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Playing a traumatized nightclub singer made her a star, but to finally win over the Academy, Isabella Rossellini had to play a nosy nun.

Rossellini received her first-ever Oscar nomination on Thursday, scoring a nomination in the best supporting actress category for her role as Sister Agnes in Edward Berger’s Vatican-set thriller Conclave. Her competition includes Ariana Grande for Wicked, Monica Barbaro for A Complete Unknown, Felicity Jones for The Brutalist, and Zoe Saldaña for Emilia Pérez.

Both of Rossellini’s parents were Oscar nominees — her mother Ingrid Bergman was nominated an astounding 7 times, winning best actress 3 times, while father Roberto Rossellini received a screenwriting nom in 1950 — but it took this nepo-baby nearly 40 years to translate her overnight success into Academy acclaim.

Rossellini’s iconic role as tortured crooner Dorothy Vallens in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986) won her an Independent Spirit Award for best female lead but the...

A specter is haunting the rules-based liberal world order: The specter of shambling, moaning, masturbating bog zombies, rising from the German countryside to terrorize the leaders of the world’s foremost democracies. There’s a giant brain in the forest, the Italian prime minister keeps pulling deli meat out of his pockets,...

Italian actress Isabella Rossellini will receive the European Achievement in World Cinema award, a lifetime achievement honor, at this year’s European Film Awards.

The Italian-American star, daughter of Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman and Italian film director Roberto Rossellini, was a successful fashion model — famously for French cosmetics brand Lancôme — before shifting into acting. Her first leading role came in the Taviani brothers’ drama The Meadow (1979), but her international breakout was David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986) in which she played the mysterious and tortured nightclub singer Dorothy Vallens. The performance, in which Rossellini also sang the film’s titular tune, won her the Independent Spirit Award for best female lead.

Over the next four decades, Rossellini carved out a unique career in cinema, moving between big-budget features — Robert Zemeckis’ Death Becomes Her (1992), Peter Weir’s Fearless (1993) — and independent auteur films, working with Peter Greenaway (2003’s The Tulse Luper Suitcases), Guy...

A pack of wolves howls at a massive iPhone that’s propped up in the snow like a monolith, an image from George Méliès “A Trip to the Moon” frozen on its screen. A steampunk Trojan horse — or is it an ark? — delivers a fleet of small children into the future, where they’re greeted by a marionette wearing a mask of Greta Thunberg’s face. Mike Tyson, dressed in the most fantastic Afrofuturist chic, pumps up the youngest survivors of a nuclear and/or robot-induced apocalypse in the middle of a boxing ring that’s held together with actual ropes.

These are just some of the surreal but stiflingly hyper-legibible sights on display in Godfrey Reggio’s “Once Within a Time,” a 43-minute curio that would seem to find the “Koyaanisqatsi” director venturing beyond the time-lapse technophobia that made his documentary work so iconic. And to a degree, it does,...

The world needs a lot of things right now, and one of them just happens to be easygoing entertainment. So be grateful for “Banana Split,” a charming teen romance that fits neatly into the era of “Booksmart” but also manages to stand solidly on its own.

Cowriter Hannah Marks (“Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency”) also stars as April, a high-school senior in a long-term relationship with dim hottie Nick (Dylan Sprouse). Marks, cowriter Joey Power and director Benjamin Kasulke spend about five minutes introducing, capturing and ending this relationship, in a quick but clever montage that both fills us in and keeps us at a distance.

That detachment does leave a nagging hole in the story, because we never have the chance to become invested in this couple. But it’s also a purposeful choice: It soon becomes clear that the filmmakers have something other than romance in mind.

COLOGNE, Germany -- The Berlin International Film Festival's Forum sidebar will feature a live performance of Guy Maddin's silent film Brand Upon the Brain! as part of its 2007 lineup.

The performance, at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, will feature a live orchestra and singers as well as foley artists performing sound effects. Isabella Rossellini, who collaborated with Maddin on The Saddest Music In the World (2003) and My Dad Is 100 Years Old (2005) will narrate the film to the Berlin audience.

"Brand Upon the Brain!" premiered at the New York Film Festival with a similar set-up. The Berlin performance, on Feb.15, will mark the film's European debut.

The 57th annual Berlin International Film Festival runs Feb. 8-18.