Hollywood didn’t have a lot to celebrate during a muted Labor Day holiday weekend, as “Weapons,” now in its fourth weekend of release, took the top spot, and “Jaws,” a 50-year-old blockbuster, beat out two new films, “Caught Stealing” and “The Roses,” that failed to generate much heat.

“Weapons,” which lost its No. 1 position last weekend to Netflix’s “Kpop Demon Hunters,” reclaimed its crown, earning an estimated $12.8 million over the four-day holiday. So far, the horror hit has earned $135 million domestically and $235.2 million globally. That’s an impressive result considering it only cost $38 million to produce. It extends a winning streak for Warner Bros., which has recently fielded successes like “A Minecraft Movie,” “Sinners,” “Final Destination Bloodlines,” “F1: The Movie” (which the studio distributed for Apple) and “Superman.” It’s a remarkable comeback for the studio’s chiefs Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy, who were on the...

A half a century later, Steven Spielberg’s Jaws still has plenty of bite as the troubled 2025 summer season comes to a close.

The original summer blockbuster, celebrating its 50th anniversary, is opening in second place at the four-day Labor Day box office office behind Zach Cregger’s August sleeper hit Weapons, which remains in first place for the fourth weekend in a row with an estimated four-day gross of $12.4 million and $10.2 million for the three-day weekend proper. The horror pic, yet another win for Warner Bros. and New Line, looks to finish Monday with a global tally of $234.6 million.

Booked in 1,975 cinemas, Jaws is looking at a four-day haul of $9.8 million — rival studios show it coming in north of $10 million — and $8.1 million for the three from 1,975 cinemas. Either way, that’s enough to swim past Darren Aronofsky‘s new movie starring Austin Butler and Zoë Kravitz, as well as Searchlight’s The Roses.

Amanda Seyfried was overcome with emotion as her new film, “The Testament of Ann Lee,” directed by Mona Fastvold, shook Venice up with a 15-minute ovation – topping “Frankenstein” as the longest of the festival so far

Co-writer Brady Corbet worked the crowd while a visibly emotional Seyfried pumped her fists in the air as the cheers and applause stretched into its seventh minute. Fastvold, the co-writer of last year’s Silver Lion “The Brutalist” and three-time Oscar winner, beamed at the crowd, overwhelmed by the booming reception. By minute eight, Seyfried whispered to nobody in particular, “What are we supposed to be doing now?”

Most of the crowd in the orchestra dwindled after 10 minutes in, though the packed audience members in the balcony — including members of the production and potential buyers — continued to clap. Corbet and Fastvold made their exit before the applause fully dissipated.

“I think people quite liked it,...

In the opening scene of “The Smashing Machine,” Benny Safdie’s bracing, clear-eyed, and laceratingly humane sports biopic, we see grainy staged video footage of Mark Kerr (Dwayne Johnson), the mixed martial arts and Ultimate Fighting Championship star, in his very first amateur bout. Kerr originally won notoriety as a wrestler, and in case anyone has wandered into the movie thinking that it might be about “fake wrestling,” this fight will dispel that delusion: It ends with Kerr crouching on top of his opponent, assaulting him with one merciless bare-knuckle punch after another, reducing his face to a bloody pulp.

As all of this is happening, we hear Kerr’s voice on the soundtrack — it’s a voice that’s disarmingly gentle and sweet — describing, to an interviewer, the high he gets when he’s destroying his opponent in the ring and he can feel that turning-point moment when the other fighter crumples and submits.

Headlining action-movie idol and wrestler Dwayne Johnson drops “The Rock” from his identity in all senses to reveal a heartfelt core in Benny Safdie’s nimbly executed and oddly endearing “The Smashing Machine.” Johnson, rarely considered a quote-unquote serious actor but most certainly a bona fide movie star thanks to the “Fast and the Furious” films and an abundance of popcorn outings often dismissed by critics, emotionally strips down to play pioneering Mma fighter Mark Kerr in the hole of painkiller addiction while trying to mount a post-rehab comeback.

Safdie’s first solo-directed feature after helming episodes of TV’s “The Curse” and creatively breaking up with his brother Josh sounds like the stuff of awards-season bait: An actor going out of his range to play a tortured athletic soul, physically transformed in a steroidal, vein-bulged-muscles sense, on the rocky path to redemption.

But “The Smashing Machine” is not that,...

Multiple top indie distributors have acquired Maryam Touzani’s crowdpleaser “Calle Malaga,” following its premiere in Venice Film Festival’s Spotlight section. The film, which stars Carmen Maura, will have its North American premiere at Toronto Film Festival next week.

“Calle Malaga” will be distributed in France (Ad Vitam), Benelux (Cinéart), Spain (Caramel), Germany (Pandora), Italy (Movies Inspired), Australia and New Zealand (Potential), Switzerland (Filmcoopi), Austria (Panda), Denmark (Camera Film), Sweden (Folkets Bio), Norway (Selmer Media), Finland (Future Film), Greece (Danaos), Hungary (Cirko) and Portugal (Leopardo Filmes).

It is the third collaboration between the Moroccan filmmaker and sales agency Films Boutique, and follows the theatrical success of her previous film, “The Blue Caftan.”

“Calle Malaga” centers on Maria Angeles, a 79-year-old Spanish woman, who lives alone in Tangier, Morocco, and enjoys her daily routine. However, her life is turned upside down when her daughter arrives from Madrid to sell the...

Riz Ahmed thinks Shakespearean scholars don’t get what makes Hamlet tick. The Danish prince, he

says, isn’t on the verge of suicide in his “To be or not to be” soliloquy — he’s trying to man up.

“It’s not ‘Should I end it all?’” says Ahmed, who speaks the iconic lines in a new “Hamlet” that debuted at the Telluride Film Festival and will screen at the Toronto Film Festival. “It’s about ‘Are we willing to live under injustice? Do you fight or do you give up?’”

Nor does Ahmed accept the usual portrayal of Hamlet as a man plagued by indecision. On-screen,

his Hamlet is a coiled ball of outrage waiting for the right moment to avenge his father. “He’s continuously active,” Ahmed says. “He’s investigating, strategizing, gathering evidence while he psyches himself up to do the unthinkable.”

This adaptation of “Hamlet” breaks with tradition in other ways,...

Irene Shubik's BBC horror anthology, "Out of the Unknown," is nothing short of groundbreaking. The series, which ran from 1965 to 1971, celebrates science fiction as a genre while embracing the humanity inherent in stories that evoke awe or terror on a grand scale. Series creator Shubik understood that few genres could provide commentary on topical issues like sci-fi, as even the most outlandish genre plots could serve as an allegory for something more pressing and immediate. What's more, our relationship with technology is always on the cusp of change — a theme that "Out of the Unknown" captures by alternating between taut drama and playful satire, brought to life with stories...

By the age of 30, Canadian filmmaker Daniel Roher had won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature for “Navalny.” His next documentary, “Blink,” premiered at Telluride last year. Wasting little time, he returns to the Colorado Rockies one year later with “Tuner,” but “this one feels a little different,” he told a sold-out crowd Saturday, before its world premiere at the fest’s Galaxy theater. He’s referring to his pivot into narrative feature filmmaking, joining a host of his documentarian contemporaries making this same move of late — including Joshua Oppenheimer whose musical “The End” also played Telluride last year.

“Tuner” continues Leo Woodall’s own move into leading man territory, after “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy” earlier this year. The Brit broke out as the conflicted rent boy in Season 2 of “The White Lotus,” and has also starred in recent TV series “One Day” and “Prime Target.” Here he plays Niki,...

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The 1980s were a sea of change for children's television, as the era's deregulatory practices even trickled down to cartoons. During this decade, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) took a more lax attitude to limiting advertisements in children's TV. Since then, there have been plenty of cartoons that are toy commercials first and foremost, with one of the premier and longest lasting examples being that of "The Transformers."

In-universe, these shapeshifting robots came from the planet Cybertron. The conflict between the heroic Autobots and evil Decepticons had drained their world of all its resources, so they came to Earth to...

Italy’s Fondazione Prada has officially launched its new film fund, which has an annual €1.5m to back 10-12 independent films.

First announced in Cannes in May by the fashion brand’s cultural foundation, the Fondazione Prada Film Fund set out its investment criteria and application deadlines at the Venice Film Festival today (September 1).

Speaking to Screen ahead of the launch, the head of the film fund Paolo Moretti said applications are open to “a first time filmmaker or a very experienced master who maybe wants to try something new or something visionary. We don’t want to put boundaries on this,...

While there were slasher movies before, no movie catapulted the horror sub-genre into the Hollywood mainstream more prominently than "Halloween." Created by filmmaker John Carpenter and co-writer and producer Debra Hill, the movie largely focuses on masked serial killer Michael Myers. The original 1978 film was an enormous success, popularizing slashers and kicking off its own multimedia franchise, including numerous sequels. Since then, the movie series has featured multiple reboots and timelines, repositioning the franchise for new generations.

Like virtually every horror franchise, "Halloween" has wildly diverged in its level of quality over the years, with triumphant highs and embarrassing lows. There are some genuine horror classics in this series, along...

As a massive fan of one of the greatest sitcoms ever made, who watched its seven seasons numerous times, I feel that Rob Lowe's character, Chris "Literally" Traeger, has been a little overlooked over the years. That's only possible because the sitcom featured so many lovable and memorable goofballs (Ron Swanson!) that it was kind of hard to stand out for any character that arrived later in the series and wasn't part of the core cast from the get-go. Lowe's health-obsessed Traeger first turned up at the end of season 2, as an auditor sent from Indianapolis (along with Adam Scott's Ben Wyatt) to review Pawnee's Parks and Recreation department,...

Entriesforthe2026Oscar forbest international feature areunderway, andScreenisprofilingeachtitle onthispage.

The 98th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 15, 2026 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

Aninternational feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between October 1, 2024, and September 30, 2025. The deadline for submissions to the Academyis October 1, 2025.

Ashortlistof 15finalistsisscheduledtobeannouncedonDecember 16, 2025, with the final five nominees announced on January 22, 2026.

The2024 awards saw 89 submissionswiththefivenominatedfilmscomprising Denmark’sThe Girl With The Needle,...

If you can’t be in Venice this year, Variety is bringing Venice to you. We’re publishing daily digital editions, running Aug. 29 – Sept. 2, including all the latest news, reviews and star-studded red carpet coverage from the Lido.

To catch up on Day 4, please click below.

More from Variety'The Testament of Ann Lee' Review: Amanda Seyfried Shakes, Battles and Extols in an Arresting Religious BiopicGreek Director Evi Kalogiropoulou Brings Genre-Bending, Dystopian, Female-Empowerment Debut 'Gorgonà' to Venice Critics' WeekGuillermo del Toro Praises Kim Novak as 'Vertigo' Star Receives Venice Career Golden Lion: 'She Was Capable of Projecting Frailty, Power, Mystery'...

The first season of "One Tree Hill" is arguably the best teen drama ever made. It's the perfect confluence of high school melodrama, a small town setting, young hot actors, and writing perfectly tailored to the sensibilities of the angsty teen audiences that flocked to the show. In many ways, it was the proto-"The Summer I Turned Pretty" (which is now coming to an end), featuring two brothers who compete for everything, from basketball to winning the heart of a sensitive and conflicted girl. An entire generation grew up on "One Tree Hill," and while it quickly transformed into a sillier series as it went on, that first season...

Exclusive: BFI Distribution has picked up UK filmmakers Christopher Petitand Emma Matthews’s International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) world premiere documentary D Is For Distance for UK-Ireland release.

A theatrical release is planned for spring 2026.

The documentary is a film essay montage of contemporary footage, archive and cinema history, documenting how Petit and Matthews’ son’s seemingly incurable and debilitating rare form of epilepsy – which wiped out the memory of his childhood – became representative of the woes of the world and how he triumphed against adversity. UK actor Jodhi May narrates.

It was produced by Mika Taanila and Jussi Eerola ofElokuvayhtiö Testifilmi,...

UK-Ireland top five, August 29-31 Rank Film (origin) Distributor August29-31 Total Week 1 The Roses (UK-us)

Disney £2.2m £2.2m 1 2 Jaws (US) Universal £1.1m £1.1m 1 3 Weapons (US)

Warner Bros £838,351 £10.4m 4 4 The Bad Guys 2 (US) Universal £807,222 £11.9m 6 5 Freakier Friday (US)

Disney £744,302 £7.4m 4

Gbp to Usd conversion rate: 1.35

Disney’s The Roses was the pick of the bunch this weekend at the UK-Ireland box office, opening to £2.2m from 694 sites, for a location average of £3,170.

Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman play a couple whose loving marriage takes a nosedive when their gender normative roles are reversed. Jay Roach directs the Searchlight comedy, with further cast including Andy Samberg,...

Those of us who first understood Shakerism not as a religious movement but as a mail-order furniture company — like a particularly elegant, artisanal version of Ikea — have much to learn from “The Testament of Ann Lee,” and a bit to unlearn too. Ascetic simplicity, the quality most conventionally associated with the vanishing Christian sect, is not exactly the order of the day in director Mona Fastvold’s blazingly ambitious and busy portrait of its founding mother, which oscillates dynamically between the modes of intrepid New World epic and expressionistic musical.

If the results are as bracingly eccentric as that description promises, they’re also less ironic than you might think. Fastvold and her co-writer/creative partner Brady Corbet may maintain a cool, analytical distance in their study of an extreme religious movement founded on challenging principles of celibacy and utopian equality, but “The Testament of Ann Lee” isn’t a travesty or a mockery.

Venice film festival

Amanda Seyfried plays the 18th-century missionary who took her message to the New World, in Mona Fastvold’s elusive film

‘Our ordeal is worth it!” This is the cry of one of the faithful in Mona Fastvold’s movie, co-written with her partner Brady Corbet, with whom she co-wrote The Brutalist. It is a vehement, fervent, striking but sometimes baffling drama about the historical figure of Ann Lee, who endured religious persecution in 18th-century England as leader of the fundamentalist Shaker movement.

As the embodiment of Christ’s second coming, Lee took her radical message to the New World and in pre-revolutionary America founded an enduring community of souls,...

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"Stranger Things" will finally be releasing its fifth and final season at the end of 2025. It's debatable whether it's one of the best TV shows of the last decade, but it's absolutely one of the most important. It's a premier series for both the Netflix boom and interminable '80s nostalgia. (At least "Stranger Things" got Gen Z to love Kate Bush.)

Naturally, other streaming services have tried to copy the success of "Stranger Things" — one of those attempts was the short-lived "Paper Girls" on Prime Video. Now, granted, "Paper Girls" is based on a comic by writer Brian K. Vaughan and artist Cliff Chiang.

Hot on the heels of “The Brutalist,” Mona Fastvold and Brady Corbet have returned with another sweeping historical epic about a European iconoclast who comes to America in order to build a new kind of church. Even more excitingly, “The Testament of Ann Lee” — a speculative, feverish, and altogether rapturous biopic about the Mancunian preacher who founded the Shakers and believed herself to be the female incarnation of Christ on Earth — addresses the most glaring problem with last year’s story about the fictional architect László Tóth: It wasn’t a musical.

“The Testament of Ann Lee” isn’t exactly a musical either, to be fair. Sure, its characters are prone to singing and dancing when the spirit grabs them (a divinely heightened play on the “Quaking Shakers’” full-body approach to religious devotion), but the film’s euphoric “movements” cleave a lot closer to prayers than to traditional numbers.

It's no secret that ticket sales are still down. The first quarter of 2025 was largely dismal at the box office, and the blockbuster season wasn't much better. A new superhero cinematic universe launched with the release of James Gunn's "Superman," but that film made about $600 million, which, while impressive, did not denote a supra-hit on the level of pre-2019 blockbusters. Marvel struggles, too, with its three 2025 films also making $600 million or less. The insubstantial car racing flick "F1" similarly made about $600 million, which wasn't much, given its overwhelming budget.

Anecdotal evidence also indicates a general dissatisfaction with the 2020s theatrical experience. You might have heard your friends complain about rowdy crowds,...

Dwayne Johnson said The Smashing Machinehas offered him the opportunity to stop “chasing box office” and break out of being “pigeonholed” into blockbuster roles.

The actor was speaking at the press conference for Benny Safdie’s Venice Competition title, in which Johnson stars alongside Emily Blunt.

“The three of us have talked about, when you’re in Hollywood, it had become about box office,” said Johnson. “And you chase the box office, and the box office can be very loud and it can become very resounding and it can push you into a category and into a corner. This is...

Though his role in the new A24 film “The Smashing Machine,” directed by Benny Safdie, strikes somewhat familiar territory, with the WWE superstar playing early UFC champion Mark Kerr, actor Dwayne Johnson revealed that taking the project on required the encouragement of his co-star Emily Blunt.

“There was this voice inside of me; the little voice said, ‘Well, what if? What if I could do more, and I want to do more, and what does that look like?’ And from the beginning, from the time we worked on ‘Jungle Cruise’ together, she really encouraged and believed in me, and said, ‘You know, there’s a place that you can put all this stuff that you have gone through as a kid . . . that place is what you love to do, which is acting. And you have me, let’s do this together,’” said Johnson during the film’s press conference at the 82nd Venice Film Festival.

Rising Greek filmmaker Evi Kalogiropoulou brings her long-awaited feature debut, “Gorgonà,” to the Venice Film Festival this week, where the movie — a genre-defying female-empowerment story set in a dystopian, male-dominated future — has its world premiere in Critics’ Week.

The film, which was awarded at the Rotterdam Film Festival’s CineMart and the Cannes Cinefondation’s Atelier while in development, follows on the heels of the director’s buzzy short films “Motorway 65,” which played in competition in Cannes in 2021, and “On Xerxes’ Throne,” a Cannes Critics’ Week prizewinner one year later.

Written by Kalogiropoulou and Louise Groult, it’s produced by Amanda Livanou for Greece’s Neda Film, in co-production with Bertrand Gore and Nathalie Mesuret at Blue Monday Productions, Alexandre Perrier and François-Pierre Clavel at Kidam, Fenia Cossovitsa for Blonde, Onassis Culture, Ert and Authorwave. Playtime is handling world sales.

“Gorgonà” takes place in a small, impoverished city-state dominated by...

Exclusive: The Writers Lab UK and Europe has unveiled its selection of 10 participants for its 2025 development programme, that supports women and non-binary writers over the age of 40.

Selected writers are based in Scotland, England, Wales, Ireland and Austria.

Industry mentors will work one on one with writers to hone their projects. Director Destiny Ekaragha, screenwriter Ursula Rani Sarma, producer Rienkje Attoh, writer Karen Cogan, director Jessica Swale, writer-director Aislinn Clarke and writer-producer Susan Soon He Stanton join previously announced mentors, filmmaker Sally El Hosaini and writer-director-producer Joy Gharoro-Akpojotor.

The lab commences on September 3 and is produced by Untamed Stories’ Julia Berg...

“Vertigo” star Kim Novak was honored with a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement on Monday at the Venice Film Festival, where the reclusive Hollywood diva made her first public appearance in decades since leaving the limelight in the mid 1960s.

She was welcomed with a warm protracted ovation before Guillermo del Toro took the stage to deliver a glowing tribute.

Novak, 92, became the world’s top box office draw during the late ‘50s and early ‘60s thanks to films now considered classics such as Joshua Logan’s “Picnic” (1955), Otto Preminger’s “The Man with the Golden Arm” (1955), George Sidney’s Pal Joey (1957) and, of course, Alfred Hitchock’s “Vertigo” (1958), in which she plays dual characters in the role of her lifetime.

After listing the top directors Novak worked with, del Toro singled out the single aspects of her career that struck him the most: “Most impressive is the fact that...

The fourth and final season of the reimagined "Battlestar Galactica" was the show's most divisive. Perhaps that was unavoidable given how "Galactica" had threaded long-running mysteries and philosophical questions throughout its run. When you keep the audience guessing for years, the resolutions can't satisfy them all.

The finale of "Battlestar Galactica," the three-part episode "Daybreak," leaves nothing to chance and no door unclosed. It gives answers and you can take them or leave them — there is an Earth, the God whispered about throughout the show is real (but remains unseen), and the series is set thousands of years in the past. The humans and humanoid Cylons are, collectively, the ancestors of modern mankind.

If AI is coming for filmmakers, don’t tell that to director Damien Hauser.

In his latest feature, “Memory of Princess Mumbi,” which premieres in the Venice Days sidebar of the Venice Film Festival, the young Swiss Kenyan filmmaker imagines a retro-futuristic Africa set in the aftermath of a cataclysmic war, creating a rich visual tapestry that makes ample use of artificial intelligence.

The result — a playful, bittersweet meta-fiction that is part love story, part mockumentary — is a film that Hauser readily admits he could have never made without AI, even as he set out to “make a movie that AI could never make,” the director tells Variety.

“Memory of Princess Mumbi” is set in 2093, as a young documentary filmmaker, Kuve (Abraham Joseph), travels to the kingdom of Umata to document the aftermath of the great war. There he meets Mumbi (Shandra Apondi), a free-spirited actress who challenges him to...

The Media Production & Technology Show (Mpts)and Future Media Conferences have partnered to launch a European version of the Post Production World Conference.

Post Production World Conference Europe (Ppw Europe) will form part of the line-up at Mpts 2026, which runs fromMay 13-14 next year atLondon’s Olympia Grand Hall.

The Post Production World Conference has been running for over two decades in the US, becoming aworld-renowned training conference for media and entertainment professionals. This is the first time it will be available outside of the US.

Ppw Europewill be home to dozens of hands-on training sessions across the full two days in multiple breakout rooms.

Mona Fastvold and Amanda Seyfried discussed their efforts to change a “male-dominated” industry and promote “female leadership” through Venice Competition title The Testament Of Ann Lee.

“It’s interesting talking about female leadership right now,” said Fastvold, opening the press conference for the film ahead of its world premiere this afternoon in Venice.

“Trying to create a piece of art in a business that’s very male-dominated,I’m always trying to create a community on set that is a bit different, and to create a culture that is nurturing, that is kind, that has a lot of empathy for everyone on my sets.

China’s 2025 summer box office season generated RMB11.97 billion ($1.67 billion), up 2.7% from last year, with admissions reaching 321 million — the second-highest in five years, according to a new report from Maoyan Research Institute.

The average ticket price dropped to $5.04, the second lowest over the period, driven by reduced distribution fees and ticket subsidy campaigns. The report notes that flexible pricing helped lift audience enthusiasm, with occupancy rates ranking second-highest among the past five summer seasons.

Two films crossed the RMB1 billion ($140 million) mark, on par with 2024, while the number of titles grossing between RMB500 million and Rmb 1 billion increased. Local films slightly increased their market share, while imported films continued a two-year recovery. The top three releases accounted for nearly half of the season’s revenue, underscoring what analysts call the “Matthew Effect” — a dynamic where a few blockbusters capture a disproportionate share of the market, leaving smaller titles with less visibility.

Venice film festival

An intensely personal interview of the 92-year-old Hollywood star delivers showstopping moments for fans of the golden age of movies

At 92 years old, Hollywood movie star Kim Novak – legendary of course for her doppelganger starring role in Hitchcock’s Vertigo – is a vivid and, in fact, yearningly romantic and demanding presence in this gallant, cinephile documentary-interview filmed by director and Novak superfan Alexandre O Philippe. She is one of the very few golden age stars still with us, and maybe the title of this film is a playful pun: at the very apex of Hollywood history, perhaps Novak feels dizzy looking down from her mythic height.

Philippe...

Sarah-Jane Potts speaks volumes without saying a word as a bereaved, selectively mute woman travelling alone who meets a talkative Irishman

Is it possible to recover after the worst imaginable tragedy? Or are there some things that you just can’t get over? These are the themes of this muted British drama about raw grief from actor turned director Joseph Millson. It stars Sarah-Jane Potts as Anne, a woman in her 40s travelling alone in Lanzarote. Dressed head to toe in black, and unsmiling, Anne stands out from the other holidaymakers. And she doesn’t talk; there is a page in the notebook she uses to communicate with the words: “I’m not deaf.

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You might know Vanessa Kirby for her roles as Princess Margaret on "The Crown," the White Widow in the "Mission: Impossible" franchise, or, most recently, her turn as the Invisible Woman/Sue Storm in "The Fantastic Four: First Steps."

In truth, however, Kirby has been acting since 2010, having gotten her start via supporting roles in British TV and theatre. Her last television role before her breakout work on "The Crown" was in the 2015 period piece horror/crime series, "The Frankenstein Chronicles." But if you think you already know what the show is about based on its title, guess again.

Created...

“Kim Novak’s Vertigo” has one of the more heartwarming and, frankly, historically significant, codas to a film-focused documentary in recent memory. It’s such a special moment that it mostly justifies the way the film has been assembled before it.

Until then, it’s quite an uneven and unstructured cinematic portrait, and one of the weaker efforts from its director Alexandre O. Philippe. The Swiss-born cinephile has become a kind of cross between Laurent Bouzereau and Mark Cousins with his succession of documentaries about iconic films and film subjects.

Novak is certainly a worthy subject for a documentary. She’s not only the last survivor of the film that many consider the greatest ever made, Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo,” but she is the nexus of obsession in a film about obsession that has inspired so much obsession in the 67 years since its release itself. At 92, her star power is as grand and magnificent as ever.

Mona Fastvold’s “The Testament of Ann Lee” tells the story, through hymnal music and choreography, of the founding leader of the Shakers as she attempts to create an ecstatic utopia. Fastvold and her husband, producer/co-writer Brady Corbet, shot the Venice competition premiere in 2024 in Hungary again after “The Brutalist.”

Like the Corbet-directed Oscar-winning film from last year, the filmmakers also shot “The Testament of Ann Lee” on a budget and on film cameras. At one point, they took the cast and crew aboard a fully operational 18th-century ship they found in Sweden, as Ann Lee (Amanda Seyfried) transports her followers from pre-industrial Manchester, England to colonial rural America.

Seyfried, Fastvold, Corbet, composer Daniel Blumberg (Oscar winner for “The Brutalist”), choreographer Celia Rowlson-Hall (“Vox Lux”), producer Andrew Morrison, and more for the film convened at the Venice Film Festival press conference Monday afternoon ahead of its premiere at the Sala Grande.

Dwayne Johnson takes on his most dramatic role yet in Benny Safdie’s wrestling biopic “The Smashing Machine,” playing UFC champion Mark Kerr. At the film’s Venice Film Festival press conference, the action star revealed that he’s been wanting to expand his repertoire for a while now. “Machine” screens in competition at the fest.

“I have, for a long time, wanted this,” Johnson said, sitting alongside director Safdie and co-star Emily Blunt, who plays Kerr’s girlfriend and then wife, Dawn Staples (they divorced in 2015). “The three of us have talked for a very long time about, when you’re in Hollywood — as we all know, it had become about box office. And you chase the box office, and the box office can be very loud and it can become very resounding and it can push you into a category and into a corner. This is your lane...

Filmmakers Mona Fastvold and Brady Corbet got candid about the challenges of independent cinema while at the Venice Film Festival with their sweeping musical drama “The Testament of Ann Lee.” Their latest collaboration — directed by Fastvold, who co-wrote the script with Corbet — explores the founding leader of the Shakers, a radical religious movement known for worshipping through ecstatic song and movement. It’s a focus on this lesser-known chapter of American history, which means the movie wasn’t the most obvious sell to financiers.

“It was quite a feat,” said Corbet at the official press conference, returning with Fastvold to Venice just a year after 2024’s award season darling “The Brutalist.” “As you can imagine, the elevator pitch for ‘Shaker musical’ wasn’t the easiest to get off the ground.”

Producer Andrew Morrison, who worked with the couple on “The Brutalist” and was responsible for cobbling together the lean $10 million price tag for “Ann Lee,...

Taiwan’s Golden Horse Film Project Promotion has unveiled its most international lineup to date, revealing film and series projects that underscore the growing appetite for cross-border collaborations in Asian cinema.

The 2025 selection comprises 50 film projects — 38 new developments (Fpp) and 12 works-in-progress (Wip) — plus 14 series projects announced earlier. Among the projects: 22 international co-productions that span territories from Japan and South Korea to Malaysia, France and the U.K., setting a new record for the event.

The slate reflects contemporary trends while showcasing returning Golden Horse Award winners alongside emerging voices exploring themes from LGBTQ+ identity to Indigenous culture, AI technology and cross-generational family dynamics.

Several Golden Horse veterans return with new projects. Wei Te-sheng, director of “Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale,” presents “Mount Sancha,” described as a rescue mission examining history and ethnic conflicts.

Geng Jun, helmer of “Bel Ami,” teams with Golden Horse Best Actor winner Zhang Zhiyong for dark comedy “Born After,...

Marrakech International Film Festival has restructured its industry strand under the banner of Atlas Programs and is launching an event dedicated to distribution for its 2025 edition, which runs from November 28-December 6.

Atlas Programs encompasses all four of the festival’s initiatives, including Atlas Workshops, which first launched in 2018 and is aimed at supporting projects from Moroccan, Arab and African filmmakers and producers.

The festival has also added Atlas Distribution Meetings, a four-day event that presents African and Arab films in post-production to 60 international distribution professionals.

Atlas Station, an initiative for Moroccan filmmakers, will also exist under the Programs banner and...

The 69th BFI London Film Festival has unveiled an A-list roster of filmmakers set to participate in this year’s Screen Talks program.

Three-time Academy Award winner Daniel Day-Lewis will sit down for a conversation, marking a rare public appearance for the reclusive actor. Day-Lewis, whose acclaimed filmography includes “There Will Be Blood,” “Lincoln” and “Phantom Thread,” remains the only performer to claim three best actor Oscars. His new film, “Anemone,” is premiering at the New York Film Festival.

Greek auteur Yorgos Lanthimos, fresh off “Bugonia,” which premiered at the Venice Film Festival, will also participate in the program. Since his 2009 breakthrough “Dogtooth,” Lanthimos has carved out one of the most distinctive paths in contemporary cinema.

Richard Linklater, the filmmaker behind “Boyhood,” “Dazed and Confused” and the “Before” trilogy, will participate in the conversation series. His diverse filmography spans experimental works like “Slacker” and “Waking Life” to comedies including “School of Rock” and “Hit Man.

Andrew Lloyd Webber is a divisive figure amongst theatergoers. There is an entire generation that considers him the (admittedly tuneful) devil incarnate, a simplistic composer of earworm-y tunes that occupy the space of empty-minded musicals. "Jesus Christ Superstar" and "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" were excused during Broadway's weird Christian revival in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but Webber hit his creative peak with "Evita." Historically and politically, it's a muddled affair, but Webber and lyricist Tim Rice rouse the audience with one showstopper after another before delivering one of the most astonishing musical numbers in the genre's history with "Don't Cry for Me Argentina."

What do you...

Acolytes of Argentine auteur Lucrecia Martel are accustomed to patience. In 25 years she’s made just five features, of which the latest, the long-gestating “Landmarks,” is her first foray into nonfiction filmmaking. A slow-burning, increasingly incensed unraveling of a horrific murder case underpinned by colonialist privilege and prejudice, it too demands patience of its viewers — though it rewards them with steadily rising emotional impact and a long view of Latin American history that transcends any true-crime trappings. Relative to Martel’s more formally radical fiction films, this is a straightforwardly constructed work, but a disciplined, clear-eyed one. Clearly a passion project for the director, it nonetheless avoids sentimentality or heated rhetoric on a high-stakes subject.

Martel’s name guarantees general arthouse exposure for a documentary that will be ubiquitous on the festival circuit following its out-of-competition premiere at Venice, with program slots in Toronto, New York and San Sebastian lined up,...

The world premiere of Daniel Hendler’s 27 Nights will open the 73rd edition of the San Sebastian International Film Festival (Ssiff) on September 19.

The Uruguayan filmmaker also stars in the feature which is playing in competition. The story follows an 80-year-old millionaire forced into a psychiatric ward by her daughters. It is Hendler’s second film screening at Ssiff this year, alongsideA Loose End in Horizontes Latinos, which won the Wip Latam Industry Award at the festival in 2024.

Closing on September 27 is Kasia Adamik’s thriller Winter Of The Crow, playing out of competition. Set in Poland during the Cold War,...

Lav Diaz’s “Magellan” has been selected as the Philippines’ submission for the best international feature film category at the 98th Academy Awards, the Film Academy of the Philippines has revealed.

The historical drama, which chronicles the final months of Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan’s life before his death on the island of Mactan, beat out six other local contenders for the slot. The selection committee, composed of Filipino film industry experts, evaluated submissions based on aesthetic and technical excellence, embodiment of Filipino values and culture, international appeal, and the producer’s campaign capabilities.

Starring Gael García Bernal alongside Filipino performers Arjay Babon, Ronnie Lazaro, Bong Cabrera, and Hazel Orencio, “Magellan” presents what Diaz calls an “uncompromising perspective on history.” Rather than portraying the titular explorer as a heroic figure, the film depicts him as a man “facing his own oblivion,” challenging romanticized colonial narratives.

The production, shot across the Philippines,...

At AmfAR Venezia, filmmaker Julian Schnabel accepted a tribute award from Jude Law before auctioning off a one-of-a-kind experience: The director and artist, at the Venice Film Festival to premiere his new drama “In the Hand of Dante,” offered to paint one of his signature portraits for the highest bidder in the room.

As the offers flew from auctioneer Simon du Pury, suddenly a woman in a black dress with a very short bob raised her hand to place a bid of €475,000. As the auctioning continued — she was caught in a heated bidding war with an art deal on the phone with an anonymous proposer — Schnabel agreed to sell two portraits for €500,000 a piece. In total, Schnabel’s efforts raised €1 million ($1.17 million) for AmfAR Venezia, the charity gala devoted to raising money for research for HIV and AIDS.

He turned to his new portrait subject and reached out for a...

Albert Serra’s riveting documentary follows star matador Andrés Roca Rey as he confronts the raw force of nature – but it’s a tough watch for animal lovers

For anyone looking for an ethical statement on bullfighting, this is not that film. Composed primarily of a series of corrida at which Peruvian star matador Andrés Roca Rey performs, this is an extremely tough watch for those with any kind of sympathy for animal rights. Director Albert Serra – lauded for his 2022 thriller Pacifiction – is not especially interested in the lives of the bulls, who all die desultory deaths, depicted with horrible intimacy here. What is even more shocking is the abuse...

Netflix Argentinian family drama “27 Nights,” directed by Daniel Hendler will open the San Sebastián Film Festival on Sept. 19, playing in competition. The opening night gala screening will mark the film’s world premiere.

One of Hanway Films big sales plays at Toronto and slice of Polish period neo-noir, “Winter of the Crow,” from Poland’s Kasia Adamik, will close San Sebastián on Sept. 27.

Hendler, a filmmaker and actor who won Berlin’s best actor award for Daniel Burman’s “The Lost Embrace,” will also star in “27 Nights,” based on the same titled novel by Natalia Zito, inspired in turn by a real-life case. The film turns on a 88-year-old millionaire who is interned by her daughters against her will in a psychiatric ward. Co-starring Marilú Marini, “27 Nights” is produced by Netflix and Buenos Aires-based La Unión de los Ríos, founded by Agustina Llambi Campbell and Santiago Mire, and behind Mitre’s Oscar-nominated “Argentina,...