Janet Montgomery, Tricia Small, Blackbox Multimedia Team For Period Crime Drama ‘Aqua Tofana’ With ‘Dracula’ Writer Cole Haddon (EXCLUSIVE)

Stanley Tucci stars in his own BBC food show where he travels across Italy to discover the country’s regional cuisines.

The Eurovision Song Contest has made the decision not to allow any Russian contestants to take part in this year's Song Contest.The world has watched in horror as Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine this week, with explosions heard across major cities. And just hours after saying Russia was still able to enter, European Broadcasting Union has followed a recommendation by the Eurovision Song Contest's governing body to disallow the entry of any Russian acts during this year's competition, set to be held in Turin, Italy, in May.

Kim Kardashian sits front row at the Prada fashion show during the Milan Fashion Week Fall/Winter 2022/2023 on Thursday (February 24) in Milan, Italy.

Tunisian-French film producer Tarak Ben Ammar has finalized a deal to purchase Studios de Paris, the production facility outside the French capital which recently housed the Netflix series Emily In Paris and Netflix’s Murder Mystery 2, Deadline can confirm.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentTarak Ben Ammar has finalized his acquisition of the Studios of Paris, the vast studio facility located on the outskirts of Paris where Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler are currently filming Netflix’s “Murder Mystery 2.” The deal is estimated in the $35-million range.Ben Ammar, who co-founded the Studios with “Valerian” director Luc Besson a decade ago and owned a 25-percent stake in it, completed the acquisition via Eagle Pictures France, a subsidiary of the Italian production and distribution powerhouse.The businessman has taken full ownership of the Studios from its shareholders, including Besson, who owned a 9.9% stake in the complex through his holding company Frontline. The other shareholders who are set to exit the studios are EuropaCorp, Besson’s former production banner which is now mainly owned by Vine Alternative and has a 40% stake in the property, as well as Euromedia, a broadcast facilities provider who has a 25% stake.

Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticIt’s no spoiler to say that Luigi Pirandello dies nine minutes into “Leonora addio.” This alternately playful and lugubrious work of reflection isn’t really about the controversial Italian writer’s life at all, but rather his legacy, and in a less literal yet ineluctable sense, that of film directors Paolo and Vittorio Taviani.Over the course of half a century, the two cinematic siblings made movies together — including 1985’s “Kaos,” an omnibus-style collection of five Pirandello stories — bookending their career together by winning top prizes at the Cannes and Berlin film festivals (for “Padre Padrone” and “Caesar Must Die,” in respectively). And then, in 2018, Vittorio died.

Amber Heard is taking on a new role.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentAmber Heard (“Aquaman”) and Spain’s Eduardo Noriega (“Vantage Point”) will star in 19th century-set supernatural thriller “In the Fire.”The film, which will shoot in Italy, is directed by Conor Allyn (“No Man’s Land”).Principal photography is set to start Feb. 21 in Italy’s Apulia region.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentMemento International has closed major sales on Ursula Meier’s Berlin contender “The Line,” and “Boy from Heaven” by Tarik Saleh, the Swedish-Egyptian helmer of “The Nile Hilton Incident.” A religious and political thriller, “Boy From Heaven” is set in Cairo, in a Koranic school following the collapse of a grand imam which marks the start of a ruthless battle for influence.The movie is headlined by Tawfeek Barhom and Fares Fares, who previously starred in “The Nile Hilton Incident.” Saleh’s Stockholm-based outfit Atmo is producing the movie with Memento. Memento International has sold the film to Benelux (Cineart), Spain (La Aventura), Italy (Movies Inspired), Greece (Cinobo), Hungary (Vertigo) and Middle East (Falcon). Other territories in negotiation.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentEmmy-winning “The Crown” star Josh O’Connor will be the protagonist of Italian auteur Alice Rohrwacher’s next film “La Chimera,” which is set in the world of archeological looting and is currently shooting in and around Southern Tuscany.O’Connor, who in “The Crown” played the young Prince Charles, in “La Chimera” is playing a young British archeologist named Arthur who gets involved in an international network of stolen Etruscan artifacts during the 1980s.Also starring in “La Chimera,” which can be loosely translated as “The Unrealizable Dream,” are Isabella Rossellini as a retired opera singer; Brazilian actor Carole Duarte (“The Invisible Life”) who plays another non-Italian woman who intersects with Arthur; Alba Rohrwacher as an international artifacts trafficker; and Vincenzo Nemolato (“Martin Eden”) who plays one of the “tombaroli,” literally grave robbers, as artifacts thieves are known in Italy. “‘La Chimera’ is the story of a young English archaeologist who gets involved in the underground world of the ‘tombaroli,’ the nocturnal raiders of Etruscan tombs,” the director said in a statement.Rohrwacher added that the film “is the final piece of a triptych on territory that I started with ‘The Wonders’ and which poses a central question: what to do with the past?” “Is the past merely a lost world, or does it intimately concern our present?,” Rohrwacher asks.“The Wonders,” which screened in Competition in 2014 at Cannes, winning the Grand Prix, was followed in 2018 by “Happy as Lazzaro” that also launched from the Croisette where it scooped the award for best screenplay.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentFour years after the death of his brother Vittorio, with whom he shared a celebrated career, Paolo Taviani is back in the Berlin competition solo, with “Leonora Addio.” The brothers won the Golden Bear in 2012 with “Caesar Must Die,” about high-security inmates performing Shakespeare.The free-form film he made –– screening on Feb. 15 –– takes its cue from a story titled “Il Chiodo” (“The Nail”) by Italian playwright and author Luigi Pirandello, written shortly before he died in 1936.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentItalian director Roberta Torre, known for campy Mafia musical “Tano to Die For” and other anarchic pics, is making “Le Favolose,” about a group of transgender women who reunite after 20 years to commemorate a dead friend and do right by her after her identity has been violated.“Le Favolose,” which translates as “The Fabulous Ones,” is being produced by Donatella Palermo, who is at the Berlinale with auteur Paolo Taviani’s competition entry “Leonora Addio.”Palermo, who has a longstanding rapport with Torre, is the Italian producer behind two Berlin Golden Bear winners: the Taviani brothers’ “Caesar Must Die” and Gianfranco Rosi’s “Fire at Sea.” “When a person decides to face the [gender] transition from man to woman it can be a very painful process in several different ways: social, physical, etc.,” said Palermo, who notes that “when a trans dies, most of the time their body is returned to their families.” Torre’s new pic is based on a real-life story of Antonia, one of the “Fabulous Ones,” who is buried by her family dressed as a man under her original name, Giampaolo, amid the indifference of most.

Cristiano Ronaldo and his path to becoming one of the greatest ever footballers is not without personal tragedy.