Pensive Locarno Title ‘Rivière’ Drops Trailer, Poster (EXCLUSIVE)

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor The French drama “The Pot-au-Feu,” one of the breakout hits at the Cannes Film Festival and one of the movies that could represent France at the Academy Awards, has received a new title, Variety has learned exclusively. Now under its new title — “The Taste of Things” – the movie will also have a qualifying run to be considered in all general categories, including best picture.

With Tuesday’s grosses, Illumination/Nintendo/Universal’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie has crossed the $100M (13.74B yen) mark in Japan. In doing so, it becomes Universal’s top title ever there. In local currency, Mario overtakes Top Gun: Maverick as the No. 6 Hollywood film of all time in Japan, and is the No. 1 studio picture since the beginning of the pandemic.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Paris-based outfit Urban Sales has locked several deals on “Pictures of Ghosts,” the latest film by celebrated Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho (“Aquarius”, “Bacurau”) ahead of its North American premieres at Toronto and New York film festivals. The movie world premiered at Cannes in the Special Screenings section. Weaving archive documentary, mystery, film clips and personal memories, the film has sold to the U.S.

Naman Ramachandran Magnolia Pictures International has acquired worldwide sales rights – including U.S. sales rights – to suspense-drama “Hesitation Wound” from Turkish writer-director Selman Nacar. The film will world premiere in the Venice Film Festival’s Horizons section.

Katharina Huber’s “A Good Place” (“Ein schöner Ort”) which won on Saturday Locarno’s best emerging director award and best performance (Clara Schwinning) in the Swiss fest’s Filmmakers of the Present, a remote and untimely village sets the scene for an imminent apocalypse but also for an otherworldly fairytale. Or are these two one and the same? Huber’s first feature opens with an image of a forest fire, foreshadowing the dystopian tone of an elusive audiovisual journey where emotions prevail over rational explanations. Set to the rhythm of a countdown, this chaptered story sees Margarita (Céline De Gennaro) and Güte (Schwinning) – two women with contrasting personalities, juggle mundane tasks of daily life with disruptive acts of sabotage.

Iranian filmmaker Ali Ahmadzadeh clinched the Golden Leopard in the main international competition of the 76th Locarno Film Festival with his latest feature Critical Zone (Mantagheye Bohrani).

Marta Balaga The hype is real: Ali Ahmadzadeh’s “Critical Zone” (“Mantagheye bohrani”) has picked up the top Golden Leopard at Locarno. It has been a bumpy ride for the film, set in Tehran over the course of one lonely night and described by the fest as “a hymn to freedom and resistance.” As reported by Variety, Iranian authorities have been pressuring Ahmadzadeh to pull it from the Swiss festival – arguing it was shot without permission – and with the director himself banned from leaving the country. “Instead of actors, I worked with real people.

Arthouse Crunch Over the last decade, theatrical arthouse markets have imploded soufflé-like. “We used to make 5,000 admissions per title, now the target audience is 500,” Peter Bognar, at Hungary’s CinefilCo, told Variety at Locarno. So, to close the gap and move hopefully into a little upside, having tapped subsidies and local TV pre-buys, producers are looking ever more to overseas public-sector coin, channelled via international co-producer partners.

Despina Athanassiadis, France Born in France and with Greek roots, Athanassiadis is currently focusing on her Alliance4Development project “The Young One,” about female truck drivers – “It’s a story of transmission, from older to younger generation” – which was awarded script consultancy residency at DreamAgo. “As a filmmaker, I’m interested in people who struggle. I find it fascinating, watching how they find ways to fix their problems.

Marta Balaga You can approach old classics just like new films, argued participants during Locarno’s Heritage Monday panel. “I talked to an exhibitor in Paris and they don’t consider repertory cinema to be different from contemporary cinema. They are collapsing both models into one and it’s very interesting,” said K.J.

Dominican project Tres balas (Three Bullets) has dominated the awards handed out by Open Doors, Locarno Pro’s talent development program for artists from underrepresented communities.

Climate change activists briefly halted the Locarno Film Festival’s honorary awards ceremony for environmentalist and documentarian Luc Jacquet on Monday evening.Jacquet, who won the Best Documentary Oscar in 2006 for The March Of The Penguins, was being feted with the Locarno Kids Award, followed by a screening of his new film Magnetic Continent in front of a 7,000-strong crowd on the festival’s landmark Piazza Grande.

John Bleasdale Guest Contributor “The Vanishing Soldier” is a coming of age story, as breathless as its protagonist: the kind of film that will make cinephiles of seventeen-year-olds. Which is one of the reasons that Dani Rosenberg, the film’s 43-year-old director, is delighted to be in Locarno, where the film, sold by Intramovies, is screening in main competition, and has just got a trailer, and poster, shared in exclusivity with Variety. “We had options for other festivals,” Rosenberg told Variety at the Swiss fest.

Marta Balaga It was a good day for female filmmakers – and documentaries – at Locarno Pro, with “Mother Vera” by Cécile Embleton and Alys Tomlinson winning the Creativity Media First Look Award on Sunday at Locarno’s pix-in-post competition, dedicated this year to the U.K. Dedicated to a young Orthodox nun, “Mother Vera” shows her turbulent past and fragile future as she faces inner conflict after 20 years as a monastic.

Belarusian-set pic Mother Vera has picked up Locarno’s Creativity Media First Look Award, the biggest prize handed out by the festival’s industry section. 

Marta Balaga Stellan Skarsgård and Gustaf Skarsgård introduced their latest film “What Remains” at Locarno Film Festival on Friday. Directed by Ran Huang, it was written by Huang and Megan Everett Skarsgård. Andrea Riseborough also stars.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent “What’s the Deal With Independent Cinema?” was the theme of the Locarno Film Festival’s StepIn think tank where a select group of European and international industry players exchanged views and took part in working sessions to discuss the state of the indie film industry. The unique event, now at it 11th edition, kicked off Thursday with an “out-of-the-box” introduction by feisty U.S.

Marta Balaga Alliance 4 Development – a co-development initiative for film projects from Austria, France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland hosted by Locarno Pro – is ready to embrace a “variety of genres, themes and visions,” says project manager Francesca Palleschi. Among 11 titles selected for its 8th edition, emerging filmmakers will be featured alongside their more established colleagues.

Christopher Vourlias Greek filmmaker Sofia Exarchou’s drama “Animal,” which world premieres Aug. 3 in competition at the Locarno Film Festival, has secured its first distribution deals and released a teaser (see below). The anticipated follow-up to Exarchou’s first feature, “Park,” which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival and won the New Directors Award in San Sebastian, “Animal” will be distributed in France by Shellac and in Austria by Filmgarten.

Goldendoodles have become the UK’s most popular dog, figures suggest.