Super Takes U.S. Rights To Alice Diop’s Venice Prize Winner ‘Saint Omer’

Violent Night – check out the first trailer below.The actor, best known for roles in Stranger Things and Marvel’s Black Widow, takes on a weary, vengeful version of Saint Nick in the action-comedy directed by Tommy Wirkola (Dead Snow, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters).A synopsis reads: “When a team of mercenaries breaks into a wealthy family compound on Christmas Eve, taking everyone inside hostage, the team isn’t prepared for a surprise combatant: Santa Claus is on the grounds, and he’s about to show why this Nick is no saint.”Violent Night is written by Patrick Casey and Josh Miller (Sonic The Hedgehog), and also stars John Leguizamo (Carlito’s Way) as leader of the mercenaries, Ben, and Beverly D’Angelo (American History X) as the matriarch, Gertrude.The film is produced by 87North, the production company founded by director David Leitch and Kelly McCormick, which has previously worked on action films Nobody and Bullet Train starring Brad Pitt.The film is set to have its world premiere at New York Comic Con on October 7. It will be released in cinemas worldwide on December 2, 2022.Harbour is set to star in a film adaptation of the PlayStation racing game series Gran Turismo, helmed by director Neill Blomkamp (District 9, Elysium).

Katie Reul editor David Harbour is boosting his resume as a badass in the first trailer for “Violent Night,” a holiday thriller featuring the “Stranger Things” star as Santa Claus. Under the direction of Norwegian filmmaker Tommy Wirkola, Harbour plays a grizzlier, more rueful version of Kris Kringle, who is anything but jolly in the trailer. On Christmas Eve, (Not-So) Saint Nick encounters a family being held hostage by a team of mercenaries and is forced to take matters into his own hands. Harbour is joined by an ensemble that includes Cam Gigandet, Beverly D’Angelo and John Leguizamo. The script was penned by Pat Casey and Josh Miller, who previously wrote the first and second live-action “Sonic the Hedgehog” movies.

Iranian director Jafar Panahi remains behind bars in Tehran but his cinema continues to travel.

Alice Diop’s Saint Omer has been selected as France’s entry to the best international film category.

EXCLUSIVE: French director Alice Diop’s breakout feature Saint Omer has secured distribution in a raft of territories for Paris-based Wild Bunch International (WBI) following its Venice Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize win.

Prince William was unable to attend the 2022 Earthshot Prize Innovation Summit in person on Wednesday, but he made sure to record a special message.

Christopher Vourlias Spanish production and distribution company Elamedia has acquired “Tengo sueños eléctricos” (I Have Electric Dreams), the Locarno prize-winning debut by director Valentina Maurel, which will screen in the Horizontes Latinos section of the San Sebastian Film Festival. Elamedia will be releasing the film in Spanish theaters later this year. Set in Costa Rica, “Electric Dreams” follows Eva (Daniela Marin Navarro), a strong-willed 16-year-old girl who lives with her mother, her younger sister and their cat, but desperately wants to move in with her estranged father (Reinaldo Amien Guttierez). Clinging onto him as he goes through a second adolescence, she balances between the tenderness and sensitivity of teenage life and the ruthlessness of the adult world.

Alice Diop’s “Saint Omer” has scored U.S. distribution with Neon’s boutique label Super after making its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, where it won two major competition awards.Super will release the film in theaters, following its U.S.

Pat Saperstein Deputy Editor Super, the boutique distribution label from Neon, has acquired U.S. rights to Alice Diop’s “Saint Omer” after it won the Silver Lion Grand Jury prize in Venice along with the Luigi De Laurentiis Lion of the Future award. “Saint Omer” was recently shortlisted for France’s submission to the Academy Awards and will premiere at the New York Film Festival and play the BFI London Festival. Neon plans a theatrical release. “Saint Omer” is Diop’s debut fiction feature, which she co-wrote with Amrita David and Marie NDiaye, and it stars Kayije Kagame, Guslagie Malanda, Valérie Dréville and Aurélia Petit. Toufik Ayadi and Christophe Barral of Srab Films produced alongside Arte France Cinéma and Pictanovo Hauts-de-France.

Ben Croll Acclaimed documentarian Alice Diop marks her narrative debut with “Saint Omer,” a pulled-from-the-headlines legal drama that won the Grand Jury Prize and the award for best debut feature at the Venice Film Festival. High profile slots in Toronto, New York, and London are to come — making the French title one of the real breakouts of this fall season. The wrenching film follows Rama (Kayije Kagame), a young novelist covering the trial of an immigrant mother accused of infanticide. With major elements never in doubt – the accused, Laurence (Guslagie Malanda), admits to the act, though she still pleads not guilty – the Venice winner turns around more intimate, philosophical, and unsettling questions.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter Audiences can’t get enough of “Don’t Worry Darling.” After the movie’s Venice Film Festival premiere, which sent the internet ablaze after Harry Styles may or may not have spit on his co-star Chris Pine and Florence Pugh avoided eye-contact with her director Olivia Wilde, the buzz around the Warner Bros. release is only escalating. Imax’s live-event screening of “Don’t Worry Darling,” which includes a Q&A with the cast and director, has sold out in 21 locations. In less than 24 hours, more than 13,000 tickets have been purchased across 100 North American locations. Screenings in several markets, like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Seattle, are completely booked, while 15 additional locations are at least half full.

On the inhospitable shores of Berck-sur-Mer, France, where the sounds of the tide mingle with a woman’s breathless running, is where Alice Diop’s narrative-feature debut “Saint Omer” begins.

Super has taken North American rights to Colm Bairéad’s award-winning drama The Quiet Girl (An Cailín Ciúin), which was recently announced as Ireland’s entry for Best International Feature Film at the 95th Academy Awards and selected for the 2022 European Film Awards.

Tilda Swinton is gracing the red carpet at the 2022 Venice Film Festival!

Florence Pugh took to Instagram to praise her "Don’t Worry Darling" co-stars as news was reported that she will not be attending the upcoming press Q&A in New York on Sept. 19. Pugh shared several images on Instagram with the cast from the Venice Film Festival, which took place on Monday.

Jessica Kiang In 2016, in the courtroom of Saint-Omer, a small, untouristed town off a D-road between Calais and Lille, the trial took place of a young Senegalese Frenchwoman accused of murdering her baby: an act so utterly antithetical to accepted ideas of motherhood and womanhood that it is inescapably considered the “worst of all possible crimes.” The woman, a PhD student with a reported genius IQ and a flair for flamboyantly intellectual French, confessed but claimed sorcery as the real culprit. It’s the kind of true story that presents an obvious opportunity for a sensitive social drama given to sober, sorrowfully objective observations about the perilous, tumbling vortex of class, gender, ethnic and cultural issues in which it plays out. “Saint Omer,” the deceptively austere, extraordinarily multifaceted fiction debut from documentarian Alice Diop, is not that film. 

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Berlin-based sales outfit M-Appeal has closed distribution deals for Italy and Greece following the film’s world premiere at the Venice Film Festival. The Israeli-Ukrainian co-production plays in Venice’s Horizons Extra section, and will have its North American premiere on Sept. 14 at Toronto Film Festival in the Contemporary World Cinema section. Rome-based P.F.A Films Srl will distribute the film in Italy, with a theatrical release planned for April 2023. The company’s recent titles include “Fabian – Going to the Dogs” by Dominik Graf, “The Audition” by Ina Weisse, and “Border” by Abbasi Ali.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Iranian cinema is having a great year despite the many impediments film directors face there, including being jailed. Reflecting this burst of irrepressible cinematic energy, after strong showing of Iranian cinema at Berlin, Cannes and Karlovy Vary, Venice has five films from the country, two of which are in competition. Also, Leila Hatami, star of Cannes festival jurist Asghar Farhadi’s “A Separation,” is a member of Venice’s main jury panel. “We have never received so many submissions from Iran, and many of them are good,” says Venice chief Alberto Barbera. He notes that “the paradox is that this is happening at a time when the Iranian regime is among the most rigidly conservative and repressive in the world,” and is responding to uprisings sparked by the country’s harsh economic conditions by re-incarcerating directors such as Jafar Panahi, whose latest film “No Bears” launches from Venice, fellow dissident filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof, and others “who try to freely express their opposing points of view.”