Cannes Fresh Faces: Directors’ Fortnight Selection ‘A Night of Knowing Nothing’ Director Payal Kapadia

Naman Ramachandran Starz-backed streamer Lionsgate Play has revealed ambitious expansion plans in Southeast Asia, local commissions in India and a 60-strong English-language programming slate.In Asia, the service is currently available in India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.“We’re certainly looking to go out to all South Asian territories, which is Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives: these are some of the territories that we’re going to go immediately,” Amit Dhanuka, executive VP at Lionsgate

EXCLUSIVE: Vidyut Jammwal, one of Indian cinema’s biggest action stars, has set his first project as a producer, the espionage thriller IB 71, in which he will also star.

Mumbai-based filmmaker Payal Kapadia has bagged the Oeil d'or (Golden Eye) award for Best Documentary for her film "A Night of Knowing Nothing" at Cannes Film Festival."A Night of Knowing Nothing" has emerged the winner in a list of 28 documentaries submitted from around the world.The announcement was made through the Twitter account of Cannes Independent movie selection handle Quinzaine Des Real on Saturday.The tweet read: "The Oeil d'Or, the award for best documentary presented at the Cannes

Academy Awards, too. Only one female filmmaker has ever won Cannes top award (Jane Campion for “The Piano”), so a win for Ducournau or Mia Hansen-Løve ("Berman Island") would be history making.

Kira Kovalenko’s Russian drama Unclenching The Fists won the Grand Prize in Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard sidebar this year.

MK2 Films has sold Cannes buzz pic The Worst Person In The World to MUBI following an auction for UK/Ire rights. The buyers has also taken Indian rights.

EXCLUSIVE: Indie distributor and SVOD service MUBI is continuing its remarkable buying spree at Cannes 2021. The growing player has now taken rights from The Match Factory to Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Cannes Competition drama Memoria for Germany, Italy, Latin America (excluding Mexico, Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador) and India.

Naman Ramachandran Indian auteur Anurag Kashyap’s Good Bad Films (“Choked”) has boarded debutant Indian filmmaker Suman Sen’s “Eka” (“Solo”) as a producer.The project was selected as one of the participant’s at this year’s La Fabrique Cinéma de l’Institut Français, a tailored program helping talented young directors from emerging countries increase their international exposure.France’s Dominique Welinski (“House of my Fathers”) is already on board as a producer via outfit DW, as are

Microsoft executive vice-president of gaming and Xbox chief Phil Spencer has revealed that the company is considering purchasing a studio from either India, Africa or South America.The comments were made during an interview with The Guardian, where Spencer stated that he would be “surprised” if an acquisition of some sort doesn’t happen in the near future.

EXCLUSIVE: Streamer and theatrical distributor Mubi has closed its first on-the-ground Cannes business, signing a multi-territory deal for Sebastian Meise’s second feature Great Freedom, which premiered here in Un Certain Regard.

Sean Penn’s “Flag Day” PremieresSean Penn’s “Flag Day” premiered at the festival on Saturday, marking the third time he’s been in Main Competition section as a director — the other times for “The Pledge” in 2001 and “The Last Face” in 2016.TheWrap’s Steve Pond wrote, “While the film sometimes struggles with disparate tones, it’s a solid, subtle drama that opts in most cases for restraint over excess.

Naman Ramachandran Indian filmmaker Rahul Jain, whose new film “Invisible Demons” has its world premiere at Cannes in the cinema for the climate special section, is prepping “Falling Star,” a limited fiction series.Jain is developing the series, which is likely to consist of six or seven one-hour episodes, via his Jann Pictures. It will see him reunite with Heino Deckert’s Ma.Ja.De.

Finally, Black Widow has hit theatres in the US and several other countries (not India, as of yet, unfortunately!) and is predicted to be the biggest box office draw in the COVID-19 pandemic era, overthrowing Vin Diesel and John Cena's F9.

K.J. Yossman “Basic Instinct” director Paul Verhoeven slammed the new “puritanism” he perceives has taken over cinema during a charged Cannes press conference for his latest film “Benedetta,” saying critics “don’t want to look at the reality of life.”The Belgian auteur has received a generally positive response to his risqué new film, which stars Virginie Efira and Daphne Patakia as two nuns embarking on an illicit lesbian affair in their convent.

Naman Ramachandran It has been a rapid escalation on to the world stage for Abdullah Mohammad Saad, one of the brightest young filmmakers from Bangladesh, with his sophomore effort “Rehana” selected in the Un Certain Regard strand at the Cannes Film Festival.Saad debuted with the searing “Live From Dhaka” (2016), a portrayal of a man increasingly desperate to get out of Bangladesh’s capital city, which won top prizes at the Singapore International Film Festival and played at Rotterdam and

Sharon Stone recently shocked everyone with her comments related to the filming of one of Basic Instinct's explicit scenes. The actress in her recently released memoir opened up about the infamous interrogation scene and suggested that she was tricked into it.

Basic Instinct‘s famous leg-crossing scene.In her recent memoir The Beauty Of Living Twice, Stone stated Verhoeven tricked her into shooting the scene without underwear – among various other anecdotes about sexism and intimidation in the industry – by suggesting that Stone’s underwear was reflecting the light poorly, and asking her to remove them with the caveat that no frontal nudity would appear in the final film.“My memory is radically different from Sharon’s memory,” the director told