Venice Review: Penelope Cruz & Antonio Banderas In ‘Official Competition’

EXCLUSIVE: Spanish indie production powerhouse Mediapro is at San Sebastian Film Festival this year screening two of the buzziest local features in the program: the Antonio Banderas, Penelope Cruz and Oscar Martinez-starring Official Competition, which arrives from Venice, and the Javier Bardem-fronted The Good Boss, which premieres here.

Jamie Lang A week after taking the Volpi Cup best actress award at the Venice Film Festival, Penelope Cruz and her “Official Competition” co-stars Antonio Banderas and Oscar Martínez were in San Sebastian on Friday evening for the film’s Spanish premiere, where the trio hosted a press conference joined on stage by producer Jaume Roures, CEO at Mediapro, and via a video stream by the film’s writing-directing duo Gastón Duprat and Mariano Cohn.While discussing her admiration for Duprat and Cohn’s

Marion Cotillard shows off her award after being honored with the Donostia during the 2021 San Sebastian International Film Festival held at the Kursaal Palace on Friday (September 17) in San Sebastian, Spain.

Penelope Cruz took over the red carpet at the 2021 San Sebastian Film Festival on opening day!

Jamie Lang Spain has selected a high profile trio of films as finalists for the country’s 2021 International Feature Oscar submission.The favorite, at least at this early stage, is Pedro Almodóvar’s “Madres paralelas,” which just saw lead Penelope Cruz take the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival.

EXCLUSIVE: Following a tussle for rights in the territory, Protagonist Pictures has closed a French all-rights deal with Wild Bunch for well-received comedy Official Competition, starring Antonio Banderas, Penélope Cruz and Oscar Martínez.

Penelope Cruz and Maggie Gyllenhaal are two of the big winners at the 2021 Venice Film Festival!

Matt Damon and Penelope Cruz had a run-in in Venice today!

In shades of the gunmetal gray that has become the grading palette of choice for Serious Historical Epics — possible because arterial blood spray shows up so nice and red against it —Ridley Scott‘s starry, surprisingly engaging “Rashomon“-inflected “The Last Duel” opens on the wintry December day of the duel in question.

“True Things” is a “romantic” drama that is not romantic in the slightest. In the tradition of films like Catherine Breillat’s “Romance” and Adrian Lyne’s “9 ½ weeks,” the focus is on what is revealed about a female protagonist by how much she is willing to sacrifice to briefly experience passion with an unreliable yet sexy man.

Antonio Banderas and Nicole Kimpel are looking so cute on the red carpet!

Like finding a grubby, balled-up bill in your spangly g-string and uncrumpling it to discover doughy old Ben Franklin staring benignly back at you, Ana Lily Amirpour‘s third feature is a sweet, scuzzy surprise made all the sweeter/scuzzier because you don’t know quite what you did to deserve it.

Guy Lodge Film CriticThe new film from Argentine duo Gastón Duprat and Mariano Cohn effectively asserted its destiny with its title: How could the Venice festival programmers resist putting a film called “Official Competition” in their official competition? Some things just make sense, and by premiering in this way, Duprat and Cohn’s droll, dippy insider comedy neatly completes the last of its many, many in-jokes: Whatever life the film has beyond the festival circuit, it will never again play

by Gastón Duprat & Mariano Cohn.  The film follows eccentric director Lola Cuevas (Penélope Cruz), who has been hired by a billionaire to create a movie of his 'legacy'.

Penelope Cruz is attending another 2021 Venice Film Festival premiere!

A poetic meditation on film, history, and loss, “Three Minutes – A Lengthening” gives a glimpse into a lost world and then unpacks just how much can be learned from that brief fragment. While on a grand tour of Europe in 1938, David Kurtz, a Polish-American man, traveled to Nasielsk, the town of his birth, and brought with him a 16mm camera filled with Kodachrome, a novelty at the time.

“Why does it take so long to break up? Why does no one talk about the fact that [divorce] is endless trauma?” Jessica Chastain asks in a heartbreaking moment from HBO’s devastating marital and breakup mini-series “Scenes From A Marriage.” A modern adaptation of Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman’s brutally emotionally honest 1970s series, now written, directed, and executive produced by Israeli filmmaker Hagai Levi, (“Our Boys,” “The Affair,” and “In Treatment”), this new HBO version is intimate,

There are shades of Ruben Ostlund’s “The Square”, if it were remade to target the film world, in Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat’s crowd-pleasing Spanish comedy “Official Competition” starring Penélope Cruz and Antonio Banderas. Controlled pacing, visual punchlines, and an insider knowledge of the varied pretensions within filmmaking make this a consistently amusing – if never downright hilarious – vehicle for the well-honed comic sides of two of Spain’s most famous exports.

Benedetta star Virginie Efira plays a woman leading a double life in drama Madeleine Collins which premiered in the Venice Days section of the Venice Film Festival today. Also doubling up in Venice by serving on the competition jury, Efira puts in a terrific performance in Antoine Barraud’s taut relationship pic that veers into thriller territory.

Ruth Wilson puts in a riveting performance in Venice Film Festival Horizons entry True Things, an impressive follow up to director Harry Wootliff’s debut Only You. Wilson and Jude Law are also among the producers for this intense story, based on the novel True Things About Me by Deborah Kay Davies.