Cannes Camera D’Or Winner Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic Signs With UTA & Brillstein Entertainment Group

Marta Balaga Female filmmakers need to make sure they can continue telling the kind of stories they want, said Croatian director Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović during Sarajevo Film Festival’s CineLink Talk. Kusijanović, who recently won the Camera d’Or at Cannes for her debut feature “Murina,” criticized the Oscars’ new diversity rules for encouraging a form of reverse engineering.

Christopher Vourlias Grasshopper Film has acquired U.S. rights to Omar El Zohairy’s “Feathers,” which won the Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival’s Critics’ Week, Variety can reveal.The Egyptian writer-director’s feature debut, which is being repped by the boutique Athens-based production company and sales agent Heretic, has also sold to China (Huanxi Media), Italy (Wanted) and Greece (Cinobo).

EXCLUSIVE: Korean director Lee Na-Jeong has signed with Brillstein Entertainment Partners for management.

UTA has signed Alexis Ohanian, founder of Seven Seven Six and former executive chairman of Reddit, in all areas.

Angelique Jackson United Talent Agency (UTA) has signed Alexis Ohanian, the founder of the software-enabled venture firm Seven Seven Six and former executive chair of Reddit, for representation in all areas.Ohanian is best known for co-founding Reddit in 2005. It’s one of the largest websites in the U.S.

Angelique Jackson Oscar-winning filmmaker Rodney Rothman (“Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse”) and former MGM co-president of production Adam Rosenberg have teamed up to launch the new “event entertainment” company, Modern Magic.“Helping lead the team that made Into the Spider-Verse was a life-altering experience that forever changed what I thought was possible,” Rothman said, announcing the new venture.

While the internet IRL is drenched in morbidity and toxicity, Japanese filmmaker Mamoru Hosoda imagines a brighter semi-utopia in “Belle.” Five billion users have signed up to a virtual society called “U,” a vast chasm of lights and screens, and is populated by algorithmically generated avatars that supposedly bring out the person’s inner strengths.

EXCLUSIVE: Stephanie March has signed with Echo Lake Entertainment for management in all areas.

Well, that’s a wrap on the 2021 Cannes Film Festival; 56 reviews and counting (there might be one or two more stragglers to come, but we are basically done). It was a pretty great festival and strong year despite the COVID-19 protocol confusion, those changing rules, and Spike Lee spoiling the Palme d’Or prize early (Spike!!).

Conspiracy theorists have spent more time researching their subjects than you have and have facts ready at their disposable with which to bury you in. Take filmmaker Oliver Stone, for example.

Spike Lee has apologized after slipping up and announcing the top winner at this year's Cannes Film Festival. On Saturday, the director announced that had won the 2021 Palme d'Or, but he was supposed to reveal a different prize winner instead. «I have no excuses.

“This stuff is junk, what we’re doing,” Bill Murray deadpans in the middle of “New Worlds: The Cradle of Civilization.” The live audience onscreen—a strange sight after a year and a half of social distancing and no live performances—laughs. Murray hams it up: “Is it too late to get some moussaka?” Then he smiles knowingly and nods.

Though “Nitram” never depicts the unspoken horrific massacre that its protagonist commits, the entire film queasily pulses in the anxious anticipation of the unspeakable event. It’s not an easy film to watch, knowing what’s coming but remaining completely powerless, not unlike watching a car crash in motion and being unable to stop it.

Note to self: do not get old. The alternative, i.e., death, may not be very pleasant but, sedate and dignified and swathed in vaguely biblical white sheets, it doesn’t get anything like the bad press that old age does in Gaspar Noé‘s “Vortex.” Let’s not forget that in “Enter the Void,” this same director made death seem like quite the trip – infinitely preferable to the progressively demeaning ravages of dementia or the Sword of Damocles that is a dodgy ticker.

Not even a global pandemic could stop prolific South Korean director Hong Sangsoo, but his latest film deals with ideas and tensions that echo questions and perspectives brought to the surface by this global health crisis. Playing in the Cannes Premiere section of this year’s Festival de Cannes, “In Front of Your Face” only slowly reveals its hand.

While the internet IRL is drenched in morbidity and toxicity, Japanese filmmaker Mamoru Hosoda imagines a brighter semi-utopia in “Belle.” Five billion users have signed up to a virtual society called “U,” a vast chasm of lights and screens, and is populated by algorithmically generated avatars that supposedly bring out the person’s inner strengths.

Director Vincent Maël Cardona uses western Europe in the early-1980s as the canvas upon which he paints his layered and achingly genuine portrait of young love, familial bondage, artistic aspiration, and universal chaos. Unburdened by a firm connection to any one genre or narrative archetype, “Magnetic Beats” tells a simple story with a full arsenal of source music, thoughtful set design, and crisp acting at all levels to pull off this love letter to a particular moment in time.

Bruno Dumont’s peculiar blend of the transcendental with a clumsy kind of realism was a natural fit to “Jeannette” and “Joan of Arc,” both films dealing with the same presumed miracle — an ordinary little girl claiming to be guided by Saints.

Christopher Vourlias Mubi, the London-based streamer and theatrical distributor that’s been on a buying spree this week in Cannes, has acquired the rights for North America, U.K., and a host of other territories for Kira Kovalenko’s “Unclenching the Fists,” which took home the top prize in the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard section, Variety can reveal.Set in a former mining town in Russia’s North Ossetia region, “Unclenching the Fists” is the story of a young woman, played by Milana

It’s a good thing you can’t catch a virus from an image because if you could, just a few frames of Kirill Serebrennikov‘s fabulously yeasty, bilious, dank Competition title, “Petrov’s Flu” would bring all of Cannes‘ anti-Covid measures to naught.