Alief Scoops Global Rights for Teen Pregnancy Doc ‘Ramona,’ Drops Trailer (EXCLUSIVE)

filmmaking is a real honor. Thank you to Michael and Tom for embracing our story about flawed, complex human beings, who happen to be Asian American, just trying their best.

EXCLUSIVE: Paris-based Alpha Violet has posted fresh sales on Mexican director Lila Avilés’s family drama Tótem, which world premiered in competition at the Berlinale to acclaim in February.

EXCLUSIVE: The Gifford Media Group has acquired film and TV rights to Harvard-trained physician-turned-novelist William Maz’s Cold War thriller The Bucharest Dossier from Oceanview Publishing.  

Ryan Seacrest is still happy to be hosting . Seacrest and the  crew, including judges Katy Perry, Lionel Richie and Luke Bryan took over ET, asking each other questions about season 21 and the craziest auditions they've witnessed to date.«Yes. Yes, I am,» Seacrest said when asked if he's still happy hosting the singing competition series. «I really like the live shows.»This group has been together for six seasons, and they've seen some things in that time.

Corriere Della Serra).As Mixmag notes, Renè was a much-loved DJ and staple act in Ibiza during the early 2000s. Born in Rome, he began DJing during his teenage years and later moved to Riccione north of San Marino where he played at nightclubs including Titilla, Peter Pan and Cocoricò.In 2000, Renè relocated to the White Isle to further pursue a career in music.

Ray Romano has been a household name in the US for decades now, thanks to his sitcom career. However, in recent years, he’s been doing a lot more indie stuff, flexing his dramatic muscles a bit.

Rihanna will perform at the 95th Academy Awards next month, it has been announced.The pop superstar will perform her Oscar-nominated song Lift Me Up, written for Marvel’s blockbuster sequel Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.The song picked up a nod for best original song, alongside Lady Gaga’s Hold My Hand from Top Gun: Maverick, and is Rihanna’s first Oscar nomination. Hosted by US comedian Jimmy Kimmel, the Oscars is set to take place on March 12.The Academy will be announcing more talent participating in the show in the coming weeks.

The International Federation Of The Phonographic Industry has announced Taylor Swift as the recipient of its 2022 Global Recording Artist Of The Year Award – the third time she has been presented with the annual prize.“It is a great pleasure to award the IFPI Global Recording Artist Award to Taylor Swift for an unprecedented third time”, says IFPI chief exec Frances Moore. “Taylor is a truly magnificent international star, who continues to grow and evolve as an artist whilst maintaining an incredibly strong connection with her fans around the world”.The prize is handed to the artist who has the highest number of worldwide streams and sales of their music each year. As well as revealing Swift as the overall winner, the IFPI also revealed the top 20 most successful acts in 2022, which includes BTS, Bad Bunny, The Weeknd, Harry Styles, Ed Sheeran, Juice Wrld and young upstarts The Beatles.“It is exciting to see this year’s Global Recording Artist Chart reflect the increasingly diverse spectrum of music available to music fans today, with superstars from Latin America, Taiwan and South Korea as well as the US, UK and Canada represented”, says Moore.

Naman Ramachandran India’s Zee Studios and Emmay Entertainment have released the first trailer for “Mrs. Chatterjee Vs Norway,” starring Rani Mukerji. The film, directed by Ashima Chibber and written by Rahul Handa, Sameer Satija and Chibber, is based on the true story of an Indian couple whose children were taken away from them by Norwegian welfare services in 2011. Mukerji plays the titular Mrs. Chatterjee who battles with the Norwegian government to reunite with her children. The film is produced by Zee Studios and Monisha Advani, Madhu Bhojwani and Nikkhil Advani’s Emmay Entertainment (“Bellbottom”). It is part of Zee Studios’ extensive 2023 slate. The company has a film, “Aatmapamphlet,” and series “Brown” at the ongoing Berlin Film Festival and Berlin Series Market respectively.

Berlinale Series and one of Disney+’s early big plays in Southern Europe, U.K.-Italian mafia series “The Good Mothers” walked off on Wednesday night with the Berlin Festival’s inaugural Berlinale Series Award.  A large virtue of the series is to come in at the mafia from a novel angle: a real story of women who dare to defy the Italian mob.  The title forms part of the first European slate by new Disney+ international streaming service Star. It tells how bosses at the the Calabrian mob were targeted by a female prosecutor – thanks to the collaboration of three women inside the ‘Ndrangheta organized crime clan. 

Taylor Swift has been named IFPI's Global Recording Artist of the Year 2022, an annual honour celebrating the most popular recording act in the world based on streaming and sales; including vinyl, CDs and downloads.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Veteran auteur Mario Martone, whose Naples-set drama “Nostalgia” launched last year from Cannes, has quite a lot in common with Massimo Troisi, Italy’s beloved late comic actor-director who is best known internationally as the star of Oscar-winning film “Il Postino.” Which is why Martone was well-suited to direct the multi-layered doc about Troisi’s legacy “Somebody Down There Likes Me” that is screening in the Berlinale Special sidebar. For starters, they are both Neapolitan, and were born only a few years a part. Troisi – who in “Il Postino” played the simple postman who rides his bicycle on a sandy Italian island to deliver mail to his sole client, the Nobel Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda – died tragically of congenital heart failure at age 41 in June 1994, the day after “Il Postino” finished shooting at Rome’s Cinecittà studios.

Charna Flam Disney+ has unveiled the trailer for “Chang Can Dunk” from filmmaker Jingyi Shao, one of Variety’s “10 Directors to Watch” for 2023. The coming-of-age sports film — which begins streaming March 10 — follows Chang (Bloom Li), an unpopular high schooler who loves basketball and Pokémon. Chang finds himself wagering a bet with the school’s all-star player, Matt (Chase Liefeld), that he will be able to make a slam dunk — in 12 weeks time. The film also stars Zoe Renee, Ben Wang, Dexter Darden, Anthony Lopez, Nile Bullock, Mardy Ma and Angel Oquendo.

reports Entertainment Weekly. It was announced Thursday that Seacrest, 48, would leave the daytime talk show after six years and focus on hosting the singing show “American Idol. “This is something that [Kelly] and I have been talking about for a long time, and it was a tough, tough decision,” Seacrest stated.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor When Frank Doelger, a six-time Emmy award-winning showrunner, whose credits include “Game of Thrones,” “John Adams” and “Rome,” was preparing to adapt Frank Schätzing’s 900-page novel “The Swarm” into an eight-part eco-thriller, he resolved to place it in a different genre. Whereas the novel read like a “disaster movie,” Doelger wanted the series to be a “monster movie” — but with a twist, the monster was us. In the first few episodes of the show, which premieres at the Berlin Film Festival on Sunday, seemingly random, unconnected events occur in different parts of the world in which marine creatures start behaving in abnormal ways that threaten the lives of those who come in contact with them. After each event, scientists are given the task of finding the cause of the change in behavior, and they slowly start to wonder whether the events are connected, and ask what is triggering them.

Liza Foreman Hot on the tail of a recent slew of pickups and sales, Paris-based sales-producer-distributor Alief has snapped up international rights to the West African folktale “Mami Wata.”   North America rights to the film are represented by Marissa Frobes at CAA Media Finance. Alief is presenting the film to buyers and festival programmers at this week’s European Film Market in Berlin. The first film from a Nigerian-based director to play (and win an award) at Sundance, this visually striking feature took home the World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Cinematography for Brazilian DP Lílis Soares.

EXCLUSIVE: Saban Films has taken worldwide rights to action-thriller Hellfire, starring Stephen Lang, Harvey Keitel and Dolph Lundgren here at the European Film Market. 

Naman Ramachandran A first trailer has been unveiled for Leandro Koch and Paloma Schachmann’s documentary “The Klezmer Project,” which will have its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival’s Encounters strand. The documentary follows Argentinian cameraman Leandro who makes a living from filming Jewish weddings. At one of his jobs, he falls in love with Paloma, the clarinetist of the Klezmer band. To seduce her he pretends to be shooting a documentary film about traditional Yiddish folk music. What Leandro does not know is that his “fake” film project will take him on an unscripted journey throughout Eastern Europe in search of the last remaining Klezmer melodies.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italy’s Kino Produzioni, the indie shingle that co-produced 2022 Berlin Golden Bear winner “Alcarràs,” is ramping up production with new films by emerging Italian filmmakers Carlo Sironi, Laura Luchetti and Irene Dionisio, as well as also Dutch director Michiel Van Erp and Argentine filmmakers María Alché and Benjamín Naishtat.  “We reached a turning point last year that started out well with the ‘Alcarràs’ victory,” said Kino chief Giovanni Pompili, speaking at the EFM. He noted that in 2022, the Rome-based outfit shot four films, “which for us was pretty challenging, but worked out well.” Meanwhile, the Kino team has grown. Producer Lara Costa-Calzado, who has been working for a decade between the U.S. and Europe on films such as Eliza Hittman’s Silver Bear winner “Never Rarely Sometimes Always,” Sally Potter’s “The Roads Not Taken” and Halina Rejin’s “Bodies Bodies Bodies,” has joined Kino as head of production.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent LevelK has unveiled the trailer for “Dancing Queen,” Aurora Gossé’s coming-of-age film world premiering in the Generation section at the Berlin Film Festival. Penned by Silje Holtet, the dance-filled movie is produced by Thomas Robsahm, whose credits include the Oscar-nominated Norwegian romantic comedy “The Worst Person in the World.” Newcomer Liv Elvira Kippersund Larsson stars as Mina, a slightly overweight underdog who falls head over heels in love and sets off to become at hip hop dancer to win his heart. The movie also stars Anders Baasmo (“In Order of Disappearance”) and Andrea Bræin Hovig (“An Affair), among others.