Senegal Showbiz Latest News and Updates

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent YouTube Original doc “The Letter: A Message For Our Earth,” an unprecedented call to action for climate change from Pope Francis, featuring his dialogues with activists from the Brazilian Amazon, India, Senegal and the U.S., launched on Tuesday from Vatican City. The high-profile ecological doc is directed by Emmy-winning director Nicolas Brown (“Serengeti Rules”) and produced by Off The Fence, the company behind Oscar-winning doc “My Octopus Teacher,” in tandem with the Laudato si’ Movement which is a global Catholic climate change organization. Shot in cinematic style, “The Letter” takes its cue from the pope’s landmark Laudato si’ environmental encyclical and interweaves the lives of five main characters, comprising Amazon rain forest tribe chief Cacique Odair “Dadá” Borari; Ridhima Pandey, a young climate activist from India; Senegalese climate refugee Arouna Kandé who is a student in sustainable development; and U.S. scientists Greg Asner and Robin Martin who have developed an innovative technique to map underwater heat waves that kill coral reefs.

Manori Ravindran International Editor Grasshopper Film has acquired the North American distribution rights to “Rewind & Play,” Alain Gomis’ feature documentary on the late jazz pianist Thelonious Monk. The film is set to screen at the 60th annual New York Film Festival later this month, and will open in theaters early next year. The doc uses an interview with Monk in France from 1969, which many would now consider to be deeply problematic, as its centrepiece. In December 1969, Monk arrived in Paris for a concert at the tail end of a European tour. While there, he was invited to appear on a television interview program, where he was to answer questions in an intimate, one-on-one studio stage.

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Alice Diop’s Saint Omer has been selected as France’s entry to the best international film category.

EXCLUSIVE: French director Alice Diop’s breakout feature Saint Omer has secured distribution in a raft of territories for Paris-based Wild Bunch International (WBI) following its Venice Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize win.

X Factor’s Fleur East is swapping singing for the Salsa dance this week as she appears in 2022’s Strictly Come Dancing. While the Sax singer is no stranger to the spotlight, with previous stints on popular UK reality TV, East’s relationship with now-husband Marcel Badiane-Robin is still somewhat drenched in mystery. According to Heart Radio, the two met while East, 34, was working at a nightclub before she shot to fame on X Factor in 2014.

Ben Croll Acclaimed documentarian Alice Diop marks her narrative debut with “Saint Omer,” a pulled-from-the-headlines legal drama that won the Grand Jury Prize and the award for best debut feature at the Venice Film Festival. High profile slots in Toronto, New York, and London are to come — making the French title one of the real breakouts of this fall season. The wrenching film follows Rama (Kayije Kagame), a young novelist covering the trial of an immigrant mother accused of infanticide. With major elements never in doubt – the accused, Laurence (Guslagie Malanda), admits to the act, though she still pleads not guilty – the Venice winner turns around more intimate, philosophical, and unsettling questions.

Tilda Swinton is gracing the red carpet at the 2022 Venice Film Festival!

Jessica Kiang In 2016, in the courtroom of Saint-Omer, a small, untouristed town off a D-road between Calais and Lille, the trial took place of a young Senegalese Frenchwoman accused of murdering her baby: an act so utterly antithetical to accepted ideas of motherhood and womanhood that it is inescapably considered the “worst of all possible crimes.” The woman, a PhD student with a reported genius IQ and a flair for flamboyantly intellectual French, confessed but claimed sorcery as the real culprit. It’s the kind of true story that presents an obvious opportunity for a sensitive social drama given to sober, sorrowfully objective observations about the perilous, tumbling vortex of class, gender, ethnic and cultural issues in which it plays out. “Saint Omer,” the deceptively austere, extraordinarily multifaceted fiction debut from documentarian Alice Diop, is not that film. 

Labor Day weekend saw blockbusters old and new buoyed by cheap tickets, as was a limited openings like Saloum with multiple sold out screenings at two theaters, including every showtime on Saturday.

RSVP required. Singleton, a TV and film director, screenwriter, producer and USC alumnus, died April 29, 2019 at the age of 51. He graduated in 1990 from the SCA’s Filmic Writing program, which is now called the John Wells Division of Writing for Screen & Television. While at USC, he won the Jack Nicholson Screenwriting Award, given to a promising film school student, two years in a row: first in 1988 for his script “Twilight Time,” then the following year for the script of “Boyz n the Hood,” which he wrote as his senior thesis on a campus library computer.

Horror films can be inspired by all walks of life. It’s not a genre that is limited to masked men chasing young teens with a knife.

EXCLUSIVE: Award-winning Senegalese filmmaker Alice Diop (Saint Omer) has signed with CAA for representation.

Michaela Zee editorThe African American Film Critics Association held its fourth annual AAFCA Awards on Saturday to honor outstanding work in television. During the ceremony, Courtney B.

Few films at TIFF 2021 were as genre-bending and defiantly original as the Senegalese thriller “Saloum.” Congolese director Jean Luc Herbulot mixes styles as diverse as spaghetti westerns, monster movies, and samurai dramas in the movie without overshadowing the story’s West African backdrop. Sound exciting to anyone else? Well, IFC Midnight thinks so.

Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp has compared his club's summer transfer business with Manchester City's, as the two sides prepare to rekindle their battle for Premier League supremacy.

Bayern Munich have distanced themselves from the prospect of signing Manchester United striker Cristiano Ronaldo, insisting he doesn't suit their philosophy.

Todd Spangler NY Digital EditorKhaby Lame is now the official king of TikTok.The short-form comedy video virtuoso now has 142.8 million followers on TikTok, which puts him above previous top TikTok creator Charli D’Amelio (who currently has 142.3 million).Lame was born in Senegal and his family moved when he was 1 year old to Chivasso, Italy. He launched his TikTok channel and shared his first video comic in March 2020, after he was laid off in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.The 22-year-old’s comedy bits have gained a massive following and he’s become one of the most-recognized and loved TikTok creators globally.

Khabane Lame, 22, became the world’s top TikToker on Wednesday, officially overtaking American sensation Charli D’Amelio, 18. As of Thursday afternoon, Lame has a staggering 142.8 million followers. D’Amelio is close behind with 142.3 million.

Darwin Nunez is on Liverpool’s transfer shortlist amid reports linking the Benfica striker with a move to Manchester United.

Manchester United prospect Amad has furiously denied reports that claimed he does not want to play for the Ivory Coast national team and has refused call-ups.

Blackswan member Fatou has opened up about her personal experience as a Black idol in the K-pop industry.The Senegal-born singer recently spoke toRolling Stone about the journey she had taken in order to debut as a K-pop idol, sharing that it hasn’t been easy for her to get to where she is today. The singer made her debut as a member of K-pop girl group Blackswan in 2020.“Let me tell you the cold hard truth: It’s so goddamn difficult,” she told the outlet, in reference to the two-year-long training programme she was required to undergo before her made her debut.

Lise Pedersen In a panel discussion provocatively entitled “Content Scramble for Africa,” guests at the Cannes Film Market’s Cannes Docs sidebar were invited to interrogate the sustainability of current forms of collaboration between the African continent and the Global North in documentary filmmaking.Moderated by IDFA programmer Sarah Dawson, the panel included Laurent Bitty, president of Africadoc-Côte d’Ivoire, Senegalese director and producer Angèle Diabang (“Un air de Kora,” “Le Monde en Face”), Christilla Huillard-Kann, co-founder of Paris-based indie film production company Elda Productions, and Mohamed Saïd Ouma, head of DocA (Documentary Africa), a film fund dedicated to documentary film.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentGaumont has locked major territory deals on “Father & Soldier,” Mathieu Vadepied’s WWI action-drama about headlined by “Lupin” star Omar Sy. The movie world premiered on opening night of Cannes’ Un Certain Regard.

Gabourey Sidibe isn't interested in her upcoming wedding to fiancé Brandon Frankel being traditional whatsoever. The 39-year-old actress opened up about her wedding plans in an interview for ' Style Issue cover.Although many details for the celebration are currently up in the air, Sidibe knows what she  want. For a moment, she wasn't even sure she wanted a wedding.«The entire time we have been engaged, I've always been like, 'No, we shouldn't have a wedding.' Maybe we'll throw a barbecue, get married in the bathroom, and then we’ll come out and tell everyone we're married,» the  actress said. The apprehension stems from Sidibe's childhood of attending weddings regularly with her wedding singer mom.

Ben Croll Pathé subsidiary Cinémas Pathé Gaumont — one of Europe’s largest exhibition chains — operates 133 theaters with more than 1,300 screens throughout France, the Benelux region and Switzerland. Which means that when it comes to market growth, this industry leader must look beyond building new multiplexes.“The network of theaters in our principal territories is now very dense,” says Cinémas Pathé Gaumont CEO Aurélien Bosc.

Emanuel Okusanya Over the last decade, Afrobeat has blossomed from a continental staple into a global sound, with artists such as Nicki Minaj, Beyonce and even Ed Sheeran incorporating the genre into their music and cosign the culture. The genre reached a new peak with Burna Boy’s concert at New York’s Madison Square Garden on Thursday, which certified him as the first Nigerian artist to headline a concert at the legendary arena.The show opened with a small welcoming speech by legendary rapper Busta Rhymes, who thanked the crowd — which was overwhelmingly West African — for their rich culture and warm embrace when he visited Nigeria.

Naman Ramachandran “Father & Soldier” by Mathieu Vadepied, starring Omar Sy, Alassane Diong and Jonas Bloquet will open Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival on May 18.The Franco-Senegalese co-production, shot in France and Senegal, tells the story of Bakary Diallo, a father, who enlists in the French army in 1917 to join Thierno, his 17-year-old son, who was drafted by force. Sent to the front, father and son will have to face the war together.

Liverpool goalkeeper Alisson has admitted he was expecting Ederson to start for Manchester City in Saturday’s FA Cup semi-final.

Matt Donnelly Senior Film WriterEndeavor has appointed Romola Ratnam as senior vice president and head of impact and inclusion, Variety has learned exclusively.Ratnam will oversee corporate social responsibility efforts, including DEI, at the global operation that owns talent agency WME. News of her hire comes on the heels of Alicin Reidy Williamson’s exit for a top post at Yahoo.

Aimee Lou Wood Leads UK Comedy Cast

stars Anna Diop (“Us”) as a Senegalese immigrant nanny, piecing together a new life in New York City while caring for the child of an Upper East Side family, who is forced to confront a concealed truth that threatens to shatter her American Dream. Michelle Monaghan, Sinqua Walls, Morgan Spector and Rose Decker also star. Rina Yang, a cinematographer on “Euphoria,” is also behind the camera as the DP for her first narrative feature.

Blumhouse and Prime Video have won world rights to Sundance horror-drama Nanny, we can reveal.

Angelique Jackson Sundance 2022’s top prize winner, filmmaker Nikyatu Jusu’s “Nanny,” has been acquired by Blumhouse and Prime Video.The companies jointly secured worldwide rights for the horror-drama, which premiered to rave reviews at Sundance in January, before ultimately winning the Sundance Grand Jury Prize, making history as the first horror film to take the festival’s top honor. Jusu is also only the second Black woman director to win the award.Written and directed by Jusu, in her feature directorial debut, “Nanny” follows a Senegalese woman named Aisha (Anna Diop) who recently immigrated to America.

Here are your Manchester United evening headlines for Sunday, March 13.

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