Lightdox Boards ‘Kapr Code,’ ‘Garconnieres,’ Ahead of Visions Du Reel Premieres (EXCLUSIVE)

Total harmony! Ewan McGregor and Mary Elizabeth Winstead are in a great place with their families after their wedding, an insider exclusively reveals in the new issue of Us Weekly.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentKino Lorber has acquired all North American distribution rights to Elie Grappe’s Ukrainian gymnast drama “Olga,” which world premiered at Cannes Critics’ Week last year and won a prize. Kino Lorber is planning a theatrical release on June 24, with 10% of proceeds to be donated to Direct Relief in Ukraine.Grappe’s debut feature, “Olga” stars former Ukrainian National Team gymnast Anastasia Budiashkina in her first film role.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentGerman actor Oliver Masucci and French star Fanny Ardant have joined the cast of Roman Polanski’s new movie “The Palace,” which will surely be a subject of controversy at the Cannes Film Festival where distribution rights are being sold.The ensemble drama, which had already cast Mickey Rourke, will be headlined by Masucci, the German actor who appeared in “Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore” and the Netflix series “Dark,” and Ardant, the esteemed French star of “La Belle Epoque” and “8 Women.” Budgeted at €13 million ($13.9 million), the movie is currently shooting on location in Gstaad, Switzerland, and is being sold by Wild Bunch International, the powerhouse behind several movies competing at Cannes, notably Arnaud Desplechin’s “Brother and Sister,” Claire Denis’s “Stars at Noon” and the opening night film “Final Cut” from Michel Hazanavicius. The key crew includes Oscar-winning music composer Alexandre Desplat, along with Polanski’s regular cinematographer Pawel Edelman, who previously worked with Polanski on “An Officer and a Spy,” “The Pianist,” “Oliver Twist” and “The Ghost Writer,” as well as set designer Monica Sironi (“Volare”).“The Palace” is produced by Luca Barbareschi at Eliseo Entertainment company, and co-produced by CAB Productions in Switzerland and Lucky Bob in Poland.Penned by Polanski and Jerzy Skolimowski, the movie takes place at a palace in Gstaad on New Year’s Eve in 1999.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor“Images of a Nordic Drama,” the debut documentary by Oscar-nominated Norwegian director Nils Gaup, has debuted its teaser trailer, ahead of its international premiere at Hot Docs.The film follows art collector Haakon Mehren who faces unexpected resistance while championing the work of an unknown Norwegian artist after finding a cache of paintings in a barn.Despite success abroad, the undiscovered work of Aksel Waldemar Johannessen, a contemporary of Edvard Munch, takes nearly three decades to launch in Norway. The painter’s depictions of prostitutes and drunks living in miserable poverty offend the aesthetics of Norway’s art establishment and challenge the canon to the point of sabotaging his rediscovery.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor“The Quiet Epidemic,” a feature documentary about the tick-borne illness Lyme Disease, has released its trailer ahead of the film’s premiere in the Special Presentations category at the Hot Docs film festival in Toronto on May 2. The film is co-directed by Lindsay Keys and Winslow Crane-Murdoch, and the producers are Chris Hegedus, who was Oscar nominated with D.A. Pennebaker for “The War Room,” and Daria Lombroso, whose credits include “Most Likely to Succeed.” Keys and Crane-Murdoch met through their Lyme Disease doctor’s office in 2015.

Trinidad Barleycorn A miner in Germany’s last coal mine undergoing a gender change, a prima ballerina fighting to keep her status after becoming a mother, a repentant hooligan turned kickboxing champion, a father who fled the former Uruguayan dictatorship, rejected refugees awaiting deportation, and stuntwomen taking hit after hit for the film industry: to say that the 5th Swiss Films Previews at doc film fest Visions du Réel introduced us to strong characters is an understatement. Six promising films soon to be launched on the festival circuit and the international market were selected for the event and pitched at VdR-Industry. Five of them were directed (co-directed for “Red”) by women.

Lise Pedersen “Like an Island” (“L’îlot”), a hybrid documentary fable tinged with magical realism by Swiss director Tizian Büchi, has won the Grand Jury Prize at international documentary film festival Visions du Réel in Nyon, Switzerland. The debut feature had its world premiere at the festival, bearing testimony to the event’s reputation as a launchpad for new talent and its tradition for hybrid fiction-reality films.

Lise Pedersen Top industry awards at the 53rd edition of the international documentary film festival Visions du Réel have gone to “La Bonga,” “Anatomy of the Night,” “The Other Profile,” “Noor” and “Becoming Roosi.” A total of 27 projects were invited to participate in three key forums – VdR-Pitching, VdR-Work in Progress and VdR-Rough Cut Lab – that ran as part of the festival’s industry activities in Nyon from April 10-14.Seventeen awards were handed out to 16 docs-in-the-making, two of which won a double award: “La Bonga,” by Sebastián Pinzón Silva and Canela Reyes, took the Visions Sud Est and Raggioverde Subtitling trophies, and “Mailin” by Maria Silvia Esteve won both the TËNK Post-Production and Party Film Sales awards. Considered to be the festival’s top industry prize, the Vision Sud Est award comes with a 10,000 CHF ($10,700) cash prize handed out to the best project from the Southern or Eastern Europe, and is the only award that takes in titles in both of the festival’s main industry sections: the VdR-Pitching and the VdR-Work in Progress segment.Handing out the prize, jury member Delphine Jeanneret, programmer and curator at the Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterhur in Switzerland, said: “We decided to award a highly promising collective work that will have a broad impact on a community that took an active part in a portrait empowering them to reclaim their community through filmmaking.”Pinzón Silva and Reyes’ debut feature, “La Bonga” is about a displaced Afro-Colombian community that embarks on a symbolic journey through the jungles of the Caribbean to resurrect a home that exists only in their memories.

Lise Pedersen The French duo behind “The Last Hillbilly,” which received a Special Mention in the First Appearance category at IDFA, have been pitching their new project at Swiss documentary festival Visions du Réel. “A Dog’s Life” will follow the journey of six teenage girls from the juvenile detention center in Bakersfield as they embark on a rehabilitation program: for three months, the girls will attempt to mend their own lives by taking care of a rescued dog. Diane Sara Bouzgarrou told Variety how she and partner Thomas Jenkoe were inspired to pick up where they had left off with their first feature collaboration.

Demi Moore,59, has been “secretly dating” chef Daniel Humm,46, and while she hasn’t confirmed the news, Humm shared the first photo of them online Thursday. The actress and famed Eleven Madison Park restaurateur attended Roni Horn’s show and happily posed with the artist.

Lise Pedersen Swiss-based sales and distribution agency Lightdox has acquired world rights for “How to Save a Dead Friend,” the debut doc by Russian filmmaker Marusya Syroechkovskaya. Lightdox provided Variety exclusive access to the film’s trailer ahead of the film’s world premiere at Swiss doc film fest Visions du Réel next week.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorSwiss documentary film festival Visions du Réel has opened in Nyon with a homage to Lithuanian director Mantas Kvedaravicius, who was killed while filming in Ukraine last week. The 45 year old, best known for his conflict-zone documentary “Mariupolis,” which was screened at the 2016 edition of the fest and has been added to this year’s lineup, was a festival regular.

Lise Pedersen Berlin Silver Bear winner Manuel Abramovich (“Blue Boy,” 2019) is presenting his new project “The Monsters” at Swiss doc festival Visions du Réel’s Industry event, VdR-Pitching.The project, he tells Variety, “is about one of the first characters that we play in our lives which is gender, as a performative fiction with our bodies. From the moment we are born we have two scripts already written for us: either you are a man or a woman.

A+E Networks Global Content Sales has hired Sony Pictures Television exec Kerstin Gühne as its Vice President for EMEA.

Lise Pedersen Jan Šimánek and Petr Záruba have dropped the trailer of their new film “Adam Ondra: Pushing the Limit,” which follows four years in the life of Adam Ondra, considered to be one of the best rock climbers in the world, as he prepares for and competes in the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games. The film will have its world premiere at Swiss documentary festival Visions du Réel.A celebrity in his home country, Ondra is one of the rare climbers who excels both in outdoor and indoor competition climbing.“He has won pretty much won every championship there is,” says Šimánek.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentStrand Releasing has acquired all North American rights to Alain Guiraudie’s “Nobody’s Hero” which is handled by Films du Losange and world premiered at the Berlin Film Festival. The movie, which opened the Berlinale Panorama section, is set in Clermont-Ferrand revolves around Frederic, a 35 year-old man who falls in love with with a middle-aged sex worker who is married.