Ava DuVernay on Making Venice History as First African American Woman in Competition: I’ve Been Told ‘Don’t Apply, You Won’t Get In’

Matt Donnelly Senior Film Writer Kenneth Branagh’s latest Agatha Christie adaptation “A Haunting in Venice” has been rattling North American theaters for a week now, signaling the start to spooky season with a packed ensemble cast featuring the likes of Tina Fey, Jamie Dornan, Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh and “Yellowstone” star Kelly Reilly. Branagh’s players (and the director himself) weren’t able speak on behalf of the moody chamber piece due to the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Variety caught up with veteran producer Judy Hofflund (who made the first two Poirot films with Branagh, “Murder on the Orient Express” and “Death on the Nile”) to discuss Fey’s journey to leading lady status in a film from this era, as well as the future of Branagh’s mustachioed sleuth.

Stop Making Sense, the remastered concert film that sowed delight at TIFF, opens on 300 Imax screens in the U.S., Canada, U.K. and Ireland. Locations Stateside number 260 ahead of a nationwide release next week.  

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor Oscar season is always full of twists and turns, and the biggest one yet just dropped with “Killers of the Flower Moon.” Variety has learned exclusively that Lily Gladstone’s work as Mollie Burkhart, an Indigenous woman at the center of a sinister plot in Martin Scorsese’s crime epic, will be campaigned for the Oscars in best actress, instead of supporting where many pundits had speculated. She will campaign alongside her Oscar-winning co-star and executive producer, Leonardo DiCaprio.

The Last Dinner Party have announced their first-ever North American tour.Kicking off on October 31, the five-piece will make their way to the East Coast for their first show at The Atlantis in Washington D.C.. From there, they will make stops in New York City and Philadelphia before heading over to the West Coast to play a show at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles, California.Their final show of the tour will take place on November 9 at the Bottom Lounge in Chicago.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter “A Haunting in Venice,” Kenneth Branagh’s latest cinematic take on Agatha Christie’s library of murder mystery novels, is expected to spook the box office competition. It’s targeting a soft $13 million to $15 million in its North American debut. Those ticket sales will likely be enough to claim the No.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian producer and director Ginevra Elkann, whose delicate first feature “If Only” opened the 2019 Locarno fest garnering critical praise, is at the Toronto Film Festival with her tonally different follow-up, “I Told You So.” The movie features a group made up mostly of women who are having a mental meltdown amid an unprecedented January heat wave in Rome. As the heat rises, so do the characters’ obsessions with sex, food, drugs, alcohol, and religion. The eclectic ensemble film, which was conceived by Elkann and her co-writers during the pandemic, features a star studded cast comprising Danny Huston – speaking perfect Italian on screen – as a heroin-addicted Italian-American priest.

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor Every awards season, pundits leave themselves open to late-year breakers. This is where a film not necessarily on anyone’s radar comes in and walks away with the industry’s most coveted prize for best picture.

The 1975 have added a fourth London date to their 2024 UK and European ‘Still At Their Very Best’ tour – get details below.Earlier this week, extra dates were added to the tour, including gigs at Glasgow’s OVO Hydro, Manchester’s AO Arena and a third show at London’s The O2.Now, the band will play a fourth show in London on February 20, which is confirmed to be the final additional date of the tour.It was also recently confirmed that the band will stage the world’s first “carbon removed” live event at the London gigs.Tickets for the new gig will go on presale on Wednesday, September 13 at 10am BST, with general sale following on Friday, September 15 at the same time. Buy tickets here.A post shared by The1975 (@the1975)A European run will then follow in Lisbon, Madrid, Paris, Oslo, Copenhagen, Berlin, Milan and many more, before they wrap up at the Palladium in Cologne, Germany on March 22.The newly announced dates will follow the band’s 32-date North American tour, which starts in Sacramento, California on September 26.

Oppenheimer story is set to debut in London this month.Operation Epsilon, written by playwright Alan Brody and directed by Andy Sandberg, is based on the true story of 10 German nuclear scientists who were captured by British and American authorities near the end of the Second World War.Based on transcripts of secretly recorded conversations from their captivity, it’s believed the scientists were working on nuclear weapons for Germany and were unaware of the progress made by American scientists, led by J. Robert Oppenheimer at the Manhattan Project.Speaking to Herald Tribune about the play, Sandberg said: “This is the other side of the Oppenheimer story, what was going on in Germany.

EXCLUSIVE: It’s not a given that talent will attend premieres if their movie gets an interim agreement but we can confirm that Oscar winner Jessica Chastain and Emmy nominee Peter Sarsgaard will be on hand to spice up the premieres of new movie Memory both tomorrow in Venice and next week in Toronto.

Ava DuVernay touched down at the Venice Film Festival on Wednesday evening with her new film Origin, which world premiered in Competition and received a more than eight-minute ovation in its debut screening.

Ellise Shafer Ava DuVernay’s latest film, “Origin,” premiered in competition at Venice Film Festival to a 5 minute and 46 second standing ovation. Based on Isabel Wilkerson’s book “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents,” “Origin” chronicles “the remarkable life and work” of Wilkerson “as she investigates the genesis of injustice and uncovers a hidden truth that affects us all,” according to the film’s synopsis. The drama stars Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Niecy Nash-Betts, Jon Bernthal, Niecy Nash-Betts, Vera Farmiga, Audra McDonald, Nick Offerman, Blair Underwood, Connie Nielsen, Emily Yancy, Jasmine Cephas-Jones, Finn Wittock, Victoria Pedretti, Isha Blaaker and Myles Frost.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic In “Origin,” Ava DuVernay weaves a centuries- and continents-spanning narrative feature around the ideas of Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Isabel Wilkerson, who rejects the word “racism.” It’s not that she doesn’t believe that racism exists; rather, she doesn’t think that racism alone can explain the inequity in human society — the way America’s founders could have written “all men are created equal” and meant something so different. As Isabel Wilkerson, the protagonist (played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor), who is based on Isabel Wilkerson, the author of “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents,” puts it to her editor (Blair Underwood), “Racism as the primary language to understand everything is insufficient.” And later, to her sister (Niecy Nash-Betts): “We have to consider oppression in a way that does not centralize race.” The book “Caste” was Wilkerson’s answer to that challenge, drawing connections between discrimination in the United States and how Nazi Germany invented a social hierarchy to justify the Holocaust, which she links in turn to the rigid system of caste in India.

Ava DuVernay’s past experiences with the Venice Film Festival have been more exclusionary than esteemed, revealed the director during a press conference for her new film “Origin” on Wednesday.

Ava DuVernay is making history today. In Venice with Origin, which world premieres in the Sala Grande this evening, she is the first African American female filmmaker to ever have been selected in competition at the world’s oldest festival. DuVernay earlier told Deadline’s Dominic Patten, “Venice was a big goal. It feels like a real full-circle moment.”

“That is the part where you look up and you say, ‘how could people have allowed their neighbors to be taken and put in the camps?’” says Origin director Ava DuVernay of the deep roots of discrimination and the cruel consequences of subjugation.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter Neon has acquired worldwide rights to Ava DuVernay’s “Origin” ahead of its world premiere in competition at the Venice Film Festival. The movie, starring Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Jon Bernthal, Niecy Nash-Betts, will also screen at the Toronto International Film Festival. “Origin” will be released in theaters later this year.

Neon has acquired worldwide rights for Ava DuVernay’s Origin ahead of its world premiere in Competition at the Venice Film Festival on Wednesday (September 6).

Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla got a rousing response at its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on Monday evening. The pic, a biopic of Priscilla Presley, who was in attendance for the move based on the memoir she co-authored, scored a 7-minute, 45-second ovation.

Ava DuVernay’s Origin, the first film by an African American woman to play in Competition at the Venice Film Festival, will have a Gala screening at Roy Thomson Hall at TIFF on Monday, September 11. DuVernay will be in attendance for the screening of the film, which she wrote, produced and directed.