Marco Bellocchio’s Cannes Competition Title ‘Kidnapped’ Sells to Further Territories

EXCLUSIVE: Zeitgeist Films and Kino Lorber have acquired all U.S. rights to Ken Loach’s Cannes Competition entry The Old Oak, which has been mooted to be the veteran filmmaker’s last movie.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Altered Innocence has picked up North American rights to Bertrand Mandico’s gory, transgressive fantasy movie “Conann,” which had its world premiere in Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight and will soon be making its way to Locarno Film Festival. Kinology is handling world sales. The film will tour at film festivals throughout the fall and be released theatrically next year. Following different iterations of the ruthless Connan the Barbarian, the film also stars Elina Löwensohn in canine prosthetics as Rainer, Conann’s spiritual guide. In the film, guardian of the underworld, Cerberus, still has a muzzle, but here he is called Rainer, and has the breasts and the voice of a woman, wears a studded black leather jacket, and a flash camera fit for the paparazzi. Talking to us from the great beyond, he details the successive reincarnations of Conann the Barbarian, a bloodthirsty Amazon from ancient times.

John Bleasdale Guest Contributor When Variety talks to Zoe Saldana and her husband, the artist and film director, Marco Perego, they’ve only just arrived in Taormina and are in the process of unpacking. Room service arrives and Zoe apologizes about having to tuck into the salad straightaway. They’re here attending the world premiere of Perego’s debut film as a director, “The Absence of Eden,” a drama that takes place in the murky world of the U.S.’s southern border, a hellish landscape inhabited by Coyotes, ICE officers, desperate immigrants and refugees. It’s a universe away from the Pandora of the “Avatar” pictures or the science fiction blockbusters “Star Trek” and “Guardians of the Galaxy” Saldana is more usually associated with. “When I was picked for those films, I had no idea they were going to become franchises. I thought it was going to be a one and done kind of thing. I hold all of those films responsible for any kind of global notoriety I may have. However, it’s time consuming. Between ‘Star Trek,’ ‘Guardians’ and ‘Avatar,’ I had solid work for over 10 years. As I became an asset that had a certain value in this industry, I could turn that to films like this.”

Brent Lang Executive Editor Magnet Releasing, the genre arm of indie distributor Magnolia Pictures, has acquired North American rights to “Sleep.” The horror-thriller, which sounds designed to make you rethink your thoughts about sleepwalking, recently had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival’s critics week. It was directed and written by Jason Yu, who worked with Korean filmmaking legends Bong Joon-ho and Lee Chang-dong before making his feature directing debut with “Sleep.” Magnet will release the film early next year. The director’s previous collaborator, Bong, called “Sleep,” “the most unique horror film and the smartest debut film I’ve seen in 10 years.” So that’s some high praise from the director of “The Host” and “Parasite.”

Ed Meza @edmezavar Behrooz Karamizade’s Iranian drama “Empty Nets,” which has its international premiere in the Crystal Globe Competition at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, offers a sobering look at the increasingly difficult, sometimes hopeless lives of young working-class people in Iran as they strive for better lives. Set on Iran’s northern Caspian Sea coast, the film follows Amir (Hamid Reza Abbasi), a young man who, desperate to marry his girlfriend Narges (Sadif Asgari), seeks work at a local fishery with the hope of earning enough money for an appropriate dowry and winning over her upper-class parents. Once there, illicit opportunities present themselves and he is soon drawn into the dangerous but lucrative business of sturgeon poaching and the black market caviar trade.

Manori Ravindran Executive Editor of International Utopia has acquired the North American rights to the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard New Voice Prize winner “Omen,” the debut feature from artist-musician turned director Baloji. The film follows a young man, Koffi, played by Marc Zinga (“Spectre”), who after spending years in Belgium returns home to the Congo to find himself confronted by his past and culture at a family event. Koffi visits his birthplace after being mysteriously shunned by his family and spending years abroad in Europe. With his soon-to-be wife and unborn child in tow, Koffi’s arrival sets in motion a sprawling, nightmarish and psychedelic fairy tale about ancestry, belief, wrestling, witchcraft and sorcery in Africa today.

Miss Benny, who stars in the new Netflix series Glamorous opposite Kim Cattrall, has come out as transgender.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Kino Lorber has acquired U.S. rights to “Four Daughters,” Kaouther Ben Hania’s film which competed at the Cannes Film Festival. The competition’s sole Arab film, “Four Daughters” mixes documentary and fiction to tell the story of a Tunisian mother whose two elder daughters joined ISIS. It won L’Oeil d’or or “Golden Eye” Award at Cannes for best documentary and is now set to roll off into the international festival circuit. Kino Lorber plans to release it theatrically this fall, followed by a digital and home video release on all major platforms. The New York-based distribution company has high hopes for “Four Daughters” during the next awards season. Last year’s L’Oeil d’Or winner, “All That Breathes,” went on to earn an Oscar nomination for best documentary. Ben Hania previously earned an Oscar nomination with her 2020 film “The Man Who Sold His Skin” in the international feature film category.

Cosmopolitan Magazine’s editor-in-chief, stopped by Stagwell’s Sports Beach Monday morning to talk about her latest projects and her obsession with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and his fiance Lauren Sanchez.Q: You are a bit of a media jack of all trades. What are you doing while you’re in Cannes and what kinds of conversations are you looking forward to having during the festival?A: Right now, I’m working on waking up from a very late dinner last night at Hotel du Cap, which was extraordinarily fun. The whole of Cannes is like a sport, isn’t it? If you can get through to the end of it you deserve a medal. Q: I know. I think I need another coffee after this. It’s quite early. I wanted to ask you about some of your current projects. I know you’re doing production stuff. Tell me how you got into that. I know you have a big editorial background. What was your path?A: I was a journalist for a long time and then I was an editor for a long time and now I’m more entrepreneurial.

Cristian Muñiz, the eldest son of Dayanara Torres and Marc Anthony, has a professional career in illustration ahead of him. The 22-year-old graduated last month with a degree in Illustration from Parsons School of Art in New York. Just a few weeks before, he exhibited his work in a gallery at the prestigious institution.

The Match Factory has posted fresh deals of for veteran Italian director Marco Bellocchio’s Cannes 2023 Palme d’Or contender Kidnapped about the true story of the kidnapping of a young Jewish boy.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Milan-based events creator Marco Balich has choreographed and produced a record-breaking 14 Olympic ceremonies, including for the 2006, 2014, 2016 and 2020 Olympics respectively held in Turin, Sochi, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo.  More recently, Balich and his team created the spectacular ceremony for the 2022 Qatar FIFA World Cup for which he liaised directly with Qatar’s ruling emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.  His Balich Wonder Studio has now partnered with global content giant Banijay, which has taken a 51% stake in the outfit he created in 2013.

Strong showings at the June 11 Tony Awards – both in terms of trophies and on-air performances – seem to have made an equally sturdy impact at the box office, with best musical Kimberly Akimbo and nominated & Juliet – posting their best numbers yet, and best play Leopoldstadt making significant gains over the previous week.

EXCLUSIVE: New York-based sales company Visit Films has acquired world rights to the Canadian comedy-drama Hey Viktor!, which debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival earlier this week.

EXCLUSIVE: Veteran Actor Alfredo Castro (The Club, No, From Afar) is in the middle of what could be described as a mid-career boom, but he doesn’t think it’ll bring him many plaudits in his native country.

Holly Jones Folding the intricacies of the human condition into everyday life in Jordan, director Cynthia Madanat Sharaiha (“Noor”) bows her feature debut “Saleem” in competition at the Annecy Animation Festival. The film marks the first Jordanian selection for the festival and was selected as part of this year’s Contrechamp strand which includes Pablo Berger’s offbeat friendship study “Robot Dreams,” a Cannes Festival standout, alongside 10 additional titles. Aiming to dismantle preconceived notions, Madanat Sharaiha calls on the tradition of storytelling prevalent in her culture to ensure a fuller perspective, parlaying the region’s quotidian routines into vivid, wide-eyed renderings of rambunctious and endearing children, their parents and the captivating provincial terrain.

Mac DeMarco has confirmed he has no plans to retire in the near future.It comes after he previously said at one of his shows in 2022 that he may quit music.“After this tour, there’s nothing on the books. So who knows, maybe I’ll never be back.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent “Forest,” an Italian eco-themed animation film about deforestation, has scored some strong pre-sales for Rome-based True Colours at the Cannes Marché du film. The still-in-production 3-D animation feature – the protagonist of which is a young mushroom named Fey – has been picked up for roughly 20 territories by Top Film Distribution which will distribute “Forest” in Ukraine, CIS, the Baltics, and Eastern European countries including former Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Poland, Czech and Slovak Republics, Romania, and Hungary.  Helmed by Luca Della Grotta and Francesco Dafano, the film is produced by Italy’s AI One, the same team that previously spawned 2020 similarly themed animation feature “Trash” that sold in more than 30 countries. 

“La Bestia,” (Ram Tamez, 2020) A best student film Annie Award winner and the first Spanish-language film from great Paris animation school Gobelins, co-directed and co-written by Tamez, a Guillermo del Toro Gobelins scholar. A heartrending gem, set on the roof of La Bestia, a freight train hurtling through Mexico used by emigrants to hitch a fast ride to the U.S., the wrench of emigration caught by a song co-wrote by Tamez.  “Cerulia,” (Sofia Carrillo, 2017)

Eva Vik’s ‘Serpentine’ Starring Barbara Palvin To Make European Premiere at TaorminaEva Vik’s short film Serpentine, starring supermodel Barbara Palvin, will make its European premiere at the 69th edition of Italy’s Taormina Film Festival, running from June 23 to July 1. Czech writer and director Eva Vik explores the possibilities of interspecies development in the film, which was previously nominated for the X Award at the Tribeca Film Festival. Set within a mysterious snake cult, the stylistic body-horror follows attempts to initiate a snake-human hybrid through genetic engineering – creating an extraterrestrial higher power intelligence as a new influential force. Palvin is joined in the cast by Soo Joo Park, and Luke Brandon Field. The film’s official partner is Bulgari brand, and it was produced by Evasion Pictures. The film will play in Taormina’s Influential Shorts program, a special gala event curated by Bella Thorne. “I look forward to welcoming both Eva Vik and Barbara Palvin to the Taormina Film Festival later this month. The short is thought-provoking and we are excited to be presenting it as part of our Influential Shorts evening,” said festival co-Artistic Director Barrett Wissman.