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Based on the homonymous novel by Lee Cheong-joon, “Festival – 1996” finds Im Kwon-taek at his most experimental endeavor of the 90s, in an effort that netted him the Best Film Award at the 1996 Blue Dragon Awards.

Lee Joon-seop is a famous writer in his 40s, who suffers, however, from guilt for his treatment of a number of people in his life, including a niece, Yong-soon, and his senile mother, whom he has left to be taken care of in the village he grew up in, by relatives and the neighbors. One day, he is informed of her death and returns to his birthplace, where a number of family and friends have also arrived to attend the funeral. A journalist from Seoul, Hye-rim, also follows him, in an effort to question the people who know him in the area and write a piece on the actual life of the famous author.

Chicago – The 56th Chicago International Film Festival will honor a prime comic force on its Opening Night on Wednesday, October 14th, 2020. The premiere of the Showtime documentary “Belushi” is a chronicle of John Belushi, directed by R.J. Cutler.

R.J. Cutler is a documentarian, filmmaker, TV producer and theater director. “Belushi” is his fourth full-length documentary as director, and contains unique interviews done in the era right after John Belushi’s passing in 1982, with contemporaries like wife Judy Belushi, Dan Akyroyd, “Saturday Night Live Producer” Lorne Michaels, Chevy Chase, Carrie Fisher and Jim Belushi. Besides the TV and film clips, Cutler added vivid animation sequences to illustrate points in Belushi’s life, that adds to the capturing of his subject’s essence, which for many biographers had been elusive.

Young John Belushi in ‘Belushi,’ the Opening Night Film of the 56th Chicago International Film Festival

Photo credit: Showtime

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Madrid-based The Mediapro Studio (Tms), one of Europe’s biggest independent film and TV players, had a smashing 2019 with the release of 126 titles. And then the pandemic struck, forcing the company to shut down 56 shows. Months later, the Spanish outfit is slowly getting back on track by enrolling major U.S. players and Spain’s biggest stars in Hollywood.

Tms is teaming with Disney Plus Latin America on what it describes as an ambitious, music-laced romantic thriller set against a Caribbean background. Its shoot was postponed because of Covid-19.

Meanwhile, David Simon, creator of “The Wire,” is writing drama “A Dry Run,” a series set up at Tms that follows Abraham Lincoln Battalion members who come to Spain to fight fascism during the Spanish Civil War.

Headlined by Penelope Cruz and Antonio Banderas, drama comedy “Official Competition” has resumed filming in Madrid; a second Tms movie, labor relations-themed “The Good Boss,...

Responding to an online distribution landscape driven primarily by the patterns of the video game industry, organizers of the leading international VR festivals have started on a plan to carve out a niche all for themselves – and for the artistically minded project their festivals champion.

“The creative or artistic content in VR do not have an identifiable place to be hosted [online],” Venice Film Festival VR curator Michel Reilhac, an expert in interactive and immersive media, tells Variety. “We think there’s a specific audience for these kinds of pieces, but [in the current online marketplaces] this content is drowned out in a sea of games. So we felt it was time to think of a way to congregate our artistic content within an identifiable platform that would be curated with a guarantee of quality.”

And so the Venice VR curator has partnered with counterparts at festivals like Tribeca, South by Southwest and NewImages, among others,...

Mort Rifkin, the ostensible novelist at the center of “Rifkin’s Festival,” has longterm writer’s block, and it’s hard to imagine that Woody Allen has ever empathized less with a character. Where Mort believes it’s futile to write if the finished work is not going to be on the level of Dostoevsky, the 84-year-old Allen continues churning out screenplays on an annual basis, unencumbered even by the increasingly distant memory of his own greatest work. His 49th feature, “Rifkin’s Festival” is the latest in a lengthy string of undistinguished bagatelles that might all be described as effortless, and not in an especially complimentary fashion.

Following Wallace Shawn and a typically jumbled grab-bag of fine actors as they mosey around the San Sebastián Film Festival — for which the film acts as an extended promo, duly opening this year’s edition — “Rifkin’s Festival” is a scenic summer-wind romcom that...

These days, every new Woody Allen film invites the same question: Is it possible to review the film and not its disgraced filmmaker? “Rifkin’s Festival” makes this challenge especially daunting: All the action takes place at the San Sebastian Film Festival, where the film opened this year’s edition. Wallace Shawn stars as a revered but neurotic director with romantic delusions. And if it seems like Allen is really asking for it, there’s one more factor working against the 84-year-old filmmaker: The film is far from vintage Allen and would struggle to find a mass audiences even before it turned against him.

Having said that, “Rifkin’s Festival” is a notch above middling Allen comedies like last year’s “A Rainy Day in New York,” thanks to delightful turns from Shawn and Gina Gershon as well as some zany stabs at film history in a series of black-and-white dream...

Joes Luis Rebordinos has put togther a festival despite rising Covid-19 cases in Spain.

Jose Luis Rebordinos, director of the San Sebastián International Film Festival, reveals the planning involved in hosting a film festival during a global pandemic, managing the loss in revenue and the international films and guests he is looking forward to celebraging.

How has the increase of Covid-19 cases in Spain impact the last stage of preparations for the start of the festival?

Despite the attention given to the rise of cases, the number of cases that have required hospitalisation and ICU hasn’t gone up so much,...

Braving Covid-19, Spain’s 68th San Sebastián Film Festival bowed on-site on Sept. 18, launching a somewhat slimmed edition that maintains, however, all its main sections. Following, seven more takes on the highest-profile film event in the Spanish-speaking world as it finally kicks off:

Depp, Dillon, Gershon Confirm Attendance

Stars are rallying round this year’s San Sebastian Film Festival. Viggo Mortensen is already confirmed as the recipient of a Donostia Award. On Thursday, the festival announced that Johnny Depp, who takes a producer credit on Julien Temple’s “Crock of Gold: A Few Rounds with Shane MacGowan,” will also be in town, as Matt Dillon, director of Cuban music doc “The Great Fellove,” and Gina Gershon, star of Woody Allen’s “Rifkin’s Festival.” “The Skin I Live In’s” Elena Anaya, Rifkin’s Festival’s” other female lead, also attends along with a strong Spanish star contingent attached to other titles.

Woody Allen’s career continues to plow ahead with the upcoming world premiere of his new romantic-comedy “Rifkin’s Festival” on the opening night of Spain’s 2020 San Sebastian Film Festival (September 18). The occasion makes sense for “Rifkin’s Festival” as the story centers around an American couple who attends the San Sebastian Film Festival. Allen shot the film on location in San Sebastian.

“Rifkin’s Festival” stars Gina Gershon and Wallace Shawn as the American couple who travel to the San Sebastian Film Festival and are pulled in opposite directions. The wife starts an affair with a famous French film director and the husband falls in love with a local Spanish woman. The cast also includes Elena Anaya, Louis Garrel, and Christoph Waltz.

“Rifkin’s Festival” will mark Allen’s second San Sebastian opener after “Melinda and Melinda” at the 2004 festival, where he was also the recipient of the Donostia Award for career achievement.

Woody Allen’s latest film, “Rifkin’s Festival,” has a first trailer, which Variety can share exclusively.

Produced by Spain’s The Mediapro Studio, Allen’s own Gravier Productions and Italy’s Wildside, the comedy will world premiere at Spain’s 68th San Sebastian Film Festival, opening the event on Sept. 18.

The setting of the world premiere seems highly appropriate for a film that takes place at the San Sebastian Film Festival and turns insistently, if the trailer is anything to go by, on the confusion of reality and fantasy.

Narrated by the husband of a married American couple, played by Wallace Shawn, who flies to the San Sebastian Film Festival, where he handles press, the trailer to “Rifkin’s Festival” shows the couple succumbing to the beauty and charm of Spain and the fantasy of the movies.

The wife, played by Gina Gershon, also succumbs to the charms of a...

Country singer RaeLynn now has her own bold sense of style and is the face of Too Faced’s new makeup collection, but growing up she looked to stars like her friend Gwen Stefani for style inspiration.

“This is really funny. Growing up, I was obsessed with the Harajuku Girls brand, so the first time I met Gwen I told her ‘I don’t wanna make you feel old or anything, but the first thing I bought was your shoes!'” the Voice alum, 23, told People exclusively at a launch party for Too Faced’s “Life’s a Festival — Peace,...

Babyshambles are shocked they have been asked to play at British music festivals Reading and Leeds - because of frontman's Pete Doherty bad behaviour in 2005.

After causing havoc at the festivals three years ago, the Kilimanjaro hitmakers were banned by event organisers - who now appear to have reneged on their decision.

Bassist Drew McConnell says, "I remember getting a phonecall the next day saying we'd never play the event again.

"Peter head-butted (Razorlight's) Jonny Borrell and, minutes before we were meant to go on, our guitarist tore off in a golf buggy cackling manically.

"I don't know why they're letting us back, I guess tempers fade."...