Notizie

Netflix has lifted the lid on a quartet of new movies out of Brazil.

The four projects are all in production and the streamer, keen to underscore its contribution to Brazilian cinema and the local production biz, was quick to note they are filming across four Brazilian states.

Rafael Vitti and canine star Amendoim will appear in Caramelo, billed as a heartwarming drama that pays tribute to a Brazilian cultural symbol, the stray mutt. Filmed in São Paulo, the story follows Pedro, an ambitious chef whose life is upended by unexpected diagnosis. With the help of a stray four-legged friend, he embarks on an emotional journey.

Migdal Filmes is producing, its first partnership with Netflix. Diego Freitas, who created the idea, directs.

There will also be an adaptation of Valter Hugo Mãe’s novel The Son of a Thousand Men hitting Netflix screens. Starring Rodrigo Santoro in the lead role,...

Mo Harawe’s debut feature The Village Next to Paradise is a haunting offering. The film, which premiered at Cannes in the Un Certain Regard section and is the first Somali film to ever screen on the Croisette, presents a compelling narrative of one family’s survival in a sleepy Somali town. But it’s the devastating backdrop against which their drama plays out that lingers long after the credits roll.

The siren wails of drones soundtrack each scene of Harawe’s film, which opens with footage of a real-life report of a United States drone strike on Somalia. Since the U.S. began using drones in the East African country in the early 2000s, Somalis have suffered at the hands of an enveloping and ravenous counterterrorism operation. According to data from the New America foundation, there have been more than 300 documented uses of drones resulting in hundreds of known civilian deaths.

Mexican Rigoberto Pérezcano’s “Lovers Fare Goodbye,” a poignant, exquisitely shot tale of star-crossed young love dominated prizes at Primer Corte, Ventana Sur’s key arthouse pic competition. The prize and dozens of others were announced Friday at Latin America’s most important film-tv mart-meet.

Organizers confirmed a total Ventana Sur attendance of 4,300 delegates, some 30% up on just a year ago.

Lensed in black-and-white and set in the Oaxaca valley, “Lovers” was always the frontrunner Primer Corte, which, with parallel section Copia Final, focuses much of the attention of buyers at Ventana Sur.

“Lovers” six prizes looks like a historical record. So do the total 88 industry awards at 12 of 14 sections – and Variety might be missing some – dolled out at Ventana Sur’s kudos ceremony. That serves testament to just how much the market has grown from 2009 when it launched at Buenos Aires’ former Harrods building with, of sections, just Primer...

Magnolia Pictures International, the global sales arm of the leading U.S. distribution company, is rebranding to Magnify as it plans to invest in more projects at earlier stages.

The sales arm has handled international sales on a number of award-winning indie movies, including “Tangerine,” “Swan Song” and recent Sundance breakouts, “Little Richard: I Am Everything” and “Kokomo City.” Magnify’s extensive sales library includes “We Own The Night,” “Good Night, and Good Luck,” “Humpday,” “The Wolfpack,” and “Two Lovers.”

Under the rebranded label, Magnify will continue to handle international sales for titles acquired by Magnolia Pictures for worldwide rights, but will also board and invest in more projects at earlier stages for global sales. The editorial line of the banner will also remain focused on director-driven titles, horror, thrillers, drama, documentaries, and international feature films.

As part of Magnify’s growth strategy, industry veteran Lorna Lee Torres, now based in Madrid,...

In 2012, a Dutch company called Mars One announced grand plans to colonize the red planet. Over 200,000 people applied to participate in the effort and become the first humans in the universe to establish a permanent colony on Mars.

Seven years later, Mars One collapsed into bankruptcy among accusations of mismanagement and the dream to send humans to live on Mars died.

Now Ridley Scott Associates (Rsa Films), the “Alien” director’s commercial production company, is set to make a documentary series about the enterprise after signing an exclusive access agreement with Mars One founder Bas Lansdorp, Variety can confirm.

Tentatively titled “Mars One: No Going Back,” the series will have access to thousands of hours of video archives as well as the people behind Mars One and, of course, the applicants who were prepared to leave earth behind forever.

“Whilst the series lays bare the true story of Mars One...

In her directorial debut Mountains, Monica Sorelle approaches the story of a Haitian family confronting gentrification with a delicate and discerning eye. The languidly paced feature observes Xavier (Atibon Nazaire), a demolition worker contemplating buying a better home while navigating the implications of his Miami neighborhood’s changing dynamics.

Xavier, his wife Esperance (Sheila Anozier) and their adult son Junior (Chris Renois) live in Little Haiti, a vibrant enclave in Miami that’s home to tens of thousands of Haitian immigrants. The neighborhood’s name is credited to Viter Juste, an activist who moved to Miami from Brooklyn in 1973 and convinced other Haitians to join him. The area’s proximity to both the beach and the city’s downtown made it attractive. Today, its protection from major flooding — it’s 10 feet above sea level — has caught the eye of developers and real estate agents. They’ve marketed Little Haiti as...

Though it is best known for its American productions, it must also be acknowledged that Netflix has shown itself quite willing to produce international films as well. As the streaming service has looked to expand its reach around the world, it has become one of the best homes for movies in languages other than English as well as a hub for popular foreign series such as Money Heist and Squid Game​​​​​​.

Netflix's original international movies bring big budgets and worldwide exposure to filmmakers that would have been hard to seek out otherwise. As with all Netflix originals, it can be difficult for subscribers to sort out the wheat from the chaff, but Netflix's best original international movies provide a great way for viewers to see actors, directors, and even genres they've never been exposed to before, and some have even been nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars.

Ride Or Die (2021)

Adapted from a manga,...

Breaking out of traditional, male, Rio de Janeiro/São Paulo strongholds to finally embrace regional, Black and Indigenous writer-directors, Brazil’s next generation of cinematic talent tackles a huge gamut of themes, styles and concern about social issues. Variety profiles 10 figures who look set to help shape the future of Brazilian filmmaking.

Caru Alves de Souza

Alves de Souza has such films as 2020 Berlin Generation winner “My Name Is Baghdad,” a plucky tale of adolescence on the fringes of society, and 2013’s San Sebastian Horizontes Latinos debut “Underage,” a riveting look at juvenile justice under her belt. She shreds ignorance with her belief “in the power of a cinema that questions established norms but also offers some alternative.”

At this year’s Berlin Co-Production Market, her “Lonely Hearts” deals with the fate of a family porn theater business, its characters “contradictory, flawed, idiosyncratic, and on the other hand, extremely empathetic,...

Legal docudrama Saint Omer was voted Best Picture at the 34th Annual Palm Springs International Film Festival, which announced this year’s juried award winners today.

Saint Omer wins for its ability “to expertly interrogate issues of society, culture, race, and gender,” the festival release stated. “Alice Diop, as screenwriter and director, delivers a film that explores different dynamics of Black women in contemporary France, drawing empathetic lead performances from Kayije Kagame and Guslagie Malanga. By harnessing the skills of her technical team, Diop turns Saint Omer into a shrewd, cogent, ambitious, and overwhelming film which teases a metafictional awareness while remaining clear-eyed and unsentimental.”

The Palm Springs festival took place from January 5-16 and screened 134 films from 64 countries, including 27 premieres. The lineup includes 35 of the International Feature Film Oscar submissions.

The jury award categories included the Fipresci Prize for films...

If you told me that the director Gabriel Martins thought exclusively in images, I wouldn’t be surprised.

Mars One, his gracefully composed observation of a working-class Brazilian family, is littered with arresting shots. Take the one of Tércia, the matriarch played by Rejane Faria, cleaning a window: Her curly mop of bleached blonde hair remains static as her right hand slides across the glass, her back muscles flexing in response to the laborious task. Or the scene of her daughter Eunice (Camilla Damião) consummating her love with her girlfriend on the floor of an empty penthouse apartment. Her dark skin gleams against the sharp, white-tiled floor as the baby-blue colored braids of her lover slither across her skin. These scenes are occasions — charged flashes of the director’s loving preoccupation with his story. And who wouldn’t be obsessed with such a humane, well-calibrated tale?

Mars One, which premiered...

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

Il Buco (Michelangelo Frammartino)

With Il Buco, Michelangelo Frammartino returns to the Calabrian countryside 12 years after Le Quattro Volte. Oscillating between a shepherd slowly dying and a nearby cave-diving expedition, Frammartino and cinematographer Renata Berta capture the movement inside their static frames with elegance. A soccer ball is kicked back and forth over the cave entrance, upping the stakes of an errant kick, burning magazine pages float down into the darkness illuminating the cave depths for the explorers and the audience—Il Buco is an experiential ode to death as the final frontier. – Caleb H.

Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel

Contemporary Japan

A new series focusing on recent(ish) Japanese cinema features exclusive streaming homes for films by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Hirokazu Koreeda,...

Keep track of all the submissions for best international feature at the 2023 Academy Awards.

Entries for the 2023 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

Scroll down for profiles of each Oscar entry

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between January 1, 2022 and November 30, 2022. The deadline for submissions to the Academy is October 3, 2022.

A shortlist of 15 finalists is...

Keep track of all the submissions for best international feature at the 2023 Academy Awards.

Entries for the 2023 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

Scroll down for profiles of each Oscar entry

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between January 1, 2022 and November 30, 2022. The deadline for submissions to the Academy is October 3, 2022.

A shortlist of 15 finalists is...

Keep track of all the submissions for best international feature at the 2023 Academy Awards.

Entries for the 2023 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

Scroll down for profiles of each Oscar entry

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between January 1, 2022 and November 30, 2022. The deadline for submissions to the Academy is October 3, 2022.

A shortlist of 15 finalists is...

Keep track of all the submissions for best international feature at the 2023 Academy Awards.

Entries for the 2023 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

Scroll down for profiles of each Oscar entry

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between January 1, 2022 and November 30, 2022. The deadline for submissions to the Academy is October 3, 2022.

A shortlist of 15 finalists is...

Keep track of all the submissions for best international feature at the 2023 Academy Awards.

Entries for the 2023 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

Scroll down for profiles of each Oscar entry

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between January 1, 2022 and November 30, 2022. The deadline for submissions to the Academy is October 3, 2022.

A shortlist of 15 finalists is...

Keep track of all the submissions for best international feature at the 2023 Academy Awards.

Entries for the 2023 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

Scroll down for profiles of each Oscar entry

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between January 1, 2022 and November 30, 2022. The deadline for submissions to the Academy is October 3, 2022.

A shortlist of 15 finalists is...

Keep track of all the submissions for best international feature at the 2023 Academy Awards.

Entries for the 2023 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

Scroll down for profiles of each Oscar entry

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between January 1, 2022 and November 30, 2022. The deadline for submissions to the Academy is October 3, 2022.

A shortlist of 15 finalists is...

Keep track of all the submissions for best international feature at the 2023 Academy Awards.

Entries for the 2023 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

Scroll down for profiles of each Oscar entry

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between January 1, 2022 and November 30, 2022. The deadline for submissions to the Academy is October 3, 2022.

A shortlist of 15 finalists is...

Keep track of all the submissions for best international feature at the 2023 Academy Awards.

Entries for the 2023 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

Scroll down for profiles of each Oscar entry

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between January 1, 2022 and November 30, 2022. The deadline for submissions to the Academy is October 3, 2022.

A shortlist of 15 finalists is...

Keep track of all the submissions for best international feature at the 2023 Academy Awards.

Entries for the 2023 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

Scroll down for profiles of each Oscar entry

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between January 1, 2022 and November 30, 2022. The deadline for submissions to the Academy is October 3, 2022.

A shortlist of 15 finalists is...

Magnolia Pictures International has acquired worldwide rights, including U.S. sales rights, to “Neon Spring” by writer-director Matīss Kaža (“One Ticket Please”).

The film will have its world premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival on Aug. 15.

Set to strobe lights and a techno soundtrack, “Neon Spring” chronicles two months in the life of Laine, a college girl from a middle-class suburb in Latvia. As Laine’s father distances himself from his crumbling marriage and his family, Laine is unable to cope with the separation and discovers the edgy Riga party scene, where she falls in love with seasoned raver Gunda. Going from rave to rave, the girls journey into a drug-fueled underworld of anarchy, freedom and exploration.

Inspired by actual experiences of the filmmaker, the film is “an honest and authentic story that explores the complexity of young relationships and sexual discoveries, loneliness and escapism, without being didactic or preachy,...

Indemnity, Italian Studies, Ultrasound, Mars One attract buyers.

Magnolia Pictures International has announced multiple territory sales on its EFM slate led by South African thriller Indemnity, drama Italian Studies, sci-fi Ultrasound and Brazilian Sundance premiere Mars One.

Travis Taute’s Indemnity is described as a Bourne-esque story about a former firefighter in Cape Town accused of murdering his wife. Sales have closed for France (Swift), Germany (Meteor), Latin America (A2/ Great Movies), Cis (New People Company), South Korea (Challan), Taiwan (Best Digital) and Poland (Mayfly). Magnolia’s genre label Magnet released the thriller in the US on February 11 and Mongrel...

There’s an entire universe out there, even when it feels like your corner of the world has been turned upside down. Who has not felt like they’ve been roaming a foreign planet at one point or another? Mars One, Gabriel Martin’s moving drama of working-class social realism, begins with the election of Jair Bolsonaro, but to the family at the center of the film, he’s a minor figure in an otherwise world of extreme inequalities in Rio. The ensemble drama follows a nuclear working-class family living in a small but somewhat happy home, including father Wellington (Carlos Franciso), who works as a superintendent in a wealthy luxury apartment complex; mother Tercia (Rejane Faria) a housekeeper; law student daughter Eunice (Camilla Damiao); and twelve-year-old son Deivinho (Cicero Lucas).

Much of the film’s first act lovingly captures the rhythms of normal life for the family including work,...

We have only just settled into the genial rhythms of Gabriel Martins’ “Mars One,” meeting one by one the loving, yearning family of four at its heart when, like capable, brassy matriarch Tércia (Rejane Faria), we get a shock to the system. Sitting at a lunch counter, Tércia is trying to ignore the ranting of a homeless man behind her. “Brazil is not for amateurs!” he bellows, and she shifts, more irritated than alarmed, until the man pulls out a bomb. The other diners flee, but Tércia remains rooted in horror as it explodes.

That this apparent terrorist attack is actually just a particularly nasty prank being pulled by a TV crew, is immediately revealed, though Tércia remains traumatized even when her family laugh off her experience at dinner that night. And the fake-out can’t help but feel a little similar to Martins’ film in its entirety: Despite a...

Executives upbeat over opportunities as households switch from linear TV to streaming.

Netflix reported 8.3m global paid subscriber gains in the fourth quarter of 2021, slightly behind its forecast of 8.5m, as member levels in Europe, the Middle East and Africa continued to catch up with the US and Canada.

The Emea region added 3.5m paid members which, while lower than 4.46m in the year-ago period, boosted the subscriber level there to 74.04m and record quarterly revenue exceeded $2.5bn for the first time.

Subscriber levels in the region are now close to the 75.22m number in the US and Canada, which...

Selected for Sundance’s 2022 World Dramatic Competition and winner of Ventana Sur’s $10,000 Paradiso Wip Award, “Mars One” returns Brazil’s Gabriel Martins to to the sense of 2019’s “In the Heart of the World”– of a society yearning for something better, to which it adds a yawning generational gulf.

Tércia, for example, dreams of her daughter becoming a dutiful housewife like herself. So her world is rocked when Eunice moves out of the family home to live with her girlfriend.

Father Wellington, a recovering alcoholic, plans his son’s future career as a national soccer star. But Deivid dreams of become an astrophysicist and part of Mars One, the first manned mission to the Red Planet in 2030.

As the months pass, the Martins, a lower-middle class Black family in Contagem, will have to find a way of coping with all the problems of the present while still dreaming of a better future,...

Further details on strategy expected by EFM.

Industry veteran Nick Donnermeyer has left Bleiberg Entertainment after 16 years to head up sales at Yale Entertainment’s new sales venture Great Escape.

Yale’s Jordan Yale Levine and Jordan Beckerman announced the news on Thursday (January 20) and said Great Escape will represent in-house titles and third-party content. Further details on the strategy will emerge during the online EFM.

Great Escape will reside under the Yale Entertainment umbrella alongside Yale Productions. Donnermeyer, who serves as president of Great Escape, said Yale’s output over the last two years was “unmatched”.

The group recently...