Mediterrane Film Festival Opens Second Edition With ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’ and a Focus on Uniting Mediterranean Nations

John Bleasdale Guest Contributor The world premiere of Mitzi Peirone’s horror film “Saint Clare” will open the Taormina Film Festival, this year celebrating its 70th anniversary edition. The adaptation of Don Roff’s novel stars Bella Thorne, Ryan Phillippe, Frank Whaley and Rebecca De Mornay. It’s the first of four world premieres to screen at the outdoor Teatro Antico in the Sicilian town, which looks out towards Mount Etna, an active volcano, to the West.

Naman Ramachandran The 32nd Raindance Film Festival (June 19-28) has revealed its jury award winners, reflecting a renewed focus on emerging filmmakers. Korean thriller “Sleep,” directed by Jason Yu and starring Lee Sun-kyun and Jung Yu-mi, took home the Discovery Award for best debut feature. The film marks Lee’s final role before his passing.

Ben Croll Roaring towards its 23rd edition, the Neuchatel Intl. Fantastic Film Festival (NIFFF) built its reputation as a haven for outré fare, pulling in a reliable (and renewable) youth crowd eager for wild thrills and hard-to-source Asian titles, while becoming a fixture on the horror festival circuit as a lakeside home-away-from-home for a stable of filmmakers who return year and again.

The Witch is the biggest series of its kind out of Greece and Antenna has conjured a second season of the epic period drama. Season two is teed up as a sequel.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Peruvian director Paolo Tizón‘s documentary “Night Has Come,” which has its world premiere Sunday in the Proxima competition section at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, has debuted its trailer (below). The film centers on a group of young men, many of them teenagers, who sign up for one of the most challenging military training courses in Latin America. The objective is to turn them into fearsome fighters operating in the dangerous VRAEM region, an area plagued by various armed groups, guarding their coca plants and engaged in narcotics trafficking.

The Jesus and Mary Chain will be heading out on a North American tour with the Psychedelic Furs later this year.The tour kicks off in Philadelphia on September 29 and will see the band take in numerous cities across the continent in October and November.They will then wrap up at the YouTube Theater in Inglewood, California on November 11. Also opening for them alongside the Psychedelic Furs will be Frankie Rose.Check out the tour dates below and buy your tickets here.SEPTEMBER29 – Philadelphia, PA, Franklin Music HallOCTOBER1 – New Haven, CT – College Street Music Hall2 – Boston, MA – Orpheum Theater4 – New York, NY – The Beacon Theatre5 – Brooklyn, NY – The Brooklyn Paramount6 – Washington, D.C. – The Anthem8 – Rochester, NY – Kodak Center Music Hall9 – Toronto, Ontario – Queen Elizabeth Theater11 – Detroit, MI – Masonic Cathedral Theater12 – Indianapolis, IN – Murat Theatre13 – Chicago, IL – The Salt Shed16 – Milwaukee, WI – Riverside Theater17 – St. Paul, MN – The Palace19 – Des Moines, IA – Val-Air Ballroom20 – St. Louis, MO – Stifel Theatre22 – La Vista, NE – The Astro23 – Kansas City, MO – Uptown Theater24 – Salina, KS – Stiefel Theatre26 – Denver, CO – Fillmore Auditorium29 – Seattle, WA – Paramount Theatre30 – Portland, OR – Crystal BallroomNOVEMBER1 – Redding, CA – Redding Civic Auditorium2 – San Francisco, CA – The Masonic3 – Reno, NV – Grand Sierra Resort Grand Theatre6 – Riverside, CA – Fox Performing Arts Center8 – San Diego, CA – The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park9 – Inglewood, CA – YouTube TheaterIn other news, The Jesus and Mary Chain and Robert Fripp are among the artists who have launched a lawsuit against the PRS over songwriter royalties.The case is centred around how the organisation handles royalties

As Georgia O’Keeffe was to the landscape of New Mexico, artist Chiura Obata was to the grandeur of Yosemite.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent The Locarno Film Festival will honor multiple Oscar winner Ben Burtt — the sound designer, editor and voice actor behind the ‘Star Wars‘ and ‘Indiana Jones’ franchises — with its lifetime achievement award dedicated to creative pioneers. The prominent Swiss fest celebrating international indie cinema will be feting Burtt, best known for voicing Wall-E and creating Darth Vader’s mechanical breathing, with its Vision Award Ticinomoda. 1977’s “Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope” was one of the first films he worked on.

Rafa Sales Ross Guest Contributor In the last decade, the Maltese film industry has undergone radical development, with a strong focus on seeing the island country evolve from a service provider to Hollywood productions to telling their own stories on screen. Speaking with Variety ahead of the second edition of the Mediterrane Film Festival, Maltese filmmakers have highlighted the importance of fostering local talent, rerouting foreign investment into native productions and strengthening bonds with neighboring countries in the Middle East and North Africa. “Things have changed drastically in recent years,” said veteran filmmaker Mario Philip Azzopardi, whose 1971 “Il-Gaġġa” is widely presumed to be the first full-length feature filmed entirely in Maltese.

Michael Schneider Variety Editor at Large Writer/directors Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij, who were behind the recent critically acclaimed FX limited series “A Murder At the End of the World,” have struck a deal with indie production shingle Sister to develop, write and produce original film and television projects. The deal, described as a “multi-year creative partnership,” reunites Marling and Batmanglij with Cindy Holland, the global CEO of Sister.

EXCLUSIVE: Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, the filmmaking duo behind BAFTA-nominated Nick Cave pic 20,000 Days on Earth, have just wrapped filming a new performance film dubbed The Extraordinary Miss Flower. The project brings to life the remarkable story of Geraldine Flower and the discovery of a suitcase of letters sent to her in the 1960s and 1970s that inspired acclaimed Icelandic singer-songwriter Emilíana Torrini to return to the studio. 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Coralie Fargeat’s Demi Moore-starring feminist body horror film “The Substance” has been set as the closing night title for the New Zealand International Film Festival. The picture is one of 16 which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last month selected for the NZIFF which is now under the artistic leadership of Paolo Bertolin.

A true crime podcast on the history of the casting couch.All the hits and misses for summer 2024News, interviews and reviewsAnouk Aimée, the French actress known for her elegance and cool sophistication in films including Claude Lelouch's "A Man and a Woman," died on Tuesday. She was 92.The company is expected to make the announcement official on Monday.Brad Pitt’s upcoming feature about Formula 1 racing has gotten a release date from Apple Original Films.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Paolo Cortellesi’s “There’s Still Tomorrow,” a box office smash in its native Italy, was Sunday named winner of the Sydney Film Prize at the end of the Sydney Film Festival (June 5-16) A jury headed by Danis Tanovic called the film about an industrious woman in post WWII Rome “audacious, cutting-edge and courageous.” The prize is one of the richest awarded at any festival and is worth A$60,000 ($39,600). The announcement was made at the city’s State Theatre ahead of the Australian premiere screening of the Demi Moore-starring Cannes hit “The Substance.” The A$20,000 ($13,200) Documentary Australia award went to local filmmaker James Bradley, for “Welcome to Babel,” which charts Chinese-Australian artist Jiawei Shen’s plans to create an epic work.

The Killers shuffled their setlist and covered The Kinks at the second show of their ‘Rebel Diamonds’ UK and Ireland tour last night (June 14) – see footage and the full setlist below.It was the band’s second show at Dublin’s 3Arena in three nights at the start of a run of greatest hits shows that the band are playing across the UK and Ireland throughout the summer.Their 21-song set included a number of changes from the previous show, including tour debuts for eight songs, including four from 2006’s ‘Sam’s Town’ in the form of ‘Enterlude’, ‘For Reasons Unknown’, ‘Bones’ and ‘Exitlude’.The also opened with ‘My Own Soul’s Warning’ from the 2020 album ‘Imploding The Mirage’, and played the title track of their most recent studio record, 2021’s ‘Pressure Machine’.In among their own material, the band also indulged in a cover of The Kinks’ 1982 single ‘Come Dancing’.In addition, five tracks from 2004 debut album ‘Hot Fuss’ got an airing, including ‘Andy, You’re A Star’, which they only recently revived on stage for the first time in seven years.

Selena Kuznikov Sulayman Tahir’s “Peripheral” and Coke Daniels’ “The Waterboyz” were among the winners of this year’s Best of ABFF Awards, presented Saturday at the American Black Film Festival. Hosted by Dondré Whitfield, the festival presented winners in the official film selection categories: narrative and documentary features, series and the HBO Short Film Award showcase. This year’s festival takes place June 12-16 in Miami Beach, Fla., followed by a virtual segment June 17-24 on ABFF PLAY.

Tribeca Film Festival‘s ode to its 2x Oscar winning co-founder Robert De Niro –De Niro Con– continued Friday night with a screening of Silver Linings Playbook with that pic’s filmmaker David O. Russell and Ben Stiller sharing their candid experiences working with the Stella Adler trained actor. Or as Stiller, who worked with De Niro in the Meet the Parents franchise coined ‘De Niro-isms.’

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Berlin-based sales agency Films Boutique has closed further deals for Ray Yeung’s “All Shall Be Well,”following the North American deal with Strand Releasing and the first international sales previously announced by Variety.The film has been acquired by Nour Films in France, One From the Heart in Greece, Mezipatra in Czech Republic and Slovakia, HBO Europe in Eastern Europe, Beta Film in Bulgaria and Falcon in Indonesia, in addition to the already announced deals with Vedette in the Benelux, Karma in Spain, Trigon in Switzerland and Lev in Israel.Films Boutique is in negotiations with potential buyers in the U.K., Latin America, Germany and Japan.Additionally, New Voice Film Productions Ltd. secured distribution deals with Golden Scene for Hong Kong and Macau and Flash Forward Entertainment in Taiwan.“All Shall Be Well” is written and directed by Yeung and was produced by Yeung’s frequent collaborator Michael J.

Prolific British scribe James Graham will ask “why television has a problem with the working classes” in the Edinburgh TV Festival MacTaggart lecture this year.

Rafa Sales Ross Guest Contributor The Mediterrane Film Festival announced its complete program ahead of its second edition, taking place in Malta’s capital of Valetta from June 22-30. New titles selected include recent Cannes highlights in Coralie Fargeat’s Demi Moore-led body horror “The Substance” and Roberto Minvervini’s “The Damned,” which join previously announced films like Yorgos Lanthimos’s “Kinds of Kindness” and Jane Schoenbrun’s “I Saw The TV Glow.” Further program additions include Mahdi Fleifel’s Directors’ Fortnight standout “To a Land Unknown,” which Variety labeled “a confident, angry, fully-realized drama,” and Truong Minh Quy’s Un Certain Regard breakout “Viet and Nam.” An extended version of the Malta-shot “Jurassic World: Dominion” will play as part of the Malta Expanded strand, while on the retrospective end of the program, the festival will honor David Bowie with screenings of Nicolas Roeg’s “The Man Who Fell to Earth” and Lisa Azuelos’s “My Way,” plus a masterclass on the musician’s enduring legacy helmed by British Film Commissioner Adrian Wootton titled “David Bowie: Celebrating 60 Years of Genius.” Artistic Director Teresa Cavina said she is “very happy” with the selection, calling it “a chorus of strong and harmonious voices that, through extraordinary films, gives shape to a complex and varied universe, a mirror of the reality that surrounds us, often difficult to decipher, sometimes painful, but also full of hope and capacity for renewal.” Cavina also emphasised the strong female presence at this year’s festival, with 16 films — almost half of the festival’s official selection — comprised of works directed by women.