‘The Acolyte’ actor drops song in response to Star Wars fan backlash

An EncroChat drug trafficker known as 'Piggy Wilson' enjoyed a luxury lifestyle with jet skis, expensive watches and a Range Rover - all funded through his life of crime.

Ukrainian filmmaker Oleh Sentsov’s latest feature Real, his first since the 2021 Venice comp title Rhino, opens with a messy GoPro shot of Ukrainian soldiers taking cover in a shallow trench in the Donbas, the country’s front line in its defense against Vladimir Putin’s invasion of the country.

Carlos Aguilar Lucy Kerr’s unnerving debut, “Family Portrait,” opens with a sequence where a character is intent on materializing the title in literal fashion. Katy (Deragh Campbell), a 20-something, tries to wrangle adults and children to take a group photo together on a calid afternoon among the greenery in the family’s vast estate. As her relatives walk towards the chosen spot, the camera moves horizontally while bodies come in and out of the frame.

Fresh off the success of her Star Wars series, The Acolyte, director Leslye Headland has found new agents as she has signed with CAA for representation.

Leslye Headland, creator of the new Disney+ series Star Wars: The Acolyte, will make her Broadway debut this fall with the Second Stage Theater production of her play Cult of Love. Trip Cullman (Lobby Hero, Choir Boy) will direct.

Angelique Jackson It’s well-proven that Emmy winner Jodie Comer excels at accent work. The actor’s Russian accent as psychopathic assassin Villanelle in “Killing Eve” was so good that playwright Suzie Miller nearly passed on her to star in “Prima Facie” because the play was written for someone from Liverpool. (Comer, is in fact, from Liverpool and ultimately collected an Olivier award, followed by a Tony for her performance).

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief A jury headed by French Vietnamese director Tranh Anh Hung awarded its Golden Goblet (Jin Jue) prizes for the Shanghai International Film Festival’s main competition. The top prize for best feature went to “The Divorce,” directed by Kazakhstan’s Daniyar Salamat. The jury praised the film for its sophisticated story-telling which mixes comedy, farce and tragedy, and “which moves fluidly from public sphere to the intimate relationship of a couple in crisis” and its feeling of innocence.

Addie Morfoot Contributor In “Porcelain War,” U.S.-based director Brendan Bellomo and Ukraine-based artist-director Slava Leontyev worked together to tell the story of porcelain artists whose lives are turned upside down by the terrors of the war in Ukraine. The film follows Leontyev and fellow artists Anya Stasenko and Andrey Stefanov, who all opt to help their countries fight off the Russian invasion. Despite daily shelling, Stasenko finds resistance and purpose in her art, Stefanov takes the dangerous journey to get his young family to safety abroad, and Leontyev becomes a weapons instructor for regular people who have become unlikely soldiers.

Al Capone in 2020’s abysmal “Capone” — brings that same serpentine gargle to Johnny. He broods, snarls, spits out something unintelligible and repeats.“Come again?” we go.

Elliott Gould has said Donald Sutherland was “like my brother” as he paid tribute to his M*A*S*H co-star, who died Thursday aged 88.

EXCLUSIVE: Studiocanal, The Picture Company, Entertainment 360 & Zaftig Films are out to buyers on a TV series based on the acclaimed 2021 documentary The Lost Leonardo, about how a crumbling painting depicting Christy in the Renaissance called The Salvador Mundi was restored and found to possibly be the final work of Leonardo Da Vinci around the time the master painter did the Mona Lisa. Juliane Moore will star as Dianne Modestini, an art restorer who saw something special in the painting, and painstakingly restored it. She and everyone else were surprised to watch it go from a $1000 estate sale item to the priciest painting ever bought, fetching $450 million by the time the auctioneer banged the gavel at the New York auction house Christie’s.  

EXCLUSIVE: Ukrainian filmmaker Oleh Sentsov spent more than five years in prison in Russia for opposing its annexation of his native Crimea in 2014. 

EXCLUSIVE: Israeli romcom drama series The Baker and the Beauty is being remade for France’s TF1, with French singer-songwriter Amir Haddad playing the lead in his debut TV role.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Paolo Cortellesi’s “There’s Still Tomorrow,” a box office smash in its native Italy, was Sunday named winner of the Sydney Film Prize at the end of the Sydney Film Festival (June 5-16) A jury headed by Danis Tanovic called the film about an industrious woman in post WWII Rome “audacious, cutting-edge and courageous.” The prize is one of the richest awarded at any festival and is worth A$60,000 ($39,600). The announcement was made at the city’s State Theatre ahead of the Australian premiere screening of the Demi Moore-starring Cannes hit “The Substance.” The A$20,000 ($13,200) Documentary Australia award went to local filmmaker James Bradley, for “Welcome to Babel,” which charts Chinese-Australian artist Jiawei Shen’s plans to create an epic work.

Massive Attack have cancelled one of their upcoming shows in Georgia, in a protest of the “government’s attack on basic human rights”.The gig was set to take place at the Black Sea Arena in Georgia, and to be held on July 28 as part of the Starring Georgia project. It was announced back in April, and promoted by the venue as an “audio-visual theatrical show” that would aim to “present [the band’s] activities linked with the details of everyday life.”Now, 3D (Robert Del Naja) and co.

Naman Ramachandran London and New York-based film sales agency The Mise En Scene Company (MSC) has diversified, securing world rights to scripted series “Driven.” The show stars Rebecca Henderson, known for her roles in “Star Wars: The Acolyte” (Disney) and “Russian Doll” (Netflix), and Liza Colón-Zayas from “The Bear” (FX). Produced by O Positive Films in New York and created by David Shane, represented by 3 Arts Entertainment, “Driven” centers on Theodora “Teddy” Fischer (Henderson), an Uber driver and struggling post-post-modern novelist. Teddy’s life hits rock bottom after getting fired from an animated children’s show for a controversial episode and dealing with her wife’s departure.

EXCLUSIVE: Matthew Lewis, Parvinder Shergill and Kayleigh-Paige Rees are leading comedy-drama Touché, a UK indie feature set in the world of fencing.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent To make war crimes doc “The Cranes Call,” which premiered at Tribeca on Sunday, director Laura Warner embedded with investigator Anya Neistat of the Clooney Foundation for Justice. While in Ukraine, Warner watched Neistat as she doggedly documented evidence of human rights abuses to bring Russian commanders and soldiers to trial in courts across Europe. Neisat worked closely with Solomiia Stasiv, her young Ukrainian interpreter, who quickly became her invaluable sidekick as they traveled to all corners of Ukraine and spoke to survivors of violence, sifting through wreckage and piecing together clues from a still ongoing conflict.

Soccer Aid for Unicef may be a showpiece match - for a very good cause - but it's not too far removed from the serious business of watching football. Not only are the celebrity players being overseen by professional managers and coaches, but there will be commentary on their skills for the benefit of those watching at home.

Murtada Elfadl From its very first moments, “Antidote” unspools like a propulsive thriller. An off-camera voice asks Bulgarian investigative journalist Christo Grozev, “Did you ever think you’d be investigating an assassination plot against yourself?” From that startling introduction, director James Jones’ galvanizing documentary moves at a fast speed to tell its high-stakes story about Vladimir Putin’s Russia, contemporary investigative journalism and the people who put their lives in jeopardy for what they believe in. In addition to Grozev, the film follows two other activists.