Berlin Breakout ‘Reality,’ Starring Sydney Sweeney, Acquired by HBO Films

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Mk2 films has enlisted leading distributors around the world for “Reality,” Tina Satter’s feature debut starring Sydney Sweeney, on the heels of its buzzy world premiere at the Berlinale. The movie, which bowed in the Panorama section, stars Sweeney (“White Lotus,” “Euphoria”) as Reality Winner, a 25 year-old whistleblower who spent five years in prison during the Trump administration. A former U.S. Air Force member and National Security Agency translator, Winner was convicted for leaking a confidential report on Russian election interference to the media. The film is based on Satter’s 2019 stage play “Is This a Room” and contains verbatim dialogue from the unedited transcript of a FBI audio recording. “Reality” captures the tense and surreal 90 minutes of FBI’s interrogation with Winner at her home in 2017.

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.

Sideshow and Janus Films have acquired North American rights for German director Christian Petzold’s new film Afire, following its award-winning world premiere in competition at the Berlin Film Festival.

Bill Murray and star Jeannie Berlin set foot on the red carpet of the 2023 SAG Awards holding hands.Murray and Berlin appeared quite close when they arrived together for Sunday's soiree at the Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles. The star wore a black tuxedo with a colorful bow tie, while Berlin sported an all-black suit and shades.Berlin, who portrayed Hadassah Fabelman in the Steven Spielberg film, was there for the film's nomination in the Best Ensemble Cast in a Motion Picture category.

Manori Ravindran Executive Editor of International Sideshow and Janus Films have acquired North American rights to the Berlin-premiering family drama “Tótem,” written and directed by “The Chambermaid” helmer Lila Avilés. Winner of the festival’s Ecumenical Jury Prize, the film follows seven-year-old Sol, who spends the day at her grandfather’s home, helping her aunts Nuri and Alejandra with the preparations for a surprise party they’re throwing for her father, Tonatiuh, who is terminally ill. However, as night descends, a strange and chaotic atmosphere takes over, shattering the bonds that hold the family together, and Sol will come to understand that her world will change dramatically.

Sydney Sweeney‘s outfit is partially covered by giant umbrellas as she arrives for a top secret project in Sydney, Australia on Friday (February 24).

EXCLUSIVE: HBO Films has closed a deal for U.S. rights to the Berlin Film Festival buzz competition title Reality. Directed by Tina Satter, the docudrama is a breakout turn for Sydney Sweeney as convicted classified document leaker Reality Winner. Sweeney stars in the hit HBO series Euphoria.

Rachel Brosnahan and Oscar Isaac are celebrating their new off-Broadway show!

Naman Ramachandran Berlin’s just concluded European Film Market (EFM), which had a physical edition this year after two online editions in 2021 and 2022 due to the pandemic, has reported “record results” according to the organizers. There were 230 stands and 612 companies from 78 countries and more than 11,500 market participants from 132 countries. Some 773 films were shown in 1,533 screenings, including 647 online screenings and 599 market premieres. The total number of buyers also rose to 1,302. 629 film projects were presented on the new Producers & Project Pages. “After the past two irregular years, we’re pleased to return to the physical in full force, and with a vibrant, bustling and strong market. The exhibition areas at Gropius Bau and the Marriott Hotel were sold out, and the exhibitors reported strong sales and good business. The decision to group all the market happenings together with the Berlinale Series Market and the market screenings at Potsdamer Platz, and to provide the industry with an efficient infrastructure, was extremely well-received by our market participants,” said EFM director Dennis Ruh.

GQ magazine in an interview published on Tuesday that the possibility of bidding farewell to the character after the fourth season would “feel like a death, in a way.” However, he said that he envies some of his peers who have had “that freedom to just shoot yourself out of some different cannons.”“Sometimes Kendall feels like the same cannon over and over again,” Strong added.An HBO spokesperson declined to comment.In addition to Strong, the show’s ensemble cast includes Brian Cox, Sarah Snook, Kieran Culkin, Alan Ruck, Matthew Macfadyen, Nicholas Braun, J. Smith-Cameron, Peter Friedman, David Rasche, Fisher Stevens, Hiam Abbass, Justine Lupe, Dagmara Domińczyk, Arian Moayed, Scott Nicholson, Zoë Winters, Annabelle Dexter-Jones, Juliana Canfield and Jeannie Berlin.

Donna Summer could hit notes more thrillingly beautiful than any other pop singer of her time, or since. I’m not sure even Whitney Houston, as great as she was, quite reached the glistening heights that culminate “Last Dance” (though she comes very close in “I Will Always Love You”). Mariah Carey (no relation to me) performs impressive vocal acrobatics, yet to my ear she can’t match the bell-like shimmer of Donna in the higher registers. And Donna in the lower registers – well, the voice thrums with visceral resonance.

Dame Helen Mirren ditched her signature bob for ageless platinum waves as she attended the Berlin premiere of Golda.The actress, who last year admitted to still loving her former boyfriend, Liam Neeson, stunned as she attended the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival in Germany on Monday and was pictured with long flowing hair extensions. Helen, 77, sported an off-the-shoulder floor-length black dress that featured a low-cut ruffled neckline, which she paired with gold chandelier earrings as she walked the red carpet.

The documentary Love to Love You, Donna Summer, about one of the world’s greatest pop stars, constitutes a kind of duet – between two filmmakers. The film, making its world premiere in Berlin, comes from directors Roger Ross Williams and Brooklyn Sudano, daughter of the subject of the film, the legendary Donna Summer. 

With her feature debut, “The Chambermaid,” Mexican writer-director Lila Avilés materialized a graceful character study of a hardworking mother. Though enriched via the meaningful interjections of its supporting players, the narrative had a singular focus.

Lise Pedersen The Copenhagen Intl. Documentary Film Festival, also known as CPH:DOX, has unveiled the full program of its 20th edition, which includes 200 new films, more than half of which are world premieres, sealing CPH:DOX’s reputation as one of the leading events of its kind in Europe. For the first time, all 13 films competing for the top Dox:Award are world premieres. These include “A Storm Foretold,” the long-awaited doc on Donald Trump’s former adviser Roger Stone by Danish political journalist Christopher Guldbrandsen; established filmmaker Margreth Olin’s highly anticipated epic film “Songs of the Earth”; “A Tiger in Paradise,” a surreal journey into Swedish singer José González’ inner world by Ruben Östlund’s regular creative partners Mikel Cee Karlsson and Erik Hemmendorff; and “Total Trust” by Jialing Zhang (“One Child Nation”), described as “the first major film about the Chinese surveillance state (…) – a disturbing tale of technology, (self-) censorship and abuse of power in the 21st century.”

Sydney Sweeney heats up the red carpet in a red hot dress for the premiere of her movie, Reality.

As the 73rd Berlin Film Festival rolls into its first weekend, one of the buzziest titles on the ground is the taut political thriller Reality, starring Euphoria and White Lotus breakout Sydney Sweeney.

.On February 18, the 25-year-old star arrived at the photocall for her latest film, Reality, wearing an suit that was more cutout than fabric. For the occasion, stylist Molly Dickson paired black flared trousers with a single-breasted, crystal-embroidered blazer with massive cutouts that wrap around from the front panels to just below her shoulders, leaving waist and most of her back exposed.In keeping with the tailored aesthetic, Sweeney wore her hair in a slicked-back ballerina bun and contrasted her minimalistic makeup with a single statement ear cuff.

Shayeza Walid Acclaimed New York-based theater director Tina Satter has worked on productions on and off Broadway for more than a decade. Now, in her first ever venture into film, Satter makes her directorial debut with “Reality,” starring Sydney Sweeney, based on Satter’s play “Is This a Room.” The film premiered Saturday at the Berlin Film Festival with Variety critic Jessica Kiang calling it a “clever, gripping docudrama.” For Satter, who co-wrote the screenplay with James Paul Dallas, making this movie was always in the books. The film, based on the real-life FBI interrogation transcript of whistleblower Reality Winner, is one Satter could envision the first time she came across the documents of the conversation between Winner and the Federal Bureau.

Jessica Kiang In the widely covered story of the U.S. intelligence operative harshly sentenced in 2018 for leaking a confidential report on Russian election interference to The Intercept, the accidental (in)appropriateness of the operative’s name was always an eyecatching detail. Could one of recent reality’s most highly public losers actually be called Reality Winner? Playwright Tina Satter’s enormously compelling film-directing debut adds another layer of cosmic irony to that nominative determinism. In using the title “Reality,” and being scripted verbatim from exchanges recorded by the FBI during Winner’s 2017 surprise interrogation, Satter not only vividly revisits the story, she also makes us question the very relationship between a narrative film and the truth it claims to expose. Reality can be stranger than fiction, but “Reality” fuses the two to become stranger, and more riveting, still.