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Tim Roth's career has been "healthily messy".The 63-year-old actor has starred in a host of well-known movies, including 'Reservoir Dogs', 'Pulp Fiction' and 'The Hateful Eight' - but Tim admits that there's also been a chaotic element to his career.The London-born film star told The Hollywood Reporter: "My feeling is that the career that I was after was anarchy. I always like that - and chaos. "So, I always do a film to finance another film. Because a lot of these films that I love to do, these crazy films I love to do, have no money. They’re the little independent things that are trying and are struggling to be made even more now than ever. So you got to do the ones that finance them. But sometimes they are terrible, and sometimes they are great, and sometimes the little independents don’t work.

British actor Tim Roth drew a big crowd and much applause with a masterclass at the 15th edition of the Luxembourg City Film Festival (LuxFilmFest) last week, in which he discussed such topics as his work with Tupac Shakur, Quentin Tarantino and Werner Herzog and how he prepared for his first TV role as a racist skinhead.

He was one of the big names attending the anniversary edition of the fest, along with the star-studded jury, which was led by Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof and also included Danish actress Trine Dyrholm (The Girl With the Needle, Poison), Austrian actress Valerie Pachner (Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, A Hidden Life), L.A.- and Luxembourg-based VFX expert Jeff Desom (Everything Everywhere All at Once), Spanish director Albert Serra (Afternoons of Solitude), and screenwriter Paul Laverty. The festival has also featured a masterclass by Oscar-winning filmmaker Alejandro Amenábar.

As part of his busy Luxembourg schedule,...

The Match Factory has launched sales for the new feature by acclaimed Mexican director Michel Franco, “Dreams,” at the American Film Market, and made a promo available for buyers. The film marks the second collaboration between the director and Jessica Chastain.

Variety revealed in July that the Match Factory would be the sales agent on the project (here).

Franco’s “Memory,” starring Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard, premiered last year in competition at the Venice Film Festival, where Sarsgaard was awarded the Coppa Volpi for best actor.

“Dreams” features Chastain in the leading role, alongside dancer Isaac Hernández. Currently a principal dancer at the American Ballet Theatre, Hernández has worked with the English National Ballet in London, the San Francisco Ballet, and most of the major ballet companies. He made his acting debut in the film “The King of All the World” (2021). The cast also includes Marshall Bell (“Stand by Me”), and Rupert Friend.

The following contains spoilers from Superman & Lois Season 4, Episodes 3, "Always My Hero."

As Superman & Lois progresses into its fourth and final season, the losses keep mounting for the Kent family, especially its matriarch, Lois Lane, who has lost both her husband and father in the opening three episodes of the season. Through it all, Lois endures a gauntlet set up by the vengeful criminal mastermind Lex Luthor as payback for having him jailed for 17 years, a vendetta that expands to both of her sons, Jonathan and Jordan Kent. However, for all the misery that Luthor has inflicted since his release from prison, Lois remains determined to protect her family, even with her husband Superman gone.

In an exclusive interview with Cbr, Superman & Lois actor Bitsie Tulloch talks about tapping into the emotional rawness of her performance at the start of Season 4, shares about working with her real-life husband director...

International rights to “Dreams,” the next film from Mexican filmmaker Michel Franco, whose “Memory” competed at Venice last year, will be sold by his regular partner The Match Factory.

“I usually work with The Match Factory, and we have an ongoing collaboration,” he tells Variety at Karlovy Vary Film Festival. “So, yeah, I like to stick with people [I know]. Why change when things are working out? It’s a great company. And I have certain distributors in certain countries that keep buying my films. And that’s, I think, how you build audiences.”

He says that he is still editing the film, so it may not be ready for Venice. “I don’t think it would be ready. I wouldn’t want to rush it. And I’m here [in Karlovy Vary]. I’m not obsessed with rushing [to finish films].”

“Dreams” will star Jessica Chastain, who also headlined “Memory,” as well as Rupert Friend and Isaac Hernández.

Independent titles lead the openers at this weekend’s UK-Ireland box office, with Thea Sharrock’s comedy Wicked Little Letters starting in 685 sites through Studiocanal.

Written by Jonny Sweet and based on a true scandal from 1920s England, Wicked Little Letters centres on an English seaside town targeted by a series of obscene letters, that are investigated by a group of women from the area.

Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley lead the cast, that also includes Anjana Vasan, Malachi Kirby and Timothy Spall. Buckley, Vasan and Kirby were named Screen Stars of Tomorrow in 2017, 2021 and 2013.

It is the third feature from UK filmmaker Sharrock,...

Ben Lobato, co-showrunner of Alice Braga-starrer “Queen of the South,” a top-three Nielsen ratings performer for USA Network, has boarded “Hot Sur,” a fast-moving thriller set up at Pablo and Juan de Dios Larraín’s Fabula and at Fremantle Mexico, the burgeoning Mexican production hub of the global production-distribution giant.

Lobato will showrun the TV series, which will be helmed by Gabriel Ripstein, writer-director of acclaimed Mexican Amazon Original “An Unknown Enemy.”

Shaping up as one of the biggest new projects being brought on the market at Content Americas, “Hot Sur” will be presented at Content Americas Copro Pitch on Tuesday, one of the TV market and forum’s industry centerpieces.

In it, Maria Paz, an undocumented Mexican immigrant looking after her bipolar sister, becomes a fugitive after being falsely accused of murder. Hunted by a determined U.S. Marshal – also Latinx – and María Paz’s vengeful former lover,...

Memory, the latest film by Mexican writer/director Michel Franco, is a performance- and character-driven relationship drama that also doubles as a family drama, with hints of the melodrama and thriller genres. Sylvia (Academy Award winner Jessica Chastain), a 40-something care worker and recovering substance abuser, and Saul, a middle-aged man suffering from early onset dementia, meet under the most inauspicious and inappropriate of circumstances: He follows her home after making eye contact with her at a school reunion. She, in turn, rejects his advances and leaves the unwanted visitor outside her door to fend for himself. He doesn’t. She finds him the next morning outside her doorstep, still waiting...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Last month, Kevin Smith revealed that he “lost a bet” to his frequent collaborator Jason Mewes and as a result had started writing the script for a third Jay and Silent Bob movie (following Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and Jay and Silent Bob Reboot) – but while Reboot was very similar to Strike Back, this time he’s working to keep the sequel unpredictable. So we won’t be seeing Jay and Silent Bob hitting the road to stop the production of a Bluntman and Chronic movie again. This one will have a different set-up – and Smith has given an idea of what the plot will be in a new social media post! He also promised that, unlike Clerks III, this movie won’t be killing off any beloved characters.

Smith wrote, “2024 marks the 30th anniversary of my first film Clerks – which means that it’s also the 30th...

The independent drama Memory – starring Jessica Chastain and Peter Saarsgard – has been making waves on the festival circuit. Catch your first look here.

Memory, Jessica Chastain’s new drama, sees her play a social worker living a simple life. That is until she’s followed home from a high school reunion by an old classmate.

The movie received an interim agreement from SAG-AFTRA so that its stars could promote it at Toronto International Film Festival where the film picked up something of a buzz. Also, Chastain and director Michel Franco have apparently worked together again on Dreams – the filming on which is reportedly already complete.

Just to be clear, this isn’t the film called Memory where Liam Neeson hits people and breaks a toilet. (We don’t want you to be disappointed.) You can find that trailer here. Memory will be Franco’s second English language film after 2015’s Chronic,...

Following acclaimed dramas like “New Order,” “Chronic” and “Sundown,” Mexican filmmaker Michel Franco has been gaining more and more international praise. While he’s worked with globally recognized names like Tim Roth, Hollywood has finally come knocking in a big way with his latest film, “Memory” which stars Academy Award winner Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard, who won the Best Actor Volpi Cup at the 2023 Venice Film Festival.

Continue reading ‘Memory’ Trailer: Jessica Chastain & Peter Sarsgaard Star In Michel Franco’s Acclaimed Drama Due Dec 22 at The Playlist.

Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard excel in Michel Franco’s absorbing story about the unnerving reunion of a care worker and a friend from her past

Mexican film-maker Michel Franco, famed for his icily contrived, pitilessly controlled dramas, often shown in static tableau scenes, has made another of his complex, painful and densely achieved movies; at Venice it won its leading man, Peter Sarsgaard, the Volpi cup for best actor. It is about abuse, violence, recovery and the redemptive power of sexual intimacy, but also about just what its title proclaims: memory, and how this accumulates over a lifetime to form an identity. Yet memory is unreliable building material; memory is the uncertain support underneath us, but solid as a crushing burden above us, a destructive gravitational force that could annihilate us entirely. And apart from anything else, memory is not necessarily the truth, so attempts to deny it are not necessarily dishonest or delusional.

In her latest film “Memory,” Jessica Chastain is out of the prosthetics and wigs and off the awards circuit (for now) required by playing two Tammys — Wynette and Faye Bakker — for Showtime’s “George & Tammy” and her Oscar-winning “Eyes of Tammy Faye.”

To play Sylvia, a recovering alcoholic grappling with childhood trauma for Michel Franco’s devastating Venice and Toronto premiere “Memory,” the Oscar winner and Emmy nominee wears no makeup, had no trailer, and bought her own costumes for the indie’s New York shoot.

“Because I have been doing bigger things sometimes and have gotten a lot of attention as of late, [there’s been the idea] that I would not be interested in being on a set without a trailer,” Chastain said in an interview out of Toronto. “We had the Oscars, and I won for ‘Tammy Faye,’ and then right after that, I showed up on set to do ‘Memory.

Michel Franco believes Jessica Chastain is the "best actress in the world".The 'Mexican' filmmaker insisted it was a "no-brainer" to cast the 'Eyes of Tammy Faye' star in the lead role of social worker Sylvia in his latest movie 'Memory' because she is so talented.He gushed to Variety: “Jessica is possibly the best actress in the states right now, it’s not an exaggeration to say she’s the best actress in the world."Jessica stars in the film opposite Peter Sarsgaard, and the director revealed the suggestion to cast the actor as Saul came from the Oscar-winning beauty herself.Michel said: “I wanted to make that decision with Jessica, because, it’s so important, the chemistry and the whole film relies on the tension of those characters."The director previously shot 'Chronic' in Los Angeles and made 'Memory' in New York,...

Masters of the Universe: Revolution has recast the heroine Teela with the star of The CW's Supergirl. The upcoming Netflix animated series is being billed as a continuation of Kevin Smith's Masters of the Universe: Revelation. That series, which premiered in 2021, provided a new sequel timeline to the iconic 1980s series He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, bringing back many fan favorite characters. This includes the strapping He-Man (Chris Wood), the insidious Skeletor (Mark Hamill), and He-Man's daring protector Teela (Sarah Michelle Gellar).

Now, Mattel announces that a new actor will be stepping into the role of Teela in Masters of the Universe: Revolution. The role will be taken over by Melissa Benoist, who is best known for playing the titular Kryptonian heroine in the Arrowverse series Supergirl. Benoist is the latest actor to join the series after the legendary William Shatner, who is playing a currently undisclosed role.

Dr Dre is marking the 30th anniversary of his best-selling album, The Chronic, with a re-release to streaming platforms.

The seven-time Grammy winner’s debut record – released on 15 December 1992 – was previously unavailable on streaming platforms.

Dre – real name Andre Romelle Young – recently re-partnered with Interscope Records to finally bring fans his iconic debut 16-track studio record.

Listeners can now listen to The Chronic on all major DSPs, including Apple Music and Spotify.

“I am thrilled to bring the Chronic home to its original distribution partner, Interscope Records,” Dr Dre said in a statement.

“Working alongside my long-time colleagues, Steve Berman and John Janick, to re-release the album and make it available to fans all over the world is a full circle moment for me.”

Interscope Geffen A&m’s Vice Chairman Steve Berman said: “To have this album at Interscope once again is incredibly gratifying for me personally and all of us at Interscope.

“Workforce,” Mexican writer-director David Zonana’s first feature, world premiered at Toronto in its Platform section, played main competition at San Sebastian and is now hailed as the most prized Mexican film of 2019, nailing Mexico’s moral deficiencies.

Bowing in World Dramatic Competition Jan. 20 at 2023’s Sundance, Zonana’s follow-up, “Heroic,” is produced by Michel Franco and sold by Wild Bunch Intl. (international) and CAA (U.S.). It’s another trenchant, withering take on modern-day Mexico.

The film’s producers and Wild Bunch Intl. and CAA shared an exclusive first look at the poster of “Heroic”with Variety.

“Heroic” poster

Countries are defined by their institutions, Machiavelli argued. If so,”Heroic,” set at the Mexican army’s Heroic Military Academy, the country’s West Point or Sandhurst, underscores that Mexico is in bad shape. Contained in length – a nifty 88 minutes – though large on ideas, it turns on Luis, a Nahuatl,...

Snoochie boochies you *expletives deleted.* 28 years ago, Kevin Smith broke out as one of comedy’s most unique yet hilarious auteurs with a black and white picture titled Clerks. Over the next seven years, Smith created a cinematic universe, the View Askewniverse, populated by raunchy, ridiculous, pop-culture-obsessed characters, caricatures, angels, demons, and God herself. After a five-year hiatus, Smith returned to the Askewniverse with Clerks II—his final foray into those characters for 13 years. In 2019, Smith released a sequel to his stoner comedy classic, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, titled Jay and Silent Bob Reboot. Fans got to follow the original Bluntman and Chronic on a quest to reclaim their names–neech. While the reboot was met with middling praise, it reintroduced viewers to a meta, angsty, older cast of beloved characters.After nearly a decade of teasing, a cancelation, and a revival, it’s been a long road...

Exclusive: Marking her first feature since she won a Best Actress Oscar for The Eyes Of Tammy Faye, Jessica Chastain and Dopesick and The Batman star Peter Sarsgaard have just wrapped on Michel Franco’s (New Order) new film, which we can reveal is called Memory.

Plot details are being kept under lock and key but the English-language project is rumoured to revolve around a New York City staycation. Also starring are Merritt Wever (Birdman), Josh Charles (Dead Poets Society), Elsie Fisher (Eighth Grade), and Jessica Harper (Suspiria).

The project marks Franco’s second American-set film after 2015’s Chronic, and marks the fifth collaboration between the filmmaker and cinematographer Yves Cape. Pic wrapped shooting in New York last Friday.

Franco, a festival-favourite, won the Venice Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize for recent feature New Order. Four of his films have played at Cannes, three winning prizes.

The film is produced...

Good Sam Good Sam Chronic Insult Trailer — CBS‘ Good Sam: Season 1, Episode 7: Chronic Insult TV show trailer has been released. Cast and crew Good Sam stars Sophia Bush, Jason Isaacs, Skye P. Marshall, Michael Stahl-David, Omar Maskati, Davi Santos, Wendy Crewson, and Edwin Hodge. CBS TV Series Group Series Plot Synopsis Good Sam‘s [...]

Continue reading: Good Sam: Season 1, Episode 7: Chronic Insult TV Show Trailer [CBS]...

Michel Franco’s “New Order” went off like a bomb at the Venice Film Festival in the summer of 2020. This dystopian social-uprising thriller that erupts with almost Hieronymus Boschian levels of chaos pits the lower Mexican class against the super One Percent as the under-served and under-represented begin picking off the wealthy. And it all unfolds in explicitly violent, free-for-all fashion from the Mexican director of films like sibling incest drama “Daniel and Ana,” bullying nightmare “After Lucia,” and the end-of-life caregiver drama “Chronic,” starring Tim Roth.

But the chances of “New Order” getting a wide release quickly sank when backlash began to emerge in Mexico in response to the trailer. Critics were quick to point out perceived racial stereotypes in the film, including that the uprisers were more dark-skinned than the lighter-skinned One Percent, and that the Black Lives Matter-inspired protesters in the film were glibly portrayed as one-note,...

The director of after-school special turned social horror movie “After Lucia” and harrowing class-uprising thriller “New Order” takes on a more relaxed vibe for his latest film, “Sundown.” That doesn’t make the new film from Mexican filmmaker Michael Franco any less bewildering in its story of a man who abandons his life to live beachside in Acapulco. If anything, “Sundown” is even more opaque than the director’s recent efforts. Watch the first trailer for the film below.

The film also stars a potent Charlotte Gainsbourg, Iazua Larios, Henry Goodman, Albertine Kotting McMillan, and Samuel Bottomley.

Here’s the official synopsis: “Neil and Alice Bennett are the core of a wealthy family on vacation in Mexico with younger members Colin and Alexa until a distant emergency cuts their trip short. When one relative disrupts the family’s tight-knit order, simmering tensions rise to the fore in this suspenseful jolt from writer/director Michel Franco.

Violence in Mexico was one of the dominant themes of the press conference for Michel Franco’s Venice competition title “Sundown” on Sunday, with the director and stars Tim Roth, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Iazua Larios in attendance.

Set in the seemingly tranquil Mexican resort city Acapulco, Roth and Gainsbourg play members of a wealthy British family whose vacation there is cut short by a distant death and an existential crisis comes to the fore. Larios plays an Acapulco native who is key to the narrative.

“We have a huge problem in Mexico with violence every day,” said Larios.

Franco is not shy of depicting violence in his films, including in his previous film “New Order,” which won the Silver Lion and the Leoncino d’Oro Agiscuola Award at the 2020 Venice Film Festival. The violence in “Sundown” is comparatively muted and is restricted to short, sharp shocks.

“I do think Mexicans,...

Mexico’s Michel Franco is back in Venice after his triumphant Silver Lion win last year for his dystopian thriller “New Order.” His new film “Sundown” is in competition at the Lido where it world premieres on Sunday. Variety spoke to the director and the film’s star Tim Roth.

While “New Order” used thousands of extras and was shot on a larger, more ambitious scale than any of Franco’s previous films, “Sundown” is a return to a more intimate, personal drama with Franco’s long-time collaborator and friend Roth leading the cast.

In it, Roth plays a wealthy man going through an existential crisis while vacationing in Acapulco with his family. Not much more can be said of the plot without revealing its twists.

This is the second time Roth stars in a Franco-directed film. Their relationship sparked nearly 10 years ago when Roth, as Cannes’ 2012 Un Certain Regard jury president,...

The winner will be announced at a virtual awards ceremony on October 17.

The 65th BFI London Film Festival has revealed the eight films selected for its 2021 official competition.

Among the titles selected are Mamoru Hosoda’s Japanese animation Belle, Justin Kurzel’s Nitram, Iranian filmmaker Panah Panahi’s Hit The Road and Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s Lingui, The Sacred Bonds. All four films premiered at Cannes Film Festival in July.

UK writer/director Harry Wootliff also returns to the festival following her Lff debut in 2018 with Only You. Wootliff is in Lff competition with her second feature True Things, a psychological...

Jay and Silent Bob struck back 20 years ago when Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back first premiered on the big screen. Written and directed by Kevin Smith, it was the fifth movie to feature Smith and Jason Mewes as the titular stoners after they were first introduced in Clerks in 1994. The feature was released in theaters on Aug. 24, 2001, making the movie officially 20 years old.

Typically, Jay and Silent Bob were presented as supporting characters in their previous movies, but Jay and Silent Bob Strike Backfinally puts them in the lead roles. It picks up with the duo learning of a movie getting made based on Bluntman and Chronic, a fictional comic book featuring their likenesses. Hoping to score big checks by demanding royalties for the movie, Jay and Silent Bob set out for Hollywood on their biggest adventure yet.

Along the way, the stoners meet an animal liberation group called...

This excerpt is from The Faber Book of Mexican Cinema (2021), by Jason Wood. It was conducted before the premiere of Franco's latest film, New Order (2020).As a director, screenwriter and producer, Michel Franco is a prolific figure in Mexican cinema. Daniel & Ana (2009), Franco’s debut feature as director, premiered at Cannes and established him as a film-maker with a forensic eye for detail and character. Franco is also incredibly attuned to contemporary issues in Mexican society, in this instance the rise of underground pornography. The winner of the Un Certain Regard award at Cannes, After Lucia (2012) continues the director’s interest in fractured family lives and how technology can act as a powerful and poisonous tool. A los ojos (2014), a collaboration with Franco’s sister Victoria, adopts a documentary aesthetic to explore the ends to which a parent will go to protect their child, whilst also examining how little...

Royals

“The Wedding of the Century,” a documentary about the wedding of Lady Diana Spencer and Prince Charles, will bow on BBC and ITV’s streamer BritBox in July in time for the event’s 40th anniversary.

On July 29, 1981, a record 750 million people in 74 countries tuned in to see the couple exchange vows at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. Video technology then couldn’t quite capture the details in all their glory, and all except for one media outlet captured the event on poor quality standard definition video tape.

British Movietone shot the ceremony on 35mm film, which has now been upgraded to 4K resolution. The restored footage is the centerpiece of the documentary from Touchdown Films, which also includes unheard anecdotes from the day and interviews with key insiders involved in planning the event.

Appointments

BBC Studios – Americas has promoted Chris Cole to executive VP, strategic partnerships, and...

If you’ve found yourself having just too good a time lately and need that to come to an end, hotfoot it to New Order, the new ordeal from Mexican director Michel Franco. In just 86 brisk, effectively brutalizing minutes, any tentative optimism you might have been feeling — say, due to a jaunty walk to a newly-reopened movie theater in sunny weather — will completely dissipate into a far more familiar downer fug. Not to suggest it’s all doom and depression! The film also makes you feel unpleasantly dirty.

Franco is...

As Deadline continues to expand its footprint internationally, we launch International Critics Line as a way to incorporate regular reviews of the fine local-language films being made outside of America. These films always have served as a seed bed to break new directors and stars in Hollywood, and we intend to spend more time with them. Major awards-season and festival-launch films now will have a dedicated landing place on Deadline, along with some unsung gems that deserve a close look by our readers and films that have achieved outsized success on their home turf. We will catch up to some films that played the festivals — such as they were — in the pandemic, as we draw even with new releases. We start with Michel Franco’s Nuevo Orden.

Nuevo Orden (New Order)

Parasite seems like a mere hors d’oeuvre compared with the main course of societal upheaval served up by...

Michel Franco’s Venice winner “New Order” (“Nueva Orden”) has scored over 330,000 admissions and $950,000 in Mexico off an Oct. 22 bow, according to Comscore.

Released by Televisa’s Videocine distrib label, that box office would be notable in any normal circumstance, given that “New Order,” an often shocking dystopian thriller, is by no stretch of the imagination a comedy nor entertainment for all the family, Mexico’s box office staples.

It’s all the more an extraordinary feat for a Mexican movie during Covid-19 when box office is tracking at some 15%-20% of its full-on power before pandemia.

“It is satisfying to see brave releases that are helping the market and attracting audiences to cinemas,” said Comscore’s Luis Vargas.

Topping Mexico’s box office on release, “New Order’s” domestic box office run is also a good way of showing the distributors who have bought the film for release in...

Move over, Bluntman & Chronic, there are about to be even more superheroes on the scene who are high as a kite. New Line Cinema has won the rights to a new superhero comedy pitch called Super High, which will focus on people who get superpowers after smoking a special strain of marijuana. If that’s […]

The post ‘Super High’ with Andy Samberg, Craig Robinson and Common Will Turn Potheads into Superheroes appeared first on /Film.

Michel Franco has made a name for himself over the years with Daniel and Ana, After Lucia, Chronic, and April’s Daughter, all of which can be described as miserablist torture tests for audiences. Taking a page from Michael Haneke but only possessing a fraction of the depth, Franco has somehow tormented his way upward in the festival circuit, earning accolades and awards (including a Best Screenplay win at Cannes). Now he returns with New Order, by far his most ambitious and political effort, and it comes as no surprise that a director who peddles in extremes provides both his best and worst work to date.

The film opens at a wedding for a wealthy family, taking place at a house that coincidentally shares some resemblance to the mansion in Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite. A quick series of exchanges show the bride Marianne (Naian Gonzalez Norvind), her well-connected father, greedy mother,...

Mexican director Michel Franco’s latest, dystopian shock drama “New Order,” proves to be the most punishing entry in a difficult oeuvre, which may sound harsh but isn’t meant as an insult.

A cold and sometimes overly intellectual filmmaker, Franco knows how to make an audience squirm. That’s part of the bargain when we buy a ticket to one of his movies. In “After Lucia,” he asked viewers — trapped in their seats, helpless to intervene — to observe a vulnerable teen’s life go off the rails after a video of her having drunken sex went viral. In “Chronic,” he spotlighted the emotional burden society heaps upon hospice nurses, with tragic results.

But how many people actually saw these films? Now, in Franco’s sixth feature, the director demands the public’s attention, launching a full-on assault on our collective comfort zone while doubling down on the very thing...

“New Order,” Mexican Michel Franco’s near-future dystopia thriller that world premieres at the Venice Film Festival Thursday, begins with protestors, daubed in green paint, bursting into a swanky wedding peopled by Mexico’s indecently rich. They rob the guests, then shoot them dead. Franco’s heart however is obviously on the side of the protestors.

“A Mexican disaster movie,” as Franco calls it, “New Order,” the only Latin American movie in Venice main competition, is Franco’s first direct social verdict on his homeland. “Mexico’s upper class are asking for trouble: They’re building up to a situation that will finally explode,” Franco told Variety in the run-up to Venice.

“The protesters have been saying for decades, hundreds of years: ‘Here we are. We need to heard.’” But nobody has really listened. “That’s why they explode,” Franco adds.

Breaking out when he won the biggest prize at...

The German sales company unveils exclusive teasers for ‘New Order’, ‘Never Gonna Snow Again’ and ‘Assandira’.

Michael Weber’s The Match Factory is preparing for a very busy Venice Film Festival when it kicks off next week, with four features in official selection.

Michel Franco’s New Order, Malgorzata Szumowska’s Never Gonna Snow Again (co-directed with her regular cinematographer Michal Englert) and Gianfranco Rosi’s Notturno are all screening in Competition, while Salvatore Mereu’s Assandira will play out of Competition.

Screen can reveal the exclusive first teasers here for New Order, Never Gonna Snow Again and Assandira. The...

Visar Morina’s “Exile,” a tense psychodrama about a Kosovan pharmacologist in Germany who becomes increasingly paranoid over a series of menacing events, won the top prize at the Sarajevo Film Festival, earning the Kosovo-born German director the Heart of Sarajevo.

The award ceremony took place online Thursday night, with Morina winning top honors from a jury led by Academy Award-winning director Michel Hazanavicius (“The Artist”) and comprised of Carlo Chatrian, artistic director of the Berlin Intl. Film Festival; Croatian actress Jadranka Đokić; Serbian director Srdan Golubović; and Andrea Stavenhagen, head of industry and training projects at the Morelia Film Festival.

Director Michel Franco and actor Mads Mikkelsen were given honorary Heart of Sarajevo awards.

The timely drama from Morina, who was named one of Variety‘s 10 Europeans to Watch earlier this year, is a poignant study of identity and belonging at a time of ongoing uncertainty in Europe over...

Michel Franco’s “New Order,” a Venice Festival main competition premiere, looks set to mark a huge step-up in scale for Franco and indeed most Latin American movies at large.

It couldn’t be otherwise, Mexican writer-director-producer Franco said at a Sarajevo Film Festival masterclass, hosted Wednesday in the Variety Streaming Room.

Teasing through-lines in a career that has made him one of the most laureled of Latin American directors, Franco also used the masterclass to talk, often with refreshing candor, about the game-changing impact of Tim Roth on his career, directors’ necessity for reassurance, and his need to produce his own movies.

A recipient of a Heart of Sarajevo Award at this year festival, Franco has risen rapidly to prominence after releasing debut feature “Daniel & Ana” in 2009, making intimate and intense movies turning on the victims of trauma – high-school bullying in 2012’s “After Lucia,” the death of an...

For many of the visitors who descended on the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year, packing their day planners with meetings at the Gropius Bau and red-carpet premieres at the Berlinale Palast, there was a surreal sense of business as usual. But with coronavirus already ravaging Italy—and soon to be sweeping across the rest of Europe—Sarajevo Film Festival director Mirsad Purivatra knew that he and his team had little time to spare.

“We started immediately to think what to do with our festival,” Purivatra told Variety on the eve of Sarajevo’s 26th edition, which runs Aug. 14-21. Even though the festival’s opening night was still months away, “we had [in mind] the worst-case scenario that it could be a bad situation with the numbers of Covid-19” cases in Bosnia.

As spring turned to summer, Purivatra and his colleagues were confident that a scaled-down version of the physical festival...

The Variety Steaming Room will present the 2020 Sarajevo Film Festival’s Masterclass Aug. 17-21. The series features intimate hour-long conversations with award-winning international filmmakers and actors.

Featured speakers include Michel Hazanavicius, Director & Sff 2020 jury president; Bérénice Bejo, Actor,; Michel Franco, writer, director and producer; Rithy Panh, filmmaker, writer and producer; and Mads Mikkelsen, actor.

The Masterclass series, moderated by Variety journalists, will focus on the entire breadth of the creative talents’ career achievements. The conversations are at 17:30 p.m. Cet / 8:30 a.m. Pt daily.

The 26th annual Sff, running Aug. 14-21, is a leading festival focusing on Southeast Europe filmmaking.

The Variety Streaming Room is dedicated to presenting virtual conversations that span private screenings of upcoming projects in film and TV, exclusive Q&As with creators and talent and relevant B2B discussions with industry thought leaders.

Register for the free series at: variety.com/sarajevofilmfestival...

Director Michel Hazanavicius and actress Bérénice Bejo, Oscar winner and Oscar nominee respectively for “The Artist,” will present individual Masterclasses at the 26th Sarajevo Film Festival this year. Also delivering Masterclasses are directors Michel Franco and Rithy Panh.

The Masterclasses, which like the rest of the festival are running online via ondemand.sff.ban, are organized in cooperation with Variety, and will be available worldwide via the Variety Streaming Room.

Hazanavicius shot his first feature-length film, “Mes Amis,” in 1999. In 2006, he directed his second feature, “Oss 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies,” and then, three years later, “Oss 17: Lost in Rio.”

In 2011, he made “The Artist,” the silent, black-and-white film starring Bejo and Jean Dujardin, which won five Academy Awards in 2012, including best film, director and actor for Dujardin, while Bejo was an Oscar nominee for supporting actress.

The film premiered at Cannes, as did Hazanavicius’ “The Players” and “Redoubtable.

Dystopian drama has been selected for Toronto and will debut at Venice in competition.

Leading German sales company The Match Factory has acquired international sales rights to Michel Franco’s New Order, which was today selected to screen at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).

The film, which will receive its world premiere in competition at Venice ahead of TIFF, marks the first collaboration between The Match Factory and Franco’s Mexican production company Teorema.

The dystopian drama explores Mexico’s economic and social inequalities through a high-society wedding, which is crashed by a group of impoverished people. The cast...

Mexican filmmaker to be awarded Honorary Heart of Sarajevo.

Mexican filmmaker Michel Franco is to receive the honorary Heart of Sarajevo award at the upcoming Sarajevo Film Festival (Sff), which is set to go ahead as a mix of physical and online events.

The Cannes award-winner is expected to attend the 26th edition of the festival, which will take place from August 14-21, as Covid-19 lockdown measures continue to be eased around the world.

The festival will also programme a retrospective of Franco’s films in its Tribute strand.

The Mexican director, writer and producer is best known for features including After Lucia,...

Sky Cinema has a big box of cinematic treats for you in June, with something for pretty much everyone on the agenda – horror fans, monocle-poppers and kids alike will find gems waiting for them in the month ahead. As usual, we’ve got a comprehensive list of everything you can expect to hit the service as summer rolls around in earnest, so close the curtains, get the fan on, shove a big bag of popcorn in the microwave, and get ready to clap your eyes on a movie or two.

Premieres

Daniel Isn’t Real – June 1st

The next generation of horror truly arrives with this surprisingly entertaining entry into the ‘imaginary friend’ genre, as Miles Robbins – son of Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins – and Patrick Schwarzenegger (you can probably guess who his dad is) battle it out to be the owner of a very real human body. Daniel isn’t...

Jay and Silent Bob Reboot will be released on Blu-ray and DVD in January 2020. Kevin Smith released the movie to select theaters in October for a limited engagement. Smith and Jason Mewes are currently on tour, bringing the long-awaited sequel to theaters and doing exclusive Q&a events, which finishes up in February of next year. For Smith fans that have not been able to make it to these events, it's nice to know that the movie will be available to watch at home really soon.

Jay & Silent Bob Reboot will be available to purchase on DVD and Blu-ray starting January 21st, 2020. Though not announced, it is believed that the movie will also be available digitally on that date too. As for hitting a streaming service, that information is not clear at the moment, but one can imagine it will be somewhere for streaming in the near future. Kevin Smith...

Exclusive: Dane Dehaan (Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets) is set as a lead opposite Julianne Moore and Clive Owen in Lisey’s Story, Apple’s eight-hour limited series written and executive produced by Stephen King, from J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot Productions and Warner Bros. Television.

Lisey’s Story is a deeply personal thriller that follows Lisey (Moore) two years after the death of her husband (Owen). A series of events causes Lisey to begin facing certain realities about her husband that she had repressed and forgotten.

Dehaan will play Jim Dooley, a huge fan of Scott’s (Owen) books who feels strongly about his unpublished work being released to the world.

Joan Allen also stars.

King wrote every episode of the series, which is based on his bestselling 2006 novel. King and Moore executive produce alongside Bad Robot’s Abrams’ and Ben Stephenson. Pablo Larraín will direct the series.

The CW’s DC universe is eying another major expansion with Superman & Lois, a present-day drama based on the DC characters, starring Supergirl‘s Tyler Hoechlin and Elizabeth Tulloch as the iconic couple. The hourlong project, now in development, hails from The Flash executive producer Todd Helbing, DC Universe architect Greg Berlanti and Warner Bros. TV, where Helbing and Berlanti are under deals.

Written by Helbing, based on the DC characters created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Superman & Lois revolves around the world’s most famous Super Hero and comic books’ most famous journalist as they deal with all the stress, pressures and complexities that come with being working parents in today’s society.

Former Flash showrunner Helbing executive produces with Berlanti, Sarah Schechter and Geoff Johns via Berlanti Productions.

With several DC series reaching maturity and the show that launched the CW universe, Arrow, in its final season,...

Ben Affleck steals the show in Jay and Silent Bob Reboot, going back to his true Hollywood roots to provide Kevin Smith with a short but sweet cameo. The moment comes late in the third half of this quasi-sequel to Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, and it's a shame that this trio fell off for the last thirteen years. If this short stretch of a reunion is any indication, Ben Affleck and Kevin Smith could create some more cinematic magic in the future if they are willing to do so.

The rest of Jay and Silent Bob Reboot is perfectly 'okay'. It's breezy, fun and often very funny. Spackled onto the preexisting blueprint for Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, it hits all the notes in tune. But there is a very heavy, been there seen that vibe swirling around the entire endeavor that weighs on the 95 minute runtime.

You already know if you want to see a movie called “Jay and Silent Bob Reboot,” but in the unlikely event that anyone out there is still on the fence about buying a ticket for this Charlie Kaufman-esque belly flop back into the depths of the View Askewniverse, it might help to know that Kevin Smith’s latest bit of self-mythologizing starts with a proud nod to “Clerks II.”

The scene begins with the feds surrounding a New Jersey chicken shack called “Cock Smokers,” and ends with Jay (Jason Mewes’ perma-stoned alter-ego) rehashing an old bit that involves him tucking his penis between his legs in tribute to the serial killer from “The Silence of the Lambs.” Yes, “Goodbye Horses” plays on the soundtrack. It’s a callback to a sight gag from a sequel that was already dependent on viewers’ familiarity with a different movie the first time around,...

American Pie stars Jason Biggs and Shannon Elizabeth have reunited 20 years later, and the two both seem open to seeing a reboot of the franchise. In the original installment of the popular movie series, Biggs and Elizabeth had a very memorable scene wherein the former blew his chances for a sexual encounter with the latter.

Two decades later, Jason Biggs and Shannon Elizabeth are both appearing in Kevin Smith's new comedy Jay and Silent Bob Reboot, and Biggs and Elizabeth caught back up on the red carpet at the Tcl Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles for a screening of the movie. Speaking about a possible new movie, Biggs had this say about the idea.

"I am always down. You will never hear from me any reluctance, but I haven't heard anything for a little while. It is the most fun I have ever had working on anything. I love that cast,...