‘The Swimmers’ Toronto Review: Remarkable True Story Of Syrian Sisters On A Harrowing Journey To Compete At The Rio Olympics

Kamila Valieva is back — and she appears to be making a very strong statement about what she went through at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, China.

Ukraine’s health care system, with items donated by the likes of Harry Styles, Ed Sheeran and Ellie Goulding. With starting prices at £10 or £5, fans can win signed merchandise and personal items donated by the stars. Harry has provided a signed vinyl LP of Harry’s House, while Ed has given a tour brochure and signed T-shirt and Ellie two signed merchandise bundles.

Marta Balaga The Sámi, the indigenous people in the far north of Europe and Russia, are ready to share their stories with the world. But only under certain conditions, says film commissioner Liisa Holmberg from the International Sámi Film Institute (ISFI). “The most important thing is respect,” she notes, mentioning the Pathfinder Film Protocol – a set of guidelines and questions for non-Sámi filmmakers named after Nils Gaup’s 1987 Oscar-nominated drama. “When the Sámi people may not have the same opportunity/resources to tell their stories, why am I the right person to [do it]? How will my film production benefit the Sámi community and what am I giving back? Is it right for me to take up this space?,” it states.

Ed Meza @edmezavar “Becoming an Astronaut,” an ambitious documentary that will focus on four new astronauts who will be announced by the European Space Agency (ESA) this November, has won the Focal Audience & Market Strategies pitching event at the Zurich Film Festival. Organized by Focal, the Lausanne-based foundation for film and audiovisual media training, Audience & Market Strategies is a three-part training program that helps producers promote their projects at an early stage. This year’s event showcased eight Swiss projects in various states of development. The program culminated with the pitching event, in which the producers presented their projects to sales company representatives, industry experts and an international jury comprising Stephen Kelliher of Bankside Films, Netflix’s Lars Wiebe, Olivier Tournaud of Cinephil, Sven Wälti, head of film at Swiss pubcaster SRG SSR, and Deadline’s Diana Lodderhose.

Harry Styles, Ed Sheeran and Ellie Goulding have donated items to a raffle raising money for Ukraine. Harry, 28, has donated a signed vinyl LP, with Ed offering a tour brochure and signed T-shirt and Ellie donating a signed merchandise bundle. The trio have joined celebrities including Swedish House Mafia and Annie Lennox in donating to the World Health Organization foundation's raffle to raise money for Ukraine’s health care system, following the invasion of the country by Russia.

“The Preamble to the Commitment to America,” which lays out their “Commitment to America” agenda for 2023, focusing on what they believe it truly means to be American. The thing is, some of the beautiful archival footage used in their video meant to highlight America, isn’t of America at all, but rather Russia and Ukraine.“America is exceptional,” the video posted on YouTube by Kevin McCarthy begins.

An Oldham councillor has been arrested by Greater Manchester Police on suspicion of rape.

A few minutes before the North American premiere of “Freedom on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom,” director Evgeny Afineesvky summed up his state of mind in a single word: “exhausted.”That makes sense, because “Freedom on Fire” screened at the Toronto International Film Festival about six months after Afineevsky and his team began working on it, barely more than a month after its final footage was filmed and only a few weeks after Helen Mirren recorded narration for a scene that comes early in the documentary.For Afineevsky, who landed Oscar and Emmy nominations for 2015’s “Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom,” this sequel of sorts was made in a six-month rush, including just three months of editing after Russian forces invaded Ukraine in February of this year. “The urgency of the movie,” the Russian-born director told the audience before the Tuesday morning TIFF screening, “is to not neglect the situation right now.”Certainly, urgency is a hallmark of “Freedom on Fire,” a harrowing document shot by dozens of people inside Ukrainian cities as the Russian army conducted a bombing campaign and an invasion that seemingly targeted civilians, despite Vladimir Putin’s claims that Russia was there to “demilitarize” and “denazify” the country, and to somehow “free” it – though as more than one person in the film points out, the Russian offensive has resulted in ordinary citizens being freed from their lives, their homes, their families.The director’s first film about Ukraine, “Winter on Fire,” was an on-the-ground look at the 2013-2014 Maidan uprising, in which student protests against the Russian-backed president drew a brutal response but resulted in the removal of the president.

Nicholas Hoult had some interesting insight to share about the evolution of Emperor Peter III, his character on Hulu’s “The Great.” Hoult shared his thoughts with Variety senior culture and events editor Marc Malkin during Variety On the Carpet presented by DIRECTV. “He’s now a doting father, which is the transition for most sex slaves, I think,” Hoult said during the red carpet interview. “It’s an examination of Catherine and his relationship, and Elle [Fanning] is such a wonderful actress, we have a lot of fun.” Hoult referred to the long-spanning relationship between the show’s two main characters, which has evolved drastically over the course of the show’s two-season run. Both Hoult and Fanning are nominated for their performances at Monday’s Primetime Emmy Awards, for lead actor and actress in a comedy series, respectively.

Manal Issa and Nathalie Issa, real life sisters who play a pair of Olympic swimming hopefuls, also sisters, said they weren’t at all aquatic when cast in the Sally El Hosaini film ‘The Swimmers’ that opened TIFF last night.

Hillary Clinton had a confession to make on Tuesday’s “Tonight Show”.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Most of the time, documentaries don’t get sequels, which is strange. Unlike their scripted fiction counterparts, the story doesn’t end when the cameras stop rolling. If you’ve ever attended a filmmaker Q&A after the screening of a great documentary, you know the first question from the audience is almost inevitably either “What’s happened since?” or “Where are they now?” Bryan Fogel must have heard that more times than he can count in the five years since his game-changing Russian sports doping doc “Icarus” won the Academy Award. “Icarus: The Aftermath” is his response, a daring and sure-to-be-divisive movie that’s even more shocking than the 2017 original, even if the big news is already out of the bag.

For all its discussion of weighty topics such as morality, espionage, and whistleblowing, Bryan Fogel’s Oscar-winning documentary “Icarus” was, at its heart, a buddy comedy. Existential and, at times, terrifying? Sure.