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It is fascinating what the human mind will allow. Riefenstahl, a documentary directed by Andres Veiel about the life of Leni Riefenstahl, explores the rationalizations the filmmaker allowed herself in order to explain her collaborations with the Nazi Party in Germany during their time in power. Until the day she died (at 101 years old in 2003), Riefenstahl refuted accusations that she was aware of the crimes being committed around her. “I never saw any atrocities happening,” she says in an interview from 1976, after the interviewer presents her with an account of her witnessing the murder of 22 Jews. She denies it adamantly. Throughout the film, we watch her deny much, while separate...

Paul Dano becomes embroiled in the cold heart of the new Russia in Olivier Assayas‘ mellow recounting of three decades of the post-ussr empire’s history in “The Wizard of the Kremlin.” A respectable if minor-register effort from the sometimes-detached director of two “Irma Veps” and “Personal Shopper,” this two-and-half-hour-plus political epic plays out as a long monologue delivered by Vadim Baranov (Dano), a fictional Vladimir Putin (Jude Law) spin doctor, owing to Giuliano da Empoli’s debut novel.

Assayas’ serialized tour through the dark corridors of the Kremlin and the machinations and theatrics it took to fashion a certain former Kgb agent into the most reviled authoritarian of our time is chilled without ever being chilling: It’s not a thriller, it’s not really a comedy, and it’s unlikely to start a revolution despite a cruel jolt of a final shot.

But it’s not in Assayas...

Premiering at Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, Orwell: 2+2=5 marks the latest documentary from I Am Not Your Negro and Exterminate All the Brutes director Raoul Peck. Capturing the prophetic writings of 1984 and Animal Farm author George Orwell while drawing parallels to the modern day, the film will open on October 3 and now Neon has released the first trailer.

Here’s the synopsis: “George Orwell was one of the most visionary authors of the 20th Century, whose novels 1984 and Animal Farm foretold a chilling, all-to-believable authoritarian future. Acclaimed director Raoul Peck (Academy Award-nominated I Am Not Your Negro), working in collaboration with the Orwell Estate, seamlessly interweaves historical clips, readings from Orwell’s diary,...

Looks like Giancarlo Esposito is bringing some big guns to his Emmy campaign — literally. During a conversation about his Best Drama Guest Actor nominated for The Boys, the actor best known for playing bad guys like Breaking Bad's Gus Fring and The Mandalorian's Moff Gideon gave us an impromptu sneak peek at his muscular transformation for an upcoming action movie. "I got to have some protein," Esposito joked while flexing his superhero-sized biceps.

You might say that his role in The Boys is already plenty meaty. Esposito joined the fan-favorite Prime Video series in its Season 1 finale as Stan Edgar, the fastidious head Vought International — the mega-corporation that controls the superhero industrial complex dominating almost every aspect of the show's parallel reality. A recurring character over the next two seasons, Stan eventually lost that job after being betrayed by his adopted daughter and disciple, Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit), and tossed in prison.

"Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful... and murder respectable." Neon has unveiled the official trailer for a vitally important new documentary film titled Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5, the latest creation from master doc filmmaker Raoul Peck. This premiered at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival and next plays at the Toronto Film Festival before it hits US theaters in October. The ultimate & comprehensive documentary about the exceptional writer George Orwell. Peck's fascinating new doc is about Orwell, but also about his predictions, and his examination about where society might end up – which is exactly where we are now... "Peck doesn't just present the information but shows new ways of seeing it, drawing patterns & connections we might not otherwise realize, championing Orwell as a man from the past who just might hold the key to the world's future." This film feels like Peck's rightfully angry expression about everything wrong with the world today,...

Audible is turning up the suspense this fall with the return of The Prophecy, the hit audio drama that blends mystery, faith, and supernatural danger into a binge-worthy sonic experience. Season two drops September 25, exclusively on Audible, and Emmy-winning powerhouse Kerry Washington is once again pulling double duty as executive producer and star, reprising her role as Dr. Virginia Edwards.

Produced by Audible in partnership with Simpson Street and Qcode, the new season brings back Alano Miller (Underground) and introduces an impressive lineup of fresh talent, including Giancarlo Esposito (Breaking Bad), Dulé Hill (Psych), Rhenzy Feliz (The Penguin), Ebony Obsidian (If Beale Street Could Talk), Eme Ikwuakor (On My Block), Yvette Nicole Brown (Community), Annie Gonzalez (Flamin’ Hot), Guillermo Diaz (Scandal), Crystal Fox (The Haves and the Have Nots), Roz Stanley, and Mara Shuster-Lefkowitz (Searching for Sisterhood). Series creator Randy McKinnon is back steering the ship, with Malakai (The Chi...

Today’s Atlantic games are pretty simple since it’s the start of the week. Did you know that The Atlantic has five games that reset daily? You can play four of them for free every day. The other games include Crossword, Fluxis, and Stacks. You can check out the games here.

You’ll have noticed that there’s been a rise in daily puzzle games since the success of games like Wordle and Connections. And we’re happy to say that there are some very fun and original ones out there.

If you need help with any of them, we’ve got your back with daily solutions. Let’s take a look at the solutions for all the Atlantic Games for August 11, 2025.

Bracket City Solution for August 11, 2025 Image Credit: The Atlantic/FandomWire

Once again, we are back with Bracket City. The answers today are mostly simple, outside of a select few,...

This year’s slate of 23 documentaries from 18 countries at the 50th Toronto International Film Festival is a melange of newsy subjects, rising directors, and potential Oscar contenders covering explorers, journalists, sex workers, activists, soldiers, and champion whistlers.

The TIFF Documentary Selection will open with two-time short documentary Oscar-winner Ben Proudfoot’s “The Eyes of Ghana,” a sales title which profiles the Ghanaian filmmaker Chris Hesse and is backed by executive producers Barack and Michelle Obama. “It is a celebration of the power of cinema,” TIFF documentary programmer Thom Powers told IndieWire via Zoom. “For 60 years, Hesse, who’s still alive in his nineties and documented the early days of the Africa’s independence movement, has helped to maintain the archive of his footage from all that time.”

This year’s nonfiction lineup, culled from a record 1,000 submissions, includes 16 world premieres, many of which are sales titles. Two high-profile docs are...

Oscar-winning director Ben Proudfoot’s The Eyes of Ghana, executive produced by Barack and Michelle Obama, is set to open the Toronto Film Festival’s Doc sidebar, organizers said Wednesday.

Nova Scotia-raised and L.A.-based Proudfoot won his two Academy Awards for his short documentary films The Queen of Basketball and The Last Repair Shop that impressed Oscar voters with their cinematic poetry and craft.

Now it has taken the Obamas’ Higher Ground Productions and Oscar-nominated documentary maker Moses Bwayo to convince Proudfoot to bring his emotional and immersive storytelling to the feature documentary with a portrait of Chris Hesse, the personal cinematographer for Kwame Nkrumah who reveals a vast library of lost films about the legendary African leader to modern audiences.

There’s no word on whether the Obamas will be in Toronto for the world premiere of The Eyes of Ghana, which also recounts the rise and fall of Nkrumah,...

Right now, the Harry Potter franchise is entering a new era. The beloved original movies are all over a decade old at this point, and they still remain a cultural behemoth. Yet still, an all-new live-action adaptation has already begun filming, coming to HBO in 2027. And that's not all: Audible will soon debut a full-cast audio drama of the books.

Of course, Harry Potter has been around in audiobook form for years and years. Look no further than the version narrated by Stephen Fry, which is probably the most famous audiobook version of the story. However, the new project being cooked up by Audible is far from a traditional audiobook; it's a full-blown, ensemble cast audio dramatization. It adapts all seven novels in immersive Dolby Atmos, with an original score and real-world sound effects.

In recent years, Audible has published numerous immersive, ensemble adaptations of popular books. For instance, one...

Bond, who died in December, made some of the most original films in British cinema history – particularly the unsettling films he and Arden made together in the 1960s and 70s

The death of Jack Bond in December last year brought an end to one of the most remarkable, and remarkably undervalued, chapters in British cinema. Bond is perhaps best known for the Pet Shop Boys movie It Couldn’t Happen Here, released in 1988; but that was just one pitstop in an unusually shaped career that took the form of, if not two halves, two distinct sections that in retrospect appear subtly intertwined.

Bond’s commission from the Pet Shop Boys stemmed from earlier work on The South Bank Show, particularly an episode about Roald Dahl in which the author encounters characters from his books – and in fact much of Bond’s career was occupied by what are essentially arts documentaries, albeit highly unconventional ones.

Harlem’s Maysles Documentary Center is giving recognition to three of this year’s top nonfiction films with Oscar potential – Orwell: 2+2=5 from director Raoul Peck, The Perfect Neighbor directed by Geeta Gandbhir, and Sundance winner Seeds, directed by Britanny Shyne.

The center will honor the films at the 6th annual Albie Awards dinner on September 24 at Ginny’s Supper Club @ Red Rooster in New York City.

“To date the Albies have been an early predictor of top contenders for the Academy Awards and other significant honors,” notes Kazembe Balagun, executive director of Mayles Documentary Center. “This year, we are excited to honor Raoul Peck’s Orwell: 2+2=5, Geeta Gandbhir’s The Perfect Neighbor, and Brittany Shyne’s Seeds.”

‘Orwell: 2+2=5’ Velvet Films/Jigsaw Productions/Neon

Peck’s documentary, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May, examines the life and work of author George Orwell, with particular emphasis on the prescient...

Britain, the 1980s. Thatcher. Black Monday. Riots. Strikes. Racism. In 1984, George Orwell’s 1984 became a bestseller again, slotting right into the nightmarish dystopia it had predicted. As unemployment figures soared, heroin addiction spread, as did HIV and AIDS. It was bloody miserable.

Then: 1988. Ecstasy, a drug promoting love and togetherness, arrived in the U.K., brought back from Ibiza — legend has it — by members of the Mancunian rock band New Order. The Second Summer of Love began. Two years later, Thatcher’s 15-year prime ministerial reign was over. Brit-pop happened.

The 2026 Oscars race for the documentary categories is coming into focus. IndieWire can announce the 2025 Albie Awards honorees, which leads directly into the campaign for securing an Academy Award nod.

The Albie Awards are billed as being a key industry event, especially as they take place prior to the New York Film Festival and at the start of Academy Awards campaigning. The 2025 Albie Awards will be held on September 24 at Ginny’s Supper Club at the Red Rooster in Harlem, with an after-party at the Maysles Documentary Center.

The 2025 honorees for the Albie Awards are a trio of acclaimed festival documentaries. Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Raoul Peck’s “Orwell: 2+2=5,” which premiered at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, is among the selections, along with Sundance award winners “The Perfect Neighbor” and “Seeds.”

“Orwell: 2+2=5” captures the life of “1984” author George Orwell. Peck previously directed “I Am Not Your Negro,” screened at the Maysles...

Sovereign is a story based on true-to-life events where a father-son duo kill two police officers in an infamous shootout known as the 2010 West Memphis police shootings. Starring Nick Offerman and Jacob Tremblay in leading roles, the film presents a provocative take on the modern world and the disregard for authority it inspires.

Although the film will be lost in the myriad of summer blockbusters and films like Superman, the Nick Offerman film wants to give out a quiet message about the current situation and how far people can go before all hell breaks loose.

Nick Offerman’s Sovereign Is the Perfect Antithesis to Superman

The father-son relationship in Sovereign, where Offerman’s Jerry Kane teaches his son Joe Kane extremist views about the world, and how they are above the law, is very similar to something that Jor-El said to David Corenswet’s Kal-El in James Gunn‘s Superman.

Andy Serkis’s animated take on Animal Farm bowed on 9 June at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, ending a fourteen-year quest to retell George Orwell’s fable for a new generation. The director told reporters the story “had to be animated” so viewers could keep a sense of innocence while confronting tyranny.

Serkis first boarded the project in 2011, steered it through a stalled Netflix pact in 2018 and finally placed production at London-based Cinesite in April 2022 with partners Aniventure and his own Imaginarium. Goodfellas is now selling the film worldwide, yet a domestic distributor has not been announced. The 96-minute feature showcases an ensemble that includes Seth Rogen, Gaten Matarazzo, Kieran Culkin, Glenn Close and Laverne Cox, while Serkis voices both Mr. Jones and Old Major.

Calling the picture a “cinematic storybook” and “political fairytale,” Serkis said he sought internalised emotion over pantomime and found that stylised CG let him...

Andy Serkis has wanted to make “Animal Farm” since he first read the book on a school bus as a kid. Now, after its premiere at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, he has realized his dream. But unlike he initially intended way back in 2012 when the adaptation was announced, the movie is animated and not motion capture.

“By definition, doing it as a live-action movie would have made it bleaker from the outset, darker, and the character designs that we were working on in the way that we were doing it was too heavy handed,” Serkis told The Wrap. “What the animated world gives you, which I’ve realized, is an innocence and a way of storytelling which allows the audience to connect and fill in the dots in a much more profound way. You can still have characters that are as meaningful and emotionally engaging, but you’re...

Andy Serkis remembered the first time he read George Orwell’s “Animal Farm.”

It was around the same time that he first read J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit”. He was on the bus to school and enchanted by the tale of animals and their fall into fascism. The original novel, published in 1945, dramatized the events of the Russian Revolution and the rise of Stalinism, but even removed from the historical context, Serkis was knocked out. “I was really hit by the book in a major way,” the actor and filmmaker told TheWrap at Annecy, where his animated adaptation made its premiere. “And it stayed with me.”

Later on he saw a theatrical production at the National Theater in London, “bizarrely with with humans using crutches and masks.” “I just found it so entrancing and like, Wow, there’s a way of visually bringing the story to life, other than what...

It’s taken over a decade, but Andy Serkis has finally brought his long-gestating adaptation of George Orwell’s Animal Farm to the screen. The animated adaptation of George Orwell’s 1945 classic premiered Monday night at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival.

Introducing the film ahead of the screening, Serkis reflected on the project’s turbulent journey from conception to completion. “We’ve been trying to create a version of George Orwell’s extraordinary fable for well over a decade, and it’s been an incredibly challenging conundrum with many twists and turns along the way,” he said.

The idea for the film was born during the filming of Rise of the Planet of the Apes in 2011, when Serkis, who plays Caesar, the leader of a rebellious army of simians overthrowing their the human masters, thought the time was right for a “retelling, a modern retelling,” of Orwell’s 1945 classic.

Andy Serkis will be returning to Middle Earth sooner than fans were expecting. The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum is the next live-action entry in the Lord of the Rings cinematic franchise. Rumors and casting updates have flooded the internet over the past few months, but very little about the project has been set in stone. Serkis, who directs the movie, as well as returning to voice and provide motion capture for the titular Gollum, has finally given fans the update we've been waiting for.

Andy Serkis recently sat down with Collider to promote the eagerly anticipated animated adaptation of George Orwell's Animal Farm at the Annecy Animation Festival in France. During the conversation, Serkis addressed the status of The Hunt for Gollum and revealed that he and the crew would be journeying back to Middle Earth in less than 12 months. "We're very early on in the process,...

Andy Serkis wants to keep his Animal Farm adaptation full of “innocence” to balance the book’s darkness.The 58-year-old actor and filmmaker is set to helm an animated take on George Orwell’s dystopian fable – which tells the story of a group of farm animals who rebel against their human owner in the hope of creating a society where they can be free and equal.He has now told Variety about why he chose animation as the format to tell the tale: “We started to work on it and did a lot of experimenting, which led us to realize that animation was the right medium for this adaptation. “That allowed us to keep the innocence of the storytelling that the original book had, while being able to say much more than live action would allow us to do. “In live action, such a story would necessarily have been darker from the outset.

Audible and Brock Media have unveiled a six-language audio adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice, recording pairs of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy for each edition and scheduling a 9 September 2025 release for the English version.

French performers Lyna Khoudri and Lucas Bravo—known for Emily in Paris and Ticket to Paradise—will voice the sparring leads in the Paris studio sessions, while Elite alumni Georgina Amorós and Omar Ayuso handle the roles for the Castilian Spanish production.

The English-language cast is headlined by Marisa Abela and Harris Dickinson, joined by Glenn Close, Bill Nighy, Jessie Buckley, Will Poulter and Toheeb Jimoh, a lineup that underscores Audible’s ambition to match screen casting standards.

Lulu Raczka’s script keeps Austen’s dialogue yet adds first-person narration from Elizabeth, a device designed to deepen character insight for listeners through Dolby Atmos spatial sound.

Director Dionne Edwards, making her audio debut after Pretty Red Dress,...

Andy Serkis’ animated take on George Orwell’s Animal Farm is now complete, and Serkis has been opening up about the project.

Andy Serkis has been chatting about his upcoming take on Animal Farm, an animated version of George Orwell’s novella that charts the fate of simple barnyard animals who seize control of their own destiny. Orwell’s novel is an allegory for the Russian revolution, and feels depressingly pertinent today.

Serkis’ adaptation feels like it’s been in development for an eternity, and to some degree, that’s the nature of animation. However, with the film making its global premiere at the Annecy Animation Festival yesterday and early reviews rolling in, the production is finally beginning to appear in front of audiences.

Serkis has been speaking to Variety about the film, not least the rather difficult trick of juggling a searing political allegory with the creation of a...

“Animal Farm” has always been, since its first publication in 1945 by British novelist George Orwell, both a timeless tale and a story of its time. It is no surprise, then, that Andy Serkis’ animated adaptation feels so deeply rooted in our own contemporary world.

Bringing the film to its global premiere at the Annecy Animation Festival yesterday, Serkis appeared moved and delighted to present “Animal Farm” in front of a packed Bonlieu. The film features a star-studded cast led by Seth Rogen (voicing a rowdy/eerie version of Napoleon), Gaten Matarazzo (Lucky), Woody Harrelson (Boxer) and Laverne Cox (Snowball), along with talents such as Iman Vellani, Kieran Culkin, Glenn Close and Serkis himself.

Back for the second year at an event that he, according to artistic director Marcel Jean, “immediately fell in love with,” Serkis spoke with Variety about the film, decades in the making.

Andy Serkis in Annecy Credit: Annecy

Firstly,...

Andy Serkis is heading back to Middle-earth, and this time he’s not just voicing and motion-capturing the most iconic CGI creature in cinema — he’s directing too. While promoting his long-gestating animated adaptation of Animal Farm at the Annecy Animation Festival in France, Serkis sat down with Collider’s Steve Weintraub and offered fans an exciting update on his upcoming Lord of the Rings spin-off centered on the artist formerly known as Smeagol in The Hunt for Gollum. Diving into the development of the movie, Serkis opened up by saying:

“We're very early on in the process. We've been talking about the film over the course of the last year. We’re about to start a period of prep in the next few months or so. We will be shooting in the early to mid-part of next year, I guess, and then it'll be as long as it takes to shoot,...

When George Orwell published “Animal Farm” 80 years ago, he intended the book — in which barnyard animals rebel against their human overlords to create an egalitarian society, only to slide back into a different form of tyranny — as a kid-friendly critique of Soviet society under Stalin. Now, director Andy Serkis has hatched an all-new computer-animated version (adapted by Nick Stoller) that makes Orwell’s masterpiece seem like a relic of the Cold War. That’s not to say such anti-totalitarian arguments no longer apply — one could argue they’re more relevant than ever today — but the message feels muddled amid all the pratfalls and fart jokes.

In a twist that Orwell (who died in 1950) might well have appreciated, the now-classic cartoon version of “Animal Farm” made in 1954 was backed by the CIA (as part of an active effort to insinuate its anti-communist talking points into Hollywood productions) and co-directed by married...

George Orwell had a unique talent for predicting the future in his books, notably 1984, but now seeing director Andy Serkis’ new animated take on Orwell’s 1945 all-too-predictive allegory and satirical story, Animal Farm, he seems more like a Nostradamus than ever. With a screenplay, alternately funny and frighteningly perceptive by Nicholas Stoller, this gorgeously animated version is not outwardly trying to be political but nevertheless is uncannily meeting its time and proving to be a little too close for comfort to America’s drift toward authoritarianism.

How did Orwell know this little parable he meant to mirror the 1917 Russian revolution, read by school kids for decades, could become so relevant in 2025, and for that matter how did these filmmakers and Serkis know? He started his quest to bring this new version to the screen at least as far back to 2013, three years before Donald Trump was elected for his first term,...

Andy Serkis's upcoming animated project has been cooking for over a decade at this point. With the release date just around the corner, Animal Farm has finally shared a sneak peek of what audiences can expect from director Serkis's genre-swapping adaptation of George Orwell's 1945 novella of the same name. While Orwell's original political allegory is more akin to the mo-cap actor's famous Planet of the Apesfilms, Serkis is pivoting to a more light-hearted and family-friendly version of the wartime tale. From the release of the poster, audiences could tell that the story would be a much more optimistic retelling. The newly released clip of a scene between a porky Napoleon, voiced by Seth Rogen, and a young and impressionable pig named Lucky, voiced by Gaten Matarazzo, tells audiences all they need to know about the upcoming animated comedy.

From the film's conception, Serkis has been letting the public...

Seth Rogen does not have high expectations for Kieran Culkin in the first footage from Andy Serkis’ animated feature Animal Farm.

Serkis directed the adaptation of George Orwell’s 1945 novella of the same name that focuses on a group of animals rising up against their owners. Animal Farm premieres this month at the Annecy Animation Festival and does not yet have a domestic release plan.

Rogen and Culkin lead the extensive cast that also includes Gaten Matarazzo, Glenn Close, Laverne Cox, Steve Buscemi, Woody Harrelson, Jim Parsons, Kathleen Turner, Iman Vellani and Serkis.

The footage shows pig Napoleon (Rogen) bonding with impressionable Lucky (Matarazzo) when Squealer also tries to connect with them. “Please remove yourself from this,” Rogen warns Culkin. “We’re trying to have a father-son moment.”

Serkis helmed the movie from a script by Nicholas Stoller after Serkis and Rupert Wyatt had penned a previous draft. Producing the film are Serkis,...

Ahead of its premiere at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival on Monday, the first footage from Andy Serkis's hotly anticipated animated adaptation of George Orwell's Animal Farm has been revealed. Variety exclusively shared the clip from Aniventure, which centers on Seth Rogen's Napoleon, who has a heartfelt conversation with Gaten Matarazzo's young pig Lucky, albeit with a brief interruption from Squealer, played by recent Oscar winner Kieran Culkin. It's a brief look at the pigs taking a moment to reflect in the aftermath of the animal rebellion on the farm, albeit with a more humorous, colorful, and family-friendly spin than the original novel. However, there are hints of the harrowing events to come as Napoleon hints that maybe not all animals are equal.

First announced in 2022, Serkis's Animal Farm follows a similar story to the dark satire, beginning with a group of animals who rebel...

The highly anticipated animated adaptation of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” world premiering on Monday at the Annecy Animation Festival, has debuted its first footage, Variety can reveal exclusively.

In the clip, we get our first look at Seth Rogen’s Napoleon, Gaten Matarazzo’s Lucky and Kieran Culkin’s Squealer as the trio catch up post-animal rebellion. Other notable Hollywood stars not present in the clip but who lend their voices to the cast include Woody Harrelson, Glenn Close, Steve Buscemi, Laverne Cox, Jim Parsons, Kathleen Turner, Iman Vellani and Serkis himself.

The film’s official synopsis reads: “When a group of farm animals rebel and kick their neglectful farmer off the land, life is good and the dream of a free, equitable future is within sight. But power struggles among some of literature’s most infamous characters ensue, and the realities of living in a world designed for...

Celebrity and documentary intersected on the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival this year with the world premiere of Bono: Stories of Surrender, the film about the U2 frontman directed by Andrew Dominik. The Irish rock star, his wife and two of his kids turned out for the glamorous late-night event on the Croisette, along with Kristen Stewart, Sean Penn, Mariska Hargitay, Imogen Poots, Cannes chief Thierry Frémaux and even the mayor of Cannes.

Before the premiere, Deadline’s Doc Talk podcast got a chance to visit with Bono to discuss the film, which explores the singer-songwriter’s relationship with his father and losing his mother when he was a teenager. Today’s edition of the show features our conversation with Bono and makers of other major documentaries that premiered in Cannes, a lineup that includes:

Eugene Jarecki, director of The Six Billion Dollar Man, his documentary about Wikileaks founder Julian Assange,...

Note: This story contains spoilers from “The Handmaid’s Tale” Season 6, Episode 10.

The sun has set on Gilead. For now.

After six seasons, Hulu’s critically acclaimed series “The Handmaid’s Tale” has reached its endpoint, which is really more of a pause until the story picks up again in spinoff series “The Testaments.” And that’s what it felt like as June Osborne narrated the eponymous final episode, summing up the surviving characters’ next steps.

Not an end. Just a breather.

O-t Fagbenle and Elisabeth Moss in “The Handmaid’s Tale.” (Disney/Steve Wilkie)

Obviously, with a spinoff in the works, it was never an option to end “The Handmaid’s Tale” with the fall of Gilead. The finale was always going to be open-ended, allowing for Gilead to come back bigger and badder than ever in “The Testaments.” And while it’s a foregone conclusion that the spinoff will build on the original,...

Balthazar, Pastis, Minetta Tavern, and Morandi are just some of the transformative, wildly successful and famous Manhattan restaurants Keith McNally has opened and run for decades. Each room imparts a promise of louche, sophisticated cool along with a memorable and delicious meal. “The Restaurateur Who Invented Downtown” the New York Times once called him, a blurb that resides on the cover of McNally’s brilliant new memoir, I Regret Almost Everything. The book is a must-read for anyone who cares about the restaurant scene of the last 40 years — or just...

Exclusive: Goodfellas has unveiled a first round of deals for Raoul Peck’s documentary Orwell: 2+2=5, exploring the contemporary resonance of George Orwell’s work, following its well-received world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival.

In Europe, the work has been acquired for France (Le Pacte), Benelux (18K Film), Spain (Caramel Films), Italy (I Wonder), Portugal (Midas Filmes), Scandinavia (Nonstop Entertainment), Bulgaria (Beta Film), Czech Republic (Film Europe), Romania (Independenta), Baltic States (A One) and Poland (Against Gravity).

In the rest of the world, the documentary has sold to Israel (Lev Cinemas) and Turkey (Yeni Bir Film), Australia (Madman Entertainment) and Japan (Comstock).

Neon pre-acquired the film for North America in a previously announced deal.

The documentary is co-produced by Peck’s Velvet Films and Oscar-winner Alex Gibney’s Jigsaw Productions.

BAFTA-winning and Oscar-nominated filmmaker Peck explores how Orwell’s work – and his dystopian masterpiece 1984 in particular, with its ideas around Doublethink,...

Gaten Matarazzo was just 14 years old when he landed the biggest role of his career so far as Dustin Henderson in Netflix’s Stranger Things. However, not long before joining his young friends in their battle against the supernatural forces of Hawkins, Matarazzo starred in a brief role in the popular crime thriller The Blacklist.

The Emmy-winning series, which ran for nearly a decade, The Blacklist marked Matarazzo’s on-screen debut with a small but significant role as Finn in its second season.

Gaten Matarazzo made his on-screen debut with a small role in The Blacklist

Gaten Matarazzo is a multi-talented performer who has ventured into acting, music, and voice work since rising to fame through the Netflix phenomenon Stranger Things.

Related: Everyone’s Freaking Out After Stranger Things Star Gaten Matarazzo’s Upsetting Reveal about a Creepy Fan Confession

However, before gaining widespread recognition as Dustin Henderson, Matarazzo began his career on Broadway.

Raoul Peck’s documentary Orwell: 2+2=5 had its world premiere in the Cannes Premiere section on May 17, 2025, earning a nomination for the L’oeil d’or at the 78th Cannes Film Festival. Featuring Damian Lewis voicing George Orwell’s writings, Peck interweaves biographical elements—Orwell’s time in Burma and his final years on Jura—with stark contemporary imagery to underscore the author’s continuing relevance amid rising authoritarianism.

Produced in collaboration with the Orwell Estate and backed by Jigsaw Productions, Velvet Film and Participant, the film blends archival footage, expert commentary and modern-day news clips to draw chilling parallels between Orwell’s dystopian vision and today’s global political landscape. Critics from Time and The Wrap have hailed its boldness, while industry observers point to its timely warning as central to the 2025 festival’s politically charged offerings.

At the Cannes Premiere on May 17, filmmaker Raoul Peck debuted Orwell: 2+2=5,...

For the first six days of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, the festival and its filmmakers kept making the same point: “Damn, the world is a mess.” And yet, in an example of gloriously mixed messages, it also took a couple of massive opportunities to add, “but aren’t movies fun?”

So far, Cannes ’25 has made for cultural whiplash of the best kind. The festival presented a string of films that delved into the darkness that surrounds us these days, from Gaza to Ukraine to Donald Trump’s administration, but it also embraced the sheer escapism of Hollywood cinema and the artistic trailblazing of the French New Wave. This year’s Cannes contains all of those things — and even in a uncertain year with the heart of the Palme d’Or race yet to be unveiled, the messages coming out of the Palais are all the better for being so contradictory.

When I was growing up, the lessons of 1984 – the dystopian novel by George Orwell – were all thought to pertain to the Soviet Union. Big Brother was Josef Stalin – controlling the thoughts of his people, punishing dissenters.

If that had been correct, the dissolution of the Soviet Union and freeing of its similarly totalitarian satellite regimes would have rendered the novel irrelevant to our present times. 1984 would have been a mere artifact reflecting outdated concerns of an earlier era marked by sinister eradication of personal liberties. Turns out that’s not the case.

Raoul Peck’s vital documentary Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5, which premiered tonight at the Cannes Film Festival, makes it startlingly clear the degree to which we are living in Orwellian times. The parallels between the nightmare of 1984 – where Big Brother dictates every facet of life – and Trump’s America have not been properly acknowledged. This film does that.

George Orwell himself has gone in and out of favor over the revisionist years, but the British author’s searing insights into empire and power and totalitarianism have never lost relevance. That’s particularly true of his final work, the dystopian premonition 1984. Published 76 years ago, the novel is the core of Raoul Peck’s documentary portrait of the writer. With a dynamic mix of biography and intellectual essence, and with the re-election of Donald Trump the obvious inflection point for its urgency, Orwell: 2+2=5 delves into the ways Orwell’s arguments illuminate a century’s worth of geopolitics.

Peck, who profiled another writer of blistering moral clarity and prescience, James Baldwin, in I Am Not Your Negro, brings a healthy dose of sympathetic rage to his exploration of Orwell’s worldview, and sensitivity to his life story. The rich selection of archival material is punctuated by new footage, clips from a...

“Special military operation.” “Department of Government Efficiency.” “Enhanced interrogation techniques.” “Alternative facts.”

We live in a time when governments use lexical distortions to manipulate public opinion – the very thing author George Orwell captured so cogently in his dystopian novel 1984, where the futuristic regime adopts “Newspeak” and other authoritarian techniques to stamp out independent critical thinking.

The time is ripe then to reexamine a writer who, though he died 75 years ago, foresaw how leaders of today would gaslight their own people to impose their will and squash dissent. Oscar-nominated filmmaker Raoul Peck takes on that task in his new documentary Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5, premiering on Saturday at the Cannes Film Festival.

“A man that died in January 1950, to be that accurate about what is happening today — you better take a second look and try to learn even more from him,” Peck tells Deadline. For his examination of Orwell and his thought,...

Exclusive:New York-based producer-financier Closer Media, in Cannes with Oliver Hermanus’s Palme d’Or contender The History Of Sound and Raoul Peck’s Premiere selection Orwell: 2+2=5, is meeting potential partners on the Croisette to assemble a slate fuelled by global auteurs.

Targeting an annual output of three to five films, founder and Chinese real estate billionaire Zhang Xin and president Jonathan King aim to go into production later this year on projects from Tom McCarthy, with whom King made Spotlight while at Participant, and Joseph Cedar, the Israeli filmmaker behind Beaufort and Footnote.

“We want to make more films,...

Unlike other genres, science fiction has seen a moderate decline in releases over the years. Whether that be because of audience preference or a general decrease in interest is unclear, but there has been a perceptible dearth of quality sci-fi flicks compared to past decades.

However, the sci-fi genre is hardly dead. Netflix is the home of many excellent science fiction movies, some of them original and exclusive to the streaming service.

From tales of thought-provoking plights that challenge human understanding to conflicts pitting mankind against extraterrestrial menaces, these ten seminal sci-fi films from Netflix are well worth anyone’s time.

These 10 Netflix Original sci-fi movies are must-watch10. The Adam Project

Regarding actor Ryan Reynolds’ filmography, he doesn’t have the best track record. While undeniably successful, most of his productions (outside of Deadpool and a few exceptions) are fairly middling or just downright bad. For the most part, he...

Exclusive: Goodfellas Animation has boarded international sales on Andy Serkis’ animated adaptation of Animal Farm, based on the iconic novella by George Orwell.

The company will introduce the film to buyers in Cannes next week ahead of its world premiere at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in June.

Lord of the Rings and Planet of the Apes star Serkis has gathered an all-star voice cast featuring Seth Rogen, Gaten Matarazzo, Steve Buscemi, Glenn Close, Laverne Cox, Kieran Culkin, Woody Harrelson, Jim Parsons, Andy Serkis, Kathleen Turner and Iman Vellani to bring the timeless allegory to life.

Directed by Serkis and written by Nick Stoller, Animal Farm is a modern adaptation of George Orwell’s classic novel, one of the most widely read books in history with countless copies sold and translations in more than 250 languages.

The story follows a group of farm animals who rebel against their human owners and take over the farm,...

This past March, author Suzanne Collins continued to delve into the "Hunger Games" universe by dropping the novel "Sunrise on the Reaping," a story that takes place about 24 years before the original "The Hunger Games" novel. It chronicles the tale of 16-year-old Haymitch Abernathy, showing how the character won the 50th Hunger Games (aka the Second Quarter Quell), putting him in line to become the mentor figure to Katniss Everdeen in the original trilogy of novels and the four initial "Hunger Games" movies. After the initial trilogy of Collins' novels, the book is the second consecutive prequel novel, following 2020's "The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes."

In similar fashion to that latter novel being quickly adapted into a film version in 2023, "Sunrise on the Reaping" was tapped for the big screen treatment almost a full year before the book was even published, and regular "Hunger Games" director Francis Lawrence will...

The Annecy International Animation Festival has unveiled the line-up for its 2025 edition, running from June 8 to 14. (scroll down for full list of Official Selection titles)

Having previously announced Michel Gondry as an honorary guest, the festival will also celebrate UK Oscar nominee Joanna Quinn (Affairs of the Art) and The Simpsons creator Matt Groening with honorary Cristal awards.

Twenty-one feature films will be showcased in the festival’s Main Competition and Contrechamp Competition, selected from 130 submissions.

Main competition titles include Sylvain Chomet’s Marcel Pagnol tribute A Magnificent Life as well as Félix Dufour-Laperrière’s Death Does Not Exist, and Dandelion’s Odyssey by Momoko Seto, and Ugo Bienvenu’s Arco.

In a break with tradition, the opening night will world premiere a selection of five shorts rather than a single feature animation.

“After a historic 2024 edition, with a record attendance of 17,400 badge-holders, and all this despite a difficult context for the industry,...

Annecy, the world’s leading animation film festival, unveiled its official program on Wednesday, with a line-up that includes features from some 20 countries across Europe, Asia and the Americas and a range of styles, from the big-budget 3D computer animated feature Into the Mortal World from Chinese director Zhong Ding; to the hand-drawn title Balentes by Italian filmmaker Giovanni Columbu, and the digital cut out animation of Mexican filmmaker Aria Covamonas: The Great History of Western Philosophy.

Covamonas’ debut premiered at the Rotterdam festival, and Annecy’s 2025 lineup features a best-of selection of recent fests, including Berlinale highlights Lesbian Space Princess and Tales from the Magic Garden, and several features premiering in Cannes next month, including The Magnificent Life of Marcel Pagnol from The Triplets of Belleville director Sylvain Chomet; Dandelion’s Odyssey from Japanese director Momoko Seto; and Death Does Not Exist from Canadian filmmaker Felix Dufour-Laperrière.

‘Lesbian Space...

The Annecy International Animation Film Festival is nearly here. The annual film festival and market takes place from June 8 to June 14, in a gorgeous town that served as the inspiration for Belle’s village in Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast”. This year’s slate is overflowing with must-see screenings and panels.

Among the special screenings this year are Andy Serkis’ long-awaited take on George Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” Michel Gondry’s “Maya, Give Me Another Title” (he’ll also be receiving an Honorary Cristal Award this year “in recognition of his exceptional contribution to the vitality of animation”), Genndy Tartakovsky’s R-rated “Fixed” and “The SpongeBob Movie: Search for Squarepants,” the new feature from Paramount Animation. Additionally, Pixar will screen their new feature “Elio.”

There will be exciting presentations from Disney, who will reveal a first-look at footage from “Zootopia 2,” courtesy of director (and Walt Disney Animation Studios Cco) Jared Bush,...

France’s Annecy International Animation Film Festival (June 8-14) will preview upcoming animations including Zootopia 2, Animal Farm and the Stranger Things animated series as part of its 2025 lineup.

The Simpsons creator Matt Groening, director Michel Gondry andacclaimed UK animator Joanna Quinn will receive honorary Cristal awards.

Gondry will present his Berlinale 2025 title Maya, Give Me a Title as a special screening.

Scroll down for the full list of competition films, screening events and studio showcases

Also attending are Andy Serkis for what the festival described as a ‘special premiere’ of his animated feature adaptation of George Orwell’s Animal Farm,...

Actor turned filmmaker Andy Serkis has been trying to get a new feature film version of George Orwell‘s (“1984”) 1945 novella “Animal Farm” (yet another story warning about fascism in society) into theaters for decades, and we finally have an update on a voice cast assembled for a new animated film iteration that counts Matt Reeves (“The Batman”) as an executive producer.

Variety has revealed that the stacked group of talented actors voicing various animals in the pic will include Seth Rogen (“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem”), Gaten Matarazzo (“Stranger Things”), Steve Buscemi (“Hotel Transylvania”), eight-time Oscar nominee Glenn Close (“Guardians of The Galaxy”), Laverne Cox (“Promising Young Woman”), recent Best Supporting Actor winner Kieran Culkin (“A Real Pain”), Woody Harrelson (“Triangle of Sadess”), Jim Parsons (“Big Bang Theory”), Kathleen Turner (“Romancing The Stone”), and Iman Vellani (“Ms.

Continue reading ‘Animal Farm’: Andy Serkis’ Animated Film Taps Seth Rogen,...