Iran Showbiz Latest News and Updates

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Paris-based Cat&Docs has acquired world sales rights for “Grand Me” by Iranian filmmaker Atiye Zare Arandi. The documentary, about an Iranian girl in the middle of a custody battle, is set to world premiere in the NEXT:WAVE strand at CPH:DOX on March 18. Set in Esfahan, Iran, “Grand Me” follows Melina, who has lived with her grandparents since her parents’ divorce.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor TikTok could be banned in the U.S. as soon as January 2025. Here’s what the new law means for users of the popular short-form video app.

Jamie Lang Leading French production-distribution outfit Le Pacte has boarded the upcoming 2D animated feature project “Conference of the Birds,” which will be spotlighted at the Marché du Film’s Animation Day during this year’s Cannes Festival. In addition to co-producing, Le Pacte will handle French distribution and serve as international sales agent on the film, part of the five-title Annecy Showcase at the Animation Day.

EXCLUSIVE: Oscar nominee Vanessa Kirby, BAFTA nominee David Oyelowo and BAFTA winner Sofie Gråbøl lead cast in Audible’s The Strange Case, the first audio drama from the creator of the John Wick franchise, Derek Kolstad.

The Cannes Film Festival has added 13 new titles to the selection for its 77th edition, including new films by Oliver Stone, Lou Ye and Arnaud Desplechin as Special Screenings.

The Foreign Office has updated its travel advice for two popular African holiday destinations after reports of explosions in the Middle East.

Lise Pedersen In an exclusive interview with Variety after picking up the top industry prize at Swiss documentary festival Visions du Réel, Franco-Iranian director Mehran Tamadon outlined the intention of his upcoming feature documentary “The Last Days of the Hospital.” Set against the backdrop of France’s public health crisis and shortage of personnel, the film will show patients from a psychiatric hospital on the outskirts of Paris taking charge of their own ward. Tamadon has been running film workshops with the patients at the hospital for the past eight years, and decided it was time to make a film to denounce what he describes as “the ultra-liberal policy which plans the death of the public hospital.” “French public hospitals are not doing well, nurses and caregivers are leaving because they are mistreated and poorly paid.

Kate Garraway halted proceedings during Friday's airing of Good Morning Britain to share some startling "breaking news" with viewers.

Lise Pedersen Two new cash prizes introduced this year in Swiss film festival Visions du Reel’s industry section, VdR-Industry, were among a flurry of awards handed out as the program wrapped in Nyon, Switzerland, on Wednesday. The Eurimages Co-production Development Award, created to promote the fund’s role in encouraging international co-production from the initial stages of a project, and which comes with a cash prize of €20,000 ($22,000), went to “The Last Days of the Hospital” by Mehran Tamadon (“My Worst Enemy,” “Bassidji”).

EXCLUSIVE: Brussels-based company Best Friend Forever (BFF) has acquired international sales rights for Canadian director Matthew Rankin’s Universal Language.

Iran is "within minutes" of developing a nuclear capability and "mad enough to use it", the Government has been warned.

UK residents with plans to head to Dubai are being urged to stay vigilant, following a fresh warning from the Foreign Office.

Mhairi Black has clashed with Rishi Sunak over Iran's drone attack on Israel.

Naman Ramachandran Circle Women Doc Accelerator, an international training program dedicated to women and non-binary filmmakers, has unveiled the four projects that will take part in its showcase as part of the Cannes Docs program of the upcoming Cannes Film Market. For the fifth consecutive year, four alumnae of the program will present their works-in-progress during the market. “Dreamers” by Imam Hasanov, produced by Maria Ibrahimova for Cinex production (Azerbaijan), is set in rural Azerbaijan, where former football player Mamed coaches an all-girls football team.

The Foreign Office has issued new travel warnings for 16 countries today following. In light of the recent drone attack on Israel by Iran, those planning to visit destinations including Morocco and the United Arab Emirates are strongly advised to check travel advice before making their journey.

Lise Pedersen Berlinale Forum entry “Shahid,” the debut feature of Iranian-German filmmaker Narges Kalhor, has been picked up by Prague-based doc specialist Filmotor ahead of its premiere at Swiss documentary festival Visions du Réel, where it is competing in the more experimental Burning Lights section. Described by Kalhor as a collective work between herself and other artists, including a costume artist and a painter from Iran, a German music composer and a choreographer from Berlin, “Shahid” shifts playfully between genres, challenging conventional filmmaking rules.

Iran has launched drones toward Israel today, in highly anticipated retaliatory strikes that the White House said is “likely to unfold over a number of hours.”

The Foreign Office has issued a new urgent travel warning for 18 countries, including popular Mediterranean holiday destinations. The government's latest advisory cautions travellers about an increased risk of terrorist attacks in countries around the southern Mediterranean and the Middle East due to heightened tensions following recent events in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

The Iranian TV journalist who was stabbed last weekend in London is already back live on air, saying attempts to silence him are not going to work.

President Joe Biden told Israel‘s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that an immediate ceasefire was needed in Gaza “to stabilize and improve the humanitarian situation and protect innocent civilians,” the White House said today.

EXCLUSIVE: MPI Media Group has acquired North American distribution rights for Saïd Belktibia’s French thriller Hood Witch starring Golshifteh Farahani and Denis Lavant.

EXCLUSIVE: Mainstay Entertainment is producing a documentary on professional tennis player Aleksandra Krunic. Norman Aladjem and Madeleine Buisseret are producing for Mainstay along with sports documentarian Natalie Jowett, who wrote and directed an Emmy-winning documentary on the tragedy of the 1972 Munich Olympics and was nominated for an Emmy as a producer on the NFL Network documentary America’s Game and the Iran Hostage Crisis.

The Tehran government has denied that it had any part on the attack on an Iran International TV presenter outside his London home.

Alex Ritman Since its inception in 2018, North American distributer and sales outfit Utopia has been quietly building up its credentials as a both a company with a distinctive cinematic palette and one able to identify indie projects ahead of the buzz. Its darkly comic 2020 breakout hit “Shiva Baby,” the directorial feature debut of Emma Seligman, gave an early indication of Utopia’s tastes, which soon led it to pick up Dasha Nekrasova’s wild and erotically-charged Jeffrey Epstein-themed horror “The Scary of Sixty-First” and Lena Dunham’s shoestring sex comedy “Sharp Stick.” In Cannes 2022 it made a splash by acquiring domestic rights to Ali Abbasi’s gritty Iranian crime thriller and Palme d’Or nominee “Holy Spider,” for which Zar Amir won the best actress award, and last year bought LGBT revenge thriller “Femme,” one of the hottest films going into the 2023 Berlinale.

Getting less than seven hours of sleep is associated with a seven per cent increased risk of developing high blood pressure over time, according to early research.

Anna Marie de la Fuente Macu Machín’s “La Hojarasca” (“The Undergrowth”) took home the top MiradaCanaria prize at the 17thMiradasDoc, which ran March 15-22 in Tenerife, Spain. Produced by El Viaje Films, Machin’s debut feature has been picking up accolades since its world premiere at Berlinale’s Forum, snagging Best Spanish Picture and director at the Malaga Film Festival’s Zonazine, a sidebar for edgier and sometimes smaller pics.

The second day of Dublin’s Storyhouse screenwriting festival kicked off with a bang on Friday as established writer-directors Ali Abbasi (Holy Spider), Mounia Akl (Costa Brava Lebanon) and Stacey Gregg (Ballywalter) all discussed at length the process of how they achieve their best work and how they balance the writer-director relationship. 

EXCLUSIVE: The Issa Rae and Deniese Davis co-founded ColorCreative is expanding its management ranks again.

Kensington Palace is facing fresh questions over image editing after Getty Images added an editor’s note to a picture of Queen Elizabeth II taken by Kate Middleton.

Murtada Elfadl Revolutions bring hope for a better life and strength in community. “Immortals,” a documentary about young Iraqi activists, deals with the aftermath of 2019’s October Protest Movement. What happens when the promise of a better life has been hijacked by insidious political forces? An insightful look into the social and political fabric of modern Iraq, Maja Tschumi‘s film shows the quiet desperation of losing hope and having raging emotions that cannot be outwardly expressed.

Iranian filmmaker Farahnaz Sharifi’s My Stolen Planet won the Golden Alexander at the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival today, automatically qualifying the film for Oscar consideration.

Christopher Vourlias Iranian filmmaker Farahnaz Sharifi‘s “My Stolen Planet,” an intimate family portrait of life during Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, won the Golden Alexander at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival on Sunday, bringing a close to an emotional and politically charged week in Greece’s second city. Using both the director’s personal archives and 8mm recordings of strangers’ lives, the film — which world premiered in the Berlin Film Festival’s Panorama strand — uses an essayistic style to present the joy and vitality of life in Tehran in the 1970s, in contrast with the oppression imposed on the Iranian people by the country’s hardline regime.

Callum McLennan “House of Gods,” a Matchbox Pictures six-part series, boasting an entirely Arab Australian cast, presents a perspective seldom seen on screen, a Muslim community in Fairfield, Australia. “You can’t manufacture authenticity. Audiences are so intuitive and adept, they can smell if something is off a mile away.

The Independent Iranian Filmmakers Association (IIFMA) has written to AMPAS to protest the omission of murdered director Dariush Mehrjui from the In Memoriam segment of the Academy Award on Sunday night.

Kensington Palace, the home of Prince William and Princess Catherine (aka Kate Middleton), has been deemed untrustworthy by a major news agency.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Two-time Oscar-winning director Asghar Farhadi has been fully cleared by an Iranian court of allegations of plagiarism pertaining to his film “A Hero” that launched from the 2021 Cannes Film Festival. Farhadi’s former student Azadeh Masihzadeh had accused the filmmaker of stealing the idea for “A Hero” from a documentary she made during a filmmaking workshop held by Farhadi in 2014 in Tehran.