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Is Elizabeth Olsen Coming Back As Marvel’s Scarlet Witch? (Photo Credit – Facebook)

Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch left quite the mark in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, where her Darkhold-fueled descent into villainy made her a force to be reckoned with. As she was obsessed with reuniting with her sons, she went head-to-head with Doctor Strange and managed to harness America Chavez’s multiverse-hopping abilities.

However, in a dramatic twist, Wanda realizes the damage she caused and destroys the Darkhold everywhere, taking herself out by collapsing Mount Wundagore. Despite Marvel’s insistence she’s gone for good, fans can’t help but speculate about her return. Surprisingly, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has confirmed her magical return.

Elizabeth Olsen To Return As Scarlet Witch

Marvel fans rejoice as Elizabeth Olsen officially returns to the MCU in 2025 as part of the cast for Marvel Zombies. Disney just dropped the exciting news,...

Rupali Ganguly talks about love and positivity from Anupamaa sets ( Photo Credit – Instagram )

Anupamaa star Rupali Ganguly has been mired in controversies in the past few weeks. After making news of her alleged rift with her co-stars, the actress again grabs headlines due to severe allegations from her stepdaughter, Esha Verma. Esha, the daughter of Rupali’s husband Ashwin K Verma from his previous marriage, has accused the actress of physical and mental abuse. While Rupali has yet to comment on the allegations, she has posted a cryptic note about love and positivity on social media.

Rupali Ganguly Posts about ‘Love and Positivity’ on Instagram Amid Abuse Allegations by Step-Daughter

Rupali seemed unaffected by the controversy, taking to her Instagram stories to post videos of her happily dancing on the sets of Anupamaa. The 47-year-old actress shared two clips from the sets on her Instagram stories on Wednesday.

In one of the videos,...

Chunky Panday’s Wife Reveals How Relatives At Her Engagement Party Was Starstruck Seeing Bollywood Stars ( Photo Credit – Instagram )

Actor Chunky Panday’s wife, Bhavana Panday, has been enjoying newly found fame since Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives landed on-air. Bhavana, a fashion designer, does not come from the Hindi film industry and was a native of Delhi before she married Chunky Panday.

The duo got hitched in 1998, and before their wedding, Bhavana and Chunky had a grand engagement in Delhi. Several Bollywood celebrities attended the event. Seeing Bollywood stars at weddings those days, especially in Delhi, was uncommon. Therefore, the guests at Bhavana’s engagement were stunned when they saw A-listers like Salman Khan and Rekha at the bash.

In a recent conversation with Mid-Day, Bhavana Panday recalled that her sisters and other guests were so starstruck seeing Salman and Rekha in person, their reactions left her utterly embarrassed.

The teaser release date for Kamal Haasan’s upcoming movie, Thug Life, has been announced. (Photo Credit – Instagram)

Kamal Haasan is undoubtedly one of the most proficient actors of his generation. He has made remarkable contributions to the film industry and carved a mark for himself. He is known for picking unconventional yet powerful roles for his films. His ambitions as a filmmaker are reflected in his art.

Mani Ratnam is one of those directors whose works make a mark on viewers and ensure a new experience each time. His movies have been an inseparable part of Indian cinema. Kamal Haasan and Mani Ratnam joined forces for Nayakan, which was released about 36 years ago. These two powerhouses have come together once again with the promise of a stunning movie, Thug Life.

The title of the film was announced in September 2023. Following that update, there was barely any news about the...

Teodora Ana Mihai’s “Traffic” was named the winner of the 40th Warsaw Film Festival on Saturday. The film was written by Cristian Mungiu, who won the Palme d’Or at Cannes with “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” and stars “Happening” lead actor Anamaria Vartolomei.

“Traffic” focuses on Romanian immigrants in Belgium, who go from unwanted second-class citizens to very much wanted criminals, as they decide to stage a heist that will change their lives forever.

You can watch the trailer here:

“I was excited about the opportunity to work closely with Cristian Mungiu, as he was also co-producing the project. I anticipated it would be an intense and challenging experience, but I don’t shy away from challenges, as I demonstrated with [previous film] ‘La Civil,’” Mihai told Variety.

“I believe Cristian and I have always shared a similar understanding of the themes explored in this film, which camouflages...

Exclusive: Daniel Auteuil, Virginie Efira, Mathieu Amalric, Vincent Lacoste and Luana Bajrami have been unveiled as supporting cast members in Rebecca Zlotowski’s murder mystery movie Vie Privée starring Jodie Foster.

The production has also unveiled the plotline for the film which follows renowned psychiatrist Lilian Steiner, played by previously-announced Foster, who mounts her own private investigation into the death of one of her patients, whom she is convinced has been murdered.

The supporting cast news and plot reveal comes as filming – running from September 30 to November 22 between Paris and Normandy – enters its third week.

The feature is Zlotowski’s sixth film after 2023 Venice Golden Lion contender Other People’s Children, An Easy Girl, Planetarium, Grand Central and Dear Prudence.

Zlotowski co-wrote the screenplay with Anne Berest, whose credits include Audrey Diwan’s Venice Golden Lion winner Happening and Other People’s Children, as well as long-time collaborator Gaëlle Macé.

The film...

It’s official: Ready or Not 2 is in the works. The news is getting announced tonight by Radio Silence at a Searchlight screening for their 2019 cult horror pic which started it all. Principal photography and release date will be announced at a later date.

Ready or Not launched Radio Silence to a greater marquee fame to stateside audiences in addition to the movie’s lead Australian actress Samara Weaving.

The actress recently told ComicBook.com, “I’m all in. I think we’re all in, I don’t know. I think we’re all in…I don’t know if we’ve had our blood handshake, but pretty much. We’ve done the spit handshake, but we haven’t cut each other’s hands and rubbed our blood together.”

VP of Production Richard Ruiz and Creative Executive Cornelia Burleigh will be overseeing the sequel for Searchlight Pictures, reporting to Co-Heads of...

Oscar-winning actor and filmmaker Jodie Foster is set to star in a French movie, “Vie Privée,” the next directorial effort of Rebecca Zlotowski.

Currently filming in France, “Vie Privée” will mark Zlotowski’s follow up to “Other People’s Children,” which competed at the Venice Film Festival in 2022.

The movie is penned by Zlotowski, Anne Berest, a well-known French novelist (“The Postcard”) and screenwriter (“Happening”), alongside Gaëlle Macé. Zlotowski and Macé previously collaborated on the script of “Grand Central.” Zlotowski’s regular producer, Frederic Jouve at Paris-based Velvet Films is producing.

Foster, who was last seen in “True Detective: Night Country,” picks her roles very selectively. Her pairing with Zlotowski seems like an ideal match as they share a similar sensibility and are both interested in dramas portraying multi-faceted characters, many of which are female protagonists.

Besides “Other People’s Children,” Zlotowski is best known for directing “Une fille facile,” “Grand Central” with Lea Seydoux,...

South Korean writer Han Kang, whose international breakthrough novel The Vegetarian was made into a film, has won the Nobel Prize in Literature 2024.

The Swedish Academy unveiled the honoree Thursday, lauding “her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”

Han’s 2007 novel The Vegetarian, her first novel to be translated into English, won the International Booker Prize in 2015. The story of Yeong-hye, a part-time graphic artist and homemaker, whose decision to stop eating meat leads to mental health struggles and problems in her familial life, was adapted as a feature film by Woo-Seong Lim and screened at Sundance in 2010.

The honor is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, in 1895. The others are prizes in chemistry, physics and medicine, as well as the Nobel Peace Prize.

Han Kang is the first South Korean to win the literature Nobel.

Partway through “Emmanuelle,” the French filmmaker Audrey Diwan’s third feature, a sleazy producer strikes up a conversation with the title character in a hotel spa. “Only two types of guests frequent luxury hotels,” he purrs to Emmanuelle, “those on the prowl and those on the run.”

The fact that Emmanuelle (a simmering Noémie Merlant) is of the former type is one of the foundational principles of this sporadically sexy, frequently aloof, and occasionally ridiculous movie, which marks something of a departure for Diwan. Like her excellent character study “Happening” — about a woman seeking an abortion in midcentury France — “Emmanuelle” is again a literary adaptation, although that’s about where the similarities end. The new film is based on Emmanuelle Arsan’s 1967 novel, which in 1974 spawned a very different adaptation: a soft-core porn phenomenon of the same name.

In readapting the book, Diwan — who was approached to make the movie...

Audrey Diwan: «El movimiento Me Too nos ha permitido encontrar nuestro propio espacio» © Ssiff

La 72 edición del Festival Internacional de Cine de San Sebastián abrió ayer sus puertas con la proyección de la película Emmanuelle, dirigida por la cineasta francesa Audrey Diwan. Basada en la novela homónima de Marayat Rollet-Andriane, más conocida por el sudónimo de Emmanuelle Arsan, la película regresa casi cinco décadas después de su icónica adaptación de 1974, la cual estuvo prohibida en España bajo el régimen franquista (y también en muchos otros países). Ahora, en un contexto muy diferente, esta nueva versión a manos de Diwan se presenta como la película inaugural de la Sección Oficial en Donostia, y lo hace con la promesa de generar debate.

El equipo de la película desfiló ayer por la alfombra roja de San Sebastián para acompañar su estreno. Entre ellos, la directora Audrey Diwan, cuyo último largometraje, El acontecimiento,...

On paper, a contemporary feminist spin on “Emmanuelle” sounds like a zesty idea. An ostensible portrait of liberated female sexuality firmly ossified in patriarchal politics, Just Jaeckin’s 1974 softcore smash is the kind of cultural touchstone so emblematic of its era that the very act of remaking it qualifies as a symbolic statement of sorts. In practice, however, “Emmanuelle” is a text so flimsy that reworking it is a bit like trying to defibrillate a blancmange: There’s no pulse of an idea there to activate, much less subvert. Saying something freshly substantive about female desire while honoring the film’s defining spirit of vapid, diaphanous horniness is a tricky, potentially unworkable brief; Audrey Diwan’s inert, frequently frigid new film opts to do neither.

Opening this year’s San Sebastian festival on a tepid note, “Emmanuelle” can only be regarded as a disappointment from Diwan, the writer-director who landed...

The 72nd San Sebastian Film Festival is underway after the world premiere of Audrey Diwan’s racy flick Emmanuelle kicked off the festivities in Spain.

The film, which boasts stars such as Noémie Merlant (Portrait of a Lady on Fire), Naomi Watts (Mullholland Drive, Birdman), Will Sharpe (The White Lotus) and Jamie Campbell Bower (Stranger Things), is inspired by Emmanuelle Arsan’s erotic novel. Chacha Huang and Anthony Wong round out the cast, all of whom, barring Watts, appeared briefly onstage before the showing at the city’s Kursaal Theater.

The director’s project centers around a woman, Emmanuelle (Merlant), on a business trip to Hong Kong working with a luxury hotel group. Searching for a lost pleasure, she seeks her arousal in experiences with some of the hotel’s guests. One of them, Kei (Sharpe), seems to constantly elude her. Diwan has said the script was conceived as an...

French director Audrey Diwan is opening the San Sebastian Film Festival this evening with third feature Emmanuelle, in the company of its star Noémie Merlant and supporting cast members Will Sharpe, Chacha Huang and Jamie Campbell Bower.

Diwan, who won Venice’s Golden Lion for abortion drama Happening in 2021, has taken inspiration for her first English-language picture from Emmanuelle Arsan’s erotic novel, originally published clandestinely in France in 1959 and then officially in 1967.

The work sparked a franchise of erotic, soft porn films, kicking off with Just Jaeckin’s 1974 cult movie, starring Sylvia Kristel as a woman who joins her diplomat husband in Bangkok where she embarks on a series of sexual adventures.

In Diwan’s contemporary adaptation, Merlant plays hotel quality control agent Emmanuelle, who is sent to audit a luxury hotel in Hong Kong, where she comes up against a steely hotel manager, played by Naomi Watts.

Bored...

Opening up this year’s San Sebastian Film Festival, Audrey Diwan’s “Emmanuelle” marks an unexpected follow-up to her Golden Lion winner “Happening” – at least on paper, anyway.

If anything, the filmmaker followed a similar line, using a literary adaptation to emphasize sensorial experience, in this case the evasive quest for physical pleasure. “The project was one of renewal,” Diwan tells Variety. “Reviving sensations then sharing them with the audience.”

Updating the 1967 novel from Emmanuelle Arsan, the latest version imagines a thirtysomething Emmanuelle (Noemie Merlant) as a kind of leisure quality control inspector, sent to stress test a Hong Kong luxury hotel run by Naomi Watts and haunted by a mysterious guest played by Will Sharpe.

And though centered on pleasure, the film often sees those needs unmet, focusing as much on frustration as on elation. “Pleasure, and the pursuit thereof, should remain a mystery,” says Diwan. “So I meant...

In terms of stars — Cate Blanchett, Johnny Depp, Javier Bardem, Tilda Swinton, Pamela Anderson — and auteur power — Pedro Almodóvar, Sean Baker, Costa Gavras, Edward Berger, Mike Leigh, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Joshua Oppenheimer, François Ozon, Lupita Nyong’o, Mohammad Rasoulof, Walter Salles, Maite Alberdi — this year’s San Sebastián Festival promises one of its biggest editions ever.

Yet it’s the Spanish festival’s wealth of new talent and rising names in its industry competitions sets it apart. Here are 10 things to expect from the fest, which runs Sept. 20-28 at the stunning Basque seaside resort:

Blanchett, Almodóvar, Bardem, Depp, Swinton, Anderson

Blanchett, Almodóvar and Bardem will collect career achievement Donostia Awards, with Blanchett talking up Guy Maddin’s Cannes hit “Rumours,” set for U.S. theatrical release via Bleecker Street on Oct. 18; Almodóvar and Swinton will present Venice success “The Room Next Door.” Depp will unveil “Modi,” his second film as a...

If the race for Best International Feature Film feels rushed this year, it is: the Academy pushed up country submission deadlines by a month. Films still have until November 15 to play in theaters in their respective countries. The Academy has also laid down more rigorous rules for who serves on the Oscar selection committees: 50 percent must be filmmakers (including artists and craftspeople). France, for example, beefed up its committee from seven members to 11.

As a country with a robust film industry, France has often been criticized for picking the “wrong” Oscar submission, from Cannes Palme d’Or winner “Titane” (Neon), which was not nominated, to “The Taste of Things” (IFC Films) over Neon’s eventual Best Picture contender, “Anatomy of a Fall.”

In fact, Audrey Diwan, director of “Happening” — a film many thought should have been submitted instead of “Titane” — is now on the French selection committee, along with veteran...

Things are looking up for “Emilia Pérez.” France has chosen the upcoming Netflix release as its submission for the Best International Feature Oscar. Acquired by the streaming service out of Cannes, the film won both the Jury Prize and Best Actress prize for its female ensemble at the 2024 edition of the annual international film festival along the French Riviera.

The operatic crime drama about a fearsome Mexican drug cartel leader that enlists a plucky lawyer to help coordinate their gender reassignment surgery is written and directed by French auteur Jacques Audiard, whose 2009 film “A Prophet” was one of the last of France’s submissions to receive a Best International Feature nomination.

The film was chosen by revamped Oscar committee featuring 11 French professionals on both the artistic and industry side of filmmaking, including recent Oscar-nominated producers Nadim Cheikhroua (“Four Daughters”) and David Thion (“Anatomy of a Fall”), Oscar-winning filmmaker Florian Zeller,...

France’s revamped Oscar committee has selected Jacques Audiard’s exhilarating redemption thriller “Emilia Perez” for the international feature film race. The movie won two major awards at the Cannes Film Festival and earned rave reviews.

“Emilia Perez” stars Karla Sofía Gascón as a fearsome drug lord who embraces her true self as a woman. The Spanish-language film earned one of Cannes’s longest standing ovations and went on to win the Jury Prize (in a jury presided over by Greta Gerwig), on top of a best actress prize for the ensemble cast, including Gascón, Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez and Adriana Paz. The movie was bought by Netflix for the U.S. and the U.K. following its Cannes premiere.

Audiard is a revered French auteur who won a Palme d’Or with “Dheepan,” and was previously nominated for a foreign-language Oscar with “A Prophet” starring Tahar Rahim.

Although “Emilia Perez...

France’s Oscar committee has shortlisted four movies, including Jacques Audiard’s redemption thriller “Emilia Perez” and “The Count of Monte Cristo,” an epic adventure film adapted from Alexandre Dumas’ classic, as well as Payal Kapadia‘s “All We Imagine as Light” and Alain Guiraudie’s “Misericordia.”

All four movies word premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. “Emilia Perez” won two major awards, the Jury Prize and a best actress nod for its ensemble female cast, Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez, Zoe Saldana and Adriana Paz; while “All We Imagine as Light,” a tale of two Mumbai nurses bonding, won the Grand Prize, becoming the first Indian film in 30 years to win the award. Kapadia was also the first Indian female director to compete at Cannes. Guiraudie’s darkly comic and provocative “Misericordia” played at Cannes Premiere and recently screened at Telluride and Toronto, while “The Count of Monte Cristo,...

France’s National Film Board has unveiled its revamped and expanded Oscar committee which is presided over by Charles Tesson, the former artistic director of Cannes’ Critics Week.

Along with Tesson, the committee includes “Emmanuelle” director Audrey Diwan who won Venice’s Golden Lion with “Happening” in 2021; critically acclaimed French playwright, director and producer Florian Zeller (“The Father”); former Lionsgate boss Patrick Wachsberger; international sales veterans Carole Baraton from Charades, and Gregoire Melin from Kinology; powerful French distributor Michèle Halberstadt from Arp Selection; producers Rosalie Varda (“Faces Places”) from Ciné-Tamaris, Nadim Cheikhroua (“Olfa’s Daughters”) and David Thion (“Anatomy of a Fall”) at Les Films Pelléas; and actor Clemence Poesy.

Appointed by France’s culture minister, Rachida Dati, the committee is facing the difficult task of picking the French film that is best suited to give the country its first Oscar win for best international feature in over three decades.

Nina (Ia Sukhitashvili), a respected Ob-gyn, performs secret abortions for desperate women in deepest rural Georgia (the ex-Soviet nation, not the American state) in April, Georgian director Dea Kulumbegashvili’s wrenching second feature. As with her previous Beginning, which also starred Sukhitashvili, Kulumbegashvili marbles gritty realism in the vein of the Romanian New Wave (long takes, implicit social criticism, hyper-naturalistic performances) with a fantastical element that might be the projection of the main character’s troubled mind, a stray symbol or just a bit of experimental legerdemain.

The surreal bolt-on doesn’t work all that well, but the limpid cinematography and more quotidian dramatic elements are impactful and striking enough to distinguish this as one of the stronger films to emerge this fall festival season. April debuts in competition in Venice and will spend part of September and beyond at fests in Toronto, San Sebastian and New York.

With laws...

For nearly 20 years, Zoe Saldaña has starred in some of the most financially successful films in history, including “Avatar” and “Avengers: Endgame.” You’d think an actress with such an impressive résumé would have scripts and prominent roles constantly coming her way. Yet, in Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Pérez,” where Saldaña plays Rita Moro Castro, she sings and dances, and in one high-energy number, “El Mal,” she shows the ferocity that shows the depth of her talent. It was a moment that left me incredibly frustrated with Hollywood. Despite her box office success, Saldaña has rarely been allowed to showcase the full range of her abilities. Why are we only learning about this now?

I expressed these sentiments to Telluride executive director Julie Huntsinger during an interview with Variety, and she confidently replied, “That all stops now.”

Read: You can see all Academy Award predictions in all 23 categories on one...

Audrey Diwan is following up her Golden Lion win for “Happening” with an adaptation of Emmanuelle Arsan’s novel “Emmanuelle.”

The sensual thriller centers on a titular woman (Noémie Merlant) whose business trip to Hong Kong awakens an insatiability inside of her. Naomi Watts, Will Sharpe, “Stranger Things” breakout Jamie Campbell Bower, Anthony Wong, and Chacha Huang also co-star.

An official synopsis for the film reads: Emmanuelle is in search of a lost pleasure. She flies alone to Hong Kong, for a business trip. In this sensual world city, she multiplies experiences and meets Kei, a man who never ceases to elude her. Diwan’s film, freely adapted from Arsan’s novel, casts a female gaze on the intimate quest of the woman whose name still evokes one cinema’s most provocative characters.

“Emmanuelle” will open the San Sebastián Film Festival on September 20. The feature is distributed by Pathé.

Chantelouve,...

Break out the tissues. Today, Pathé released the official French trailer and poster for French writer/director Audrey Diwan’s (Happening) upcoming film, Emmanuelle, which will have its World Premiere as the Opening Night film, In Competition, at the San Sebastián Film Festival on the September 20.

The synopsis reads,

“Emmanuelle (Merlant) is in search of a lost pleasure. She flies alone to Hong Kong on a business trip. In this sensual global city, where she initiates numerous encounters, she meets Kei, a man who constantly eludes her.”

Audrey Diwan’s film, freely adapted from Emmanuelle Arsan’s novel, casts a female gaze on the intimate quest of the woman whose name still evokes one cinema’s most provocative characters. The film stars actor-director Noémie Merlant, Naomi Watts (Mulholland Drive), Will Sharpe (The White Lotus), Jamie Campbell Bower (Stranger Things), Chacha Huang, and Anthony Wong (Internal Affairs). Chantelouve, Rectangle Productions and Goodfellas produced the film.

Audrey Diwan’s erotic quest movie “Emmanuelle” has dropped a first trailer and poster ahead of its world premiere screening in September at the San Sebastian Film Festival.

Shot in Hong Kong, the film is freely adapted from Emmanuelle Arsan’s novel of the same name. It casts a female gaze on the intimate quest of the woman whose name still evokes one cinema’s most provocative characters.

With “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” star Noémie Merlant in the title role, Emmanuelle goes in search of a lost pleasure. She flies alone to Hong Kong on a business trip. In this sensual global city, she initiates numerous encounters and meets Kei (Will Sharpe), a man who constantly eludes her.

Alongside Merlant, the film also stars Naomi Watts, Jamie Campbell Bower, Chacha Huang and Anthony Wong.

Diwan, a Venice Golden Lion winner for her 2021 film “Happening,” co-wrote “Emmanuelle” with fellow filmmaker Rebecca Zlotowski,...

The highly anticipated release of Gears of War: E-Day is generating a lot of excitement among Gears fans.

This upcoming prequel is set to transport us all the way back to the intense initial moments of the Locust emergence, marking a pivotal and challenging period in humankind’s battle for survival.

Although specific details about the storyline are being kept closely guarded, a mysterious remark from The Coalition, the developer of Gears of War, has ignited speculation about the potential return of a beloved character from the franchise: General Raam.

The Legacy of General Raam in Gears of War

Fans were surprised to learn the upcoming Gears of War: E-Day is a prequel.

General Raam is a well-known character for Gears of War fans. This formidable Locust leader, with his imposing stature and Kryll bat companions, quickly became a notable video game villain when he first appeared in 2008’s Gears of War.

USA’s series White Collar may have ended a decade ago. However, the Matt Bomer-led police procedural has seen an upswing thanks to Netflix and to Suits. Moreover, there is some new information on a spinoff in the works. Best of all, it is really happening.

Here are the latest details.

Instagram Matt Bomer White Collar Spinoff Is Happening!

There has been a lot of talk about a White Collar reboot. Now, fans don’t have to hope and dream. It is happening! According to Variety, the series creator Jeff Eastin revealed on Thursday it is happening. He hat attended the publication’s TV Fest event in a panel alongside three of the series stars, Matt Bomer, Tim DeKay, and Tiffany Theissen.

Eastin announced, “We’re gonna reboot. I’m writing the script.” To this, Matt Boomer shared, “I’m in!” In solidarity, DeKay and Thiessen, who portray husband...

The Fantasia International Film Festival returns with its 28th edition from July 18 through August 4, 2024, returning to the Concordia Hall and J.A. de Sève cinemas, with additional screens and events at Montreal’s Cinémathèque québécoise and Cinéma du Musée. The second wave of programming has been unveiled, adding even more genre premieres to an already packed slate.

Come To Daddy director Ant Timpson‘s Bookworm (starring Elijah Wood and Evil Dead Rise‘s Nell Fisher) is the fest’s 2024 Opening Film. Fantasia is also hosting the World Premieres of the dark fantasy The Beast Within, starring “Game of Thrones” actor Kit Harington, Cannes’ hit The Count of Monte-Cristo, and more. The festival is also giving their Canadian Trailblazer Award to Vincenzo Natali, to be presented before the premiere of the new 4K restoration of his 1997 classic Cube.

The second wave of titles, from the press release:

Bookworm

Fantasia’s 28th...

Anamaria Vartolomei, the breakout star of Audrey Diwan’s Venice prizewinning “Happening,” is under the spotlight at this year’s Cannes Film Festival playing strong women in a pair of movies, “Being Maria” and “The Count Monte Cristo.” Both movies are supported by Chanel for which Vartolomei is an ambassador.

Vartolomei says since starring in Diwan’s drama “Happening,” which was set in the 1960s and centered around the then-illegal act of abortion, she has continued being lured to demanding roles with political and social themes.

“I think movies are the expressions of my engagements as a woman, and as such I often star in films that are engaged because when you’re an actress you contribute to change and we must continue to wage this battle that other women have led before,” says Vartolomei, who was wearing a glamorous dark khaki and black silk jacquard muslin dress by Chanel.

If you took Magnolia, Goodfellas, Boyz n the Hood and perhaps Claude Lelouch’s A Man and a Woman, plugged them all into the latest version of ChatGPT and asked it to spit out a brand new film, you could wind up with something like Gilles Lellouche’s (no relation to Claude) swooning French crime romance, Beating Hearts (L’Amour ouf).

A hodgepodge of movie clichés and overwrought scenes, directed with zero tact and plenty of pounding needle drops, actor-turned-director Lellouche’s third stab at the helm after his rather likeable ensemble comedy, Sink or Swim, is less a disappointment than a serious assault on the viewer’s intelligence. The fact that it premiered in Cannes’ competition, rather than in a sidebar “Première” slot, speaks to the general level of one of the festival’s weakest main slates in recent memory.

Sink or Swim was a major hit in France that grossed $40 million,...

When New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael wrote a long and heated rave of Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris after its premiere in 1972, she stated, among other things, that “this is a movie people will be arguing about for as long as there are movies.”

Kael may have been overdoing it when she stressed Last Tango‘s monumental importance, claiming it was a “movie breakthrough” and that it “altered the face of the art form.” But in terms of people arguing years later about the film’s legacy, she was spot-on.

Case in point: Being Maria, a new biopic of tormented French actress Maria Schneider, who at age 19 starred opposite Marlon Brando in the Bertolucci movie — a feat that launched her career as a promising new international actress while destroying her life at the same time.

The reasons for this are well known, and resurfaced over the past...

The "John Wick" universe is continuing to expand, with or without Keanu Reeves. Lionsgate has announced that a new spin-off set within the world of the beloved action franchise is on the way. This one will focus on Donnie Yen's blind assassin character Caine, who was introduced in last year's "John Wick: Chapter 4." While much about the film remains under wraps for the time being, it will pay off a subplot that was previously teased by director Chad Stahelski.

According to Variety, Yen will star in the currently untitled spin-off film, with Robert Askins ("The Umbrella Academy") set to pen the screenplay. Production is due to begin next year in Hong Kong. The new spin-off is said to "continue Yen's story arc following the events of 'John Wick: Chapter 4,' as Caine has been freed from his obligations to the High Table." Yen had this to...

Audrey Diwan is attached to direct “The Marriage Portrait,” based on the novel by award-winning Northern Irish writer Maggie O’Farrell, best known for “Hamnet.”

Variety hears that the project will see the fast-rising French auteur team with two of Europe’s leading arthouse producers in Ireland’s Element Pictures (which has three films in Cannes’ official selection this year) and Italy’s Wildside (which has competition title “Limonov: The Ballad”). Film4 helped develop the feature.

Set in 1500s Renaissance Florence, “The Marriage Portrait” — which was published in 2022 — follows the fictional tale of young duchess Lucrezia de’ Medici, a sheltered 16-year-old who has spent her life locked inside the city’s grandest palazzo. But when her husband takes her on an unexpected visit to a country villa, it occurs to her that he has a sinister purpose — he intends to kill her.

Diwan, who has just completed the post-production of her...

Studiocanal has unveiled an exclusive first-look still of Matt Dillon and Anamaria Vartolomei (“Happening”) starring as Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider in Jessica Palud’s movie “Maria,” which is slated to bow at the Cannes Film Festival.

Palud’s film sheds light on the tragic life of Maria Schneider, who starred opposite Marlon Brando in Bernardo Bertolucci’s “The Last Tango in Paris” at the age of 19 and never recovered from the shoot. The film depicts how Schneider was imposed an un-simulated rape scene on the set of “The Last Tango in Paris” by Bertolucci and Brando.

“Maria,” the only movie directed by a female filmmaker that’s set for Cannes Premiere, is based on “Tu t’appelais Maria Schneider,” a book written by Vanessa Schneider, the actress’ cousin. Haut et Court, the banner behind the Cesar-winning movie “The Night of the 12th,” will release “Maria” in French theaters on...

Isabelle Huppert will head up the 2024 Venice Film Festival jury this year. Serving as jury president, Huppert will hand out the Golden Lion and other awards when the festival on the Lido concludes. The dates for this year’s edition are August 28 to September 7.

Huppert has never before served as jury president at Venice, but she did at Cannes in 2009, awarding the Palme d’Or to Michael Haneke’s “The White Ribbon” after deliberations with James Gray, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Asia Argento, Robin Wright, and Lee Chang-dong. Before that she’d served on the jury headed by Dirk Bogarde at Cannes in 1984, which gave the top prize to “Paris, Texas.”

The 71-year-old actress has been a powerhouse force in global cinema for the past 50 years, making her mark in French cinema before quickly appearing in Hollywood productions such as Michael Cimino’s “Heaven’s Gate.” Over the past decade Huppert’s...

“Emmanuelle,” a new feature from French writer-director Audrey Diwan, will world premiere in competition as the opening film for the 72nd San Sebastian Film Festival, which kicks off on September 20.

Inspired by the eponymous erotic novel by Emmanuelle Arsan, the film tells the story of a woman looking for a lost pleasure. During a business trip to Hong Kong, she meets several new people, including a man named Kei, who constantly eludes her. According to the director, the story was conceived as an exploration of pleasure in the post #MeToo era.

Diwan, a Venice Golden Lion winner for her 2021 film “Happening,” co-wrote “Emmanuelle” with fellow filmmaker Rebecca Zlotowski, whose 2013 feature “Grand Central” screened in competition at Cannes and won the François Chalais Award.

Chantelouve, Rectangle Productions and Goodfellas (formerly Wild Bunch) produce. “Emmanuelle” will be distributed by Pathé in France, where it will debut on September 25, and Beta Fiction in Spain.

Audrey Diwan’s Emmanuelle will open the 72nd San Sebastian International Film Festival in competition as a world premiere on September 20.

Naomi Watts, Jamie Campbell Bower, Will Sharpe and Noémie Merlant star in the feature exploring a woman’s erotic fantasies.

Diwan’s previous film Happening premiered at Venice in 2021 where it won both the Golden Lion and the Fipresci prize. It was also nominated for a Bafta and three Cesar awards.

Emmauelle is produced by French outfits Chantelouve, Rectangle Productions and Goodfellas.

More to follow.

After announcing a whopping number of English-language films in competition, Cannes Film Festival has added some international titles: Michel Hazanavicius’ animated feature “The Most Precious of Cargoes” and Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof’s “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” Variety has learned.

An auteur-driven allegorical feature, “The Most Precious of Cargoes” (first-look still below) is adapted from Jean-Claude Grumberg’s bestselling novel of the same name, set during World War II against the backdrop of the Holocaust. It will be the first animated feature to compete in more than a decade, since Ari Folman’s “Waltz With Bashir” in 2008.

The film is co-produced and represented internationally by Studiocanal, which also has Gilles Lellouche’s “Beating Hearts” in competition. “The Most Precious of Cargoes” is a passion project for Hazanavicius, the Oscar-winning filmmaker behind “The Artist,” who has been developing the project for years. Hazanavicius penned the script with Grumberg and created the drawings,...

Clare Binns, managing director of Picturehouse Cinemas and Picturehouse Entertainment, is to be presented with Unic’s 2024 achievement award for her dedication to the exhibition of European cinema.

The International Union of Cinemas (Unic) will present the award during the CineEurope awards ceremony on June 20 at the International Barcelona Convention Centre.

Phil Clapp, president of Unic and chief executive of the UK Cinema Association, said: “Clare’s contribution to cinema programming and audience development have been widely recognised, and her leadership continues to shape the industry. The award recognises her incredible passion for the big screen, her outstanding career and...

Box Office Clash Between Pushpa 2 Vs The Greatest Of All Time Is Not Happening ( Photo Credit – Instagram )

Possibly, the biggest box office clash of the year is going to happen between Allu Arjun’s Pushpa 2 and Ajay Devgn’s Singham Again. Both films are carrying immense buzz, with their titular characters enjoying a cult status. Amid this, a few weeks back, some reports suggested that it’s no longer a two-way battle as Thalapathy Vijay has entered the scene with his The Greatest Of All Time. But now, it’s clear that Vijay is out of this competition.

For those who aren’t aware, Vijay is quitting films as he has planned to join full time politics. While it’s truly a shocker for fans and the Tamil film industry, a big relief is that the superstar has a couple of films in the kitty and he’ll complete them...

Rwandan actress Eliane Umuhire (“Augure by Baloji,” “My New Friends”), French producer Sylvie Pialat (“Timbuktu,” “Staying Vertical”), Belgian cinematographer Virginie Surdej and Canadian film critic, journalist and frequent Variety contributor Ben Croll have been named on the jury for the Critics’ Week section of the Cannes Film Festival.

The four will now join Spanish filmmaker Rodrigo Sorogoyen, who last week was named Critics’ Week jury president, with the group set to choose the sidebar competition’s award winners, including the Grand Prize for best feature film, the French Touch Prize of the Jury, the Louis Roederer Foundation Rising Star award for best actor or actress and the Leitz Ciné Discovery Prize for best short film.

The 2024 Critics Week lineup is set to be unveiled on April 15, four days after the Cannes official selection is announced on April 11.

Last year, Venice Golden Lion-winning “Happening” director Audrey Diwan presided over a Critics...

Kino Lorber has acquired North American distribution rights to Bruno Dumont’s “The Empire,” a sci-fi satire starring Anamaria Vartolomei (“Happening”), Camille Cottin (“Call My Agent!”), Lyna Khoudri (“The Three Musketeers”) and Fabrice Luchini.

“The Empire” just world premiered in competition at the Berlin Film Festival, where it won the Silver Bear Jury Prize. The movie marks Dumont’s follow up to “France,” a dark comedy starring Léa Seydoux which competed at the Cannes Film Festival.

Kino Lorber is planning a theatrical release later this year, followed by a home video, educational and digital release on all major platforms. The acquisition of “The Empire” marks the sixth time that Kino Lorber has collaborated with Dumont, with previous releases including “Li’l Quinquin,” “Coincoin and the Extra-Humans,” “Slack Bay,” “Camille Claudel 1915” and, most recently, “France.”

The film is set in a quiet and picturesque fishing village in Northern France, where a special...

At last year’s Cannes Film Festival, Leonardo DiCaprio, Harrison Ford and Scarlett Johansson hit the red carpet to premiere their latest big movies. But Hollywood may have a much lighter presence at the 2024 edition of one of the world’s most notable film festivals.

The culprit is the combination of last year’s actors and writers strikes, which created production delays, as well as a tough economy that’s leading studios to tighten the purse-strings. But there will still be stars on the Croisette, in addition to “Barbie” director Greta Gerwig, who will be presiding over the jury.

Based on intelligence from industry insiders on both sides of the Atlantic, the upcoming edition will have a larger emphasis on European auteurs, along the lines of Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall” and Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest,” which were each nominated for five Oscars.

While the...

Channeling the French approach of having a female protagonist and focusing almost exclusively on her, as seen in films like “Blue is the Warmest Color” and “L'evenement”, Elena Naveriani turns the whole thing on its head, by having a middle-aged, plain-looking woman as her protagonist instead of a gorgeous young woman. Her approach is both refreshing and functions as a kind of meaningful irony regarding cinema standards, in a script based on a 2020 novel by feminist author Tamta Melashvili.

Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry is screening at Osaka Asian Film Festival

One morning, a 48-year-old shopkeeper named Etero is out foraging wild blackberries near her small Georgian village when the sighting of a blackbird causes her to slip and fall down a ravine. Her near-death experience has her seeing various instances of herself dead, but also makes her contemplate her life, and particularly her single status, despite the fact that she was happy with it until now.

Exclusive: Following their work together on Ted Melfi’s acclaimed coming-of-age drama St. Vincent, Naomi Watts (Feud: Capote vs. The Swans) and Bill Murray (Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire) have been set to topline The Friend, an adaptation of Sigrid Nunez’s New York Times bestselling novel, from writer-directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel (Montana Story).

Others set to star in the indie include Sarah Pidgeon (Tiny Beautiful Things), Golden Globe nominee Constance Wu (Crazy Rich Asians), Emmy winner Ann Dowd (The Handmaid’s Tale), and Noma Dumezweni (The Watcher).

David Siegel and Scott McGehee

Winner of the 2018 National Book Award for Fiction, The Friend follows a New York writer in the aftermath of her lifelong friend and mentor’s unexpected death. Thereafter, she’s left to deal with his complicated literary legacy, three eccentric ex-wives — and a massive, brokenhearted Great Dane named Apollo.

Currently in production on the film in New York,...

Global production giant Fremantle is still hungry. On Tuesday the Bertelsmann-controlled group signed a deal for another major acquisition, entering into a conditional purchase agreement to take control of Asacha Media Group, a private-equity-backed company that owns several high-profile production companies in the U.K., France, and Italy.

The acquisition of Asacha Media Group follows Fremantle’s recent deal to take an 80 percent stake in Singapore-based TV group Beach House Pictures. The investment in the two companies will cost Fremantle parent company Rtl Group $217 million (€200 million), Rtl Group said Tuesday.

Asacha’s production portfolio includes France’s Srab Films, producer of Venice winner Happening and official French Oscar contenders Les Misérables and Saint Omar; Picomedia, producer of hit Italian drama series The Sea Beyond; and British group Red Planet Pictures, known for such series as Death in Paradise and Life on Mars. Other Asacha-owned companies part of the Fremantle...

Playing his signature brand of rural French absurdity in stark counterpoint to the grandiose strains of a space opera, Bruno Dumont returns with The Empire: his Barbarella bourguignon, his dijionnaise Dune. The Empire is the story of two warring factions: one whose mothership resembles the palace of Versailles; the other’s as if someone glued together two Notre Dames, crypt to crypt. It follows their envoys on earth, now in human form and attempting to capture a toddler who they believe to be the Chosen One––whose mere presence makes them bow down like bodies in rigor mortis. There are blasé beheadings with lightsabers, a group of men on Boulonnais horses who call themselves the Knights of Wain, and, for no apparent reason, the commandant (Bernard Pruvost) and lieutenant (Philippe Jore) from P’tit Quinquin.

If that all sounds like a mixed bag it’s probably because The Empire is...

Out of the many movies you could imagine emerging from the mind of French auteur Bruno Dumont, a Star Wars parody was probably somewhere at the bottom of the list.

And yet it’s been some time since the Cannes Grand Jury Prize laureate, who broke out in the late 90s with viscerally stylized, hard-hitting works of Gallic realism like The Life of Jesus and Humanity, has strayed far from his gritty roots towards a brand of accentuated arthouse satire.

His latest effort, the sci-fi farce The Empire (L’Empire), definitely fits the latter mold, although it’s loaded with enough VFX, light saber battles, spacecrafts and prophecies to give George Lucas a run for his money. That is, if Lucas decided to set the next Star Wars in a sleepy northern French city, used a local mechanic to play one of the leads and tossed in a few flagrant sex scenes,...

Naomi Watts (Mulholland Drive), Tye Sheridan (Ready Player One), Michael Imperioli (The White Lotus) and Norman Reedus (The Walking Dead franchise) have signed on to star in The Housewife, a psychological drama from first-time feature filmmaker Ben Shirinian that is launching foreign sales at EFM via Neon International.

Based on a true story from 1964, the film follows a determined young New York Times journalist (Sheridan) as he tracks down a potential Nazi officer living secretly in Queens. When he befriends the suspect’s elegant and charming wife (Watts), the implications of his investigation become much more unsettling.

Robbie Brenner, Kevin McKeon (Call Jane), and Lee Broda (May December) are producing alongside EP Alyssa Hill, who also penned the script. CAA Media Finance is repping domestic rights. Production is set to commence in June.

Currently starring as socialite Babe Paley in Ryan Murphy’s Feud: Capote vs. The Swans,...