HollyShorts Film Festival to Return in August for 19th Edition

Ellise Shafer Diane Kruger is set to receive the Golden Eye Award at this year’s edition of Zurich Film Festival. Throughout the course of her career, Kruger has worked with high-profile directors such as Quentin Tarantino, Wolfgang Peterson and Robert Zemeckis. She is best known for her roles as Helen of Sparta in “Troy” (2004), Abigail Chase in “National Treasure” (2004) and its sequel “Book of Secrets” (2007), Bridget von Hammersmark in Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” (2009), Anna in “Mr.

Ellise Shafer HollyShorts Film Festival, the Oscar-qualifying celebration of short films, has announced the jury lineup for its 2023 edition. The 18-person jury includes Chiwetel Ejiofor (“12 Years a Slave”), Sam Worthington (“Avatar”), Zoey Deutch (“Not Okay”), Alexandra Shipp (“Barbie”), Josh Whitehouse (“Daisy Jones & the Six”), Christina Chong (“Star Trek: Strange New Worlds”), Nelu Handa (“Run the Burbs” showrunner) and Jaime Ray Newman (“Skin”). Variety international correspondent K.J.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Zurich Film Festival will honor the chief executive of German film and TV company Leonine Studios, Fred Kogel, with its Game Changer Award, which is presented to a leading personality from the film industry whose “extraordinary efforts serve to advance the sector.” Kogel set up Leonine four years ago, and it has grown rapidly to become Germany’s leading independent film company, as well as a major TV producer. Its successes as a film distributor have included the release of “The School of Magical Animals,” “Knives Out” and the “John Wick” franchise.

In his first communiqué as Sundance’s Festival Director, Eugene Hernandez has doled out new information as far as the slate and venues for 2024, also addressing the timing of programming and a “challenging moment” for artists, as the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes continue.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Berlin-based sales agent Pluto Film has boarded “Forever-Forever” (“Nazavzhdy-Nazavzhdy”), Ukrainian filmmaker Anna Buryachkova’s feature directing debut, ahead of its world premiere in Venice Film Festival’s Horizons Extra competition. After transferring from a downtown high school, Tonia (Alina Cheban) befriends a group of badass youngsters, trying to find protection from the people from her past and a place she truly belongs. They spend time together, roaming around Kyiv’s post-socialist suburbs, having fun and getting in trouble.

Emily Blunt is joining other Hollywood stars who have decided to prioritize their families over their careers. Blunt, who stars in the recently released "Oppenheimer," said there's an "emotional cost" for her and her young daughters when it comes to her career. In June, Tom Holland announced he would be taking a break from Hollywood, which he says was planned after the completion of his AppleTV+ series, "The Crowded Room," which "broke" him.

Venice Film Festival artistic director Alberto Barbera is refusing to row back on his decision to invite controversial movie-biz bigwigs Roman Polanski, Woody Allen and Luc Besson to the late summer event, which will take place despite the potential disruption by the ongoing SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes. “Luc Besson has been recently fully cleared of any accusations. Woody Allen went under legal scrutiny twice at the end of the ’90s and was absolved,” Barbera said in a new interview with Variety.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Venice Film Festival artistic director Alberto Barbera is in a good mood after Tuesday’s lineup announcement managed to stave off the impact of the SAG-AFTRA strike, something which could have been “devastating” to the event, he says. In the end, the only U.S. film that skipped the Lido is Luca Guadagnino’s Zendaya-starrer “Challengers,” which Barbera says was against Guadagnino’s wishes.

Diljit Dosanjh and Arjun Rampal film, which is now titled “Punjab ’95,” will have its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.

The Toronto International Film Festival is back for another big year.

Venice International Film Festival has announced which film will be closing the event in September.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Recently restored versions of William Friedkin’s “The Exorcist,” Terrence Malick’s “Days of Heaven” and Francis Ford Coppola’s “One From the Heart” feature in the Venice Classics section of the 80th Venice Film Festival. The lineup of recently restored films in Venice Classics, which is curated by the festival’s artistic director Alberto Barbera in collaboration with Federico Gironi, was unveiled on Friday. “The Exorcist” is screened, 50 years after it was produced by Warner Bros., alongside Disney’s “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm,” starring Shirley Temple and directed by “the prolific and sometimes brilliant” Allan Dwan, to mark the Hollywood studios’ 100th anniversaries.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter Sofia Coppola’s “Priscilla” has been tapped as the Centerpiece selection for the 61st New York Film Festival. The biographical drama about the wife of Elvis Presley will make its North American premiere at Alice Tully Hall on Oct. 6. “Priscilla” centers on the life of Priscilla Ann Wagner (“Mare of Easttown” actor Cailee Spaeny) and her life and love affair with the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll (“Euphoria” breakout Jacob Elordi). It’s based on the 1985 memoir “Elvis and Me” by Priscilla Presley and Sandra Harmon and follows her early years as a teenage army brat stationed in West Germany to her arrival at Graceland, which became her home and prison.

Atom Egoyan will be returning to the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) to premiere his latest movie, “Seven Veils”.

Some star-packed projects are heading to the 19th annual Oscar-qualifying HollyShorts Film Festival. The just-announced lineup includes films featuring, produced or directed by the likes of Tom Hanks, Eva Longoria, Alden Ehrenreich, Queen Latifah, Tom Holland, Keke Palmer, Cate Blanchett, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, John Travolta and more.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Seven films have been selected for the 11th edition of Final Cut in Venice, the works-in-progress section of the 80th Venice Film Festival. Final Cut in Venice, which runs Sept. 3-5, provides support for the completion of films from Africa and five Middle Eastern countries: Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Syria. It is one of the programs run by the festival’s industry section, Venice Production Bridge. Over three days, the working copies of the selected films will be presented to producers, buyers, distributors, post-production companies and film festival programmers. The first two days are devoted to screenings, and then one-to-one meetings between the producers of the projects and the professionals attending the Venice Production Bridge will take place on the third day. The program will conclude with the awarding of prizes in kind or in cash, the purpose of which is to provide support for the films’ post-production.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Jane Campion, Laura Poitras, Mia Hansen-Løve and Martin McDonagh are among high-caliber members of the Venice Film Festival’s main jury. The prominent directors, most of whom are Venice regulars – Poitras last year scored the Golden Lion with documentary “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” – will be joined on the Venice jury panel by Palestinian actor Saleh Bakri (“Wajib”); Chinese star Shu Qi (“The Assassin”); Italian director Gabriele Mainetti, who was at Venice last year with “Freaks Out”; and Argentinian auteur Santiago Mitre whose “Argentina, 1985” also launched from the Lido last year. They will join Damien Chazelle who – as previously announced – will serve as president of the Venice competition jury. 

Well, it’s official: Variety reports that Luca Guadagnino‘s latest, his tennis love triangle film “Challengers,” will open the 80th edition of the Venice Film Festival. No surprise there, as Guada has premiered five of his seven feature films on the Lido.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent For his third edition at the helm, Locarno Film Festival artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro has assembled a wide spectrum of films that “do not resemble each other in terms of tone or form” while reflecting “the world in all its expressions and manifestations,” he tells Variety. This boundless range is best exemplified by the fact that starkly surrealist Filipino arthouse star Lav Díaz’s latest work, “Essential Truths of the Lake,” will be vying for the fest’s Golden Leopard alongside fare that, at least on paper, appears much lighter. This includes U.S. director Bob Byington’s indie comedy “Lousy Carter” and Estonian helmer Rainer Sarnet’s “The Invisible Flight,” which Nazzaro says  “mixes Kung Fu, hard rock and the Orthodox Church.”

Christian Petzold’s Afire and Celine Song’s Past Lives are among the titles set to screen at this year’s scaled-down Edinburgh International Film Festival (Aug 18-23), which is being mounted as part of Edinburgh’s wider cultural Festival.