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Tarak Ben Ammar’s Italian outfit Eagle Pictures and Italy’s PiperFilm have announced a multi-pronged distribution partnership. Under their deal, PiperFilm will handle world sales on several Eagle-produced titles including upcoming comedy “Leopardi & Co” starring Whoopi Goldberg and Jeremy Irvine.

PiperFilm will launch sales on the English-language film, directed by Italy’s Federica Biondi, at the upcoming European Film Market. In “Leopardi & Co,” Goldberg portrays the agent of an American actor played by Irvine and lands him a part as the great Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi. But since her client knows nothing about Leopardi, a young Italian woman (played by Denise Tantucci) is hired to provide background information. Romance ensues.

The pact will see PiperFilm handling distribution of several Italian films produced by Eagle Pictures, while the Home Entertainment division of Eagle Pictures will handle the home video and transactional rights of PiperFilm’s lineup, starting with Paolo Sorrentino’s “Parthenope.

Italy’s PiperFilm is to take on international sales for several films by leading producer and distributor Eagle Pictures, including Italian box office hitThe Boy With The Pink Trousers, as part of a new collaboration agreement between the two companies.

The partnership will also see Eagle Pictures handle the home video and transactional rights of PiperFilm’s releases, starting with Paolo Sorrentino’s Parthenope.

Distribution, production, and sales company PiperFilm launched last year. Its sales division, run by well-known executive Catia Rossi, will bring a slate of Eagle Films movies to EFM next week.

Margherita Ferri’s The Boy With...

"Summer Job" on Netflix follows entitled Gen Z Italians competing for €100,000 by doing the one thing they dread the most: working for someone else. Some stars rise to the occasion, while others stick to their spoiled ways, leading to penalties and eliminations. Viewers can follow the cast members on Instagram to see what they've been up to since filming, including Sofia, Matthias, Pietro, Angelica, Melina, Lavinia, Marina, Samuele, Gian Marco, and Pit.

Summer Job hit Netflix in January 2023, and with an interesting premise and enough entertainment for everyone, there's plenty that viewers should know about the cast and where they can find them online. Hosted by Matilde Gioli, Summer Job follows 10 entitled Gen Z Italians who have a serious aversion to working and think that they are in Mexico for a vacation but are actually locked in a competition for up to €100,000. The catch is that the cast has to...

Summer Job is one of Netflix's newest reality series, but with so many options available to subscribers, is it worth checking out, or is it better to skip it? Summer Job, which is Netflix's first Italian reality show, focuses on ten affluent young adults who are used to living it up, going to parties, and generally doing whatever they want when they want. With the possibility of getting jobs out of the question for these Gen Z children of rich families, it doesn't take much for Netflix and host Matilde Gioli to convince the unknowing contestants to travel to Mexico for an all-expenses-paid vacation.

Unfortunately for the group, they soon realize that like the cast of Too Hot To Handle season 4, they actually signed up to work a variety of jobs not just to remain on vacation and for a chance to win up to €100,000 or about 107,000. If the...

With the jury winners announced this past weekend (see at the bottom), the 73rd Venice International Film Festival has now come to an end. As always, it was a strong kick-off to the fall festivals, with some premieres of dramas that we’ll see over the next few months, as well as a great many that won’t arrive until next year (or perhaps later, pending distribution). We’ve wrapped up the festival by selecting our 9 favorite films, followed by our complete coverage. Check out everything below and let us know what you’re most looking forward to.

Austerlitz (Sergei Loznitsa)

Having experimented with feature-length fiction films, shorts, and archival-footage documentaries in the course of his career, Sergei Loznitsa’s output since his 2014 Ukrainian crisis documentary Maidan has both garnered him greater acclaim than before and zeroed in on cinema as a collectively generated form. – Tommaso T. (full review)

Hacksaw Ridge...

Lav Diaz’s The Woman Who Left from the Philippines won the Golden Lion at the 73rd Venice Film festival on Saturday while Emma Stone claimed the Coppa Volpi best actress prize for La La Land and Oscar Martínez took actor honours for El Ciudadano Ilustre.

The Silver Lion – grand jury prize went to Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals and the Silver Lion award for best director was a tie between Andrei Konchalovsky for Paradise and Amat Escalante for The Untamed.

Noah Oppenheim prevailed in the screenplay category for Jackie, while Ana Lily Amirpour earned a special jury prize for The Bad Batch.

Venice Winners In Full

Golden Lion for best film

The Woman Who Left (Ang Babaeng Humayo; Philippines) by Lav Diaz

Silver Lion – grand jury prize

Nocturnal Animals (USA) by Tom Ford

Silver Lion award for best director (tie)

Andrei Konchalovsky, Paradise (Cis)

Amat Escalante, The Untamed (La Región Salvaje, Mexico-Denmark-France-Germany- Norway-Switzerland...

Receiving its North American premiere last spring at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival, where it snagged a Best Actress award for Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi, Paolo Virzi’s Human Capital was Italy’s submission for this year’s Best Foreign Language contender. Ultimately it wasn’t selected for a nomination, even though its considerable critical acclaim made it a wise choice (in 2014, Paolo Sorrentino’s sublime The Great Beauty took home the award, but Virzi beat out Sorrentino for Best Film on home turf), as Virzi’s familial drama is an expertly paced dramatic thriller crafted around what could easily been a generic narrative. Meanwhile, the momentum behind the film has instigated a reunion of Virzi with Bruni-Tedeschi for his next feature, even if its box office success wasn’t replicated after it reached Us theaters. A well-paced and engaging thriller, Virzi’s film is a triptych of perspective-based characterizations coalescing into an...

For What It’s Worth: Virzi’s Leftist Neo-Noir a Capitalistic Parable

Receiving its North American premiere last spring at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival, where it snagged a Best Actress award for Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi, Paolo Virzi’s Human Capital is Italy’s submission for this year’s Best Foreign Language contender. They’ve chosen wisely once again (last year Paolo Sorrentino’s sublime The Great Beauty took home the award, but Virzi beat out Sorrentino for Best Film on home turf), as Virzi’s familial drama is an expertly paced dramatic thriller crafted around what could easily been a generic narrative. A triptych of perspective based characterizations coalesce into an arresting finale engendering Verzi’s foreboding title.

Cleaning up after what appears to have been a large banquet, a member of the serving staff takes off into the cold Italian evening on his bicycle, shortly run off the road and into a ditch.

Paolo Virzi

“Human Capital” is a term used to assign a monetary value to an employee based on their knowledge, habits, personality, and creative and physical qualities. According to an insurance company, our lives have value, or in some cases very little.

Upon speaking with Paolo Virzi, the Italian director of his 12th and newest film Human Capital, he revealed he had calculated his own. Though he felt his value was awfully low given his age and his health, he’d agree that the real value of a human life is determined by the actions and behavior of humans that can only be considered priceless.

Human Capital is a three-part story surrounding a hit-and-run car accident as viewed by three different characters. It’s less Rashomon, more Amores Perros, capturing the dark edges, social commentary and young love embedded deep within the story. Following openings abroad, an American premiere in...