Sarah Polley Grateful For Female Filmmakers Telling Her “Here’s How Fierce You’re Going To Have To Be” As A Director

Sarah Paulson is set to play Gwen Shamblin, the founder of a diet program Weigh Down Workshop and Remnant Fellowship, in a scripted version of the investigative docuseries, The Way Down.

Sarah Paulson is set to star and exec produce the HBO Max scripted adaptation of its docuseries The Way Down: God, Greed, and the Cult of Gwen Shamblin.

People in Falkirk are being urged to help to look after children and young people who have made the long dangerous journey to the UK to seek asylum with no parents or family to protect them.

Over a career that has taken her from child actor to the director’s chair, Canadian filmmaker Sarah Polley has spent enough time on set to have a feel for the standard rhythms of a shoot.

Six countries have not received invitations to the Queen's state funeral on Monday September 19.

Manori Ravindran International Editor The stars descended on Soho House in downtown Toronto on Saturday for Variety and Chanel’s Female Filmmakers’ Dinner during the Toronto International Film Festival. Guests in attendance included Tilda Swinton, star of Joanna Hogg’s “The Eternal Daughter”; Gina Prince-Bythewood, director of “The Woman King”; Darren Aronofsky, director of “The Whale”; and Anna Kendrick, who’s in Toronto shopping her new AGC Studios project “The Dating Game” to market buyers. Stars mingled on a packed rooftop before convening in the club’s private dining room, which gathered around 100 of the festival’s bright lights in filmmaking. They dined on a bespoke Soho House menu of beef tartare with black truffle, black cod and bok choy, and wagyu rib cap with porcini purée.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian director Paolo Virzì (“Human Capital,” “Like Crazy”) is in Venice where his dystopic drama “Siccità,” which means drought in Italian, is premiering out-of-competition. The innovative pic, which features an A-list ensemble cast comprising Monica Bellucci, Sara Serraiocco (“Counterpart”) and Silvio Orlando (“The Young Pope”), is set amid a protracted drought caused by climate change in the Italian capital where the Tiber has dried up. Virzì spoke to Variety about how “Siccità” germinated during COVID-19 and was shot amid tight pandemic protocols. Excerpts. You worked with novelist and screenwriter Paolo Giordano on the concept and the script for this film. How did the collaboration start?

EXCLUSIVE: Five days before filmmaker Sally El Hosaini (My Brother the Devil) was ready to declare “Action, background action” on the set of The Swimmers, the film fell apart due to the pandemic. “We just thought it was curtains for the film, which was heartbreaking,” the director recalled. “It just came to a halt, and there could be no promises of anything for anyone.”

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic At the end of “The Swimmers,” you could be excused for thinking that Syrian refugee Yusra Mardini won an Olympic gold medal. She didn’t. That’s not to detract from everything she and her older sister, Sara, went through to escape the Syrian civil war and reclaim their dreams of competitive swimming. It just means that director Sally El Hosaini and co-writer Jack Thorne didn’t know how else to wrap this inspirational true story, which is ideally suited for one of those 40-minute Oscar-grubbing documentary shorts but is stretched over three times that length (and then some) in this feel-good Toronto Film Fest opener. At a bloated 134 minutes, it’s not enough that co-leads (and real-life sisters) Nathalie and Manal Issa have great chemistry on-screen, or that the story reminds you of last year’s “Flee” and a dozen other true-life refugee stories. The gratuitous running time tells you something right off: There’s more than enough movie here even without the trip to the Rio Olympics, where Yusra placed 41st out of 45 in the 100-meter butterfly. But stretching it out this long is still liable to make your brain start to prune, the way fingers do when they spend too much time in water.

Pat Saperstein Deputy Editor The Telluride Film Festival wrapped on Labor Day, with many of the season’s mystery films getting a first look from critics, journalists and festivalgoers. But what did we learn from the four-day fest? Do we have an Oscar frontrunner? Four narrative films world premiered in the Colorado mountains – “Women Talking” from MGM/UAR, “Empire of Light” from Searchlight Pictures and “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” and “The Wonder” from Netflix. Other Venice titles also made their North American debuts such as Netflix’s “Bardo” and Focus Features’ “Tar.” Here are five things we learned at Telluride.

Evgeny Afineevsky released his Oscar-nominated Netflix documentary Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom in 2015, documenting the Euromaidan protests the previous year in the city of Kyiv that led to the collapse of the Russia-aligned Azarov government and the removal and exile of Putin ally Viktor Yanukovych as Ukraine’s president. Afineevsky returns to Venice this year with Freedom on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom, a follow-up that details the real stories of the people of Ukraine as they continue their fight against Russia’s invasion of their country.

Rooney Mara and Claire Foy join their co-stars for a special event at the 2022 Telluride Film Festival over the weekend in Telluride, Co.

The women in question here belong to a secluded rural religious order on unidentified prairieland and the talking they do throughout Sarah Polley’s immaculately made, intellectually adventurous and politically incisive new film consists of an ongoing debate that will determine the futures of these mostly young women.

Clayton Davis Could Sarah Polley join the ranks of Jane Campion, Chloe Zhao and Kathryn Bigelow by becoming only the fourth female filmmaker to win an Oscar for directing? Based on the rapturous reception that “Women Talking” received at the Telluride Film Festival on Friday, it certainly seems possible. Even if that doesn’t happen, the ambitious film, a drama about a group of women in a tight-knit religious community grappling with a legacy of abuse, has put a stake in the ground as the festival’s first slam dunk best picture candidate. In fact, I think it’s going to be a contender across the board. In a Telluride lineup that is heavy on documentaries and Cannes titles, Polley’s film is one of only four World Premieres for narrative features. But what a launching pad Telluride is shaping up to be for the film and its director, a critical favorite for her work in front of the camera in “The Sweet Hereafter” and behind with the likes of “Away From Her.” The premiere for “Women Talking” kicked off with a tribute to Polley, who was presented with the Silver Medallion by Frances McDormand, who produced and stars in “Women Talking.”

TELLURIDE – The events at a secluded Mennonite colony in Bolivia during the late ‘00s spurred headlines around the world. Men from the extremely conservative religious group had raped multiple women in their community while they slept.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic With a title like “Women Talking,” audacious actor-turned-helmer Sarah Polley’s fourth feature makes clear that it will be one of those rare films capable of passing the Bechdel test. That barometer, for those who may not know, poses three seemingly easy-to-meet criteria: (1) The movie has to have at least two women in it, (2) who talk to each other, (3) about something other than a man. It’s astonishing how many movies fail. Even Polley’s film, which consists of women talking for most of its 97 minutes, is a complicated exception, since most of the conversation — an urgent meeting among the wives, mothers and daughters of an ultraconservative religious colony — concerns the men. But even then, there’s no denying that “Women Talking” is unlike any film you’ve seen before, which is exactly what you’d want from the director of 2012’s astonishingly personal, format-shattering meta-documentary “Stories We Tell.” A decade later, Polley is back with another bold thought experiment, this one inspired by a horrific conspiracy of sexual abuse discovered within a Mennonite community about a decade ago.

Alissa Simon Film Critic This fall, Arab filmmakers will be out in force at such prestigious international fests as Venice and Toronto. Venice alone boasts six features from first- and second-time Arab directors in its official sections, plus an additional six works-in-progress at its Final Cut Production Bridge. Meanwhile, Toronto opens with “The Swimmers,” a drama from U.K. helmer Sally El Hosaini based on the journey of Syrian sisters and Olympic hopefuls Yusra and Sara Mardini, who fled the war in their home country for Germany. Yusra competed in the 2016 and 2021 Summer Olympics. An additional six Arab films will screen at the Canadian fest. Dek: Arab filmmakers embrace genres and issues as festivals and distributors take notice

Clayton Davis Telluride Film Festival’s official 2022 lineup has been announced, revealing world premieres of Sam Mendes’ “Empire of Light,” Sarah Polley’s “Women Talking,” Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre’s “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” and Sebastián Lelio’s “The Wonder.” In its 49th year, the festival will pay tribute to two-time Oscar-winner Cate Blanchett, whose new film “TÁR,” from director Todd Field, will debut stateside after premiering at the Venice Film Festival. In addition, the festival will also tribute Academy Award nominee Polley (adapted screenplay for 2006’s “Away from Her”) and acclaimed documentarian Marc Cousins, who has two films dropping at the fest. One is “My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock,” which is based on a fictional monologue between Cousins and the master of suspense. The other is “The March on Rome,” depicting the ascent of fascism in Europe during the 1930s.

ARMAGEDDON TIME (d. James Gray, U.S., 2022) BARDO, FALSE CHRONICLE OF A HANDFUL OF TRUTHS (d. Alejandro González Iñárritu, Mexico-U.S., 2022) BOBI WINE, GHETTO PRESIDENT (d.