Genre Cinema Reanimates Post-COVID Theatrical Distribution

This Much I Know to Be True, the latest feature from Andrew Dominik which recently debuted at the Berlin Film Festival, has been set for a May theatrical release by Trafalgar Releasing.

Nick Cave and Warren Ellis have announced a full global cinema release for their forthcoming film This Much I Know To Be True.The film will be released in cinemas globally on May 11, with tickets going on sale on March 23. They will be available here.The Andrew Dominik-directed feature is a companion piece to the 2016 music documentary One More Time With Feeling, and premiered at the Berlin Film Festival this month.This Much I Know To Be True will explore Cave and Ellis’ creative relationship and feature songs from their last two studio albums, 2019’s ‘Ghosteen’ (by Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds) and last year’s ‘Carnage’ (by Cave and Ellis).It will feature the first ever performances of the albums, filmed in Spring 2021 ahead of their UK tour.

Nick Clement Miami Dade College’s Miami Film Festival will present its 39th annual edition from March 4-13, featuring a mix of in-theater and virtual presentations. With more than 120 films from 35 countries on display, ranging from features to documentaries to shorts, the event will be filled with premieres and special screenings and events.“Last year we did the hybrid event, with reduced capacity and no parties and limited guests.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefAcclaimed Japanese animated film “Poupelle of Chimney Town” will release in North American home entertainment markets from May.The rights in the U.S. and Canada are controlled by Eleven Arts which has appointed Shout! Factory to handle distribution.

Daniel Radcliffe, Jack Black and Conan O’Brien have been spotted filming their upcoming Weird Al biopic in Los Angeles. The actors got into character in wigs and garish costumes as they transformed themselves for the movie based on the American comedy musician. Radcliffe was far from incognito as he donned a big curly wig, a Hawaiian print shirt, a moustache and round wire-frame eyeglasses for the title role.

Naman Ramachandran Iran’s Leila Hatami, Berlin best actress winner for Asghar Farhadi’s Oscar-winning “A Separation,” has called for a wider range of Iranian cinema to be represented internationally.“More various films should be shown internationally from Iran because usually as everything is commercial, people choose the films which are more touristic [because] it gives you an aspect of the society,” Hatami told Variety. “What I would like is that the art of Iran would be shown more, because you see facts, events, moods in Iran – but you can see that everywhere. You can see it in the news.” “It’s good to have films about problems of society and such things, but what I appreciate especially is the art of Iranian cinema,” Hatami said.

EXCLUSIVE: Nicole Kerr has been promoted to VP Entertainment at Jessie Cohen PR & Consulting, where she has been for the past five years. In the newly created leadership position, the veteran will continue rep her full slate of clients spanning film festivals, feature films, filmmakers and talent.

Nominations have been announced for this year’s Irish Film And TV Academy Awards (IFTAs). Scroll down for the full list.

Making history! Sofía Jirau is the first model with Down syndrome to star in a Victoria’s Secret campaign. The 24-year-old Puerto Rican model was tapped as one of the faces for the Love Cloud Collection, a new line of uber-comfy bras and underwear. 

Cinema Guild has acquired U.S. rights to The Novelist’s Film, the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize winner from South Korean writer-director Hong Sangsoo, which recently made its world premiere at the 2022 Berlin Film Festival. The film is the third Silver Bear winner in as many years from Hong—who won Best Director for The Woman Who Ran in 2020 and Best Screenplay for Introduction in 2021—and will be the 11th of the director’s works released by Cinema Guild in the last seven years.

Ben Croll Thrown into uncertainty by the tragic death of star Gaspard Ulliel, production on Betrand Bonello’s “The Beast” will still go forward, the director confirmed to Variety. Bonello and Ulliel recently collaborated on the hybrid, essay film “Coma,” which premiered in Berlin’s Encounters sidebar.A sci-fi melodrama set in 1910, 2014 and 2044 and dealing with questions of reincarnation and technology, “The Beast” was set to reunite Léa Seydoux and Gaspar Ulliel, who both starred in Bonello’s 2014 biopic “Saint Laurent.” Bonello wrote the sweeping project with both actors in mind and planned to start shooting in April.While Ulliel’s sudden passing has upended that specific timeline, the filmmaker still intends to begin production later this year, telling Variety that he will likely recast the role with a non-French star.

Love letters rarely include knock-off Barbie dolls engaging in incest, but the conventional is often off the table when it comes to French director Bertrand Bonello. “Coma,” Bonello’s latest, begins with a miscellanea of incongruent images, zoomed in and blurred, an amalgamation of amorphous shapes that exacerbates the sharpness of the accompanying words.

Few directors are better equipped to make an interesting and entertaining film in the middle of a pandemic than Quentin Dupieux. Seemingly unperturbed by this “new normal,” the French filmmaker continues on his recent string of cost-effective but impactful films, each revolving around a simple but conceptually bold ‘what if’ scenario, with “Incredible But True,” premiering in the Special Gala section of this year’s Berlin International Film Festival.

Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem are stepping out in style!

Christine McGuinness has revealed that she cut her chin open during a Dirty Dancing style lift with husband Paddy on holiday in Spain.The 33 year old mum of three, who admitted that there 'isn't a right time' to tell her kids that they have autism, revealed that she had to be rushed to hospital during their sun-soaked getaway after the couple recreated the famous lift from the 1987 film. Christine described she was in the swimming pool with Paddy, 48, as he lifted her up above his head to performed the climactic lift. However the glamorous Real Housewives of Cheshire star opened up in her memoir, A Beautiful Nightmare, that the dance move did not go to plan.

An imaginative insight into an 18-year-old’s mind, Bertrand Bonello’s Berlin Film Festival Encounters strand entry Coma comes with a preface: it’s dedicated to his teenage daughter. It aims to both reflect the concerns of her generation and to reassure her that some kind of rebirth will come after the pressures of lockdown during the Covid pandemic. Coma stars just two actors in-camera, with voice work from Gaspard Ulliel, who died tragically earlier this year. Bonello’s introductory comments about loss feel particularly poignant after the death of his Saint Laurent star. 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefBlackOps Studios Asia from the Philippines, Story Arch Pictures from the U.S. and Agog Film from Hong Kong have joined forces to develop, produce and finance a slate of genre movies that target the streaming marketplace.The 16-title slate comprises nine films and seven series in the action, horror and sci-fi genres, with 11 flowing from BlackOps, two from Story Arch and three from Agog.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentSwitzerland, thanks to its prolific co-production activity, has a hand in a record-breaking 11 titles in the Berlinale’s official selection, including two films competing for the Golden Bear, and two more in Berlin’s cutting-edge Encounters section, as well as a Swiss talent selected for the fest’s Shooting Stars event, Souheila Yacoub.Ursula Meier’s “The Line” (competition) — Following “Home” and “Sister,” Meier continues to pursue “this idea of family that is as much necessary, as it is toxic,” says the film’s producer Pauline Gygax. After a violent argument with her mother, Margaret, 35 (Stephanie Blanchoud), who has a long history of inflicting and suffering from violence, is subjected to a restraining order.

Anna Marie de la Fuente It’s a new dawn for Chile’s audiovisual industry. When Gabriel Boric, Chile’s youngest (at 35) and most left-leaning president since Salvador Allende, was elected in December, his pledge to more than double the state’s contribution to the arts was greeted with great fanfare.  After all, Chile’s prodigious film output this past decade has been remarkable despite the scant public support it has received. “If everything we have achieved in the last 10 years was done with so little money, imagine what we can achieve with an increase in audiovisual funding!” says Constanza Arena, executive director of Chile’s film promotion org, CinemaChile.In recent years, Chile has triumphed at the Oscars, starting when Pablo Larraín’s “No” was nominated for international feature in 2012, and culminating in an Oscar win for Sebastian Lelio’s “A Fantastic Woman” in 2017.