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A few years back, directors Lois Patiño and Matías Piñeiro joined forces for what was meant to be a very loose adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. The resulting short, Sycorax, felt like the meeting of two kindred spirits. Piñeiro’s ability to resuscitate the Bard’s texts and graft them onto present-day settings met with Patiño’s keen eye for the otherworldly. The story of a fictional cineaste (Piñeiro regular Agustina Muñoz) who roams the Azores in search of a woman to play the eponymous witch from The Tempest, Sycorax oozed both the playfulness of Piñeiro’s “Shakespeareads” and the sensual, hypnotic aura of Patiño’s Red Moon Tide or Samsara. It was that rare joint project whose two directors worked in perfect symbiosis, each playing to the other’s strengths.

Based on an original idea by Piñeiro and Patiño, through written and directed by the latter only, Ariel...

Pulsar Content has nabbed worldwide sales on “Two Women,” a Canadian sexy comedy which is slated to world premiere at Sundance.

Directed by Chloé Robichaud, “Two Women” is written by critically acclaimed playwright Catherine Léger based on her own play, “Home Deliveries,” which is itself a modern adaptation of Claude Fournier’s 1970 comedy “Two Women In Gold.”

“Two Women” follows neighbors Violette and Florence who are haunted by a sense of failure despite having successful careers and families. “What if happiness lies in rebelling against a rigid performance-driven society by sometimes choosing short-term satisfaction over success, freedom over being good? In a world where having fun is nowhere near the top of the priority list, having an adventure with the delivery guy can become revolutionary. For Violette and Florence this is the breath of fresh air they’ve been longing for,” reads the synopsis.

The cast is lead by Karine Gonthier-Hyndman,...

Michele Placido’s “Eternal Visionary” (Eterno visionario) is a sprawling look at legendary playwright Luigi Pirandello’s inner demons. Sweeping through the 1920s and 1930s, the playwright (Fabrizio Bentivoglio) ruminates on his past as fraught personal relationships tumble to the fore.

The film has scale and sweep. But it’s more interested in emotion and interiority, especially mental landscapes as they shift and are affected across a span of time. One may try to be in denial and repress the emotional shadow of certain circumstances but sooner or later, they will catch up. The haunting of the man hews itself all over “Eternal Visionary.” The wounds and guilt are as persistent as the stubborn ego of the artist who pushes for the ‘human sincerity’ in his work to be recognized. He’s almost deluded in several instances.

The film portrays the genius of a man who feels constantly misunderstood by everyone around him.

Exclusive: Pulsar Content has acquired world sales rights for Joséphine Japy’s upcoming feature The Wonderers following a family navigating the severe disability of the youngest daughter.

Produced by Cowboys Films, the feature marks Japy’s first time in the director’s chair.

The actress was recently seen in Netflix’s BAFTA-winning fictionalized Bernard Tapie biopic Class Act, with previous credits including On The Wandering Paths, Love At Second Sight, Breathe, as well as Claude François biopic My Way, early on in her career.

Set against the backdrop of a summer on the French riviera, the drama revolves around the Roussier family and its fragile equilibrium shaped by the uncertain diagnosis of its youngest daughter, 13-year-old Bertille, who suffers from a severe disability.

Her parents and 17-year-old older sister Marion live in constant fear of losing her. Disconnected from typical teenage dreams, Marion seeks escape in a relationship with an older boy.

Veteran festival director Marco Mueller was only hired to take over as the artistic director of the Taormina Film Festival in April this year. “I’m stressed out,” he told Variety, two weeks ahead of the festival opening, but he is philosophical. “The history of this island is one of people trying to conquer Sicily, but Sicily has always ended up conquering the conquerors. We are conquered not only by the beauty of the place, but also the local customs, not to mention the food and wine, of course.”

Mueller, who has previously headed the Locarno and the Venice film festivals as well as the Pingyao Film Festival more recently, has a clear vision for the direction he wishes to pursue. “From the moment I signed my contract, I knew I really wanted to go back to the formula that was used in the golden years of the festival, which for me,...

Bill Cobbs, the convincing character actor who had pivotal turns in such films as The Hudsucker Proxy, Sunshine State and Night at the Museum, has died. He was 90.

Cobbs died Tuesday night at his home in Riverside, his publicist, Chuck I. Jones, told TMZ.

A native of Cleveland who excelled at comedy as well as drama, Cobbs portrayed Whitney Houston’s manager in The Bodyguard (1992), the older brother of Medgar Evers in Rob Reiner’s Ghosts of Mississippi (1996), a jazz pianist in Tom Hanks’ That Thing You Do! (1996) and the Master Tinker, builder of the Tin Woodsman, in Sam Raimi’s Oz the Great and Powerful (2013).

He also played the wise coach who put a basketball-playing dog into the Timberwolves lineup in Air Bud (1997).

On television, Cobbs stood out as the sardonic bartender The Dutchman on the Dabney Coleman-starring The Slap Maxwell Story, the bus driver Tony on The Drew Carey Show,...

Lois Patiño, one of the leading lights of the New Galician Cinema in Spain, is putting the final touches to “Ariel,” the highly anticipated follow up to his critically-acclaimed feature ”Samsara” which has secured distribution in more than a dozen territories and won a Special Jury Prize at the Berlinale Encounters 2023.

A contemporary and playful reinterpretation of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” from the perspective of the character Ariel, the feature, produced by Spain’s Filmika Galaika with Portugal’s Bando à Parte, will be sneak-peeked for the first time ever at the inaugural Ecam Forum co-production market, set to run June 10-14 in Madrid.

Producer Beli Martínez said more than 80% of the financing is locked via broadcasting partners Rtp in Portugal, Tvg in Galicia, Spain, public funders Agadic in Galicia and Spanish federal agency Icaa and Turismo de Portugal.

At Ecam Forum, she will be looking for post-production financing, distribution and sales.

Something has subtly shifted in Quentin Dupieux’s perspective, leaving the one-man-band of French cinema a rather different auteur than the anti-comedy punk that nearly stumbled onto the festival stage so many years ago. Chalk it up to maturity or to an impressive professional rise — reaching new highs this year with the opening slot at the Cannes Film Festival — but the director’s tone has softened and his targets have shifted, even as his working methods (and working ethic) remain set-in-stone.

Like a distant Gallic cousin to Wes Anderson and Hong Sang-soo (now there are two names you rarely see together), Dupieux has connected a distinctive voice into a well-honed system built for productivity, allowing him to write-direct-shoot-edit-and-score a new film every year. And sometimes, he finds time for two.

Within the past twelve months, he’s brought films “Yannick” and “Daaaaaalí!” to Locarno and Venice, and now steps into...

With over six decades of an illustrious filmmaking career, Marco Bellocchio’s latest feature, Kidnapped: The Abduction of Edgardo Mortara, will be coming U.S. theaters later this month from Cohen Media Group. A story once in the hands of Steven Spielberg to adapt, the 84-year-old Italian director’s latest work follows Edgardo Mortara, a seven-year-old Jewish boy who was taken from his family in Bologna to be raised Catholic in the actual arms of Pope Pius IX. Ahead of the May 24 release, we’re pleased to exclusively announce NYC’s Quad Cinema will be presenting the retrospective “Marco Bellocchio’s Film of Revolution,” taking place May 17-23.

See the lineup below.

Fists in the Pocket In the Name of the Father A Leap in the Dark Enrico IV Devil in the Flesh Good Morning, Night Marx Can Wait

Bellocchio also shared a personal statement ahead of the retrospective, which one can read below.

Italian director Paolo Taviani, who with his late brother Vittorio formed the revered filmmaking duo that in 1977 won the Cannes Palme d’Or for “Padre Padrone,” has died at 92.

Taviani died on Thursday in a Rome clinic after suffering from a short illness, according to Italian media reports. “Paolo Taviani, a great maestro of Italian cinema, leaves us,” Rome Mayor Roberto Gualtieri said on X, formerly known as Twitter.

The Taviani brothers “directed unforgettable, profound, committed films that entered into the collective imagination and the history of cinema,” Gualtieri added.

Vittorio was the youngest of the Taviani Brothers, who emerged in the 1970s as the prolific pair whose works blended neo-realism with more modern storytelling in works such as “Padre Padrone” (1977), “The Night of the Shooting Stars” (1982) and Luigi Pirandello adaptation “Kaos” (1984).

Born in the Tuscan town of San Miniato, Vittorio and Paolo Taviani soon moved to nearby Pisa where...

Pulsar Content has closed major deals on “Niki,” a biopic of French-American artist Niki de Saint-Phalle.

“Niki” marks the feature debut of popular French actor Céline Sallette and stars Charlotte Le Bon (“The Walk” “Saint-Laurent”) as de Saint-Phalle. Pulsar closed deals with Neue Visionen (Germany), Movies Inspired (Italy), Paradiso (Benelux), Praessens (Switzerland), Vercine (Spain), Magic Films (Cis), Best Films (Baltics), Shaw (Singapour), Sky Digi (Taiwan) and Immovision (Brazil).

The movie portrays Saint-Phalle from the age of 23, when she’s still a model and an aspiring actor who is married and has a two-year-old daughter, Laura. Together, they flee the U.S. during the oppressive McCarthy era and come to France, where they experience a short-lived euphoria. Soon, distant and frightening memories begin to emerge in Niki’s mind. Her vocation as an artist will be her salvation.

Le Bon is an actor-turned-director whose feature debut “Falcon Lake” bowed at Cannes.

Shudder has picked up North America, UK & Ireland and Australia & New Zealand to David Moreau’s continuous shot genre title MadS from French outfit Pulsar Content.

The film shot in five takes over five days. It is set on a summer night and follows a teen who stops to see his dealer, tries a new drug and sets out to party, but ends up picking up an injured woman as the night takes a shocking, surreal turn.

MadS stars newcomers Milton Riche, Laurie Pavy and Lucille Guillaume.

Pulsar Content is at the EFM with Michele Placido’s Eternal Visionary about the life of Luigi Pirandello,...

Pulsar Content has secured worldwide sales on Michele Placido’s “Eternal Visionary,” a film about the life of Luigi Pirandello, the Italian playwright, novelist and poet who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1934.

Pirandello is played by Fabrizio Bentivoglio, one of Italy’s best known actors whose credits include “Loro,” “The Invisible Boy” and “Human Capital.” Bentivoglio stars opposite filmmaker and actor Valeria Bruni Tedeschi who stars as Pirandello’s wife. Federica Luna Vincenti completes the cast.

The movie opens in 1934 as Pirandello is traveling to Stockholm, where he is about to receive the Nobel Prize. He starts reliving the drama and magic of the loved ones who have populated his life and inspired his art. He reminisces about the madness of his wife, his stormy relationship with his children, his controversial stance towards fascism and his love for Marta Abba, the young actress who became his muse.

Now in post-production,...

Titles include Vincent Perez’s ‘The Edge Of The Blade’ and Leo Leigh’s ‘Sweet Sue’.

Filmest München has secured six world premieres for its upcoming 40th anniversary edition, including Vincent Perez’sThe Edge Of The Blade and Leo Leigh’s UK comedy drama Sweet Sue, recently acquirred by Curzon.

The festival in Munich has long been a staging ground for the world premieres of German films but is now looking to establish itself as a launchpad for more international titles, building on last year’s world premiere of Marcelo Gomes’ Brazilian drama Paloma.

Swiss actor-director Perez will travel to...

Exclusive: Leo Leigh’s directorial debut Sweet Sue and Vincent Perez’s fencing film The Edge Of The Blade are among six international films set to get their world premiere at the upcoming Filmfest München (June 23 – July 1), which this year celebrates its 40th edition. Scroll down for full list and details.

The large summertime festival has been known for premiering German films but this year has collated a stronger collection of global debuts, partly inspired by the launch at the event last year of Marcelo Gomes’ Brazilian film Paloma.

The six international debuts — heralding from U.S., Canada, UK, France, and Israel — are each looking for a German distributor. Directors and talent will be attending the screenings.

Leigh is the son of celebrated British auteur Mike Leigh. His BBC Films-backed comedy-drama, sold by HanWay, follows a woman back on the dating scene who embarks on a relationship with a...

Roberto Andò with Anne-Katrin Titze: “I am rehearsing a new play in Naples. It’s a play by Colm Tóibín.”

Toni Servillo (star of Paolo Sorrentino’s Oscar-winning The Great Beauty) plays Luigi Pirandello (winner of the 1934 Nobel Prize for literature) in Roberto Andò’s enchanted Strangeness, which is as gracefully far away from a biopic as it gets. The two men the famous author incognito encounters, both undertakers and madly involved in local theatre, are played by the popular Italian comedy team Ficarra e Picone (Salvatore Ficarra as Sebastiano Vella and Valentino Picone as Onofrio Principato).

Luigi Pirandello (Toni Servillo) with Sebastiano Vella (Salvatore Ficarra) and Onofrio Principato (Valentino Picone) in Roberto Andò’s Strangeness

I first met Roberto Andò the morning before Long Live Freedom (Viva La Libertà), starring Toni Servillo, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi and Valerio Mastandrea was screened at the Film Society of Lincoln Center and Cinecittà...

The Hummingbird (Il Colibrì) director Francesca Archibugi with Anne-Katrin Titze on Dancing Barefoot: “That Patti Smith song is very important to me.” And The Clash’s London Calling: “It does belong to Marco’s (Pierfrancesco Favino) story as a boy …”

Francesca Archibugi’s The Hummingbird with songs from Patti Smith, Billie Holiday, and The Clash, stars Pierfrancesco Favino (in Andrea Di Stefano's The Last Night With Amore at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival), Nanni Moretti, Bérénice Bejo, Laura Morante, Kasia Smutniak, Benedetta Porcaroli, Fotinì Peluso, Azzurra Di Marco, Francesco Centorame, and Sergio Albelli Is the opening night selection of Film at Lincoln Center and Cinecittà’s 22nd edition of Open Roads: New Italian Cinema.

Luisa Lattes (Bérénice Bejo) with Marco Carrera (Pierfrancesco Favino)

Other highlights include Roberto Andò’s Strangeness with Toni Sevillo (Paolo Sorrentino’s Oscar-winning The Great Beauty), as Nobel Prize-winning playwright Luigi Pirandello, Salvo Ficarra,...

Italian sales company True Colours has closed a raft of sales following Berlin’s European Film Market. Italy’s box office hit “La Stranezza” (“Strangeness”) got picked up for a dozen territories and queer romantic drama “Norwegian Dream” also sold widely, including to North America.

Directed by Roberto Andò, “Strangeness” (pictured) toplines Toni Servillo (“The Great Beauty”) as Nobel-prize-winning playwright Luigi Pirandello. This tragicomic period piece about how Pirandello found inspiration to write his masterpiece “Six Characters in Search of an Author” has been a sleeper hit at the Italian box office, coming from nowhere to pull more than €5.5 million ($5.8 million) and becoming the local 2022 box office champ.

Now “Strangeness,” which is produced by Bibi Film and Tramp Limited with Rai Cinema and Medusa, will be playing in: Spain (Alfa Pictures); Poland (Aurora Film); Portugal (Il Sorpasso); Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay (Zeta Film); former Yugoslavia (Stars Media); Taiwan...

In his bold 1990 interpretation of Luigi Pirandello’s “Henry IV,” the late and legendary Irish stage, screen and music star Richard Harris utters the immortal lines, “Woe to him who doesn’t know how to wear his mask.”

Even before his breathtaking big-screen triumph 60 years ago as the rugby ruffian Frank Machin in Lindsay Anderson’s film directing debut, “This Sporting Life,” Harris proved adept at juggling personal and professional personas. He swaggered with macho gusto and great thesping chops through the London stage scene and quickly found key roles in action epics such as “Guns of Navarone” and “Mutiny on the Bounty.”

Then his stunning 1963 breakthrough in “Life” made the showbiz side of the equation easy.

A Cannes lead actor award, an Oscar nomination and reams of reviews such as Variety’s quickly put Harris at the top tier of international leading men. Variety’s London critic at the...

Over the course of its original 10-season run, "Murphy Brown" was consistently considered one of the best sitcoms on television and made a star out of its leading lady Candice Bergen. One of its key ingredients for success was the character of Jim Dial, the lead news anchor for "Fyi," played by Charles Kimbrough. With his overly articulated speech and rich baritone, he made what should be the face of trustworthiness and intelligence into a delightful straight-laced buffoon, earning the actor an Emmy nomination in 1990.

Sadly, Charles Kimbrough has passed away at the age of 86. Appearing on stage and screens big and small, the Tony-nominated actor had a robust career going all the way back to the late 1960s that ranged from Shakespeare on Broadway to voicing Victor the gargoyle in Disney's "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" to a supporting role in the romantic comedy "The Wedding Planner." He worked...

The highest-grossing local film was Robert Andò’s comedy ‘La Stranezza’ that is screening at International Film Festival Rottterdam

The Italian box office grossed €306.6m in 2022, down a massive 48.2 on the average recorded between 2017-2019, according to figures released by Italian distributors’ association Anica this week.

Admissions also fell 51.6 in 2022 compared to the three-year pre-Covid 19 pandemic era.

The figures were up 81 and 79.6 respectively on 2021, the year cinemas were closed until August 26 due to the pandemic.

“The effects of the Covid emergency were still very much felt [in 2022],” said Anica in a statement.

The organisation pointed out regulations that prevented the sale...

Italy’s box office grosses in 2022 totaled €306 million while the admissions tally was a measly 44.5 million admissions, which reps a 48 drop compared with the country’s average pre-pandemic intake between 2017 and 2019.

On the positive side, the Italian 2022 box office result repped an 81 increase in grosses over 2021 when closures, mandatory Covid masks in cinemas, and other side effects of the pandemic prompted a massive plunge.

But the country’s moviegoing mojo pales in comparison with France’s 152 million admissions in 2022, and also with the admissions tallies in Germany, 74 million, and Spain, 59 million, all of which were also below pre-pandemic levels, but not as dramatically so. For example moviegoing numbers in France and Germany both clocked in at roughly 26 less that their pre-pandemic levels, while Spain was 37 below pre-pandemic par, according to a study by Italian motion picture association Anica which released the country’s box office figures and its contextual analysis...

Invited to speak about his profession of acting during a masterclass at the 40th Torino Film Festival, Toni Servillo – whose credits include Oscar winner “The Great Beauty,” Cannes Jury Prize winner “Il Divo” and “The King of Laughter,” which won him the best actor prize at Venice – brushed aside the cliché that actors kept in them, as stigmas, the characters they had played.

“I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I kept none of them. We are just empty vases that fill and empty. I’m always afraid of the question: ‘How did you get into Pirandello?’ [he plays the writer Luigi Pirandello in Roberto Andò’s new film, ‘La Stranezza’] How did I get in? Well, through the door!,” he says.

Servillo believes that there are many myths around these roles that would later prevent the actor from being himself again. “To identify with the character, the actor tries to master a tumult that,...

Italian sales company True Colours has taken international distribution rights to Roberto Andò’s “La Stranezza” (“Strangeness”), toplining Toni Servillo (“The Great Beauty”) as the Nobel-prize-winning playwright Luigi Pirandello.

This tragicomic period piece about how Pirandello found inspiration to write his masterpiece “Six Characters in Search of an Author” will launch from the Rome Film Festival and concurrently have its market premiere at the Eternal City’s upcoming Mia Market, which runs Oct. 11-15.

Starring alongside Servillo are popular Sicilian comedy duo Salvo Ficarra and Valentino Picone, who are known in Italy as Ficarra and Picone.

“Strangeness” is set in 1921, the year when Pirandello returned to Sicily for the 80th birthday of his mentor, famous novelist and playwright Giovanni Verga.

Upon arriving in the city of Agrigento, the playwright becomes captured by a world populated by strange personalities, ghostly visions, distant memories and melancholy apparitions, all of which inspire him to write “Six Characters,...

A Flower in the Mouth.There is a common thread between two otherwise disparate premieres in the Forum section of this year’s Berlin International Film Festival—Eric Baudelaire’s A Flower in the Mouth, shot in France and the Netherlands, and Dane Komljen’s Afterwater, shot in Germany. Both films benefited from the direct involvement of the Jeonju Cinema Project: an extraordinary funding and development initiative undertaken in partnership with the South Korean city’s local government and the programming team of its annual film festival. Together, these two works mark out something like a gesture of intention for the project. Baudelaire’s film is a rich, single-setting response to the demands of microbudget filmmaking and pandemic strictures both, particularly in its second half, which transposes a 1922 Luigi Pirandello play to an all-night café in Paris. Meanwhile, Komjlen’s film is a more ephemeral vision overall, composed largely...

Éric Baudelaire on Une Fleur À La Bouche and When There Is No More Music to Write, and Other Roman Stories: “These two flower stories were sort of overlapping in my mind subconsciously, but it wasn’t a conscious thing.”

In my conversation with Eric Baudelaire, the director of When There Is No More Music to Write, and Other Roman Stories also screened) and A Flower In The Mouth (Une Fleur À La Bouche) co-written with Anne-Louise Trividic, starring Oxmo Puccino and Dali Benssalah, we discussed his work with editor Claire Atherton, music historian Maxime Guitton connecting him to composer Alvin Curran, a Luigi Pirandello play, Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point, Robert Musil and Young Törless (Der junge Törless).

Éric Baudelaire with Anne-Katrin Titze on When There Is No More Music To Write, And Other Roman Stories: “The flower vendor in Rome has been a subject of preoccupation for me since 2017 …”

From Paris,...

Paolo and Vittorio Taviani directed films together from the early 1950s until Vittorio died in 2018, leaving his now 90-year-old brother to carry on alone. Leonora Addio, the second film Paolo has made without Vittorio, is not only dedicated to him but picks up many of the themes that ran through their earlier work, including their enthusiasm for theater in general and the writings of Nobel laureate Luigi Pirandello in particular. The Berlin Film Festival competition entry looks and sounds sumptuous, but its two stories — both of which raise questions about what the living owe the dead — are disappointingly slight.

Pirandello wrote novels and poetry, but he was most famous as a playwright fond of theatrical trickery; today, his best-known play is Six Characters in Search of an Author. Accordingly, Leonora Addio is filmed and...

A lopsided diptych that welds an intimate travelogue through Italian cinema and history to a rather shaky bit of literary adaptation, Paolo Taviani’s “Leonora Addio” is, in theory, a valentine to Sicilian poet and dramaturge Luigi Pirandello, and in practice an extended homage to the filmmaker’s brother, Vittorio. But then, given the brothers’ seven-decade partnership, which brought them a Palme d’Or, a Golden Bear, and a lifetime achievement Lion in Venice (among several other glories), and only came to a close upon Vittorio’s death in 2018, how can the 90-year-old Paolo Taviani’s first solo effort be anything else?

And so, well after his opening dedication “To my brother Vittorio,” Taviani never stops finding new ways to evoke his loss, just as the film proper never stops reinventing itself. A travelogue not only across land but also through moods and styles and diverse film forms,

Uniting the...

It’s no spoiler to say that Luigi Pirandello dies nine minutes into “Leonora addio.” This alternately playful and lugubrious work of reflection isn’t really about the controversial Italian writer’s life at all, but rather his legacy, and in a less literal yet ineluctable sense, that of film directors Paolo and Vittorio Taviani.

Over the course of half a century, the two cinematic siblings made movies together — including 1985’s “Kaos,” an omnibus-style collection of five Pirandello stories — bookending their career together by winning top prizes at the Cannes and Berlin film festivals. And then, in 2018, Vittorio died.

“Leonora addio” marks Paolo’s first solo feature. There’s almost no way not to read the film as a farewell by one sibling to another, or an even larger-aperture reflection on what becomes of an artist and his art after his passing — more relevant now than ever, with monuments being...

Four years after the death of his brother Vittorio, with whom he shared a celebrated career, Paolo Taviani is back in the Berlin competition solo, with “Leonora Addio.”

The brothers won the Golden Bear in 2012 with “Caesar Must Die,” about high-security inmates performing Shakespeare.

The free-form film he made –– screening on Feb. 15 –– takes its cue from a story titled “Il Chiodo” (“The Nail”) by Italian playwright and author Luigi Pirandello, written shortly before he died in 1936. That aspect of the pic is a long-gestating project that Paolo, who is 91, says he and Vittorio had long intended to film together.

The Taviani brothers previously drew from Pirandello, most notably for their 1984 drama “Kaos.”

“We even wrote it,” said Taviani, referring to “Il Chiodo.” “Then, when I started working on it alone, as always happens, I modified it. But that’s the origin [of “Leonora Addio”].”

The film begins with with Pirandello receiving...

Italy’s robust 2022 Berlinale representation of a half-dozen titles runs the gamut from the latest works by venerable veterans Paolo Taviani and Dario Argento to pics by fresh new Cinema Italiano voices including Chiara Bellosi, whose first film, “Ordinary Justice,” launched from Berlin in 2020.

Taviani, who is 91, is returning to Berlin but alone this time — his filmmaker brother, Vittorio, with whom he won a Golden Bear in 2012 for “Caesar Must Die,” passed away in 2018 — in competition with surreal drama “Leonora Addio,” inspired by a short story by Italian playwright and author Luigi Pirandello.

Argento, who set his 1977 chiller “Suspiria” in Germany, will be at the Berlinale for the first time as a director with Rome-set suspenser “Dark Glasses,” though he was on the fest’s main jury panel in 2001. Film unspools as a Berlinale Special Gala.

Bellosi is back with Panaorama selection “Swing Ride” (“Calcinculo”), about a 15-year-old named...

Leonora Addio

With production wrapping up in late 2020 we were thinking that a release sometime last year was in the cards – but there’s no need rushing the nonagenarian as Paolo Taviani’s Leonora Addio is now dated with a February domestic release in Italy and this could possibly mean that he’d get an invite to the same fest that welcomed his last film in Caesar Must Die. This is a long-gestating project that that was intended to directed alongside his brother.

Gist: Inspired a short story by great Italian playwright and author Luigi Pirandello, this is the tale of three surreal Pirandello funerals intertwined with the murder of a young Sicilian immigrant boy in Brooklyn for what is described as a surreal, grotesque, complex narrative.…...

Hulu has announced a premiere date for the second season of the Staged TV show. Starring David Tennant and Michael Sheen, season two of the British comedy series will be released on the streaming service on Tuesday, March 16th. There are eight episodes this time around, up from the freshman season's six installments.

Initially airing on BBC One, the first season of the Staged TV series stars David Tennant, Michael Sheen, director Simon Evans, Georgia Tennant (David's wife), Anna Lundberg (Michael's girlfriend), and Lucy Eaton (Simon's sister) playing fictionalized versions of themselves. Samuel L. Jackson, Adrian Lester, and Judi Dench guested. In the first season, bickering David and Michael try to rehearse a performance of Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author during lockdown via videoconference. The production's underconfident director, Simon, struggles to keep control.Read More…...

Under the slogan “Film Goes On,” the Jeonju International Film Festival sets off to prepare for this year’s festival on April 49, unveiling four Jeonju Cinema Project titles for this year. Jeonju Cinema Project is revealed before any other sections of the 22nd edition.

Jeonju Cinema Project is a significant section of Jeonju Iff, which provides production support for creative and experimental features and documentary films. Completed projects are world premiered at Jeonju Iff each year. For this year, two Korean and two international films were selected as Jeonju Cinema Project titles: The Man with High Hopes directed by Min Hwan-ki, Hug directed by Im Heung-soon, Outside Noise directed by Ted Fendt, and A Flower In the Mouth directed by Éric Baudelaire.

Min Hwan-ki’s The Man with High Hopes is a documentary film about the late Korean politician Roh Hoe-chan, who devoted his life to social justice. The film...

Leonora Addio

Following the death of his brother and fellow co-director Vittorio Taviani in 2018, Paolo Taviani continues with his first solo effort Leonora Addio, based on the novella Il Chiodo by Nobel prize winner Luigi Pirandello. Produced through Rai Cinema and Donatella Palermo’s Stemal Entertainment, the project is headlined by Fabrizio Ferracane and Massimo Popolizio. Nicola Piovani provides the score, while regular Taviani Dp Simone Zampagni will lens alongside Paolo Carnera. The Taviani Bros. emerged as one of Italy’s most prominent filmmaking duos in the 1970s, winning the Palme d’Or in 1977 for Padre Padrone and Cannes would be great to them with their 1982 classic The Night of Shooting Stars with the brothers winning the Grand Prize of the Jury and the Ecumenical Jury Prize.…...

Paolo Taviani, of revered filmmaking duo the Taviani brothers, is back behind the camera — this time without his brother Vittorio, who died in 2018.

Taviani is shooting “Leonora Addio,” a surreal drama that takes its cue from a short story by great Italian playwright and author Luigi Pirandello. It’s a long-gestating project that Paolo says he and Vittorio had long intended to film together.

Italy’s Fandango Sales has taken international distribution for the film and will be kicking off world sales outside Italy during the Toronto International Film Festival’s online film market this month.

Co-produced by Donatella Palermo’s Stemal Entertainment and Rai Cinema with France’s Les Films d’Ici, “Leonora” started principal photography at the end of July at Cinecittà Studios and will also be shooting in Sicily. Production is expected to wrap in October and Taviani said he expects to complete the film by year’s end.

It’s now or never for “BoJack Horseman” to win the Best Animated Series Emmy, and there’s no better representative than the penultimate episode, “The View from Halfway Down.” This summary statement, about titular horse BoJack (Will Arnett) encountering everyone who’s died in the series at a dinner party, forces him to confront the reasons behind his substance abuse and bad behavior. Rather than a dream, the surreal episode turns out to be a near-death experience, with BoJack apparently drowning in his swimming pool, making good on the prophetic image in the main titles.

For director Amy Winfrey, who oversaw 21 episodes throughout the six seasons, “The View from Halfway Down” was a particularly satisfying conclusion. Winfrey not only got to dabble in the ultimate expression of surrealism, but she also got to participate in fun callbacks with some of her favorite characters, including “Horsin’ Around” sitcom creator Herb...

Lockdown has inspired some great satirical art. Only yesterday I saw a dog waste bin in my local woods affixed with a picture of Dominic Cummings. Our movements, like those of the dogs of Blean Nature Reserve, may be contained, but our creativity runs free.

In the case of Staged, a six-part BBC One comedy starring David Tennant and Michael Sheen, containment was both inspiration and form. Conceived by Simon Evans and Phin Glyn, the series was made and set during UK lockdown. The episodes were all filmed, by necessity, inside the cast’s homes, and scenes were spliced with stock footage of the two main locations in London and Wales.

Unlike some lockdown TV projects which have been borne forth on a wave of gratitude for the efforts made to keep calm and telly on, Staged is the real deal. It’s perfectly suited to the format and properly funny.

What if you didn't stop playing make-believe when you became an adult? What if your life and sanity relied on playing by a strict set of rules established in the imaginative days of your childhood—a set of rules that have become more malicious with the passing of time? That's the trippy predicament three young women experience in Braid, a psychological mouse trap of a movie brimming with stunning aesthetics, powerful performances, and a fearless creative vision from writer/director Mitzi Peirone. With Braid out now on VOD platforms from Blue Fox Entertainment, Daily Dead had the great pleasure of catching up with Peirone in our latest Q&A feature to discuss the ambitious making of one of the most memorable movies released thus far this year.

Congratulations on Braid, Mitzi! It’s a heart-wrenching, mind-melting, visual feast of a movie. How and when did you come up with the idea for this film?...

Paris — In his first feature since 2010’s “The Clink of Ice,” filmmaker Bertrand Blier returns with a somber, existentialist farce reminiscent of the last century’s most celebrated absurdist theater.

Vladimir and Estragon, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, meet Taupin and Foster (Gérard Depardieu and Christian Clavier). One is homeless, the other well off, though that dynamic eventually flips. As they ramble the streets of Brussels, the two are constantly met by legions of script supervisors, who deliver them the latest pages and revisions that will inform their next steps.

As in “The Truman Show,” an all-seeing showrunner lies behind the scenes; as in “Six Characters in Search of an Author,” our protagonists sometimes bristle at the roles they have been cast into.

Still, the film’s premise is less an existential treatise than a malleable platform for a series of monologues, dialogues and testy exchanges. More than anything else, “Heavy Duty...

A True Original: Alberto Cavalcanti is showing from September 9 – October 12, 2018 in the United States.Champagne CharlieIf Dickensian fiction story of Nicholas Nickleby were to be filmed today, he’d be a young man incessantly searching Craigslist and wondering what college education is really good for. At least that’s the impression one gets watching Alberto Cavalcanti’s lively adaptation, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (1947), which perfectly captures the angst of urban youth fitted with stellar education and plenty desire for work, but dire economic prospects—an apt topic both today and at a time when Cavalcanti made his British fiction films, during and immediately after the Second World War.In his native Brazil, Cavalcanti has been celebrated for his avant-garde modernist films, including his debut, Nothing But Time (1926), and his collaboration with Walter Ruttman on Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis (1927), which serves as an important reference in the...

Amazon Studios has acquired North American, U.K., and Indian rights to “Rainbow – A Private Affair,” the last work co-directed by Italy’s revered Taviani brothers.

Amazon’s purchase from Paris-based Pyramide Intl. of those streaming rights follows Vittorio Taviani’s death in May, at 88, and comes as the film goes on theatrical release via Pyramide in France. The directing duo’s surviving member, Paolo Taviani, who is 86, told the French newspaper Le Monde last week that he would keep working even without his brother, with whom he made movies all his life, “until my devastated country rises from its ruins,” an apparent reference to Italy under its new populist government.

“Rainbow – A Private Affair,” which launched last year from Toronto, is an adaptation of a short novel written by Italian author Beppe Fenoglio and set during Italy’s mid-1940s civil war, when partisans and fascists engaged in battles of attrition.

Celebrated Italian writer-director Vittorio Taviani, winner of the Palme d’Or and Berlin Golden Bear, has died aged 88. He passed after a long illness, his daughter has confirmed to Italian media.

The director formed one half an acclaimed filmmaking duo with his brother Paolo: the two were known as the Taviani Brothers. The siblings became household names in Italy in the 1960s and worked on more than 20 movies together including 1977 Palme d’Or winner Padre Padrone and docudrama Caesar Must Die, which won the Golden Bear for best film at Berlin in 2012.

The former charted the story of Gavino Ledda, the son of a Sardinian shepherd, and how he managed to escape his harsh, almost barbaric existence by slowly educating himself, despite violent opposition from his brutal father. Caesar Must Die is the story of inmates at a high-security prison in Rome who prepare for a public performance of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.

Makarand Despande: “I feel Tom is like Luigi Pirandello’s Henry IV, an actor who fell from the horse and remained Henry for rest of his life. Tom for me fell into being a good man, a great soul who just not only played this difficult part all his life with courage and simplicity but dissolved hisRead More

The post Theatre Stalwarts Makarand Deshpande, Lilette Dubey, Victor Bannerjee remember Tom Alter appeared first on Bollywood Hungama.

Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.

Metrograph

Three Spielberg pictures screen this weekend, while Rohmer is highlighted with Pauline at the Beach and Full Moon in Paris on Friday.

A Rocky-Creed mini-series run on Friday and Saturday.

The Rules of the Game shows this Sunday.

Japan Society

One of David Bowie‘s greatest performances is on display in Nagisa Oshima‘s Merry Christmas,...

Danièle Delorme and Jean Gabin in 'Deadlier Than the Male.' Danièle Delorme movies (See previous post: “Danièle Delorme: 'Gigi' 1949 Actress Became Rare Woman Director's Muse.”) “Every actor would like to make a movie with Charles Chaplin or René Clair,” Danièle Delorme explains in the filmed interview (ca. 1960) embedded further below, adding that oftentimes it wasn't up to them to decide with whom they would get to work. Yet, although frequently beyond her control, Delorme managed to collaborate with a number of major (mostly French) filmmakers throughout her six-decade movie career. Aside from her Jacqueline Audry films discussed in the previous Danièle Delorme article, below are a few of her most notable efforts – usually playing naive-looking young women of modest means and deceptively inconspicuous sexuality, whose inner character may or may not match their external appearance. Ouvert pour cause d'inventaire (“Open for Inventory Causes,” 1946), an unreleased, no-budget comedy notable...

Title: You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet (Vous n’avez encore rien vu) Kino Lorber Director: Alain Resnais Screenwriter: Laurent Herbiet, Alex Reval, based on Jean Anouilh’s “Eurydice” and “Dear Antoine” Cast: Mathieu Amalric, Pierre Arditi, Sabine Azéma, Jean-Noël Bouté, Anne Cosigny, Denis Podalydès, Hippolyte Girardot, Michel Piccoli, Lambert Wilson Screened at: Review 1, NYC, 5/28/13 Opens: June 7, 2013 If you’re a fan of theater—and I mean cerebral theater, not “Cats” or “The Lion King”—you may have run across Luigi Pirandello’s 1921 play “Six Characters in Search of an Author,” one of the best examples of metatheater. In that imaginative work, an acting company prepares to rehearse the play “The Rules [ Read More ]

The post You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

One of the most winning aspects of the Almeida theatre, as run in the 1990s by a couple of actors, Jonathan Kent and Ian McDiarmid, was their determination to take up the cause of certain fellow players whom they knew to be undervalued. If Richard Griffiths was one of the most conspicuous beneficiaries of this policy, then, my goodness, he paid back their artistic largesse 50-fold.

He and I worked together first when Jonathan directed him as the controlling husband, Leone Gala, in my adaptation of Luigi Pirandello's The Rules of the Game in 1992. As we watched, awed by Richard's dazzling speed of thought and witty dexterity with language, the same notion occurred, probably simultaneously, to both Jonathan and me. Here was one of those rare actors who could convincingly play intellectuals, and who therefore might have a chance of following in Michael Gambon and Charles Laughton's huge footsteps in Brecht's Galileo.

• Ricky Gervais, sure to lend his feisty brand of British snark, is in talks to star alongside Kermit, Miss Piggy and the rest of the Muppets gang in the sequel to 2011′s The Muppets, EW can confirm. Gervais would play off of Modern Family Ty Burrell’s Interpol inspector in the Europe-set comedy. James Bobin, who helmed the previous Muppets film, is back to direct from a script he co-wrote with Nicholas Stoller. Stoller co-wrote The Muppets with Jason Segel, and directed him in this year’s The Five-Year Engagement. The Hollywood Reporter first reported the news.

• Tom Hardy (The Dark Knight Rises...

The Artist star, Berenice Bejo is apparently in some serious negotiations to join an upcoming French-language drama which comes from director Michele Placido. Titled The Choice, the movie is Placido’s follow-up to the 2011 crime thriller The Lookout, and is also one of 27 projects presented at Les Arcs European Film Festival’s Co-Production Village.

Inspired by Luigi Pirandello‘s novel, The Choice will center on a woman who discovers she is pregnant following a rape. She and her husband, who love each other deeply, but haven’t been able to concieve a child together, are faced with a terrible choice.

As you already guess – if negotiations with Bejo work out, she will come on board to portray the above mentioned woman.

The Choice is produced by Maxime Delauney’s Nolita Cinema and Romain Rousseau, and according to them, the movie is:

…not only a drama, but a powerful love story...