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The journey towards this year’s Venice Film Festival began nearly two decades ago for documentarian Marie Losier and pop icon Merrill Nisker – better known to the world as Peaches. Upon meeting backstage at a show, Losier instinctively turned her Bolex camera on the musician — and then didn’t stop filming for 17 years.

The result is “Peaches Goes Bananas,” an intimate and unconventional doc premiering out the Venice Days sidebar.

The project marks the second Peaches-focused project to hit this year’s festival circuit, following Philipp Fussenegger and Judy Landkammer’s “Teaches of Peaches” in Berlin, and the singer sees no overlap.

“The projects are so different,” Nisker tells Variety. “One is more of a documentary of a certain album at a certain place in time, [whereas] Marie’s film – well, I don’t even consider it documentary. It’s more of a painting, a portrait. Marie gets excited about an...

"Every show had this power that I've never experienced..." Madman Films has unveiled the official trailer for an acclaimed documentary film titled The Teaches of Peaches, made by the two European filmmakers Philipp Fussenegger & Judy Landkammer. This first premiered at the 2024 Berlin Film Festival earlier this year and opens in Germany this month, but still doesn't have any US release date yet. Seamlessly weaving together exclusive archival gems with dynamic tour footage, this documentary captures the transformative journey of quirky Canadian musician/performance artist Merrill Nisker into the internationally acclaimed cultural powerhouse that is Peaches. Film during her 2022 concert tour marking the 20th anniversary of her breakthrough album The Teaches of Peaches. Others that appear in the film include Peaches' frequent collaborators Feist, Chilly Gonzales, Shirley Manson. Through biting wit, Peaches advocates for Lgbtqia+ rights and tackles issues of gender & sexual identity, leaving an indelible mark on popular culture. If you know Peaches,...

The independent juries of the 74th Berlin International Film Festival early Saturday unveiled their picks of the best movies at the 2024 Berlinale.

Matthias Glasner’s German family epic Sterben (Dying), and the Iranian feature My Favourite Cake from directors Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha, both of which are considered frontrunners for the top prize at the official festival ceremony on Saturday night, received multiple awards for the indie juries, as did Dag Johan Haugerud’s Norwegian drama Sex, a critical favorite from this year’s Panorama sidebar.

Sterben, which follows a classical conductor (played by Lars Eidinger) and his very dysfunctional family, won the best film honor from the guild of German arthouse cinemas and the top prize awarded by the jury of Berliner Morgenpost readers representing the Berlin newspaper.

My Favourite Cake, a quiet drama about a 70-year-old widow who takes a chance on new love, won the Fipresci...

The Berlin Film Festival has unveiled the winners of this year’s Panorama Audience Awards, voted on by ordinary viewers at the world’s largest public film festival.

Memories of a Burning Body, the second feature film from Costa Rican director Antonella Sudasassi Furniss, won the top prize for best fiction film, while No Other Land by Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor took the Panorama Audience Award for best documentary.

Memories of a Burning Body follows a trio of seventy-something women as they discuss their sexuality and their bodies, confronting the taboos and constrictions of living in a sexist and repressive society. Produced by Substance Films in co-production with Playlab Films, Memories of a Burning Body is being worldwide by Bendita Film Sales.

No Other Land, directed by a collective of Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers, traces the Israeli government’s attempts to expel Palestinians in Masafer Yatta,...

NonStop Entertainment has acquired Nordic distribution rights to Mattias J Skoglund’s upcoming horror The Home [working title].

The film will begin production in Gotland, Sweden in spring, produced by Siri Hjorton Wagner for [sic] film. LevelK is handling international sales.

The Home is based on Mats Strandberg’s 2017 novel of the same name, about a man who returns to his small town to care for his dementia-stricken mother, as she experiences terrifying visions of her late abusive husband.

Strandberg is adapting his book in collaboration with Skoglund; co-producers are Elina Litvinova of Three Brothers and Heather Millard of Compass Films. Financing comes from the Svenska Filminstitutet,...

A Different Man.The Berlinale have begun to announce the first few titles selected for the 74th edition of their festival, set to take place from February 15 through 21, 2024. This page will be updated as further sections are announced.COMPETITIONAnother End (Piero Messina)Architecton (Victor Kossakovsky)Black Tea (Abderrahmane Sissako)La Cocina (Alonso Ruiz Palacios) Dahomey (Mati Diop)A Different Man (Aaron Schimberg)The Empire (Bruno Dumont)Gloria! (Margherita Vicario)Suspended Time (Olivier Assayas)From Hilde, With Love (Andreas Dresen)My Favourite CakeLangue Etrangère (Claire Berger)Small Things Like These (Tim Mielants)Who Do I Belong To (Meryam Joobeur)Pepe (Nelson Carlos De Los Santos Arias)Shambhala (Min Bahadur Bham)Sterben (Matthias Glasner)Small Things Like These (Tim Mielants)A Traveler’s Needs (Hong Sang-soo)Sleep With Your Eyes Open. ENCOUNTERSArcadia (Yorgos Zois)Cidade; Campo (Juliana Rojas)Demba (Mamadou Dia)Direct ActionSleep With Your Eyes Open (Nele Wohlatz)The Fable (Raam Reddy...

Berlinale co-directors Carlo Chatrian and Mariette Rissenbeek are going out with a bang in their final year, with a lineup unveiled today featuring the latest works by Olivier Assayas, Bruno Dumont, Mati Diop, Hong Sang-soo, Abderrahmane Sissako, Jane Schoenbrun, Alonso Ruizpalacios, Matias Pineiro, Travis Wilkerson, Kazik Radwanski, Annie Baker, and more.

When the co-directors were asked by Screen Daily about their departure, Chatrian said, “It’s quite simple. Mariette and I had a mandate of five years. It is true that at the beginning I said that I was willing to go on because there was a shared will with the [German] Ministry [of Culture] to go on. But then the people who have the responsibility to see the future of the Berlinale thought this structure of two leaders was not the right one and I don’t consider myself able to run the festival alone. And that was the decision of the Ministry.

The Berlinale has completed the lineup for its Panorama, Generation, Forum and Forum expanded sections, with new films from Levan Akin and Andre Techine, plus the debut feature of US playwright Annie Baker.

Swedish filmmaker Akin, who scored an international hit in 2019 with And Then We Danced, will open the Panorama strand with Crossing, about two people travelling from Georgia to Istanbul in search of a young transgender woman.

Scroll down for the full list of Panorama, Generation and Forum features

Also among the 31 films in Panorama are My New Friends from French filmmaker Techine, starring Isabelle Hupert, Hafsia Herzi...

This detached character study is neither a feelgood story of empowerment, nor a grim look at a life on the margins and is more powerful for it

‘Muscle worship, domination, same-old same-old.” ​​Tischa “The Tigress” Thomas is describing a recent session with a client, who pays for the privilege of submitting to her will. Thomas’s main gig is bodybuilding, but like many semi-professionals in the world of sports entertainment and performance, she engages in various side-hustles to make ends meet. One of the strengths of Philipp Fussenegger’s documentary portrait of her is that it is not wholly a feelgood story of uplifting empowerment, nor is it a relentlessly grim look at a life lived on the margins. Instead, it shows how for Thomas (as for most people), the highs and lows blend and overlap, and tend not to obey the neat narrative arcs of fiction.

In other respects though,...