‘Silent House’ Director Farnaz Jurabchian on Her Fight to Leave Iran to Attend Festival Screenings

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor In one scene in Mona Achache’s “Little Girl Blue,” which world premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in the Special Screenings section, the director is seen insisting that lead actor Marion Cotillard stays in character even on her tea break, to the extent that she must drink tea noisily as her character, Carole – based on the French filmmaker’s own mother – used to do. Does this suggest a manipulative relationship between director and actor? Cotillard disagrees. “I don’t see a director and an actor as being in relationships of manipulation. It’s more a collaboration,” she tells Variety. “It happened to me only once where I felt that I was being manipulated by a director, and I really didn’t like that.”

Scarlett Johansson and Colin Jost let their love shine in France! On Tuesday, the actress and the star stepped out for the premiere of  at Palais des Festivals during the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.The usually private pair had all eyes on them as they made a rare outing together and looked loved-up as they showed minimal PDA. Johansson, 38, was a vision in a pink dress that showed off her massive back tattoo.

Anna Marie de la Fuente Latin American companies have descended on the 60th LA Screenings, mindful of the ever-shifting panorama in content distribution and production.  The ongoing writers’ strike is viewed by some as a boon for international content. Take what Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said at the company’s first quarter financials report presentation when the writers’ strike was looming: “If there’s a strike — and we want to work really hard to make sure we can find a fair and equitable deal so we can avoid one — but if there is one, we have a large base of upcoming shows and films from around the world.” “The global market is finally realizing that Latin America, with almost 700 million inhabitants that speak the same language, is a territory that has a huge penetration in terms of OTT and – still – pay tv subscribers,” says Mexico City-based Manuel Marti, Fremantle’s head of scripted development, Latin America. “At the same time, it has a long history of producing local content with a distinctive genre that’s slowly being embedded into American culture via the 62 million Latinos that live in the U.S.,” he adds.

Jennifer Lawrence made sure to keep things comfortable on the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival on Sunday.The 32-year-old Oscar winner attended a special screening of the film and walked the carpet in Cannes, France, while wearing a stunning Christian Dior couture cherry red gown.But when Lawrence lifted her gown to walk down the steps, she revealed that she was rocking some black flip flops underneath the elegant look.Lawrence attended the screening with Sahra Mani, the director of the new documentary she produced,, and fellow producer Justine Ciarrocchi.Earlier on Sunday, Lawrence attended the photocall for while wearing a silver mesh look and heels. is a documentary following Afghan women under the control of the Taliban.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent This year at Cannes Iran being repped by just one film, the timely underground drama “Terrestrial Verses,” co-directed by Canada-based Alireza Khatami and Iran-based Ali Asgari, premiering in Un Certain Regard. Shot in Tehran after the Mahsa Amini movement started, “Verses” consists of 12 tableaus depicting the increasingly absurd and tragic plight that Iranians face in their everyday life with a scathingly ironic deadpan tone. Variety spoke to the directors about how they teamed up and decided to capture the zeitgeist in turbulent Tehran. How did the project germinate?

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic In “Black Flies,” a movie that keeps working to get high on its own intensity, Sean Penn and Tye Sheridan play paramedics who spend their nights driving through hell (I mean, Brooklyn). There are countless shots of the two in their EMS van, riding along under the tracks of an overhead subway train — the exact kind of grungy Brooklyn boulevard that Popeye Doyle went smashing through in the famous “French Connection” car/subway chase. As Rut (Penn) and Cross (Sheridan) patrol the borough neighborhood of Brownsville, one of the poorest and most crime-ridden sections of New York City, those overheard tracks become part of the film’s meticulously oppressive visual design. The two have so little breathing room they can barely see the sky. After a while, though, you start to think: Don’t these guys everdrive down a side street? Like everything else in “Black Flies,” those subway tracks are stylish signifiers of doom that are a little too in-your-face.

“Succession,” which earned him an Emmy Award nomination for guest actor in 2022. And he’s now nominated for his second Tony Award for playing one of theater’s most disdained patriarchs in “A Doll’s House” opposite Jessica Chastain. But in reality, he might just be one of the nicest, most humane and well-liked guys in entertainment today – and he’s got the seems-to-be-everywhere working actor’s resume to prove it.Starring in Amy Herzog’s revival of Henrik Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” as Torval, the sexist husband who ultimately sends his wife, Nora, out the door, Moayed manages to make himself not exactly likable, but somehow more understandable. “The consciousness came less about how he would be perceived, and more about what [director] Jamie Lloyd and Amy Herzog wanted to do,” Moayed told TheWrap.

Ukraine war and the momentous burst of rebellion against the Iranian regime prompted by the death of Mahsa Amini are reverberating profoundly at the Cannes Film Festival. At the festival’s opening ceremony on Tuesday night, legendary French actress Catherine Deneuve paid tribute to the war’s victims by reciting a poem from Ukrainian poet Lessia Oukraïnka, solemnly declaring: “I no longer have either happiness or freedom, only one hope remains to me: to return one day to my beautiful Ukraine.” One year ago, Cannes got off to an emotional start with remarks from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Iranian director Ali Abbasi has responded to Russia’s unexplained ban of his serial killer thriller Holy Spider just days after its theatrical release.

Anna Marie de la Fuente Spain’s foremost animation film festival, Animayo Gran Canaria, awarded Oscar-qualifying honors to animation shorts “Our Uniform” by Iran’s Yegane Moghaddam and “Amarradas” by Spain’s Carmen Córdoba as it reported a 29% jump in attendance, the biggest ever in its 18-year history. Sixty animation shorts were in contention, selected out of 2,000 entries from more than 80 countries. Disney animation legend Andreas Deja (“The Lion King,” “Aladdin”), who presented the Spanish premiere of his 2D animation short, “Mushka,” presided over the international jury. He also held a Master Class on his 30 years at Disney, delivered a keynote address on the making of “Mushka” and led a three-hour drawing class on animated villains. “The students made me feel like a rock star,” he told Variety. “What better thing to hear than that the films I worked on still impact many people to this day,” he mused.

EXCLUSIVE: Tye Sheridan is launching his new production company, Dogwood Pictures with its debut film, Black Flies, is set to play in competition at the 76th Annual Cannes Film Festival. Directed by Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire, the pic reunites Sheridan with Sean Penn after over a decade since Malick’s The Tree of Life. Sheridan first became involved with the film in 2018 and continued on throughout the film’s execution and release.

Lise Pedersen Cannes Docs, the Marché du Film sidebar dedicated to documentary film, has unveiled the line-up of its Doc Day, which unspools on May 23, as the final event in at Cannes Docs. Veteran U.S. cinematographer and documentary filmmaker Kirsten Johnson, president of Cannes Festival’s Œil d’or Jury which hands out an award to the best doc in Cannes’ Official Selection, will open the morning session in a conversation with writer, director and producer Guetty Felin (“Ayiti Mon Amour,” “Closer to the Dream”). Entitled “Cinema and the Pleasures of the Impossible,” it will explore the many ways filmmaking creates possibilities to search for the invisible, to bring life to the dead and to time travel in their lives.

The Sundance Institute has revealed that the 40th edition of the Sundance Film Festival will take place in person in Utah from January 18-28, 2024, with a large selection of films also to be made available online, as they have been for a number of years.

The Amsterdam-based International Coalition for Filmmakers at Risk (ICFR) has called on Iran to lift a travel ban on director Mohammad Rasoulof.

Fiona Lamptey has left her position as Director of UK Features at Netflix.

Russell Crowe will receive the Crystal Globe Award for Outstanding Artistic Contribution to World Cinema at the 2023 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, KVIFF organizers announced on Friday. And unlike past recipients of the Crystal Globe like Michael Caine, Julianne Moore, Mel Gibson, Judi Dench and Robert De Niro, Crowe will also perform on the festival’s opening night with his rock band, Indoor Garden Party.The festival, which takes place in a spa town outside Prague in the Czech Republic, will present Crowe with the award on its opening night, June 30.

Carrie Fisher finally received a spot on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Mohammad Rasoulof’s hopes to attend the Cannes Film Festival have been dashed.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Dissident Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof has been banned from leaving Iran to serve as a member of the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard jury, according to a report. News of the travel ban for the director who was recently released from Tehran’s Evin prison after being arrested last July for criticizing the government on social media, has been reported by the Farsi-language news service of Radio France Internationale (RFI). The report said Rasoulof had been asked to be a member of the Un Certain Regard jury but has been forced to decline. The Cannes Film Festival did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Dissident Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof has confirmed that he was unable to accept an invitation from the Cannes Film Festival to participate in its Un Certain Regard jury after being barred from leaving Iran.