Constantin Film’s Martin Moszkowicz on the American Film Market, Navigating a ‘Perfect Storm’ and the German Giant’s Big Plays for 2024

Adam Sandler worked with his entire family for his new Netflix animated film Leo and they all walked the red carpet together at the premiere!

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Tessa Ía, who broke out heading “After Lucía,” Michel Franco’s Cannes winning first feature, is set to star in “Hyperballad,” which offers what is proving one of the most potent mixtures in cutting-edge Latin American film: Genre, ambition, and a first-feature young woman director. Directed by Alejandra Villalba García, “Hyperballad” (“Hiperbalada”) is lead produced by Hiperbalada, a production house lead by Villalba Garcñia and pic producer Carlos Paz.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor More than 800 film industry professionals in Germany and Austria have signed an open letter opposing antisemitism, with the number of signatories continuing to grow. The signatories include a wide range of directors, writers, producers and other film industry professionals.

Marta Balaga India Donaldson picked up the Polish Film Institute Award for her upcoming feature “Good One” at the American Film Festival in Wrocław, coming with a $50,000 cash prize for post-production in Poland. “It’s an affirmation of how we have been working and what we have been working towards,” Los Angeles-based Donaldson told Variety after the ceremony. “Good One” – presented during AFF’s industry event U.S.

Naman Ramachandran Universal’s “Trolls Band Together” has reclaimed the top spot at the U.K. and Ireland box office from stablemate “Five Nights At Freddy’s.” In its third weekend, “Trolls Band Together” collected £1.8 million ($2.2 million) for a total of £12.7 million ($15.7 million). In the process it won back the pole position it had ceded to Universal’s “Five Nights At Freddy’s,” which in its second weekend took in £1.2 million in second place for a total of £8.7 million.

“My Neighbor Totoro” — with a throaty, gravely American accent.The freaky heron takes a little boy named Mahito into a magical world where his thought-to-be-dead mother could be hiding.“Your mother, she’s awaiting your rescue. I’ll be your guide,” Pattinson croaks like a chain-smoking frog in his first-ever animated role.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Filmax has boarded “The Monster of Many Noses,” which marks yet another feature debut of a Barcelona-based female director, Abigail Schaaff, here in a movie which blends fantasy genre and local lore to large social point. Filmax, which also handles distribution in Spain, will show first images of the film at the American Film Market. Connecting 1960s Spain to its 1930s, the decade of Spain’s Civil War whose atrocities were silenced as the price of transition to democracy in 1970s Spain, “The Monster of Many Noses” (“L’home dels lassos”) is set in 1968 in a small village in the mountains.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent U.K. based sales agency Film Republic has picked up Peru’s 2024 Oscar entry “The Erection of Toribio Bardelli,” the latest film from Adrián Saba, one of Peru’s most prominent auteurs on the festival scene. Film Republic has also shared a first international trailer with Variety.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Barcelona-based studio Filmax has scooped international rights to “Just One Small Favor,” the new film from Zeta Studios, which is behind Netflix smash hit “Elite” and HBO Max Spanish banner title “García!” Released in Spain by Universal on Nov. 10, “Favor” will receive its market premiere at this week’s American Film Market.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor International sales agency the Playmaker has signed a deal with Blue Finch Film Releasing to distribute the one-shot horror film “Home Sweet Home — Where Evil Lives” in the U.K. and Ireland. Thomas Sieben’s film, which made its world premiere in August at FrightFest in London, has its market premiere at AFM.

On the heels of the wonderful 2019 The Two Popes, in which Anthony Hopkins starred as Pope Benedict XVI in an imagined conversation with Jonathan Pryce’s future Pope Francis, Hopkins is once again involved in the same kind of cinematic historical fictional meeting as founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud, who is engaged in a private debate with The Chronicles of Narnia author and theologian C.S. Lewis (played by Matthew Goode) on the existence of God. As with The Two Popes, there is no proof whatsoever that any meeting ever took place, but it clearly provides lots of material to wrap your head around. That is exactly what Mark St. Germain did in creating his 2009 play Freud’s Last Session, which was built on the 1967 Harvard lectures of Dr. Armond M. Nicholi Jr in his presentation “The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life.”

Some movie theaters are implementing intermissions during screenings of Martin Scorsese‘s Killers of the Flower Moon, prompting Apple and Paramount to intervene.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent “No Me Sigas,” the directorial debut of “Anything’s Possible” writer Ximena García Lecuona, and “Malamuerte,” from Caye Casas, a rising star of pitch black Spanish comedy, both feature in a rich and far-ranging 2023 Blood Window Lab, the project platform of Ventana Sur’s genre forum, which unspools Nov. 27-Dec. 1.

Is Tom Sandoval really a narcissist? We’re about to find out!

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Rodrigo Sorogoyen, director of ‘The Beasts,’ the Best Foreign Film winner at France’s 2023 Cesar Awards, has gone into production on a new series, “The New Year’s Eves.” Following on Sorogoyen’s acclaimed “Riot Police,” and his episode in “Offworld,” chosen by Variety as one the best international series of 2022, “The Beasts” is produced by Movistar Plus+, the biggest Spanish pay TV/OTT operator, in collaboration with Madrid-based independent production house Caballo Films (“Riot Police,” “The Route”), co-founded by Sorogoyen. Movistar Plus+ International will handle distribution outside Spain.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Sales agency Sola Media is set to present its new project “The Sloth Lane” to buyers at the American Film Market. The animated film, an addition to the “Tales From Sanctuary City” franchise, is described as “a story of self discovery, family and friendship.” Australia’s Like a Photon Creative is producing the film and Sola Media is handling world sales, after recently acquiring international distribution rights for the next three animated feature films in the Sanctuary City franchise.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Chile’s “The Devil’s Vein” and “Lucila” and Mexico’s “Ch’ulel” figure among a 14-title lineup at Animation! Pitching Sessions, part of Ventana Sur, the Cannes Festival and Marché du Film’s biggest annual event organized beyond its May event on the Riviera – in this case in Buenos Aires hand in hand with Argentina’s INCAA film agency. Among bigger names, “The Devil’s Vein” is a 2D family-targeting fantasy adventure, from the director, German Acuña, and producer, Sebastián Ruz, of “Nahuel and the Magic Book,” a 2020 Annecy standout.

Thierry Frémaux is best known internationally as the long-time head of France’s Cannes Film Festival, which is organized out of its offices in Paris’s trendy Marais neighborhood.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent While at the Lumiere Film Festival in Lyon, German film master Wim Wenders said he shares Martin Scorsese’s deep concern over Hollywood’s obsession with sequels, and worries about AI in line with U.S. actors who are still on strike.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent “All of Us Strangers,” Andrew Haigh, U.K., U.S.) Setting a high benchmark for Valladolid’s main competition, “a curious kind of ghost story, at once incredibly tender and profoundly devastating as it slowly reveals its secrets,” Variety wrote in its review. Written and directed by Haigh.