Göteborg Film Festival Winners: ‘Unruly’ By Malou Reymann Takes Best Nordic Film Award

The Good Mothers, Disney+’s hard-hitting mafia drama series, has won the first ever Berlinale Series Award.

Nordic programmer Viaplay has launched a streaming service in the U.S., delivering subscribers thousands of hours of programming for $5.99 a month.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Egypt’s El Gouna Film Festival will be back this year after being put on hiatus in 2022. Organizers have announced that the prominent Arab fest’s 6th edition will take place in the Red Sea resort town Oct. 13-20, while the fest’s industry arm the CineGouna Platform, will run Oct. 15-19. The fest, which was launched in 2017 by Egyptian telecom billionaire Naguib Sawiris – whose brother Samih built the El Gouna resort in a swathe of desert near Hurghada, a tourist town 250 miles south of Cairo – had been cancelled last year after five successful editions. Though no reason was given, the one year break was possibly due to Egypt’s Red Sea area is being impacted by the war between Russia and Ukraine, whose citizens represent about 40% of beach tourists who travel to Egypt annually.

EXCLUSIVE: Members of the first ever Berlinale Series Award jury have predicted that TV awards could soon rival film at the world’s major festivals.

Danish actor Nikolaj Lie Kaas is best known for his work on-screen with filmmakers such as Lars von Trier and Anders Thomas Jensen, but he’s in Berlin this week with Agent, his first project as a writer-director.

Berlinale Series Market’s annual project pitching event, “Tipping Point” walked off Tuesday morning with the Series Mania Award. The prize is an invitation to the production’s team to present again at the industry centrepiece at next month’s Lille-based get-together, the Series Mania Forum’s Co-Pro Pitching Sessions. “Tipping Point” joins 15 other projects as a sixteenth project presented out of competition in partnership with the Berlinale Co-Production Market.  Set in the extraordinary Svalbard – an archipelago half way between the northern coast of Norway and the North Pole, it  turns on a feisty young eco-activist at constant odds with her father, an oil exec, until he is murdered. Teaming with some of his friends to investigate his death, she discovers another man from the one she knew, as she chases a stolen software which could solve climate crisis or destroy the world.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Coming of age thriller “The Gymnasts,” one of the most recent titles from Europe’s public broadcaster partnership The Alliance, has been licensed to over 30 territories, London-based super indie All3Media International confirmed on Monday at the Berlinale Series Market.     Based on Ilaria Bernardini’s bestselling novel “Corpo Libero” (“The Girls Are Good”), the six-part series is produced by the Oscar-winning team at Indigo Film, behind “The Great Beauty,” in co-production with ZDF Neo’s German company Network Movie.  The series has been made in collaboration with Rai Fiction and Paramount+, and in association with All3Media International.

Marta Balaga DR Sales has closed a deal with Walter Presents on the popular drama series “Carmen Curlers.” The company has picked up the show for the U.K. and Ireland, as well as taking North American rights for PBS Masterpiece. Based on true events and kick-starting in the 1960s, the show chronicles the invention of the electric curler in Denmark. It also focuses on its female workers, making their own money for the first time in their lives, and societal changes, already lurking around the corner. “I am absolutely delighted to welcome ‘Carmen Curlers’ in the Walter Presents collection of the very best international drama,” says executive director Walter Luzzolino, calling it “a warm, incisive, emotionally absorbing piece with a gorgeous vintage aesthetic and a truly remarkable script.” 

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor The Berlin Film Festival has returned to its first fully in person edition since 2020. But this year, the Berlinale has come back with a vengeance, and added something that it wasn’t especially known for in its pre-pandemic days: star power. Indeed, it’s been hard not to bump into a famous person in the German city — almost giving this previously mostly auteur driven gathering a vibe that more closely resembles the latest versions of Sundance or Toronto. Artistic director Carlo Chatrian told Variety Sunday that A-list names help raise awareness for the festival’s core mission – to celebrate movies and encourage audiences to return to theaters.

Lise Pedersen New and boosted tax breaks, plus state-of-the-art facilities and a lean, skilled crew base are drawing a growing number of productions to Scandinavia, a region whose content continues to be in high demand both locally and globally. Denmark remains the exception and does not offer tax incentives or rebates for film and TV production. In addition, its production studios have been hard hit by a war over rights between talent and streamers that brought TV production to a virtual standstill in 2022. Iceland, on the other hand, which upped its tax incentive from 25% to 35% last year, has seen its film industry grow by a whopping 85% over five years. An added benefit for productions is a 25% incentive for music recording, which includes studio costs, travel and lodging.

Marta Balaga Director: Vita Maria Drygas Producer: Vita Żelakeviciute Production companies: Drygas Film Production Sales: Dogwoof Documentary is a journey to places devastated by military conflicts, seen through the eyes of thrill-seeking tourists. (Generation 14plus) Director: Asaf Saban

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent The Berlinale red carpet on Saturday became a protest platform against Iran’s repressive regime when a group of Iranian filmmakers and talents, joined by jury president Kristen Stewart, chanted “Women, Life, Freedom!” and demanded the release of imprisoned journalists and an Iranian rapper. Actress Golshifteh Farahani, who is also on the jury; “Holy Spider” actress Zar Amir Ebrahimi; and “The Siren” director Sepideh Farsi were among dozens of Iranian film professionals participating in the protests hosted by Berlinale co-directors Mariette Rissenbeek and Carlo Chatrian. Protesters with signs demanded freedom for female Iranian journalists Niloofar Hamedi and Elaheh Mohammadi who are behind bars, accused of “conspiring against national security” for being the first to report on Mahsa Amini’s death, and for the release of dissident Iranian hip hop artist Toomaj Salehi who has been accused of spreading propaganda and could face the death penalty.

Kristen Stewart glams it up for the opening ceremony of the 73rd Annual Berlinale International Film Festival at the Berlinale Palast on Thursday (February 16) in Berlin, Germany.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Anne Hathaway and Kristen Stewart delivered a dose of major glamour on the red carpet on Thursday as the Berlin Film Festival returned to full-scale, in-person operation for the first time since 2020. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky revived Berlin’s role as a political platform.   The Hollywood stars were greeted by packed crowds outside the Berlinale Palast and by festival co-heads Mariette Rissenbeek and Carlo Chatrian.

EXCLUSIVE: France tv distribution has boarded international sales on French philosopher and writer Bernard-Henri Lévy and director-photographer Marc Roussel’s documentary Slava Ukraini and will launch the title at the EFM.

Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds appear to have welcomed their fourth child. On Sunday, Lively shared a photo on Instagram which showed her without a baby bump.

Manori Ravindran Executive Editor of International Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is expected to make an appearance at the Berlinale, Variety has learned. A spokesperson for the Berlin Film Festival, which kicks off on Thursday, confirmed that the Ukrainian leader “will be present at Berlinale in some kind of form,” although “which and when is not confirmed yet.” Zelenskyy is the subject of one of the festival’s most high-profile projects: Sean Penn and Aaron Kaufman’s top-secret documentary “Superpower.” The details of the film have remained sparse for over a year, when it was first revealed that Penn had been in Ukraine when the war with Russia broke out.

, Eugene Levy is back on TV as the host of. The Apple TV+ original series, which premieres Feb. 24, sees the Emmy-winning actor globetrotting around the world. Except the thing is, Levy typically doesn't enjoy traveling, especially when it takes him outside of his comfort zone.

Malina Saval Associate Editor, Features Sean Penn went to war and a movie broke out. That is, in effect, the story behind the making of the documentary “Superpower,” a gripping cinematic portrait of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky on the eve of Russian president Vladimir Putin’s military invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.  Co-directed by Penn and Aaron Kaufman, who helmed the 2021 documentary “Crusaders: Ex-Jehovah’s Witnesses Speak Out,” “Superpower” bows Feb. 17, out of competition, as a Berlinale Special Gala at the Berlin Film Festival. Fifth Season and Vice Studios are behind the film, with Fifth Season selling worldwide rights. “Superpower” was not conceived as a war story. Rather, Penn and Kaufman, as well as producer Billy Smith, endeavored to chart the trajectory of Zelensky’s unusual career trajectory — from actor-comedian-producer playing a history teacher elected as Ukraine’s president in the satirical TV series “Servant of the People,” to a rising political star elected as the real-life president of Ukraine in 2019. The intent was to relay a tale about an everyman — in Zelensky’s case, a Ukrainian, Russian-speaking Jew born under Soviet rule in the late 1970s — who finds himself at the helm of a fledgling democratic nation burning to embrace freedom. A Ukrainian president elected on an anti-corruption platform who, very soon post-election, finds himself in the crosshairs of an American president’s impeachment. 

Sweden’s Göteborg Film Festival returned this month after two pandemic-disrupted editions with an accomplished crop of urgent and highly-political competition titles.