Venice Winner Arsalan Amiri Returns to HAF With ‘Janava’

EXCLUSIVE: Venice Film Festival, Netflix and The Gotham Film & Media Institute are teaming up on a program of movies at iconic New York venue, the Paris Theater. Scroll down for program lineup in full.

It would appear that Warner Bros. Discovery is changing things up with the release of “Dune: Part Two” later this year.

EXCLUSIVE: Unlike its predecessor, Dune: Part Two won’t be debuting at the Venice Film Festival, we can reveal.

Federation Studios has nabbed worldwide distribution rights to French political comedy and Series Mania winner Under Control.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent The Venice Film Festival will honor “The Night Porter” director Liliana Cavani and Tony Leung Chiu-wai, the Hong Kong star of “In the Mood for Love” and Marvel’s “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” with its 2023 Golden Lions for Lifetime Achievement. Cavani first attended Venice in 1965 with the historical doc “Philippe Pétain: Processo a Vichy,” which won the Lion of San Marco for best documentary. She was back the Lido in 1966 with her TV movie “Saint Francis of Assisi,” and, again, in 1968, with “Galileo,” followed by Patricia Highsmith adaptation “Ripley’s Game,” starring John Malkovich, in 2002 and “Clarisse,” a doc about an order of cloistered nuns in 2012.

Could Hercule Poirot be headed to this year’s Venice Film Festival?

the scene-stealer in from her last press tour: her grandmother. Sitting with Fallon for “The Tonight Show” Monday, Pugh shared that her family, including her so-called “Granzo Pat,” were in New York with her.

Oscar-winning actress Michelle Yeoh's acting roots can be traced back to Manchester, as the city's Metropolitan university has revealed she graduated with a BA in creative arts in 1983.

Everything Everywhere All at Once” — his first major role in 30 years.“Everything is still so fresh in my mind,” he told Variety in an interview published Wednesday. “And that’s why moving forward I’m still really scared.“Even though I just won an Oscar, I’m still really fearful of what tomorrow brings,” he shared.Quan, an immigrant from Vietnam, had his first acting role in the Harrison Ford-starring movie “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” when he was just 12 years old. The next summer, he played Data in the movie “The Goonies” — but that was it.Until now.“I had a conversation with my agent, and I said, ‘I’m so worried that this is only a one-time thing,'” Quan told Variety about his recent successes.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Fly Me to the Moon,” a work-in-progress from Hong Kong, dominated the prizes presented at the Hong Kong – Asia Film Financing Forum project market. It collected five awards and was invited to continue its journey at Cannes in May. Directed by first-time feature maker Sasha Chuk and produced by the veteran Stanley Kwan, the film tells the tale of a pair of sisters moving from Hunan to Hong Kong in the 1990s. They are faced with an identity crisis, poverty and their father’s drug addiction. It entered the market with $640,000 of its intended $705,000 production budget in place, and more than filled the gap with the prizes announced on Wednesday.

Naman Ramachandran “White Snow,” the latest project from celebrated Indian filmmaker Praveen Morchhale, is his “artistic revolt” against political systems that repress artists. The project has been selected for the 21st Hong Kong — Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF), the project market that operates concurrently with FilMart (March 13-16). Set in and around Kargil, a Muslim-dominated town in the Himalayas, where a war was fought between India and Pakistan in 1999, the film tells the story of Amir, whose short film gets banned due to a complaint from a religious leader, and his social media accounts gets blocked. His elderly mother Fatima sets out on an arduous journey in the Himalayan mountains to show the film in villages, which breaks her mentally and physically and brings her close to madness before she becomes a free soul.

Naman Ramachandran Nepal’s “Bhunte” marks the feature debut of Bikas Neupane, who previously directed two acclaimed shorts. The project has been selected for the 21st Hong Kong — Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF), the project market that operates concurrently with FilMart (March 13-16). The film will follow 12-year-old Bhunte, who lives with his poor father and mother in a small village called Khahare, located in Nepal’s western plains. He has an obsession with soccer, despite his asthma-stricken father’s objection. One day at school, Bhunte vows to buy a soccer ball of his own when his classmates don’t let him play with them.

Naman Ramachandran Taiwan-France film “Salli” marks the feature debut of Taipei-based filmmaker Lien Chien-Hung after several acclaimed shorts and a TV movie. “Salli,” which won the grand prize at the Chinese-language film project matching and co-production platform Golden Horse Film Project Promotion in 2019, is a work-in-progress selection at the Hong Kong — Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF). The Mandarin-, Taiwanese-, English- and French-language film follows a lonely middle-aged chicken farmer Hui-Chun, who doesn’t speak English and develops a romantic relationship through an app with a French man who calls himself Martin. In the online world, Hui-Chun is Salli. Despite everyone calling it a romance scam, she wants to prove that love indeed exists.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent “The Last of Us” has become the most-viewed title ever on HBO’s subscription streaming service in Europe. Warner Bros. Discovery announced on Tuesday that the first season of the nine-episode apocalyptic-drama has smashed HBO’s SVOD European viewer ratings. This result comes after the season one finale set another ratings high in the U.S. on Sunday night, delivering 8.2 million viewers across HBO Max and linear telecasts, based on Nielsen and first party data. The series, which is based on the critically acclaimed video game of the same name developed by Naughty Dog for the PlayStation, has been a hit from the get go. “The Last of Us” is now averaging 30.4 million viewers in the U.S. across its first six episodes, according to HBO, with the first episode approaching 40 million viewers in the U.S. Outside of the U.S.. The show is now also the most-watched show ever on HBO Max in Latin America.

Naman Ramachandran The writing team of Iran’s Jafar Panahi and Nader Saeivar, who won best screenplay at Cannes for “3 Faces” (2018) directed by Panahi, have reunited for “The Witness.” To be directed by Saeivar, the project has been selected for the 21st Hong Kong – Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF), the project market that operates concurrently with FilMart (March 13-16). Saeivar made his feature debut with “The Alien” (2020), which was a Berlinale selection and won prizes at the Beijing, Hong Kong, Duhok, Taormina and International Crime and Punishment film festivals. Saeivar’s sophomore feature, “No End,” debuted at Busan in 2022 and won him best director at Goa and a brace of awards at Vesoul recently.

Naman Ramachandran Amazon’s Prime Video streaming service has acquired Makbul Mubarak’s award-winning debut feature, “Autobiography,” for the Southeast Asian region. The film, which is being sold by Alpha Violet, follows young Rakib (Kevin Ardilova), whose father is in prison and whose brother works abroad. He works as the housekeeper in a mansion in a rural Indonesian town belonging to retired general Purna (Arswendy Bening Swara). Purna returns to the town to start his mayoral election campaign and Rakib, whose clan has worked for the general’s family for centuries, serves as his assistant. An act of vandalism during the campaign triggers an escalating chain of violence.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “We need more love stories, even if they have their ups and downs,” says Hong Kong-based producer Cora Yim, who is behind the Hong Kong – Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF) in-development project “The Marriage Drive.” HAF runs takes place alongside the FilMart rights market.  The film is a simple-to-describe idea that writer-director Lawrence Kan has been kicking around and developing for some six years. The story involves a middle-class professional couple — he’s in the legal sector, she’s in finance — and tracks their childless, but not loveless, marriage over a period of 10 years from marriage to divorce.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Chinese director Zhang Hanyi takes an unexpected turn with his latest feature film effort, “The Walking Bird,” which makes its appearance as an in-development project at the Hong Kong – Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF), which takes place alongside the FilMart rights market.  His previous film, 2017’s “Dragonfly Eyes,” was one of the most unusual and stylish films of the year from anywhere in the world. It told a disturbing (fictional) narrative through extraordinary found-footage obtained from hundreds of real-world CCTV cameras, and won the FIPRESCI and Ecumenical Jury prizes at the Locarno Festival that year.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Work-in-progress film project “The Remnant” is both a spotlight on those who feel powerless and also a very Hong Kong example of elements of the city pulling themselves up. “The Remnant” is one of the projects in the Hong Kong – Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF) unspooling March 13-15 alongside Hong Kong’s Filmart market. It tells the story of a former gangster who, upon his release from prison, sets up a laundry in an anonymous district and lives a quiet life. After property developers try to grab a rundown building, young gangsters try to throw people out of the building, drug addicts cause trouble and the old-timer heeds his neighbors’ calls and fights back.

Michelle Yeoh made history as the first Asian woman to win Best Actress at the Academy Awards. It’s a triumphant and moving moment for the thesp who killed in her role as a time-traveling Chinese-American laundromat owner navigating an IRS audit and complex relationships with her husband and daughter in Everything Everywhere All At Once. It was her first Oscar nomination.