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The Annecy Festival’s tribute to Mexico as its 2023 guest county of honor brings over 250 artists and executives to the world’s biggest animation event. Here are 10 Talents to Track emerging directors and artists among an exploding animation scene. Variety could easily have chosen another 20 more.

Sofia Alexander

Celebrated as the executive producer and creator of Crunchyroll’s first original series “Onyx Equinox,” the tale of a young Meso-American slave who becomes the last hope of saving humanity from invading gods of the underworld. On TV “I never saw Meso-American Indigenous Mexico without Spanish influence, and I wanted to connect with my roots,” says Alexander. The series is anime influenced, not just in its aesthetics – the painterly fields of Meso-America and the frenzied gory combat – but also in its being serialization, pacing and broad audience target, including adults, she argues. A freelancer for Cartoon Network, Hasbro and Nickelodeon, but “Onyx Equinox” is her major achievement.

Apple TV+’s “The Afterparty” is back with a new trailer and a new murder. The 10-episode second season will drop its first two episodes starting July 12. After that, the series will follow a weekly release schedule each Wednesday.

“The Afterparty” puts a new spin on the popular murder mystery genre. As each character recounts what they were doing and what they saw on the night in question, their testimony is told through a different film genre. Based on this first look, Season 2 promises to be just as imaginative as Season 1 of the murderous comedy.

Also Read:

Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri Bloodied in High School Brawl for First ‘Bottoms’ Trailer (Video)

This time around, a wedding is ruined when the groom (Zach Woods) is found dead in bed. Desperate to figure out whodunit, Aniq (Sam Richardson) and Zoë (Zoë Chao) call up their former investigator turned ally, Detective Danner...

There’s no doubt that Robert De Niro is funny, but his recent taste in comedies have certainly called his sense of humor into question. It’s been over 20 years since “Analyze This” and “Meet the Parents” launched the robust comedy leg of the Oscar winner’s career, but not every subsequent project has been as successful. Following the twin head scratchers of “Dirty Grandpa” and “The War with Grandpa” (unrelated; though equally ignored), the godfather of Hollywood has finally found his comedy groove again.

And wouldn’t you know, all it took was a good, old-fashioned Italian American family farce — fittingly titled “About My Father.” Though there’s a wide swath of the public for whom De Niro can do no wrong, even giants can fall. Luckily, Sebastian Maniscalco knows the importance of family.

The marquee comedian appeared opposite De Niro in Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman,” sealing his...

If you appreciated the offbeat humor of a film like Meet the Parents and anything that stand-up superstar Sebastian Maniscalco has brought to his popular Netflix specials, best to make About My Father your next must-watch movie. The engaging new comedy, written by Maniscalco and longtime collaborator Austen Earl, hits theaters Memorial Day Weekend. Cultures clash in this wild outing when Maniscalco’s “Sebastian” brings his outspoken Italian immigrant pop, Salvo (Robert De Niro), to his girlfriend’s family home for a holiday celebration. What can go wrong?

Well, nearly everything. Hilarity ensues. The film also stars Kim Cattrall and Leslie Bibb, who recently told MovieWeb how much they appreciated Maniscalco’s humor and “vulnerability." The story feels like a bona fide tribute to his real-life father, Salvo, who immigrated to Chicago from Sicily, and went on to make a new life for himself and his family as a hair stylist.

We’ve been here before, haven’t we? A Disney live-action remake igniting a round of existential debate? This time it’s Rob Marshall’s interpretation of The Little Mermaid, based on John Musker and Ron Clement’s 1989 version and starring Halle Bailey as the titular sea creature. It features new music by Lin-Manuel Miranda and wrings as much as possible from the corporation’s CGI budget.

The questions raised by this faithful adaptation are familiar, but answering them only matters to an extent. Nostalgia pays in cash, correctives in publicity. For the global conglomerate’s bottom line, remaking classics is worth it. That these already tempered fairytales are retrofitted for contemporary audiences is merely a bonus.

Marshall’s Ariel (Bailey) is Black — a choice that sent scores of people clutching their pearls and reverting to racist protestations. Their complaints of a nonexistent white erasure are littered across the internet under the hashtag #NotMyAriel.

Hogwarts Legacy is the ultimate roleplaying game for witches and wizards, especially for those who enjoy the main Harry Potter series - but nonetheless, a few gameplay elements in particular leave something to be desired. Overall, the game is a fantastic adventure full of exploration and an interesting story line, and it certainly keeps the player busy with heaps of side quests and collectibles. However, the otherwise magical experience can often be muddled by an underlying issue with lackluster RPG components.

The reasoning behind some of these more uninspired features in Hogwarts Legacy could possibly be related to an upcoming Dlc. After all, it has become relatively commonplace for developers to exclude content from the base game, and then offer it to players in the form of a paid expansion. Some areas, like Hogwarts Legacy's best missable location, Azkaban, seem to have been built with this sentiment in mind. But...

Paris-based Urban Sales has boarded Diego Lerman’s “The Substitute” (“El Suplente”) which will have its world premiere at Toronto followed by San Sebastian.

“The Substitute” tells the story of Lucio (Minujín), a prestigious university professor who starts working as a substitute teacher at a high school in the suburbs of Buenos Aires, where he grew up. Through tales, novels and poetry, he tries to distract his class from the harsh reality of their everyday lives. But soon, he must step out of his professional duties when Dylan, one of his students, is threatened by a local drug kingpin.

One of Argentina’s leading filmmakers, Lerman won this year’s Locarno’s Silver Leopard award for “Suddenly.” He’s best known for directing “A Sort of Family” which played at Toronto, won best screenplay at San Sebastian and was acquired by Netflix; as well as “Refugiado” and “Invisible” which played...

Keep track of all the submissions for best international feature at the 2023 Academy Awards.

Entries for the 2023 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

Scroll down for profiles of each Oscar entry

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between January 1, 2022 and November 30, 2022. The deadline for submissions to the Academy is October 3, 2022.

A shortlist of 15 finalists is...

Tommy Lee gave Instagram users a shock earlier this month.

The Mötley Crüe rocker shared a completely naked selfie, captioning it: “Ooooopppsss.”

The Nsfw snap, which remains on his Twitter profile, showed Lee sitting on marble in his bathroom, wearing only a silver necklace.

Read More: Tommy Lee Exits Midway Through First Mötley Crüe Reunion Tour Show Because Of Broken Ribs

Despite the photo finally being taken down, fans questioned how it took Instagram so long to remove it.

Girls can’t post photos with cleavage on Instagram without it being taken down but Tommy Lee can post That. nah. pic.twitter.com/hd4u2vZzmN

— yourlocaltaurus (@BorehamIsabelle) August 11, 2022

following tommy lee on instagram is interesting enough but i-

sigh.

that was traumatizing.

how is it still up pic.twitter.com/B67TLfhhEw

— ☆kaisen (@kaiheartseb) August 11, 2022

Lee addressed the nude photo during Mötley Crüe’s show in San Antonio, Texas,...

Welcome to It’s a Hit! In this series, IndieWire speaks to creators and showrunners behind a few of our favorite Emmy-nominated television programs about the moment they realized their show was breaking big.

Last year the internet went wild when the first images of actors Lily James and Sebastian Stan, recreating the famous photo of Pamela Anderson biting then-husband Tommy Lee’s nipple ring, dropped on the internet.

Audiences were gobsmacked by how much the actors, particularly James, looked like the real people. For James, her dedication to portraying Anderson accurately was paramount. In a previous IndieWire interview she talked about donning a blonde wig to walk around Hollywood to see how people would react. According to the the series’ creators, Robert Siegel and D.V. DeVincentis, it was akin to James putting on a “superhero” costume, with the actress up before everyone else to have prosthetics applied to her...

Lelio makes his San Sebastian competition debut with The Wonder starring Florence Pugh.

Films from Sebastián Lelio and Hong Sang-soo are among the new titles to be selected in competition at this year’s San Sebastian Film Festival (September 16-24).

Lelio, whose A Fantastic Woman won the Academy Award for best foreign-language film in 2017, makes his San Sebastian competition debut with The Wonder. Adapted from Emma Donoghue’s novel set in a 19th-century Irish town, it stars Florence Pugh, Ciarán Hinds, Tom Burke, Toby Jones and Niamh Algar.

Cannes and Berlin prize winner Hong San-soo will make his second appearance...

On the day a U.S. appeals court lifted an injunction that blocked a Mississippi “religious freedom” law – i.e., giving Christian extremists the right to discriminate against gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgender people, etc. – not to mention the publication of a Republican-backed health care bill targeting the poor, the sick, the elderly, and those with “pre-existing conditions” – which would include HIV-infected people, a large chunk of whom are gay and bisexual men, so the wealthy in the U.S. can get a massive tax cut, Turner Classic Movies' 2017 Gay Pride or Lgbt Month celebration continues (into tomorrow morning, Thursday & Friday, June 22–23) with the presentation of movies by or featuring an eclectic – though seemingly all male – group: Montgomery Clift, Anthony Perkins, Tab Hunter, Dirk Bogarde, John Schlesinger, Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Arthur Laurents, and Jerome Robbins. After all, one assumes that, rumors or no, the presence of Mercedes McCambridge in one...

Ahead of American Ultra's arrival in UK cinemas, here's our pick of the 25 finest, sneakiest secret agents in film...

Operatives. Spies. Moles. Infiltrators. Secret agents go by many names. In fact, Britain's national security agency doesn't even call them agents - they're covert human intelligence sources, or simply “officers".

Whatever we choose to call them, secret agents lead necessarily furtive and obscure lives - so obscure that most of what we know about them is defined by what we've seen and read in books and movies.

During the Cold War, the image of the secret agent as a well-groomed sophisticate in a suit proliferated all over the world, and even in the high-tech landscape of the 21st century, that image still stands - just look at such movies as Kingsman: The Secret Service, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and, of course, the Bond franchise. But secret agents can come in many other guises,...

Books and films have been joined at the hip ever since the earliest days of cinema, and adaptations of novels have regularly provided audiences with the classier end of the film spectrum. Here, the Guardian and Observer's critics pick the 10 best

• Top 10 family movies

• Top 10 war movies

• Top 10 teen movies

• Top 10 superhero movies

• Top 10 westerns

• Top 10 documentaries

• More Guardian and Observer critics' top 10s

10. Planet of the Apes

Although the source novel, La Planète des Singes, was written by Frenchman Pierre Boule and originally reached its futureshock climax in Paris, this enduring sci-fi fantasy is profoundly American, putting Charlton Heston's steel-jawed patriotism to incredible use. It also holds up surprisingly well as a jarring allegory for the population's fears over escalating cold war tensions.

Beginning with a spaceship crash-landing on an unknown planet after years of cryogenic sleep, Franklin J Schaffner's film soon gets into gear as Heston's upstanding...

If you were unfortunate enough to have missed, or dare I say never heard of, the thrilling prison drama The Escapist, then for you Rupert Wyatt came out of nowhere and stole the summer of 2011 with Rise of The Planet of The Apes, that rare beast of a genuine high-quality, intelligent and exciting blockbuster. After storming the box office, the British director is now the toast of Hollywood, having almost directed Sherlock Holmes before Guy Ritchie came on board and rumoured to be attached to The Twilight Zone reboot way back when.

Wyatt has since departed the Apes franchise, leaving it in the rudest of health, and has now moved on to direct Birdsong, Sebastian Faulk’s wartime epic which is regularly hailed as one of modern literature’s greatest works. No pressure… But what makes this extremely talented man tick? Wyatt was kind enough to give up his time...

Welcome to the first Notebook Soundtrack Mix—Hyper Sleep! A word about the mix: There's no thematic thread through this collection, it's a variety of intriguing music. In making soundtrack mixes, I'm drawn to the subjective qualities of association and meaning that arise from experiencing the musical narratives that result from transitions and combinations of tracks in succession. Though there are several favorite films, Seijun Suzuki's Branded to Kill, for one, individual pieces are chosen simply for the music. I haven't seen some of the films. Robert Drasnin, Vladimir Cosma and Antoine Duhamel are represented with curious French T.V. work, rather than with some of their more well known output (The Kremlin Letter, Diva and Pierrot le fou, respectively.) Maybe this is the first of a series…I have several ideas for themed mixes, but wanted to start this way, including work that reflects jazz, classical, experimental and pop influences.

Ferociously intelligent actor who reigned supreme in Stoppard and Shakespeare

John Wood, who has died aged 81, was one of the greatest stage actors of the past century, especially associated with his roles in the plays of Tom Stoppard. But a combination of his enigmatic privacy and low profile on film – he cropped up a lot without dominating a movie – meant that he remained largely unknown to the wider public.

As with all great actors, you always knew what he was thinking, all the time. Wood was especially striking in the brain-box department. Tall, forbidding and aquiline-featured, he was as much the perfect Sherlock Holmes on stage as he was the ideal Brutus. He exuded ferocious intelligence, and the twinkle in his eye could be as merciless as it was invariably amused.

As the Royal Shakespeare Company's Brutus in Julius Caesar in 1972, he was undoubtedly the noblest Roman of them all,...

From Twelfth Night to Danny Boyle's new production at the National Theatre, theatre adores twins and doppelgangers. What's really going on?

Danny Boyle's hotly anticipated production of Frankenstein, in a new version by Nick Dear, opens next week at the National theatre. The show's two leads, Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller, will be alternating the roles of Victor Frankenstein and the Creature, so, unless they can afford to go twice, audience members are going to have to choose which way round they want to see the casting. But is this doubling up just an astute marketing ploy? Or is it, perhaps, a broader commentary? Can the relationship of Frankenstein and the Creature tell us anything about the symbiotic relationship of stage and audience? Even about the theatre itself?

There is quite a history of doubling parts in the theatre. The renowned 19th-century actors William Macready and Samuel...

Susannah York, film star of the 1960s, has died aged 72. We look back over her career in clips

Susannah Yolande Fletcher was born in Chelsea in 1939. After growing up in Scotland and studying at Rada, she got her screen break in the Highland army drama Tunes of Glory (1960) and her first lead, as a teenager growing into her sexuality, in Lewis Gilbert's The Greengage Summer. She continued her association with frank subject matter opposite Montgomery Clift in Freud. A further boost came with 1963's Oscar-winning Tom Jones, in which York played the true love of Albert Finney's Tom. Although her Sophie was less bawdy than much of the movie, she still had fun, as the trailer shows.

York's career continued to thrive throughout the 1960s, with roles in Sands of the Kalahari, espionage adventures Kaleidoscope and Sebastian, and as Sir Thomas More's daughter in A Man for All Seasons...

Star of Tom Jones and They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, she defied typecasting

Susannah York, who has died aged 72, was a vibrant, energetic personality with a devouring passion for work, strong political opinions and great loyalty to old friends. Her international reputation as an actor depended heavily on the hit films she made in the 1960s, including Tom Jones (1963) and They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969, for which she received an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress. But, even when her movie career waned, she worked ceaselessly in theatre, often appearing in pioneering fringe productions. It was typical of her that, although diagnosed with cancer late in 2010, she refused chemotherapy and fulfilled a contractual obligation to do a tour of Ronald Harwood's Quartet.

In her early years York was often cast as an archetypal English rose. But, although born in Chelsea, south-west London (as Susannah Yolande Fletcher), she was raised...

Damsels in Distress

Opens: 2011

Cast: Adam Brody, Analeigh Tipton, Megalyn Echikunwoke, Ryan Metcalf

Director: Whit Stillman

Summary: The story revolves around a group of style-obsessed college girls who take in a new student (Gerwig) and teach her their misguided ways of helping people at their grungy university.

Analysis: The first film in a decade from arthouse darling Whit Stillman, a filmmaker's filmmaker whose three Manhattan-based, yuppie-themed mannerist comedies - "Metropolitan," "Barcelona" and "The Last Days of Disco" - were a big influence on the likes of auteurs such as Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach. Stillman says this film varies somewhat from his previous trilogy of sorts, telling First Things that "This film is different, Completely different. Okay, not completely different, but it’s different".

Independently financed by Castle Rock CEO Martin Shafer, the project recently wrapped filming in Manhattan where Stillman returned to last year after having spent much...

Damsels in Distress

Opens: 2011

Cast: Adam Brody, Analeigh Tipton, Megalyn Echikunwoke, Ryan Metcalf

Director: Whit Stillman

Summary: The story revolves around a group of style-obsessed college girls who take in a new student (Gerwig) and teach her their misguided ways of helping people at their grungy university.

Analysis: The first film in a decade from arthouse darling Whit Stillman, a filmmaker's filmmaker whose three Manhattan-based, yuppie-themed mannerist comedies - "Metropolitan," "Barcelona" and "The Last Days of Disco" - were a big influence on the likes of auteurs such as Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach. Stillman says this film varies somewhat from his previous trilogy of sorts, telling First Things that "This film is different, Completely different. Okay, not completely different, but it’s different".

Independently financed by Castle Rock CEO Martin Shafer, the project recently wrapped filming in Manhattan where Stillman returned to last year after having spent much...