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It was all about Wild West myths and classy Negronis as Rai Cinema celebrated “Heads or Tails?” in Cannes on Thursday.

Presented in Un Certain Regard and directed by Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis, the surreal western follows Rosa (Nadia Tereszkiewicz), who, trapped in an unhappy marriage, flees with daredevil Santino (Alessandro Borghi). Many go after them, including Buffalo Bill (John C. Reilly).

“It’s a very original film and I think it will have a great impact. Not only in Italy, but in the world. It touches upon themes that are universal. There’s love, power and a little bit of politics,” CEO of Rai Cinema Paolo del Brocco told Variety at the event.

“It’s difficult to invent new things in cinema, but we hope more original films will come [in the future]. When we see a new idea, we invest a lot in it. We want it to be done well.

Palestinian director Scandar Copti’s drama Happy Holidays has clinched the Étoile d’Or for Best Film at the Marrakech Film Festival.

The Jury Prize was awarded ex aequo to Argentinian director Silvina Schnicer’s The Cottage and Somali and Austrian filmmaker Mo Harawe’s The Village Next to Paradise. Damian Kocur won the Best Directing Prize for his drama Under the Volcano, which is Poland’s Oscar entry this year.

The prize for Best Performance by an Actress was shared by Wafaa Aoun and Manar Shehab for their performances in Happy Holidays, while Roman Lutskyi won the award for Best Performance by an Actor for his work in Under the Volcano.

Happy Holidays is a contemporary Haifa-set drama in which a minor car accident sets off a chain of events, unraveling lies and unspoken truths that sow division within a multifaceted patriarchal society.

The film world premiered in the...

“Aisha Can’t Fly Away,” “Chronicles From the Siege,” and “It’s a Sad and Beautiful World” claimed a trio of post-production prizes at this year’s Atlas Workshops, which ran from Dec. 1 – 5 as part of the Marrakech Film Festival.

Winner of the top award, “Aisha Can’t Fly Away” walked away with a €25,000 post-production grant. Directed by Morad Mostafa, the film follows a 26-year-old Sudanese woman working as a caregiver in Ain Shams, a Cairo neighborhood known for its sizable African migrant community. Governmental indifference mixes with racial tensions and gang violence, setting the stage for a dark turn when one gang offers Aisha protection – if she’ll offer a favor in return.

The project previously won top honors at Final Cut in Venice earlier this year. Set for delivery in 2025, the lauded title has had festival scouts buzzing for months.

Speaking with Variety from Marrakech, one prominent festival...

The Locarno Film Festival is justly renowned for its retrospectives, and this year is no exception. But rather than an individual director or star, this edition is dedicated to a studio: Columbia Pictures with “The Lady with the Torch” celebrating the studio’s centenary.

With 44 films from well-known titles such as Orson Welles’s “The Lady from Shanghai” (1947) and Fritz Lang’s “The Big Heat” (1953) to more obscure gems like Frank Borzage’s “Man’s Castle” (1933) and Earl McEvoy’s “The Killer that Stalked New York” (1950), curator Ehsan Khoshbakht has created what he calls an “unofficial history” of the studio in its heyday, as controversial president Harry Cohn dragged Columbia from poverty row to Academy success.

Variety sat down to speak with Khoshbakht (who is also the co-director of Bologna’s Cinema Ritrovato Festival) about the retrospective.

Variety: What role does the retrospective play in Locarno?

Khoshbakht: Very recently, I was...

There was a spontaneous singalong, shrieks of “I love you” and the clanking of a cowbell one audience member had brought to remind Shah Rukh Khan of the film he made long ago in the Alps: the Indian megastar’s masterclass at the Locarno Film Festival was the closest Switzerland comes to pandemonium. Facing a capacity crowd at Locarno’s venerable Gran Rex cinema, Srk accepted the adulation and declarations of love with the gracious fan-friendliness that has made him beloved for 35 years.

Stardom, he insisted, really doesn’t matter. “Being able to entertain people when they come into contact with me is the most important thing,” he said during an hour-long interview with festival director Giona Nazzaro. “I want them to take away something entertaining. It could be sad entertainment, it could be good entertainment, it could be romantic entertainment. But for me, I’ve never understood the stardom part of it.

First Look, the works-in-progress initiative of Locarno Pro, will focus on Spanish cinema for its upcoming edition which runs August 9-11 during the Locarno Film Festival.

First Look will select six films from Spain that are currently in post-production in partnership with the Spanish Institute of Cinematography and Audiovisual Arts (Icaa) and Icex Spain Trade & Investment.

The projects will be presented by their producers during Locarno Pro to industry professionals such as sales agents, buyers, festival programmers, and representatives from post-production funds.

In past editions, First Look has focused on international arthouse productions from the UK, Colombia, Mexico, Chile, Brazil,...

News of the death of Celluloid Dreams CEO Hengameh Panahi has sparked an outpouring of admiration and tributes from the independent film community.

Panahi, a pivotal figure in the global art house scene, died Nov. 5, aged 67. In her decades in the business — as a producer, co-financier and sales agent — Panahi introduced the world to international auteurs from Iran (Jafar Panahi, Marjane Satrapi), Europe (Jacques Audiard, François Ozon, Gaspar Noé, Marco Bellocchio, Aleksandr Sokurov, the Dardenne brothers) and across Asia (Takeshi Kitano, Naomi Kawase, Jia Zanghke, Hirokazu Kore-eda).

“She took films that were challenging, that were difficult to make, to sell, to promote, and she fought for them,” says Oscar-winning producer Jeremy Thomas (The Last Emperor) who knew and worked with Panahi for more than 30 years. “She was a unique part of the film ecosystem. She was really inspirational, with the films that she enabled to be made, and seen.”

Celluloid Dreams,...

Surprise! Legendary director Barbet Schroeder, in Locarno to introduce his latest doc “Ricardo and Painting,” was greeted with a Special Tribute Award before the screening.

“Is this for the film?” Shroeder, a modest man, asked on stage. “No,” said Locarno festival director Giona Nazzaro. “It’s for being Barbet Schroeder.”

Despite focusing on harsher subjects in his previous documentaries, “General Idi Amin Dada: A Self Portrait,” “Terror’s Advocate” or “The Venerable W.,” this time Schroeder decided to follow painter Ricardo Cavallo.

“I have already done my ‘Trilogy of Evil.’ I could continue: the world is full of bad people. But then there was this friend of mine, who I thought was such a good person,” he tells Variety.

Cavallo, convinced that “true life exists in creation,” could teach anyone how to change their way of seeing, claims Schroeder, sacrificing everything for his art.

“I am always interested in my characters,...

Filmmaker Ali Ahmadzadeh is under pressure from Iranian authorities to pull his latest feature Critical Zone from Locarno’s Main Competition after he was summoned to the country’s Ministry of Security.

The pic, set to debut in Locarno, is described as “an artistic reflection on the anger and the rage of the young generation of Iranians” and was shot without the permission of authorities before recent protests started.

Ahmadzadeh was summoned to the Ministry following the announcement of Locarno’s Competition features on July 5. The film’s international sales agent Luxbox Paris and the producer, Sina Ataeian Dena, have also received threatening emails and messages demanding the film be pulled from the fest.

Dena said in a statement today that Ahmadzadeh is under frequent interrogation and harassment through text messages. He also said the director’s visa has been blocked and authorities have banned him from leaving the country...

Ali Ahmadzadeh, director of Locarno competition title “Critical Zone,” is under threat from Iran’s ministry of security.

The film, shot without Iranian authorities’ permission before the “Woman, Life, Freedom” revolution in Iran, is billed as an artistic reflection on the anger and the rage of the young generation of Iranians.

“Guided by the voice of his Gps, Amir navigates the underworld districts of Tehran to comfort the troubled souls of the night,” reads the film’s description in the Locarno program.

“Instead of actors, I worked with real people. In most situations, we had to hide the camera or find complicated tricks to work around the limitations. Making this film was a big rebellion. Showing it means an even bigger victory for us,” Ahmadzadeh said in his director’s statement.

Ahmadzadeh has been under pressure from the security service to show them the film and pull it from Locarno,...

Andrew Legge’s Lola, a faux found footage film that plays with historical and science fiction, gives weight to an emerging idea: could this be the best year for Irish cinema? If you believe the metrics of Rotten Tomatoes, the best-reviewed film of 2022 was once The Banshees of Inisherin. At the time of writing, it’s An Cailín Ciúin (aka The Quiet Girl), a film in the Irish language. Aftersun, the most beloved of any this year, stars Kildare’s Paul Mescal. With Jessie Buckley’s turn in Women Talking leading from the front, there is the wild possibility that five of next year’s acting nominations at the Oscars could go to people from that damp Atlantic rock—one or two might even win.

A little further afield, some independent works have helped buffer the moment: God’s Creatures (another Mescal joint), Donal Foreman’s The Cry of Granuaile, Frank Berry’s Aisha,...

Japan, Greece, Benelux also secured.

Altitude Film Sales and Participant have secured key deals on Laura Poitras’ Venice Golden Lion winner All The Beauty And The Bloodshed.

The film has sold to France (Pyramide Films), Latin America (Sun Distribution Group), Australia-New Zealand (Madman), Benelux (Cineart), Japan (Klockworx), Greece (Strada), Portugal (Leopardes), Poland (Against Gravity), former Yugoslavia (McF), Scandinavia/Baltics (Nonstop), South Korea (Challan), Taiwan (Hooray Films), Czech Republic-Slovakia (Film Europe), Turkey (Filmarti) and the Middle East (Front Row Entertainment).

Altitude Film Distribution will release the film in the UK and Ireland on January 27 next year, with Neon distributing in the US at the same time.

Six awards will be presented with two ‘in-kind’ prizes.

Filmmakers Houda Benyamina and Yasmine Benkiran, and Locarno Film Festival artistic director Giona Nazzaro are among the jurors for the industry programme of Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea International Film Festival (December 1-10).

French director Benyamina, Moroccan filmmaker Benkiran and Nazzaro comprise the jury of the Work-In-Progress showcase, which selected six feature projects in post-production last month. The trio will award a 30,000 post-production prize.

Benyamina’s solo directorial debut Divines won the Camera d’Or for best debut feature at Cannes in 2016. She is in post-production on her next film Toutes Pour Une.

From left: Stefano Knuchel, Khesrau Behrouz, Laurie Anderson, and Maya Shenfeld.On our way to Locarno from the airport, a fellow Critics Academy participant told me that he had made a list of 37 films he wanted to see, while I glanced at my own list feeling underprepared. In the end, he didn’t reach that number—none of us did. We had our writings to do, the glittering Lake Maggiore to bask in, and daily necessities, like scurrying between venues and finding time for meals.When the goal of festival-going is to take in as many films as possible, attending a 24-hour long talk on the “Future of Attention” may not seem like the best way to resolve these anxieties. Film festivals run on an attention economy. It was a statistically risky decision for me to pitch this article instead of several smaller film reviews, since I didn’t know...

Indian editor, writer, director, cinematographer and producer Mahesh Narayanan is attached to the province of Kerala where he was born and raised. After a significant ammount of films he signed as editor, Narayanan made his directorial debut in 2017 with the critically acclaimed drama “Take Off” about the ordeal of Indian nurses in the city of Tikrit, Iraq in 2014. With his latest feature length film in the International competition of Locarno Film Festival, Narayanan is the first Indian director whose work is shown in this prestigious festival since 2005, which was more than a reason enough to meet him in Locarno to discuss his idea for a movie inspired by true events, the environment he chose to set the story in, the position of women in Indian society and his very deep connection to Kerala.

“Declaration” is a film that shows the hardships a married couple working in a latex gloves factory...

In its first full-on post-pandemic edition, Locarno roared back into action as an industry hub over Aug. 3-9, smashing attendance records with delegates at industry arm Locarno Pro soaring from 2019’s prior record of 1,040 to 1,300.

That reflects the year-round work of festival artistic director Giona Nazzaro and industry head Markus Duffner at Locarno Pro, building on foundations laid by Nadia Dresti over 2010-19. Sky rocketing attendance also says much about the state of the international film industry as it is is rocked by titanic sea change propelled by global, regional and local streaming platforms. Following, 10 takes on Locarno as its turns its final bend towards Aug. 13’s awards announcement.

Latest Deals

A score or more of new deals announced since Sunday in exclusivity to Variety:

*Germany’s Pluto Film has been in negotiations with several theatrical distributors on Locarno Piazza Grande title “Semret,” ahead of its world premiere on Aug.

Johnson stars in David Leitch’s Bullet Train, which opened the festival.

This year’s edition of the Locarno Film Festival (August 3-13), the second one under the artistic direction of Giona Nazzaro, kicked off Wednesday evening with the presentation of the Davide Campari excellence award to the UK actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson before the screening of his latest film, David Leitch’s Bullet Train, which sees him starring opposite Brad Pitt and Sandra Bullock.

In his speech, the 32-year-old Kick-Ass, Anna Karenina and Nocturnal Animals star said that he was “incredibly grateful for this opportunity and the acknowledgment of what...

Modern Films’ Eve Gabereau, Emu Films’ Mike Elliott and Element Pictures’ Ed Guiney are also taking part.

Mia Bays, Matt Brodlie, Graeme Mason, Eve Gabereau and Ed Guiney are among the industry speakers taking part in the UK Pavilion industry programme at Cannes, previously known as the UK Film Centre, which will run from May 19 to May 24.

The series of industry events will be open to festival and market delegates as well as press attending the festival. It includes a series of Talent Talks with filmmakers with films making their world premiere in the festival.

The industry talks include an...

Pioneer Italian documentary director Cecilia Mangini, whose political works exploring hot-button topics such as youth contending with Italy’s postwar poverty, the condition of women, and the roots of fascism made her a legendary figure on the international film festival circuit, died on Jan. 21. She was 93.

Mangini made her mark from her very first work, 1958 feature “Ignoti alla città” (Unknown to the City), about kids in Rome’s slums, which was written by gay, leftist poet and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini, with whom Mangini subsequently collaborated on other docs.

“Unknown to the City,” which drew from Pasolini’s first novel “Ragazzi di Vita” (“The Street Kids”), was initially blocked by Italy’s censors who objected to a scene in which young boys steal from a newspaper seller because they claimed it could lead to similar delinquency. Mangini appealed the censors’ decision and won.

“All this buzz, Pasolini, the delinquency charge,...

The Locarno Film Festival has appointed longtime collaborator Markus Duffner as the head of its Locarno Pro industry program.

Duffner, who will take the Locarno Pro helm in January, is replacing Paris-based sales exec Valentina Merli, who after being appointed to the post roughly a year ago quietly stepped down following this year’s virtual edition in August.

As head of Locarno Pro, Duffner will work closely with Sophie Bourdon, Locarno Pro deputy chief who also heads its Open Doors co-production forum, dedicated to nurturing cinema in areas where filmmaking is especially tough.

Nadia Dresti, who has been with Locarno intermittently for roughly 30 years — and built its market side into a unique and formidable space for international quality cinema industry operators — will continue in her role as its international advisor. Dresti in January of this year stepped down as Locarno Pro chief and, at that time, handed the reins over to Merli,...

Italian film critic and academic Beatrice Fiorentino has been appointed new general delegate of the Venice Film Festival’s Critics’ Week, the Lido’s independently run section dedicated to promising first works from around the world.

Fiorentino — who was previously a member of the section’s selection committee — had been widely expected to replace her predecessor Giona Nazzaro, who stepped down recently ending a five-year stint at the section’s helm after being appointed artistic director of the Locarno Film Festival.

“The National Union of Italian Film Critics is very happy with the work done by Giona Nazzaro in the last few years,” said Franco Montini, president of the org that runs the section. In a statement, he went on to note that “the appointment of Beatrice Fiorentino, his closest collaborator, has the intent of giving continuity to the project.”

During his tenure, Nazzaro and his team added luster to...

Giona Nazzaro signals determination to hold a physical edition of the festival next August.

Respected programmer and selector Giona Nazzaro was announced as the new artistic director of the Locarno Film Festival on Thursday (November 5).

He arrives at the 73-year-old lakeside festival from the International Film Critics’ Week at the Venice Film Festival. He put his stamp on the parallel selection as delegate general from 2016, showcasing an eclectic selection of films ranging from UK actress-director Alice Lowe’s dark comedy Prevenge to Tunisian filmmaker Alaeddine Slim’s The Last Of Us, which won the Lion of the Future for best debut film,...

Giona A. Nazzaro, an Italian film programmer, critic, and regular on the international festival circuit, is the new artistic director for the Locarno International Film Festival. Locarno’s festival board announced his appointment on Thursday.

Nazzaro, who has been a general delegate of the Venice Festival’s International Critics’ Week since 2016, and a member of the Rotterdam Festival’s artistic committee, takes over from Lili Hinstin, who resigned from the Locarno post in September after less than two years at the job.

Nazzaro officially takes over on January 1 and will put together the program for the 74th Locarno Festival,...

High-profile doc “The Rossellinis,” described as a tongue-in-cheek autobiographical look at the descendants of iconic Italian director Roberto Rossellini’s extended family, is among the standout world premieres in the lineup of the upcoming Venice Film Festival’s Critics’ Week.

Directed by Roberto Rossellini’s grandson, Alessandro Rossellini, the doc is unspooling out of competition and will close the separately-run Venice section that will feature seven first works in competition. It’s not yet know whether Isabella Rossellini will be on the Lido to promote the film.

The competition titles — all first works as well as world premieres — include “Topside,” the feature film debut of U.S. directorial duo Celine Held and Logan George, which is described in promotional materials as a drama set deep in the underbelly of New York City, where a five year-old girl and her mother live among a community that has claimed the abandoned subway tunnels as their home.

BBC to premiere Jonathan Glazer’s ‘Strasbourg 1518’

Sexy Beast director Jonathan Glazer’s latest film Strasbourg 1518 is to premiere on BBC Two on July 20. The film is part of the BBC’s Culture in Quarantine initiative, and features performances from great dancers inspired by the so-called dancing plague that broke out in Strasbourg in 1518. It was co-commissioned by Artangel and Sadler’s Wells and is produced by Academy Films for BBC Films and BBC Arts.

Rotterdam film festival changes

International Film Festival Rotterdam has instigated significant changes under new director Vanja Kaludjercic ahead of its landmark 50th edition, scheduled to run January 27-February 7. The fest will introduce new strand ‘Harbour’, which will become its central program and also its largest, screening movies from around the world. Giona Nazzaro has joined the supervising programming team, alongside Bianca Taal and Gerwin Tamsma. Its flagship Tiger and Big Screen competitions will also be expanded,...

A new strand, Harbour, will become the festival’s largest section.

Vanja Kaludjercic, the new director of the International Film Festival Rotterdam (Iffr), has revealed a radical change in its programming structure and team for the 50th edition of the festival which is due to take place January 27- February 7, 2021.

One of the key changes is the introduction of a major new programming strand, Harbour, which will now become the festival’s largest section and will screen 60 new films. The Bright Future Competition will no longer take place.

“What we would like to do with Harbour is to break free...

Terrence Malick-produced English-language costume drama “The Book of Vision,” directed by Italy’s Carlo Hintermann, will open the Venice Film Festival’s independently-run Critics’ Week section on Sept. 3. (Watch an exclusive clip from the film above.)

Venice, barring complications, is set to be the first major international film event to hold a physical edition after the coronavirus crisis, with dates set for Sept. 2-12.

The high-concept pic — which toplines “Game of Thrones” star Charles Dance, Dutch actress Lotte Verbeek (“Outlander”), and rising Swedish actor Sverrir Gudnason (“Borg/McEnroe”) — focuses on the history of the doctor/patient relationship told from the perspective of a female medical student named Eva (Verbeek).

She leaves graduate school to take a deep dive into the history of medicine and toggles between the present and the 18th century. It’s Hintermann’s feature film debut following several English-language documentaries, including one about Malick, for whom...

2019 Oscar-nominated “The Edge of Democracy” filmmaker Petra Costa and Switzerland’s Visions du Réel Film Festival weren’t going to let a global pandemic stop them from hosting a highly anticipated masterclass on Thursday.

For nearly three hours the filmmaker fielded questions from moderators Delphine Jeanneret of the Geneva University of Art and Design, Giona Nazzaro, member of the selection committee for Visions du Réel, and an eager audience of streamers around the world.

Below, five takeaways from the day’s talk.

“The Edge of Democracy”:

While the class covered years of Costa’s career, from time spent in the theater to studying anthropology in the U.S. and her earlier films, most of the day’s talk was focused on 2019’s Oscar-nominated documentary “The Edge of Democracy.”

Examining the impeachment trials of Dilma Rousseff, the imprisonment of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and election of Jair Bolsonaro...

Though hiring a foreigner to run a national institution such as the Berlinale in Germany is rather rare, it’s been happening to other Italians lately.

Carlo Chatrian at Berlin is the most prominent case. But there are several more. In 2018, Italy’s Paolo Moretti, who now heads the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, became the first non-French national to be appointed general delegate to any of the Cannes sections. Moretti had previously worked all over Europe and was already based in France. But his most formative job was probably programming Venice’s Horizons section for four years, learning the ropes from the Lido’s then-chief Marco Mueller, who now runs China’s much smaller but prestigious Pingyao Intl. Film Festival.

Another Italian, Eva Sangiorgi, was hired in 2018 as the head of the Viennale, Austria’s top film fest. She was the first non-Austrian, and also the first woman, to land that job.

Giona Nazzaro and Ed Guiney among those selected to preside over funding.

TorinoFilmLab has named the juries presiding over its various production and co-production grants to be announced later this month.

Venice Critics’ Week head Giona Nazzaro, Isabelle Glachant, founder of Hong Kong-based production company Chinese Shadows, Julia Oh, commissioning executive at the UK’s Film4, Golden Bear-winning Romanian director Adina Pintilie; and former Israel Film Fund chief Katriel Schory will preside over the Tfl Production and Co-Production Awards.

Projects eligible for grants of up to €50,000 include the 11 titles selected for the FeatureLab training programme.

A separate jury will...

“Rare Beasts,” the directorial debut of British stage and screen actress Billie Piper is set to premiere at the Venice Film Festival’s Critics’ Week, which has unveiled its lineup of nine first works, four of them from female filmmakers.

Produced by Vaughan Sivell of Western Edge Pictures in association with Moffen Media Limited, “Rare Beasts” is “a completely unhinged comedy,” section chief Giona Nazzaro said.

Piper plays Mandy, a struggling young writer and mother who comes from a dysfunctional family and falls upon a troubled man played by Leo Bill (“Peterloo”). The high-caliber cast of Brits also includes Lily James (“Downton Abbey”) and David Thewlis, best known as Remus Lupin in the Harry Potter film series.

The out-of-competition opener for Critics’ Week will be Indian animation film “Bombay Rose” by Gitanjali Rao, which Nazzaro described as a love story between a Hindu girl and a Muslim boy and also...

Women were in focus at this year's Venice Film Festival — both Golden Lion winner Roma and Grand Jury honoree The Favourite featured female leads (including The Favourite star, and Venice best actress winner, Olivia Colman) — but Venice was also in the spotlight over accusations that it continues to ignore female filmmakers.

Venice's 2018 competition lineup included just one female director — Jennifer Kent, whose The Nightingale won a special jury prize — and discussion of gender representation and accusation of bias dominated public discourse this year. Jury president Guillermo del Toro made calls for more diversify and Palme d’...

Tunisian first-time director Abdelhamid Bouchnak is at the Venice Film Festival with “Dachra,” one of the first horror films to come out of the Arab world, which closed the independently-run Critics’ Week section on Friday. It combines elements of American chillers such as “The Blair Witch Project” with visuals and tropes that are instead specific to Arabic cinema, and tackles the topic of witchcraft as a motive for murders, a practice that still exists in parts of North Africa. Bouchnak, who studied filmmaking in his country and in Montreal, spoke to Variety about the challenges of going the genre rout for his debut which Celluloid Dreams is selling internationally.

“Dachra” is the first horror film out of Tunisia and a very rare case of a horror film out of the Arab world at large. Do you feel like a pioneer? What drew you to this genre?

It’s a choice...

Syrian civil war doc “Still Recording,” directed by Ghiath Ayoub and Saeed Al Batal, is the winner of the Venice Film Festival’s Critics’ Week prize.

It follows art students Saeed and Milad, who in 2011 decide to leave Damascus and go to Douma, a suburb under rebel control and take part in the Syrian revolution. Amid revolutionary enthusiasm, they launch a local radio station and a recording studio. War, siege and famine follow.

The directing duo (pictured) shot more than 500 hours of footage over four years spent in the besieged city. “Recording” also won the section’s best technical contribution nod. The powerful doc does not yet have a sales agent.

The winner of the Critics’ Week prize is chosen by the audience.

The independently run Venice section dedicated to first works also gave out a prize known as the Verona Film Club Award to Franco-Swiss directorial duo Alexia Walther...

After its strong presence earlier this year in Berlin and Cannes, Arab cinema is represented at Venice by six titles hailing from Syria, Palestine, Tunisia and Saudi Arabia, which all reflect the region’s politics albeit in very different ways.

Though there are no Arab pics competing for the Golden Lion in Venice — unlike Cannes, where Lebanese director Nadine Labaki’s “Capernaum” and Egyptian-Austrian first-time filmmaker Abu Bakr Shawky’s “Yomeddine” competed for the Palme d’Or — there are two Arab entries vying for prizes in the Lido’s Horizons section dedicated to more cutting-edge works: France-born Syrian first-time feature helmer Soudade Kaadan’s drama “The Day I Lost My Shadow,” and “Tel Aviv on Fire,” a high-concept comedy by Palestinian director Sameh Zoabi, who studied at Columbia U., plus four other films spread across other sections.

Set in war-torn Damascus in 2012, “The Day I Lost My Shadow” is about...

Indian Film ‘Tumbbad’ to Open and Tunisian Film ‘Dachra’ to Close Venice Film Festival’s Critics’ WeekHorror-fantasy ‘Tumbbad’ has become the first Indian film to open the prestigious Venice Film Festival’s Critics’ Week on August 9. Horror film Dachra is the first Tunisian film to close.

The segment, which will run parallel to the 75th edition of the main festival, features nine films by first time directors from across the globe. The section’s artistic director, Giona Nazzaro, called the 19th-century-set film, co-directed by Rai Anil Barve and Adesh Prasad, “a thrilling rollercoster ride”.

Tumbbad the first Indian film ever to open the Venice International Film Critics’ Week, is a thrilling rollercoaster ride that questions the roots of human greed while providing entertainment of the purest kind.

“Fantasy, action, frights, and scares: Tumbbad has it all,” Nazzaro said in a statement, shared by the film’s producers.

Both Tumbbad and...

Indian fantasy “Tumbbad” will open the Venice Film Festival’s Critics’ Week, which unveiled its lineup Monday of nine first works by international filmmakers, all of them world premieres.

The section’s artistic director, Giona Nazzaro, described the 19th-century-set “Tumbbad,” co-directed by Rai Anil Barve and Adesh Prasad, as a fast-paced parable about greed and “a visionary fantasy film, rich in visual inventions, special effects and blood.” The Hindi-language epic, produced by Mumbai-based Little Town Films, is being screened out of competition, and is sold internationally by Eros International.

The films in the competition lineup include Sudanese director’s Hajooj Kuka’s “A Kasha” (“The Roundup”), a comedy of errors set during Sudan’s civil war, which has been a standout on the co-production platforms circuit; German director Andreas Goldstein’s “Adam & Evelyn,” a coming-of-age story set in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall; Franco-Swiss directorial...