Notícias

Exclusive: Dubai-based global management and production company 75East has signed Iranian-American filmmaker and animator Liam LoPinto, whose 2023 animated short film The Old Young Crow made waves on the festival circuit.

The work was EP’d by Succession Emmy-nominated actor Arian Moayed and Academy Award-winner Rayka Zehtabchi, who was the first Iranian woman to win an Oscar in 2019 for her short film Period. End of Sentence.

Described by Flee-director Jonas Poher Rasmussen as “playful, poetic, and profound,” the short tells the story of an Iranian-born man who, upon discovering his childhood sketchbook, goes on a kaleidoscopic journey back to a Tokyo graveyard where he befriended an elderly Japanese woman long ago.

LoPinto is currently developing including a feature length adaptation of the film within a slate of other short and feature length projects.

New York-raised LoPinto has recently participated in the second edition of The Pillars Artist Fellowship. Aimed at emerging Muslim artists,...

Exclusive: Dubai-based global management and production company 75East has signed Egyptian writer, director and producer Omar Hilal, director of feel-good drama comedy Voy! Voy! Voy!, which was Egypt’s 2023 Oscar submission.

The picture, which is Hilal’s first feature, is inspired by the true story of a man who fakes blindness to join a team of visually impaired footballers bound for Poland to fulfil his dream of escaping Egypt to live in Europe.

75East Principal and Talent Manager Antone Saliba announced the signing at the Red Sea Film Festival, where he is attending the Red Sea Souk market and joined FilmNation CEO Glen Basner and Mbc Studios General Manager Zeinab Abul Al Samh among others on an industry panel this week.

Voy, Voy, Voy! was Hilal’s first feature after a 20-year career as one of the preeminent advertising directors of the Arab world.

After topping the Egyptian box office...

The seventh edition of the El Gouna Film Festival felt like a solid step back into stability following the cancelation of the 2022 edition for a “reset” and the postponement of last year’s edition from October to December due to the war in Gaza. This year’s fete, which took place between Oct. 24-Nov. 1 in the Egyptian resort town, welcomed keen audiences and key regional and international players as part of market platform CineGouna.

“The program was always strong but the media concentrated the coverage on the glamour and red carpet,” artistic director Marianne Khoury tells Variety. “When I joined last year, I wanted to rebalance that a little bit and have the right coverage on all the programs, not just the glitz and glamour.”

And that is exactly how the festival felt this year, with filmmakers and industry heads all acutely aware of the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East,...

Exclusive: Dubai-based global management and production company 75East has signed Egyptian director Karim Shaaban, who is currently in production on his new feature 6 Days in Cairo.

He is the latest signing in a growing roster of talent on the 75East books since its launch last December with a focus on Swana (Southwest Asia and North Africa), alongside the likes of Jordanian Oscar-nominee Bassel Ghandour (Theeb) and Egyptian Palme d’Or-nominee Abu Bakr Shawky (Yomeddine).

Shaaban most recently directed the short film I Don’t Care if the World Collapses, starring Egyptian superstar Salma Abu Deif as an ambitious advertizing producer whose path crosses an actor excited about landing his first role in a commercials shoot.

The short premiered this year at the Cleveland International Film Festival, followed by a US Oscar-qualifying festival tour including Palm Springs International ShortFest and Nashville Film Festival. The film was self-produced, written by Wael Hamdy,...

Exclusive: Egypt’s El Gouna Film Festival has launched a new initiative supporting and promoting emerging directing, writing and producing talents in the Mena region and unveiled the first participants.

The Cinegouna Emerge Rising Stars initiative has been created within the framework of the festival’s Cinegouna Emerge program aimed at nurturing the next generation of Mena film professionals.

The inaugural selection comprises Mohammed Almughanni (Palestine), Faris Alrjoob (Jordan), Leila Basma (Lebanon), Rasha Hosny (Egypt), sibling directorial duo Noel and Michelle Keserwany (Lebanon) and Dessil Mekhtigian (Egypt).

Gaza-born director Mohammed Almughanni has a bachelor’s and master’s in film directing from Łódź Film School in Poland. His most recent short An Orange from Jaffa, about a young Palestinian man trying to cross an Israeli checkpoint to join his mother on the other side, won the Grand Prix in the International Competition of the Clermont Ferrand Short Film Festival earlier this year.

Exclusive: Dubai-based global management and production company 75East has signed Lebanese writer-director Nay Tabbara, whose short film Ebb & Flow won the Student Visionary Award at its Tribeca world premiere in June.

Inspired by real events and the political instabilities of the early 2000s in Lebanon, the short follows 14-year-old Loulwa whose plans for a secret date behind her family’s back take an unexpected turn when a bomb explodes in Beirut.

The short followed its Tribeca success with an impressive Academy-Qualifying festival run, screening in competition at festivals including Palm Springs International ShortFest, IndyShorts International Film Festival, HollyShorts Film Festival, and Nashville Film Festival.

Nay Tabbara is a multi-hyphenate Lebanese filmmaker based between New York City and Beirut.

She gained experience on set, working as an assistant director in her native Lebanon for the likes of Ziad Doueiri and Mounia Akl, before moving to the U.S. to earn a...

Exclusive: Dubai-based management and production company 75East has signed Palestinian director Mahdi Fleifel, whose narrative feature debut To A Land Unknown is playing in Directors’ Fortnight this year.

75East, was launched last December by former Mister Smith sales executive Antone Saliba under the banner Untamed Talent with a focus on the Swana region (South West Asia and North Africa), and has recently rebranded.

The only Palestinian feature in Cannes this year, To A Land Unknown tells the story of the desperate attempts of two Palestinian cousins stranded in Athens to find a way to reach Germany.

Chatila and Reda are saving to pay for fake passports to get out of Athens. When Reda loses their hard-earned cash to his drug addiction, Chatila hatches an extreme plan, which involves them posing as smugglers and taking hostages in an effort to get him and his best friend out of their hopeless environment before it is too late.

Pan-Arab outfit Mad Solutions has launched international sales company Mad World, which will introduce its first slate of titles and executive team at the Cannes market next week.

The Dubai-based firm will handle worldwide sales and international distribution of new Arab-language feature films, led by Mad Solutions’ co-founders Alaa Karkouti and Maher Diab as well as the company’s managing partner Colin Brown. All three are co-presidents of Mad World, with Karkouti serving as CEO.

Also joining Mad World are European executives Edin De Liancourt as vice president of sales and acquisitions and Jeanne Deny as director of sales and acquisitions.

Mohamed Kordofani’s Goodbye Julia and Kaouther Ben Hania’s Four Daughters lead the nominations for the 8th Critics Awards for Arab Films, which will be held during the upcoming Cannes Film Festival.

Both features picked up seven nominations apiece for the awards, focused on Arab films that were produced and premiered outside of the Arab world in 2023. Overseen and run by the Cairo-based Arab Cinema Centre (Acc), it was voted on by 209 critics from 72 countries and the winners will be announced during Cannes on May 18.

Scroll down for full list of nominations

This year’s nominees range from Sudan,...

Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania’s Oscar-nominated documentary Four Daughters and Sudanese director Mohamed Kordofani’s Lupita Nyong’o-EPed drama Goodbye Julia lead the nominations in the eighth edition of the Critics Awards for Arab Films.

Hybrid work Four Daughters, exploring the story of a real-life Tunisian mother who lost two of her daughters to Isis after they were radicalized by a local preacher, world premiered in Competition in Cannes last year.

The film won Cannes’ Golden Eye for Best Documentary and also went on to be nominated for Best Documentary at the 2024 Academy Awards.

Kordofani’s Khartoum-set drama Goodbye Julia was also at Cannes in 2023, making history as the first Sudanese film to play in the festival across its 76 editions, with a debut in Un Certain Regard. It represented Sudan at in the 2023-24 Oscar race but was not nominated.

Set against the backdrop of the 2011 South Sudan Independence referendum,...

Faris Alrjoob's German-Jordanian short The Red Sea Makes Me Wanna Cry will be released on film streaming giant Mubi on April 20th making it the first Jordanian short film in Mubi's library, which is good news for cinephiles, who can now easily access the film on the platform with just a click and a small subscription fee.

Commenting on this unique partnership, Mad Solutions' co-founders Alaa Karkouti and Maher Diab said: “We're ecstatic with our first collaboration with Mubi, the worldwide platform famous for its meticulous choices of their films' quality. We're proud this collaboration starts with The Red Sea Makes Me Wanna Cry that stole the spotlight on its world premiere at Cannes Film Festival and is also our second project with the director Faris Alrjoob.”

Mubi is a global streaming platform, production company, and film distributor founded in 2007. Mubi produces and theatrically distributes films by emerging and established filmmakers,...

Faris Alrjoob's The Red Sea Makes Me Wanna Cry is now streaming exclusively on Mubi in many countries.Location scouting photograph for The Red Sea Makes Me Wanna Cry.Writing this feels like a vernissage of sorts; the film is finally arriving, or rather departing, into the world.Let me set the scene. The night before the first day of shooting. A group of us are gathered in our cinematographer Mahmoud Belakhel’s hotel room in the south of Jordan—a space that seemed suspended in time, somewhere in the 1970s. Mahmoud and I are crammed between the edge of the bed and a small desk. Alina Musiol, our production designer, stands by the balcony door, looking at us. Luma Al Hamarneh, my producing partner, is on a call (she had two phones at the time that were always vibrating). A slow knock on the door—Leen Hamarneh and Mahdi Abu Salma,...

Mubi has unveiled next’s streaming lineup, featuring notable new releases, including Molly Manning Walker’s debut How to Have Sex, Kevin Macdonald’s High & Low: John Galliano, and Quentin Dupieux’s Yannick. Ahead of Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17, two of his earlier films will arrive on the platform, along with a pair of features from All of Us Strangers director Andrew Haigh, as well as S. Craig Zahler’s Brawl in Cell Block 99, and more.

“The story can be translated into many different settings and I think it’s still relevant in terms of house parties, clubs, and even in relationships,” Molly Manning Walker recently told us about her debut How to Have Sex. “On the other hand: I wanted to make something that was very cinematic, but not set in a domestic environment. But the reason that this particular setting felt perfect was that––at that time,...

South Korean director Hong Sang-soo was awarded the El Gouna Gold Star for best narrative film for his meditation on art and relationships, “In Our Day,” as the delayed edition of the El Gouna Film Festival held its closing ceremony on Thursday. The Italian animated film “A Greyhound of a Girl,” directed by Enzo D’Alò, and the Brazilian director Guto Parente’s “A Strange Path” picked up the Silver and Bronze Stars respectively.

The jury comprised of Indian director Anup Singh, Jordanian actress Saba Mubarak, Palestinian actress Yasmine Al-Massri, French Lebanese actress Manal Issa and Egyptian filmmaker Omar El Zohairy.

In the non-fiction category, Ibrahim Nash’at’s acclaimed documentary “Hollywoodgate” took the top prize, with “Seven Winters in Tehran” and Mila Turajlić’s Serbian film “Non-Aligned: Scenes from the Labudović Reels” sharing the Silver Star, and “On the Adamant,” directed by French director Nicolas Philibert, taking the Bronze Star. The...

Untamed Talent, a management and production company led by former Mister Smith Entertainment executive Antone Saliba, is launching with the backing of Dubai-based Front Row Productions, a joint venture of leading Middle East distribution companies Front Row Filmed Entertainment and Empire Entertainment.

Front Row Productions will provide capital and strategic value to support Untamed Talent’s goals to innovate new business models covering the South West Asia and North Africa region, the fastest-growing entertainment market in the world. The focus will be not only on representing filmmakers from established Middle East industry hubs of Egypt and Saudi, it will also identify, develop and promote talent from traditionally underrepresented countries within the region such as Jordan, Morocco, Syria, Afghanistan, Turkey and Iran.

Untamed will work on a non-exclusive basis with all production and distribution parties in the region, as well as U.S. and international studios and streamers to maximize opportunities for its clients.

‘Hajjan’ director Abu Bakr Shawky and ‘Theeb’ producer’ Bassel Ghandour on initial clint roster.

Untamed Talent, a new management and production company led by former Mister Smith Entertainment executive Antone Saliba, has launched with the backing of Dubai-based Front Row Productions and unveiled its first roster of clients.

The firm will represent filmmakers from the established Middle East industry hubs of Egypt and Saudi as well as promoting talent from more underrepresented countries in South West Asia and North Africa such as Jordan, Morocco, Syria, Afghanistan, Turkey, and Iran.

Front Row Productions, a joint venture of leading Middle East distribution...

Former Mister Smith sales executive Antone Saliba has launched management and production company Untamed Talent, with the backing of Dubai-based Front Row Productions.

The latter company, which is a joint venture of leading Middle East distribution companies Front Row Filmed Entertainment and Empire Entertainment, will provide capital and strategic value for the new banner.

Saliba, who was a sales and acquisitions executive under David Garrett at Mister Smith, wants to create new content business models for the fast-growing entertainment sectors of the Swana region, covering Southwest Asia and North Africa.

As well as representing filmmakers from the established Mena industry hubs of Egypt and Saudi, the new company will also identify, develop, and promote talent from traditionally underrepresented countries within the region such as Jordan, Morocco, Syria, Afghanistan, Turkey and Iran.

The company will work on a non-exclusive basis with production and distribution parties in the region, as well as U.

Premiering at the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes, Faris Alrjoob’s The Red Sea Makes Me Wanna Cry is a tale filled with shimmering mysteries, utilising elliptical storytelling, enigmatic voiceover and a strong command of camera movement and tone to suggest multiple hidden meanings lingering in the background. His thesis film at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne, The Red Sea Makes Me Wanna Cry sees the Jordanian filmmaker travel to Aqaba – a tourist hotspot situated between Israel and Saudi Arabia – making excellent use of location to suggest an almost dystopian, forgotten world, imbuing our protagonist’s journey to learn more about her long-lost lover with a keenly felt sense of time and place. We had the chance to talk to Alrjoob ahead of the film’s world premiere yesterday about shooting on Super 16, the benefits of a 1:66:1 frame and how his lead actress, Clara Schwinning, is like a young Tilda Swinton.

The lineup for the 2023 Directors' Fortnight (Quinzaine des Réalisateurs) at Cannes has been announced. See also the lineup of the Official Selection and Critics' Week.Creatura.Feature FILMSThe Goldman Case (Cédric Kahn)Agra (Kanu Behl)The Other Laurens (Claude Schmitz)Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell (Thien An Pham)Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry (Elene Naveriani) Blazh (Ilya Povolotsky)She Is Conann (Bertrand Mandico)Creatura (Elena Martín Gimeno)Déserts (Faouzi Bensaïdi)In Flames (Zarrar Kahn) Légua (Filipa Reis and João Miller Guerra)The Book of Solutions (Michel Gondry)Mambar Pierrette (Rosine Mbakam)Riddle of Fire (Weston Razooli)The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something has Passed (Joanna Arnow)The Sweet East (Sean Price Williams)A Prince (Pierre Creton)A Song Sung Blue (Zihan Geng)In Our Day (Hong Sang-soo)Short FILMSThe House Is on Fire, Might as Well Get Warm (Mouloud Aït Liotna)A Storm Inside (Clément Pérot)The Birthday Party (Francesco Sossai...

The Cannes Directors’ Fortnight lineup has been unveiled ahead of this year’s festival.

Set for May 16 through May 27, the Directors’ Fortnight will debut 20 feature films and 10 short films this year.

Cédric Kahn’s “The Goldman Case” is the opening night selection. The film centers on the 1976 trial of left-wing revolutionary Pierre Goldman who was convicted of multiple armed robberies and later murdered.

Korean director Hong Sangsoo’s “In Our Day” will conclude the festival. The feature stars Kim Minhee and Ki Joobong in parallel stories of cat owners grappling with their felines’ respective mortality.

Directors’ Fortnight highlights also include Oscar winner Michel Gondry’s French comedy “The Book of Solutions,” starring Pierre Niney as a filmmaker with writer’s block. The film marks “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” director Gondry’s first feature in seven years.

“Good Time” director of photography Sean Price William makes his directorial feature...

After Cannes Film Festival announced its main lineup last week, the Directors’ Fortnight and Critics’ Week sidebars have unveiled their slates. Now in its 55th edition, Directors’ Fortnight features Hong Sangsoo’s second feature of the year, In Our Day, while Sean Price Williams’ The Sweet East, Michel Gondry’s The Book of Solutions, Bertrand Mandico’s She Is Conann, and more.

“The Directors’ Fortnight was born when a community of directors came together with the desire to create an independent space that would encourage the emergence of free filmmaking regardless of geographical provenance or any other limiting criteria,” said Julien Rejl, Artistic Director of the Directors’ Fortnight. “At the heart of the creation of the Directors’ Fortnight was the singular quality of a work of art and the impossibility of pigeonholing it. We have chosen to present 30 films to you which, through their own unique language, embody a spirit...