News

The Argentine Film Academy selected “Kill The Jockey” as the country’s official submission for the Best International Feature Film category at the 2025 Academy Awards. The dark comedy movie, directed by Luis Ortega, follows a talented but troubled jockey whose dangerous behavior threatens his career and relationship.

“Kill The Jockey” made its debut this year at film festivals in Venice and Toronto. It stars Nahuel Pérez Biscayart as the reckless rider and Úrsula Corberó as his girlfriend Abril. On the day of an important race, the jockey suffers a bad accident and disappears from the hospital. He then roams the streets of Buenos Aires while evading a mobster named Sirena, played by Daniel Gimenez Cacho.

Biscayart and Corberó are internationally known actors. Biscayart appeared in well-reviewed movies like “120 Beats per Minute” and “My New Friends.” Corberó gained fame on the Netflix series “Money Heist” and will star in an upcoming Sky show.

Argentina has selected Luis Ortega’s latest flick Kill The Jockey as its candidate for the Best International Feature Film category at the 97th Academy Awards.

The announcement was made yesterday by the Argentine Film Academy.

Kill the Jockey debuted in competition at this year’s Venice Film Festival before going on to screen at TIFF.

Nahuel Pérez Biscayart stars in the absurdist comedy as a legendary jockey whose self-destructive behaviour is beginning to outshine his talent and threaten his relationship with his girlfriend Abril (Úrsula Corberó).

On the day of the most important race of his career that will clear him of his debts from mobster boss Sirena (Daniel Gimenez Cacho), he has a severe accident, disappears from the hospital and wanders the streets of Buenos Aires. Free from his identity, he starts to discover who he is truly meant to be. But Sirena wants him found, dead or alive.

“Red Island,” the latest film by “120 Bpm” director Robin Campillo, has been acquired by New York-based company Film Movement for North American distribution following its run in the festival circuit.

“Red Island,” which is produced by Marie-Ange Luciani, the Oscar-nominated producer of “Anatomy of a Fall,” world premiered at San Sebastian Film Festival. Film Movement will open the film theatrically on Aug. 16 at Film at Lincoln Center, followed by a wider release and a rollout on digital and home entertainment platforms.

Set at the beginning of the ’70s in Madagascar, “Red Island” follows the lives of a few armed forces and their families living in one of the last French military bases abroad, a relic of the fading French colonial empire. Influenced by his reading of the comic book heroine Fantômette, Thomas, a 10-year-old boy, explores his surroundings and gradually opens another reality.

“Red Island” marks Campillo’s follow up to “120 Bpm,...

Detrás de la alta costura: Daniel Brühl y Théodore Pellerin protagonizan la serie sobre los orígenes de Karl Lagerfeld. © Disney Plus+

Ya se han publicado el primer tráiler y póster de “Becoming Karl Lagerfeld”, la nueva serie original de Disney Plus+ ambientada en plena década de los 70 en París, Mónaco y Roma, que narra la historia de Karl antes que Lagerfeld, la compleja e icónica personalidad de la alta costura parisina, alguien a punto de convertirse en el Emperador de la moda. Esta historia es una adaptación del best-seller “Kaiser Karl” de Raphaëlle Bacqué y llega por primera vez a la pantalla con un reparto estelar.

En 1972, Karl Lagerfeld (Daniel Brühl) tiene 38 años y aún no luce su icónico peinado. Es un diseñador de prêt-à-porter desconocido para el gran público. Cuando conoce y se enamora de Jacques de Bascher (Théodore Pellerin), un joven dandi ambicioso y atormentado, el más misterioso de los diseñadores de moda,...

Sci-fi blockbuster Dune: Part Two opens in 721 venues this weekend, carrying the hopes of many UK-Ireland cinemas after a slow start to 2024.

Denis Villeneuve’s sequel is Warner Bros’ fourth-widest opening of all time in the territory, after last year’s Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom (749) and Barbie (724), and 2022’s Elvis (746).

It is opening on 62 sites more than Dune, which started in 659 venues in October 2021. That film began with a £4.8m weekend at a £7,210 average, dethroning James Bond title No Time To Die. It went on to a £22.1m total – a decent result in a market still feeling the effects of the pandemic.

There are so many questions surrounding the search for identity and one's own place under the sun that I can relate to in Nele Wohlatz' dreamy drama “Sleep With Your Open Eyes” that I don't even know where to start. As an immigrant who changed houses so many times that every move involved more costs, logistic planning and emotional investment than it was healthy, I felt an instant connection with the film's protagonists who dream big, while struggling to make ends meet pressured by the big question of where they really belong to. I also understood that Wohlatz, who herself has lived for 12 years far away from her native Germany, to study and work in Argentina, knew how to tell the story of a double-sided cultural alienation and solidarity among those ‘lost in translation', right from the film's opening scene which didn't even reveal much about what was going to happen.

Luis Ortega has wrapped production in Argentina on “Kill the Jockey,” starring Úrsula Corberó, “Money Heist’s” Tokyo, and Nahuel Pérez Biscayart (“120 Bpm”), which is shaping up as one of the biggest upcoming movies from Latin America.

Ortega’s follow-up to 2018 Un Certain Regard hit “El Angel,” which sold worldwide and set a box office record in Argentina, “Kill the Jockey” has been snapped up for overseas sales by Vicente Canales’ Film Factory Entertainment, which also sold “El Angel.”

TelevisaUnivision VOD service ViX will roll out “Kill the Jockey” in the U.S. and Latin America. Scanbox handles distribution in Scandinavia.

“Kill the Jockey’s” top-notch cast also features Daniel Giménez Cacho, Mariana Di Girólamo, Daniel Fanego (“El Ángel”) and Roly Serrano (“Youth”).

It turns on Remo (Pérez Biscayart), the best jockey of his generation, whose addictions, however, have gradually cast a shadow over his glory. Like Abril (Corberó), another jockey,...

Paris-based Playtime has unveiled a strong Cannes film market sales slate, which includes competition titles “About Dry Grasses” and “Homecoming.”

“About Dry Grasses” is by Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan, who won the Palme d’Or in 2014 for “Winter Sleep.” The film follows Samet, a young art teacher, who is finishing his fourth year of compulsory service in a remote village in Anatolia. After a turn of events he can hardly make sense of, he loses his hopes of escaping the grim life he seems to be stuck in, and hopes that his encounter with fellow teacher Nuray will help him overcome his angst. Deniz Celiloğlu, Merve Dizdar and Musab Ekici are among the cast.

“Homecoming,” by French director Catherine Corsini who won the 2021 Queer Palm for “The Divide,” follows Khédidja, who minds a wealthy Parisian family’s children for a summer in Corsica. She brings along her own two...

After the Oscars, the Palme d’Or is the most prestigious film award in the business, and it’s a lot less predictable. Coming from a jury usually comprised of actors and directors, it arrives as the outcome of furious debate and often conflicting values about the nature of the art form. There is no mathematical formula for predicting the Palme d’Or, and educated guesswork can be misleading, but it’s still worth a shot.

Handed out at the festival since 1955, the golden prize represents the pinnacle of prestige for the filmmaker who receives it. As Cannes presents itself as the nexus of the greatest cinema on the planet, the prize is an extension of that mentality, and it invites winners into an exclusive club that spans film history. Recipients of the Palme d’Or have ranged from “Black Orpheus” and “La Dolce Vita” to “Apocalypse Now.” In some cases,...

Greenwich Entertainment has taken North American rights to dark comedy-drama “Concerned Citizen,” which had its world premiere in the Panorama section of the Berlinale. Salzgeber has taken the rights for Germany and Austria. Berlin-based sales outfit M-Appeal is selling the film.

Idan Haguel’s film, a satirical parable on the insidious ways in which privilege can unleash the prejudice within, centers on Ben, who thinks of himself as a liberal and enlightened gay man, living in the perfect apartment with his boyfriend Raz. All that’s missing to complete the picture is a baby, which the couple are trying to make a reality.

Meanwhile, Ben decides to improve his up-and-coming neighborhood in gritty south Tel Aviv by planting a new tree on his street. But his good deed soon triggers a sequence of events that leads to the brutal police arrest of an Eritrean immigrant. The guilt trip that ensues...

In Digital Shorts we review some of the latest video games that are only available digitally (at least in the UK), in a short-form review format. In this edition, we take a look at the music-based racing game Music Racer, which has just been released in a new “Ultimate” version.

Music Racer: Ultimate is a dynamic rhythm game loved by millions of players around the world. Rush along futuristic, neon tracks, lining up your drive train to the beat of the music. Racecourses are generated in real-time, meaning the speed and mood of each run are determined by the compositions chosen. Different obstacles and rewards can be attained for each track, tracks which you can drive through in a myriad of cars, including Initial D’s Trueno AE86, K.I.T.T. from Knight Rider, the Delorean from Back to the Future, even a lightcycle from Tron. In fact there...

Pretty well from when he started out in 2002, melding fiction, recreation and direct reportage in films that won him two San Sebastián Golden Shells but bamboozled more mainstream critics, Spain’s Isaki Lacuesta has maintained that he wanted to make larger audience movies.

With his tenth feature, Berlin competition player “One Year, One Night,” taking in the 2015 Bataclan Paris terrorist attack, he finally has his chance.

Produced by Lacuesta’s label La Termita Films and Spain’s Bambu Producciones, the company behind milestone Spanish TV shows “Grand Hotel,” “Velvet” and “Cable Girls,” “One Year, One Night” cost six times the budget of Lacuesta’s most expensive film before that, the director says.

It stars Argentina’s Nahuel Pérez (“Bpm (Beats Per Minute)”) and Noémie Merlant (“Portrait of a Lady on Fire”), two of the most admired young actors currently working in France, and it’s backed by the distribution and sales muscle of Studiocanal,...

One of the hottest titles from Spain at this year’s European Film Market, is Catalan director Carla Simón’s sophomore feature “Alcarrás,” the hotly anticipated follow up to her 2017 debut “Summer 1993.” There, Paris-based MK2 Films will be talking to interested buyers of the recently-finished arthouse entry. To mark the occasion, the sales company has given Variety access to an early clip.

A smash hit with critics and festivals alike, Simón’s autobiographical debut “Summer 1993” won the Best First Feature Award and the Generation Kplus Grand Prix jury prize at Berlin in 2017. The feature was Spain’s 2018 Oscars submission, nominated for the Efa Discovery Award and won three Spanish Academy Goya awards including best new director. Carla Simón also received the Women in Motion Emerging Talent Award at Cannes 2018.

Less autobiographical, although still deeply rooted in Simón’s own background, “Alcarràs” turns on a multi-generational family of peach...

École de l’air

We thought there might be an outside chance that this might shore up in 2021 – but we were dead wrong as it appears that production might have taken place in several locations and over the course of more than one season/backdrop with shooting days as far back as July and as recent as this past December. Robin Campillo‘s highly anticipated fourth feature comes five years after his Cannes-winning Bpm (Beats Per Minute) in 2017. Starring Quim Gutiérrez, Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Charlie Vauselle, Sophie Guillemin, Hugues Delamarliere, David Serero, Luna Carpiaux, Mathis Piberne and Sacha Cosar-Accaoui, École de l’air was written by Campillo and filmmaker Gilles Marchand and is produced by Les Films de Pierre’s Marie-Ange Luciani while cinematographer Jeanne Lapoirie Bpm (Beats Per Minute) lens.…...

Laurent Cantet, best known for “The Class,” his Cannes 2008’s Palme d’Or-winning film about a teacher and his racially-mixed students in an underprivileged Parisian suburb, highlights the cracks within French society in the thought-provoking “Arthur Rambo.”

The film, which played at Toronto in its Platform section and is competing at San Sebastian, is inspired by the true story of Mehdi Meklat, a young man who grew up in a French high-rise project on the outskirt of Paris and became a star journalist and an author celebrated by France’s mainstream media and left-leaning intellectual circles.

But in 2017, as Meklat reached the apogee of his success, he was publicly shut down and dropped by his publisher after his heinous tweets – written under a pseudonym before becoming famous — were revealed. The movie follows this anti-hero’s downfall through the next 48 hours.

Rabah Nait Oufella (“Raw”), who starred in “The Class” as a kid,...

Uruguayan filmmaker Manuel Nieto’s social thriller “The Employer and the Employee,” starring Nahuel Pérez Biscayart (“Persian Lessons” and “Bpm” (Beats Per Minute), comes to the San Sebastian Film Festival to close the Horizontes Latinos sidebar on Thursday, Sept. 23. It’s a journey that began at Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight where it world premiered after winning development prizes at Toulouse’s Latin Film Festival, Mar del Plata’s LoboLab and San Sebastián’s Wip Latam.

Picked up by Latido Films in the run-up to Cannes in July, “The Employer and the Employee” is Nieto’s third feature after his debut “The Dog Pound,” followed by “The Militant.” If there’s a thru line to find among his films, Nieto sees several: “The leads are masculine, the father figure is always present, they deal with youth in different stages and weights of responsibility and invariably touch on the concepts of legacy, identity,...

Les Films Pelleas, the Paris-based production banner behind Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet’s “Anais in Love” at Cannes’ Critics Week, is powering a female-driven slate with new projects by Justine Trier (“Sibyl”), Katell Quillévéré (“Heal the Living”) and Danielle Arbid (“Suzanne et Osmane”).

“Anatomie d’une chute” marks Triet’s follow up to “Sibyl,” which competed at Cannes in 2019. Les Films Pelleas is producing the movie with Marie-Ange Luciani’s Les Films de Pierre (“Bpm (Beats Per Minute)”). A departure from Trier’s previous films, “Anatomie d’une chute” is a procedural drama revolving around a woman who being investigated for the murder of her husband who was found dead. During the investigation, the detective first suspect an accident or a suicide and eventually believe it’s a murder. The key witness in the case turns out to be the couple’s blind son, who faces a moral dilemma.

“It’s a...

Led by “Persian Lessons” and “Bpm (Beats Per Minute)” star Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, Manuel Nieto’s “The Employer and Employee” has been snapped up for world sales by Latido Films.

The Madrid-based sales agent has also dropped a trailer for the film. The deal was made in the run-up to July’s Cannes Festival where the feature, Nieto’s third, will world premiere in Directors’ Fortnight.

One of the biggest new Latin American films at Cannes, “The Employer and the Employee” marks a step-up in scale for Uruguayan writer-director Nieto and enhances his reputation as one of the region’s major directors on the rise.

Also written by Nieto, “The Employer and The Employee” (“El Empleado y El Patrón”) charts the two parallel lives of an employer, Rodrigo (Pérez Biscayart), and an employee, teen Carlos (Cristian Borges), who is the son of a grizzled land laborer scratching out a living...

Naomi Watts’ update on the cult horror film “Goodnight Mommy” just secured two crucial roles in Cameron and Nicholas Crovetti.

The twin boys will play Watts’ sons in the Amazon Studios project, which just kicked off production in New Jersey. Matt Sobel is directing the new take on the film, whose predecessor was selected as Austria’s entry for best international film at the 2015 Oscars.

The story follows two brothers who arrive at their mother’s country home to discover her face covered in bandages, what she says is the result of a recent cosmetic surgery. As her behavior grows increasingly erratic, a horrifying question takes root in the boys’ minds: what if the woman beneath the gauze isn’t their mother at all?

Sobel is directing from a script by Kyle Warren. Joshua Astrachan, David Kaplan, Nicolas Brigaud-Robert and Valery Guibal are producing. Watts, Sobel, Warren and the directors of the original film,...

Exclusive: One week after we brought you news of his app Erupt, today we can reveal that film and Broadway producer Edward Walson (Blue Jasmine) is launching Curia, a curated film streaming SVOD platform.

The idea behind the platform — which is initially only available in the U.S. — is to offer rotating monthly programming organized into niche sub-genres. Organizers say the service will be a fixture on the film festival circuit — including the upcoming Cannes Film Festival and market — with an appetite for new, exclusive acquisitions, including shorts.

The lineup will include auteur-driven cinema, movie classics and some commercially-minded fare. The first month’s programming in June will include sections such as Lol (comedies), Growing Pains (coming-of-age), Les Provocateurs and LGBTQ Pride.

Movies at launch will include Some Like It Hot, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, In The Loop, Capote, Birdman Of Alcatraz, Paths Of Glory, A Ciambra, Boyhood, The Selfish Giant,...

Naomi Watts is set to star in and executive produce the English-language remake of the hit Austrian psychological thriller “Goodnight Mommy,” set up at Amazon Studios.

The streamer will mount the remake with indie prestige label Animal Kingdom and production company Playtime. Released in 2014, the original film became a cult classic and was selected as the Austrian entry for best foreign language film at the Academy Awards.

Matt Sobel (“Take Me To The River”) is directing from a script by Kyle Warren. David Kaplan, Joshua Astrachan, Valery Guibal and Nicolas Brigaud-Robert are producing. In addition to Watts, the original film’s directors Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz will serve as executive producers.

Playtime acquired the remake rights and developed the new film with Playtime. Amazon is financing and releasing worldwide.

“Goodnight Mommy” follows twin brothers who, when sent to stay with their mother, are surprised to find her swathed in bandages from a recent procedure.

After a year of upheaval, France’s Cesar Awards will host its 46th edition under new leadership on Friday with more diversity and parity within its 4,292-strong membership. Across the administration board and general assembly, however, there’s still a dearth of Black creatives.

More women and visible minorities have joined the ranks of Cesar Awards’ voting members since the arrival of a new president, Veronique Cayla, the former boss of the Franco-German public culture channel Arte France, and vice chair Eric Toledano, the popular co-director of smash-hit “The Intouchables,” in late September.

The annual awards, which are France’s equivalent of the Oscars, reformed its operating model and corporate leadership last year following an industry-wide revolt that led to the resignation of long-time Cesar Academy president Alain Terzian, along with the rest of the 21-member board of governors.

Joining the org just six months ago, Cayla and Toledano were...

In today’s Global Bulletin, Ava DuVernay’s Array Releasing shares the trailer for Takeshi Fukunaga’s “Ainu Mosir,” Fremantle and Viacom deal on “Tough as Nails,” Eccho Rights and Born Wild team on a new output deal, King of Sunshine Productions announces two holiday musical specials for Channel 5, StudioCanal gets its second lead for “Un año, una noche,” and Amazon Prime Video scoops LatAm streaming rights for “Dignity.”

Distribution

Ava DuVernay’s Array Releasing is set to launch Takeshi Fukunaga’s sophomore feature “Ainu Mosir,” a Tribeca Film Festival premiere, which garnered a special jury mention, on Nov. 17 on Netflix and in select theaters.

A coming-of-age story, “Ainu Mosir” follows 14-year-old Kanto through his world of centuries-old traditions as he questions long-standing beliefs after the loss of a parent. Set in Hokkaido, Japan among the indigenous Ainu people, the story and characters were developed with input from the community,...

European production-distribution-sales powerhouse Studiocanal is on board the Paris Bataclan attack feature “Un año, una noche,” with Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, breakout star of “Bpm (Beats Per Minute),” set to topline.

A Spanish-French co-production, “Un año, una noche” is produced by Bambú Producciones, creator of hit Spanish drama series such as “Gran Hotel,” “Velvet” and “Cable Girls”; Mister Fields and Friends, Bambu’s movie production label; and La Termita, the shingle run by the film’s director, Isaki Lacuesta. Lacuesta is best-known for left-of-field features such as San Sebastian Golden Shell winners “The Double Steps” and “Between Two Waters.”

Jérôme Vidal and Julien Naveau’s Paris-based Noodles Production produces out of France in collaboration with Studiocanal, which will handle international sales and distribution.

Inspired in large part by the autobiographical book written by Ramon González, a survivor of the attack, “Un año, una noche” depicts the Bataclan terrorist attack but also...

Gaumont’s “Aline, The Voice of Love,” a hotly anticipated film freely inspired by the life of Celine Dion, has already lured key distributors around the world ahead of its theatrical bow in November.

“Aline, The Voice of Love” is directed by actor-turned-filmmaker Valerie Lemercier, a self-proclaimed fan of Dion who also headlines the movie and has described it as a tribute to the Quebec-born singer.

Gaumont has pre-sold the movie to Italy (Lucky Red), Germany/Austria (Weltkino), Spain (A Contracorriente), Portugal (Nos), Canada (Maison 4/3), Australia (Rialto), Japan (Cetera), Hong Kong (Pineapple), Singapore (Shaw), Poland (Galapagos), Cis/Baltics (Megogo Distribution), Bulgaria (Buglarian Film Vision), Ex Yugoslavia (McF), Czech Republic (Aqs), Hungary (Vertigo) and Benelux (Cineart), Switzerland (Impuls). A U.S. deal is in negotiations.

The movie is produced by Edouard Weil at Paris-based Rectangle Productions (“Climax”), with Laurent Zeitoun and Caramel Films (“Heartbreaker”). Gaumont is co-producing and will release the...

Following the Cannes prize-winning film “Bpm (Beats per Minute),” Playtime and Memento are re-teaming on Jacques Audiard’s “Paris, 13th District” (Les Olympiades) which is currently filming in the French capital.

Audiard, whose credits include the Palme d’Or winning “Dheepan” and Oscar-nominated “A Prophet,” penned the script with two female auteurs, Léa Mysius (“Ava”) and Celine Sciamma, whose latest film “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” won best screenplay at Cannes 2019 and earned a Golden Globe nomination.

Playtime will handle worldwide sales on the movie, while Memento will distribute in France. Both banners previously partnered on Robin Campillo’s “Bpm (Beats per Minute),” which won Cannes’ Grand Jury Prize, six Cesar awards, and went on to have a successful commercial run.

Produced by Audiard and Valérie Schermann through their Paris-based banner Page 114, “Paris, 13th District” is in its second week of shooting in Paris and could be delivered as...

Distributor Altitude has picked up a slate of four films for the U.K. and Ireland, including Adam Egypt Mortimer’s “Archenemy,” Quentin Dupieux‘s “Mandibles,” Mathieu Turi’s “Meander” and Philippe Lacôte’s “Night of the Kings.”

Spectrevision’s “Archenemy” stars Joe Manganiello (“True Blood”) as a hero from another dimension exiled to Earth, while the Venice Film Festival’s sleeper hit “Mandibles” is a surreal buddy road movie starring comedy duo David Marsais and Grégoire Ludig, known for “La Folle Histoire du Palmashow,” as well as Coralie Russier (“120 Bpm”), Adèle Exarchopoulos (“Blue Is The Warmest Color”) and rapper Romeo Elvis.

Thriller “Meander” features Gaia Weiss (“Vikings”) as a woman who wakes up in a seemingly never-ending metal tube and is forced to overcome a variety of deadly traps to survive.

Venice title “Night of the Kings,” which won the Amplify Voices Award at Toronto International Film Festival...

Cannes 2020 label film recently played at Toronto and San Sebastian.

Suzanne Lindon, at just 20 years old, was the youngest filmmaker to make it into Cannes’s special 2020 Official Selection this year with her debut feature Spring Blossom.

She both directed and stars in the gentle coming-of-age tale about a Parisian teenager who enters into a platonic love affair with an actor in his 30s.

In the absence of a physical Cannes, the film premiered in Toronto’s Discovery section in early September, before heading to San Sebastian’s New Directors line-up. It is now touring festivals worldwide, stopping off this...

In today’s Global Bulletin, ITV’s “I’m a Celebrity…” relocates, San Sebastián announced WIPs, Mikkelsen is honored, My Entertainment hires, Banijay finishes German setup and Formula 1 gets an anniversary docuseries.

Relocation

ITV tentpole reality program “I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here!” will trade the jungles of down under for a rundown castle in the U.K. after Covid-19 travel restrictions have made producing the show in its traditional New South Wales home too challenging a prospect.

First launched in 2002, the series has become one of the most important in ITV’s catalog and this February received a three-season renewal. It boasts an average audience of more than 9 million viewers per season and dominates the social media landscape during and after broadcasts. It has spawned several local formats in other territories and an ITV2 spin-off, “I’m a Celebrity: Extra Camp,” which was dropped by the...

Danish writer Karen Blixen, whose memoir “Out of Africa” and short story “Babette’s Feast” were both turned into Academy Award-winning films, is now the subject of another big-screen makeover with an adaptation of her short story “The Immortal Story” set to be penned by Argentina’s Daniel Rosenfeld and Lucía Puenzo.

Argentine-French actor Nahuel Pérez Biscayart (“Bpm (Beats per Minute)”) and Leonardo Sbaraglia have signed letters of intent to head up the cast, along with an international actor and actress, which have yet to be confirmed, Rosenfeld told Variety.

Director-producer of Idfa player “Piazzola, the Years of the Shark,” which won best documentary at Argentina’s 2018 Academy Awards, Rosenfeld has purchased rights to the story, which was adapted by Orson Welles in 1968.

Rosenfeld is currently writing the screenplay adaptation with Puenzo, one of Latin America’s most courted film directors and showrunner on Amazon’s “La Jauría,” produced by Fabula and Fremantle.

In “Schindler’s List,” most of the actors spoke English, using accents to indicate their characters’ origins. In “Son of Saul,” the cast struggles to communicate in a mish-mosh of languages, as Jews of different nationalities were thrown together in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Stories about the Holocaust — so vital in trying to reconcile the horrors of the past century — must at some point take a philosophical stand on how to deal with how their characters express themselves.

And then there is “Persian Lessons,” a most peculiar anomaly among tales of the Shoah: It tells of a Belgian Jew who invented a language in order to survive World War II. The film claims to be “inspired by a true story” but is really a parable in the tradition of “The Reader,” wherein a terrified prisoner (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart) agrees to teach Farsi — a language he does not know and is therefore obliged to...

While we still have a month to go until the Oscars, that hardly means the awards season is over. This morning, the Académie des Arts et Techniques du Cinéma unveiled its nominations for the César Awards aka France’s Oscars.

Leading the pack with 13 nominations each was the AIDS drama “BPM” and Albert Dupontel’s Wwi drama “Au Revoir Là-Haut.” Though receiving largely rave reviews for much of the season, “BPM” is notable for not making the cut in the Best Foreign Film race at the Oscars.

Continue reading ‘BPM’ Leads 2018 César Award Nominations, ‘Dunkirk’ & ‘La La Land’ In The Race at The Playlist.

As the nominations for the 29th annual GLAAD Media Awards were announced today, Battle of the Sexes, Call Me by Your Name, Lady Bird, Professor Marston and the Wonder Women. and The Shape of Water all scored nominations for Outstanding Film in Wide Release.

Claiming noms for Outstanding Film-Limited Release were BPM, A Fantastic Woman, God's Own Country, Thelma and The Wound.

In all, 125 nominees were announced in 21 English-language categories and another 16 in four Spanish-language categories.

Actress Trace Lysette (Transparent) and actor Wilson Cruz (Star Trek: Discovery) announced the nominees live on GLAAD's Facebook page from Park City,...

Sweden’s “The Square,” Russia’s “Loveless” and Chile’s “A Fantastic Woman” are among the nine films that will advance in the Oscars race for Best Foreign Language Film, the Academy announced on Wednesday. The other films that made the list come from Germany (“In the Fade,” starring Diane Kruger), Hungary (“On Body and Soul”), Israel (“Foxtrot”), Lebanon (“The Insult”), Senegal (“Félicité”) and South Africa (“The Wound”). Angelina Jolie’s Cambodian-language film “First They Killed My Father” did not advance in the race, and neither did the critically acclaimed “Bpm (Beats Per Minute)” by Robin Campillo. Also Read: 'In...

Robin Campillo’s AIDS activist drama BPM (Beats Per Minute) leads the pack with six nominations for this year’s Lumiere Awards, with nods in the best film, best director and best acting categories, among others.

The film is France’s entry in the Oscar best foreign-language film category and took home the Grand Prize in Cannes earlier this year.

Mathieu Almaric’s Barbara, which was given a special award for artistry in the Un Certain Regard section in Cannes, and the comedy C’est la Vie, from Intouchables directors Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano, each scored four nominations.

The three will compete in the...

There were also wins for Sofia Coppola, Joaquin Phoenix and Diane Kruger.

The Competition prizes for the 70th edition of the Cannes Film Festival have been handed out tonight (28 May) in the Lumiere Theatre, with Ruben Östlund’s The Square winning the coveted Palme d’Or.

Pedro Almodóvar presided over this year’s jury that also included Will Smith, Maren Ade, Park Chan-wook, Paolo Sorrentino, Jessica Chastain, Fan Bingbing, Agnès Jaoui and Gabriel Yared.

Full list of winners below:

Palme D’Or

The Square (Ruben Östlund)

Grand Prix

120 Beats Per Minute (Robin Campillo)

Best Director

Sofia Coppola (The Beguiled)

Best Actor

Joaquin Phoenix (You Were Never Really Here)

Best Actress

Diane Kruger (In the Fade)

Jury Prize

Loveless (Andrey Zvyagintsev)

Best Screenplay

The Killing Of A Sacred Deer and You Were Never Really Here

Camera D’Or

Jeune Femme (Léonor Sérraille)

Best Short Film

A Gentle Night (Qui Yang)

Short Film Special Mention

Katto (Teppo Airaksinen)

70th Anniversary...

The International Federation of Film Critics (Fipresci) awarded its prizes Saturday at the Cannes Film Festival.

Robin Campillo’s 120 Beats Per Minute took home the top honors among the official selection competition films. The drama documenting the Act Up AIDS activists in the 1980s has been getting strong reviews.

In the Un Certain Regard competition, Kantemir Balagov’s Closeness (Tesnota) took to the honor. The story set in a Jewish family in late-nineties Russia that is torn apart by a kidnapping.

The prize for a first or second film in the Directors’ Fortnight or Critics’ Week...