‘White Plastic Sky’ Review: Dystopian Animated Feature from Hungary Imagines a Future Where Our Bodies No Longer Belong To Us [Berlin]

EXCLUSIVE: Cinema Guild has nabbed North American rights to the feature doc Our Body directed by Venice prize winner Claire Simon (The Competition), which premiered to critical acclaim at last month’s Berlin Film Festival before touching down stateside at MoMA’s Doc Fortnight as well as True/False. Pic is slated for release in theaters later this year.

K.J. Yossman Mercury Studios, the production company behind recent Abbey Road Studios doc “If These Walls Could Sing,” have unveiled their new feature, about composer Felix Mendelssohn’s genius sister Fanny. Although Felix, who is best known for writing “The Wedding March,” is still world-renowned 175 years after his death, his sister Fanny was also a prolific musician, composing 450 works – including her own wedding music – before she died in her early 40s. “Fanny: The Other Mendelssohn” tells her story. Sheila Hayman (“Mendelssohn, The Nazis and Me”) directs the doc, which also stars classical artist Isata Kanneh-Mason bringing Mendelssohn’s works to life. Filming has taken place in Berlin, New York, London, Oxford and Buckingham Palace, where Kanneh-Mason played Queen Victoria’s piano.

Tara Karajica In “Narrow Path to Happiness,” Hungarian director Kata Oláh follows a young gay Romani couple from a remote village in Hungary whose dream it is to make a musical based on their lives. Just as the Hungarian government is becoming increasingly authoritarian and hostile toward LGBTQ+ people, they move to the capital. The film played in the International Competition at the Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival this week. The younger protagonist, Lénárd Váradi, who was 16 years old at the time, reached out to the National Film Institute in Hungary, asking for contacts and looking for a producer who would help them apply for a script development grant. Oláh, who also edited the film, says she couldn’t believe it. “I thought somebody was joking! It cannot be real! So, I said, ‘Sure, let’s meet.’ And then, we met and I fell in love with them and said: ‘You know, it doesn’t work like that; we can’t just apply for a script grant. But I will start to follow you and I will make a documentary about how you are trying to achieve your dream.”

Jamie Lee Curtis is spilling the deets on her SAG Awards kiss with Michelle Yeoh. Curtis took home the trophy for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role for her role in “Everything Everywhere All at Once” during the 29th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards last Sunday. Before taking the stage to the delight of the audience, Curtis grabbed her co-star and planted a big kiss on her.

Jamie Lee Curtis is spilling the deets on her SAG Awards kiss with Michelle Yeoh. Curtis took home the trophy for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role for her role in during the 29th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards last Sunday. Before taking the stage to the delight of the audience, Curtis grabbed her co-star and planted a big kiss on her.ET's Will Marfuggi spoke to the  actress at the 2023 Film Independent Spirit Awards Saturday where she said she had «no idea» she kissed Yeoh in what has now become a viral awards season moment.«I didn't know I actually kissed Michelle until they showed me,» Curtis revealed. «I'm telling you, the word shocked — you people, you must think we all think we're gonna win things.

Bill Murray and star Jeannie Berlin set foot on the red carpet of the 2023 SAG Awards holding hands.Murray and Berlin appeared quite close when they arrived together for Sunday's soiree at the Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles. The star wore a black tuxedo with a colorful bow tie, while Berlin sported an all-black suit and shades.Berlin, who portrayed Hadassah Fabelman in the Steven Spielberg film, was there for the film's nomination in the Best Ensemble Cast in a Motion Picture category.

Monday night's episode of , fans got a peek at the drama ahead, including the week where Zach Shallcross and his final three women will get the chance to spend a night totally alone.Before fans look ahead to Fantasy Suites, though, more of the journey is set to unfold. Next week, the group will head to Budapest, Hungary, where Zach will decide which four hometowns he'll visit.«I've got strong feelings for all of these women,» Zach admits to the cameras, before reuniting with Greer, who's been absent since testing positive due to COVID-19.While Gabi reveals that she's ready to introduce the tech executive to her family, Kat and Charity seem to be questioning things, with the former struggling with «uncertainty» and the latter telling Zach, «It's sometimes hard for me to trust that I'm making the right choices.» Something must not go right, as Zach is seen breaking down in dramatic fashion.After Hometowns, when the Fantasy Suites do roll around, Zach drops a bombshell on host Jesse Palmer.«This week is viewed as 'sex week,'» Zach says.

Jamie Lee Curtis is keeping her late parents close to her heart.

Operation Petticoat,” she said. “Which was based on a movie that my father, Tony Curtis (nepo baby) starred in.”“I was fired from that TV show, a year later, and I thought my life was over,” she added.“If I hadn’t been fired from Operation Petticoat, I would have never had the opportunity to audition for a little tiny, no-budget horror movie called Halloween.”In her acceptance speech for her performance in Everything Everywhere All At Once, Jamie Lee Curtis went on: “I’m wearing the wedding ring that my father gave my mother.

Jamie Lee Curtis addressed nepotism in Hollywood after winning a Screen Actors Guild Award on Sunday. "I'm wearing the wedding ring that my father gave my mother," Curtis told the audience as she accepted the award for her role in "Everything Everywhere All At Once." She reminded the room at the Fairmont Century Plaza that her famous parents, Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis, didn't always have the perfect love story. "They hated each other, by the way.

Jessica Kiang The quote that opens Chinese director Liu Jian’s shaggy but amiable new animated feature is instructive. “To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life” is a passage from James Joyce’s “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,” and indeed, Liu was himself at art college as a young man in the early ’90s, when and where “Art College 1994” is, unsurprisingly, set. The quasi-memoir feel to the movie does have its charm — it’s always a kick to see animation techniques applied not to extravagant flights of fancy but to slices of real, ordinary life — but it’s also its chief flaw. In re-creating life out of life, Liu is quite successful; whether he makes it into drama is another question. Like its characters, “Art College 1994” gives the impression of having just too much time on its hands.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian animation auteur Enzo D’Alò – whose globally known works include “The Blue Arrow,” “Lucky and Zorba,” “Momo” and “Opopomoz” – is back with Roddy Doyle adaptation “A Greyhound Of a Girl” launching from the Berlin Film Festival’s Generation Kplus section. “Greyhound of a Girl,” which is D’Alò’s first English-language film, is about four generations of Irish women who embark on a car journey. One of them is dead, one of them is dying, one is driving, and the fourth is twelve-year old Dublin school girl Mary O’Hara. Mary shares her grandmother’s rebel spirit and love of cooking and is bravely dealing with the fact that her granny’s days are drawing to a close.

The Irish director and musician John Carney once made a movie under the working title “Can a Song Save Your Life?,” though the name was changed before it was released. And another batch of Dublin musicians of note ask a similar question in the documentary “Kiss the Future,” which premiered on Sunday at the Berlin International Film Festival and finds U2 using music to aid the occupants of a city under siege, Sarajevo.Directed by Nenad Cicin-Sain, produced by Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and Sarah Anthony and written by Bill S.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent The latest series from Alex de la Iglesia and “Veneno” creators Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo feature at a first-look Next from Spain Showcase which marks a massive step-up in the country’s presence at the Berlinale Series Market. Running Feb. 20-22, the showcase also unveils “Rapa” Season 2, with its first season proving Movistar+’s biggest 2022 bow, and “This Is Not Sweden,” a pioneering Spanish co-production with Scandinavia and Germany.  The Showcase titles are joined by Isaki Lacuesta’s “The Chauffeur’s Son,” a Co-Pro Series project from “Elite’s” Zeta Studios, and “Selftape,” a Filmin Original from Filmax and a Series Market Screening.

Mark Schilling Japan Correspondent One of Japan’s most commercially successful and highly acclaimed animators, Shinkai Makoto has been called a successor to anime titan Miyazaki Hayao. Known for his mix of photo-realistic visuals and gorgeously realized fantasies, Shinkai surpassed the master when his 2016 smash “Your Name” became the highest-earning Japanese film of all time worldwide, beating Miyazaki’s 2001 “Spirited Away.” (That record was later broken by the 2020 anime sensation “Demon Slayer.”) His latest film, “Suzume,” about a teen girl’s quest to halt an apocalypse triggered by the opening of magical doors all over Japan, is also the first Japanese animated feature to screen in the Berlin competition since “Spirited Away” in 2002. Variety sat down with Shinkai to hear his views on his own work and the state of the anime industry.

For almost four years of siege in the 1990s, the city of Sarajevo concussed from shelling, the rumblings of armored vehicles and the repeated pop of sniper fire.

Matt Damon revealed he is in the early stages of research in a documentary project tackling the war in Ukraine at the Berlin Film Festival on Sunday.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Matt Damon revealed he was in the “early stages” on a project about Ukraine during the press conference for “Kiss the Future” at the Berlin Film Festival. Damon is a producer on the documentary which chronicles the struggle of Sarajevo citizens during the Bosnian War. World premiering in the Berlinale Special section, the politically minded documentary is directed by Nenad Cicin-Sain and based on “Fools Rush in: A Memoir” the memoir of Bill Carter, an aid worker. It shows how his determination resulted in the enlistment of the world’s largest rock band, U2, to help shine a light. Fifth Season and WME handling worldwide sales. Asked if he was considering following the footsteps of Sean Penn with “Superpower” with a film on the war in Ukraine, he said he’s “watched as everyone has with horror that unfolded there in the last year,” and although they “don’t have anything on it right now there isn’t any doubt that we’ll be doing.”

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Paris-based Italian director Giacomo Abbruzzese says making the Berlin Film Festival competition cut with his first feature, “Disco Boy,” which toplines German star Franz Rogowski (“Passages,” ”Undine”), is “certainly a dream come true.” But he also points out that his remarkable debut was a long time coming.  A graduate of several film schools, including France’s prestigious Le Fresnoy, Abbruzzese started developing “Disco Boy” in 2013 following an encounter in a French disco with a classical dancer who had been a soldier.