Gianfranco Rosi’s Pope Travels Doc ‘In Viaggio’ Makes a Political Statement – Clip (EXCLUSIVE)

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent An English-language reimagining of the world of Sergio Corbucci’s cult 1966 spaghetti western “Django,” which launched the career of Italian icon Franco Nero, is set to launch from the Rome Film Festival in October. The high–concept TV series, titled “Django,” will play in 2023 exclusively on Sky and its streaming service NOW in all countries where Sky operates, including the U.K., Ireland, Italy, Germany and Austria. It will also air on Canal+ in France, Switzerland, Benelux and Africa. The Rome Film Festival runs from Oct. 13-23. The 10-episode “Django” show stars Matthias Schoenaerts (“Rust and Bone,” “Bullhead”) as the iconic gunman who is the title character, alongside Nicholas Pinnock (“For Life”) as John Ellis, described as the “visionary founder” of the town of New Babylon. Lisa Vicari (“Dark”) plays Django’s daughter Sarah and Noomi Rapace (Millennium Trilogy) has the adversarial role of John’s powerful and ruthless enemy Elizabeth Thurman. 

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian producer Andrea Iervolino (“Waiting for the Barbarians”) has acquired a controlling stake in central London’s Mercato Metropolitano food market and teamed with British music producer David Tickle’s Tickle Entertainment on a doc series set there about global food culture. Iervolino, whose Iervolino and Lady Bacardi Entertainment (ILBE) company produces feature films including Bobby Moresco’s upcoming “Lamborghini,” is also the founder of innovative digital entertainment platform TaTaTu, a social media platform that uses a form of rewards points called TTU Coins. TaTaTu recently acquired a controlling stake in London’s Mercato Metropolitano from its founder Andrea Rasca who in 2016 established this pioneering community market as a space for social exchange and environmental sustainability. The Mercato is now being used as the location for an upcoming docu-series chronicling the journey of four chefs who sought refuge in the United Kingdom respectively from Syria, Namibia, Nepal, and Uzbekistan.

It wouldn’t be a “9-1-1” season premiere without a massive emergency, and the Season 6 premiere of the Fox series does not disappoint.TheWrap has an exclusive clip from Monday night’s episode in which the crew – including Athena (Angela Bassett), Bobby (Peter Krause) and Howie (Kenneth Choi) – respond to an emergency at a major stadium where a blimp has crashed into the rafters, portending a life-threatening emergency for all in attendance. Meanwhile, Maddie (Jennifer Love Hewitt) is manning the coms.Elsewhere in the episode, Bobby and Athena drop off May on her first day of college and discuss honeymoon plans, while Maddie and Chimney go to couple’s therapy.Get a preview of what’s to come in the exclusive video above.

The Duchess of Sussex kept her accessories to a minimum as she attended the state funeral of Elizabeth II. But the jewellery she did include in her striking ensemble was particularly sentimental.The former Suits actress, 41, opted to team her all black caped dress and elbow length gloves with a simple pair of diamond and pearl drop studs which had been gifted to her by the late monarch during an engagement they did together in 2018.The beautiful jewellery, which could be seen peeking out from Meghan's wide brimmed hat, is thought to be a smaller version of the earrings that the late Queen tended to wear every day.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Egyptian-American director Dina Amer’s politically sensitive drama “You Resemble Me,” the story of Hasna Aït Boulahcen who in 2015 was wrongly believed to be Europe’s first female suicide bomber, is getting a Middle East release via Front Row Filmed Entertainment. Amer’s feature debut, which world premiered positively at the 2021 Venice Film Festival, is a deeply researched character study of the fragile young Muslim woman who became linked to the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris even though she didn’t participate in them. Aït Boulahcen died during an anti-terrorism raid alongside her cousin Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who was one of the ringleaders of the coordinated assaults that killed 130 people in the French capital, including 90 at the Bataclan theater. 

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Prime Video has inked an overall creative deal with Italian writer-director Antonio Dikele Distefano, who is the originator of groundbreaking Netflix original series “Zero” that in 2021 marked Italy’s first show centered around the present-day lives of black Italian youth. Dikele, who was born in Italy to Angolan parents, is now making his feature film debut with an Amazon original film titled “Autumn Beat,” a coming-of-age drama about two brothers named Tito and Paco, who grew up in Milan and have the same dream: to break into the rap music world. “The duo seem destined for success—Paco is a born performer and Tito knows how to write like no other—but ambition, life, and love for the same woman will test their bond,” says the provided synopsis.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Master documentary filmmaker Gianfranco Rosi, whose “Sacro Gra” won the Venice Golden Lion in 2013, is back on the Lido with “In Viaggio,” a doc about Pope Francis’ travels in which the director creates a counterpoint between archival footage and images that Rosi shot himself.  In the first nine years of his pontificate, Pope Francis made 37 trips visiting 53 countries, focusing on his key issues: poverty, migration, the environment, solidarity and war. Intrigued by the fact that two of Francis’ trips – the first to the refugees landing in the Sicilian island of Lampedusa; the second in 2021 to the Middle East – so closely mirrored the itineraries of the director’s “Fire at Sea” (2016) and “Notturno” (2020), Rosi decided to delve into hundreds of hours of footage of papal travels with the intention of providing through them a “map of the human condition,” he says.

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.”

A powerful meditation on recent history, In Viaggio premiered out of competition at the Venice Film Festival. Directed by previous Golden Lion winner Gianfranco Rosi, it follows the travels of Pope Francis, using mostly archival footage to paint not just a picture of the man, but of the modern world.

One doesn’t need to be religious to feel the impact of the words uttered by Pope Francis to never-ending crowds of faithful followers, a concept deeply understood by Gianfranco Rossi with “In Viaggio,” a decade-long chronicling of the travels of the head of the Catholic church across all corners of the world. Composed entirely of archival footage, the film grants rare access to the public life of the pontifical, not only from the elevated security of a pulpit but from the more democratic grounds of unpaved streets and vast public avenues.   The film opens with the following disclaimer: “In the first nine years of his pontificate, Pope Francis made 37 trips visiting 53 countries, focusing on his most important issues: poverty, migration, the environment, solidarity and war.” These very same issues guide the work of Rossi, whose two latest documentaries – 2016’s Golden Bear-winning “Fire at Sea” and 2020’s “Notturno” – deal with the haunting ripples of the refugee crisis and the war in the Middle East (in fact, Rossi and Pope Francis came together after the pontiff visited the island of Lampedusa following a watch of “Fire at Sea”).

Naman Ramachandran The subject of the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, one of the topics of discussion at the Venice Film Festival, bubbled to the surface again on Tuesday with Tilda Swinton making a statement with her hair dyed yellow. “It’s my honor to wear half of the Ukrainian flag,” Swinton said at the press conference for Joanna Hogg’s “The Eternal Daughter,” when complimented on her look by a journalist. Swinton expressed that it was an honor later during the conference as well. The star wore a light blue top, which complements the dark blue of the Ukraine flag. Shot during lockdown, “The Eternal Daughter” follows an artist and her elderly mother who confront long-buried secrets when they return to a former family home, now a hotel haunted by its mysterious past. Swinton plays both mother and daughter. The names of the mother and daughter in the film are Rosalind and Julie, the names for Swinton and her real life daughter Honor Swinton Byrne in Hogg’s “The Souvenir” and “The Souvenir Part II.”

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Francesco Zippel’s Sergio Leone doc, which premieres on Tuesday at the Venice Film Festival, is the first portrait of the Italian master made with full support of his children Raffaella and Andrea. Titled “Sergio Leone: The Man Who Invented America,” the high-profile doc is premiering in the Venice Classics section for docs on cinema. It features an impressive list of voices holding forth on what makes Leone special for them. Among these are: Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino, Giuseppe Tornatore, Frank Miller, Darren Aronofsky, Damien Chazelle and Robert De Niro (see clip). But aside from Leone’s visionary talent as a director what emerges is that as his career escalated from the so-called “Dollars Trilogy” to “Once Upon a Time in the West” through to his final masterpiece, “Once Upon a Time in America,” Leone’s life was steeped in two inextricably linked passions: film and family. 

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Prominent arthouse sales company The Match Factory has closed multiple sales on Italian auteur Gianni Amelio’s Venice competition title “Lord of the Ants” ahead of its Venice premiere on Tuesday. The Match Factory has sealed deals on Amelio’s latest work – which is a biopic of Italian poet, playwright and director Aldo Braibanti, who was jailed in 1968 due to a Fascist-era anti-gay law – that will ensure the film’s theatrical release in: Australia/New Zealand (Palace Films); Japan (Zazie Films); Spain (Surtsey Films); Sweden (TriArt Film) and Greece (Ama Films). Further deals are in negotiation, the company said. Braibanti was convicted after a complaint from his partner’s father, who later forced his son to be treated with electroconvulsive therapy in an ill-conceived attempt to rid him of his homosexuality. The Fascist-era law that punished Braibanti, which made it a crime to lead innocent or unwary people “morally” astray, was repealed in 1981.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Last year Andrea Scrosati – who is group COO and continental Europe CEO of Fremantle – was at Venice with two films. This year Fremantle’s got six pics launching from the Lido, three of them in competition, which is a larger contingent than any of the U.S. studios or streamers.  Fremantle’s business model, which involves a cluster of companies mostly across Europe that they either fully own or are majority investors in, has been bearing fruit on their film side. Their output has grown “from 8 to 32 delivered movies in two years,” Scrosati says.  And the multi-pronged company’s Venice lineup – which includes Luca Guadagnino’s “Bones and All,” Emanuele Crialese’s “L’Immensità,” and Joanna Hogg’s “The Eternal Daughter” – is a reflection of that.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Cairo-based film marketing and distribution outfit MAD Solutions has acquired rights for Arab territories to Venice competition entry “Les Miens” (“Our Ties”), directed by French actor and filmmaker of Moroccan descent Roschdy Zem. “Our Ties” is co-written by Zem with actor/director Maïwenn (“Polisse,” “Mon Roi”), who co-stars. Zem is a French cinema fixture, having starred in pics including “Other People’s Children” and directed several films including 2019’s “Persona Non Grata.” “Ties” is a drama about family dynamics centered around a man played by Sami Bouajila whose personality changes radically after he suffers a head injury. Zem plays his TV presenter brother.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent British director Joe Wright, who helmed Winston Churchill drama “Darkest Hour” – which earned Gary Oldman an Oscar for his portrayal as the British prime minister – is set to change historical sides and direct TV drama “M,” which chronicles Benito Mussolini’s rise to power. The high-end series, which is based on Antonio Scurati’s Premio Strega-winning and international bestselling novel “M. Son of the Century,” traces the birth of Fascism in Italy and Mussolini’s ascent with an innovative approach that has sparked debate about the Fascist dictator’s legacy in Italy and abroad. “The writer understood and put on paper, with facts and documents and everything, that Mussolini is the guy – him and only him – who created what we now know as populism and Fascism,” said the show’s producer Lorenzo Mieli, speaking in Venice, where he is among producers of Luca Guadagnino’s “Bones and All.”

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine made an impassioned speech on Wednesday during the Venice Film Festival’s opening ceremony, pleading for the global film community to rally to the country’s cause as it suffers a a mounting death toll amid fierce fighting with Russia. “Personalities of culture: directors, producers and actors, screenwriters, cameramen, composers, artistic directors, set designers, critics and many, many more, from many countries in the world, all belonging to the same family of cinema!,” Zelenskyy said in a recorded speech beamed onto the festival’s Sala Grande screen. “Your opinion is important and your voice counts.”

It's back to business for TV's Ant and Dec as they prepare to make their return to stalwart ITV show, I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here, for the 2022 series.The presenting duo and best friends have been having a whale of a time as they've been seen larking around whilst filming an advert for the upcoming show, which will kick off in November. It's set to be a particularly exciting series, as the programme is finally returning to Australia, where it had been set for 18 years up until the Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020, and it was filmed at Gwrych Castle in Wales.

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.