‘Holy Spider’ Film Review: Disturbing Serial-Killer Drama Goes to Extremes to Show Violence Against Women

K.J. Yossman The adaptation of T.M. Logan’s novel “The Holiday” has an exclusive trailer and a U.S.

Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds have started their summer tour – see photos and check out the setlist from their first gig since 2018 below.The band headlined Denmark’s Northside Festival last night (June 2) and treated fans to some special performances including playing ‘Get Ready for Love’ for the first time since 2009, according to notes on SetlistFM.They also gave ‘Vortex‘, a song recorded in 2006 and shared last year as part of the band’s ‘B-Sides & Rarities Part II’ release, its live debut.The show comes weeks after Cave‘s son Jethro died at the age of 31. Cave issued a statement to NME at the time saying, “We would be grateful for family privacy at this time.”Since then, the singer has thanked fans for their support in the wake of his son’s death.Cave lost another son, Arthur, 15, in 2015 after he fell to his death from a cliff in Brighton.The Bad Seeds’ show last night ushers in a busy summer of festival appearances including the band’s headline show at London’s All Points East on August 28.They last played the Scotiabank Arena in Toronto, Canada in 2018 and had a handful of other shows planned before the COVID pandemic scuppered live music.Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds’ setlist for their opening tour show 01. ‘Get Ready For Love’02. ‘There She Goes, My Beautiful World’03. ‘From Her to Eternity’04. ‘O Children’05. ‘Jubilee Street’06. ‘Bright Horses’07. ‘I Need You’08. ‘Waiting for You’09. ‘Carnage’ 10. ‘Tupelo’11. ‘Red Right Hand’12. ‘The Mercy Seat’13. ‘The Ship Song’14. ‘Higgs Boson Blues’15. ‘City Of Refuge’16. ‘White Elephant’ 17. ‘Into My Arms’18. ‘Vortex’ (live debut)19. ‘Ghosteen Speaks’Meanwhile, NME have an exclusive new clip of Nick Cave and Warren Ellis‘ film This Much I Know To Be True featuring Marianne

Welcome to International Disruptors, a feature where we shine a spotlight on key executives and companies outside of the U.S. shaking up the offshore marketplace. This week, ITV Studios International Production MD Lisa Perrin talks through some of the biggest topics of the moment. Lisa is responsible for a host of well-respected labels outside the U.S. and UK that are primed to take advantage of the current penchant for foreign-language drama. She joined two years ago and is finally able to get out and about after the pandemic curtailed travel. 

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentSpanish streaming service Filmin has acquired Lars von Trier’s “The Kingdom” trilogy, along with the full library of films by the director, from TrustNordisk.Von Trier is currently completing the third and final instalment of “The Kingdom,” his cult 1990s TV show about the good, evil and paranormal inside the neurosurgical ward of Denmark’s main hospital.Filmin is also acquiring the restored Seasons 1 and 2 of the show and will launch the complete series in Spain. The trilogy has already been acquired in several territories, including Germany and Austria (Koch Films), Japan (Synca Creations) and South Korea (AtNine).“We are pleased to experience this high level of interest in the series among buyers, who are evidently intrigued and excited about the series’ epic story, director and cast, which of course comes as no surprise,” said Susan Wendt, TrustNordisk’s managing director.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentMK2 Films has locked major territory deals on Leonor Serraille’s drama “Mother and Son” which world premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival and garnered strong reviews. “Mother and Son” charts the lives of a young African woman, Rose, and two of her four children, Jean and Ernest, who come to France from the Ivory Coast in the 1980s with high ideals.

Lucas’ bishop warns him of the dangers before he sets out to minister to a remote community of Icelanders in Cannes Un Certain Regard title Godland. “It’s easy to go mad there,” he explains at his Copenhagen dining table, steadily chewing his way through the fabulous feast in front of him. Iceland, where the sun never sets on summer nights, where the weather is extreme, the landscape broodingly monumental: just remember the apostles, “a group of lonely men,” the bishop advises as he wipes his mouth. Lucas (Elliott Crosset Hove) is not eating; one glance tells you he’s a priest of an ascetic bent.

Leo (Eden Dambrine) and Remi (Gustav De Waele) are more than just friends and not at all lovers. At only 13 years of age, they’re too young for that – and what’s more, their bond transcends simple labels. First seen running through the lush meadows of rural Belgium, the duo share a complicity that is as natural and abundant as the late summer harvest.

Mads Mikkelsen will star in an epic period drama called “King’s Land” and is reuniting with the director of “A Royal Affair” Nikolaj Arcel, making it Arcel’s first film since “A Royal Affair” in 2012. “King’s Land” (working title) is co-written by Arcel and Danish screenwriter Anders Thomas Jensen (“Riders of Justice”) and is based on the Danish bestseller “The Captain and Ann Barbara” from 2020.

As countries go, Iceland is probably one of the most fast-changing in terms of its biological make up, its intense volcanic activities reshaping its surface and contours at a speed fast enough to be perceived within a single generation. Paradoxically, it is also a place where time appears to stand still, with the sun omnipresent for half the year and absent for the rest.

Mads Mikkelsen is set to star in a new period drama King’s Land (working title) which will reunite the prolific Danish actor with A Royal Affair director Nikolaj Arcel.

Lise Pedersen The top IEFTA (Intl. Film Talent Assn.) award for docs-in-progress at the Cannes Film Market’s documentary-focused industry sidebar Cannes Docs has gone to “Twice Colonized” by Lin Alluna.The film was developed by the Circle Women Doc Accelerator, a training program for female-identifying documentary filmmakers.The win marks a hat-trick for Circle since they started their partnership with Cannes Docs in 2020: previous IEFTA Docs-in-Progress Award laureates at the industry event include “Beauty of the Beast” by Anna Nemes, produced by Circle 2018 alumna Ágnes Horváth-Szabó, and “Cent’anni” by Circle 2020 alumna Maja Prelog, produced by Rok Biček.“Twice Colonized” tells the story of renowned Inuit lawyer Aaju Peter who has led a lifelong fight for the rights of her people.

For decades, Italian filmmakers dominated Cannes.If the 1960s saw Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni and Luchino Visconti reign supreme, somehow the 1970s were even richer. Elio Petri and Francesco Rosi won shared top prizes in 1972, while for two consecutive years later that decade the Taviani brothers and then Ermanno Olmi hoisted Palmes across a border that sits just 40 miles away.This year’s lone competition title from an Italian director (the only other Italian language film, “The Eight Mountains,” comes courtesy of two Belgians), Mario Martone’s “Nostalgia” will probably not break that particular drought, but the Neapolitan director can take solace in another modest honor: Telling a story about mothers and sons, about gangsters and priests, and about a peculiar kind of longing for the past in a place where little has changed for hundreds of years, “Nostalgia” is a nigh perfect candidate to wave il Tricolore.Taking a thin amount of plot and stretching it as far and wide as it can go, the film itself is far from perfect, but it does benefit from “The Traitor” star Pierfrancesco Favino’s terrific lead performance as a man who learns the hard way that there’s no going home again.After forty years abroad, Felice (Favino, of course) returns to his native Naples a stranger in a familiar land.

Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticIceland is like no other place on Earth, and the films that take place there can’t help but reflect this. In “Godland,” Icelandic writer-director Hlynur Pálmason attempts to see his homeland through outside eyes, the way it must have looked to the Danes who claimed and controlled it until World War II.

“Either/Or,” by Elif Batuman (Penguin Press)Do you remember what it felt like to be a college sophomore? The Jell-O shots, cookie dough and moments of abject humiliation and terror as you tried, oh so self-importantly, to figure out how to live?Elif Batuman brings back the tedium and exhilaration of undergraduate life in “Either/Or,” a charming, mordantly funny follow-up to her first novel, “The Idiot,” which was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize.Selin, the overachieving daughter of Turkish immigrants and Batuman’s alter ego, spent much of that book mooning over Ivan, an older, emotionally unavailable boy in her Russian class. Hence the title, “The Idiot,” a reference to Fyodor Dostoevsky and the generally clueless behavior of young people everywhere.In “Either/Or,” whose title nods to the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard’s treatise on the aesthetic versus the ethical life, Selin decides to opt for the former and become the writer she has longed to be since childhood.

A drastic departure from his prior films “Border” and “Shelley,” Ali Abbasi’s newest film, “Holy Spider,” draws inspiration from the 2000-2001 crimes and subsequent trial of Saeed Hanaei (played here by Mehdi Bajestani), a war veteran-turned-serial killer in the Iranian city of Mashhad who murdered 16 sex workers, claiming that he was cleansing the holy city of sinners and corruption in the name of Islam.

The Queen has made an appearance at this year's Chelsea Flower Show. Just two weeks after pulling out of the State Opening of Parliament due to ongoing mobility issues, Her Majesty surprised everyone by turning up to a royal preview of the show ahead of tomorrow's official opening. Buckingham Palace has confirmed it was a last-minute decision for her to attend the event, with a spokeswoman adding: "Adjustments have been made for the Queen’s comfort".

Forbes). “I know we are human beings and that we are very complicated, and the power of art is that it knows no color. Because human beings, when they sit and watch art they want to feel less alone.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefIranian-Danish director Ali Abbasi insists that his Cannes competition film “Holy Spider” is not intended to be a controversial truth telling. Rather, he is telling the truth through a fictional interpretation of real events. The film chronicles a killing spree in the streets of the religious city of Mashhad, where 16 prostitutes were found dead between 2000 and 2001.“I am not a big fan of serial killers or serial killer movies,” Abbasi said May 23 at the Cannes Film Festival.

Ramin Setoodeh Executive Editor“Holy Spider,” a gritty drama about a real-life Iranian serial killer, stunned the Cannes Film Festival at its premiere on Sunday afternoon, earning a thunderous seven-minute standing ovation and bringing a jolt of electricity to what’s been a sleepy festival so far.The film, from Iranian-Danish director Ali Abbasi (“Border”), chronicles a killing spree in the streets of the religious city of Mashhad, where 16 prostitutes were found dead from 2000 to 2001.  A local journalist, Rahimi (Zar Amir-Ebrahimi), is trying to crack the case as she grows frustrated by the police’s apathy toward finding the murderer. But in one of many twists in this drama, the identity of the serial killer is revealed early on — he’s a war veteran named Saeed (Mehdi Bajestani), a seemingly normal family man who spends his nights picking up women on his motorcycle and brutally strangling them in his home as a religious cleansing ritual.