Viaplay Lightens Tone With Latest Original Film By Greenlighting Swedish Romcom ‘R.S.V.P.’

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentMK2 Films has locked major territory deals on Leonor Serraille’s drama “Mother and Son” which world premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival and garnered strong reviews. “Mother and Son” charts the lives of a young African woman, Rose, and two of her four children, Jean and Ernest, who come to France from the Ivory Coast in the 1980s with high ideals.

“ABBA Voyage” is certainly a trip.

75th Cannes Film Festival. And last night at the amfAR gala, there was no disappointment. Held at the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc, the annual benefit is one of Cannes' most exclusive events.

Swedish director Ruben Östlund‘s already won one Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival; in 2017 for “The Square.” And while he’s back in Cannes again this year with “Triangle Of Sadness” to try and win another, he already has his next film in mind, with Woody Harrelson set to star for him again. READ MORE: ‘Triangle Of Sadness’ Review: Ruben Östland’s Falters In This Broad Class Satire [Cannes] In an interview with Variety, Östlund gave details about the new project, including its title and premise.

EXCLUSIVE: Streamer Viaplay is once again looking beyond Scandi Noir by greenlighting a feature about a woman in two timelines, experiencing a messy divorce and difficult teenage years.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentREinvent International Sales has closed major territory sales on “UFO Sweden,” a science fiction movie adventure from Crazy Pictures, a Swedish film collective whose past credits includes the 2018 hit movie “The Unthinkable.”Described as a mix between “X-Files” and “Stranger Things,” “UFO Sweden” is set in a small town and follows a teenage rebel placed in foster care, who suspects that her father is not dead, but has been kidnapped by UFOs. With the help from a UFO association, she is determined to find out the truth.

Naman Ramachandran The European Genre Film Foundation (EGFF), aimed at restoring and raising awareness of classic genre films in Europe and globally, launched at Cannes on Tuesday.The non-profit organization, headquartered in Stockholm, will work with film libraries, archives, rights holders, academics, film festivals and other institutions. It is modelled on Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation and the American Genre Film Archive (AGFA) in the U.S.Among the first projects of the EGFF will be an academic study of historic female genre film makers in Europe and raising funds for a 4K film scanner set-up dedicated to digitizing and restoring genre films and related material that is languishing in archives.

unleashed smoke bombs and unrolled a list of murdered women just before the world premiere of Ali Abbasi’s serial-killer drama “Holy Spider.” And if the demonstration’s cause was only too just, its context was all too uncommon, since these protesters were seemingly there to support, not oppose, Abbasi’s violent and disturbing film. To follow up his Un Certain Regard-winning “Border,” the Iran-born Denmark-based director has burrowed into a chilling bit of true-crime from his native country, reimagining the 2001 case of a religious fanatic who slaughtered 16 young women and using that premise to explore systemic misogyny writ large. He does so by turning the murder thriller upside down, telling a story where the killer’s identify is never in doubt and his intentions are always crystal clear, and where the greatest source of tension comes from wondering whether anyone in power will lift a finger to stop him. The killer in this case is middle-aged construction worker Saeed (Mehdi Bajestani).

Cannes film festival at Palais des Festival. Swedish native Alicia, 33, pulled out all the stops as she cut a glamorous figure in a unique Louis Vuitton ensemble.  Alicia wowed in the gladiator inspired metallic co-ord which featured a floor length skirt and cross front halter neck top from the French luxury fashion house.

Annika Pham In April, Anette Novak took over as CEO at the Swedish Film Institute, a role previously held by the high-profile Anna Serner, champion of gender equality.A trained journalist, Novak was previously head of the Swedish Media Council, a government body responsible for film classification, children and youth protection.Earlier on, she was CEO of RISE Interactive, a Swedish state-owned IT and research institute.How do you feel about attending Cannes with a record number of Swedish films in Official Selection and what does film in general mean to you? I feel excited — three Swedish directors in competition for the Palme d’Or is amazing, and an impressive sign of strength for Swedish and Nordic films! Film is the seventh artform and as such a potential carrier of all the other artforms, thus difficult to catch in a short explanation. It is a medium with enormous impact, capable of transmitting knowledge, insights, raising awareness and empathy, triggering laughs and tears, addressing imbalances, and creating new ones.You’ve just started at the Swedish Film Institute in April. What are the priorities on your ‘to do list’? My top priorities at present is to listen and learn, to pick the brains of all the competences we have in-house in the Swedish Film Institute and within different segments of the Swedish film industry, film heritage sector, film literacy field, academia and beyond.What is your vision to help Swedish film navigate through this turbulent post-pandemic and streaming era? It is way too early to formulate a vision.

Annika Pham Half a dozen Sweden pics and co-prods are set to storm the Croisette, flagships of the solid public support system in place, and fully or partly shot in a foreign language. Headlining the slate are the completion entries “Triangle of Sadness” by former winner Ruben Östlund (“The Square”), shot in the English language, and the Arabic-speaking thriller “Boy From Heaven” by Tarik Saleh (“The Nile Hilton Incident”), set in Cairo.

After his 2017 art-world satire “The Square” scored the Palme d’Or at Cannes, Swedish provocateur Ruben Östlund swaggers back to competition with “Triangle of Sadness,” a mixed-bag of social commentary and gross-out comedy that could only come from a filmmaker with a secured reputation and zero f—s to give. Taking aim at the 1% and shouting “Eat the rich!” with the anger of a sea storm and the subtlety of an exploding toilet, the film is both over-long and under-stuffed, but it nevertheless left Cannes’ notoriously tough crowd doubled over in laughter.Running just under two-and-a-half hours and split up into three chapters, the film lifts as much from Noam Chomsky as from John Waters as it hoses down beauty standards and luxury culture with gallons of projectile vomit.

Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticThe closer you look at the subject of beauty, the uglier it appears. Meanwhile, wealth is obscene from practically every angle. Irreverent Swedish satirist Ruben Östlund gets right up in there, probing the pores of the elitist worlds of supermodels and the mega-rich in “Triangle of Sadness,” which takes its name from a fashion-world term for the deep-V crease that appears between one’s eyebrows with stress or age.

The Swedish Film Institute today launched its annual gender equality report. The survey ‘406 Days’, which looks at gender disparity in the development and production process, demonstrates that the average female-led fiction feature spends over one year longer in development than projects led by male filmmakers.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentKarin af Klintberg is set to direct “The King,” a documentary about the Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf, which SF Studios is co-producing and will be distributing in the Nordics. Af Klintberg is the first journalist to have been granted unique access to follow the King and has been following him through his private and professional life. It’s also the first time that a documentary has been produced about a Swedish king while he is still alive.

In just over a decade, Ruben Östlund has established himself as one of the new Cannes masters, leapfrogging from sidebar to sidebar—2011’s Play debuted in Directors’ Fortnight, 2014’s Force Majeure was selected for Un Certain Regard—before jumping to the Competition, which he won at first strike with 2017’s art-world satire The Square. This year he returns with Triangle of Sadness, starring Harris Dickinson, Charlbi Dean and Woody Harrelson. The Swedish director cheerfully offers to tell Deadline everything—even the ending—but this is a director whose films are less about plot than they are about people, and his latest subject, the fashion world, suggests plenty of food for his dark thoughts.

Netflix Greenlights Swedish Film ‘A Day And A Half’ From ‘Chernobyl’ Star Fares Fares

Lise Pedersen Paris-based international sales company The Party Film Sales has nabbed the rights for Antongiulio Panizzi’s hybrid documentary “The Girl in the Fountain,” a double portrait of icons Anita Ekberg and Monica Bellucci, which opened at the Torino Film Festival last November.The story of an actress devoured by her own icon, the film alternates between archive footage of Ekberg and reenacted scenes by Bellucci, who retraces Ekberg’s weaknesses and choices, inviting the viewer to reflect on what it is like to be an icon, providing a fresh look at femininity, fame and media exposure.The famous scene in Federico Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita,” in which Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg take a midnight dip in the Trevi Fountain, hides a much more chaotic life – that of an actress consumed by her own iconic image, says Panizzi. Speaking to Variety ahead of the Torino premiere, Panizzi said that the iconic scene turned out to be a burden for the actress, who got to experience what Rita Hayworth meant when she said that “they go to bed with Gilda; they wake up with me.”It was the director’s wish to have Bellucci tell the Swedish icon’s story, as he believed she would be the perfect match.

fashion fabulousness to get you through your week? Look no further than the red carpets of Cannes Film Festival 2022, which kicked off on Tuesday and will run until May 28. The event, which was cancelled in 2020 due to Covid and made a partially-masked return in 2021, is back with a bang this year as the red carpet is once again rolled out on the Croisette.

Christopher Vourlias Ukrainian director Olha Zhurba and producer Darya Bassel are teaming up on a documentary about Ukraine’s refugee crisis after their last collaboration, “Outside,” premiered at Copenhagen’s CPH:DOX festival this year.The project, with a working title “Displaced,” is being produced by Bassel’s Kyiv-based Moon Man production outfit in co-production with Germany’s Koberstein Film and Denmark’s Final Cut for Real.Zhurba began filming not long after the Russian invasion on Feb. 24, capturing footage of the thousands of Kyiv residents who had flocked to the capital’s railway station for safety.