Fremantle has acquired 70% of Lux Vide, the 30-year-old Italian producer of Medici, Leonardo and Coco Chanel.
13.02.2022 - 10:37 / variety.com
Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentRAI Com is launching sales at the online EFM on Giuseppe Piccioni’s Fascist-era drama ‘L’Ombra del giorno,” starring Italian A-lister Riccardo Scamarcio (“Three Floors”) and Benedetta Porcaroli (“Baby,” “The Catholic School”).Pic, which Scamarcio produced, is a love story with a thriller twist set in 1938, two years before Italy entered World War II. It unfolds entirely in the central Italian town of Ascoli Piceno, a hidden gem with gorgeous medieval monuments, churches and piazzas.The film’s title translates as “The Shadow of the Day,” a reference to the darkness of Fascism.Luciano (Scamarcio), a wounded World War I veteran and a sympathizer of Fascism like most Italians at the time, runs a classy restaurant overlooking the town’s ancient square.
He hires Anna (Porcaroli), a young woman with a secret, to work in the kitchen and they becomes romantically entangled. Then the onset of war prompts the pic to “veer off into thriller territory,” Scamarcio said. Piccioni, who wrote the screenplay with Gualtiero Rosella and Annick Emdin, is a veteran Italian helmer specializing in adult melodramas, whose “Light of My Eyes” (2011) and “These Days” (2016) both launched from Venice.Besides Scamarcio and Porcaroli, who broke out with Netflix series “Baby,” based on a real Rome teen prostitution scandal, Lino Musella (“The Hand of God”), Vincenzo Nemolato (“Gomorrah”) and Sandra Ceccarelli (“Blanca”) round out the cast.“Shadow,” which was made on a €2.8 million ($3.1 million) budget, is produced by Scamarcio’s Lebowski shingle with RAI Cinema.RAI Cinema’s 01 Distribution will release the film in Italian cinemas on 250 screens on Feb.
Fremantle has acquired 70% of Lux Vide, the 30-year-old Italian producer of Medici, Leonardo and Coco Chanel.
Italy festival in Los Angeles on Tuesday. The actress, 42, showed off her chic sense of style in a plunging black blazer and matching trousers as she posed on the red carpet as the A-list event at Harmony Gold. She paired the stylish ensemble with a pair of black heeled boots and wore her slick black locks in a blown out style.
A football fan who sent racist abuse to former England defender Rio Ferdinand has been handed a 12-week suspended sentence.
Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movies & Mysteries has revealed its original movie lineup for April, collectively premiering six new films, ET can exclusively reveal. Hallmark Channel's «Spring Into Love» programming slate will continue Saturday, April 2, while Hallmark Movies & Mysteries' movies begin airing Sunday, April 3.ET exclusively reveals one of Hallmark Channel's upcoming films, the music-centric , which will star Broadway veterans Krysta Rodriguez and Santino Fontana, who will perform duets «Fly Me to the Moon” and “Something Stupid.» Fontana will also sing covers of “It Had to Be You,” “Someone to Watch Over Me,” “New York, New York” and “Over the Moon.”The film, which debuts April 2, follows college literature professor Mia (Rodriguez) and Tony (Fontana), a headliner at a Manhattan supper club, who, unbeknownst to them, find themselves at the center of their mothers' matchmaking magic.
The Eurovision Song Contest has made the decision not to allow any Russian contestants to take part in this year's Song Contest.The world has watched in horror as Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine this week, with explosions heard across major cities. And just hours after saying Russia was still able to enter, European Broadcasting Union has followed a recommendation by the Eurovision Song Contest's governing body to disallow the entry of any Russian acts during this year's competition, set to be held in Turin, Italy, in May.
EXCLUSIVE: WME has inked Oscar winning writer-director Guy Nattiv and his producing partner Jaime Ray Newman.
Anne Hathaway has been enjoying her European getaway with her youngest son Jack, 2. The 39-year-old and her son were spotted vacationing in Rome on Sunday, Feb. 20. The Princess Diaries actress rocked a navy blazer and matching cap paired with a pair of jeans and big sunglasses as she held little Jack. Jack donned a fashionable white, red and blue tri-colored jacket and white pants as he rested in his mama’s arms.
Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentMemento International has closed major sales on Ursula Meier’s Berlin contender “The Line,” and “Boy from Heaven” by Tarik Saleh, the Swedish-Egyptian helmer of “The Nile Hilton Incident.” A religious and political thriller, “Boy From Heaven” is set in Cairo, in a Koranic school following the collapse of a grand imam which marks the start of a ruthless battle for influence.The movie is headlined by Tawfeek Barhom and Fares Fares, who previously starred in “The Nile Hilton Incident.” Saleh’s Stockholm-based outfit Atmo is producing the movie with Memento. Memento International has sold the film to Benelux (Cineart), Spain (La Aventura), Italy (Movies Inspired), Greece (Cinobo), Hungary (Vertigo) and Middle East (Falcon). Other territories in negotiation.
Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentEmmy-winning “The Crown” star Josh O’Connor will be the protagonist of Italian auteur Alice Rohrwacher’s next film “La Chimera,” which is set in the world of archeological looting and is currently shooting in and around Southern Tuscany.O’Connor, who in “The Crown” played the young Prince Charles, in “La Chimera” is playing a young British archeologist named Arthur who gets involved in an international network of stolen Etruscan artifacts during the 1980s.Also starring in “La Chimera,” which can be loosely translated as “The Unrealizable Dream,” are Isabella Rossellini as a retired opera singer; Brazilian actor Carole Duarte (“The Invisible Life”) who plays another non-Italian woman who intersects with Arthur; Alba Rohrwacher as an international artifacts trafficker; and Vincenzo Nemolato (“Martin Eden”) who plays one of the “tombaroli,” literally grave robbers, as artifacts thieves are known in Italy. “‘La Chimera’ is the story of a young English archaeologist who gets involved in the underground world of the ‘tombaroli,’ the nocturnal raiders of Etruscan tombs,” the director said in a statement.Rohrwacher added that the film “is the final piece of a triptych on territory that I started with ‘The Wonders’ and which poses a central question: what to do with the past?” “Is the past merely a lost world, or does it intimately concern our present?,” Rohrwacher asks.“The Wonders,” which screened in Competition in 2014 at Cannes, winning the Grand Prix, was followed in 2018 by “Happy as Lazzaro” that also launched from the Croisette where it scooped the award for best screenplay.
Christopher Vourlias Germany’s Sola Media has closed a wave of international sales for the animated feature “Finnick,” produced by Riki Group, which will be released by Sony Pictures Russia in Russia and CIS on March 24.The CGI-animated comedy follows the adventures of 13-year-old Christine, who befriends the young prankster Finnick – one of the furry and usually invisible beings known as Finns. The odd couple has to team up as detectives to solve the mysterious events happening in their city.The Stuttgart-based sales agency has inked deals with Eagle Pictures (Italy), Independent Films (Benelux), Koch Films (German/Austria/Switzerland), Vertigo Releasing (U.K.), Tanweer (Greece), Selmer Media (Scandinavia), Myndform (Iceland), Rialto (Australia and New Zealand), and Black Sheep Films (South Africa), and holds exclusive distribution rights in multiple additional territories.
Three people were injured in a shooting Saturday morning outside a West Los Angeles restaurant frequented by celebrities following a Justin Bieber concert, authorities say. The shooting occurred just before 3 a.m.
Naman Ramachandran Protagonist Pictures has closed multiple deals for several key territories on Sundance selection and Berlin Film Festival competition title “Call Jane.”Territories sold include DCM for Germany, Austria and Switzerland, Umbrella Entertainment for Australia and New Zealand, Mis.label for Scandinavia, Eagle for Italy, Shaw for Singapore and Empire for South Africa.Directed by Phyllis Nagy, the Oscar nominated writer of “Carol,” the film stars Elizabeth Banks, Sigourney Weaver, Kate Mara and Chris Messina. The film follows Joy (Banks), a traditional 1960s housewife who unexpectedly falls pregnant and finds the Janes, an underground abortion movement led by Virginia (Weaver).
Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentTel-Aviv-based Cinephil, the sales company behind triple-Oscar nominated “Flee,” has snapped up world rights, excluding U.S., to Italian director Nicolò Bassetti’s transgender-themed doc “Into My Name,” which is executive-produced by Elliot Page.UTA Independent Film Group will be handling North American rights. The buzzy doc, which world-premieres at the Berlin Film Festival in the Panorama Documentary section, stems from Bassetti’s personal experience with the gender transition of his child, Matteo.“Into My Name” provides an intimate look at the universal challenges of gender transition by observing a tight-knit group of trans friends in the central Italian city of Bologna. Cinephil managing director Olivier Tournaud in a statement said that he was “immediately taken” by Bassetti’s “sensitive and relatable exploration of the many facets of gender and even more so the love letter from a father to his son.”“Into My Name is timely and spotlights voices that need to be heard; this is exactly the kind of film Cinephil is proud to represent,” Tournaud noted.Bassetti underlined that for him the doc “is a deeply personal project, both as a parent of a transgender son and as a director who has always explored individual paths that show our shared humanity.” “I trust that together with a strong partner such as Cinephil, we can add to the awareness and understanding of trans issues with international audiences,” the director said.The doc’s characters, Nico, Leo, Andrea and Raff — whose ages span from their mid-20s to mid-30s — come from different parts of Italy, and started their gender transition from a female to a male identity at different times in their lives.
Leo Barraclough International Features EditorGlobal Screen has closed a raft of presales for 3D-animated feature film “My Fairy Troublemaker,” and will present new scenes to buyers at Berlin’s European Film Market.The film has been sold to U.K. and Ireland (Signature Entertainment), Australia and New Zealand (Rialto), Spain and Portugal (Big Picture Films), Italy (Koch), Scandinavia (Selmer Media), Poland (Kino Swiat), CIS (Silver Box), Ukraine (UFD), Baltics (Garsu Pasaulio), former Yugoslavia (Karantanija), Bulgaria (Pro Films), Middle East (Gulf Film), South Korea (Big Film), Malaysia (Suraya) and Vietnam (Lightening McQueen).In the film, Violetta, a cheeky fairy, smuggles herself into the human world.
Ricky Ian Gordon headed downtown where his “The Garden of the Finzi-Continis” was being premiered by the New York City Opera on Jan. 27.
I’d always imagined our first Valentine’s Day as a married couple would be full of romance and passion. But on 14 February in 2019, I instead found myself lying on a hospital bed next to my husband Ciaran, who was going through chemotherapy. Sweetly, he’d still managed to get me a balloon and a teddy with some help from the nurses.
Anna Marie de la Fuente Leading Italian sales company The Open Reel has snagged the international sales rights to Pablo Garcia Perez de Lara’s latest doc, “Born to be Born,” ahead of its world premiere at the European Film Market (EFM) in Berlin.Doc revolves around a progressive public school, the Escola Congrés-Indians, in Garcia’s native Barcelona, where preparations for an end-of-year trip of the school’s first graduating class are underway. Children learn at their own pace in the primary school which instills, above all, the values of respect and empathy for other people.“I was struck by the director’s ability to discreetly document the important educational role that the school and its educators play with these young students,” said The Open Reel founder Cosimo Santoro, adding: “They guide them through understanding and dialogue in every phase of their discussions and through any possible conflicts that may arise.” Garcia has trained his camera on children in many of his previous features and shorts.
Teresa Giudice‘s children are growing up before our eyes. The Real Housewives of New Jersey star’s second-youngest daughter, Milania, celebrated her 16th birthday on Saturday, Feb. 5. Milania looked absolutely gorgeous in a sparkly green dress at her party, which Teresa, 49, and her oldest sister Gia, 21, documented on their Instagram Stories. Her sisters Gabriella, 18, and Audriana, 13, were also at the party, as was Teresa’s fiancé, Luis Ruelas.