Paul Schrader Talks Creepiness and Race Relations in Venice Title ‘Master Gardener’ (EXCLUSIVE)

EXCLUSIVE: New York-based arthouse distributor KimStim has acquired all North American rights to Huang Ji and Ryuji Otsuka’s third feature film, Stonewalling, which recently premiered in the Giornate Degli Autori section of this year’s Venice film festival.

Algerian filmmakers have stepped up a campaign calling for their government to unlock promised state funds for cinema, warning that Algeria’s film industry is on its last legs following a near-year-long funding freeze.

Zendaya is officially a two-time Emmy-winning actress after landing the award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for her role in HBO's . ET caught up with the 26-year-old star after the show where she gushed about the production team behind  and even shared some insight into her plans to celebrate. «It's so special, it's such an honor to be acknowledged for something that you're really proud of. It means it means the world to me,» Zendya said of the accolade.

Magnolia Pictures acquired North American rights to Blue Jean, the directorial debut of Georgia Oakley which just world-premiered in the Venice Days section of the Venice Film Festival. Pic stars Rosy McEwen and won Venice’s Giornate degli Autori (GdA) People’s Choice award. Magnolia plans to release the film next year.

Naman Ramachandran The spirit of Marilyn Monroe was very much present during the making of Andrew Dominik’s “Blonde,” according to the film’s talent. Produced by Brad Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment, the film, which is in the main competition at the Venice Film Festival, is a fictionalized version of the life of the iconic actor and is based on the bestselling novel by Joyce Carol Oates. The film traces the volatile childhood of Norma Jeane Baker, through her rise to stardom as Marilyn Monroe and her romantic entanglements. It blurs the lines of fact and fiction to explore the widening split between her public and private selves. Ana de Armas (“No Time to Die”), who plays Norma Jeane/Marilyn, Adrien Brody (“The Pianist”), who plays her second husband, and Julianne Nicholson, who plays her mother, were present at a press conference for the film at Venice, alongside Dominik.

Christopher Vourlias Paris-based sales agency and production company Luxbox has released the trailer for “Trenque Lauquen,” Argentine director-producer Laura Citarella’s adventure mystery that has its world premiere Sept. 8 in the Horizons sidebar of the Venice Film Festival. Variety has been given exclusive access to the trailer, which can be seen below. Filmed in two parts, Citarella’s fourth feature begins with a pair of men both searching for a woman who has mysteriously vanished. While one of them claims to be her boyfriend, the other has also forged an intimate bond with the missing woman, with a series of flashbacks revealing that he’s also fallen in love with her.

Naman Ramachandran Florian Zeller and the cast of his “The Son,” including Hugh Jackman, Vanessa Kirby, Laura Dern and Zen McGrath, addressed the issue of mental health, the film’s central subject, ahead of its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival. The film, Zeller’s follow up to his Oscar-winning “The Father,” is an adaptation of his own stage play. It focuses on Peter (Jackman), whose busy but happy life with his infant and new partner Beth (Kirby) is disrupted when his ex-wife Kate (Dern) informs him about their teenage son Nicholas (McGrath), who has been missing from school for months and is disturbed. Addressing a press conference at Venice, Zeller said that he wanted to “explore these very emotional territories in a very honest and humble way” and that his work with the cast “was such a joyful, truthful and intense journey that we shared.”

Ahead of accepting the Venice Film Festival’s Glory to the Filmmaker Award this evening, legendary filmmaker Walter Hill met with the press corps here on the Lido to talk about his new western, Dead For A Dollar.

Paul Schrader is under no illusions about “Master Gardener,” the sure-to-be-divisive final chapter in an informal trilogy that kicked off with 2017’s “First Reformed” and continued with last year’s “The Card Counter.” For starters: the film centers on a former white supremacist (played by Joel Edgerton) and his attempts at redemption. “This one is going to piss people off,” Schrader told IndieWire of the film, which premiered out of competition this weekend at the Venice Film Festival, where the auteur is also being given a lifetime achievement award.

“I made a new life for myself from flowers,” marvels the green-thumbed Narvel Roth. “How unexpected is that?” To be fair, it’s about the only plausible thing that happens in Paul Schrader’s Venice Film Festival out of competition entry Master Gardener, an incredibly silly but fitfully entertaining noir-tinged drama that follows so neatly on from First Reformed and The Card Counter that it’s almost as if Schrader has patented his own sui generis subgenre, a mix of the sublime and the ridiculous that just about works if you’re prepared to walk the line with it.

Christopher Vourlias On the eve of the 79th Venice Film Festival, where his powerful Ukraine war documentary “Freedom on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom” will premiere out of competition on Sept. 7, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Evgeny Afineevsky was in a frantic race against time. Footage was still being shot in Ukraine into the second week of August, with Afineevsky only completing the film on Aug. 31 — the same day that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed the A-list celebrities and foreign press at the festival’s opening ceremony, urging the world not to forget the war in Ukraine with the impassioned plea: “Don’t turn your back to us.”

Paul Schrader is under no illusions about “Master Gardener,” the sure-to-be-divisive final chapter in an informal trilogy that kicked off with 2017’s “First Reformed” and continued with last year’s “The Card Counter.” For starters: the film centers on a former white supremacist (played by Joel Edgerton) and his attempts at redemption. “This one is going to piss people off,” Schrader told IndieWire of the film, which premiered out of competition this weekend at the Venice Film Festival, where the auteur is also being given a lifetime achievement award.

Joel Edgerton has the support of his partner Christine Centenera at his big premiere at the 2022 Venice Film Festival!

A man scribbles in his diary. The pages are visible by dim light, the wooden table nondescript.

Lots of stars stepped out to attend the annual Miu Miu Women’s Tales photo call this year!

Gene Maddaus Senior Media Writer A man who met writer-director Paul Schrader at a campus event at their Michigan alma mater has filed a lawsuit alleging that Schrader later stole his ideas and used them in the film “The Card Counter.” Mark Vanden Berge alleges in the suit that he met Schrader after a screening of “First Reformed” at Calvin University, a Christian college in Grand Rapids, in February 2018. He says he told Schrader about a treatment he was working on for a film called “Blown Odds,” about a gambler’s search for redemption, and asked Schrader for help developing it into a marketable screenplay. According to the suit, Schrader told him to email him the treatment. Vanden Berge sent it to him, according to the suit, but never heard back from Schrader directly, though he says he was told that Schrader had received it.

Naman Ramachandran Leads Sigourney Weaver, Joel Edgerton and Quintessa Swindell were thankful for the opportunity to work with revered writer-director Paul Schrader on his latest film “Master Gardener,” showing out of competition at the Venice Film Festival. In a lively press conference on Saturday attended by the leads and Schrader, the filmmaker referred to the “lonely man in the room” archetype that he’s returned to in film after film beginning with “Taxi Driver.” “Hopefully, I’m done with him,” Schrader said. “I’ve always admired Paul’s work; never dreamed of working with him, because I’m not a lonely man in the room – I’m the lusty woman in the house,” Weaver said, adding that the “Master Gardener” role was one of the best she’s ever had. Weaver also thanked Schrader for writing two great parts for women in the film.

Anna Marie de la Fuente For Argentina’s Santiago Mitre, his courtroom drama “Argentina 1985,” a Golden Lion contender at the 79th Venice Film Festival, is an examination of the machinations of power from within, as were his past four features. But unlike those films, “Argentina 1985” is based on a real event, the trial of Argentina’s military leaders who ruled with brutal impunity until democracy was finally restored in 1983. The civil trial is considered one of the most significant in modern world history, along with the Nuremberg trials when defeated Nazi leaders were put on the stand. The difference in this David vs. Goliath story is that Argentina’s military junta still had a grip on power when they were taken to court for their crimes.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent After taking a break from his filmmaking career to preside over the French film promotion org Unifrance, Jean-Paul Salomé has made a big comeback with a pair of films with Oscar-nominated French actor Isabelle Huppert. The latest one, “The Sitting Duck,” is world premiering at Venice in the Horizons section. Adapted from Caroline Michel-Aguirre’s book “La Syndicaliste,” “The Sitting Duck” tells the true story of Maureen Kearney, the head union representative of a French multinational nuclear powerhouse who becomes a whistleblower, denouncing top-secret deals that shook the French nuclear sector. One day, Kearney is found in her home, tied to a chair, the letter “A” carved into her abdomen, and a knife handle inserted into her vagina. Traumatized, she has no memory of the assault. However, after an investigation, the police accused her of staging the attack herself.

Apart from the few but mighty completists of renegade filmmaker Abel Ferrara, the primary draw to watch “Padre Pio” is star Shia LaBeouf making his first on-screen attempt at a comeback after facing domestic abuse allegations. The star credits the film with prompting his conversion to Catholicism and helping to begin the process of repairing his life.