European Film Academy Chief Matthijs Wouter Knol on the Need for European Unity

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorAs the European Film Market prepares to launch on Monday in a digital format, its new director Dennis Ruh talks to Variety about the rationale behind the structure that he has chosen, and the challenges he’s faced in staging this edition of the event.We took into consideration that the film industry follows a certain rhythm each year.

The inaugural Red Sea Film Festival — which was due to launch March 12, 2020 in Saudi Arabia's coastal city of Jeddah and became one of the first festival casualties of the coronavirus — has finally been rescheduled. Almost a year to the day that the festival was canceled as the kingdom reported its first cases of COVID-19 and much of the world was beginning to feel the devastating effects of the pandemic, organizers have revealed that the festival will now take place Nov.

The Avatar: The Last Airbender franchise is set to get even bigger.

Marvel fans won’t be getting any new details out of Tom Holland.

European Film Market, incorporating industry and press screenings of Berlin Film Festival’s program.

Mark Rylance, Dylan O’Brien, Zoey Deutch and Johnny Flynn are set to star in Graham Moore's crime drama The Outfit. Focus Features has pre-bought the world rights from FilmNation Entertainment to the feature directorial debut of Moore, who earned an Oscar for best adapted screenplay for The Imitation Game.

EXCLUSIVE: In a hot under-the-radar package, we can reveal that Oscar-winner Mark Rylance (The Trial Of The Chicago 7), Maze Runner star Dylan O’Brien, Set It Up star Zoey Deutch and The Dig actor Johnny Flynn are set to star in Oscar-winning writer Graham Moore’s (The Imitation Game) directorial debut The Outfit.

A word to wise film producers: Start tracking the racial, gender and disability status of your employees now. The film Academy’s Aperture 2025 inclusion program is closer than you think.

Frank Moreno, who was known for screening films at Cannes for Roger Corman’s New World Pictures to purchase and distribute in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s, died Wednesday in Florida. He was 82 and died after a brief battle with cancer, according to his daughter.

Top Chef” Quickfire Challenge was about to start filming, and Padma Lakshmi — the Bravo show’s longtime host, judge and executive producer — was being fussed over by people wearing masks and face shields.“This is a lot of copy to get through,” said Lakshmi, who would soon have to describe a complicated “Black Box” challenge — one imported from “Top Chef: France” — to the show’s five remaining contestants on this Sunday afternoon in mid-October.

Ann-Marie Corvin Roberto Olla, executive director of Eurimages, has revealed that the Strasbourg-based public funder has hired diversity consultants to help facilitate fairer funding for under-represented filmmakers.Speaking at the International Film Festival Rotterdam this week on a panel titled “Reality Check: Funding Our Inclusive Futures,” Olla said that the co-production funding body, which comprises 41 member states, has commissioned a report, which should lead to a new policy being

Ice Cube is set to meet with US President Joe Biden over the rapper’s Contract With Black America.The rapper, who has long been a vocal advocate for racial equality, previously received a backlash for permitting the Republicans to add to his campaign during Donald Trump‘s tenure.The move forced him to clarify that he was not a Trump supporter.He also caused a stir after he previously refused a Zoom call from Kamala Harris in the run up to the presidential election, explaining that he did not

When the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival, the city’s largest film festival, gets underway February 17, it will look a little different from previous seasons. It’s a virtual event, save for some drive-in screenings, but the LGBTQ content is still abundant.

Elaine Low Senior TV WriterWheelhouse, the firm founded by producer Brent Montgomery in partnership with Jimmy Kimmel, has brought on investment and private equity executive Ann Berry as its chief investment officer.

Taking the reins at the Berlinale’s European Film Market after the departure of the long-serving Matthijs Wouter Knol, who left last year to run the European Film Academy, was never going to be easy. Throw an ongoing pandemic into the mix, which has upended traditional industry interactions and shut down international travel, and the role overseeing one of the world’s most important film events looked even more challenging.

Leo Barraclough Senior International CorrespondentThe European Film Market, which is being staged as a virtual event from March 1-5, is to arrange screenings of films selected as part of the Berlin Film Festival lineup in movie theaters in four cities around the world.The initiative, running under the banner “EFM Goes Global,” will see physical screenings for distributors in Tokyo for the Asian market, Melbourne for Oceania, São Paulo for South America, and Mexico City for Central America.

premiered the documentary “Summer of Soul” at this year’s festival.“That’s great because it’s gotten me to a place psychologically where I don’t need white people to care about what I do,” King continued.

announced Wednesday that the 2021 edition will move from its regular late-May spot to early July, when the seaside Côte d’Azur averages a balmy 86 degrees.The summery change-up comes days after the French government announced plans to vaccinate its entire population against the coronavirus by August. Cinemas there remain closed through at least the end of January.Last year’s festival was canceled outright due to the pandemic, though cases at the time had subsided in France.

What has been hinted at and speculated about for weeks now is official — the 2021 Cannes Film Festival is officially no longer a spring event, as it moves into the middle of summer over concerns about COVID-19. According to the event’s organizers, this year’s Cannes Film Festival is no longer going to happen in mid-May and will instead begin on July 6, running until July 17.