Variety and the Golden Globe Awards Announce Party at Venice Film Festival

Sophia Scorziello editor “Oppenheimer” cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema will be honored with Variety’s Creative Impact in Cinematography award at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival. In addition to this summer’s Christopher Nolan blockbuster, the Dutch cinematographer has worked as Nolan’s DP on “Tenet,” “Interstellar” and Dunkirk” along with Jordan Peele for “Nope” and Spike Jonze for “Her.” “SCAD is proud to partner with Variety on this year’s Creative Impact Award, which will be presented to cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema,” said SCAD Savannah Film Festival executive director Christina Routhier.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Oscar-winning writer-director Bobby Moresco (“Crash”) is set to direct “Ferrari vs. Mercedes,” the latest movie set in Italy’s vintage auto racing world – following Moresco’s “Lamborghini: The Man Behind the Legend” and Micheal Mann’s “Ferrari” – being produced by Andrea Iervolino. Just like “Lamborghini,” which in the U.S.

Holly rings her school to tell them she is staying at home. She isn’t sick. She just can’t bring herself to go. “Bad things are going to happen today,” she says just above a whisper, her voice cracking.

It’s interesting how the Venice Film Festival has gone from one of the festivals of the fall festival season to arguably the best film festival in the world now, even overshadowing Cannes in recent years thanks to the fact that Netflix now avoids the Croisette for the most part because of France’s theatrical laws and save their Oscar contenders for the Lido. Venice has had an amazing run, arguably since 2017 when Guillermo del Toro’s “The Shape Of Water” won the top prize and then went on to win the Oscar for Best Picture, which has happened one more time since with “Nomadland” and several key Oscar contenders since).

Clean, green Switzerland, land of chocolate, cuckoo clocks and direct democracy, is revealed to have a history of racial abuse as ugly as any other in Giorgio Diritti’s rolling epic Lubo, showing in competition at the Venice Film Festival. German actor Franz Rogowski plays the title character, a street performer and paterfamilias who is part of Switzerland’s community of Jenisch, a nomadic people originating in Germany. Lubo’s story is a dramatically terrible one – his wife is killed in a spat with heavy-handed police and his children are taken away, all while he is being marched off to serve time in the army – but it speaks to the truth.

EXCLUSIVE: Distributor-producer Lucky Red is one of Italy’s most respected independent film and TV companies. Run by former actor Andrea Occhipinti since 1987, the firm has released more than 500 titles and produced more than 50 films.

There’s been a lot of jealous talk about nepotism in the film world lately, but who would really want to come into the movie world as a, what, fourth-generation Huston? There are likely swords already being sharpened for Jack Huston, the handsome, charming, 40-year-old nephew of Anjelica, grandson of Jack and great-grandson of Walter. But his directing debut, Day of the Fight, which premiered this week in the Venice Film Festival’s Horizons Extra section, is certainly worthy of the family name. It’s a little earnest, sometimes a bit too style-conscious, and Huston is inclined to put performance before story every time. But the emotional input really earns its payoff in a confident, imaginatively mounted calling card.

Woody Allen is attending the Venice International Film Festival for the premiere of his latest film, “Coup de Chance”.

As if to come to the aid of her national cinema after the debacle that was Roman Polanski’s The Palace, Poland’s Agnieska Holland, soon to turn 75, restores some of her homeland’s cultural dignity with a devastating exposé that angrily, and quite brilliantly, questions its humanity and political integrity. At 144 minutes, and in black and white, it is not exactly a Trojan horse, and its moral rigor does not come with a spoonful of sugar. But Green Border earns every second of that running time, and with a focus and energy that belies its directors age. Awards-wise, this may prove to be the international feature to beat.

Ferrari has defended the casting of Adam Driver against claims of cultural appropriation.Andrea Iervolino, an Italian-Canadian film producer on the Enzo Ferrari biopic, rebuked claims made against Driver’s casting by actor Pierfrancesco Favino, who questioned why Italian actors were not cast more often in Hollywood films.In response, Iervolino said Italy had failed in comparison to other countries in producing Hollywood stars with worldwide visibility, citing examples like Javier Bardem and Antonio Banderas from Spain, and Marion Cotillard and Vincent Cassel from France.Speaking at the festival (via the Telegraph), Ierovlino said: “Italian cinema needs to look beyond Italy and come up with synergies with the international film industry, which wants to invest in Italian icons. Films like Ferrari, which will be distributed in 150 countries, promote Italy and Italian genius.”The producer called on the Italian film industry to “make films based on stories that speak to the whole world, with international stars who work side by side with our own talent”.In his original comments, Favino, who stars in a movie called Comandante which opened this year’s festival, asked why actors on the level of Toni Servillo (The Great Beauty) were not cast more often in Hollywood productions.“There’s an issue of cultural appropriation,” Favino said.“Instead, the parts are given to foreign actors who are distant from the story’s real protagonists, starting with the exotic accents,” he added.

Fremantle kicked off its presence at the Venice Film Festival with a bang this year with the announcement of its new €150M ($162.7M) Scripted Fund forged in partnership with Israel-based IBI Investment House. 

In principle, using the rainy-day, kitchen-sink post-rock of Manchester band The Smiths so prominently in a film like The Killer seems incredibly perverse, given that it’s an exotic, globe-trotting thriller about an American assassin. But in reality, it’s actually very sound choice indeed: legend has it that the band’s singer, Morrissey, had two reasons for naming his band so, the first being that “Smith” is one of the most common and thus unremarkable surnames in the world. The second, and much more subversive theory, suggests that it’s also a reference to David and Maureen Smith, brother-in-law and sister of ’60s serial killer Myra Hindley, the snappily dressed couple whose testimony blew open the Moors Murderers case and whose beatnik likenesses adorn the cover of Sonic Youth’s 1990 album “Goo”.

It’s hard to believe that it’s now over 60 years since Roman Polanski teamed up with Jerzy Skolimowski for the landmark 1962 Polish thriller Knife in the Water. But it’s even harder to believe that these two giants of international cinema reunited more recently to pool their braincells and come up with the most terrible, joyless farce since the heyday of the ’70s British sex comedy. Forget for a moment, if you can, the furor surrounding Polanski’s controversial status as a fugitive from justice and concentrate instead on the fact that the Venice Film Festival, in its infinite wisdom, went ahead and booked this entirely dreadful offering anyway, deeming it somehow worthy of a prestigious Out of Competition slot.

Roman Polanski’s Venice Film Festival feature The Palace received a 3 minute ovation tonight at its world premiere screening.

Five years after his triumphant A Star is Born world premiered at the Venice Film Festival, Bradley Cooper is back on the Lido with Maestro. Except, the director and star is only here in spirit owing to the SAG-AFTRA strike.

The stars are stepping out in style!

Lukas Gage and Chase Stokes partied the night away with their partners while attending the Variety and Golden Globes Party during the 2023 Venice Film Festival on Thursday night (August 31).

Mads Mikkelsen and his son Carl Jacobsen Mikkelsen make quite a dashing pair!

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Mousy and diminutive, to the point that she practically disappears beneath a frizzy bramble of brown hair, Mimosa (Rebecca Antonaci) adores movies. In “Finally Dawn,” she stumbles into one, drafted into being a featured extra on a swords-and-sandals epic shooting at Cinecittà. Doing so makes Mimosa a potential target in a meandering true-crime-adjacent period piece inspired by the death of Wilma Montesi, which plays like an Italian spin on the Black Dahlia case.

When Andy Kaufman passed away in May 1984, it was the final full stop in a life that seemed to be endlessly self-regenerating. Or was it? Rumors that this was another of his bizarre stunts were rife at the time, so much so that one of the mourners at the comedian’s funeral poked the body that lay in the casket to see if it would move.