A24 To Produce & Distribute Eggers Brothers’ Directorial Debut ‘The Front Room’ Starring Brandy Norwood, Kathryn Hunter And Andrew Burnap

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent The European Film Academy will honor Palestinian auteur Elia Suleiman with its European Achievement in World Cinema Award. The Paris-based Suleiman, whose most recent work “It Must Be Heaven” premiered in 2019 at Cannes, is the first Palestinian director to win this prestigious prize. Suleiman will be an honorary guest at the 35th European Film Awards ceremony to be held on Dec. 10 in Reykjavik. Born in Nazareth, Suleiman started his career in New York where in the early 1990s he shot two short films, “Introduction to the End of an Argument” and “Homage by Assassination” which won several prizes.

Ed Meza @edmezavar Director Edward Berger and producer Malte Grunert are set to follow up their new adaption of Erich Maria Remarque’s harrowing war novel “All Quiet on the Western Front” with a much more upbeat work, a remake of the rollicking 1967 French-Italian pic “The Last Adventure,” which starred Alain Delon, Lino Ventura and Joanna Shimkus. Grunert and Berger had been working on the remake and were already in development when “All Quiet on the Western Front,” which makes its world premiere at the Toronto fest Sept. 12, came along. They are now planning to return to the project after Berger finishes his next pic, the Vatican-set thriller “Conclave,” based on the Robert Harris novel and set to star Ralph Fiennes, John Lithgow, Stanley Tucci and Isabella Rossellini. Berger goes into prep on “Conclave” in October in Rome, with production scheduled to start in January.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian director Paolo Virzì (“Human Capital,” “Like Crazy”) is in Venice where his dystopic drama “Siccità,” which means drought in Italian, is premiering out-of-competition. The innovative pic, which features an A-list ensemble cast comprising Monica Bellucci, Sara Serraiocco (“Counterpart”) and Silvio Orlando (“The Young Pope”), is set amid a protracted drought caused by climate change in the Italian capital where the Tiber has dried up. Virzì spoke to Variety about how “Siccità” germinated during COVID-19 and was shot amid tight pandemic protocols. Excerpts. You worked with novelist and screenwriter Paolo Giordano on the concept and the script for this film. How did the collaboration start?

Banijay Kids & Family has bought UK drama specialist Kindle Entertainment and Italian animation firm Movimenti Production. The deals bring the total number of production within Banijay’s youth-focused arm across France, the UK and Italy to six, sitting alongside distribution, marketing and licencing arm, Zodiak Kids & Family Distribution.

Rome’s Cinecittà studios are hitting unprecedented levels of occupancy, as the historic site continues to upgrade and expand its facilities under a five-year industrial plan, Cinecitta SpA CEO Nicola Maccanico said on Wednesday.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian director Stefano Sollima, who is known in Hollywood for “Sicario: Day of the Soldado,” “Without Remorse” and TV show “Gomorrah,” is back behind camera on a contemporary Rome-set crimer titled “Adagio.” Shooting started Sept. 5 on “Adagio” which features an ensemble cast of Italian A-listers comprising Pierfrancesco Favino (“Nostalgia”), Toni Servillo (“The Great Beauty”), Valerio Mastandrea (“Perfect Strangers”) and Adriano Giannini (“The Ties”). “I am eager and full of enthusiasm about finally returning to depict my city after all these years. Rome has changed, and so have I,” Sollima said in a statement for Variety. He went on to describe “Adagio” as a dark story of revenge and redemption, which will be the last chapter of my Roman criminal trilogy.”

Penélope Cruz dazzled in a lace couture gown on the red carpet at The Venice Film Festival on Sunday, 3 September. The star looked the picture of elegance as she attended the premiere for L'immensità, in which she stars as leading lady, Clara, in a film about a mother-of-three navigating her life in 1970s Rome. To attend the red carpet event, Penélope wore a black lace gown adorned with stunning pink detailing, designed as part of Chanel's couture collection.

Love Island lovebirds Ekin-Su Cülcüloğlu and Davide Sanclimenti are back in each other's arms after their busy new work schedules kept them apart. Since being crowned winners of the ITV2 dating show, the pair have been busy planning their next business moves, meaning they haven't had much time for one another.

Even before the title flashes up for Venice Film Festival competition entry L’Immensita, we know that Penelope Cruz is the most fun mom – most likely the only fun mom – in town. She doesn’t just set the table for dinner; she puts on music, leads the kids in a choreographed dance and singalong as they pass plates and cutlery, emoting into a passing fork as if it were a microphone. Adults bore her. At a birthday dinner for an ancient relative, she slips under the table to join her children in removing and mixing up everyone’s shoes. “I want to play!” she says, eyes gleaming.

Charlotte Dawson has shared an upbeat update following her horror accident during a trip to Rome. The reality star is feeling chipper about her holiday to see one of her best friends get married.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent In Italian director Emanuele Crialese’s new drama “L’Immensità,” which is set in 1970s Rome, Penélope Cruz plays a mother of three who, while contending with a violent Italian husband, winds up in a psychiatric institution. “I don’t think my character is crazy at all,” Cruz said. “She is trapped in her family. Trapped in her home, in her body. In the situation in which she finds herself living. She doesn’t have a plan B. There is no escape,” she added. “She’s not crazy at all. She’s oppressed in many different ways. And she simply can’t take it anymore.

Emanuele Crialese put in a buoyant performance at the Venice Film Festival Sunday, during which he discussed how his identity informed his Golden Lion contender L’immensità.

Mario Gianani, CEO of Fremantle’s Rome-based The Young Pope and My Brilliant Friend production powerhouse Wildside, is enjoying a high-profile time on the international film festival circuit this year.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent British director Joe Wright, who helmed Winston Churchill drama “Darkest Hour” – which earned Gary Oldman an Oscar for his portrayal as the British prime minister – is set to change historical sides and direct TV drama “M,” which chronicles Benito Mussolini’s rise to power. The high-end series, which is based on Antonio Scurati’s Premio Strega-winning and international bestselling novel “M. Son of the Century,” traces the birth of Fascism in Italy and Mussolini’s ascent with an innovative approach that has sparked debate about the Fascist dictator’s legacy in Italy and abroad. “The writer understood and put on paper, with facts and documents and everything, that Mussolini is the guy – him and only him – who created what we now know as populism and Fascism,” said the show’s producer Lorenzo Mieli, speaking in Venice, where he is among producers of Luca Guadagnino’s “Bones and All.”

During a Venice Film Festival masterclass today, Better Call Saul and Nobody star Bob Odenkirk told the audience he “wants to do more action.”

ARMAGEDDON TIME (d. James Gray, U.S., 2022) BARDO, FALSE CHRONICLE OF A HANDFUL OF TRUTHS (d. Alejandro González Iñárritu, Mexico-U.S., 2022) BOBI WINE, GHETTO PRESIDENT (d.

Right at the beginning of The March On Rome, a special screening in the Venice Days section of the Venice Film Festival, Mark Cousins draws our collective gaze to a piece of graffiti saying that cinema is most powerful weapon of all. It isn’t clear — to me, anyway — whether that joyful proclamation dates back to 1922, when Benito Mussolini led a Fascist march from Naples to Rome, or to some other eruption of historical optimism. Cinema isn’t as powerful as all that — if it were, Fascism would have been clobbered to a pulp by Chaplin, Lubitsch and all the other filmmakers who lampooned its vainglorious leaders. But images do matter. They certainly mattered to Italian Fascism.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor In “The March on Rome,” which world premieres in the Venice Days sidebar of Venice Film Festival Wednesday, Northern Irish-Scottish filmmaker Mark Cousins tracks the ascent of fascism in Italy in the 1920s, and its fall-out across 1930s Europe. He also draws a dotted line from those events to the storming of the Capitol in Washington, D.C., in January 2021. The documentary, illustrated with archive footage and Cousins’ characteristic cinematic analysis, starts with Donald Trump defending his decision to retweet a quote from Italian dictator Benito Mussolini: “It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep.” Later in the film, Cousins inserts footage of Trump supporters attacking the Capitol, hoping to overturn Joe Biden’s electoral victory.