Shortlisted Oscar International Films Tackle Gender, Sexuality and Bullying

Afternoon International Insiders. The team is in Berlin and EFM is hotting up. We’ve got the latest from Germany and more so read on.

EXCLUSIVE: Growing theatrical distributor and streamer MUBI has picked up all rights from The Match Factory to Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Oscar breakout Drive My Car for Latin America, India, Malaysia, Africa (excluding French language Pay-TV rights) and the Middle East (excluding Israel and Turkey).

Mark Schilling Japan CorrespondentThe Oscar nominations for “Drive My Car,” Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s three-hour drama about a man dealing with the death of his wife, have thrilled the director’s native Japan.News of the four Academy Awards nominations was reported by all major Japanese media, from the most serious Nikkei business daily to the sports tabloids whose usual coverage of local art films is zero.The news also lit up Twitter.“An Academy Award nomination for Best Picture is a great accomplishment. I think the melding between Haruki Murakami and Chekhov has created a universality that can be felt around the world,” said Twitter user YasioE.“I really want it to win the Best Picture award, don’t you? Judging from the state of the awards race, I think it can win it.

Those theatrical motion picture studios earning Oscar Best Picture nominations today will put their best foot forward at the box office, and increase the cinema footprint of their contenders in an effort to capitalize on their success and raise the pics’ profiles.

Oscar Isaac is getting candid about his new show Moon Knight.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent“Kompromat,” an anticipated spy thriller directed by Jerome Salle (“Zulu,” “L’Odyssée”) with Gilles Lellouche (“The Stronghold”) and Joanna Kulig (“Cold War”), has been sold by SND to distributors in key territories. Inspired by a true story, “Kompromat” stars Lellouche as a French diplomat working Siberia who discovers he is being framed by FBI and has to find his way out of the trap.

“Dune” director Denis Villeneuve, 54, a stinky sock that was used to cover his penis while shooting a nude scene in the sci-fi film. “At one point, when Denis wasn’t looking, I may have left my c–k sock in his pocket,” Isaac recently revealed on Entertainment Weekly’s Awardist podcast.

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.

Refresh for latest…: Sony/Marvel’s Spider-Man: No Way Home scaled fresh heights this session as it reached an amazing new milestone by crossing the $1B mark at the international box office. The offshore cume through Sunday is an estimated $1.003B for a global total of $1.74B.

Martin Dale ContributorHiventy-Monal, one of France’s leading post-production companies, is seeing rising demand across its range of services, including film processing, dubbing and subtitling, post-production, film restoration and BluRay mastering. It has operations in France, Poland, Singapore, Vietnam, Kenya and Nigeria.Hiventy has one of the few film lab services in Europe.

Julia Child knew her way around a sauce the way Leonard Bernstein knew his way around a sympathy, the way Patrick Mahomes knows his way through a defense. That is to say, with panache.

In one of Syrian-born artist Mohamad Hafez’s stunning 3D pieces, a figurine of the Virgin Mary stands before an ornate portal, her hands joined in prayer. The building around her, rendered in plaster, paint, rusted metal and found objects, is blasted to ruins.

EXCLUSIVE: Saban Films has acquired North American and other overseas territory rights to The Old Way, the Western from director Brett Donowho that stars Nicolas Cage. The distributor is targeting a theatrical and VOD release for the pic sometime during the fourth quarter of 2022.

Paramount/Nickelodeon/Spin Master’s Paw Patrol: The Movie has sauntered across the $100M threshold at the international box office. The Cal Brunker-directed animated action adventure now counts $100.3M to date overseas, and over $140M global.

Clayton Davis After all the talk of a potential Lady Gaga-Kristen Stewart Oscar night showdown, could it be much ado about nothing?Both actresses have a very vocal and passionate fanbase. Leading up to the Screen Actors Guild awards nominations, many predicted that the two would ultimately be the final two standing in the race for the Oscar statuette.

The 72nd Berlin International Film Festival has confirmed its various juries, including who will be joining M. Night Shyamalan to award the International Competition prizes.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentGaumont, the venerable French film and television group behind “The Intouchables” and “Lupin,” is launching in Italy with Marco Rosi, an industry veteran joining from Lux Vide, and a bullish first slate.The company is already well-established in the U.S., the U.K. and Germany.

Carole Horst Netflix’s “Robin Robin” uses stop-motion animation and felt figures to tell its charming, musical story of a bird who doesn’t quite belong in a family of stealthy mice and discovers her real place in the world. It’s a Christmas tale that’s also made the Oscar shortlist for animated shorts. Directors-writers Dan Ojari and Mikey Please had been working with each other off and on for about 10 years and formed Parabella Studios, where they began developing “Robin Robin.” A serendipitous meeting with Aardman’s Sarah Cox led them to that legendary studio, which they found to be a perfect match for their own sensibilities.

Refresh for latest…: With an amazing $1.69B worldwide cume through Sunday, Sony/Marvel’s Spider-Man: No Way Home has become the No. 6 film ever globally, passing Jurassic World ($1.67B) and The Lion King ($1.662B) to get there. This includes a running $970.1M from the international box office, which should portend an eventual $1B overseas gross — and without a China bump. Domestic is at $721M+.