‘Athena’ Trailer: Romain Gavras & Ladj Ly’s Thriller Tackles A Community Under Seige

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?

Netflix has greenlit a Japanese drama series about the last ninjas to remain in modern times.

K.J. Yossman “Anatomy of a Scandal” star Rupert Friend has signed on to star as famed Romanian conductor Sergiu Celibidache in “The Yellow Tie,” an upcoming biopic of Celibidache’s life, Variety can exclusively reveal. Friend will have a central role in the feature, playing the young Celibidache. As Variety revealed last year, John Malkovich is also signed on to play an older version of the conductor. The duo last appeared on screen together in 2004’s “The Libertine,” in which Johnny Depp also starred as the Duke of Rochester. Friend has also appeared in features including “Hitman: Agent 47” and “The Death of Stalin.” He will next be appearing in “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar” alongside Benedict Cumberbatch.

Myrmecology is a study of science that looks at the life, society, and hierarchy of Ants. Early Myrmecologists believed that Ant culture was utopian and thought by studying them in encased Ant farms, they could find solutions to human problems. However, in Gianni Amelio’s Italian post-WWII drama, The Lord of the Ants (Il Signore Delle Formiche), flips this idea around. It examines why strict societies foster cultures of oppression where everyone must play their role or be punished. The screenplay by Amelio, Federico Fava, and Edoardo Petti chooses its dialogue with precision. They want us to know they resent post-Mussolini Europe and how not just homosexuals but anyone on the margins is oppressed under fascist rule. 

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.

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.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Best Friend Forever has unveiled the trailer for “To The North,” Romanian Mihai Mincan’s feature debut which is world premiering in the Horizons section at Venice. Inspired by true events, the edgy thriller follows Joel, a religious Filipino sailor who finds a Romanian stowaway, Dumitru, hidden between some containers during his shift on a transatlantic ship. Joel decides to hide him and subsequently starts feeling tormented by his crew, friends and even God.

Charlotte Dawson has shared throwback snaps from her recent trip to Rome, Italy, taken hours before her horrific scooter accident. The former Ex On The Beach star, 29, who has been left in "agony", revealed on Wednesday that she had been rushed to hospital as she shared snaps of her swollen, bloodied and bruised face from the ambulance. Charlotte, who has since jetted back to the UK, took to Instagram on Saturday to share a collection of photos just hours before her scooter accident.

Charlotte Dawson has shared throwback snaps from her recent trip to Rome, Italy, taken hours before her horrific scooter accident.The former Ex On The Beach star, 29, who has been left in "agony", revealed on Wednesday that she had been rushed to hospital as she shared snaps of her swollen, bloodied and bruised face from the ambulance. Charlotte, who has since jetted back to the UK, took to Instagram on Saturday to share a collection of photos just hours before her scooter accident.The 29 year old daughter of late comedian Les Dawson penned: "Before chazza became more of an attraction than the chuffin colosseum. "At least I managed to get some nice pics & eat some sexeh food before it all went Pete tong.

Vincent Cassel is getting some support on the red carpet.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Iconoclast, the international production group behind Romain Gavras’ Venice competition film “Athena,” is setting a wide-ranging slate of projects with emerging filmmakers from different audiovisual fields, including Leo Berne from the artists collective Megaforce, and Elias Belkeddar and Said Belktibia from the collective Kourtrajmé. The company is also producing the next projects of Harmony Korine and Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre, among others. In a rare interview, Nicolas Lhermitte, who co-founded Iconoclast with Mourad Belkeddar, says the company has emerged from the pandemic with a record number of developed projects. “We took the opportunity during the pandemic to develop a lot of projects, and today we have around 30 projects in the pipeline, spanning films and series that are set up at our studios in France, the U.S. and Germany,” says Lhermitte, who adds that Iconoclast aspired to “accompany multi-disciplinary artists to venture from one field to another, films, TV series, branded content, and music videos.”

Romain Gavras’ immersive modern tragedy Athena just had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, receiving a 4 1/2-minute standing ovation in the process.

Romain Gavras wastes no time in “Athena” informing the audience of the stakes. There have been three cases of police brutality within two months in the titular majority-minority community.

Designed as something akin to a Greek tragedy for today’s moment, Venice Film Festival Competition title Athena is a torrent, an inundation, a cascade of rage, fury and frustration over the realities of life for a particular group of French families. Such conditions exist in most societies, some more dire than others, but here the wages of pent-up anger are presented with a single-minded intensity and extended duration that would be hard to exceed.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic There is no Athena housing project in Paris. That’s a name invented by “Athena” director Romain Gavras and partner in crime Ladj Ly for the banlieu apartment block that becomes a kind of makeshift fortress in an epic standoff between residents — first- and second-generation Black and Arab immigrants tired of being mistreated — and the French national police. Naming it thus lends what unfolds there a classical resonance, one that ties Gavras’ astonishing third feature to the tradition of Greek tragedy, though the situation could hardly be more timely. “Athena” tells the story of four brothers, one murdered on camera by a group of unidentified men in police uniforms, the three others torn about what to do next. Who were these assailants, shown stomping an innocent 13-year-old to death? Why does the French police seem to be protecting the culprits? And what will it take to obtain justice?

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent After the edgy crime comedy “The World Is Yours,” Romain Gavras is back with thriller “Athena.” Produced by Paris-based Iconoclast for Netflix, the ambitious, €15 million film ($15 million) unfolds in the aftermath of the tragic killing of a young boy. A leaked video showing the boy as a victim of police brutality goes viral and ignites an all-out war in an imaginary community called Athena. It’s the first French movie that Netflix is presenting in competition at the Venice Film Festival. “Athena” tells the story of the boy’s three siblings, who are responding to the tragedy in different ways. French star Dali Benssalah (“Les Sauvages,” “No Time to Die”) plays the older brother, Abdel, a French soldier. Faced with an impossible moral dilemma, Abdel is called back from the frontline to help diffuse the all-out war that has been sparked by his younger brother Karim (Sami Slimane), who wants revenge. Athena becomes the backdrop of a tragedy for both the family and its entire community. The film’s stellar cast also includes Ouassini Embarek, Anthony Bajon and Alexis Manenti.

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.