’20 Days in Mariupol’ Director Was Initially Worried the Grotesque Injustice He Captured in Ukraine Would Scare Away Audiences

On July 25, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. held a town hall on Fox News with Sean Hannity. If it seems odd that a Democratic candidate for president was speaking to the Trump-invested Fox News audience, it was. Hannity asked Kennedy, “You’re talking to the American people tonight. Why should they vote for you?”

A new government list has outlined the key risks facing the UK, including a potential future pandemic and disruptions to global energy supplies.

Red Rooms won a leading three awards including Best Feature at the 27th annual Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal, with the thriller Femme taking Best Director for Sam H. Freeman & Ng Choon Ping and Outstanding Performance for Nathan Stewart-Jarrett. See the full list of winners below.

K.J. Yossman Gene Fallaize, the director of Kevin Spacey’s most recent film, has said he stands by his decision to cast the actor while he was awaiting trial for sexual assault. Spacey was cleared on all counts on Thursday following a four-week trial in London’s Southwark Crown Court.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Beta Film has sold more than 100 hours of drama series to PBS Distribution-backed Walter Presents for the U.S., and Channel 4-backed Walter Presents for the U.K. Five seasons of Italy’s gritty crime series “Rocco Schiavone” as well as Canadian mystery dramas “The Wall – The Chateau Murder” and “The Wall – The Orchard” will be available in both territories.

Blizzard Entertainment is raising funds with the help of Mila Kunis to support those in Ukraine through a new pack of companion pets for World of Warcraft. Sunny the golden retriever and Flurky the murloc are the new pets, and are yellow and blue to reflect the colours of the flag of Ukraine.

As brutal war rages on in Ukraine, a hidden threat that will haunt its people for decades lurks beneath their feet.

Addie Morfoot Contributor A documentary about women who accused Louis C.K. of sexual harassment and the consequences those accusations had on their careers is one of 22 documentaries from 12 countries heading to the 2023 Toronto Intl. Film Festival.

Supermarkets have more than doubled their profit margins on fuel since the start of the war in Ukraine, according to new analysis. The RAC has found that Asda, Tesco, Morrisons, and Sainsbury’s were making an average of around 4.7p per litre on fuel sales when the Russian invasion began in February 2022.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Recently restored versions of William Friedkin’s “The Exorcist,” Terrence Malick’s “Days of Heaven” and Francis Ford Coppola’s “One From the Heart” feature in the Venice Classics section of the 80th Venice Film Festival. The lineup of recently restored films in Venice Classics, which is curated by the festival’s artistic director Alberto Barbera in collaboration with Federico Gironi, was unveiled on Friday. “The Exorcist” is screened, 50 years after it was produced by Warner Bros., alongside Disney’s “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm,” starring Shirley Temple and directed by “the prolific and sometimes brilliant” Allan Dwan, to mark the Hollywood studios’ 100th anniversaries.

Brent Lang Executive Editor Joshua Zeman’s latest feature documentary “Checkpoint Zoo,” an inspiring story that unfolds in a war-torn part of the world, has wrapped principal photography. The film tells the story of the daring rescue of over 5,000 animals that were trapped in a wildlife park behind enemy lines during the early days of the Russian-Ukrainian War.  “Checkpoint Zoo” was produced by Zeman and Zach Mortensen for Ghost Robot, with Ian Davies and Torquil Jones for Noah Media Group, which is also financing the project.  UTA Independent Film Group has signed on to lead worldwide sales of the picture. In the early days of the war, a beloved animal refuge known as Feldman Ecopark, located in Ukraine’s second largest city, was in a precarious position. On one side of the park was the invading Russian army; on the other sat the Ukrainian front line. With thousands of animals trapped with little food and water, a group of men and women risked their lives to bring them to safety.

Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov has sustained shrapnel injuries while fighting in the Zaporizhzhia region in southeastern Ukraine.

Christopher Vourlias “Stay Online,” a Ukraine war drama from director Yeva Strelnikova which uses the innovative Screenlife format, has dropped a trailer ahead of its world premiere July 22 at Montreal’s Fantasia Film Festival. Variety has been given exclusive access (see below). Set after the Russian invasion of Ukraine last February, the film begins when a young woman (Liza Zaitseva) volunteering in Kyiv is given one of the thousands of laptops donated by ordinary Ukrainians to support the war effort. She’s asked to install a sensitive military application and deliver the laptop to her brother serving on the frontline. But the woman receives a mysterious video call from a young boy searching for his father, the laptop’s previous owner, who went missing during the Russian army’s brutal massacre of innocent civilians in Bucha. Reluctantly, she agrees to help find his missing parents — a decision that will ultimately force her to risk the lives of her own loved ones.

The BBC’s Russia editor has been able to live and work in Moscow and report on events since the invasion of Ukraine.

The Chernobyl disaster is regarded as the world's worst-ever civil nuclear incident.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin has seen his State TV channel experience a humiliating primetime hack, in which millions of his people were warned “the hour of reckoning has come.” 

Peta Murgatroyd and Maksim Chmerkovskiy are best known as professional dancers on ABC's hit reality competition,  their love story began on a different stage entirely — Broadway. The couple began as close friends over a decade ago while performing together in New York, and they remained friends for years before things turned romantic while behind the scenes at Chmerkovskiy and Murgatroyd's romance quickly became a fan favorite on the ballroom floor and off. They performed together for over five years at  andlaunched a touring production of their own in 2018 while remaining key figures of the community. ET takes a look at their love story below. Before their time together on Murgatroyd and Chmerkovskiy both worked as dancers on the Broadway production a live dance show inspired by a performance at Elton John's 50th birthday party.Chmerkovskiy, originally from Ukraine, had already been in the U.S.

Over one thousand Ukrainian refugees who have been living on a ship in Edinburgh have finally been rehomed. MS Victoria has been docked in Leith Harbour for a year to accommodate the Ukrainians who fled their home country after it was invaded by Russia.

Stephen Rodrick Some things are best in small doses. Cheesecake and Ketamine come to mind. The more-is-not-necessarily-better conundrum confronts the creators of “Scream of My Blood: A Gogol Bordello Story,” a Vice News documentary about the punk folk band Gogol Bordello and Eugene Hütz, the band’s charismatic lead singer. Hütz also doubles as a Ukrainian activist/raconteur/resident deep thinker. He can be a lot. Audiences’ appreciation of the doc will depend on their patience with Hütz, a man whose intentions are good even if his volume is always set to 11.  Directors Nate Pommer and Eric Weinrib have the difficult task of trying to explain a 24-year-old cult band in 99 minutes. It is very much an immigrant story. There’s an early shot of Hütz swaggering onstage with the band — a mélange of violinists, drummers and guitarists — and baptizing the audience with his beer.

Nick Holdsworth Eugene Hütz, founder and frontman with U.S. gypsy punk band Gogol Bordello, would likely to have ended up a painter wearing “dirty pants and long hair” had his parents not left the Soviet Union when he was 16. “I would probably have become a painter, as there was more of a path paved in that in my family,” he says. “I was drawing most of my childhood and my uncle – Mikhail Mykolayev – is a pretty well-known painter who still lives in Kyiv.” Fresh from playing a brief, impromptu solo guitar gig at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, following the international premiere of a new documentary about the band, “Scream of My Blood: A Gogol Bordello Story,” Hütz fits the bill, although his khaki cargo pants are not paint spattered.