Venice Titles ‘Sun Children’ & ‘The Furnace’ Sales Deals; Locarno Opener & Jury – Global Briefs

PMC administratorIf you happened to live next door to the co-founder of Nextdoor, a hyper-local, Facebook-like app for your neighborhood, where locals trade babysitter and piano teacher referrals, you’d be living beside a pristine mansion with an asking price of $25 million.

The 2020 Venice Film Festival has added another pair of films to its official lineup. Run Hide Fight, an action film from Kyle Rankin starring Isabel May and Thomas Jane, will have its world premiere out of competition in Venice, as will Fiori, Fiori, Fiori!, a documentary short from Call Me By Your Name director Luca Guadagnino.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentUnsurprisingly the coronavirus crisis has prompted an uptick in views of classic and heritage cinema titles on streaming platforms, even spawning new online outlets for vintage films.Now the hope is that this increased interest can serve as a stimulus to foster greater preservation of the world’s cinematic patrimony before it’s too late.That is one of the key considerations that surfaced from a Locarno Pro webinar on the distribution of heritage and

Andreas Wiseman, Tom Grater EXCLUSIVE: Gravitas Ventures has acquired North American rights to Van Ditthavong’s feature directorial debut All Roads To Pearla (formerly known as Sleeping In Plastic), which had its world premiere at the 2019 Austin Film Festival.

Jake Kanter International TV EditorJohn Preston Teams With BBC For ‘Stonehouse’ John Preston, the author of the book behind Golden Globe-winning BBC/AMC series A Very English Scandal, has been commissioned to pen a BBC drama about a British politician who faked his own death.

Tom Grater International Film ReporterThe Venice Film Festival’s industry-focused Production Bridge had unveiled the line-up of projects that will take part in its ‘Final Cut In Venice’ workshop this year. The six films all hail from the MENA region.

Swedish House Mafia (2/13-17, 2013)The first and only artist to headline five consecutive nights at the venue to kick off their historic One Last Tour in 2013. I remember the excitement of the call with about a dozen people on the artists’ team, including Amy Thomson their manager and Sam Kirby their agent, rolling the shows one after the other as each quickly sold out, something that no artist had done before at the Civic.

Jake Kanter International TV EditorBBC appoints new Scotland chief BBC Scotland has named program maker, commissioner and award-winning broadcaster Steve Carson (pictured) as its new director, replacing Donalda MacKinnon, who steps down later this year. Carson is currently head of multi-platform commissioning for BBC Scotland and will be elevated to look after 1,100 staff.

Tom Grater International Film ReportereOne and Australian pay TV company Foxtel have inked an expanded deal on a slate of the former’s recent titles. Included are the Oscar-winning 1917, Green Book, and Judy, as well as Wild Rose, Booksmart, Babyteeth, and more.

Manori Ravindran International EditorCelluloid Dreams is handling international sales for Majid Majidi’s Venice competition title “Sun Children.”Set to world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, which today unveiled its lineup, the film tells the story of 12-year-old Ali and his three friends. Together, they work hard to survive and support their families, doing small jobs in a garage and committing petty crimes to make fast money.

Naman Ramachandran U.K. based HanWay Films will handle international sales on Israeli auteur Amos Gitai’s new film “Laila In Haifa,” set to bow in competition at the Venice Film Festival in September.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentParis-based company Indie Sales has acquired Jasmila Žbanic’s “Quo Vadis, Aida?” which will world premiere in competition at the Venice Film Festival. Co-produced by Indie Sales’ sister company Indie Prod, the film is based on real events and is set in the Bosnian summer of 1995, against the backdrop of the Serbian occupation of Srebrenica, a U.N.

Also Read: Fall Film Festivals Venice, Telluride, Toronto and New York Team Up With 'United Platform'Based on journalist Jessica Bruder’s 2017 nonfiction book “Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century,” the film follows Fern (McDormand), a woman who, after the economic collapse of a company town in rural Nevada, packs her van and sets off on the road exploring a life outside of conventional society as a modern-day nomad.

Manori Ravindran International EditorChloé Zhao’s road drama “Nomadland” starring Frances McDormand, will screen at Venice, Toronto and New York as part of the fall festivals’ solidarity pact in the wake of the pandemic. It will also play as part of a special Telluride-hosted drive-in event.Zhao’s third film will world premiere with simultaneous screenings on Sept.

Andreas Wiseman International EditorA new version of RuPaul’s Drag Race is coming to the Netherlands later this year via format owner World Of Wonder, broadcaster RTL and Dutch firm Vincent TV. Drag Race Holland (8×60’) will feature ten Dutch drag queens who take part in weekly challenges where the bottom two face-off against each other in a lip-synch battle for a chance to remain in the competition.

Major League Baseball started its 2020 regular season Thursday night with a pair of games. First, the New York Yankees and the Washington Nationals squared off, and then the San Francisco Giants and Los Angeles Dodgers took center stage.

Tom Grater International Film ReporterVenice Days (Giornate Degli Autori), the independent Venice Film Festival sidebar that is under the new leadership of artistic director Gaia Furrer this year, has announced its line-up of titles, including a feature directed by artist Bruce LaBruce and new shorts from Atlantics filmmaker Mati Diop and Mug director Malgorzata Skumowksa.From more a thousand submissions, the programming team have whittled it down to just 28 titles.