Anna Smith Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Vivian Oparah is aware of the spotlight on her following her BAFTA Film Awards nomination for her breakthrough performance in Searchlight’s romance movie Rye Lane, but she feels it’s imperative that she “stay grounded” because it’s a more disparate path towards stardom for Black actresses.

Few feature films in recent memory have generated as much excitement around the city of London as Searchlight’s latest pic Rye Lane.

‘The Woman King’ & ‘Aftersun’ Dominate Girls On Film AwardsThe Woman King and Aftersun dominated the main awards at the second annual Girls On Film Awards. The Woman King picked up Best Ensemble, sponsored by Netflix, and Best Female Friendship On Screen. Woman King star Viola Davis was also awarded the Feminist Superhero award. Woman King lead Sheila Atim was there in person to accept the awards. Aftersun nabbed Best Feature Film Sponsored by EON Productions, while the film’s publicity team also won Best Publicity Campaign. Other big winners included Sebastián Lelio’s The Wonder, which took home Best Cinematography and the Sinéad O’Connor pic Nothing Compares (Best Documentary). Nominees for the awards were chosen by a selection of critics and journalists. Girls On Film was launched by Deadline critic and broadcaster Anna Smith and producer Hedda Archbold with the aim of rewarding excellence in the field of feminism, inclusion, and diversity in cinema. Check out the full winners on the Girl On Film Twitter account.

EXCLUSIVE: Hot off the heels of their Sundance premiere of Rye Lane, writers Nathan Bryon and Tom Melia have teamed up with Vertigo Films for their next romantic comedy The Whole Hog. 

The influence of streaming companies was a central topic of the Women in Leadership panel at the Evolution Mallorca International Film Festival this past weekend.

Viaplay Plans November 1 Launch Date For UK As Premier Sports Deal Closes

A24 acquired North American rights to Charlotte Wells’ feature debut breakout Aftersun following its bow in Critics’ Week at the Cannes Film Festival last May. Today, we have the first trailer for the award-winning drama — check it out above. A24 releases in North America on October 21.

Netflix has bagged Thomas M. Wright’s tense Cannes thriller The Stranger and will premiere it globally in October.

“There’s nothing wishy-washing about working with Phyllis Nagy,” Elizabeth Banks tells Deadline of working with the Call Jane director. “She’s very gentle with her direction but she’s also firm with what she expects or wants out of something, which I really appreciate.”

James Bond producer Barbara Broccoli has said that the character could be non-binary in the future.As speculation mounts over who will replace Daniel Craig in the role following No Time To Die, the producer appeared on the Girls On Film podcast and reiterated that Bond would remain a man.However, when host Anna Smith asked about the prospect of a non-binary 007 in future, Broccoli replied: “Who knows, I think it’s open, you know? We just have to find the right actor.”The Bond boss’s latest words

Is it possible that a future James Bond could identify as non-binary? Producer Barbara Broccoli thinks so. 

An official trailer has been released for the Downton Abbey movie sequel that promises a new location to be featured as the Crawley family embark on a trip to the South of France. Opening up with an aerial shot of the Downton Abbey estate, the clip to Downton Abbey: A New Era shows glimpses of some of the show’s original characters that will return in the film, including Lady Mary, Anna Smith and maid Daisy Mason.

Clio Barnard took inspiration from two people she met while filming previous films for Ali & Ava, which premiered at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival.

Only Ten Months Until the Next Cannes.

An 83-year-old man goes undercover in a nursing home in The Mole Agent, Chilean director Maite Alberdi’s Oscar hopeful that’s been shortlisted for both International Feature and Documentary.

Horror is woven into political drama in La Llorona, the riveting Golden Globe Foreign Language Film nominee and shortlisted International Feature Oscar contender from Guatemala’s Jayro Bustamante. An elderly wealthy man hears ghostly noises in the night.

A prisoner becomes a storyteller in Night Of The Kings, Ivory Coast’s vivid International Feature Oscar shortlist selection written and directed by Philippe Lacôte (Run). Newcomer Bakary Koné stars as a pickpocket who arrives at La MACA, a notorious prison in the Ivorian forest.

When documentary maker Alexander Nanau started filming a team of investigative journalists in the aftermath of a tragic fire, no one knew the staggering level of corruption they would uncover. The blaze at Bucharest’s Colectiv club in 2015 left 27 dead and 180 injured. When more burn victims began dying in hospitals from wounds that were not life-threatening, the Romanian newspaper Sports Gazette started probing into the health service.

The opening scene of Dara Of Jasenovac, Serbia’s submission to the International Feature Oscar race, gives a poignant hint of the horrors to come. The setting is rural Croatia in the 1940s.

In 1962, a group of striking factory workers was massacred in the industrial Russian town of Novocherkassk. The shocking event, and the ensuing cover-up, is explored in intimate and meticulous detail by veteran filmmaker Andrei Konchalovsky in Dear Comrades!, this year’s submission from Russia to the International Feature Oscar race.

This year’s International Feature Oscar entry from Armenia, Songs Of Solomon, boasts Green Book Academy Award-winning co-writer/producer Nick Vallelonga as producer for the film debut of theater director Arman Nshanian. Songs Of Solomon is a relatively low-budget but emotive watch, contrasting the power of music and friendship with the horrors of genocide.


Tragedy is punctured by comedy from the start of The Father. At a funeral in rural Bulgaria, mourners prepare to say goodbye to Valentina as the priest delivers an elegy over her grave.

After an impressive start at India’s box office, the Tamil-language film Master has hit Amazon Prime Video across the globe, and looks set to maintain the star power of leading actor Vijay. Two years after playing a charismatic soccer coach in Bigil, Vijay dances into the role of a charismatic professor in Master.

Set in 2025, Ukraine’s post-apocalyptic International Feature Film Oscar entry Atlantis imagines life — and death — in the country one year after the ongoing war with Russia has ended. Sergiy (Andriy Rymaruk) and his friend Ivan (Vasyl Antoniak) both suffer from PTSD, and lead joyless lives shooting at targets and working in a steel factory. When the factory is closed down by its British owner, Sergiy ends up driving a water truck around the barren landscape.  

“I’m sick of stories about frustrated couples who rip each other apart and explore their sexuality to escape boredom,” says Lisa (Nina Hoss) in My Little Sister. While there is plenty of frustration, and some sex, in Switzerland’s International Feature Film Oscar entry, this is not that story. It’s the tender tale of theatrical German twins brought closer by cancer.  


Wealthy, curtain-twitching suburbanites have formed the basis for many a TV show, but the Polish feature Never Gonna Snow Again proves the setting can be profoundly cinematic and esoteric, as well as darkly funny. Co-directing and writing with director of photography Michal Englert, Malgorzata Szumowska revels in blending genres in this acutely observed festival hit that is Poland’s submission for the 2021 International Oscar race.

By Nancy Tartaglione