Climate Change, Societal Ills, Mysticism Among Subjects Explored in South Asian Oscar Contenders

Steven J. Horowitz Senior Music Writer Nestled amid a tale of hardship and torment, “Keep It Movin'” is a bright spot in the newly released adaptation of “The Color Purple.” Just as sisters Nettie and Celie (Halle Bailey and Phylicia Pearl Mpasi) are about to be torn from one another, they find a brief moment of respite and optimism as they sing to one another on the beach. “Nothing’s gonna take you down, oh / Just let it go / Life can never break your soul,” sings Nettie, instilling a feeling of hope that flickers and wanes in Celie as the film endures.

Jordan Moreau Lee Sun-kyun, a South Korean actor who starred in the Oscars’ 2020 best picture winner “Parasite,” died Wednesday morning, according to the Associated Press and the South Korean news agency Yonhap. He was 48. He was found dead in a car in a park in central Seoul, according to the AP.

NME about how her campaign is about “how climate change affects us all”.Louise Harris released the stirring ‘We Tried’ in November, with the track already having topped the UK iTunes singles chart. Broadcaster Chris Packham has got behind her bid for a Christmas hit, while iconic musician and producer Brian Eno describing the song as “a powerful weapon”.Harris, 25, from Hertfordshire, was arrested after performing the track at a peaceful protest outside Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s home at the end of November.

December is the most popular month for charitable giving by Americans – accounting for about a third of all donations made per year. Call it the spirit of the holidays, repeated viewings of A Christmas Carol, or a rush to get in tax-deductible gifts before the calendar year runs out.

John Bleasdale Guest Contributor When writer-director Mohamed Kordofani first conceived of the film “Goodbye Julia,” he realized that he didn’t have a single friend from South Sudan — “and there are millions who live in Khartoum.” Now he has hundreds, he tells Variety. The first Sudanese film to premiere in the Un Certain Regard sidebar in Cannes, his debut feature won the Prix de la Liberté and is now the official Sudanese entry for the Academy Awards, with Lupita Nyong’o on board as an executive producer. The film had its Middle East and North Africa premiere this week at El Gouna Film Festival, where Kordofani was awarded the Variety MENA Region Talent Award.

As an internationally renowned director, Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho is, in a manner of speaking, a citizen of the world: Regularly premiering films at Cannes, frequently traveling to festivals elsewhere in Europe, Australia, and the United States.

EXCLUSIVE: D. Smith’s breakout documentary Kokomo City, a top contender for Oscar recognition, will make its debut on Showtime and Paramount+ on February 2, Deadline can reveal.

One of the favorites to make the Oscar documentary feature shortlist this year takes viewers to a remote area of Estonia, within the healing space of the smoke sauna. It is an ancient tradition in that part of the world, a way of “connecting family and friends to cleanse body and soul inside a place of peace and contemplation.”

At the beginning of the Netflix Oscar-contending short documentary Camp Courage, young Milana Abdurashytova takes out paper and makers and draws what she calls “a home of my dreams.” It’s a lovely cottage on a hill, with clouds dotting a sky of blue.

EXCLUSIVE: On the opening day of Oscar shortlist voting, Hulu announced it has acquired one of the contenders for short documentary recognition – Relighting Candles: The Tim Sullivan Story, executive produced by Melissa McCarthy and Ben Falcone.

In a clip from the documentary, Little Richard: I Am Everything, we hear the young entertainer singing an early version of what would become his signature tune, “Tutti Frutti.” But surprise! The original lyrics were different than the ones we know today: “Tutti frutti, good booty/Tutti frutti, good booty!”

Like the Japanese with their Godzilla movies, the Koreans are partial to a bit of post-apocalyptic social satire, and Um Tae-Hwa’s box office hit Concrete Utopia follows a path trailblazed in 2013 by Bong Joon-ho’s cult sci-fi Snowpiercer. Adapted from the popular webtoon Pleasant Outcast by Kim Soong Nyung and partly inspired by British writer J.G. Ballard’s 1975 novel High-Rise, it centers on a Korean apartment block whose residents become lawless after a terrifying earthquake rips through the country.

Naman Ramachandran Ena Sendijarević’s “Sweet Dreams,” Netherlands’ submission in the Academy Awards international feature category, has secured North American distribution via Dekanalog. The film had its world premiere at Locarno, where it won the Pardo for best performance for Renée Soutendijk (“Suspiria”) and the second prize of the junior jury. The film debuted in North America in Toronto’s Centrepiece section and won the Silver Hugo new directors award at Chicago.

Naman Ramachandran Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) is teaming with AI Singapore and the Agency for Science, Technology and Research to launch the S$70 million ($52.3 million) National Multimodal LLM Program (NMLP). The initiative, funded by Singapore’s National Research Foundation, will develop the country’s research and engineering capabilities in multi-modal large language (LLM) models. It will help to plug a critical gap because current LLM models are heavily Western originated.

Well, aren’t we happy we didn’t place this one on our 100 Most Anticipated Films of 2024 feature (not that it had shot, so it wouldn’t have been ready). And it looks like the rumors are true.

EXCLUSIVE: Adam McKay, who has been outspoken about the threat of global warming, is deciding to make his next directorial project a climate-related one. Insiders add that with that project now getting all of McKay’s attention, he will no longer be directing the Netflix movie Average Height, Average Build, and the film will no longer be moving forward.

Extinction Rebellion have targeted BAE’s Govan shipyard with a graffiti protest over its contribution to climate change as well as the war in Gaza.

One of Manchester Airport’s lounges has been named among the worst in the UK according to a study by consumer group Which?. The Manchester Terminal 1 Escape Lounge received a score of just one and a half stars based on secret inspections.

The Scottish Government will give another £2 million to address climate change loss and damage, the First Minister has announced.

“The work that exhibitors have done in this market is nothing short of exceptional,” Luke Vetere, Managing Director of Majid Al Futtaim Distribution, one of the largest theatrical distributors in the MENA region, told a crowd of industry figures this morning at Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Film Festival.