‘The Box’ Review: Past Venice Champ Lorenzo Vigas Returns With a Short, Sharp, Gut-Punching Psychological Thriller

Comfortable in his newly found friendship, Hatzín (Hatzín Navarrete), a teenager from Mexico City who traveled to Chihuahua’s northern state to reclaim his father’s remains, pretends to be upset and explains he’s decided to return home. He laughs several seconds later, tricking Mario (Hernán Mendoza), his boss and impromptu life mentor.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorProduction, finance and sales outfit Film Constellation has inked new key deals on psychological thriller “John and the Hole,” directed by one of Variety’s top 10 directors to watch, Pascual Sisto.

The global pandemic has provided filmmakers opportunities to get creative in order to make films in unusual circumstances. Already at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival  we have seen The Guilty with Jake Gyllenhaal in what is essentially a one man show connected to outside world simply by a phone in an emergency operations 911 call center.

EXCLUSIVE: The Venice Film Festival, which wrapped last night, carried out 4,500 total Covid tests in 11 days, returning only three positive results, organizers have told us.

JURY AWARDSGolden Lion for Best Film: “Happening,” Audrey DiwanSilver Lion (Grand Jury Prize): “The Hand of God,” Paolo SorrentinoSilver Lion for Best Director: Jane Campion, “The Power of the Dog”Coppa Volpi for Best Actor: John Arcilla, “On the Job: The Missing 8”Coppa Volpi for Best Actress: Penelopé Cruz, “Parallel Mothers”Award for Best Screenplay: “The Lost Daughter,” Maggie Gyllenhaal Special Jury Prize: “Il Buco,” Michelangelo FrammartinoMarcello Mastroianni Award for Best New Young

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentIn Italian director Francesco Lettieri’s “Lovely Boy,” which is the closing film of Venice’s independently run Venice Days section, a rising star of Rome’s never before depicted trap music scene gets sucked into a spiral of self-destruction.“Lovely Boy” is the sophomore feature by Lettieri, who made his debut with “Ultras,” a drama about Neapolitan soccer hooligans that plays worldwide on Netflix.Both “Ultras” and “Lovely Boy” were lead produced by

You got to know when to hold ’em and know when show ’em. CBS is following that paraphrased lyric’s advice with Kenny Rogers: All In for the Gambler, an hourlong special featuring big names performing the late singer’s hits. It’s set to air at 9 p.m. Thursday, September 23, on the network and Paramount+.

Former Golden Lion winner Lorenzo Vigas (From Afar) returns to the Venice Film Festival with his second feature, La Caja, aka The Box. Set in northern Mexico, it’s a grueling insight into the plight of casual workers as well as a mystery about a son and his possible father.

Anna Marie de la Fuente Lorenzo Vigas, who made film festival history by being the first Venezuelan-born filmmaker to snag the Venice Golden Lion in 2015, is back on the Lido with “The Box” (“La Caja”), the final part of a trilogy that began with his Cannes Critics’ Week short “Elephants Never Forget” and continued with his Venice-winning feature debut, “From Afar.”A resident of Mexico since 2001, Vigas was watching the news on TV about people recovering the bodies of their lost relatives from

Jessica Chastain gives off retro vibes in a cranberry colored jumpsuit as she arrives at the 2021 Venice Film Festival on Sunday afternoon (September 5) in Venice, Italy.

Like finding a grubby, balled-up bill in your spangly g-string and uncrumpling it to discover doughy old Ben Franklin staring benignly back at you, Ana Lily Amirpour‘s third feature is a sweet, scuzzy surprise made all the sweeter/scuzzier because you don’t know quite what you did to deserve it.

Maria Sharapova looked elegant as she walked the streets of Venice with fiancé  Alexander Gilkes before sitting down to enjoy a croissant on Saturday.  The Russian tennis star, 34, looked amazing as she donned a chic mid length black cotton dress for the day out in the sun drenched floating city.

A poetic meditation on film, history, and loss, “Three Minutes – A Lengthening” gives a glimpse into a lost world and then unpacks just how much can be learned from that brief fragment. While on a grand tour of Europe in 1938, David Kurtz, a Polish-American man, traveled to Nasielsk, the town of his birth, and brought with him a 16mm camera filled with Kodachrome, a novelty at the time.

There are shades of Ruben Ostlund’s “The Square”, if it were remade to target the film world, in Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat’s crowd-pleasing Spanish comedy “Official Competition” starring Penélope Cruz and Antonio Banderas. Controlled pacing, visual punchlines, and an insider knowledge of the varied pretensions within filmmaking make this a consistently amusing – if never downright hilarious – vehicle for the well-honed comic sides of two of Spain’s most famous exports.

When Last Night In Soho director Edgar Wright submitted his latest film to the Venice Film Festival, he called it “a dark Valentine to Soho.” Elaborating on that, Wright told the Lido press corps this afternoon, “I love London, but there’s a lot to fear about it as well, so you have a conflicted relationship with the city… I’ve spent more time in Soho than I have on any of my couches at home. The story of the film and the film itself were inescapable at some point.”

Naman Ramachandran The first trailer for Venice competition title “La Caja” (The Box) has landed. The film is by Lorenzo Vigas, who won the Venice Golden Lion in 2015 for “Desde allá” (From Afar).The film follows Hatzin, a young teenager from Mexico City who travels to collect the remains of his father, which have been found in a communal grave amid the huge skies and empty landscape of Northern Mexico.

Here’s a pairing that you probably didn’t expect – Jessica Chastain and Maria Sharapova!

partner Alexander Gilkes, 42, seen chatting away as they enjoyed some al fresco drinks.  Jessica looked effortlessly stylish on the outing as she slipped into a leopard print maxi dress with shirred detailing and spaghetti straps.

What if you’ve paid your debt to society, but the spiritual weight of what you truly owe for your past actions can never be repaid in full? Following the terrific comeback reception to “First Reformed” and the spartan, Bresson-ian transcendental style employed within, feeling good about his chances, filmmaker Paul Schrader doubles down on austere slow cinema again in “The Card Counter,” a movie about the moral balance a man can accrue.