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Black Tea Photo: Cinêfrance Studios Archipel 35 Dune Vision

Mauritanian director Abderrahmane Sissako's Black Tea follows the story of Aya (Nina Melo), who leaves the Ivory Coast in search of a new beginning in Guangzhou, China. She is hired by Cai (Han Chang), who runs a tea boutique; he sets about teaching her all he knows, and over time they discover a tender love for one another.

Black Tea was nominated for the Golden Bear award at the 2025 Berlin Film Festival. Sissako previously directed the 2014 drama, Timbuktu, about a family living in the sand dunes on the fringes of the city of Timbuktu, who have evaded the attention of the Jihadists, until now. 2002's Waiting For Happiness (Heremakono) follows two characters meeting in the Mauritanian city of Nouhadhibou, while 2006's Bamako explored the tensions between a married couple against the backdrop of broader political and economic issues.

Speaking with Eye For Film,...

If you’ve already scoured through our massive summer movie preview, then you’re already aware the season’s kick-off is one of the most eclectic months in some time, featuring high-wire blockbusters, the return of beloved auteurs, the year’s finest comedy, and more gems to discover.

16. The Surfer (Lorcan Finnegan; May 2)

After one of the most successful films of his career with last year’s Longlegs, Nicolas Cage returns this year with The Surfer, a beach-set psychological thriller directed by Lorcan Finnegan. Rory O’Connor said in his review, “In The Surfer, an exploitation film set to pressure-cook, a mild-mannered man is pitted against a group who even Andrew Tate might find a touch extreme. It’s set in South Australia on fictional Luna Bay, the kind of place where if the heat doesn’t get you, something else probably will. The water shines turquoise-blue but the beaches look like scorched earth.

The Hong Kong-Asia Film Financing Forum (Haf) has revealed 25 in-development projects set for its 23rd edition, with titles produced by acclaimed filmmakers such as Hirokazu Kore-eda, Aditya Vikram Sengupta, Sylvie Pialat, Lee Sinje, Stanley Kwan and Yeh Ju-Feng. A standalone animation section will also be introduced for the first time.

Part of the Hkiff Industry Project Market, Haf is scheduled to take place from March 17-19 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, in conjunction with Hong Kong Filmart.

Scroll down for full list of projects

Out of 276 submissions from 45 countries and regions, “those shortlisted are remarkable for their...

The Hong Kong-Asia Film Financing Forum (Haf) has revealed 25 in-development projects set for its 23rd edition, with titles produced by acclaimed filmmakers such as Hirokazu Kore-eda, Aditya Vikram Sengupta, Sylvie Pialat, Lee Sinje, Stanley Kwan and Yeh Ju-Feng. A standalone animation section will also be introduced for the first time.

Part of the Hkiff Industry Project Market, Haf is scheduled to take place from March 17-19 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, in conjunction with Hong Kong Filmart.

Scroll down for full list of projects

Out of 276 submissions from 45 countries and regions, “those shortlisted are remarkable for their...

Former mk2 films acquisition and sales agents Olivier Barbier and Ola Byszuk are joining forces with ex-Orange Studio exec Lenny Porte to create international sales company Lucky Number.

The trio, who have worked on hundreds of auteur titles between them, including Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall, Celine Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire and Michel Hazanavicius’ The Artist to name but a few – are currently building their slate for an early 2025 market launch.

Their aim is to handle 10 French and international auteur films a year, split roughly between two to three animated features, and seven to eight fiction films and docs, including work by new voices.

The trio want to offer a boutique service, which also involves financing and distribution strategies from the earliest stages of development, to ensure maximum impact on international markets.

“In an industry that has become increasingly complex both in terms of production and distribution,...

Mark Cuban always had a knack for innovation, and business came naturally to him. In the midst of these successes and ideas, he also got on board Shark Tank as one of the “Sharks” and gained a huge popularity and fan base. Throughout his stint on the show, Cuban was seen investing in several ventures, and some of these brought in huge returns for him as well.

Mark Cuban via Build Series | Credits: YouTube

However, one his biggest business deals happened outside the show, adding another feather to his business genius.

Mark Cuban’s Landmark Theatres Find New Home With Cohen Media Group

In the year 2018, Mark Cuban made a strategic decision to sell Landmark Theatres to Cohen Media Group, a prominent name in the indie film scene. Landmark, known for its focus on showcasing independent and specialty films, operated 56 theaters across 27 major markets, including popular locations in Los Angeles and New York City.

Cannes’ Critics Week has rounded out the jury for its 63rd edition running running May 15-23.

The previously announced Spanish writer-director-producer Rodrigo Sorogoyen will preside over the festival’s parallel selection dedicated to first and second features alongside Rwandan actress Eliane Umuhire, French producer Sylvie Pialat, Belgian director of photography Virginie Surdej, and Canadian journalist and film critic Ben Croll.

Sorogoyen is known for psychological thriller The Beasts which premiered in the Cannes Premiere strand in 2022 and won nine Goya awards, plus 2019 drama Mother, 2018 Spanish-French thriller The Realm, 2016 crime thriller May God Save Us, 2013 romantic drama Stockholm, and 2008’s 8 Dates co-directed with Peris Romano.

Rwandan actress Eliane Umuhire (“Augure by Baloji,” “My New Friends”), French producer Sylvie Pialat (“Timbuktu,” “Staying Vertical”), Belgian cinematographer Virginie Surdej and Canadian film critic, journalist and frequent Variety contributor Ben Croll have been named on the jury for the Critics’ Week section of the Cannes Film Festival.

The four will now join Spanish filmmaker Rodrigo Sorogoyen, who last week was named Critics’ Week jury president, with the group set to choose the sidebar competition’s award winners, including the Grand Prize for best feature film, the French Touch Prize of the Jury, the Louis Roederer Foundation Rising Star award for best actor or actress and the Leitz Ciné Discovery Prize for best short film.

The 2024 Critics Week lineup is set to be unveiled on April 15, four days after the Cannes official selection is announced on April 11.

Last year, Venice Golden Lion-winning “Happening” director Audrey Diwan presided over a Critics...

The Mauritanian master Aberrahmane Sissako reached glory with his previous feature, the foreign-language Oscar-nominated “Timbuktu” (2014). It was a harrowing, beautiful and potent film that hit the soft spot in combining the no-nonsense panoramic overview of the Islamist occupation of the titular city and the humaneness of the resistance to it. Ten years later, Sissako is, once again re-united with his co-screenwriter Kessen Tall, back on the festival circuit with his attempt at the globe-trotting cinema called “Black Tea”. It premiered at the competition of Berlinale and continued its tour at the Belgrade International Film Festival – Fest.

Black Tea screened at Berlin International Film Festival

Sissako opens his film with a sequence set, but not actually elaborated in any way, at a mass wedding ceremony in Abijan, the capital of Ivory Coast. Like other brides, Aya (Nina Melo) is excited, but when her time comes to say the magic words, she makes a monologue,...

After two weeks of new cinema, the Berlin Film Festival comes to a close this Sunday, February 25, with its annual awards ceremony. This year’s event marks one of change, as festival artistic director Carlo Chatrian, at his post since 2018, steps down to make way for Tricia Tuttle, who will take over for next year’s outing.

This year’s Berlinale has already stirred plenty of buzz for films like Alonso Ruizpalacios’s “La Cocina,” a drama set in a New York City kitchen and starring Rooney Mara, and Tim Mielants’ opener “Small Things Like These,” starring likely Oscar winner Cillian Murphy. Both films are eligible for awards, along with “Timbuktu” director Abderrahmane Sissako’s “Black Tea,” “Goodnight Mommy” filmmakers Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala’s “The Devil’s Bath,” “The Guilty” director Gustav Möller’s “Sons,” Olivier Assayas’ “Suspended Time,” plus Aaron Schimberg’s Sundance hit “A Different Man,” and many more.

Part of reviewing films for trades like The Hollywood Reporter is to provide a clear and concise plot summary for the reader. But this task may prove particularly difficult for Black Tea — the first feature in nearly ten years from Mauritanian auteur Abderrahmane Sissako, whose powerful 2014 drama Timbuktu won several César awards and was nominated for a foreign-language Oscar.

Ostensibly, the story follows Aya (the graceful Nina Mélo), an African bride who dumps her groom at the wedding and flees to China, where she works in a tea shop and winds up having an affair with her seductive boss, Cai (Chang Han). But is that what really happens?

The trailer, as well as the official synopsis, would lead you to think so. In reality, though, this completely enigmatic drama never offers up a succinct plotline, skipping from one character and story to another, jumping back and forth between countries and time periods,...

Tea can be an energizer or a sedative. “Black Tea,” the first film in a decade from veteran Mauritanian auteur Abderrahmane Sissako, sips exclusively from the latter end of the shelf, passing through chamomile-type calm into outright soporific territory. And if that seems a trite metaphor related to the beverage, this tepid Berlinale competition entry has plenty more of its own: A love story between a Chinese tea-shop owner and an Ivory Coast émigré that is rooted in the rituals of brewing and consuming the blessed leaves, the film aims for woozy sensualism but falls way short on the ambient richness and X-factor chemistry required to sell such an essentially confected exercise.

It’s altogether a mystifying misstep from Sissako, typically a filmmaker of such formal and political vigor; by its close, the ten years separating “Black Tea” from 2014’s beautiful, shattering “Timbuktu” feel closer to an eon. Though this...

It’s been 10 years since Mauritanian–Malian director Abderrahmane Sissako last directed a film, but his much-anticipated return is suffused with a lightness that belies the long wait. A soft-focus romantic drama that channels some of the same humanism that steeped its way into “Timbuktu,” “Black Tea” finds Sissako applying his empathetic gaze towards the service of a much gentler vision.

It starts with a prologue of sorts set on the Ivory Coast. Aya (Nina Mélo), an Ivorian woman in her thirties, is about to get married but has just discovered that her future husband has been unfaithful. In a memorable opening image, a black insect walks through the folds of her white dress — an ominous fly in the ointment — as she waits for the nuptials to begin, her face twisting with uncertainty. At the altar, she astonishes her family by refusing to say “I do,” choosing instead to walk...

“Black Tea,” Abderrahmane Sissako‘s lushly lensed romance drama set in China, has been bought by major distributors in key territories ahead of its world premiere in competition at the Berlin Film Festival.

Gaumont, which co-produced the film, has sold it to Caramel (Spain), Academy two (Italy), Pandora Films, Cineart (Benelux), Films4you (Portugal), Provzglyad (Cis), Mozinet (Hungary), Another World Entertainment (Norway), Film Bazar (Denmark), McF Megacom, Filmstop, Mb Taip Toliau (Lithuania), Imovision (Brazil), Av Jet (Taiwan), Falcon (Indonesia), Pathé BC and New Cinema (Israel).

The movie was also previously acquired by Cohen Media Group for distribution in the U.S. “Black Tea” marks Sissako’s follow up to his 2015 Oscar-nominated film “Timbuktu.”

“Black Tea” tells the story of Aya, who leaves the Ivory Coast after walking out on her wedding day and sets off to start a new life in Guangzhou, China. In this district where the African diaspora meets Chinese culture,...

Cohen Media Group, the U.S. distribution company behind Matteo Garrone’s Oscar-nominated “Io Capitano,” has acquired North American rights to “The President’s Wife,” a biting movie starring Catherine Deneuve as France’s former first lady Bernadette Chirac.

The deal closed during the European Film Market currently taking place and running alongside the Berlin Film Festival.

The movie, which marks the feature debut of director Léa Domenach, is nominated for a Cesar Award for best first film. The deal was negotiated by Robert Aaronson, executive VP of Cohen Media Group, and Charlotte Boucon, head of world sales at Orange Studio — newly acquired by Studiocanal — on behalf of Warner Bros Picture France.

The film opens in 1995, as Jacques Chirac becomes president of France. “His wife Bernadette now expects to be treated with the respect due to her lifelong work in the shadow of her husband. But mocked as too corny, she’s cast aside.

"It's very special." "I love the scent." "So do I." Gaumont in France has revealed the first promo trailer for an indie relationship drama titled Black Tea, a brand new film made by acclaimed Mauritanian filmmaker Abderrahmane Sissako. This film is premiering in the Main Competition at the upcoming 2024 Berlin Film Festival kicking off soon this month. Looks like one of the best in the line-up! Aya, a young Ivory Coast woman in her early thirties, says "no" on her wedding day, to everyone's astonishment. After emigrating to China, she finds work in a tea export shop with Cai, a 45-year-old Chinese man. Aya and Cai soon fall in love but can their affair survive the turmoil of their pasts and other people's prejudices? Eight years after the breathtaking Timbuktu (in competition at Cannes 2014 and an Academy Award nominee for Best International Film), Sissako returns with Black Tea – starring Nina Mélo,...

Gaumont has unveiled a first still and trailer for “Black Tea,” Abderrahmane Sissako’s highly anticipated follow-up to his 2015 Oscar-nominated film “Timbuktu.” The movie will world premiere in competition at the Berlin Film Festival.

A lushly-lensed romance drama, “Black Tea” (previously titled “The Perfumed Hill“) tells the story of Joice, who leaves the Ivory Coast after walking out on her wedding day and sets off to start a new life in Guangzhou, China. In this district where the African diaspora meets the Chinese culture, she gets hired in a tea boutique owned by Cai, a Chinese man. In the secrecy of the back shop, Cai decides to initiate Aya to the tea ceremony and their relationship slowly turns into tender love.

Gaumont, which is handling international sales and French distribution rights on the film, has described it as “a timeless, universal love story between two opposite characters” and a “sensory journey” set across China,...

Mad Solutions has acquired world sales rights to Osn’s first-ever original feature, “Yellow Bus,” which world premiered at the Toronto Film Festival.

As well as world sales, Mad Solutions will handle Middle East and North Africa theatrical distribution, while Osn will handle all other Mena rights. Sikhya Entertainment will handle distribution in the Indian subcontinent.

In U.S. filmmaker Wendy Bednarz’s feature debut, an Indian woman living in the Arabian Gulf embarks on a search for truth and accountability after her daughter is left to die on a school bus in the sweltering desert heat.

The film stars Syrian actress Kinda Alloush, alongside Indian star Tannishtha Chatterjee, who was nominated for best actress at the British Independent Film Awards for “Brick Lane,” as well as fellow prominent Indian actor Amit Sial, who is known for the series “Inside Edge,” and Aarushi Laud, who plays the daughter.

The film...

London- and Paris-based Film Constellation has boarded sales on 2D family animated feature “Carmen,” a contemporary adaptation of the opera, to be directed by 2023 Annecy Film Festival winner Sébastien Laudenbach. Variety revealed first details of the project last year exclusively.

Laudenbach, who won the best film award at Annecy for “Chicken for Linda!,” is teaming up with renowned French animation studio Folivari on “Carmen.”

It’s 1840 in Seville, a pulsating town of sailors and small-time crooks. Salvador, a young assistant to the gifted knife grinder Antonio, meets a captivating gypsy girl named Carmen. Her rapturous beauty and independent spirit are the talk of the town, but Antonio’s ability to glimpse the future foretells a tragic fate. With unwavering resolve, Salvador will muster an eclectic band of misfit kids, led by the spirited Belén, to protect Carmen against the unyielding threads of destiny, igniting the ancient city’s alleyways in a symphony of emotions.

Philo may be best known among cord-cutters for its easy access to live TV streaming, but with its Movies & More add-on, the service is also quickly becoming the final stop for film fanatics. And for those customers looking to buff up their film history — from cult classics to music documentaries — Philo has just added Fandor to the add-on.

7-Day Free Trial $25 / month philo.com

Now available for Movies & More subscribers, customers can get access to thousands of award-winning classics, documentaries, international films, and indie movies. The film streamer touts a library of at least 6,000 titles at all times, be it Academy Award-nominated dramas or gruesome cult horror flicks, so there is never a shortage of things to watch.

Some of its most acclaimed offerings include “Timbuktu,” a Mauritanian-French drama and a 2015 Academy Award Nominee for Best Foreign Language Film about a cattle herder who has to face the new laws...

A digest of key Swiss industry news announced during the Locarno Film Festival.

Swiss public broadcaster Srg has extended its co-production agreement with the local film industry for another four years and has increased its annual budget by CHF1.5m ($1.7m) to CHF34m ($38m).

The new “Pacte de l’Audiovisuel” co-production agreement between Srg and the local film industry will run from 1 January 2024 until the end of 2027.

The annual budget available in the “Pacte” for co-producing Swiss feature films will increase from $10m (Chf 9m) to $11.45m CHF10m in response to rising costs for film production.

In addition,...

Eight years after delivering his Oscar-nominated film “Timbuktu,” Abderrahmane Sissako is set to make his anticipated directorial comeback with “The Perfumed Hill.” Gaumont is representing in international markets and will introduce it to buyers at at Toronto. The French studio will also distribute the film in France, while Cohen Media Group will release it in the U.S.

Re-teaming Sissako with his “Timbuktu” co-writer Kessen Tall, “The Perfumed Hill” is a romance drama set between China’s tea hills, the Ivory Coast and Cape Verde. It stars Nina Melo (“Girlhood”), Han Chang (“Little Big Women”) and Ke-Xi Wu (“Nina Wu”).

The movie follows the journey of Joice, who leaves the Ivory Coast to start a new life in Guangzhou, China, after saying “no” on her wedding day. She finds a job at a tea boutique owned by Cai, a Chinese man, in the vibrant region of Guangzhou, known as the “Chocolate City.

The Academy’s International Feature Film Award Committee has nothing to do with selecting the foreign-language submissions from more than 90 countries around the world. It’s up to the individual country to figure out which film has the best chance to build a following among some 1,000 global Academy participants (mostly in Los Angeles) who watch a dozen films at festivals, screenings, theaters, or on the Academy online portal, and rate them to come up with a shortlist of 15 films for the overall Academy to watch. Those who see the entire shortlist can pick the final five nominees.

While many in Hollywood decry this method of selecting the international Oscar contenders, the scale and logistics of the submitting and voting process have staved off any meaningful reform. More countries are participating every year: this year 92 submissions were eligible. Some members would like to see 10 nominees, given the high volume of quality films on display.

The Academy’s International Feature Film Award Committee has nothing to do with selecting the foreign-language submissions from more than 90 countries around the world. It’s up to the individual country to figure out which film has the best chance to build a following among some 1,000 global Academy participants (mostly in Los Angeles) who watch a dozen films at festivals, screenings, theaters, or on the Academy online portal, and rate them to come up with a shortlist of 15 films for the overall Academy to watch. Those who see the entire shortlist can pick the final five nominees.

While many in Hollywood decry this method of selecting the international Oscar contenders, the scale and logistics of the submitting and voting process have staved off any meaningful reform. More countries are participating every year: this year 92 submissions were eligible. Some members would like to see 10 nominees, given the high volume of quality films on display.

With awards season fast approaching, it’s looking like this could be the year animation awards finally grow up. With Sundance winner “Flee” earning early buzz, there’s clearly a growing appetite for more mature animated fare in the U.S. Entering into the fray this year is “The Summit of the Gods,” a sweeping 2D animation from French director Patrick Imbert. Adapted from the acclaimed manga series of the same name, “The Summit of the Gods” follows a Japanese adventure photographer and mountaineer obsessed with finding a legendary climber attempting to scale Mount Everest. IndieWire is proud to premiere the trailer exclusively below.

Here’s the official synopsis, per Netflix: “Were George Mallory and his companion Andrew Irvine the first men to scale Everest on June 8, 1924? Only the little Vestpocket Kodak camera they took with them might reveal the truth. In Kathmandu, 70 years later, a young Japanese reporter...

Finnish writer-director Khadar Ayderus Ahmed, born in Mogadishu, continues to enjoy his first feature’s successful festival run. Screening this week in Toronto, “The Gravedigger’s Wife” premiered at Cannes Critics’ Week in July.

“We finished the shoot in 2019. We were invited to Cannes last year, but decided to wait for better times,” explains the helmer. “In Cannes, me and my family, and my actors, we were the only Somalis in the audience. Now, in Toronto, there is this big Somali community. They are excited and waiting for the film – people are sending me screenshots of their tickets!”

Inspired by a sudden death that happened in his family 10 years ago in Helsinki, the film shows a man who “hunts bodies for a living,” waiting in front of hospitals for new corpses to bury. But when his wife (Canadian model Yasmin Warsame) needs expensive surgery, gravedigger Guled (Omar Abdi) and his young...

It’s been eight years since director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun was last in the Cannes Film Festival’s main competition lineup with his 2013 drama “Grisgris,” and it’s no surprise that the filmmaker from Chad, in Central Africa, is back this year with “Lingui, the Sacred Bonds” — after all, the director has been in the Cannes lineup five times, and he won the jury prize for “A Screaming Man” in 2010.

But here’s what is surprising, and dismaying: In the six festivals between “Grisgris” and “Lingui,” Cannes’ main competition has included a grand total of three African films: “Timbuktu” in 2014, “Yomeddine” in 2018 and “Atlantics” in 2019. Others have screened in various sidebars and out of competition, but for the past decade, Cannes’ marquee section has been almost entirely devoid of work from Africa.

While Haroun shouldn’t have to carry the load on the Croisette for an entire continent, he is an...

Guatemala has only submitted three films for Oscar consideration in the history of the Best International Feature category. In 1995 it entered “The Silence of Neto” and in 2016 “Ixcanul,” but neither advanced in the race toward a nomination. This year, the director of “Ixcanul” Jayro Bustamante is back in the race with Guatemala’s third-ever submission “La Llorona.” In February the film became the country’s first submission to make the 15-title shortlist and is now on pace to be its first nominee.

The supernatural drama film reimagines a Latin American fable using magical realism and horror to examine Guatemala’s dark past in a story of cultural guilt and justice. “La Llorona” had its world premiere at the 2019 Venice Film Festival where it won the Best Film prize at the Venice Days sidebar and then screened at TIFF shortly after, a full year before it was made available stateside via...

Earlier this month, the Academy announced that 93 countries submitted films for its International Feature Film category at the 92nd Academy Awards. Ten of these came from Africa, a new record for the continent.

It remains to be seen whether any of these titles will be shortlisted in order to make the final list of five nominees. Of the 10 films, Senegal’s “Atlantics,” Mati Diop’s 2019 Cannes Grand Prix winner acquired by Netflix, probably has the strongest chance.

The last time a film representing an African country won this category was South Africa’s “Tsotsi,” by Gavin Hood, at the 78th Oscars in 2006. It’s one of just three wins from African countries, which also include Algeria’s “Z” by Costa-Gavras in 1969 and the Ivory Coast’s “Black and White in Color” (“La Victoire en chantant”) by Jean-Jacques Annaud in 1976.

In 2018, eight submissions included African first-timers Mozambique (“The Train of Salt...

From the beginning, there’s something disconcerting about the exuberance of Lendita Zeqiraj’s feature debut “Aga’s House.” We’re immediately plunked down into the middle of a circle of women sitting on a remote Kosovan hillside in the sunshine exchanging salty anecdotes while preparing food. They laugh, bicker and throw cruel little jabs at one another, referring to age, attractiveness, sexual experience or lack thereof. But the bawdiness and hilarity feels volatile and precarious, as though it could end at any moment, as though these women, in their exile from society, are living as loudly and brashly as they can to drown out the ticking of the unexploded mine of the past over which they dance.

Four of the women have been living in this so-called “refuge house” for some time: the pretty, flirtatious, unserious Emira (Rozafa Çelaj); her best friend and sparring partner Luma (Adriana Matoshi); Kumrija...

Elia Suleiman is in every scene of “It Must Be Heaven,” but he only speaks four words. The writer-director-star finds himself in a New York taxi cab in the midst of a globe-trotting journey after fleeing his drab routine back home. Asked where he comes from, he replies, “Nazareth,” then clarifies: “I am Palestinian.” And that’s pretty much all you need to know. For the rest of the movie, Suleiman’s deadpan stare says it all, as the slapstick auteur’s latest installment in his ongoing chronicle of Palestinian identity settles into his usual playful routine. Once again, the Chaplinesque Suleiman drifts through an ambivalent world, and his solemn expression does the bulk of the talking.

Suleiman’s always a reliable charmer, with a penchant for funneling the language of Jacques Tati and Buster Keaton into moving-image editorials about his troubled homeland. However, a decade has passed since his...

Charles S. Cohen doesn’t just love French cinema: he puts his money where his mouth is. And with a net worth estimated at $3.3 billion by Forbes Magazine, the owner of producer/distributor Cohen Media Group — the largest American distributor of French films in the U.S. — is showing his love in a multitude of ways.

“I am finalizing plans with the French government for the renovation and expansion of La Pagode Cinema, the only theater

in the 7th arrondissement [of Paris],” the real estate magnate says.

It’s only one of his many recent efforts involving French cinema, which include licensing the film libraries of Maurice Pialat, Jacques Rivette, Claude Chabrol and others, restoring and releasing them on home video through his Cohen Film Collection.

He’s also chairman of the Alliance Française, and his efforts in promoting French cinema and art earned him France’s National Order of Merit in...

Arthouse specialist Landmark Theatres has been sold by Todd Wagner and Mark Cuban to Cohen Media Group for an undisclosed price.

The sale ends months of speculation about Landmark’s fate — the company has been shopped around for months, reportedly drawing interest from Amazon, Netflix, and Byron Allen. Cohen Media Group chairman Charles S. Cohen, a real estate developer whose fortune is estimated to be $3.4 billion, said he will retain the senior management team of Landmark Theatres.

In an interview with Variety, Landmark Theatres president and CEO Ted Mundorff said he was pleased that the sale had been resolved and also said he was optimistic that Cohen, a cinephile, was an ideal owner.

“It’s a great day for the industry,” said Mundorff. “You have a film lover who bought a theater company… and he’s going to keep the ship running the way it has been going.”

The deal was announced Tuesday by Wagner,...

Coldplay – performing under the name Los Unidades – linked with Pharrell and rising Memphis rapper Jozzy for a new song “E-Lo” that will appear on Global Citizen Ep 1. The four-track Ep is an extension of the Global Citizen Festival and will be released November 30th via Atlantic Records.

“E-Lo” finds Chris Martin crooning inspirational lyrics over a lithe pop groove. “There’s nowhere I’d rather be,” he belts, “Gonna raise up the one hand and raise up the other/ Hurt me outside, inside I’m free/ And there’s no enemy,...

On November 1, the 2018 IndieWire Honors ceremony will celebrate eight filmmakers and actors for their achievement in creative independence. We’re showcasing their work with new interviews this week.

At just 32, Ryan Coogler has already turned out an extraordinary trilogy of missing-father-and-son films: “Fruitvale Station,” which played Un Certain Regard after debuting at Sundance, “Rocky” sequel “Creed,” and historic blockbuster “Black Panther,” which has crashed Hollywood barriers that should have been shattered decades ago.

Coogler’s original coming-of-age concept for “Black Panther” was a lion learning what it means to be king, a man who carried an idealized version of his father and country in his head. When that is destroyed, he has to pick up the pieces and create something new. Coogler had never seen an African man like T’Challa, untouched by colonization, either in a movie or in history.

There’s no question “Black Panther” changed the rules of what works in Hollywood.

On November 1, the 2018 IndieWire Honors ceremony will celebrate eight filmmakers and actors for their achievement in creative independence. We’re showcasing their work with new interviews this week.

At just 32, Ryan Coogler has already turned out an extraordinary trilogy of missing-father-and-son films: “Fruitvale Station,” which played Un Certain Regard after debuting at Sundance, “Rocky” sequel “Creed,” and historic blockbuster “Black Panther,” which has crashed Hollywood barriers that should have been shattered decades ago.

Coogler’s original coming-of-age concept for “Black Panther” was a lion learning what it means to be king, a man who carried an idealized version of his father and country in his head. When that is destroyed, he has to pick up the pieces and create something new. Coogler had never seen an African man like T’Challa, untouched by colonization, either in a movie or in history.

There’s no question “Black Panther” changed the rules of what works in Hollywood.

Exclusive: Keesha Sharp, who plays Trish Murtaugh on Fox’s Lethal Weapon series, has picked up rights to John Williams’ 2013 biography America’s Mistress: The Life and Times of Eartha Kitt. She and her husband Brad Sharp will develop and produce the project as a feature film, and she will also star as Kitt, the seminal performer known for playing Catwoman on ABC’s iconic 1960s Batman TV series and for singing hits including “C’est si bon“ and the ubiquitous holiday tune “Santa, Baby.”

Born Eartha Mae Keith in 1927, Kitt, who died of colon cancer in 2008 at age 81, appeared in films including Anna Lucasta, Boomerang with Eddie Murphy, Harriet the Spy, and Holes which starred a young Shia Labeouf. Her TV credits are just as extensive, including playing Catwoman on Batman opposite Adam West. She also lent her voice in Disney’s animated feature The Emperor’s New Groove...

Oscar-winning composer A. R. Rahman has written the score for the film.

Franck Priot’s Paris-based production outfit Ghosts City is co-producing Tamil-language drama Madras Beats, directed by Rajiv Menon, with India’s Mindscreen Cinemas.

Oscar-winning composer A.R. Rahman has written the score for the film, about a boy from India’s ‘untouchable’ caste who dreams of becoming a drummer in the South Indian ‘Carnatic’ classical music tradition. Gv Prakash, who is a trained classical musician in addition to an actor, heads the cast.

French editor Nadia Ben Rachid and sound mixer Thierry Delor, who both won Cesars for Timbuktu,...

The Cageaissance may be upon us. After earning his best reviews in years with Sundance’s Mandy, Nicolas Cage will help Sion Sono make an English-language debut with the post-apocalyptic picture Prisonsers of the Ghostland, which Deadline describes as the story of a “notorious criminal Hero (Cage) who is sent to rescue an abducted girl who has disappeared into a dark supernatural universe.” Melding the origins of its direcotr and setting, Reza Sixo Safai (what a name) and Aaron Hendry’s script finds them in “an East-meets-West vortex of beauty and violence” while trying to “escape the mysterious revenants that rule the Ghostland.” A lot of which sounds like nonsense, and very well could be, but Sono can handle that. And thoughts of the pairing alone will be worth the price of admission.

Meanwhile, Cohen Media Group have reunited with Abderrahmane Sissako for the Mauritanian auteur’s The Perfumed Hill.

Launched six months ago, Orange Studio’s international sales division will be hitting Cannes Film Festival with three movies across various selections, including a pair of new acquisitions, Guillaume Nicloux’s Directors’ Fortnight player “To the Ends of the World” and “Rafiki” (pictured), Wanuri Kahiu’s Lgbt love story slated for Un Certain Regard.

“Rafiki” has just been banned by authorities in Kenya where homosexuality is illegal. Adapted from “Jambula Tree,” a short story by Uganda’s Monica Arac de Nyeko, the film tells the story of two teenage girls whose developing romance put them at odds with their families and community.

Météore Films will release “Rafiki” in France. Andrei Kamarowsky, who heads up Orange Studio’s international sales division with Emilie Serres, pointed out “Rafiki” will be the first Kenyan movie to be presented at Cannes Film Festival.

Orange Studio has also acquired international sales rights to...

When real estate billionaire Charles S. Cohen was 15, all hell broke loose in Newark, N.J. It was the summer of 1967 and a 12-year-old black child, not much younger than him, was on the cover of Life Magazine bleeding from a police shotgun wound aimed at an older kid who’d been looting beer during a riot. Cohen lived across the bridge in Westchester County, N.Y., close enough for the horror to feel real, so he filmed stills of the magazine, and intercut them with his own story about two boys in a playground, one black, one white, combining their strengths to spin a merry-go-round.

Cohen called his first short “Contrast,” and premiered it at his high school auditorium. His guts roiled with trepidation and pride. He’d done every bit of it from editing to piano score besides act — he’s not much for glory hogging. Ask Cohen,...

Palme d’Or-winning director will work alongside The Lunchbox’s Ritesh Batra.

Romanian director Cristian Mungiu (Bacalaureat, the Palme d’Or-winning 4 Months, 3 Weeks And 2 Days) will be one of this year’s guest directors at the FeatureLab of the TorinoFilmLab.

Mungiu will work alongside Indian filmmaker and Tfl alumni Ritesh Batra (Our Souls At Night, The Lunchbox) to mentor the 2018 workshop participants.

The FeatureLab is a development program dedicated to 1st and 2nd feature film projects already at an advanced stage. It is organised in Sardinia with Fondazione Sardegna Film Commission.

During the six month programme, lab directors, screenwriters and...

Will Smith and Uma Thurman took some time off of Cannes jury duty to celebrate legendary producer Jeffrey Katzenberg at a gala dinner where he received an honorary Palme d'Or.

The Dreamworks co-founder added the prize to his awards shelf on Friday night, and compared it to being awarded an honorary Oscar in 2012.

Netflix head Ted Sarandos was present at the gala dinner, which took place at the Carlton hotel in Cannes. Producer Brett Ratner, Paramount CEO Jim Gianopolous, Timbuktu producer Sylvie Pialat and directors Naomi Kawase, Costa-Gavras and Joachim Lafosse were also on hand.

Festival head Thierry Fremaux...

At lunch with Reda Kateb, who plays Django Reinhardt in Étienne Comar's Django Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Étienne Comar's (co-screenwriter of Xavier Beauvois' Of Gods And Men, producer of Abderrahmane Sissako's Timbuktu) directorial debut, Django, starring Reda Kateb and Cécile de France with Alex Brendemühl (who is also in Nicole Garcia's Mal De Pierres), was the opening night film of the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema in New York.

Django (not to be confused with Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained, which starred Jamie Foxx, Leonardo DiCaprio and Christoph Waltz, or Franco Nero's Django films) is based on the novel by Alexis Salatko, with a score by longtime Nick Cave collaborator Warren Ellis, costumes by Pascaline Chavanne, and shot by Christophe Beaucarne on the life of jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt.

Étienne Comar with Cécile de France and Reda Kateb Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Étienne brought up Madeline Fontaine,...

The thing about fascism is that it forces people to figure out who they are; it’s us vs. them, and anyone who tries to feign indifference or bury their head in the sand is only ceding ground to the armies of violence. “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing,” goes Edmund Burke’s famous maxim, but how — in the face of such monstrous villains — could men who do nothing possibly be thought of as good?

Perhaps it’s a matter of semantics, but the movies would seem to argue that it’s more accurate to say “All that is necessary for the triumph of good is that evil men do something.” Oskar Schindler, to pick but one famous example, was not a good man until the empirical reality of genocide goaded him into becoming one. A more subtle (though perhaps more...

Author: Stefan Pape

Opening the Berlinale this year, and in somewhat surprising circumstances, is Django – which marks the a debut for Etienne Comar, as the renowned producer – behind two of the finest foreign language films in recent years in Timbuktu and My King – takes his seat in the director’s chair for the very first time, to bring us the story of jazz pioneer Django Reinhardt.

Known to many as the father of ‘Gypsy Swing’, Django (Reda Kateb) reached the pinnacle of his success during the Second World War, playing to packed out crowds on a regular basis, wowing audiences in Paris alongside the Quintette du Hot Club de France. He was renowned not only for his innovation in his genre, but for his ability to play with just two fingers, having burnt his hand in a fire. Given his Romani ethnicity, Django was a target for the Nazis, though...

This past January, the 2017 Berlin Film Festival announced that its opening night film would be the world premiere of Etienne Comar’s “Django,” about famous French jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt and his struggles in German-occupied Paris. Now, ahead of opening night this Thursday, watch an exclusive clip from “Django” below.

Read More: 2017 Berlin Film Festival to Open With Etienne Comar’s ‘Django’

Set in France in 1943, Django Reinhardt delights Parisian audiences with his music despite numerous Romany people finding themselves the target of persecution and death from the the Nazi occupation forces. Though Reinhardt believes himself to be safe, soon Nazi propaganda agents demand he tour Germany in order to counteract the influence of “negro music” from the United States. When he refuses, he goes on the run with his pregnant wife and his mother only to find the Nazis are on his trail.

This is Comar’s debut feature film.

With a little more than a month to go before kickoff, the Berlin Film Festival has unveiled Etienne Comar’s Django as its opening movie. A world premiere, it will also run in competition. Comar, a successful screenwriter and producer whose credits include Cannes Grand Jury Prize-winner Of Gods And Men, Haute Cuisine, My King, The Women On The 6th Floor and the Oscar-nominated Timbuktu, makes his feature directing debut with the period drama. Pathé International has…...

Etienne Comar’s directorial debut stars Reda Kateb as iconic musician.

The 67th Berlin International Film Festival will open on Feburary 9 with the world premiere of Etienne Comar’s (Of Gods And Men) directorial debut Django.

The film, which will play in competition at the Berlinale, revolves around Django Reinhardt, the iconic guitarist and composer, and his flight from German-occupied Paris in 1943 where as Sinti his family was harassed and hounded by the Nazis.

Reda Kateb (Far From Men) stars in the title role alongside Cécile de France (The Kid with a Bike), as well as Alex Brendemühl and Ulrich Brandhoff.

Director Comar is best known as the screenwriter and producer of titles including Of Gods And Men, Haute Cuisine and My King, and as a co-producer of The Women on the 6th Floor and Timbuktu.

The screenplay comes from Comar and Alexis Salatko. Django Reinhardt’s music was re-recorded for the film by the Dutch jazz band...

The modern movie landscape can make some people feel like the best days of film are behind us. With remakes, reboots and adaptations very abundant, and original movies seemingly not raking it in at the box office, that is an understandable sentiment. But the BBC felt like there are a lot of recent movies worth celebrating, and that is why they set out to make a list of the 100 greatest movies of the 21st century. The list they came up with is nothing if not interesting, and it is definitely a reminder that there are a lot of great movies that have been made in the last 16 years.

BBC published the list on Tuesday morning, after taking months to put it all together. In order to come up with this list, they used nearly 200 critics from both print and online publications, as well as academics and curators. The contributors that were used spanned the globe,...