Berlin Film Festival Artistic Director Carlo Chatrian to Step Down After 2024 Edition

Carlo Chatrian whose mandate as artistic director of the Berlinale will come to an end next year. As we reported last week, Chatrian had been expected to stay on beyond 2024, and was surprised to learn that the German body which oversees the festival, Kulturveranstaltungen des Bundes in Berlin (KBB), announced that it would no extend his contract. The org had previously said it would abandon the model of having an executive director and an artistic director and return instead to having a single director, following the next edition.

Woody Allen is attending the Venice International Film Festival for the premiere of his latest film, “Coup de Chance”.

The tears flowed for Priscilla Presley following the world premiere of Sofia Coppola’s biopic, “Priscilla”, in Venice on Monday.

Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore‘s new movie May December is set to introduce the 2023 New York Film Festival later this month!

Total admissions to theatres at this year’s Venice Film Festival have hit 114,851, up 18% on last year, according to figures published by the Biennale this week, as the film event passes the midway point. 

Busan International Film Festival (BIFF, October 4-13) has unveiled its full line-up, including opening and closing films, and announced that Hong Kong star Chow Yun-fat has been named as Asian Filmmaker of the Year. 

Spanish film star Gabriel Guevara was arrested on sexual assault charges while in attendance this weekend at the Venice International Film Festival. The 22-year-old was the star of Prime V

With no film industry to speak of, and limited funds to make a movie in one of the most remote places on earth, young Bhutanese director/writer Pawo Choyning Dorji pulled off a miracle with his first feature, Lunana: A Yak In The Classroom which came out of nowhere to get an Oscar nomination for Best International Feature (formerly Best Foreign Language Film) in 2019. It was a charmer of a movie set in a village in Bhutan with no connection to the outside world and where a young teacher must decide whether he wants to stay and teach the kids or follow his dreams to Australia.

Tuesday is a fairy tale with some very real-world consequences.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor The international trailer for “A Whole Life,” which will have its world premiere in the Gala section of the Zürich Film Festival (Sept. 28 to Oct. 8), has debuted with Variety (below).

In principle, using the rainy-day, kitchen-sink post-rock of Manchester band The Smiths so prominently in a film like The Killer seems incredibly perverse, given that it’s an exotic, globe-trotting thriller about an American assassin. But in reality, it’s actually very sound choice indeed: legend has it that the band’s singer, Morrissey, had two reasons for naming his band so, the first being that “Smith” is one of the most common and thus unremarkable surnames in the world. The second, and much more subversive theory, suggests that it’s also a reference to David and Maureen Smith, brother-in-law and sister of ’60s serial killer Myra Hindley, the snappily dressed couple whose testimony blew open the Moors Murderers case and whose beatnik likenesses adorn the cover of Sonic Youth’s 1990 album “Goo”.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Vicky Krieps, best performance prize winner in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard for “Corsage,” will star as Sophie Toscan du Plantier in six time-Oscar nominee Jim Sheridan and David Merriman’s “Re-creation,” which is being presented in the Venice Gap-Financing Market. The docu-drama, which centers on the brutal murder in 1996 in Ireland of French film and TV producer Toscan du Plantier, has been co-written and will be co-directed by Sheridan, best known for “My Left Foot” and “In the Name of the Father,” and Merriman.

It’s hard to believe that it’s now over 60 years since Roman Polanski teamed up with Jerzy Skolimowski for the landmark 1962 Polish thriller Knife in the Water. But it’s even harder to believe that these two giants of international cinema reunited more recently to pool their braincells and come up with the most terrible, joyless farce since the heyday of the ’70s British sex comedy. Forget for a moment, if you can, the furor surrounding Polanski’s controversial status as a fugitive from justice and concentrate instead on the fact that the Venice Film Festival, in its infinite wisdom, went ahead and booked this entirely dreadful offering anyway, deeming it somehow worthy of a prestigious Out of Competition slot.

Five years after his triumphant A Star is Born world premiered at the Venice Film Festival, Bradley Cooper is back on the Lido with Maestro. Except, the director and star is only here in spirit owing to the SAG-AFTRA strike.

The cast, producers and collaborators of Roman Polanski’s The Palace showed their support for the filmmaker here in Venice today during a press conference for the movie that world premieres out of competition this evening. 

Berlinale co-head Carlo Chatrian has decided to step down as artistic director after the 2024 edition of the festival.

Dynamic Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos’ anticipated latest, Poor Things, got a rapturous reception at after it world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on Friday, with a standing ovation timed at 10 minutes and 37 seconds.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor “Stella. A Life.,” which stars Berlinale best actress award-winner Paula Beer, has been sold to France, Scandinavia and Australia. The film will have a market screening at Toronto Film Festival, and will have its world premiere with a Gala Screening at the Zurich Film Festival.

German Culture Minister Claudia Roth has announced she wants the Berlinale to be placed back under the control of a single director.

The 80thVenice Film Festival gets underway in earnest today and the landmark edition will be unlike any other, taking place as it does against the backdrop of two Hollywood strikes.