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Back when tigers used to smoke, starry-eyed dreamers imagined tantalizing futures that seemed so within reach — until cold harsh truth reared its ugly head. So it goes in So Young Shelly Yo's debut feature, “Smoking Tigers,” an incisive excerpt of 2000s Korean-American life in Southern California. Here, sixteen-year old Hayoung (Ji-young Yoo) has to juggle her family and social life in one fateful summer. Between her parents' failing marriage, new cram school friends, and her own yearning for a stable home, she becomes entangled in an network of lies that becomes increasingly difficult to extricate herself from.

We had the opportunity to speak with So Young Shelly Yo over Zoom, on the occasion of “Smoking Tigers”' North American theatrical premiere. Over the course of the conversation, we spoke about filming bilingually, working on a first feature, and the gamble that is the American Dream.

This interview has been edited and redacted for clarity.

A new faith-based film fund has been set up by former Im Global executive Alexandros Potter and filmmaker Yelena Popovic, behind the hugely successful 2021 drama “Man of God,” about the Greek saint Nectarios of Aegina.

Simeon Faith, one of a number of new announcements in the faith-based film world in recent months, is a dedicated equity film fund focused on financing and producing what it describes as “talent-driven, high-end artistic and commercial fare with strong elements of faith for a global audience.”

The new fund aims to finance one to two films per year over the next four years. The first project on the slate is “Moses the Black,” a story of a gangster in modern day Chicago that is inspired by the fourth-century saint of the same name. The film is scheduled to go into production this year, with Popovic as writer and director.

Simeon Faith comes backed by...

Netflix is backing three projects from women filmmakers in Nigeria and Africa including the series Baby Farm, executive produced by EbonyLife’s Mo Abudu.

The series follows a pregnant woman who becomes entrapped in a high-profile but sinister Ngo called Baby Farm and must work to save herself and her fellow captives.

Nollywood star Rita Dominic leads the cast with Joseph Benjamin, Onyinye Odokoro, Genoveva Umeh, Langley Kirkwood and Jenny Stead.

The slate also includes the feature House of Ga’a, from Bolanle Austen-Peters, whose 2022 drama Man Of God was also released by Netflix. Her new feature is set in...

Hello, and welcome to the Scene 2 Seen Podcast!

I am Valerie Complex, an associate editor and film writer at Deadline. Today I’m chatting with Ji-young Yoo, who has some anticipated performances on the horizon. It’s no wonder Variety named her one of the 10 Actors to Watch for 2023.

Ji-Young stars as a co-lead in the six-part limited series Expats, which is based on the Janice Y.K. Lee’s international best-selling novel, The Expatriates. Directed by Lulu Wang (The Farewell), the series also stars Nicole Kidman and Sarayu Blue. Set in Hong Kong 2014, the story centers on three American women – Margaret Mercy and Hilary – whose lives intersect after a sudden tragedy. The series made its debut at the 2023 Toronto Film Festival and was released on Prime Video in January.

The actress attended Sundance 2024 for the premiere of the immersive film Freaky Tales alongside Pedro Pascal and Jay Ellis. From Captain Marvel...

“Ozark” fans, rejoice. The Jason Bateman and Julia Garner-starring drama series is returning to Netflix in April with a second part to its fourth season — and it’s just one of many other hotly anticipated titles coming to the streamer this month.

April will also see the long-awaited sophomore installment to “Russian Doll,” the mind-bending “Groundhog Day”-esque dramedy series starring Natasha Lyonne as a hard-partying New York City woman stuck in a brain-melting circuitous loop from hell.

For fans of capital-m mess, there’s the Spanish-language “Elite,” which traces the scandalous (and often murderous) exploits of the posh attendees of high school Las Encinas. Or, if you prefer your glamorous mess via reality series, “Selling Sunset” — about the lux real estate market in Los Angeles — is premiering its fifth season April 22.

In notable films, there’s the Judd Apatow-helmed “The Bubble,” a spoof loosely inspired by the...

A list of new streaming releases on Netflix, what a concept!

Netflix’s list of new releases for April 2022 is highlighted by the return of one of the great sci-fi comedies ever. Natasha Lyonne is set to return as the temporally displaced Nadia on Russian Doll season 2 on April 20. The first season of the show premiered in 2019 and appeared to tell a rather complete story about one Brooklyn woman’s experiences of dying over and over again. But Lyonne and fellow producers Leslye Headland and Amy Poehler still have some story to tell. Netflix is undoubtedly very happy to let them continue to tell it.

Read more TV Russian Doll, The Good Place, And How Fun TV Got Dark and Insightful By Amanda Keats TV Russian Doll: Natasha Lyonne’s Most Underappreciated Roles By Rosie Fletcher and 1 other

Another major series of note this month is the final batch of episodes for Ozark.

Athens International Film Festival ran September 22-October 3.

Tatiana Huezo’s fiction debut Prayers For The Stolen won the top prizes at Athens International Film Festival (September 22-October 3), including best film and best direction (Silver Athena).

The screenplay by Huezo and Jennifer Clement is based on the latter’s novel and follows the life of three adolescent girls in a remote Mexican small city plagued by the narco-cartels.

Produced by Nicola Celis (Pimienta Film) who also produced Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma, and Jim Stark, the film premiered in Un Certain Regard at this year’s Cannes film festival, where it earned a special mention.

Athens International Film Festival ran September 22-October 3.

Tatiana Huezo’s fiction debut Prayers For The Stolen won the top prizes at Athens International Film Festival (September 22-October 3), including best film and best direction (Silver Athena).

The screenplay by Huezo and Jennifer Clement is based on the latter’s novel and follows the life of three adolescent girls in a remote Mexican small city plagued by the narco-cartels.

Produced by Nicola Celis (Pimienta Film) who also produced Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma, and Jim Stark, the film premiered in Un Certain Regard at this year’s Cannes film festival, where it earned a special mention.

25th entry in superspy franchise sets record advance sales for Everyman, Picturehouse, Curzon.

Universal executives said No Time To Die scored an estimated £4.5m-£5m ($6.2m-$6.8m) UK and Ireland opening day on Thursday (September 30).

Combined with South Korea and Mexico the superspy saga that marks Daniel Craig’s fifth and final outing as James Bond has amassed an early running total of more than $7m.

‘No Time To Die’: Review

The UK and Ireland opening day debut is approximately 13% above that of Spectre (Monday opening) and around 26% behind Skyfall’s Friday bow.

No Time To Die is getting...

Deals close for Australia, France, Latin America and others.

LA-based Pinnacle Peak Pictures has struck a raft of territory sales on Man Of God, the Greek box office champion about the life of St. Nektarios of Aegina that has held on to the number one slot for four weeks and drawn more than 270,000 admissions.

VP of international sales Ron Gell has licensed rights to Heritage for Australia and New Zealand, Saje for France, California Filmes for pan Latin America, Dutch Channels for Netherlands, and McF for former Yugoslavia.

Gell and his team previously licensed Yelena Popovic’s Moscow International Film...

Dune’s total after two weekends of play is $77.8m.

Worldwide Box Office September 24-26 2021 Rank Film (Distributor) 3-day (World) Cume (World)3-day (Int’l) Cume (Int’l) Territories 1 Shang-Chi (Disney) $27.2m $363.3m $14m $166.9m 45 2 Dune (Warner Bros) $26.3m $76.5m $26.3m $76.5m 32 3 Cloudy Mountain $10.5m $58.2m $10.5m $58.2m 1 4 Free Guy (Disney) $9.2m $317.4m $5.1m $203.3m 49 5 Dear Evan Hansen (Universal) $7.5m $7.5m n/a n/a 2

Credit: Comscore, all figures estimates

‘Dune’ hits $76m

Updated: Warner Bros and Legendary’s Dune delivered a strong second session in its early wave of international markets, grossing a confirmed $26.8m from 32 territories, including eight newly opened smaller countries.

Real evil will always be a tantalizing go-to for storytellers, and in the case of notorious serial killer Ted Bundy, it’s meant at least nine at-bats across film and television for handsome, ambitious actors (from ‘80s-era heartthrob Mark Harmon to post-Disney Zac Efron) to twist looks, charisma and pathology into a portrait of chill, guy-next-door monstrosity.

Could Luke Kirby’s turn, as the death-row Bundy, be the best yet? Even if director Amber Sealey’s crisp, compelling indie docudrama “No Man of God” is the second Bundy film this year alone, not counting documentaries? Pardon the competitive shading to that question, but in the Hannibal Lecter era, screen madmen have mostly been muscle-flexing attempts at nerve-jangling one-upmanship, so it’s a comparison most films welcome.

And Bundy, convicted of murdering three women but certainly guilty of killing, raping and kidnapping countless more, has become a true-crime cottage industry, to...

With the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival now officially wrapped, after making history for being the first in-person film festival since the beginning of the Covid-19 lockdown, the genre movies it premiered are also noteworthy, particularly for their relatable characters and vital themes. No Man of God, No Running, and Settlers are all remarkable thrillers for their powerful messages of people standing up for, and not backing down from, what they believe in.

No Man of God: Biographical crime thrillers that chronicle the cases of real-life serial killers often sensationalize the criminal’s crime spree in order to shock their audiences. But director Amber Sealey’s new movie No Man of God is a stunning and welcome entry in the genre, as it instead chooses to study the full spectrum of the human condition following the murders committed by notorious serial killer, Ted Bundy.

Written by Kit Lesser and set in the mid-1980s,...

Directors Amber Sealey and Joe Berlinger got caught up in a feud, ahead of the June 11 Tribeca premiere of Sealey’s Ted Bundy pic No Man of God.

The quarrel began with an email Berlinger sent to Sealey, after noticing interviews in which she discussed the glorification of Bundy in American culture. In these interviews, he felt she was comparing her film favorably to others made about the infamous serial killer—including two of his own—implying that past films had contributed to the idolization of Bundy, whereas hers does not.

“Forgive the unsolicited advice, but after reading some of your interviews about your Bundy movie, I feel compelled to tell you that tearing down my work to promote yours is a slippery slope and intellectually dishonest and deeply offensive,” Berlinger said in the email, which you can read in its entirety below. “My work has gotten wrongfully convicted people...

“Expats,” the Amazon series adaptation of Janice Y.K. Lee’s novel “The Expatriates,” has found its first cast member in Ji-young Yoo.

Set against the fabric of Hong Kong, “Expats” is the story of an international community whose lives are bound together forever after a sudden family tragedy. The show was originally ordered to series at Amazon back in 2019.

Yoo will star as Mercy, described as a carefree New Yorker who becomes tangled up in the lives of the expat community in Hong Kong. Though the move to Asia was meant to be a fresh start after college, Mercy’s zero responsibility attitude to life begins to haunt her, proving what she has always believed to be true – that she was born with a curse.

Yoo will next be seen in the feature “The Sky Is Everywhere,” which will debut in theaters in 2022. Her other credits include “Girl From Nowhere” and “Moxie.

Yelena Popovic shot film under Covid protocols in Greece last summer.

Moscow International Film Festival audience award winner Man Of God will open theatrically in Russia via Rocket Releasing and in Greece through Feelgood Entertainment on August 26, Pinnacle Peak Pictures VP of international sales Ron Gell announced on Thursday (May 20).

Gell is in active talks with independent theatrical distributors throughout Europe, Eastern Europe, and Latin America and deals are pending.

Yelena Popovic directed the film, which shot under Covid protocols in Greece last summer and will premiere at the 15th Los Angeles Green Film festival running May 22 and 23.

Hellenic Academy...

Warrior Queen Of Jhansi, Beckman attract buyers.

LA-based Pinnacle Peak Pictures, renamed after the sale of the North American Pure Flix streaming platform to Sony, is screening Man Of God to EFM buyers and continuing sales on Walking With Herb as it reports a raft of deals on its slate of family, inspirational and faith films.

Walking With Herb, which is being lined up for a US theatrical release in early summer and features George Lopez as God’s motorcycle-riding messenger, has sold to California Filmes for all Latin America.

Female empowerment story Warrior Queen Of Jhansi has gone to Rialto in Australia,...

Exclusive: Actress Ji-young Yoo has boarded the forthcoming feature The Sky Is Everywhere from Apple and A24. She will join the ensemble that includes Cherry Jones, Jason Segel, Grace Kaufman and Jacques Colimon.

Based on the YA novel by Jandy Nelson, Josephine Decker (director of Sundance winner Shirley) will helm the film which will be adapted by the author. The novel follows the character of Lennie (Kaufman), a teen who accidentally falls in love while grieving the loss of her sister Bailey. Yoo is set to play Lennie’s best friend Sarah.

Jones will play the role of Gram, Lennie and Bailey’s grandmother, who takes them in and raises them in her home where she lives with her eccentric son, Big played by Segel. He runs a local hot air balloon company and tends to fall in love with whichever woman he takes up in the balloon. Colimon will play Joe Fontaine,...

Ruben Östlund’s feature stars Woody Harrelson, Harris Dickinson, and Charlbi Dean.

Ruben Östlund’s Triangle Of Sadness, starring Woody Harrelson. Harris Dickinson and newcomer Charlbi Dean, starts shooting in Greece on September 19 after it was cancelled twice earlier this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

It will shoot on the island of Euboea (Evia) and on a yacht in the Ionian sea for eight weeks.

Produced by Erik Hemmendorf of Stockholm-based Plattform Produktion, the film is a satire that follows a model couple, played by Screen Star of Tomorrow Dickinson and Dean, who are invited on a luxury cruise.

Production scheduled to wrap on September 21.

Mickey Rourke is flying home to the US today (September 15) after filming his scenes in Greece on Pure Flix/Quality Flix sales title Man Of God.

Rourke and Russian star Alexander Petrov flew to Greece earlier this month where production on the US-Greece feature from Simeon Entertainment and View Master Films resumed following five weeks of principal photography in and around Athens in June-July.

Rourke, who like Petrov travelled to Greece after travel restrictions on flying into Europe were relaxed, landed on September 8.

Man Of God centres on Saint Nektarios of Aegina, a humble...

Production scheduled to wrap on September 21.

Mickey Rourke is flying home to the US today (September 15) after filming his scenes in Greece on Pure Flix/Quality Flix sales title Man Of God.

Rourke and Alexander Petrov from Russia flew to Greece earlier this month where production on the US-Greece feature resumed following five weeks of principal photography in and around Athens in June-July.

Rourke, who like Petrov travelled to Greece after travel restrictions on flying into Europe were relaxed, landed on September 8.

Man Of God centres on Saint Nektarios of Aegina, a humble Greek Orthodox priest who was persecuted by...

Miky Lee elected vice-chair, Paramount CEO and chairman Jim Gianopulos treasurer.

Netflix co-ceo Ted Sarandos has been named chair of the Academy Museum board of trustees in the wake of embattled former studio head Ron Meyer’s exit from the role last month.

Sarandos most recently served as vice-chair and stepped in as acting chair last month after Meyer quit the Academy Museum and his post as NBCUniversal vice-chairman after reports involving an affair.

Following the board meeting today (September 15) Miky Lee has been named vice-chair, Paramount CEO and chairman Jim Gianopulos treasurer, and Kimberly Steward has been re-elected secretary.

Studio’s Orion Pictures to distribute in Us on August 14.

MGM’s international distribution and acquisitions division has acquired all remaining territories excluding China on Bill & Ted Face The Music from Endeavor Content.

MGM previously secured distribution in key territories including Germany, Greece, Latin America and the Middle East, among others, and its Orion Pictures will distribute in the Us on August 14.

The new deal encompasses France, Italy, Spain, Japan, South Korea, Scandinavia, Taiwan, Thailand, Hong Kong, Hungary, Turkey, Benelux, Bulgaria, Singapore and Romania.

Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter reunite on the cult comedy franchise that started in 1989. In the latest instalment,...

“After two and a half months in lockdown, everybody was happy to be back at work.”

Man Of God was two days out from the start of production when Greece went into lockdown in mid-March, so when restrictions were lifted at the end of May producer Alexandros Potter knew he had to act fast.

“For us we felt the right thing was to start production and get as much done as we could,” said Potter, who runs Simeon Entertainment with the faith-based film’s writer-director Yelena Popovic.

“We’d scheduled the Greek release for November through Feelgood Entertainment,” said Potter.

Pure Flix/Quality Flix has picked up international sales rights to religious drama “Man of God,” starring Mickey Rourke, Aris Servetalis and Alexander Petrov.

The rights are for sale at the Berlin Film Festival. “Man of God,” directed and written by Yelena Popovic. Producers are Alexandros Potter and Yelena Popovic through their company Simeon Entertainment and Kostas Lambropoulos through his company View Master Films.

Ron Gell of Pure Flix/Quality Flix, said, “This is a big film with award-winning talent. It’s exciting to be involved with this great script and we are confident that Yelena Popovic will deliver a wonderful film by year’s end. This is a story everyone can relate to, of humility, inspiration and devotion.”

“Man of God” centers on St. Nektarios of Aegina, a Greek Orthodox saint who was a priest of the common people during the 19th Century, who was stripped of his church...