News

Exclusive: Ard and Beta Film’s 30 Days of Lust is being remade in France.

French director Émilie Noblet is working on the remake, which will be produced by Black Sheep Films. No network is attached as of yet.

30 Days of Lust follows former high school sweethearts Freddy (Linda Blümchen) and Zeno (Simon Steinhorst), who are both about to turn 30. A daring experiment puts a long-term relationship to the test: Freddy and Zeno agree to 30 days of sex with whomever they want. Throughout the experiment, awkward dates and bizarre encounters create suspicion between them, while moments of tenderness emerge amidst the emotional rollercoaster.

Beta also sold finished tape of the series to Nos’ TVCine channels for Portugal and several Portuguese-speaking African countries, along with streaming service Seznam for Czech Republic, in addition to the sale to Sbs Australia unveiled earlier this year.

The show is...

In early Series Mania business, Europe’s Beta Film has pounced on international distribution rights to “30 Days of Lust,” a half-hour dramedy from Munich’s Trimafilm, in which a couple, high-school sweethearts but now knocking 30, experiment with 30 days of free sex.

Beta Film has also shared in exclusivity with Variety a first clip from the eight-part series which world premieres in International Panorama Competition at next month’s Series Mania, a section whose value is rising fast as companies seek to leverage TV festival selection as a sign of distinction in a still hugely crowded fiction TV marketplace.

In the clip, from the early going of Ep. 1, Freddy (Linda Blümchen), a pharmacist, and Zeno (Simon Steinhorst), an art restorer, hit a party given by an obnoxious acquaintance of Freddy’s from college.

In an opening scene to the series, Freddy, after good enough sex with Zeno, has run through the idea that,...

“American Factory” and “Apollo 11” led all films in nominations for the 13th annual Cinema Eye Honors, a New York-based awards show created to pay tribute to all facets of nonfiction filmmaking.

The two films each received five nominations, including Outstanding Nonfiction Feature, from the Cinema Eye jury of festival programmers, as well as votes from this year’s eligible filmmakers.

The full slate of nominees in that category is a solid lineup of the year’s most acclaimed docs. In addition to Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert’s “American Factory” and Todd Douglas Miller’s “Apollo 11,” it includes Waad al-Kateab and Edward Watts’ “For Sama,” Ljubomir Stefanov and Tamara Kotevska’s “Honeyland,” Luke Lorentzen’s “Midnight Family” and Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang’s “One Child Nation.”

Also Read: 12 Documentaries to Check Out This Fall, Including Films by Bruce Springsteen and Agnès Varda (Photos)

“American Factory,” “Apollo 11...

Festival to run November 14-21; full line-up due later this month.

International feature film Oscar submissions The Traitor from Italy’s Marco Bellocchio and Antigone from Canada’s Sophie Deraspe will join Alice Winocour’s Proxima and Alex Gibney’s Citizen K at AFI Fest in the world cinema and documentary selections, announced on Tuesday (15).

World cinema entries include Academy Award submissions Corpus Christi from Poland, Sweden’s And Then We Danced, and Romania’s The Whistlers, playing alongside the Los Angeles premiere of Terrence Malik’s A Hidden Life.

Documentary entries include Alex Gibney’s Citizen K, Barbara Kopple’s Desert One,...

Ai Weiwei film is a companion piece to Human Flow.

Copenhagen-based documentary festival Cph:dox (March 20-31) has revealed its line-up of competition titles for 2019.

Notable world premieres include The Rest, the latest feature from Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei. His previous feature, refugee crisis doc Human Flow, premiered at Venice in 2017 and won multiple awards.

The Rest is a parallel work to Human Flow, again focusing on the refugee crisis, but this time in line with the voice and experience of an individual refugee. Edited down from 900 hours of footage, the film depicts those living in political limbo in Europe,...