Berlinale-Bound Mafia Drama ‘Una Femmina’ Debuts Trailer (EXCLUSIVE)

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentRAI Com is launching sales at the online EFM on Giuseppe Piccioni’s Fascist-era drama ‘L’Ombra del giorno,” starring Italian A-lister Riccardo Scamarcio (“Three Floors”) and Benedetta Porcaroli (“Baby,” “The Catholic School”).Pic, which Scamarcio produced, is a love story with a thriller twist set in 1938, two years before Italy entered World War II. It unfolds entirely in the central Italian town of Ascoli Piceno, a hidden gem with gorgeous medieval monuments, churches and piazzas.The film’s title translates as “The Shadow of the Day,” a reference to the darkness of Fascism.Luciano (Scamarcio), a wounded World War I veteran and a sympathizer of Fascism like most Italians at the time, runs a classy restaurant overlooking the town’s ancient square.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentItalian director Matteo Garrone, who was at the 2020 Berlinale with Roberto Benigni-starrer “Pinocchio,” is set to return to the director’s chair in March with coming-of-age adventure drama “Io Capitano,” on which France’s Pathé will be handling international distribution.Garrone’s new pic, whose title translates as “I, Captain,” will be shot in Italy, Morocco and Senegal, marking the first time, Garrone –– a two-time Cannes jury prize-winner, with “Gomorrah” in 2008 and “Reality” in 2012 –– sets a feature film outside of Italy.As is customary with Garrone, story details of “Io Capitano” are being kept under wraps, besides the fact that he wrote the screenplay with regular collaborators Massimo Gaudioso and Andrea Tagliaferri and actor Massimo Ceccherini (“Pinocchio”), who also contributed to the “Pinocchio” screenplay.

Elizabeth Banks Pic Sells For Protagonist

Emiliano De Pablos Media giant Mediaset has acquired Italian distribution rights to Spanish writer-director Benito Zambrano’s drama “Lemon and Poppy Seed Cake,” produced and sold by Barcelona-based studio Filmax.News of the deal comes just before Filmax screens “Lemon and Poppy Seed Cake” to buyers at this year’s online European Film Market.Described as high-quality cinema for adults and predominantly female audiences, “Lemon and Poppy Seed Cake” adapts the novel of the same title by screenwriter and casting specialist Cristina Campos. It has sold more than 250,000 copies worldwide.A member of  Spain’s generation of directors that broke out in the 1990s,  helping Spanish movies find far larger favor with audiences at home, Zambrano’s breakout debut, 1999’s “Alone,” won the Panorama Audience Award at Berlin.

Angelique Jackson Bleecker Street has secured North American rights to Catherine Hardwicke’s new action-comedy, “Mafia Mamma,” starring Toni Collette, Monica Bellucci and Rob Huebel.Collette stars in the film as a suburban American woman, who inherits her grandfather’s mafia empire and must learn navigate her new role as the head of the family business, defying everyone’s expectations.Based on an original idea by acclaimed French novelist, screenwriter and filmmaker Amanda Sthers, Hardwicke directs from a screenplay written by Debbie Jhoon and Michael J. Feldman (Peacock’s “AP Bio,” Hulu’s”Deadbeat”).

Bleecker Street has acquired North American rights to Catherine Hardwicke’s action-comedy Mafia Mamma, starring Toni Collette (The Staircase, Nightmare Alley), Monica Bellucci (The Matrix franchise, The Man Who Sold His Skin) and Rob Huebel (The Descendants, The Goldbergs), which is heading into production in Italy in May.

Bleecker Street has acquired domestic rights to Catherine Hardwicke’s new action comedy “Mafia Mamma” starring Toni Collette, the company announced on Wednesday.The film also stars Monica Bellucci and Rob Huebel. The film is set to go into production this May in Italy.“Mafia Mamma” centers on a suburban American woman who inherits her grandfather’s Mafia empire, and guided by the Firm’s trusted consigliere defies everyone’s expectations, including her own, as the new head of the family business.“Mafia Mamma” is a Vocab Films, IDEA(L) and New Sparta Production based on an original idea by French novelist, screenwriter and filmmaker Amanda Sthers.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentAward winning film director and historian Mark Cousins (“The Story of Film: A New Generation”) is at Rome’s Cinecittà Studios making a doc titled “March on Rome” that will explore the roots of fascism by analyzing films, photographs, and other documents found in Italian archives.The high-profile documentary — pegged to the centennial of the infamous late October 1922 insurrection by which Benito Mussolini came to power in Italy — will take its cue from the Fascist propaganda film “A Noi” by director Umberto Paradisi, produced in 1923 as an official Fascist party document celebrating the March on Rome.Italian writer and director Tony Saccucci (“The Duce’s Boxer”), who originated the project and did meticulous research for it, serves as a co-writer with Cousins. Saccuci cross-checked Paradisi’s film with other sources of the time to reveal details of the pic that provide a completely new take on the history of those dramatic days, according to the synopsis.

Cristiano Ronaldo and his path to becoming one of the greatest ever footballers is not without personal tragedy.

HanWay Films has closed several international deals on McCarthy, Václav Marhoul’s drama about the infamous U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy, ahead of this month’s virtual European Film Market.

The secret’s out! Sarah Jessica Parker has been revealed as the top-secret designer of many of the heels in And Just Like That, particularly those from the faux-vintage label entitled Duchessa Gardini.

Denis Zakaria says he is looking to emulate Manchester United star Paul Pogba after he completed a move to his former club Juventus in the January transfer window.

Oscar Isaac (“Dune,” “Moon Knight”) and Jared Leto (“House of Gucci,” “Morbius”) sat down for a virtual chat for Variety’s Actors on Actors, presented by Amazon Studios. For more, click here.In “House of Gucci,” Jared Leto vanishes into a larger-than-life performance as fashion world ne’er-do-well Paolo Gucci. By contrast, Oscar Isaac’s turns in Paul Schrader’s “The Card Counter” (as William Tell, a poker player with a dark past in the Iraq War) and Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune” (as Duke Leto, the head of a powerful interstellar dynasty) are tightly contained.But the two actors still find many similarities to discuss, including their future as Marvel superheroes — Leto’s Morbius and Isaac’s Moon Knight — and their alternate careers as musicians starting in the 1990s.

Christopher Vourlias Gianluca and Massimiliano De Serio, the Italian directing duo best known internationally for their Locarno premiere “Seven Acts of Mercy,” are developing a colonial-era drama that they’re presenting during the Rotterdam Film Festival’s CineMart co-production market.“Prince Aden” begins in 1935, when a 16-year-old Somali boy passes the test to become a dubat, a soldier in the Italian army that has invaded Ethiopia on the orders of Mussolini. Aden Sicré is sent to the frontlines, but after being injured on his first day of service he’s forced to return home – where he is unexpectedly hailed as a war hero by the Fascist regime.Five years later, Aden is recruited to take part in a recreation of the daily life of an African village at the newly built Mostra d’Oltremare exhibition center in Naples.

Production company MUBI has acquired Julie Ha and Eugene Yi’s documentary “Free Chol Soo Lee” that premiered last week at Sundance, the company said in a release.The film has been acquired for North America, UK, Ireland, Latin America, German, Austria, Italy and Turkey and will release theatrically in 2022 in the U.S., with plans for other regions coming later.The documentary is about a movement in the 1970s in San Francisco, where a 20-year-old Korean immigrant Chol Soo Lee gets racially profiled and convicted of a Chinatown gang murder. Lee is sentenced to life and fights to survive until a journalist takes up his case and ignites a social justice movement in the Asian American community.

Wyatte Grantham-Philips editor“Free Chol Soo Lee” has been acquired by global distributor, streamer and production company MUBI.The documentary, which premiered last week at the Sundance Film Festival, will come to U.S. theaters in 2022, with release plans in other territories (Latin America, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Italy, Turkey, the U.K.

Elle Mulvaney has opened up about her close bond with her Coronation Street co-stars.

Supporters are generally feeling confident Manchester United have made the right choice as Amad gears up for a loan transfer to Scottish champions Rangers.