Christine Vachon: Todd Haynes & Pioneering Film Producer Talks ‘Past Lives’ & Cinema’s Indie Future [Karlovy Vary Interview]

Moviegoers already knew that Todd Haynes‘ “May December” would open the 61st annual New York Film Festival this Fall. But now another North American premiere will happen in NYC.  Sofia Coppola‘s “Priscilla” will be the festival’s Centerpiece on October 6 before it hits theaters later that month courtesy of A24.

Film at Lincoln Center has teed up Sofia Coppola’s Priscillaas the Centerpiece selection for the 61st New York Film Festival.

Venice may have Luca Guadagnino’s “Challengers” with Zendaya and Josh O’Connor to open the annual soiree on the Liido, but the New York Film Festival is going to kick off with some Cannes gold. Today, the Film Society of Lincoln Center revealed that Todd Haynes’ “May December,” which premiered on la Croisette, will open the 61st edition of the New York Film Festival.

Todd Hayes’ May December will open the New York Film Festival on September 29, organizers said today.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter Todd Haynes’ soapy romantic drama “May December,” starring Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore, will open the 61st New York Film Festival. The movie is scheduled for Sept. 29 at Alice Tully Hall with the director and cast expected to attend in person. Following its NYFF premiere, “May December” will be released theatrically on Nov. 17 before landing on Netflix on Dec. 1. “May December,” which centers on a scandalous age-gap relationship, premiered in May at the Cannes Film Festival to rave reviews and sold to Netflix for $20 million. Moore and “Riverdale” star Charles Melton play Gracie and Joe, a married couple with a 20-year age gap. Their relationship sparked a national tabloid scandal because Joe was just 13 when the two fell in love. Decades later, their union is put to the test when Portman’s character Elizabeth, a popular TV actress, travels to Georgia to study the life of Gracie, whom she’ll be playing in a movie.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent The Locarno Film Festival, Thessaloniki International Film Festival, Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, Rotterdam”s IFFR and the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival have joined forces in a new initiative called Launchpad which aims to nurture budding film professionals. The basic purpose of Launchpad is to facilitate the formative process of selected emerging film professionals working in international sales, marketing, traditional and online distribution, exhibition and programming, and funds and commissions. The idea is to give them facilitated access to a network of European film festivals spread throughout the yearly calendar.

Jessica Kiang At a festival the size and stature of the Czech Republic’s Karlovy Vary, new discoveries are a daily occurrence. But it is rare that at festival’s end, one of the most excitingly buzzy emergent names should be that of a filmmaker who died 27 years ago and who has languished in relative obscurity – certainly in the Anglophone world – ever since. And yet here we are, at the tail end of an 11-film Yasuzo Masumura retrospective – the biggest of its kind ever mounted at an international film festival – that has proved, in a word, revelatory.  It’s not just in terms of blowing the dust from this extraordinary, unjustly overlooked filmmaker’s catalog, but also in the broader sense of being an exemplary model for how to connect a vibrant, youthful regional audience to global film history. There is a classic film fan born every minute, but in Karlovy Vary this year, you could feel it happen in real time during the screenings of Masumura’s  “A Cheerful Girl” (1957), “Hoodlum Soldier” (1965), “Spider Tattoo” (1966) and so on.  

Winner of the Caméra d’Or for the best first feature film last month at the Cannes Film Festival, writer-director Pham Thien An’s “Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell” is a deeply felt three-hour spiritual odyssey about grief in its many forms.  READ MORE: ‘You Sing Loud, I Sing Louder’ Review: A Vulnerable Ewan McGregor Can’t Save This Father-Daughter Addiction Drama [Karlovy Vary] An impressive tracking shot moves from a nighttime soccer game through a lively street in Saigon before settling on friends having send-off drinks for a member of the group who is forsaking the city for a simple life in the mountains.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Nata­lie Port­man will be honored at the 49th edition of Deauville Amer­i­can Film Fes­ti­val, which will bestow her with its Deau­ville Talent Award. She will attend a screening of her new film, Todd Haynes’ sex scandal drama “May Decem­ber,” at the festival, which runs from Sept. 1 to 10. Among her career highlights, the festival singles out her performance in Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan,” for which she won an Oscar in 2011. She was also an Oscar nominee for Mike Nichols’ “Closer” in 2005 and Pablo Larraín’s “Jackie” in 2017. Other standout roles the festival pointed to were her performances in “Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace” in 1999, Anthony Minghella’s “Cold Mountain” in 2003, and Kar-Wai Wong’s “My Blueberry Nights” in 2007.

The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival’s Eastern Promises industry strand has unveiled the winners of it’s project showcases, which took place at the fest from July 2-4.

The unseen and the obscene are the subject of Pascal Plante’s disturbingly brilliant psychological horror, which takes an overused genre — the serial killer movie — and an often-misused technique — dark Lynchian surrealism — and somehow alchemizes the two into something new and original. It’s strong meat for sure (the courtroom-drama framing is deceptive, since this is not really a film about justice), but word-of-mouth cult status beckons, and a healthy nightlife on the genre circuit is assured.

EXCLUSIVE: Christine Vachon offered her outlook on some of the industry’s most pressing issues at a keynote masterclass session this afternoon at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.

Will Tizard Contributor In Robert Hloz’s sci-fi feature debut “Restore Point,” second chances are big business. In the year 2041, anyone who has an unnatural death has the right to be brought back to life, provided they’ve dutifully created a backup of their personality called a “restore point.” Naturally, some object to the notion of artificially extending life ad infinitum, wherein the story begins to get complicated. “I wanted to make a sci-fi film since I was a little kid,” Hloz says, “but I would never guess that it will happen to be my debut. I thought maybe third, fourth film.”

Marta Balaga Before Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie,” there was “Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story.” “Mattel did pay a visit to our office,” said acclaimed producer Christine Vachon at Karlovy Vary Film Festival. Back in 1987, she was helping out on the Todd Haynes and Cynthia Schneider-produced movie. The now-banned film, dedicated to Carpenter’s tragic life and her untimely passing, featured dolls instead of actors. “Todd bought all these toys in garage sales. There were Barbies, but also all these Barbie rip-offs, so he was able to prove to Mattel that it was off brand,” Vachon said in conversation with Variety international features editor Leo Barraclough.

You know the modern world is in a dark place when even a middle-aged Iranian woman says that things were better in the old days. Indeed, for his feature debut, director Behrooz Karamizade has fashioned an intelligent and thoughtful drama that should travel well in today’s climate of insecurity, offering a fresh perspective on a multiplicity of worldwide issues (trickle-down theory, the gig economy) while adding an especially nuanced subplot exploring the refugee crisis and the mechanics of people-trafficking.  

Before Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie captured the zeitgeist with their Warner Bros-backed Barbie, the popular doll was the subject of a much darker indie pic directed by Todd Haynes.

Brave is the man who will sign up for a real-life father-daughter road movie set the aftermath of an acrimonious divorce, but Ewan McGregor his no regrets about pairing up with his eldest child — by his first wife — for You Sing Loud, I Sing Louder, which screened as a tribute to the actor in Karlovy Vary. Set in a dreamlike American West, and very far removed from the specifics of the McGregors’ own personal situation, it finds a reformed alcoholic dad trying to reconnect with his offspring after collecting her from hospital. She thinks they’re off to visit an artist friend of her father’s, but the truth is that, in a bid to absolve himself of many years’ worth of guilt, he’s taking her to rehab.

Marta Balaga Forget “Star Wars” – Ewan McGregor preferred to show his kids another one of his films. “I wasn’t there when [my daughter] Clara watched ‘Trainspotting’ for the first time. But I did used to show my kids ‘the toilet scene.’ Just for a laugh. It’s a unique situation, perhaps, for a father to be able to show his children footage of him going down the toilet,” he said at Karlovy Vary Film Festival. The trauma didn’t stop there. “I have a memory of showing Clara ‘Moulin Rouge!,’ however. I think she was 9 years old. I put it on, and then I hear this wailing and crying. I rushed in, asking if I should switch it off and she went: ‘Noooo’!”

The raucous period drama “Firebrand” was the official opening-night film at the 57th annual Karlovy Vary International Film Festival on Friday night in the spa resort town outside Prague, but there was a lot more going on in and around the Grand Hall at the Hotel Thermal than just the on-screen battle between Alicia Vikander’s Catherine Parr and Jude Law’s King Henry VIII. It also included the presentation of awards to Vikander and Russell Crowe, the usual complement of opening-night speeches, an extended dance number that appeared to be performed on ice skates (though it wasn’t on ice but on an artificial surface that mimicked ice but could be walked on safely) and, during breaks and after the movie, complete concerts by the British band Morcheeba and by Crowe’s nine-piece band, Indoor Garden Party.

Given the stories that Russell Crowe was still celebrating his open-air concert at Karlovy Vary’s Thermal Hotel until the small hours of the morning, there was little surprise that the actor was late for his meeting with a group of international journalists. However, the 59-year-old showed no signs of wear and tear, and even graciously insisted the press conference go on past its strict 30-minute cut-off time.