Berlin Film Festival Cuts Close To A Third Of Its Lineup, Including Berlinale Series Amid Budget Struggles

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Berlin-based sales agent Pluto Film has boarded “Forever-Forever” (“Nazavzhdy-Nazavzhdy”), Ukrainian filmmaker Anna Buryachkova’s feature directing debut, ahead of its world premiere in Venice Film Festival’s Horizons Extra competition. After transferring from a downtown high school, Tonia (Alina Cheban) befriends a group of badass youngsters, trying to find protection from the people from her past and a place she truly belongs. They spend time together, roaming around Kyiv’s post-socialist suburbs, having fun and getting in trouble.

France’s Deauville American Film Festival has unveiled the 14 U.S. indie titles selected for competition in its 49th edition running from September 1 to 10.

Cinephiles already know that “Ferrari,” Michael Mann‘s first film since 2015’s “Blackhat,” will have its world premiere in competition at the Venice Film Festival in September. But now Mann fans know when his biopic will have its North American premiere: as the closing film of the New York Film Festival on October 13.

Michael Mann’s Ferrari has been selected as the closing-night movie at the New York Film Festival in October. The news Thursday comes after the pic starring Adam Driver and Penélope Cruz was tapped to world premiere in competition in August at the Venice Film Festival.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter Michael Mann’s racing drama “Ferrari” is set to close the 61st annual New York Film Festival. The sports biopic, starring Adam Driver as automotive mogul Enzo Ferrari, will make its North American premiere at Alice Tully Hall on Oct. 13.

Venice Film Festival artistic director Alberto Barbera is refusing to row back on his decision to invite controversial movie-biz bigwigs Roman Polanski, Woody Allen and Luc Besson to the late summer event, which will take place despite the potential disruption by the ongoing SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes. “Luc Besson has been recently fully cleared of any accusations. Woody Allen went under legal scrutiny twice at the end of the ’90s and was absolved,” Barbera said in a new interview with Variety.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Venice Film Festival artistic director Alberto Barbera is in a good mood after Tuesday’s lineup announcement managed to stave off the impact of the SAG-AFTRA strike, something which could have been “devastating” to the event, he says. In the end, the only U.S. film that skipped the Lido is Luca Guadagnino’s Zendaya-starrer “Challengers,” which Barbera says was against Guadagnino’s wishes.

The Toronto International Film Festival is back for another big year.

Brent Lang Executive Editor Two labor strikes may be upending Hollywood’s awards season and the film festivals that serve as launching pads for many Oscar contenders, but the Toronto International Film Festival signaled Monday that it still plans to showcase the best in cinema, unveiling its 2023 slate of movies. Alexander Payne, Richard Linklater, Kore-eda Hirokazu and Justine Triet are among the auteurs who will be screening their latest works at the festival. Payne will be on hand with “The Holdovers,” a comedy set in a boarding school that reunites him with “Sideways” star PaulGiamatti, while Linklater is showing “Hitman,” an action-comedy with Glen Powell and Adria Arjona. Kore-eda and Triet will screen “Monster” and “Anatomy of a Fall,” both of which premiered at Cannes, where the latter won the Palme d’Or.

Venice International Film Festival has announced which film will be closing the event in September.

The Venice Film Festival will close with the world premiere of J. A. Bayona’s Netflix survival thriller La Sociedad De La Nieve (Society Of The Snow).

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Spanish director J.A. Bayona’s “Society of the Snow,” a reconstruction of a 1972 plane crash in the Andes that forced survivors to take extreme measures, including cannibalism, has been set as the Venice Film Festival’s closing film. The deeply immersive Spanish-language saga is a Netflix original film shot in Andalusia’s Sierra Nevada, mainland Spain’s highest mountain range, using a 300-person crew. “Society of the Snow” will world premiere on the Lido out-of-competition on Sept. 9th. Its official screening will be held in the Palazzo del Cinema after the awards ceremony. In 1972 Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, which had been chartered to bring Montevideo’s Old Christians Rugby Club team to Chile, crashed at an altitude of 11,712 feet in the Andes.  Of its 45 passengers – which consisted mostly of the rugby team, friends and family – 29 survived. Without food, the survivors, who belonged to Uruguay’s elite, were forced to eat the flesh of the deceased to stay alive. 19 survived an avalanche. 72 days after the crash, 16 finally made it out alive. 

EXCLUSIVE: The major fall film festivals — Venice, Toronto, and Telluride especially — may be fearing more by the day that the current combined WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes are going to put a serious crimp in their plans for glorious, star-filled fests that also can have an impact in launching awards season (just today, MGM said Zendaya’s Challengers withdrew as the Venice opening-night film and its release moved to late April 2024 due to the actors strike).

The Sarajevo Film Festival has unveiled its official selection for this year’s edition, with Elene Naveriani’s Cannes Directors’ Fortnight title Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry among the titles playing in Competition.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Forty-nine films will compete for the Heart of Sarajevo awards at the 29th Sarajevo Film Festival, which runs in Bosnia and Herzegovina from Aug. 11 to 18. The Feature Film Competition will present 11 titles, with two world premieres, one international and five regional premieres. World premieres include “Europa” from Austrian-Iranian filmmaker Sudabeh Mortezai, whose credits include 2018 Venice Days entry “Joy,” the Best Film winner at London Film Festival, and “Macondo,” which competed for the Golden Bear at Berlin Film Festival in 2014. The other world premiere is “Medium,” from Greek director Christina Ioakeimidi, whose debut feature was “Harisma” in 2010.

EXCLUSIVE: Former Berlinale Series Head Julia Fidel has been snapped up by Frank Doelger’s The Swarm and Concordia producer Intaglio Films.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Seven films have been selected for the 11th edition of Final Cut in Venice, the works-in-progress section of the 80th Venice Film Festival. Final Cut in Venice, which runs Sept. 3-5, provides support for the completion of films from Africa and five Middle Eastern countries: Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Syria. It is one of the programs run by the festival’s industry section, Venice Production Bridge. Over three days, the working copies of the selected films will be presented to producers, buyers, distributors, post-production companies and film festival programmers. The first two days are devoted to screenings, and then one-to-one meetings between the producers of the projects and the professionals attending the Venice Production Bridge will take place on the third day. The program will conclude with the awarding of prizes in kind or in cash, the purpose of which is to provide support for the films’ post-production.

Helen Mirren dedicated a Jerusalem Film Festival life-time achievement award to actors around the world on Thursday, just an hour before a looming SAG-AFTRA strike was made official.

Venice may have Luca Guadagnino’s “Challengers” with Zendaya and Josh O’Connor to open the annual soiree on the Liido, but the New York Film Festival is going to kick off with some Cannes gold. Today, the Film Society of Lincoln Center revealed that Todd Haynes’ “May December,” which premiered on la Croisette, will open the 61st edition of the New York Film Festival.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The Melbourne International Film Festival has unveiled the full lineup for its 2023 edition, with “Shayda,” by Australian-Iranian director Noora Niasari, set as the opening title. The festival will run as a live event August 3-20, at venues around the city and its suburbs, and online Aug 18 – 27. The hybrid format was developed during the COVID pandemic and MIFF found it useful as a tool to reach further away audiences and wider demographics than a strictly in-theater edition. The ‘Bright Horizons’ competition section open to films by first- or second-time feature directors contains an 11-title mix of new and recently-debuted works.