India-China Locarno Film ‘Rapture’ Explores the Politics of Fear

Michael Lewis, the author of The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game, the book that inspired the Oscar-winning film The Blind Side, is blaming Hollywood for the rift over money between ex-NFL lineman Michael Oher and his former guardians, Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy.

Oppenheimer marked the sixth time Cillian Murphy starred in a film directed by Christopher Nolan following The Dark Knight trilogy, Inception and Dunkirk.

Iranian filmmaker Ali Ahmadzadeh clinched the Golden Leopard in the main international competition of the 76th Locarno Film Festival with his latest feature Critical Zone (Mantagheye Bohrani).

Marta Balaga The hype is real: Ali Ahmadzadeh’s “Critical Zone” (“Mantagheye bohrani”) has picked up the top Golden Leopard at Locarno. It has been a bumpy ride for the film, set in Tehran over the course of one lonely night and described by the fest as “a hymn to freedom and resistance.” As reported by Variety, Iranian authorities have been pressuring Ahmadzadeh to pull it from the Swiss festival – arguing it was shot without permission – and with the director himself banned from leaving the country. “Instead of actors, I worked with real people.

Tara Karajica In Sudabeh Mortezai’s provocative fifth feature, “Europa,” the Vienna-based director follows ambitious executive Beate from Europa, a mysterious corporation looking to expand into the Balkans by seemingly promoting philanthropy and investment in underdeveloped areas. What Europa actually needs is to buy land from the locals in a remote Albanian valley. The film plays in Competition at the Sarajevo Film Festival.

Nicholas Galitzine and Taylor Zakhar Perez had to make the world believe that they were falling in love with one another while filming their new movie Red, White & Royal Blue. Now they’re opening up about their chemistry and how they pulled it off.

Arthouse Crunch Over the last decade, theatrical arthouse markets have imploded soufflé-like. “We used to make 5,000 admissions per title, now the target audience is 500,” Peter Bognar, at Hungary’s CinefilCo, told Variety at Locarno. So, to close the gap and move hopefully into a little upside, having tapped subsidies and local TV pre-buys, producers are looking ever more to overseas public-sector coin, channelled via international co-producer partners.

The mystical and the industrial cross paths in this haunting debut from India, screening at this year’s Locarno Film Festival in the event’s parallel competition for first and second movies. It begins in an almost documentary style, showing the harsh, eerie beauty of Jharia, a once-proud mining community that’s now an apocalyptic ruin of a city, where toxic waste is dumped 24/7 and noxious fires burn just as endlessly. Midway through, however, Lubdhak Chatterjee’s film begins to change direction, as its passive hero becomes attuned to the natural mysteries lurking in the adjacent woods.  

Addie Morfoot Contributor With documentary distribution in a state of disruption, most independent nonfiction filmmakers have been left on their own to find new and creative solutions to ensure that their films reach audiences. Ian Cheney is the latest director to turn to a bespoke distribution method for his docu “The Arc of Oblivion.” Cheney wrote, edited, and directed the film, which explores people’s impulse toward preservation and how it relates to the natural world, memory and legacy.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Wes Anderson will be honored at the 80th Venice Film Festival, which runs Aug. 30-Sept. 9.

Wes Anderson will be honored with the Cartier Glory to the Filmmaker Award at the 80th Venice International Film Festival, running from August 30th to September 9.

It’s rare that European cinema impacts on Hollywood but it’s exciting when there’s a trickle-down effect, like the connection to be made between Denmark’s stripped-down Dogme movies, which launched in Cannes in the late ’90s, and Steven Spielberg’s decision to go back to basics (well, for him) with Catch Me If You Can a few years later. It’s a moot point how many will ever see Romanian director Radu Jude’s follow-up to his 2021 Berlinale winner Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, but, like Bob Dylan going electric or the Sex Pistols making their ramshackle debut at a London art school, this wilfully uncommercial but bloody-minded film could be genuinely seminal in its anarchic and totally individualistic approach, slipping discordant, Godardian subversion into a darkly comic, Ruben Östlund-style human drama.

Sophia Sun Intern Comedian Zarna Garg has launched a podcast on the heels of her Amazon Prime Video special “One in a Billion.” Garg was recently highlighted as one of Variety‘s 10 Comics to Watch for 2023. “The Zarna Garg Show,” which bowed Aug. 1 across major podcast platforms and YouTube, features conversations with her multi-generational Indian American family on what she describes as “bringing taboo topics out in the open.” The first installment features Garg, her husband, Shalabh, and their three children: Zoya, 20, Brij, 17, and Veer, 11.

Busan International Film Festival has announced the 30 projects selected for this year’s Asian Project Market (APM), including new projects from leading Asian filmmakers such as Japan’s Koji Fukada, Indonesia’s Makbul Mubarak and India’s Rima Das.

Ted Hope delivered a blistering takedown of the studios and streamers during an “out-of-the-box” keynote at the Locarno Film Festival. The veteran U.S.

Coronation Street fans have been hailing Tina O'Brien as 'incredible' as she was seen playing out Sarah Barlow's latest heartache. The ITV soap character has had a tricky time of late, to say the least, after her brief fling with Damon Hay behind her husband's back was exposed.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The Busan film festival’s Asian Project Market is set to welcome several of the region’s top auteurs either as producers or prospective directors at its next edition in October. APM organizers Thursday unveiled 30 projects to be presented during a four-day round of one-on-one meetings and pitching sessions. India’s Rima Das (“Tora’s Husband”) will pitch “Malti My Love.” Japan’s Fukada Koji (“Love Life,” “Harmonium”) will pitch “Nagi Notes.” Indonesia’s Makbul Mubarak (“Autobiography”) will pitch “Watch It Burn.” Among the successful producers adding their weight to APM contenders are: Patrick Mao Huang (“Moneyboys,” “Tiger Stripes”) selling Peter Ho’s project “Appetite for Desire”; Jeremy Chua (“Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell,” “Autobiography”), pitching Rafael Manuel’s “Filipinana”; Ichiyama Shozo (“Ash Is Puirest White”) pitching Song Fang’s Japan-China collaboration “Full Moon”; Fran Borgia (“A Land Imagined,” “Tiger Stripes”) pitching Aakash Chhabra’s “I’ll Smile in September”; and Tan Chui Mui (“Barbarian Invasion”) pitching Jian Xiaoshuan’s “To Kill A Mongolian Horse.” The project market and the Asian Contents & Film Market are both scheduled to operate Oct.

Christopher Nolan is one of the most accomplished directors of our time. Delivering hit after hit, Nolan's films are thought-provoking and powerful. His latest film,, based on the true story of J.

A select group of films has qualified for Academy Award consideration after winning prizes at the 27th LA Shorts Film Festival, the longest-running shorts festival in the movie capital.

It’s been 38 years since the release of the film version of Back to the Future.