Mauritania Showbiz Latest News and Updates

Hey! It’s time for another Good in the ‘Wood Wednesday! Shailene Woodley was on Monday night’s The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon to promote her new upcoming movie release, The Mauritanian. The actor also confirmed that she is indeed engaged to NFL player Aaron Rodgers.

Sometimes, you watch a trailer and you don’t even need to see more than 15 seconds and understand that it’s tailor-made for Oscar voting. That’s the case with the upcoming political/courtroom drama, “The Mauritanian.” With its cast of big names and a timely story involving a relatively recent political controversy, “The Mauritanian” is exactly the type of film that fits that “Oscar Bait” category.

The Mauritanian. If the and the Green Bay Packers quarterback seem like an usual pair, well, they kind of are.

Angelique Jackson Entertainment studio Topic Studios and New York-based production company Loveless have entered into an all-media first-look deal, partnering to develop scripted and unscripted projects across TV, film and podcasts.Topic Studios, the entertainment studio from First Look Media, which recently produced the Golden Globe-nominated legal thriller “The Mauritanian,” and Loveless, the production company founded by Emmy-nominees Carly Hugo and Matt Parker, have come together for the

Shailene Woodley confirmed this evening that she’s engaged and we also got our first look at her massive engagement ring!

Jenelle Riley Deputy Awards, Features EditorYou can now read the screenplay for “The Mauritanian,” based on Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s 2015 memoir “Guantanamo Diary,” here.The script, from M.B. Travern and Rory Haines and Sohrab Noshirvani, was directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Kevin MacDonald and stars Tahar Rahim as Slahi and Jodie Foster as Nancy Hollander, the attorney who took on his case.

The mystery continues. Jodie Foster is a big fan of the Green Bay Packers, but she has no idea why Aaron Rodgers thanked her while announcing his engagement to Shailene Woodley.

Mamoudou Athie, star of breakout feature film Patti Cake$, is to star in and produce a feature film set in the Sahara Desert.

The Oscar-nominated prison thriller A Prophet first threw the international spotlight on Tahar Rahim in 2009 when the film premiered in Cannes. Now another film involving incarceration is drawing fresh praise for the French actor.

As the specialty box office space continues to navigate the digital VOD and day and date waters, numbers are trickling in but, again, they don’t necessarily give a solid reflection of a film’s box office performance as they did in the before-times (aka pre-Covid). On this President’s Day holiday weekend, award season faves like A24’s Minari dropped in approximately 61 markets before heading to PVOD on February 26 while Sony Pictures’ French Exit had a very limited theatrical run.

Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticWith the Super Bowl behind us and the Oscars looming (and a pandemic-dampened Valentine’s Day as a marketing peg), American distributors are releasing their most robust slate of new releases in months this weekend.Awards contenders “Judas and the Black Messiah” (about the FBI-sanctioned murder of Fred Hampton) and “Land” (starring and directed by Robin Wright) arrive in theaters, hot off their premieres at this year’s virtual Sundance Film Festival.

It’s often the case that movies based on true stories offer a glimpse of the real-life characters at the end.

Olympics documentary “One Day in September” and the Idi Amin film “The Last King of Scotland” didn’t think it was a movie.But Benedict Cumberbatch and his producing partner, who had brought the project to Macdonald, had one request: Talk to Slahi before you say no.“I was intimidated to talk to him,” Macdonald said. “Here’s a guy who’s been accused of being involved in 9/11, who has received a phone call from Osama bin Laden’s satellite phone.

What first attracted you both to this project? TAHAR RAHIM Kevin [Macdonald], first of all, because I worked with him before [in the director's 2011 feature The Eagle]. He called me up and told me that he might have a good part for me.

True stories provide fertile breeding ground for awards-season contenders, but few biographies are as rich and strange as that of Mohamedou Ould Salahi, who spent 14 years in Guantanamo Bay on flimsy terrorism charges as the U.S. fought an often-directionless war on terror.

Mohamedou Ould Salahi endured unimaginable horror as an inmate of the U.S. government’s notorious Guantanamo Bay detention center for more than 14 years.

Silence of the Lambs actors Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins have reunited for the film’s 30th anniversary.The pair, taking part in Variety‘s Actors on Actors series, sat down for an hour over video chat to talk about their new projects. Foster is starring in The Mauritanian, while Hopkins plays the lead role in The Father.Hopkins recalled receiving the script, saying: “After 10 pages, I phoned my agent.

Jodie Foster (“The Mauritanian”) and Anthony Hopkins (“The Father”) reunited for a virtual chat for Variety’s Actors on Actors series. For more, pick up the Jan.

On Radioactive, production designer Michael Carlin created a sense of enormous scope with a relatively modest budget, recreating period environments from five countries, for a story spanning more than a century.

Kevin Macdonald has sensational nonfiction material in The Mauritanian, based on the best-selling memoir Guantánamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Slahi, who spent 14 years incarcerated at the U.S. Naval Base in Cuba without ever being charged with a crime.

Featuring a standout, awards-worthy performance by Tahir Rahim, Kevin Macdonald’s “The Mauritanian,” adapted from Mohamedou Ould Salahi’s memoir “Guantanamo Diary,” about his prolonged imprisonment at the titular base, is a staggering work of docudrama, that highlights the horrors that the American government inflicted on terrorist suspects post-9/11.

Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticWhen Kevin Macdonald set out to make “The Mauritanian,” the director must have found himself identifying to some degree with defense attorney Nancy Hollander. The lawyer, played here by Jodie Foster, braved insult and scorn when she took up the case of Mohamedou Ould Slahi, who was arrested in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Watch Video: Jodie Foster Defends Accused 9/11 Terrorist in 'The Mauritanian' TrailerThere’s a moment in which “The Mauritanian” flirts with complicated subject matter, namely by suggesting that even if Mohamedou (played by Rahim) is guilty of being one of the main architects of 9/11, he’s still entitled to legal representation and due process.

Though she has starred in some of the most indelible movies in cinema history—Taxi Driver, The Silence of the Lambs, The Accused—and won two Oscars for doing so, Jodie Foster’s output has slowed in recent years. And it is not a paucity of roles, she says, but rather a decision to become more selective about what she takes on.

Dave McNary Film ReporterTopic Studios has signed a first-look deal with The Population, formed by “Nomadland” producer Mollye Asher, “I Carry You With Me” producer Mynette Louie and Derek Nguyen.The deal, announced Thursday, expands the relationship between Topic and Louie, currently collaborating on a scripted limited drama series for television.Topic Studios produced the ACLU documentary “The Fight,” Kevin Macdonald’s upcoming legal thriller “The Mauritanian,”  “The Climb” and recently

Clayton Davis Tahar Rahim turned the heads of cinephiles more than a decade ago in Jacques Audiard’s “A Prophet,” which was Oscar-nominated for best foreign language film in 2010.

Hilary Swank takes you on a thrilling ride in the new trailer for “Fatale”.

A conspiracy is about to be unearthed.

Also Read: Jodie Foster to Direct True Story About Theft of the Mona Lisa“The Mauritanian” is based on a true story and a memoir by the real Ould Slahi called “Guantanamo Diary,” which wound up on the New York Times Best Sellers list and documented the man’s fight for survival against all odds.Kevin Macdonald (“The Last King of Scotland”) directs this political and legal thriller that also stars Zachary Levi, Saamer Usmani and Shailene Woodley.M.B.

In one of the strangest years in film history, it stands to reason that awards season would be a complete unknown. What films will make it in time? Which late-entries will surprise us? And what the hell are the ceremonies going to actually look like? Well, we really don’t have many answers, but we do know that STXFilms is hoping “The Mauritanian” is part of the conversation.

Clayton Davis STX Films has decided to enter this unconventional awards season with a mighty and timely drama, “The Mauritanian,” formerly called “Prisoner 760,” from Scottish director Kevin Macdonald. The film will be released in theaters on Feb.