Industry Experts Discuss Curatorial Justice in Film at Cannes Docs

On-location production of scripted TV series has ground to a complete halt in Los Angeles due to the five-week-old Writers Guild strike, according to data compiled by FilmLA, the city and county film permit office.

For months now, we’ve known a series led by “Star Wars” fan-favorite, Ahsoka Tano, was coming to Disney+. Several weeks ago, we saw the first full trailer for the series.

Sideshow and Janus Films have acquired all North American rights for Catherine Breillat’s drama Last Summer (L’été dernier) following its well-received premiere in competition in the final days of the Cannes Film Festival (May 16-27).

2023 Tribeca Festival in June, Robert De Niro made a splash at the 76th annual Cannes Film Festival, where the Oscar-winner's 45-year-old girlfriend, Tiffany Chen, made her debut on the carpet. Additionally, the actor's latest film,, made quite the impression on audiences during its world premiere. «It was great,» De Niro told ET's Rachel Smith about walking the carpet at the Cannes event with Chen in May.

On-location filming of scripted TV shows in Los Angeles has ground to a near-complete halt in the fourth week of the Writers Guild’s strike, according to data compiled by FilmLA, the city and county film permit office.

Jane Fonda took matters into her own hands over the weekend at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. The 85-year-old veteran actress introduced the Palme d'Or Award to French director Justine Triet.Fonda introduced the historic moment, noting that seven female directors were nominated for the prestigious award for the first time and applauding the festival for its progress.She then gave Triet the award for her film.

Two films by Arab women directors are sharing the L’Oeil d’or (Golden Eye) prize for the best documentary in Cannes. Four Daughters (Les Filles d’Olfa) by Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania and The Mother of All Lies (La Mère de tous les mensonges) by Moroccan filmmaker Asmae El Moudir were announced as the winners at a joint ceremony this morning at the Palais in Cannes.

Having previously won the Palme d’Or in 2001 for “The Son’s Room” and premiered the majority of his films in competition, Italian filmmaker Nanni Moretti has been a mainstay at the Cannes Film Festival for several decades.

CANNES: Docudramas are inherently difficult to master. You’re attempting to meld real-life footage or people with actors and, often, fictionalized accounts that may substantially differ from the truth.

On-location filming in Los Angeles continues to nosedive amid the ongoing Writers Guild strike, plunging 51.5% last week compared with the same time a year ago. The WGA strike is now in its 23rd day with no signs of abating as films and TV shows shutting down production across the county.

Matt Donnelly Senior Film Writer The upper deck at France’s Hotel Du-Cap-Eden-Roc offers a stunning coastal view of nearby city Cannes, the kind that Jay Gatsby would covet to peep Daisy Buchanan. On Tuesday, at one of the hottest parties at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, that view belonged to Graydon Carter. Standing alone with a female companion, the creator of the digital publication Air Mail and iconic former editor of Vanity Fair observed not a long-lost love but a cliffside full of movie stars, auteur directors and Hollywood power players. Carter’s Air Mail co-hosted an evening celebrating the 100-year anniversary of Warner Bros. Pictures, the latter represented by Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav and his top content lieutenants. Leonardo DiCaprio, Scarlett Johansson and Colin Jost, Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese, Lily-Rose Depp, Sam Levinson, Jason Statham and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Rebel Wilson and more turned up to toast cinema and each other.

Kaouther Ben Hania’s powerful drama “Four Daughters” which mixes documentary and fiction to tell the story of Tunisian mother whose two elder daughters joined ISIS is scoring a slew of sales following its well-received Cannes competition premiere. French company The Party Films Sales has sealed deals on “Four Daughters” for: Benelux (Cineart); Spain (Caramel Films); Italy (I Wonder); Switzerland (Trigon); Sweden (Triart); Denmark (Camera Film); Norway (Arthaus); Finland (Cinemanse); Poland (New Horizons); Greece (Ama Films); former Yougoslavia (Discovery) and Turkey (Bir Film). Rights to the film for multiple other territories are under negotiations, the company said.

Lise Pedersen The highest award for docs-in-progress at the Cannes Film Market’s sidebar dedicated to documentary, Cannes Docs, has gone to Ya-Ting Hsu’s debut feature doc “Islands of the Winds.” Twenty years in the making, the film follows the anti-eviction struggle of the patients of Losheng Sanatorium for lepers, which became a symbol of the fight for democracy in Hsu’s native Taiwan. The prize comes with a €10,000 ($10,800) cash prize and project follow-up by IEFTA (the International Emerging Film Talent Assn.). It is produced by Hsu’s Taiwan-based Argosy Films and Media Productions, Huang Yin-Yu (Moolin Films, Ltd. & Moolin Production, Co., Ltd, Taiwan and Japan) and Baptiste Brunner (Wide Productions – La Cuisine aux Images, France).

EXCLUSIVE: Leading Egyptian independent production company Film Clinic is gearing up for the shoot of The Inevitable Journey Of Finding The Wedding Dress by Jaylan Auf.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent FilmRise, the New York-based film and TV studio and streaming network, and Canal+ Docs have boarded “Missing From Fire Trail Road,” Sabrina Van Tassel (“The State of Texas vs. Melissa”)’s long-gestated documentary film about the crimes against indigenous women. “Missing From Fire Trail Road” sheds light on the case of Mary Ellen Johnson-Davis, a Native-American woman who disappeared in 2020, and exposes how hundreds of indigenous women continue to go missing in the US, perpetuating trans-generational trauma on Indian reservations. The announcement was made today by Max Einhorn, SVP of acquisitions and co-productions at FilmRise, Christine Cauquelin, head of documentaries at Canal+ and Van Tassel, who is also producing the feature.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Kirsten Niehuus, CEO at Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, which funds films and TV series production in the Berlin region, and Simone Baumann, managing director of German Films, which promotes and supports the release of German films abroad, welcomed a wide array of guests to their garden party at the Cannes Film Festival on Saturday. Three Medienboard-funded films are in this year’s Competition: Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania’s “Four Daughters,” Austrian filmmaker Jessica Hausner’s “Club Zero,” and U.S. helmer Wes Anderson’s “Asteroid City.” Niehuus told Variety: “Those are three very different productions, but it shows the spectrum [of films] that Medienboard supports.” Tunisian films, like “Four Daughters,” need international co-production funding to get made, she said, and “we believe in world cinema, so were very happy [to back it].” Hausner is “one of the most impressive female filmmakers [in the world], and I think there should be more female filmmakers on the Croisette and every other ‘A’ festival,” she said. “Asteroid City” is “the best of American arthouse filmmaking; very stylish, with a great narrative – so we love it,” she said.

Lise Pedersen Newcomer Docs-by-the-Sea, the international documentary Labs and Forum for creative doc projects from Asia, will present and works-in-progress showcase for the first time at the Marché du Film’s Cannes Docs.  Featuring four films in late production stage, the showcase is highly necessary, argues its curator, Gugi Gumilang, the executive director of In-Docs, the non-profit org behind Docs by the Sea.   A member of last year’s Docs-in-Progress jury, he said this gave him a chance to see what people are looking for. “There’s a lack of Asian representation [in documentaries],” he tells Variety, adding: “It’s really tough for documentary filmmakers in Asia, few countries have film funds,” he said, citing Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, the Philippines and, more recently, Hong Kong. “There are few dedicated festivals, the biggest being South Korea’s DMZ. Other international film festivals like Busan, Singapore and Jeonju cater for documentary film, but the competition is tough as they don’t just focus on Asian projects.”

Late last month the U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to condemn the Taliban for systematically depriving Afghan women of their rights, demanding the country’s fundamentalist Islamic rulers provide “full, equal, meaningful and safe participation of women and girls” in Afghan society.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter Robert De Niro blasted Donald Trump as a “stupid” man during the Cannes Film Festival press conference for “Killers of the Flower Moon,” comparing the former president to the twisted power player he portrays in Martin Scorsese’s crime epic, which premiered on Saturday night. De Niro admits he struggled to connect with William Hale, saying “I don’t understand a lot about my character. Part of him is sincere. The other part, where he’s betraying [the Osage tribe], there’s a feeling of entitlement. We became a lot more aware [of that dichotomy] after George Floyd with systemic racism.” De Niro drew parallels between his character and Donald Trump, whose name the actor initially refused to say out loud at the press conference. “That guy is stupid,” he said of the former president. Lily Gladstone, who stars as Osage tribe member Mollie Burkhart, pointed out that Osage members still attended the funeral of William Hale, in denial about his involvement in the brutal murders of tribe members. De Niro, again, evoked Trump in response to that kind of blind loyalty to evil men. “There are people who still think he can do a good job. Imagine how insane that is.”

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Kaouther Ben Hania, the Oscar-nominated director of “The Man Who Sold His Skin” whose latest film “Four Daughters” is competing at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, will next direct “Mimesis,” an epic love story set in Tunisia. While the plot is under wraps, the story is set in two different periods, the 1990s and the 1940s, paying tribute to cinema and Arab-Muslim cultural heritage. It’s being produced by Nadim Cheikhrouha at Tanit Films, who produced Ben Hania’s “Four Daughters” and her previous film “The Man Who Sold His Skin” which world premiered at Venice where it won best actor for Yahya Mahayni and was nominated for best international film at the Oscars in 2021.