Jessica Kiang Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Naman Ramachandran Arrow Films have acquired U.S., Canada, U.K. and Ireland rights to Berlinale title “Incredible But True,” by French writer-director Quentin Dupieux (“Mandibles”).The quirky comedy, which had its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival in February, sees a husband and wife move into a suburban house of their dreams only to discover that a mysterious secret is hidden in the basement, which may change their lives forever.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentAlmost two weeks into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Europe’s film industry continues to parse the complexities of a boycott on Russian cinema in order to express solidarity with the Ukrainian film community.While some film festivals, such as Stockholm and Glasgow, haven’t hesitated in boycotting Russian state-funded films outright, others like Cannes and Venice are taking a more nuanced approach, banning official delegations, but not necessarily Russian films and directors.The war’s more immediate effect, however, is that Ukrainian cinema is set to gain an increased visibility in the festival arena and beyond.On Monday evening, Rome’s Cinema Troisi hosted a free screening in collaboration with the Venice Film Festival of Ukrainian director Valentyn Vasynovych’s “Reflection” (pictured), set during the war in Donbass, in eastern Ukraine, in 2014. The film, which premiered in competition on the Lido last September, “asks, with brutal austerity, what happens to the soul of a man — and a nation — at war,” as critic Jessica Kiang put it in her Variety review.The Rome event, introduced by Venice Biennale president Roberto Cicutto, is being followed by other screenings of “Reflection,” organized by the fest in Italy.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentKino Lorber has acquired North American rights for Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović’s debut feature “Murina” which won the Golden Camera Award at last year’s Cannes Film Festival.Executive produced by Martin Scorsese and lushing lensed by Hélène Louvart (“The Lost Daughter”), “Murina” will be playing on opening night of the First Look Festival at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York.“Murina” is a tense and sensual tale about a restless teenager, Julija, whose urge to break free from her oppressive father and isolated existence in coastal Croatia is triggered by the visit of a family friend. Variety‘s Jessica Kiang wrote in her review that “If Patricia Highsmith had ever written a coming-of-age story set on the rocky, clear-watered Croatian coastline, it might have looked a lot like Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović’s bright, brooding debut.” The movie also boasts a breakthrough performance by Gracija Filipovic, a promising young actor and professional swimmer who was one of this year’s 10 Shooting Stars at the Berlinale.

Jessica Kiang Two cameras orbit a grand piano on a circular track. Sometimes one will catch sight of the other, passing behind the black-haired singer at the keyboard, flashing between the session violinists or gliding beyond the bearded man crouched low over his synthesizer.

Jessica Kiang Since 2012, more than 100 children have been conceived using the smuggled-out sperm of incarcerated Palestinians — or so it is claimed by the end titles of Mohamed Diab’s “Amira.” But here, this phenomenon, the mechanics of which make for a genuinely riveting first act, is somehow judged not dramatically fertile enough to carry an entire film.

Jessica Kiang “I don’t know my neighbors. There is a wall between us,” muses immigrant handyman Moha (Mohamed Mellali) in voiceover in Neus Ballús’ deceptively modest, gently ingenious third feature, “The Odd-Job Men.” “Water, electricity, gas, telephone.

Jessica Kiang “After that summer, nothing would be the same,” says Edo (Emanuele Maria Di Stefano), the narrator of “The Catholic School,” Stefano Mordini’s worryingly watchable, stylistically polished account of the lead-up to the tawdry and brutal real-life incident known to Italians as the Circeo Massacre.

Jessica Kiang “Where will we run away to this time?” asks Soraya Bakri (Nadine Labaki) of her husband Walid (Saleh Bakri), partly joking but mostly not, when what looks like all the trash in Beirut appears on their rural hideaway’s doorstep. Mounia Akl’s “Costa Brava, Lebanon,” is mostly a bittersweet dramedy built from an intimate, sprightly understanding of internal family dynamics, but it is fringed with the implicit melancholy of Soraya’s question.

Jessica Kiang When we first meet Alma (Déborah Lukumuena) and Margot (Souheila Yacoub), they are at each other’s throats. They are onstage, two of a gang of young hopefuls trying out for a plum role in a semi-experimental Parisian theatre piece, but the fight is not part of their audition.

Jessica Kiang Without Wendy Chinchilla Araya, the dancer and first-time film actress playing the title role, “Clara Sola” would be a finely wrought tale of a later-life coming-of-age, in which mysticism, marginalization and sudden sexual jealousy collide on the fringes of a teeming Costa Rican forest.

Jessica Kiang “You have to change it because you didn’t choose it.” The defiant mantra that evolves over the course of Moroccan director Nabil Ayouch’s scrappy but heartfelt hip-hop street-musical “Casablanca Beats,” his third time in Cannes but first time in competition, could be a rallying cry for any youth activism group, anywhere in the world.

Well, Wes Anderson‘s “The French Dispatch” has premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, and it appears to be a big hit, some saying it’s one of Anderson’s best pictures and even stronger than his celebrated last live-action film, “The Grand Budapest Hotel.” Our critic Jessica Kiang wrote about the film, “’The French Dispatch”… is a work of such unparalleled Andersonian wit, that at times the sheer level of detail – mobile, static, graphic and typographic – that bedecked the screen was enough to

Jessica Kiang The two men on the train are sharing a single set of earphones. “Good song, isn’t it?” says the more gregarious of the two.

Jessica Kiang “Did you think you were making a French independent film?” rails literary agent Vincent (Mikaël Chirinian) in French independent film “The World After Us.” He’s angry with his callow young client, Labidi (Aurélien Gabrielli), because Labidi has abruptly changed tack on a novel that’s already been optioned, and has also changed its title to, inevitably, “The World After Us.” Louda Ben Salah-Cazanas’ directorial debut is sensitively made, well observed and beautifully performed, but

Jessica Kiang “The things of my mother’s that I kept don’t suit the place now,” says Glenda (Nia Roberts) absently as she preps dinner in her modernist sculpture of a house, set on a remote hillock. “They feel … primitive.” Lee Haven Jones’ sharp, striking Welsh-language SXSW midnight movie “The Feast” is designed as a critique of Glenda’s disdain, her casual snobbery toward the heritage and history of the farmland she grew up on.

Jessica Kiang Veering between profundity, faux profundity and a faintly discernible mockery of those who might mistake one for the other, Canadian filmmaker Denis Côté administers a thimbleful of COVID-era potion with “Social Hygiene,” which brought him the best director prize in the Berlinale Encounters sidebar (shared with Ramon and Silvan Zürcher for “The Girl and the Spider”).

Jessica Kiang “Attention!” bawls an onscreen title, or rather its subtitle, given that the original is written in Georgia’s lovely curly alphabet.

Jessica Kiang “You get used to feeling mediocre,” says one of the merely very bright students in a school full of what he considers “geniuses.” “Try Harder,” Debbie Lum’s simultaneously charming and chastening documentary on the senior class in Lowell High — the majority Asian-American, top-ranked school in San Francisco — takes its cue from its lovable, dorky, high-achieving subjects and mostly remains in a cheerful register, heroizing a group rarely celebrated in high school movies: the good

Jessica Kiang When Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy “broke” the Cannes Critics Week selection six years ago with the devastating “The Tribe,” casting deaf actors in an institutional parable exclusively told through sign language, it seemed some sort of event horizon for authenticity and formal daring had been reached.

Jessica Kiang From “All the President’s Men” to “Spotlight,” American films that valorize those ethically uncompromising reporters who have gone above and beyond, often at significant personal cost, in pursuit of stories of intense public interest, are not uncommon.

With a much different than usual Venice Film Festival now come to a close, it’s time for the annual awards ceremony that marks the beginning of the awards season, whatever that means in this strange year.

Jessica Kiang How do you commemorate a shameful history long suppressed? One way is to render it in black and white images so stark there’s nowhere for the shame to hide, a feat achieved with stunning clarity by Andrei Konchalovsky’s perversely beautiful and coldly furious “Dear Comrades!” (exclamation point ironic).

Jessica Kiang The wives are not old in Milcho Manchevski’s “Willow,” but their tales have a folkloric resonance — even the two of the three that are set in the present day. Using a tripartite structure the director has been fond of in the past, notably in his Oscar-nominated, Venice-winning 1994 debut “Before the Rain,” Manchevski secures three outstanding female performances from his main actresses, each one leading her own story of motherhood’s griefs, guilts and impossible sacrifices.

Jessica Kiang “I’ve never been to Lebanon,” Lebanese-American high-schooler Marjoun (Veracity Butcher) tells us in voiceover. “Just here: Arkansas.” There’s the slightest uninflected irony in her delivery of that last word, suggesting that her story will archly observe the conundrum of many a second-generation immigrant: belonging to a place that often fails to recognize you as one of its own.

Jessica Kiang A boy, a building and a looming big bang: Out of these elements French directors Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh create a wondrous debut feature that derives such a crackle of authenticity from the physical reality of its setting that its starry-eyed metaphysics seem uncannily plausible too.