‘The Stoplight Society’ Director Ruben Mendoza, Costa Rica’s Laura Astorga, Chile’s Equeco Set for Sanfic Industria’s Santiago Lab (EXCLUSIVE)

Anna Marie de la Fuente Sisterly love ruled at Chile’s 19th Santiago International Film Festival (Sanfic), which wrapped on Aug. 27 where female directors and actors clinched the top prizes. Israeli-Ukrainian drama “Valeria is Getting Married” by Michal Vinik and Kattia Zuñiga’s “Sister & Sister” snagged the preeminent Chilean festival’s best film plaudits, adding to their trove of accolades since their respective world premieres.

Anna Marie de la Fuente Chilean indie Equeco, led by Pablo Calisto, is a triple threat at the 19th Santiago Int’l Film Festival (Sanfic), with three projects participating in the annual event running August 20-27. Vying for the top prize in the official competition is Equeco’s “Historia y Geografia,” which debuts its teaser trailer exclusively on Variety. Equeco is also embarking on its most ambitious project, “Il Cileno” by Sergio Castro San Martín, a historical drama in co-production with Italy’s Dispàrte, a Rome-based independent production company founded in 2015 by Alessandro Amato and Luigi Chimienti.

Chile on Wednesday named the anti-colonialist Western The Settlers from first-time feature filmmaker Felipe Gálvez as its official entry for Best International Feature at the 2024 Academy Awards.

Great Britain runner Laura Muir was comforted by her fellow athletes after she broke down following the final of the women's 1500m on Tuesday at the World Athletics Championships where she failed to take first place, instead coming sixth. Reflecting on her performance, Laura said: “I thought I positioned myself well, for the race it was slow and I was covering moves and things it’s just that last lap was crazy.

An official teaser for “American Horror Story: Delicate” has been released, offering fans a closer look at Emma Roberts, Kim Kardashian and Cara Delevingne’s looks in the upcoming season.

Let us paint a familiar scene for you. It's well past midnight and the after-work drinks have reached their natural end point.

San Sebastian Fetes Veteran Director Victor Erice

Hilary Duff is already being flooded… with jokes.The unique spelling of the hurricane — which increased to a Category 4 on Friday morning — means Duff is one of the rare «Hilarys» who shares her exact first name with the worrisome storm, a fact she lamented on her Instagram Story on Thursday.«I've gotten so many texts, it's like my birthday,» she wrote. «They couldn't have gone with two Ls?»It doesn't help, of course, that one of Duff's most popular singles, 2003's «Come Clean,» features the chorus, «Let the rain fall down and wake my dreams / Let it wash away my sanity / 'Cause I wanna feel the thunder, I wanna scream / Let the rain fall down, I'm coming clean.»Duff's husband, Matthew Koma, even got in on the joke, taking to TikTok to share a video of himself in the couple's kitchen.«Hey, so I've been living in the eye of Hurricane Hilary for a couple years now, and I just wanted to hop on here and show you guys what it's like,» he teased, as his wife fired back some Category 5 side-eye.Hurricane Hilary is expected to reduce in intensity by the time it makes landfall, however, it still could potentially be the first tropical storm to hit Southern California since September 1939 — in which a tropical storm hit Long Beach, causing dozens of fatalities.

Editor’s note: Dade Hayes and Jonathan Bing are co-authors of Open Wide: How Hollywood Box-Office Became a National Obsession. Hayes is Deadline’s Business Editor and Bing is Chief Communications Officer at Vice Media Group.

Holly Jones Chilean editor-turned-filmmaker Diego Figueroa (“Los Vecinos”) is set to unveil his debut feature “Patio de Chacales”(“A Yard Of Jackals”) at Sanfic Industria’s prestige Works In Progress strand, offering a suspense-addled mindbender that pivots and retreats through the depths of its protagonists’ minds as atrocities unfurl close-to-home. Produced by Alejandro Ugarte at Santiago-based Infractor, which co-produced the Juan Cáceres Malaga-winning title “Perro Bomba” alongside Chile’s Pejeperro Films and France’s Promenades Films, “Patio de Chacales” toys with the medium to present a singular take on clandestine crime networks.

EXCLUSIVE: Madeline Zima (Californication) and Leonardo Nam (Westworld) are currently in production in Canada on Love Is the Monster, a new thriller they’re leading for filmmaker Alex Noyer (Sound of Violence) that has landed a SAG-AFTRA Interim Agreement. Others set to star include Moe Jeudy-Lamour (Ted Lasso), Kimberly-Sue Murray (Trader), Kristina Tonteri-Young (Warrior Nun), Milla Puolakanaho (Omerta), Tatu Sinisalo (Sisu) and Sheila Mccarthy (Women Talking).

EXCLUSIVE: Sex Education and Doctor Who star Ncuti Gatwa is set to star as David Copperfield in a new all-star audible series executive-produced by Oscar winner Sam Mendes.

Hallmark Channel is updating it’s official schedule for September 2023.

Ruben Dias trained with Manchester City ahead of their Super Cup match with Sevilla to boost his chances of featuring against Newcastle.

Hearts have been dealt a European blow with red tape denying them the chance to unleash Japanese striker Kyosuke Tagawa on Rosenborg.

Next month Laurel Halo will release her new album Atlas. We have already heard the lead single "Belleville," which was released in July, and now the DJ/producer has dropped the title track. "Atlas" is an ambient track filled with dramatic flourishes, from the beautiful strings to the more abstract sense of dread that filters in throughout its near seven-minute runtime.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent LOCARNO — Costa Rica’s Juli Films has boarded Nicaraguan Gloria Carrión’s “Pantasma,” building production partner backing for one of the most ambitious titles at a talent packed Locarno’s Open Doors Projects Hub. A stop motion doc-feature, the film will narrate how the Sandinista-Contra War of 1982-1989 in Nicaragua forced Félix, a 17-year-old revolutionary, to become an adult in the battlefield, “Pantasma” is now set up at Costa Rica’s Caja de Luz, Carrión’s label, and Juli Films, whose credits also take in documentaries “Songs from Bosawas” (2014) and “Patrol” (Mountainfilm Festival, 2023).

Open Doors is a case in point. Five takeaways on this year’s lineup: Recalibration of a Sense of Self “Three Bullets,” at Open Doors Projects Hub, is made by Dominican Génesis Valenzuela, an alum of San Sebastian’s prestigious Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola, which plumbs the murder of Dominican immigrant Lucrecia Pérez, shot and killed by four neo-Nazis, the same year that Spain celebrated its conquest of Latin America. Valenzuela will come in at the film as she reconstructs her own identity as a “human being/woman/Afro-Caribbean/filmmaker.” “The driving force of this film is the desire for emancipation, both from the constraints of existence and from those of filmmaking,” she has said.

Guy Lodge Film Critic There is no unknown country in “The Unknown Country,” a gently meandering road trip through an America that even those of us directly unacquainted have traveled via the movies: Morrisa Maltz’s lovely second feature trades in the familiar imagery of unfettered highways ribboned through the great, grassy middle of nowhere, roadside inns outlined in humming hot-pink neon, gas stations slumped against the sparse landscape like oily oases. It’s the people building their lives along this route, however, that this sociable, inquisitive docufiction seeks to discover, as Maltz profiles the faces flashing by the driver only passing through.

Swedish pic Mother, Couch! starring Taylor Russell and Ewan McGregor alongside Ellen Burstyn is one of the titles San Sebastian has set to compete for its New Directors award during its 71st edition, running September 22 — 30.