Vanessa Kirby Wows Venice With 'Pieces of a Woman,' 'The World To Come'

Andreas Wiseman International EditorEXCLUSIVE: WestEnd Films has scored UK distribution and other key deals for TIFF Selects title Falling For Figaro, from director Ben Lewin (The Sessions) and starring Joanna Lumley (Absolutely Fabulous) and Danielle Macdonald (Patti Cake$).Entertainment Film Distributors has picked up the romantic comedy for the UK.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefThe English Premier League, soccer’s most lucrative club championship, will return to screens in China from this weekend.

Jo Malone London, the British perfume and scented candle brand, has issued an apology to John Boyega — who was last year named its first male global ambassador — for taking a personal video he made for them and reshooting it for the Chinese market, in the process removing not onlyStar Wars actor entirely but not featuring a single black individual.

Emma Corrin is enjoying a little downtime in Venice!

VENICE -- There’s been a lot of talk about gender parity, feminism and equality at the Venice Film Festival this year, with nearly half the in-competition films directed by women.

A funny-moving story enjoyably retold with classic British understatement and just the right twist at the end, The Duke is the account of an incredible true event from 1961, when a man from the working-class north of England climbed through a bathroom window into London’s National Gallery one night and stole a valuable painting of the Duke of Wellington by Francisco Goya. His motive was charity.

You could dine on nothing but lard for twenty years and still not develop the hardness of heart necessary to avoid being won over by Roger Michell‘s “The Duke,” a ridiculously charming British comedy that dunks a gamely accented prestige cast into an appealingly milky true story like so many digestives into a warm, well-earned, early evening cuppa.

There are no heroes in Final Account, no one to empathize with. What makes it uniquely worth watching is its cast of octogenarians and nonagenarians who were eyewitnesses and in some cases active participants in the horrors of the concentration camps.

Rebecca Davis editorThe Premier League, the leading U.K. soccer division, has terminated its massive $747 million TV rights contract with China’s PPTV two years early due to unpaid payments, it said Thursday.

Tom Grater International Film ReporterThe Premier League, England’s top soccer division, has terminated a lucrative TV rights contract with Chinese broadcaster PPTV over unpaid money.The initial deal, signed in 2016, was worth $750M (£564M) and covered three seasons between 2019 and 2022.