Variety to Host Three Conversations at Annecy International Animation Film Festival

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent The Locarno Film Festival will honor multiple Oscar winner Ben Burtt — the sound designer, editor and voice actor behind the ‘Star Wars‘ and ‘Indiana Jones’ franchises — with its lifetime achievement award dedicated to creative pioneers. The prominent Swiss fest celebrating international indie cinema will be feting Burtt, best known for voicing Wall-E and creating Darth Vader’s mechanical breathing, with its Vision Award Ticinomoda. 1977’s “Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope” was one of the first films he worked on.

Rafa Sales Ross Guest Contributor The Mediterrane Film Festival kickstarted its second edition with the international premiere of Alexandre de La Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte’s “The Count of Monte Cristo.” The film, shown at the heart of Malta’s capital of Valletta on Saturday night, was followed by a reception at the historic Mdina Ditch Gardens, in which Malta Film Commissioner Johann Grech highlighted the importance of the festival as an event to “unite the nations of the Mediterranean through film.” The sentiment echoes this year’s festival theme of Unity Through Film, with Grech adding that he hopes the festival will bring nations together to “share stories that celebrate not only our diversity but also our shared outlook.” The film commissioner emphasised the success of the festival’s first edition, claiming the return to the local economy “far exceeded our investment, showing once again what a force for good film is in our country.” Several members of the local film industry were present at the gathering as well as international attendees in this year’s jury president Jon S. Baird (“Tetris,” “Stan and Ollie”) and “Triangle of Sadness” actor Zlatko Burić, who was part of last year’s jury.

EXCLUSIVE: Online Canadian film journal Panorama-cinéma has set plans in motion to launch Montreal Critic’s Week (Semaine de la critique de Montréal), a new film festival, at Montreal’s Cinémathèque Québécoise in January 2025.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Extinction,” the Malaysian-produced animation that is playing at the Shanghai International Film Festival, has struck its first international rights sales deals. The film was recently picked up by All Rights Entertainment, the Paris, Hong Kong and Los Angeles-based sales agency. All Rights has subsequently licensed the title to Magic Film for the CIS region, to Dazzler Media for the U.K., to Red Cape Distribution for Israel and to Bir Film for Turkey.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Actor-director Viggo Mortensen, actor Clive Owen and actor-director Daniel Brühl will be honored at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, Central and Eastern Europe’s leading movie event, which will open with Mortensen’s “The Dead Don’t Hurt.” The festival also revealed Wednesday that director-producer Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter-director Nicole Holofcener will attend the event. Mortensen, Owen and Brühl will each receive the Festival President’s Award.

The Munich International Film Festival will screen 152 films from 53 countries during its 41st edition, which runs from June 28 to July 6. 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Coralie Fargeat’s Demi Moore-starring feminist body horror film “The Substance” has been set as the closing night title for the New Zealand International Film Festival. The picture is one of 16 which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last month selected for the NZIFF which is now under the artistic leadership of Paolo Bertolin.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent U.S.-based Italian director Mitzi Peirone’s comic horror thriller “Saint Clare” has been set as the opening night film of Italy’s upcoming Taormina Film Festival with protagonist Bella Thorne in attendance. “Saint Clare” follows Peirone’s debut, the horror film “Braid,” which launched from Tribeca in 2018. Based on U.S.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Parallax China, one of China’s leading independent film sales companies, has picked up rights to a pair of titles that debut this week at the Shanghai International Film Festival. It is handling world sales on “Qian Tang River,” directed by Wan Bo, and “Another Day of Hope,” by Liu Taifeng. Both are directorial debuts and both appear in the non-competitive Refreshing Chinese Cinema section.

Shanghai International Film Festival represent a showcase of directors who are also known-quantities, but who are worthy of higher profiles. (The festival’s Asian Talent selection has a further selection of six more directors seeking to break through.) The competition quartet fall into two pairs (a seventh and eighth generation maybe): the latest works of Guan Hu and the rarely seen Gu Changwei on one hand; and a younger generation of auteurs, Wei Shujun and Zhang Dalei. Guan is in need of rehabilitation after his 2019 war film was selected as the Shanghai festival’s opening film but experienced a last-minute cancellation due to the intervention of unforeseen layers of censorship.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Along with a red-carpet opening ceremony, a press conference with the members of the main competition jury is a staple event of major film festivals and the 26th edition of the Shanghai International Film Festival kicked off in traditional form on Friday. Along with Vietnam-French director Tran Anh Hung, previously revealed as jury president, the other members of the decisive committee this year are: Australian director and screenwriter Rolf de Heer; German director Matthias Glasner; Hong Kong actor Tony Leung Ka Fai; Argentinian director Santiago Mitre; Chinese director Sonthar Gyal; and, the jury’s only woman, star actor Zhou Xun. A packed audience lobbed familiar questions about the criteria they jurors would employ to decide the Golden Goblet prize winners, and what informs those views.

Pnina Blayer, the honorary president and former artistic director of the Haifa International Film Festival (HIFF) has died. She was 77. 

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent U.S. producer Stacey Sher — whose credits include Quentin Tarantino‘s “Pulp Fiction,” “Django Unchained” and “The Hateful Eight” as well as Steven Soderbergh’s “Erin Brockovich,” “Out of Sight” and “Contagion” — will be honored by the Locarno Film Festival with its Raimondo Rezzonico Prize, which celebrates a producer who epitomizes the indie ethos.

EXCLUSIVE: The Munich International Film Festival has set an eclectic trio of world premieres for its upcoming 41st edition. Harley Chamandy’s Allen Sunshine, Jamie Kastner feature doc The Spoils and Davi Pretto’s Continente will each premiere, Deadline can reveal.

Lexi Carson Montreal’s Fantasia International Film Festival has unveiled its second wave of titles, which includes Ant Timpson’s “Bookworm” as the opening night film. This year’s edition, the 28th for the festival, will run from July 18 to August 4.

Addie Morfoot Contributor “La Cocina,” the Rooney Mara-starring drama that premiered at the 2024 Berlinale, is among four feature films that will screen at the inaugural Croatian International Film Festival beginning Aug. 8. The four-day event, set in the coastal city of Sibenik, will also feature 18 documentary and narrative shorts, giving the struggling independent film market an additional international venue to screen movies and launch careers.

The first Muslim International Film Festival (MIFF) ended this weekend in London with Amjad Al Rasheed’s debut feature Inshallah A Boy taking the best feature gong while veteran documentarian Asif Kapadia picked up the festival’s honorary Trailblazer Award. 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The imminently upcoming Sydney Film Festival has added eight titles that premiered at Cannes to its lineup. They are: Guan Hu’s “Black Dog”; Mohammad Rasoulof’s “The Seed of the Sacred Fig”; Francis Ford Coppola’s passion project “Megalopolis”; Guy Maddin, Evan and Galen Johnson’s “Rumours,” starring Australia’s Cate Blanchett; documentary “Ernest Cole: Lost and Found,” Jia Zhangke’s “Caught by the Tides”; “The Girl with the Needle”; and revenge thriller “Ghost Trail.” Due to demand, the SFF organizers have also added additional screenings of “The Substance,” the Demi Moore-starring film already set as the festival’s closing night title. The festival runs June 5-16.

Naman Ramachandran Tarsem Singh Dhandwar’s “Dear Jassi” and Arati Kadav’s “Mrs” will open and close this year’s New York Indian Film Festival. Punjabi and English-language “Dear Jassi,” a tale of star-crossed lovers based on a true story, arrives in New York after a glittering festival run that began in 2023, at Toronto, where it won the Platform Prize.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The Shanghai International Film Festival has unveiled a selection that is weighted heavily to world premieres and Chinese, local titles. That gives the festival showcase screenings for the newest works by established Chinese directors Gu Changwei (“Peacock, “Till Death Do Us Part”), Wei Shujun (“Only the River Flows,” “Striding Into the Wind”) and Guan Hu (“Old Fish”). Guan was rewarded in Cannes only last week for his Un Certain Regard-winning picture “Black Dog,” but will unveil his next effort “The Hedgehog in Shanghai’s main competition.