Memento Intl., Anonymous Content Board Venice Trans Drama ‘Woman Of…’; Teaser Unveiled (EXCLUSIVE)

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter “A Haunting in Venice,” Kenneth Branagh’s latest cinematic take on Agatha Christie’s library of murder mystery novels, is expected to spook the box office competition. It’s targeting a soft $13 million to $15 million in its North American debut. Those ticket sales will likely be enough to claim the No.

New York Post.Based on records of in-patient and out-patient procedures obtained from two national surgery databases, around 4,550 Americans sought transition-related surgical procedures in 2016, with that number more than tripling to 13,000 by 2019, according to the study, published in JAMA Network Open.The study’s authors attribute the rise in surgical procedures to federal and state laws approved during the Obama administration requiring coverage for medically necessary care, including treatments for gender dysphoria. The study only looked at surgical procedures in the years prior to 2020, and not hormonal interventions intended to assist in a gender transition.In total, about 48,00 individuals underwent surgical procedures from 2016 to 2020, while the overall number of “health system encounters for gender identity disorder” tripled during that same time.“The rapid rise [in gender dysphoria diagnoses] suggests that there will be a greater need for clinicians knowledgeable in the care of transgender individuals and with the requisite expertise to perform [gender confirmation surgery] procedures,” the report says.Following an 11th U.S.

EXCLUSIVE: Production veteran and President Obama photographer Anna Wilding has launched a production company, Broader Horizons Entertainment (BHE), and is working to raise $50M for a content fund.

The first real clue comes when Andrzej is called up for national service and, standing in front of the army medics in his underwear, refuses to take his socks off. His toenails were painted blue, he tells his mates cheerfully a couple of years later, as if it were a joke. But it isn’t a joke; it is the most serious thing in his life. He is waving a flag at the time; they are in the bloom of the Solidarity movement and the promise of a new world, when it feels like anything goes. 

Guy Lodge Film Critic There will come a time, perhaps not even too far from now, when films like “Woman Of…” may feel, if not old hat, at least familiar, part of a genre unto itself: not a coming-of-age story but a coming-of-self one, tracing the particular life stages of identifying oneself as transgender, accepting oneself as such, and finally living that truth out loud. Spanning decades in its closeup portrait of a Polish trans woman traveling that trajectory in a social climate hostile to her very existence, Małgorzata Szumowska and Michał Englert’s heart-on-sleeve film isn’t aiming to be revolutionary — there’s an old-fashioned melodramatic heft to its episodic construction, setting its heroine’s tale in a pointedly mainstream context.

Polish director Malgorzata Szumowska and Michal Englert’s transgender drama Women Of world premieres in Competition at the Venice Film Festival on Friday.

EXCLUSIVE: It’s not a given that talent will attend premieres if their movie gets an interim agreement but we can confirm that Oscar winner Jessica Chastain and Emmy nominee Peter Sarsgaard will be on hand to spice up the premieres of new movie Memory both tomorrow in Venice and next week in Toronto.

Marta Balaga Controversy over Venice title “Green Border” continues to heat up as director Agnieszka Holland gave an ultimatum to Poland’s Minister of Justice Zbigniew Ziobro following his comments about her film. According to the statement shared with Variety, Holland has hired the lawyers Sylwia Gregorczyk-Abram and Michał Wawrynkiewicz.

EXCLUSIVE: Critical Content, the production company behind Netflix’s Ginny & Georgia and Sylvester Stallone doc Sly, has made some hires and promotions in its creative team.

Christopher Vourlias Three-time Academy Award nominee Agnieszka Holland has called out a hard-right Polish minister who compared her refugee drama “Green Border” to Nazi propaganda, accusing him of “hate speech” and insisting that the Eastern European nation’s right-wing ruling party is “afraid” of her film’s damning portrayal of its response to the refugee crisis. The movie is competing for a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival this week. “We expected that they would be furious.

Ava DuVernay is making history today. In Venice with Origin, which world premieres in the Sala Grande this evening, she is the first African American female filmmaker to ever have been selected in competition at the world’s oldest festival. DuVernay earlier told Deadline’s Dominic Patten, “Venice was a big goal. It feels like a real full-circle moment.”

Ellise Shafer At the Venice Film Festival press conference for Ava DuVernay’s new film “Origin” on Wednesday, the director revealed that she has previously been told not to apply to the festival, because “you won’t get in.” DuVernay is making history this year as the first African American woman in the festival’s 80-year history to have a film compete for the Golden Lion. “For Black filmmakers, we’re told that people who love films in other parts of the world don’t care about our stories and don’t care about our films.

“That is the part where you look up and you say, ‘how could people have allowed their neighbors to be taken and put in the camps?’” says Origin director Ava DuVernay of the deep roots of discrimination and the cruel consequences of subjugation.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter Neon has acquired worldwide rights to Ava DuVernay’s “Origin” ahead of its world premiere in competition at the Venice Film Festival. The movie, starring Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Jon Bernthal, Niecy Nash-Betts, will also screen at the Toronto International Film Festival. “Origin” will be released in theaters later this year.

Neon has acquired worldwide rights for Ava DuVernay’s Origin ahead of its world premiere in Competition at the Venice Film Festival on Wednesday (September 6).

Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla got a rousing response at its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on Monday evening. The pic, a biopic of Priscilla Presley, who was in attendance for the move based on the memoir she co-authored, scored a 7-minute, 45-second ovation.

Christopher Vourlias A decades-spanning portrait of a transgender Polish woman on a journey of self-discovery is at the heart of Małgorzata Szumowska and Michał Englert’s “Woman Of,” the latest from the two-time Berlin Silver Bear winner (“Body,” “Mug”) and her longtime collaborator. The film premieres Sept. 8 in competition at the Venice Film Festival.

A quote by William Friedkin himself opens “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial,” describing the film, as well as all the filmmaker’s other works, as being about “the thin line between good and evil.” This line is all the thinner here, in the American director’s final feature, for it is entirely a matter of opinion. We are not given to see the facts of this story as they unfolded; we cannot watch and make up our own minds as to whether the people involved were right or wrong to act the way they did.

In principle, using the rainy-day, kitchen-sink post-rock of Manchester band The Smiths so prominently in a film like The Killer seems incredibly perverse, given that it’s an exotic, globe-trotting thriller about an American assassin. But in reality, it’s actually very sound choice indeed: legend has it that the band’s singer, Morrissey, had two reasons for naming his band so, the first being that “Smith” is one of the most common and thus unremarkable surnames in the world. The second, and much more subversive theory, suggests that it’s also a reference to David and Maureen Smith, brother-in-law and sister of ’60s serial killer Myra Hindley, the snappily dressed couple whose testimony blew open the Moors Murderers case and whose beatnik likenesses adorn the cover of Sonic Youth’s 1990 album “Goo”.

Ellise Shafer Harmony Korine’s “Aggro Dr1ft” received a 10-minute standing ovation after its premiere at Venice Film Festival, despite a flurry of walkouts. Though some audience members left as soon as the experimental action film finished (and at least 25 departed before that), Korine’s hardcore fans stuck around for a rousing 10-minute ovation. As Korine greeted the crowd and did a happy dance, chants of “Harmony! Harmony! Harmony!” rang out.