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Abel Ferrara, Shia Labeouf And Steve Buscemi Head To Venice Sidebar Giornate Degli Autori

Abel Ferrara’s Padre Pio, starring Shia Labeouf as the controversial 20th-Century monk, will be among the 10 films world premiering in competition in parallel Venice sidebar Giornate degli Autori (August 31 to September 10). Other contenders include Canadian filmmaker Graham Foy’s teen tragedy The Maiden, U.K.-Moroccan director Fyzal Boulifa’s mother and son tale The Damned Don’t Cry; Algerian costume drama The Last Queen by Adila Bendimerad and Damien Ounouri and opening film Dirty, Difficult, Dangerous, a Beirut-set love story involving a Syrian refugee and Eritrean careworker tale by French-Lebanese director Wissam Charaf. The films will compete for the GdA Director’s Award, which is decided by a jury of 27 young European cinephiles, presided over this year by French director Céline Sciamma, under the coordination of Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Kviff) director Karel Och.

Three buzzy titles, all turning on women carving out their own destinies – Carmen Jaquier’s “Thunder,” Laura Baumeister’s “Daughter of Rage” and Dinara Drukarova’s “Grand Marin” – feature in the 13-title lineup of San Sebastian’s 2022 New Directors section.

Also making the New Directors’ cut – now firmly consolidated as the most important sidebar at the highest-profile film festival in the Spanish-speaking world – is “Tobacco Barns,” the awaited and second feature from Spain’s Rocío Mesa, as well as Jeong Ji-hye’s Jeonju Festival winner “Jeong-sun” which has its director hailed as a talent to track.

Eight of the 13 features are directed by women who also serve as protagonists in most of the section’s films. Their themes range wide, however, from the absurdity of Moldova’s past (“Carbon”) to an allegorical portrait of civil conflict (“Carbide”) to cybershaming (“Jeong-sun”) and women’s love of literature (“To Books and Women...

Recently spotlighted at the Finnish Film Affair, where it was given the Best Nordic Project Award, Danish production “The Great Silence” will head straight to the convent, where Sister Alma (played by “Ninjababy” lead Kristine Kujath Thorp) is preparing to take her perpetual vows. But once her recovering alcoholic brother shows up, stirring up memories of a family secret, Alma begins to question her choices.

The film, currently shooting in Copenhagen and produced by Pernille Tornøe of newly founded Monolit Film, will mark helmer Katrine Brocks’ feature debut, inspired by her religious upbringing in a Christian community and co-written with Marianne Lentz, also behind her Robert Award-winning short “In the Blink of an Eye.”

“My parents met at a Bible camp. Religion has always been the backdrop of my childhood, it was the foundation of everything” she says, admitting that her “very personal relationship with God” changed once she started her teens.

Hey, Bold And The Beautiful fans. We've got some major casting news for you guys in this new article, and it sounds like it could result in a major twist for the Hope stolen baby storyline. It turns out that the producers have decided to bring on the mother of Reese's accomplice Florence! That's right, guys. They're about to make this a family affair. According to the folks over at People.com, the Bold And The Beautiful producers have hired veteran actress Denise Richards to come on and portray Florence's mother Shauna Fulton. The Shauna character is a long term contract role. That means we can expect to see a lot Shauna as well as Florence in the future. Really, it just sounds like they're going to drag this storyline out even more. The official description that's been attached to the new Shauna Fulton character reads like this, "Shauna is a fun-loving,...