuing a rallying cry for diversity, inclusion and empowerment across the globe.

“Our festival aspires to map out a detailed and thorough overview of our world’s complexity, welcoming films from the four corners of the world, which outline the radical changes, the challenges and the problems of our times,” says festival general director Elise Jalladeau. The program spotlights “the urgent call for diversity, stories of women’s empowerment [and] the visibility not only of the Lgbtqi+ community, but of all marginalized and oppressed groups of people who have suffered discrimination due to their identity,” she adds.

Following on the historic victory for...

The 26th edition of the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival (TiDF) kicks off today (March 7) with 12 features screening in international competition.

Several titles are making their world premiere at the festival including Johatsu - Into Thin Air from Andreas Hartmann and Arata Mori about the thousands of people who disappear in Japan each year.

Also playing is Sundance award-winner A New Kind Of Wilderness from Silje Evensmo Jacobsen. The Norweigan film, which won the grand jury prize in documentary, follows a family living in the wild who are forced to confront contemporary society after a tragic event.

Fellow Sundance-award winner Nocturnes...

Stunning animation highlights the vibrant world of samba jazz and the tragic disappearance of Francisco Tenório Júnior. Trueba and Mariscal misstep with the addition of a distracting fictional journalist, Jeff Harris, in an otherwise compelling narrative. The film sheds light on the political turmoil of Argentina's military junta and the atrocities committed during the "Dirty War" era.

They Shot the Piano Player is a fictional, animated docudrama about the tragic disappearance of Francisco Tenório Júnior. The virtuoso Brazilian pianist was instrumental in popularizing samba jazz, specifically bossa nova and its alternating beat structure, which became a late 50s and 60s global phenomenon. Tenório Jr. vanished the night of March 18, 1976, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, after leaving his hotel to run an errand. Spanish filmmakers Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal chronicle his musical legacy and murder at the hands of complicit dictatorial regimes. Their methodology is undoubtedly creative despite a flawed approach.

With no new bust-out limited releases, repertory continues to do its part for the specialty box office, the latest a 4k restoration of Nostalghia. Kino Lorber said the Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1983 film, which opened Wednesday, will gross an estimated $22.87k at Film Forum in NYC for the five days.

It’s currently the top performer at the theater and will take in more than all other films screening there combined over that period. Two additional shows at the Roxie in San Francisco and the Austin Film Society bring combined grosses to about $29.4k. Expands next week to Philadelphia and Montreal with additional markets coming later. The film about a Russian poet and his interpreter, who travel to Italy researching the life of an 18th-century composer, stars Oleg Yankovskiy, Andrei Gorchakov, Erland Josephson, Domiziana Giordano and Patrizia Terreno.

Kino Lorber had success with the restored 4k re-release of Bernardo Bertolucci’s...

Sony Pictures Classics announced today that they will release Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal’s Bossa Nova-themed animated film They Shot The Piano Player in theaters in New York and Los Angeles on February 23, 2024, before expanding nationwide in the following weeks.

The film is produced by Cristina Huete of Trueba PC (Chico & Rita) in Spain, along with Serge Lalou for Les Films d’Ici (Josep) in France, Janneke van de Kerkhof for Submarine Sublime (BUÑUEL In The Labyrinth Of Turtles) in the Netherlands, and Humberto Santana in Portugal. It is executive produced by Nano Arrieta of Atlantika and Fabien Westerhoff of Film Constellation.

From the duo behind the 2012 Academy Award®-nominated Chico & Rita, They Shot The Piano Player is narrated by Jeff Goldblum and features a who’s who of the best of Brazilian music, including João Gilberto, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Vinicius de Moraes, Milton Nascimento and Paulo Moura.

Bossa Nova-themed animation from Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal received awards-qualifying run in November.

Sony Pictures Classics will release Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal’s Bossa Nova-themed animated feature They Shot The Piano Player theatrically in New York and Los Angeles on February 23, 2024.

‘They Shot The Piano Player’: San Sebastian Review

The film received a one-week awards-qualifying run in November following its premiere at Telluride and Toronto International Film Festival. It will expand nationwide in the weeks following the release.

Jeff Goldblum narrates the story of a New York music journalist who sets out to uncover the truth behind...

Deadline on Tuesday launched the streaming site for Contenders Film: Documentary, its annual showcase of the year’s best nonfiction films that are in the running for the Documentary Feature Oscar.

Click here to launch the streaming site.

A total of nine buzzworthy films participated in panel discussions during Sunday’s virtual event, featuring movies from Amazon MGM Studios, Apple Original Films, HBO Documentary Films, National Geographic Documentary Films, Paramount+ and MTV Documentary Films, Sony Pictures Classics, and Telemark and Greenwich Entertainment.

Panelists who joined to discuss their projects included directors Davis Guggenheim (Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie), Peter Nicks (Stephen Curry: Underrated), Jesse Moss and Amanda McBain (The Mission), Christopher Sharp (Bobi Wine: The People’s President), Raoul Peck (Silver Dollar Road), Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal (They Shot the Piano Player), Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson (Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project), Jakub Piątek (Pianoforte) and...

They Shot the Piano Player is a documentary about Brazilian jazz artist Francisco Tenório Júnior, who went missing in 1976. Spoiler alert, the film uncovers why Tenório Júnior is no longer here. Directors Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal joined Deadline’s Contenders Film: Documentary to discuss how they used animation to articulate historical moments for which they had no archival footage.

“My first commitment was to be fair to Tenório Júnior,” Trueba said. “I think you must do something for him, not just for us. For him and also for the audience to discover him, but I wanted the audience to know him, to meet him and to listen to his music.”

Some animated portions depict Tenório creating music, for which the filmmakers had audio recordings. Mariscal said the music guided the visuals.

“Thanks to the animation, we can again give life to Tenório recording and re-creating this moment,” Mariscal said.

By the time December rolls around, a frontrunner has typically emerged in the Oscar race for Best Documentary Feature. Not this year. The contest remains wide open, more so than in any year in recent memory.

For that reason alone, it’s essential to hear from the leading filmmakers in the mix. And that’s where Deadline’s Contenders Film: Documentary event comes in. Out essential guide featuring an awards-worthy slate of outstanding nonfiction films kicks off Saturday at 9 a.m. Pt featuring panels from nine of the year’s most buzzy titles.

Click here to sign up for and launch the livestream.

Among the all-star talent on hand is Oscar winner Davis Guggenheim, director of Apple Original Films’ Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie, about the beloved Hollywood icon. Guggenheim’s film recently won five prizes at the Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards, including Best Feature and Best Director.

Also...

The Society Of The Snow has garnered 13 nominations, followed by Close Your Eyes and Jokes & Cigarettes with 11.

Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren’s 20,000 Species Of Bees leads the nominations for Spain’s prestigious Goya awards, which will be presented on February 10, 2024.

20,000 Species Of Bees premiered in competition at Berlin, going on to win the Silver Bear for best performance for Sofía Otero, playing an eight-year-old girl who spends a summer working in the Basque Country’s beehives while exploring her identity.

The film scored 15 nominations, including best film, best director and four nods in the acting categories.

Ja Bayona’s...

Emerald Fennell’s dark comedy Saltburn takes a massive jump from to over 1,500 screens today as Bradley Cooper’s Maestro, Hayao Miyazaki’s latest The Boy and the Heron, animated They Shot The Piano Player and other festival favorites launch awards season runs this Thanksgiving specialty weekend.

Apple, opening Napoleon wide with Sony, is also planting a flag for evergreen status for last year’s holiday romp Spirited, a musical retelling of A Christmas Carol with singing, dancing Ryan Reynolds and Will Ferrell.

Maestro, presented by Netflix, raises the baton in ten locations including New York and LA today and plans to add more theaters weekly. The anticipated Venice-premiering film – see Deadline review — was directed by and stars Bradley Cooper as the iconic conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein, with Carey Mulligan as his wife of 25 years, Felicia Montealegre Cohn Bernstein. Cooper is also a co-writer and producer alongside Martin Scorsese,...

Taking a cue from the genre-melding impulse of the music at its heart, They Shot the Piano Player initially gives every appearance of being pure fiction. The plot of this animated film by Spanish directors Javier Mariscal and Fernando Trueba follows Jeff Harris (voiced by Jeff Goldblum), a journalist from New York City who’s been commissioned to write a book on bossa nova. Immersing himself in the music in preparation for a trip to Rio de Janeiro, he hears a solo by Brazilian jazz pianist Francisco Tenorio Jr. and gets sidetracked. The innovator of samba jazz, it turns out, disappeared under suspicious circumstances in Buenos Aires just before the 1976 military coup, and Jeff decides to fill in the blanks.

The setup, then, has all the trappings of a detective story, with an amateur sleuth in obsessive pursuit of an unsolved mystery. In Rio, Jeff’s friend João (Tony Ramos...

Groundbreaking French-Iranian sales agent and producer Hengameh Panahi, who represented a myriad of renowned Cannes and Venice prize-winning auteur directors, has died at the age of 67.

Paris-based press attaché Viviana Andriani, who handled press campaigns for a number of Panahi’s films, announced the news in a short communiqué.

She said Panahi had died on November 5 after bravely battling a long illness.

Panahi was a force to be reckoned with on the international film industry circuit, who launched dozens of renowned arthouse directors at the beginning of their careers and accompanied them as they won awards and fame.

Born in Iran, Panahi was sent to Belgium to complete her education as teenager.

She got her first big break in the film industry as head of international at Brussels-based animation studio Graphoui.

In an early sign of her flare for scouting promising talent, Panahi connected with John Lasseter and Tim Burton...

"His musical touch hasn't left my ear." Sony Pictures Classics has unveiled a full US trailer for a fascinating, jazzy Spanish documentary called They Shot the Piano Player, which first premiered at the Annecy Film Festival in France this summer. It's a doc made by filmmakers Fernando Trueba & Javier Mariscal (of Chico & Rita) telling the true story of a missing pianist. A New York music journalist goes on a quest to uncover the truth behind the mysterious disappearance of the young Brazilian piano virtuoso Tenorio Jr. - in full Francisco Tenório Júnior. A celebratory origin story of the world-renowned Latino musical movement Bossa Nova, They Shot The Piano Player captures a fleeting time bursting with creative freedom at a turning point in Latin American history in the 60s and 70s, just before the continent was engulfed by totalitarian regimes. Starring Jeff Goldblum as the voice of Jeff Harris, with Caetano Veloso & Joao Gilberto.