Gael Garcia Bernal to Head Rebooted Rome Film Festival Jury –– Global Bulletin

Emiliano De Pablos In times of dramatic change for the film-TV industry, Spanish auteur cinema is booming, goosed by multiple significant and high-quality titles, reaping prizes, critical praise and profile at international festivals. Beyond the preeminent interest in established auteurs such as Pedro Almodóvar, Alejandro Amenábar, J.A.

Tim Burton and Monica Bellucci are making their first public appearance as a couple!

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Beta Film has announced a half-dozen sales to European public broadcasters on high-end period drama “La Storia,” which is Italian pubcaster RAI’s biggest event show of the year and is world premiering at the Rome Film Fest. The sweeping eight-episode saga, set in Italy during the final years of World War II and its immediate aftermath, is based on a globally bestselling novel by the late great Elsa Morante, whom “My Brilliant Friend” author Elena Ferrante often cites as her primary literary reference.

Italian actress and screenwriter Paola Cortellesi’s directorial feature debut There’s Still Tomorrow (C’è Ancora Domani) opened the 18th Rome Film Festival on Wednesday evening.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Rome Film Fest opener “There’s Still Tomorrow,” a bold period dramedy that marks the directorial debut of popular Italian actor Paola Cortellesi, has scored a slew of international sales. The film, shot in black-and-white and set in post-World War II Rome, riffs on Italy’s neorealist past, albeit with a female empowerment element angle and a contemporary A-list Italian cast.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Veteran RAI exec Adriano De Maio has been trying to shake things up at the Italian state broadcaster since last May, when he was appointed head of film and drama. To contend with the unstoppable disruption caused by digital and streaming in Italy’s TV landscape, De Maio is trying to steer RAI toward programming that provides more cultural enrichment, while also catering to the youth demographic that drives traffic on the pubcaster’s RAI Play streaming platform — which has more than 23 million subscribers, way more than Netflix’s Italian customer base. As RAI faces possible budget cuts due to the government’s decision to lower its license fee [RAI’s current allocation for film and TV series was not immediately available], De Maio sat down with Variety in Rome to discuss his vision for the scripted content he’d like RAI to acquire for its viewers.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Investment in original content production continues to grow in Italy where resources across all genres reached a total of €1.8 billion ($1.9 billion) thanks to increased investments from U.S. streamers.

EXCLUSIVE: The Bureau creator Eric Rochant is today formally unveiling his production banner, Maui Entertainment, which has quietly launched with backing from Federation Studios.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Sky Italia is launching a high-profile documentary series with international ambitions titled “The Overlooked Serial Killer,” reconstructing a true-crime case that has gripped millions of Italians. The documentary investigates the connection between Elisa Claps, an Italian teenager who disappeared in 1993, and Heather Barnett, a British woman whose mutilated body was found in Bournemouth in 2002.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian distribution and production company Notorious Pictures is expanding into the TV series sphere by snapping up rights to buzzy literary property “Forbidden Notebook,” a 1952 novel by Italian-Cuban writer Alba de Céspedes that has been recently rediscovered and successfully republished in English. De Céspedes has been described by the New York Times as “a bestselling novelist and political activist in her native Italy” admired for her sensitive depictions of women whose recently rediscovered work “has lost none of its subversive force.” She is considered a source of inspiration for Elena Ferrante, the Italian writer with legions of fervent fans around the world and whose four “Neapolitan Novels” have been adapted into the long-running “My Brilliant Friend” TV series by Italy’s RAI and HBO.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Rome’s MIA Market, dedicated to international TV series, animation, feature films, documentaries and more, kicked off Monday in the Eternal City’s 17th century Palazzo Barberini. There were some 2,300 registered industry execs on day one – roughly 300 of which are buyers – more than 120 selected projects on display, and plenty of panels.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Prominent Egyptian director Marwan Hamed, whose epic “Kira and El Gen” about local resistance to British occupation recently scored at the local box office, is being feted with a career award by the El Gouna Film Festival. The Egyptian fest, running Oct.

The Evolution Mallorca International Film Festival, running from October 18 to 24 in the Spanish island’s capital of Palma, has unveiled its full line-up.

Sharareh Drury Miami Dade College’s Miami Film Festival GEMS has announced the full lineup for its 2023 festival, which will run from Nov. 2-5. The 10th edition of the fest will feature 26 films from 14 countries, all taking place at MDC’s Koubek Center and Silverspot Cinema.

The San Sebastian Film Festival awarded O Corno (The Rye Horn) with the Golden Shell for Best Film. San Sebastián native Jaione Camborda took the top prize of the night for the feature she directed.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent U.S. actor Elena Kampouris (“My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3”) is set to star in the Sicily-set “Here Now,” a romantic thriller marking Italian director Gabriele Muccino‘s return to English-language filmmaking.

Isabel Coixet recounts that she vowed to never to do another literary adaptation after her 2017 English-language feature The Bookshop based on Penelope Fitzgerald’s critically acclaimed 1978 novel of the same name.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent The Montpellier Mediterranean Film Festival’s Cinemed industry section has teamed up with Beirut-based cultural nonprofit Aflamuna on a new initiative, under which 10 film and doc projects from a wide range of Arab countries will soon be unveiled to prospective partners. The new program, called Cinemed and Aflamuna Professional Encounters, features 10 Arab works in development that reflect a slew of themes relevant to the region, including political turbulence, societal changes, female empowerment and climate change concerns.

Netherlands photographer and director Anton Corbijn has been named as president of the main feature film jury for the upcoming Zurich Film Festival.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent French multi-hyphenate Lou Doillon, who is Jane Birkin’s daughter, is set to star in Italian comedy “Quasi a casa” directed by Carolina Pavone, a former assistant director on several Nanni Moretti films. Shooting is underway in Rome on the sophisticated comedy, in which Doillon — a model, actor and singer-songwriter, like her half-sister Charlotte Gainsbourg — plays an eclectic, successful singer who strikes up a turbulent friendship with a younger female musician who idolizes her.