Canneseries Long Form Competition: Israel’s ‘The Lesson’ Scoops Two Prizes

Lil Nas X has confirmed details of his first headline tour. The Long Live Montero tour, named after his 2021 album of the same name, begins in September with a run of shows in North America.

EXCLUSIVE: The Eurovision brand continues its North American expansion. Leading Canadian producer Insight Productions, a Boat Rocker company, has teamed with Eurovision Canada rights owners and ASC, Inc., one of the companies behind NBC’s music reality competition series American Song Contest, to debut the first-ever Eurovision Canada in 2023.

The 35th Israel Film Festival in Los Angeles, the largest showcase of Israeli cinema and television in North America, unspools this year both in theaters and virtually from May 5th – 26th.  The Festival’s Opening Night film on May 5th is director Avi Nesher’s critically acclaimed Image of Victory, nominated for 15 Ophir Awards; the evening also serves to celebrate Israel’s Independence Day.  With leading Israeli filmmakers and talent in attendance for post screening Q&As, this year’s Festival will include five U.S. Premieres, six West Coast Premieres and 14 Los Angeles Premieres among the 30 award-winning features, documentaries and short films, announced Meir Fenigstein, founder and executive director of the Israel Film Festival in L.A.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentBritBox, the ITV and the BBC’s streaming service, is set to roll out across the Nordics with a raft of original programming on April 28. BritBox International will launch in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland, and will include BritBox Originals, exclusive new series, as well as TV classics.

EXCLUSIVE: Israel, the nation that brought the likes of Fauda and Shtisel to the world, has become the latest regulatory battleground as producers push for streamer quotas and greater ownership of IP.

Kyle Abbott is making his return to Genoa City for a drama-filled storyline.

Canada’s most iconoclastic sketch comedy series is back, with Prime Video sharing a new trailer for the long-in-the-works revival of “The Kids in the Hall”.

The 35th Israel Film Festival in Los Angeles will open next month with the L.A. premiere of Avi Nesher’s Image of Victory, which was nominated for a leading 15 Israeli Academy Ophir Awards last year. The film kicks off the hybrid in-person and online festival that runs May 5-26 and will see Henry Winkler receive the IFF Career Achievement Award and philanthropist David Wiener bestowed with the IFF Humanitarian Award.

Israel's entry in Eurovision 2022 will not get to perform live in Turin, Italy due to strikes and security concerns.

Getting wedding inspiration? Nearly four months after Michelle Young and Nayte Olukoya‘s engagement aired, the duo have already begun thinking about their dream nuptials.

John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentIsraeli series “The Lesson,” a taut half-hour series parable on the vicious spiral of social media confrontation, took top honors on Wednesday night at a spirited 2022 Canneseries festival whose main competition was buoyed by titles from some of the boldest players in the business.With “The Lesson” co-lead, the extraordinary Maya Landsmann, walking off with best performance for her nuanced turn as a super-sized troubled teen who goads her liberal teacher into a personal attack on her physical appearance – a put-down which goes viral – the series can rate as the big winner at this year’s event.Produced by Yochanan Kredo at Jasmine TV for Israeli broadcaster Kan 11 – and scoring huge numbers when aired on the network –  the show, written by Deakla Keydar and directed by Eitan Zur (“Asylum City”), also exemplifies the virtues of much best Israeli TV drama: Taut, pointed writing, great acting, direction which serves the drama, production values while wringing the most out of low budgets. “Thus is a hugely crafted series, everybody loved it at Canneseries,” Albin Lewi, Canneseries artistic director, told Variety.

Holly Jones Progressive and passionate civics teacher Amir (Doron Ben-David) seeks to dispel the broad stereotypes his class paints of their Arab neighbors after brazen and troubled teen Leanne (Maya Landsmann) incites her peers in class to her rallying call of “Kill the Arabs” while presenting an unsettling scenario for a class project: Bar Arabs from a local swimming pool. Extolling the virtues of empathy is no small feat, however. Amir soon finds himself caught up in a viral conflict with Leanne that calls his character into question and speaks to the often-hasty and out-of-context judgment the populace is eager to make when hard-pressed to do the right thing.“The Lesson,” an all-encompassing six-episode socio-political drama produced by Yochanan Kredo at Jasmine TV for Israeli broadcaster Kan 11, takes a gripping plunge – confirmed by huge figures on Kan 11 – into various forms of prejudice and the way they spread and seed within a community.

Marta Balaga Bowing in Canneseries official selection, six-episode miniseries “Infiniti” isn’t just for sci-fi aficionados, Empreinte Digitale producer Eric Laroche told Variety.Co-produced between France and Belgium, the latest Canal Plus offering – created by Stéphane Pannetier and Julien Vanlerenberghe – interweaves multiple storylines, moving from the International Space Station (ISS) that suddenly goes silent to an investigation in Kazakhstan, where a beheaded, wax-covered body is found by a local cop.Discouraged by his superiors, Isaak (Daniyar Alshinov) decides to solve the mystery, while French astronaut Anna Zarathi (Céline Sallette) pursues her dream of space travel.“Having more than one genre, especially in a TV series, is very interesting. But one of them still needs to form the skeleton of the show.

Cancer Bats posted a new track called ‘Pressure Mind’ on Friday, the third track to be released from their upcoming seventh studio album ‘Psychic Jailbreak’, which will be released on 15 Apr.On it, the band’s Liam Cormier says: “Sometimes you just need a release with everything going on in the world, this song is our punk rock way of blowing off some steam. [The] melodic verses and bridge are all about introspection and thinking how we get ourselves in these mindsets time and time again, and then the chorus is all about letting it out!”The band have also teamed up with Anchored Coffee Roasters to make a special limited edition coffee blend to accompany the release because, well, I don’t know, why not I guess.

EXCLUSIVE: Dave Logan, creator of Acorn TV’s Harry Wild and writer on Roald Dahl film To Olivia, is developing a crime drama TV series set in Malta with his Harry Wild co-writer Jo Spain.

John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentThe latest from Belgium’s Eyeworks Film & TV Drama and director Wouter Bouvijn – who teamed on Canneseries hits “The Twelve” and “Red Light” – “1985,” sold by Studiocanal, works on multiple levels as a coming-of-age series.Two young Gendarmarie police recruits, Marc and Franky, and his sis Vicky, a law student and pirate radio DJ, move to Brussels. They are soon caught up in police corruption – insider drug trading, heavy fire arms robbery – and the rise of  the brutal Nijvel gang.Created by Willem Wallyn (“Albatros”), this is the coming-of-age story of three unbreakable friends loss of innocence, and that of a nation in its leaders.It is also an origins tale, of the forging of the modern age. Belgium’s distrust of its forces of law and order and political class rankles to this day, shared now with other countries, as does its politics of confrontation which Vicky denounces in an on-air monolog in Ep.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentFederation Entertainment has boarded the anticipated Israeli series “The Lesson,” which is headlined by Doron Ben-David (“Fauda”) and Maya Landsmann (“Zero Hour”). “The Lesson” will compete at Canneseries on April 2.Directed by Eitan Zur (“Asylum City”) and penned by Deakla Keydar (“Zero Hour”), the six-part drama revolves around Amir, a 43-year-old teacher, and Lian, a 17-year-old student, who engage in an emotional conflict in a fight for justice that bursts far out of the classroom.The series explores the ripple effect of their violent clash from the classroom to the entire school, then throughout the community, to the media and into the complex political reality Israel is facing today.