‘Plaza Catedral’ Director Hopes His Panama Oscar Entry Will Continue Legacy of Lead Actor, Who Was Killed Before Film Premiere

The action-packed new trailer for Tarik Saleh’s “The Contractor” has been released.

Sasha Urban editorSTX Films has released the trailer for its upcoming action thriller “The Contractor,” starring Chris Pine. The film will be released in theaters and digitally on April 1.After special forces sergeant James Harper (Pine) is involuntarily discharged from the army, he contracts with an underground military operation and finds himself entangled in a dangerous conspiracy that leaves him fighting for his life.

Holly Jones By way of improvisation, relying heavily on events to naturally develop, Argentine filmmaker Gastón Solnicki presents a meandering ode to the city of Vienna, its customs, cultures, facades, and the near-sacrilege of enacting a smoking ban in cafes city-wide.In, “A Little Love Package,” two main protagonists become the vehicles through which the minutiae of everyday life in Vienna unfolds. Experimental aural and visual cues present themselves as Angeliki (Angeliki Papoulia) and Carmen (Carmen Chaplin) seek the perfect apartment in a city suspended in time.Produced by Little Magnet Films, out of Austria, and Solnicki’s Argentine production company, Filmy Wiktora, “A Little Love Package” is the fifth cinematic feature for Solnicki, whose entire catalog was recently acquired by MOMA.

Manori Ravindran International EditorMia Wasikowska will take on the lead role in “Little Joe” director Jessica Hausner’s cult thriller “Club Zero,” Variety can reveal.The Australian actor will portray an unusual schoolteacher in Hausner’s second English-language film, which begins shooting in the U.K. and Austria in July.Wasikowska was most recently seen in Mia Hansen-Løve’s Cannes-premiering film “Bergman Island.”In “Club Zero,” Wasikowska’s teacher takes a job at an elite school and forms a strong bond with five students — a relationship that eventually takes a dangerous turn.Discussing the film at the Doha Film Institute’s Qumra event last year, Hausner described the film as “a lot about eating,” relating to eating disorders and “eating behaviors.” This will be Hausner’s sixth feature.

Christopher Vourlias Austrian director Ulrich Seidl, whose latest feature “Rimini” plays in the main competition at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, is winding down production on his next film, Variety can reveal.“Sparta” is a companion piece to Seidl’s competition entry and revolves around the brother of that film’s protagonist, the washed-up singer Richie Bravo. “[‘Rimini’] actually originated as a much larger story,” the director told Variety.

A lasting legacy. Chadwick Boseman was celebrated during the nominations ceremony for the 2022 Oscars nearly two years after his death.

Netflix has shown its commitment to the German-speaking creative scene by unveiling 19 projects from Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Oscar Isaac (“Dune,” “Moon Knight”) and Jared Leto (“House of Gucci,” “Morbius”) sat down for a virtual chat for Variety’s Actors on Actors, presented by Amazon Studios. For more, click here.In “House of Gucci,” Jared Leto vanishes into a larger-than-life performance as fashion world ne’er-do-well Paolo Gucci. By contrast, Oscar Isaac’s turns in Paul Schrader’s “The Card Counter” (as William Tell, a poker player with a dark past in the Iraq War) and Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune” (as Duke Leto, the head of a powerful interstellar dynasty) are tightly contained.But the two actors still find many similarities to discuss, including their future as Marvel superheroes — Leto’s Morbius and Isaac’s Moon Knight — and their alternate careers as musicians starting in the 1990s.

Leonine And Lionsgate Strike Germany/Austria Film Deal

Naman Ramachandran Leonine Studios has secured all German and Austrian rights for Lionsgate’s upcoming film slate, including Keanu Reeves’ “John Wick 4” and its spin-off “Ballerina,” starring Ana de Armas.The deal, which extends Lionsgate’s existing relationship with Leonine, also includes culture-clash comedy “About My Father” from stand-up comedian Sebastian Maniscalco (“The Irishman”) starring opposite Oscar-winner Robert De Niro (“Meet The Parents”); action thriller “Shadow Force” with Kerry Washington (“Django Unchained”); the untitled new comedy from director Adele Lim starring Tony winning actress Ashley Park (“Emily in Paris”); gamer comedy “1Up” with Ruby Rose (“Batwoman”); and horror-thriller “Dear David,” centering on the urban legend that had its origins on the Twitter channel of Adam Ellis, starring Augustus Prew (“The Morning Show”) in the lead. Fred Kogel, CEO of Leonine Studios, said: “We are thrilled to extend our strong partnership with our friends at Lionsgate with this tremendous feature film slate.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorIn a new series, Variety catches up with the directors of the films shortlisted for the International Feature Film Oscar to discuss their road to the awards, what they’ve learned so far, and what’s taken them off guard.In “Great Freedom,” the winner of the runner-up prize in Un Certain Regard at Cannes, Austrian director Sebastian Meise takes an empathetic look at the relationship between two prisoners in a German jail: convicted murderer Viktor (Georg Friedrich), and a gay man, Hans (Rogowski), imprisoned repeatedly over three decades under the country’s homophobic Paragraph 175 statute. The film is Austria’s entry in the International Feature Film category of the Oscars, and is one of 15 films to be shortlisted. What does it mean to you to be shortlisted for the best international feature Oscar?It’s incredibly exciting, and personally, I wasn’t expecting it at all.

Annika Pham Oscar and double Palme d’Or winning director Bille August (“The Best Intentions”, “Pelle the Conqueror”) is attending the Göteborg Film Festival for a Director’s Talk and the gala screening of his psycho-drama “The Pact”.He will also pitch at the adjoining Nordic Film Market (Feb. 3-6), the work in progress of his upcoming Danish pic “The Kiss”.August spoke exclusively to Variety about “The Kiss,” his enduring interest in the complexity of human beings, book-to-screen adaptations and his belief in the big screen experience.Loosely based on Stefan Zweig’s novel “Beware of Pity and transposed from an Austrian to a Danish setting, “The Kiss” is a romantic drama set in 1913.

The crushing weight of debt and the stress of financial struggle have led many to find creative problem-solving methods. The Sundance crime drama “Emily The Criminal” explores one such story about a character pressed to the limits by a system intent on keeping her in the loop of student debt and marginalized job opportunities.

Last January, filmmaker Blerta Basholli was just happy she had gotten into the Sundance Film Festival with her debut feature “Hive.” The Albanian-language film about a woman who starts her own business after the Kosovo War was an inspirational gem, but Basholli hadn’t even dared to dream of just how far they would go.Not only did it become the first film in Sundance history to win the top three awards in the world cinema competition, now it has a strong chance of becoming Kosovo’s first Oscar contender in the best international feature category.“Hive,” which comes to video on demand on Feb. 1 and The Criterion Channel on Feb.

Panama makes its debut on the International Feature Oscar shortlist with the character-driven thriller Plaza Catedral. This contender from Abner Benaim (Ruben Blades Is Not My Name) is a taut two-hander between a grieving mother and a young street hustler, with a sobering message about corruption and violence. Samuel Goldwyn Films recently acquired the title.

Michael Appler On Broadway Wednesday evening, “Skeleton Crew,” the final of seven new plays written by Black playwrights to make its debut this season, opened to an intimate crowd at the Manhattan Theatre Club’s Friedman Theatre. The show was embraced by an audience that included Danielle Brooks, Denée Benton and La Chanze but stripped, like the factory it depicts, of the usual pomp and circumstance of a flashy Broadway opening.“Skeleton Crew,” the third work in Dominique Morisseau’s trilogy of Detroit-based plays, finds five workers at a Michigan auto factory — dogged by a corroding city around them, the unfeeling unpredictability of their employers and the looming devastation of joblessness as their workplace, the last of the city’s independent auto factories, inevitably closes.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentAsghar Farhadi, a two-time international Oscar winner for “A Separation” and “The Salesman,” is in the running for a third time with “A Hero,” which marks the Iranian auteur’s return to shooting in his country.It’s a drama about a man named Rahim (Amir Jadidi) who, while on furlough after being imprisoned for debt, returns a lost handbag full of gold coins. This apparently heroic act spirals out of control due to social media, which plays an important part in the pic as it exposes the pitfalls of media manipulation in Iran but also, by extension, the world. The fact that the movie made it up to this stage creates curiosity for audiences to watch the film.