Directors Guild Names Rebecca Rhine Western Executive Director

K.J. Yossman “Anatomy of a Scandal” star Rupert Friend has signed on to star as famed Romanian conductor Sergiu Celibidache in “The Yellow Tie,” an upcoming biopic of Celibidache’s life, Variety can exclusively reveal. Friend will have a central role in the feature, playing the young Celibidache. As Variety revealed last year, John Malkovich is also signed on to play an older version of the conductor. The duo last appeared on screen together in 2004’s “The Libertine,” in which Johnny Depp also starred as the Duke of Rochester. Friend has also appeared in features including “Hitman: Agent 47” and “The Death of Stalin.” He will next be appearing in “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar” alongside Benedict Cumberbatch.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian director Stefano Sollima, who is known in Hollywood for “Sicario: Day of the Soldado,” “Without Remorse” and TV show “Gomorrah,” is back behind camera on a contemporary Rome-set crimer titled “Adagio.” Shooting started Sept. 5 on “Adagio” which features an ensemble cast of Italian A-listers comprising Pierfrancesco Favino (“Nostalgia”), Toni Servillo (“The Great Beauty”), Valerio Mastandrea (“Perfect Strangers”) and Adriano Giannini (“The Ties”). “I am eager and full of enthusiasm about finally returning to depict my city after all these years. Rome has changed, and so have I,” Sollima said in a statement for Variety. He went on to describe “Adagio” as a dark story of revenge and redemption, which will be the last chapter of my Roman criminal trilogy.”

Love Island lovebirds Ekin-Su Cülcüloğlu and Davide Sanclimenti are back in each other's arms after their busy new work schedules kept them apart. Since being crowned winners of the ITV2 dating show, the pair have been busy planning their next business moves, meaning they haven't had much time for one another.

Charlotte Dawson has shared an upbeat update following her horror accident during a trip to Rome. The reality star is feeling chipper about her holiday to see one of her best friends get married.

Charlotte Dawson has shared throwback snaps from her recent trip to Rome, Italy, taken hours before her horrific scooter accident. The former Ex On The Beach star, 29, who has been left in "agony", revealed on Wednesday that she had been rushed to hospital as she shared snaps of her swollen, bloodied and bruised face from the ambulance. Charlotte, who has since jetted back to the UK, took to Instagram on Saturday to share a collection of photos just hours before her scooter accident.

Charlotte Dawson has shared throwback snaps from her recent trip to Rome, Italy, taken hours before her horrific scooter accident.The former Ex On The Beach star, 29, who has been left in "agony", revealed on Wednesday that she had been rushed to hospital as she shared snaps of her swollen, bloodied and bruised face from the ambulance. Charlotte, who has since jetted back to the UK, took to Instagram on Saturday to share a collection of photos just hours before her scooter accident.The 29 year old daughter of late comedian Les Dawson penned: "Before chazza became more of an attraction than the chuffin colosseum. "At least I managed to get some nice pics & eat some sexeh food before it all went Pete tong.

Right at the beginning of The March On Rome, a special screening in the Venice Days section of the Venice Film Festival, Mark Cousins draws our collective gaze to a piece of graffiti saying that cinema is most powerful weapon of all. It isn’t clear — to me, anyway — whether that joyful proclamation dates back to 1922, when Benito Mussolini led a Fascist march from Naples to Rome, or to some other eruption of historical optimism. Cinema isn’t as powerful as all that — if it were, Fascism would have been clobbered to a pulp by Chaplin, Lubitsch and all the other filmmakers who lampooned its vainglorious leaders. But images do matter. They certainly mattered to Italian Fascism.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor In “The March on Rome,” which world premieres in the Venice Days sidebar of Venice Film Festival Wednesday, Northern Irish-Scottish filmmaker Mark Cousins tracks the ascent of fascism in Italy in the 1920s, and its fall-out across 1930s Europe. He also draws a dotted line from those events to the storming of the Capitol in Washington, D.C., in January 2021. The documentary, illustrated with archive footage and Cousins’ characteristic cinematic analysis, starts with Donald Trump defending his decision to retweet a quote from Italian dictator Benito Mussolini: “It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep.” Later in the film, Cousins inserts footage of Trump supporters attacking the Capitol, hoping to overturn Joe Biden’s electoral victory.

Seni Tienabeso has been promoted to executive director of ABC News Live, the network’s streaming channel.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Seni Tienabeso was elevated to executive director of ABC News Live, spotlighting a growing emphasis on streaming news content at the Disney-backed news organization. Seni first joined ABC News in 2007, and worked over a decade a a field producer and reporter before becoming a senior producer at “World News Tonight.” At ABC News Live, Tienabeso helped launch “ABC News Live Prime with Linsey Davis,” one of the industry’s earliest regular streaming programs. In his new role, hei will oversee day-to-day editorial direction for the channel and focus on developing its original live programming, live events, and specials. ABC News Live executive producers will now report to Seni, who will lead the search for a new executive producer of “ABC News Live Prime.”

Fascism – its roots, legacy and contemporary manifestations – is a leitmotif running throughout the 79th Venice Film Festival as Italy marks the centenary of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s fateful power grab in 1922, in an era when totalitarian leaders are once again on the rise.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian director Emanuele Crialese broke out with 2002 Cannes Critics Week winner “Respiro,” followed by “Nuovomondo” and “Terraferma,” which both scooped prizes in Venice. He’s back on the Lido with his ambitious, boldly personal drama “L’immensità.” Set in 1970s Rome, the film features Penélope Cruz as the mother of two children, one of whom is a 12-year-old named Adriana who wants to change her name and gender identity and convince everyone that she is male. In his director’s note, Crialese calls “L’immensità” a memory-based film for which he needed the necessary time, distance and self-awareness to make. Though not strictly autobiographical, it is based on the director’s personal experience transitioning. As Crialese tells Variety, Adriana’s character is a representation of himself.

Will Tizard Contributor Spontaneous flames, dysfunctional warning alerts and a sense of impending catastrophe feature in Hungarian-Romanian director Cristina Grosan’s sophomore feature “Ordinary Failures,” premiering in Venice Days, a sidebar to the Venice Film Festival. Variety is launching the trailer for the film (below), which is being sold by Totem Films. The Czech-Hungarian-Italian-Slovak co-production, filmed entirely in the Czech Republic, mainly in Prague but also featuring Pilsen, is based on a screenplay by Klára Vlasáková, which Grosan says evolved for three years and continued morphing right up through the shoot. The ominous tale revolves around the lives of three strangers: a teenager, a young mother, and a woman in her early sixties, who cross paths during one day in which their city is rocked by mysterious explosions.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent When Angelina Jolie read Alessandro Baricco’s short novel “Without Blood” — the basis for her next directorial effort — the Italian fable about the brutality of war and healing in its aftermath had an immediate  therapeutic effect.  “I read it right as I was going through the beginning of a very dark time in my life. I read it in the month that followed my divorce [from Brad Pitt in 2016],” recalls Jolie, who shot the adaptation at Rome’s Cinecittà Studios. “It had the effect on me that it’s had on so many people,” Jolie says, noting that the blurb on the cover says that the book is about the complexity of the human condition.  

J. Kim Murphy Joanne Koch, the executive director emeritus at Film at Lincoln Center who served as the organization’s leader for over 32 years, died on Aug. 16 in New York City.

Joanne Koch, the executive director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center, has died. She was 92. Koch was an influential figure in the culture of cinema in New York and ran Film at Lincoln Center, as it is known now, for 32 years.

Rebecca Rhine is moving from the Cinematographers Guild to the Directors Guild. She’ll be the DGA’s new Western Executive Director starting in October.