Berlinale Competition Title ‘Return to Dust’ Sells in Europe (EXCLUSIVE)

Sarah Drew said her new Lifetime movie, took an emotional toll.Inspired by the memoir from Lizbeth Meredith,  Drew plays Lizbeth, a mother, who after saying goodbye to her daughters for a visit with their father — her abusive ex-husband — discovers days later that he has kidnapped the children and taken them to Greece. For the next two years, fueled by memories of her own childhood kidnapping, Lizbeth travels to the White House and Greece, burning through every dime and favor to get her children back. One wrong move and her ex-husband will disappear with her girls.

Michael Schneider Variety Editor at LargeMTV is taking its Movie & TV Awards back to Santa Monica’s Barker Hangar. The network announced on Wednesday that its 2022 “MTV Movie & TV Awards” will air live on Sunday, June 5, followed by its second annual reality-centric “Movie & TV Awards: Unscripted” on the following night, Monday, June 6.The kudocast’s hosts, nominees, performers, presenters and other details will be announced at a later date.

The Glasgow Film Festival has withdrawn two Russian titles from its 2022 program in response to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorBerlinale Competition title “Return to Dust,” written and directed by China’s Li Ruijun, has been sold to Modern Films for U.K. and Ireland, and BTeam Pictures for Spain.

Series Mania Forum’s 2022 Co-Pro Pitching Sessions.One of Europe’s most prestigious TV competitions, with titles competing for a €50,000 ($56,000) grand prize, this year’s Sessions form part of the Forum, which runs March 22-24.The lineup is rich in projects backed by top-tier producers and sales forces, while sluiced by large themes, such as racial and gender equality.The latest from top Italian company Fandango, producer of “Gomorrah” and “My Brilliant Friend,” “The Impossible She” turns on about the first woman to be selected for a Formula 1 race.

Taeyeon has revealed that the team she had worked with for her latest studio album was not in favor of making ‘INVU’ the title track.During a recently press conference for the release of ‘INVU’, the Girls’ Generation leader spoke about the record’s recording process and delved into how the song ‘INVU’ eventually became the title track, despite pushback from her team.“The moment I heard the demo track of ‘INVU’, I immediately thought ‘This is the one’,” Taeyeon recalled. “[But] to be very honest, the team that was working on the album with me wasn’t in favor of choosing this as a title track,”“It was a tricky situation because everybody was saying ‘No’ and I was the only one who was saying ‘Yes!’,” she added.

John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentIn “False Flag” Season 3, Streamaze, an Israeli high-tech company, suffers a chemical attack at a hotel which is masterminded by terrorists.Or does it? Maybe this was an attack on an individual gone awry.Mossad’s state-of-the art data analysis identifies three suspects, all with possible reasons to commit the outrage, one of whose victims is the Israeli Minister of Culture. But suspicions don’t make them guilty.‘False Flag’ mainstay character Eitan Koppel is once more dispatched to investigate and is always two moves ahead of the local police.

Manori Ravindran International EditorIsabelle Huppert, this year’s recipient of the Berlinale’s Honorary Golden Bear, has pulled out of attending the festival after testing positive for COVID in Paris.The festival confirmed the French star’s absence on Monday night.“Unfortunately, today Isabelle Huppert has been tested positive for the coronavirus in Paris and therefore she will not be able to attend the Berlin International Film Festival,” reads a statement from the Berlinale.“While informing the festival, she emphasized that she feels very dedicated to the Berlinale and wants to participate in any possible way also to support her latest film ‘À Propos de Joan.'”Berlinale artistic director Carlo Chatrian explained that because Huppert “doesn’t feel sick,” the festival will go ahead with its planned ceremony on Tuesday honoring the “Elle” actor with its lifetime achievement award. Huppert join in via a live link from Paris.

Naman Ramachandran Projects from France-Iran and India were the big winners at this year’s Berlinale Co-Production Market, which is part of the European Film Market.The Eurimages Co-Production Development Award, endowed with €20,000 ($22,628), went to the producers of Caractères Productions from France, and Honare Khiyal from Iran for their project “My Favourite Cake” by directors Behtash Sanaeeha and Maryam Moghaddam. The VFF Talent Highlight Award with prize money of €10,000 went to director Shuchi Talati’s “Girls Will Be Girls.” The film is to be produced by Pushing Buttons Studios, an outfit founded by Indian actors Ali Fazal (“Death on the Nile”) and Richa Chadha (“Gangs of Wasseypur”) and co-produced by Sanjay Gulati and Pooja Chauhan of Crawling Angel Films (2020 Berlinale selection “The Shepherdess and the Seven Songs”) and Claire Chassagne of Dolce Vita Films (2019 Venice and Cairo winner “A Son”).

Snail Mail has shared a new demo of her ‘Valentine’ title track to celebrate Valentine’s Day – listen to ‘Adore You’ below.Lindsey Jordan released her second album last year via Matador, and will head out on a rescheduled UK and European tour later this year.The new demo version of ‘Valentine’, titled ‘Adore You’, sees a more lo-fi, scratchy initial version of the song, which eventually ended up as a widescreen rock anthem.Check it out below.The US singer-songwriter was forced to delay the run of shows in support of her latest album album after undergoing vocal cord surgery.“I’ve been struggling with my vocal health more and more each year. I lose my voice after a couple [of] days of singing,” she said at the time, adding that a doctor subsequently discovered “massive polyps”.The musician will touch down in the UK on June 23 for a performance at The Ritz in Manchester before making stop-offs in Glasgow (June 24), Bristol (28), London (29) and Brighton (30).An additional European concert in Lyon, France is scheduled for July 5 before Snail Mail heads back to the states in August.Tickets purchased previously remain valid for the new shows.

Jessica Kiang A later-life love story of the gentlest kind, Li Ruijun’s “Return to Dust” is an absorbing, beautifully framed drama that makes a virtue — possibly too much a virtue — of simplicity. The story is straightforward: Two lonely middle-aged people, each barely tolerated by their more worldly family members, are pushed into an arranged marriage, which quietly blossoms into a companionable love match.

A tender love story set in rural China, Li Ruijun’s Return To Dust is a wonderfully atmospheric entry to the Berlin Film Festival competition. It opens with the arrangement of a marriage between Ma Youtie (Wu Renlin) and Cao Guiying (Hai Qing), by two families who are patently keen to get rid of them both.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorBesides being a showcase for international films, the Berlinale is a platform for German cinema. There are more than 130 German films and co-productions screening across the festival and the European Film Market.Pre-pandemic, in 2019, 237 German films were produced a year, but only 10 to 20 a year perform well internationally, according to Simone Baumann, managing director of German Films, which promotes Teutonic movies abroad.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorDutch-Caribbean teen documentary “Shabu” has debuted an exclusive clip, ahead of its screening at Berlin Film Festival on Monday. Reservoir Docs is handling world sales, except for Netherlands, Belgium and France.The film, directed by Aruban-Dutch filmmaker Shamira Raphaëla, world premiered at IDFA, winning the best youth documentary award, and also played at Rotterdam Film Festival.

Drew Sidora is giving life as a scream queen a try. The 36-year-old actress and Real Housewife stars in Lifetime's , a movie that's part  and part Urban Legend.«I've never been able to do a scary movie -- I can't even watch scary movies!» Drew confesses to ET over video chat. «Everybody's like, 'How are doing a scary movie?' But I felt like I needed to conquer this, you know what I mean? So this was my first one and it really challenged me as an actress.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentFrançois Ozon, the prolific and provocative French director who won the Berlinale’s 2018 Golden Bear Award with “By the Grace of God,” is returning to the festival with “Peter von Kant” which will world premiere on opening night. A twist on Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s cult film “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant,” Ozon’s movie has Denis Menochet playing the tormented filmmaker, opposite Isabelle Adjani, who stars as his muse. Like the original film, “Peter von Kant” is about a film about love, jealousy and domination.

Anna Marie de la Fuente International sales, distribution and production company Axxon Media has picked up a troika of films ahead of Berlinale. Leading the pack is Askar Uzabayev’s “Happiness” (“Bakhyt”) from Kazakhstan, which world premieres in the festival’s Panorama section.Making its market debut at the EFM is Algeria-set “Soula,” written and directed by Salah Issaad, a contender at the Red Sea Festival in Jeddah last December.The third film is Amalric Gérard’s French burlesque comedy “Public Enemy No.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor“1341 Frames of Love and War,” which world premieres in the Berlinale Special section of the Berlin Film Festival, has debuted its trailer with Variety. World sales are being handled by Reservoir Docs, excluding North America, Israel, Greece and Portugal, which are being sold by the filmmakers.The film is a documentary portrait of one of the world’s leading war photographers, Israel’s Micha Bar-Am.