Alice Rohrwacher Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

There’s quite a bit of uncertainty surrounding the film industry as we end the summer and look towards the fall, courtesy of the dual strikes from the WGA and SAG. We’ve already seen some high-profile films vacate the fall space and move into 2024, but there are still quite a few big projects that are hoping to take part in the yearly fall festival circuit.

Liam Neeson crime thriller In The Land Of Saints And Sinners opens on 896 screens this weekend, joined by Sean Penn in Asphalt City — the Godzilla vs. Kong of the specialty market?

David Lynch‘s “Blue Velvet” continues to cause a stir nearly four decades after its release, with the film having just as many detractors as it does champions. And in a recent interview with IndieWire, actress Isabella Rossellini had a chance to respond to one of the film’s harshest critics: the late Roger Ebert.   READ MORE: ‘La Chimera’ Trailer: Alice Rohrwacher’s Latest Drama Stars Josh O’Connor, Isabella Rossellini & More Ebert infamously trounced the film upon release in 1986, particularly how Lynch treated Rossellini in her performance, deeming it exploitative.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italy — which is the Country of Focus at this year’s European Film Market in Berlin — is flourishing in terms of production activity just as its box office grosses start to pick up. Yet there’s room for improvement in terms of the number of titles that are able to break out internationally. The Cinema Italiano output currently stands at over 350 movies a year, including co-productions, which is up compared with pre-pandemic levels.

South Korean auteur Bong Joon-ho once described the works of Italian film director, editor, and screenwriter Alice Rohrwacher as “a mix of magic realism and neorealism, innocent characters butting up against corrupt behemoths.” And that’s a beautiful and apt description of her work and arguably her latest film, “La Chimera.” A period romantic drama, the film centers on A group of archaeologists and the black market of historical artifacts that ties them all together.

The Göteborg Film Festival has unveiled the competition titles selected for its 47th edition, which runs from January 26 to February 4. (Scroll down for the full list).

Switzerland has been named as the Country of Honor at the 2024 edition of the Cannes Marché du Film, running alongside parent event the Cannes Film Festival from May 14 to 22.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent The Cannes Film Market, which runs alongside the festival, has named Switzerland as Country of Honor for the 2024 edition that’s set to run May 14-22. As part of the tribute, Cannes will highlight Switzerland’s contributions to the audiovisual industry and provide a platform for emerging Swiss talents and projects in development.

Brent Lang Executive Editor David Robert Mitchell and Maika Monroe are reuniting on “They Follow,” a sequel to the 2014 cult horror hit, “It Follows.” Neon, the Oscar-winning studio behind “Parasite,” will co-produce the movie and release it domestically. The studio will introduce it to international buyers at this year’s American Film Market. Principal photography will commence in 2024.

Josh O’Connor is hitting the red carpet at the 2023 Rome Film Festival!

Thierry Frémaux is best known internationally as the long-time head of France’s Cannes Film Festival, which is organized out of its offices in Paris’s trendy Marais neighborhood.

UPDATED with latest: The Toronto Film Festival began September 7 in Ontario with opening-night movie The Boy and the Heron, from Oscar-winning filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki. It kicks off a lineup for the fest’s 48th edition that includes world premieres of GameStop pic Dumb Money, Netflix’s Pain Hustlers, Taika Waititi’s Next Goal Wins, Kristin Scott Thomas’ Scarlett Johansson pic North Star, Chris Pine’s Poolman, Michael Keaton-directed Knox Goes Away, Anna Kendrick’s Woman of the Hour, Atom Egoyan’s Seven Veils, Michael Winterbottom’s Shoshana, Grant Singer’s Reptile, Viggo Mortensen’s The Dead Don’t Hurt, Lee Tamahori’s The Convert and Alex Gibney’s doc In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon.

Golden Globe and an Emmy for his performance, in a new interview with British GQ. “I found it so impactful, people stopping me,” he recalled of the spike in notoriety.

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor The 50th Telluride Film Festival official lineup has been announced, revealing multiple world premieres including Emerald Fennell’s “Saltburn,” George C. Wolfe’s “Rustin,” Jeff Nichols’ “The Bikeriders” and Alexander Payne’s “The Holdovers.” In addition, the festival will pay tribute to Oscar-nominated director Yorgos Lanthimos, whose film “Poor Things” will debut Stateside after premiering at the Venice Film Festival.

Sure, this time of year, everyone is thinking about the prestigious fall festival events, such as TIFF, Venice, Telluride, NYFF, etc.. However, what they’re forgetting is the sheer madness and joy that comes with visiting Fantastic Fest in Austin.

Sure, this time of year, everyone is thinking about the prestigious fall festival events, such as TIFF, Venice, Telluride, NYFF, etc.. However, what they’re forgetting is the sheer madness and joy that comes with visiting Fantastic Fest in Austin.

Film at Lincoln Center has set the 32 features from 18 countries making up the Main Slate of the New York Film Festival, from Cannes prize-winners Anatomy Of A Fall by Justine Triet (Palme d’Or) and Zone Of Interest by Jonathan Glazer (Grand Prix), to the latest by Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, Wim Wenders, Agnieszka Holland, Hong Sangsoo, Radu Jude, Yorgos Lanthimos and Alice Rohrwacher.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent An underhanded move by members of Italy’s right-wing government to try and take over the management of Rome’s Centro Sperimentale Film School is prompting an uproar by its students and a strong show of support from the country’s top directors. Earlier this week, students of the Centro Sperimentale — which is the oldest film school in the world, and among the finest — staged a demonstration in front of the country’s parliament just as a piece of legislation that would change the school’s management was swiftly being approved by a parliamentary committee.

Curzon CEO Philip Knatchbull today said that he plans to leave the company after 17 years in post. He will remain in the role until November when a new CEO is expected to be in place.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Alice Rohrwacher’s “La Chimera,” in which “The Crown” star Josh O’Connor plays a British archeologist named Arthur who gets involved in an international network of stolen Etruscan artifacts during the 1980s, has sold worldwide after premiering positively in Cannes. The Match Factory has inked deals for the film in the U.K. and Ireland (Curzon); Australia and New Zealand (Palace Entertainement); Benelux (September Film); Germany (Piffl Medien); Hong Kong (Edko);  Spain (Elastica); South Korea (M&M International); China (Jetsen); Japan (Bitters End); Taiwan (Swallow Wings); Austria (Stadtkino); Baltics (A-One); Bulgaria (Art Fest); CIS (Mauris Film); Czech Republic & Slovakia (Aerofilms); Finland (B-Film); Denmark (Filmbazar); Former Yugoslavia (MCF): Greece (Cinobo); Hungary (Cirko); Middle East and North Africa (Moving Turtle); Poland (Aurora Films); Portugal (Midas); Romania (Independenta); Singapore (Anticipate Pictures); Thailand (Documentary Club); and Ukraine (Arthouse Traffic). 

Italian filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher’s latest pic La Chimera has inked a series of international deals for The Match Factory following its well-received debut at last month’s Cannes Film Festival.

Alice Rohrwacher’s “La Chimera” flits between languages (English, Italian, French, German) as fluidly as it does mediums (35mm, Super16mm, and 16mm cinematography) and styles (jerkily sped up Chaplin-esque scenes, clinical CCTV footage, audacious 180-degree camera flips). Rohrwacher uses this mosaic of disparate approaches to hone in on other kinds of incongruous and unpredictable interplay: modern Italy and its ancient past, heartbreak and new love, and the real world and its spiritual mirror realm.

The 76th Cannes Film Festival is wrapping up this evening with the main awards, including the Palme d’Or, to be handed out by Ruben Ostlund’s jury inside the Palais. Scroll down for the list of winners which is being updated as prizes are announced.

Italian filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher’s La Chimera absolutely charmed the Cannes Film Festival audience at its world premiere in competition this afternoon, receiving a 9-minute standing ovation inside the Palais’ Lumière theater. For those keeping score, that ties for the longest of this year’s event with Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon which played out of competition.

Guy Lodge Film Critic In “La Chimera,” the ancient past nestles mere inches below the surface of the present, eventually breaking above ground and disrupting, if not the space-time continuum, the more mundane order of things. The borders between life and death feel similarly frictious and permeable, as if we could merely visit one from the other, as easily as sleeping and waking. Arthur (Josh O’Connor), the wandering Brit at the center of Alice Rohrwacher’s marvelously supple and sinuous new film, is accustomed to such limbo states. So are admirers of Rohrwacher’s filmmaking, which, in this eccentric, romantic tale of competing grave-robbers in Central Italy, touches the transcendental without diving into the outright fabulism of 2018’s “Happy as Lazzaro.”

A Chimera is something one tries to achieve but alas, never manages to find. It is the heart and soul of a quest in life, in different ways, for the cast of characters in writer/director Alice Rohrwacher’s beautiful new film La Chimera premiering today as one of the last entries in competition at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. It also happens to be one of the best.

In less than 10 years, Alice Rohrwacher has carved out a formidable reputation for herself, notably by gatecrashing the boys’ club that is traditionally the Cannes competition, and the fact that she did so in 2014 with only her second film, The Wonders, is further proof of a distinctive talent. One competition slot doesn’t guarantee another, yet Rohrwacher was back in 2018 with the follow-up, Happy as Lazzaro. Both films won prizes — Grand Prix and Best Screenplay, respectively — which means that expectations are high for the Oscar-nominated 41-year-old Italian, whose new film, La chimera, makes it three in a row.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italy’s RAI Cinema, which has four titles in this year’s Cannes selection, has closed a deal on Ron Howard’s next movie “Origin of Species,” a hot project at the Cannes market starring Daisy Edgar-Jones, Ana de Armas, Jude Law and Alicia Vikander. RAI Cinema chief Paolo Del Brocco said the company – which is the film arm of Italian state broadcaster RAI – has teamed up with Rome-based Lucisano Media Group to acquire Italian rights from CAA Media Finance on Howard’s survival thriller penned by Noah Pink (“Tetris”) about a a group of eclectics who turn their backs on civilization and head to the Galapagos. In Cannes, RAI Cinema also picked up Italian rights from Gaumont on family movie “Moon The Panda,” by French humans and animals adventures specialist Gilles de Maistre, known for “Mia and the White Lion”and “The Wolf and the Lion.” De Maistre’s latest, about the friendship between a boy and a panda, is set to shoot later this month in China’s Sichuan mountains.

Neon has acquired North American rights to Justine Triet’s Cannes Competition feature Anatomy of a Fall.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Alice Rohrwacher is in the Cannes competition for the third time with “La Chimera,” in which “The Crown” star Josh O’Connor plays a young British archeologist named Arthur who gets involved in an international network of stolen Etruscan artifacts during the 1980s. For Rohrwacher, the film is connected to growing up in Umbria, once the center of the Etruscan civilization. But it’s also the final piece of a triptych on a territory that she started with her previous Cannes entries: “The Wonders” and “Happy as Lazzaro.” Three works that, as she has put it, pose a central question: “What to do with the past?”  

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Cinema Italiano is on a roll, as reflected by the fact that this year Italy has scored three Cannes competition slots. Despite the persisting sore spot that sees the country still lagging behind other European territories in terms of post-pandemic box office returns, Italy “continues to produce and invest heavily in film and is overcoming the crisis,” noted Cannes artistic director Thierry Fremaux after announcing the lineup. The robust Croisette contingent marks the second time in 20 years that Italy lands three Cannes competition berths. Though the trio of selected directors — Marco Bellocchio, Nanni Moretti and Alice Rohrwacher — are all Cannes regulars “they represent three different generations of auteurs,” said Paolo Del Brocco, chief of state broadcaster RAI’s RAI Cinema arm that co-produced all three titles. And each of these films, he went on to point out, displays “very different ideas and cinematic visions.”

Pat Saperstein Deputy Editor In its first acquisition at the Cannes Film Festival, Neon has picked up North American rights to director Pablo Berger’s animated feature “Robot Dreams” ahead of its world premiere in Cannes on Saturday. The Spanish filmmaker of “Blancanieves” based his first animated feature on the award-winning graphic novel by Sara Varon. “Robot Dreams” screens Saturday in the Special Screenings section of the festival. Neon previously scored three consecutive Palme d’Or wins with “Parasite,” “Titane” and “Triangle of Sadness.” “Robot Dreams” is described as a “universal exploration of the importance and fragility of friendship.” It follows DOG, a New York canine who decides to build himself a robot companion. They become inseparable, to the rhythm of 1980s New York city, until the sad summer night when DOG is forced to abandon ROBOT at the beach.

Neon has acquired North American rights to Robot Dreams, the first animated feature from Spanish filmmaker Pablo Berger (Blancanieves), which is poised to premiere in the Special Screenings section of the Cannes Film Festival this Saturday, May 20th.

“Elemental” and Martin Scorsese’s Apple-produced “Killers of the Flower Moon” an additional veneer of vindication. As to the box-office futures of the 20-odd films competing for this year’s Palme d’Or, certainly none will reach the international highs of James Mangold’s “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” but then, none were ever expected to.Instead — and at its best — Cannes works as a sophisticated shell game, channeling the glamour of the red carpet and the frenzy of 40,000 accredited guests to make glitzy international events out of existential Turkish dramas like Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s “About Dry Grasses,” existential Finnish dramedies like Aki Kaurismäki’s “Fallen Leaves”or intimate two-headers about 19th-century French gastronomy like Tran Anh Hung’s “The Pot au Feu.”Other Palme d’Or contenders will come with built-in SEO, as Wes Anderson’s more-star-packed-than-usual “Asteroid City”threatens to saddle red-carpet rubberneckers with a permanent case of whiplash once the Texan auteur’s full repertory company mounts the Palais steps alongside new additions Tom Hanks and Scarlett Johansson.That all the aforementioned filmmakers could walk those Palais steps in blindfolds is another notable element of an official competition marked by staggering high fidelity.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian producer Luciano Sovena, who was instrumental to bringing early works by several of Italy’s now-prominent auteurs such as Alice Rohrwacher, Luciano Frammartino, and Saverio Costanzo, to the big screen, has died. He was 73. News of Sovena’s sudden death was announced on Sunday by the Rome and Lazio Film Commission Foundation, of which he was president. The cause of death was not disclosed. The foundation paid tribute to Sovena as “A great and generous professional; a friend of Italian cinema,” in a statement. It went on to note that he was “Ironic, ‘simpatico’ and open to everyone.”

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Sales agency The Match Factory is launching the trailer (below) of Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki’s “Fallen Leaves,” which will premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in Competition. This gentle tragicomedy is the fourth part of Kaurismäki’s working-class quartet, following “Shadows in Paradise,” “Ariel” and “The Match Factory Girl,” which The Match Factory, the company, is named after. The film tells the story of two lonely people (played by Alma Pöysti and Jussi Vatanen) who meet each other by chance in the Helsinki night. They then try to re-find each other: the first, only, and ultimate love of their lives. Their path toward this goal is clouded by the man’s alcoholism, lost phone numbers, not knowing each other’s names or addresses, and life’s tendency to place obstacles in the way of those seeking their happiness.