Agnieszka Smoczynska Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Brett Morgen’s kaleidoscopic ode to David Bowie landed at no 10 in North America this weekend, singing up $1.225 million on 170 screens – exclusively Imax (159 U.S. locations, 11 in Canada).

EXCLUSIVE: Warner Bros is finalizing a deal to preemptively acquire The Bet, a hot spec from Spanish screenwriter Javier Gullón (Enemy), according to multiple sources.

Alissa Simon Film Critic With her debut feature “Tiger Stripes,” Malaysian writer-director Amanda Nell Eu joins an exciting group of directors who provide subversive takes on genre and body horror. Julia Ducournau and “Raw” comes to mind, as do Agnieszka Smoczynska and “The Lure” and John Fawcett and “Ginger Snaps” — like David Cronenberg before them. Eu, an MA graduate of the London Film School, blends Malaysian folklore with heightened realism and a large dollop of “Mean Girls” in the story of a tween going through changes wrought by puberty and alterations in her friendship group.

EXCLUSIVE: Black Bear’s management arm has signed the Swedish actor and model Simon Lööf for representation.

EXCLUSIVE: Black Bear’s management arm has signed Danish-American actor Elliott Crosset Hove for representation.

Marta Balaga Polish helmer Agnieszka Smoczyńska fought for Tamara Lawrance to be a part of “The Silent Twins,” she said at Karlovy Vary Film Festival. “We had two options: [hire] one actress who plays both characters, but there is no chemistry, or find actual twins, which was not possible. We had Letitia Wright, who was this amazing actress and ‘Black Panther’ star, and then we found Tamara,” she said. The story was inspired by real-life identical twins June and Jennifer Gibbons, who only communicated with each other. “They are not that similar, so what do you do? You make a decision. And I knew she was the one, because it was all about this tension between them.”

Marta Balaga Once again, 10 promising directors are making their way to Karlovy Vary Film Festival thanks to European Film Promotion’s Future Frames – Generation NEXT of European Cinema initiative, ready to burst onto the international film scene. “Over the past few years, we have established a reliable label with Future Frames,” says Sonja Heinen, EFP’s managing director, adding that the goals have remained the same: spotlighting talent, creating visibility for the emerging directors, and helping them access the market. “Being selected gives them a certain stamp of approval. They get a platform to exchange and experience, and are equipped with coaching which they can use later in their career,” adds Nora Goldstein, project director.  

Actress and director Robin Wright will be the featured guest at Karlovy Vary’s closing ceremony on July 8, where she will receive the festival’s Honorary President’s Award.

Christopher Vourlias The anticipation surrounding Jonathan Glazer’s Holocaust drama “The Zone of Interest” was building long before it was tapped to compete at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Details about the Auschwitz-set film, which is loosely based on the novel by Martin Amis, have been kept under wraps, although no less a Cannes personage than festival director Thierry Fremaux described it as “quite a challenging film.” Glazer’s first movie since 2013 sci-fi fantasy “Under the Skin” is sure to be among the more talked-about films bowing on the Croisette. Filmed entirely in Poland and lensed by two-time Oscar nominee Łukasz Żal (“Ida,” “Cold War”), “Zone of Interest” is also a triumph for the Polish film industry. “The character, the genes of the film, they were here in Poland,” says Academy Award-winning producer Ewa Puszczyńska (“Ida,” “Cold War”), whose shingle Extreme Emotions shares producing credits with British producer James Wilson’s JW Films. “There is a lot of Polish soul…in this film.”

Marta Balaga The Polish film industry is embracing variety and high-profile international collaborations, with a slew of new co-productions already generating buzz among buyers and festival programmers. “More and more established filmmakers, who used to look for collaborators in Romania or Hungary, are now coming to Poland — mostly because we are backed by concrete institutions and because there is money,” says producer Klaudia Śmieja-Rostworowska of Madants, heading to Berlinale’s European Film Market with “Ultima Thule” and Goran Stolevski’s “Housekeeping for Beginners.” “Our crews speak English and work abroad. We are visible internationally,” she adds.

Marta Balaga SEO: Petit Film boards Agnieszka Smoczyńska’s ‘Hot Spot’  DESCRIPTION: Paris-based Petit Film boards ‘Hot Spot’ by ‘The Silent Twins’ director Agnieszka Smoczyńska By MARTA BAŁAGA Paris-based Petit Film has boarded “Hot Spot” by Polish director Agnieszka Smoczyńska.  The story, set in the near future, follows a disillusioned private eye Djonny, called to investigate a murder at a refugee camp. But he becomes increasingly unstable as he confronts a cyber witch who gradually takes control of his life. 

EXCLUSIVE: Silence has been golden for Tamara Lawrance who, paired with Wakanda Forever’s Letitia Wright in The Silent Twins, won the best joint lead performance trophy at the recent BIFA awards. 

Scottish filmmaker Charlotte Wells’s acclaimed debut feature Aftersun swept the board, snagging seven wins at the British Independent Film Awards (BIFA) in London this evening.

Letitia Wright has been in some of the biggest films of all time, playing a superhero for Marvel Studios. But her role in the new movie, “The Silent Twins,” directed by celebrated Polish auteur Agnieszka Smoczynska (“Lure“), might have been one of the most intense productions she has experienced in her career thus far.

The Silent Twins,” told NPR in 2015. “No one else could understand them.

After its debut at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, Agnieszka Smoczyńska‘s English-language feature debut, “The Silent Twins,” hits theaters this Friday. But before that, check out Fenn O’Meally‘s short companion piece to the film, “Kiin,” co-written by the movie’s two stars.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Charlotte Wells’ “Aftersun” won the Grand Prize of the Deauville American Film Festival on Saturday evening during a ceremony which was followed by the French premiere of Olivia Wilde’s “Don’t Worry Darling.” “Aftersun” had world premiered at Critics Week in Cannes where it won a prize. The movie marks the feature debut of Wells, a New York-based Scottish filmmaker. Headlined by “Normal People” actor Paul Mescal, the bittersweet drama follows a father and his daughter who take a holiday at a Turkish resort in the late 1990s. The movie is being represented in international markets by Charades and will be distributed in North America by A24.

EXCLUSIVE: Kristen Konvitz has joined UTA as an Agent in the Independent Film Group division. She will work from the agency’s Los Angeles headquarters, reporting to Partners Jim Meenaghan and Rena Ronson, who serve as Co-Heads of the Independent Film Group. 

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentGina Gammell and Riley Keough’s “War Pony,” Charlotte Wells’ “Aftersun” and Agnieszka Smoczyńska’s “The Silent Twins” are among the several female-driven anticipated feature debuts slated for the Deauville American Film Festival’s competition.Eight titles out of 13 features set to compete at Deauville as first films. “War Pony” world premiered at Un Certain Regard in Cannes and won the Camera d’Or for best debut.

Deauville Unveils American Indie-Focused Competition Selection

EXCLUSIVE: Dekanalog has picked up Streetwise, Anatolian Leopard and Fugue, three buzzy international films.

Guy Lodge Film CriticAny number of directors could have shot Andrea Seigel’s straightforwardly moving screenplay for “The Silent Twins” and turned out a straightforwardly moving film in the process. It’s hard to imagine any of those movies looking, sounding or feeling quite like the one Agnieszka Smoczyńska has made, however.

In the late 19th century, two French psychiatrists coined the term “folie à deux,” literally translated as madness for two, to describe what is now widely referred to as shared psychotic disorder, or when two — or more — people transmit delusional beliefs and occasional hallucinations to one another. The condition is most common in people closely related, who live in intimate proximity, and has been lengthily dissected by academics.

Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Smoczynska (The Lure, Fugue) makes her english language debut with The Silent Twins, the strange and remarkable story of June and Jennifer Gibbons, twin sisters who only communicated with each other from 8 to later teen years when drugs and drinking led to petty theft and an arson charge that landed them in the tightly secured medical ward of Broadmoor  for 11 years before being released in the 1980’s. Creating their own puppetry and dolls, poems, and music which they only broadcast for each other on a fake radio program, the “twinies” as they were called by family fell into an odd void that became more pronounced, even when they were forced to go to separate schools at one point, and they carried on this way until becoming young women landing into legal troule  until incredibly being incarcerated for over a decade, five or six times as long as the longest sentence for the petty crimes of which they were accused.

Christina Bazdekis has joined United Talent Agency as an agent in the motion picture division. Based in New York, she will report to MP co-heads Jason Burns and Julien Thuan.

EXCLUSIVE: The Farewell and Honey Boy producer Kindred Spirit is expanding with the appointment of Sam Intili who joins the company as Head of Creative after departing Animal Kingdom.

Focus Features has picked up Silent Twins, starring Black Panther break-out Letitia Wright and Tamara Lawrance. The feature is the English language debut of Agnieszka Smoczynska and is based on the lives of June and Jennifer Gibbons, real-life identical twins who grew up in Wales, as the only Black family in a small town.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media ReporterFocus Features has landed rights to “Silent Twins,” a thriller starring Letitia Wright and Tamara Lawrance.Based on the book by Marjorie Wallace, the film marks the English language debut of director Agnieszka Smoczynska (“The Lure”). Andrea Seigel wrote the screenplay.Set in the 1970s and ’80s, the story follows June and Jennifer Gibbons, twins from the only Black family in a small town in Wales.

Focus Features has acquired worldwide rights to feature Silent Twins, which marks the English language debut of director Agnieszka Smoczynska (The Lure).

Tom Grater International Film ReporterEXCLUSIVE: Here’s a cool-sounding Euro package. Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Smoczyńska, who will helm her English-language debut Silent Twins starring Letitia Wright this fall, has been set to direct dystopian crime drama Hot Spot.Producers are Klaudia Smieja-Rostworowska at Poland’s Madants, who produced Claire Denis’ High Life and Agnieszka Holland’s Mr Jones, alongside Before Midnight producer Christos V.