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Domina is a British-Italian historical drama series created by Simon Burke. The Sky Atlantic series chronicles the life of Livia Drusilla, from her early years when Julius Caesar was assassinated to her marriage to the Roman emperor Augustus, which makes way for her to become the most powerful and influential empress in the Roman Empire. Domina stars Nadia Parkes, Tom Glynn-Carney, Enzo Cilenti, Peter Campion, Darrel D’Silva, Tom Forbes, Liam Garrigan, Oliver Huntington, and Alexandra Moloney. So, if you loved the historical drama, a captivating story, and compelling characters in Domina, here are some similar shows you should check out next.

Troy: Fall of a City (Netflix & Rent on Prime Video) Credit – Netflix

Troy: Fall of a City is a historical drama miniseries created by David Farr. Based on the Trojan War, the Netflix series revolves around...

Exclusive: After its comic crime caper The Big Fuck Up played in competition at Canneseries this week, Brussels-based producer Jonnydepony has landed another drama commission from Belgian platform Streamz.

Boho is a light comedy-drama from writer Abbie Boutkabout that follows a trio of 30-something friends as they navigate life in Borgerhout, an eclectic and culturally-rich area of Antwerp in Belgium. “It’s like Soho, but in Antwerp,” said Jonnydepony CEO and co-founder Helen Perquy in an interview with Deadline.

Abbie Boutkabout is the creator and Philippe De Schepper, who leads Banijay Benelux-backed Jonnydepony with content financier and exec producer Perquy, will be the showrunner. Boutkabout, De Schepper and Zita Theunynck are the writers, and Olympia Allaert is the director. The show received script and production support from the Flanders Audiovisual Fund, and Perquy revealed all heads of department on the production are female.

Ikram Aoulad (Arcadia), Serine Ayari (Exen) and hip-hop artist Miss Angel,...

Swiss thriller The Deal has won the inaugural Buyers Choice Award at the Series Mania Forum, the industry section of the French TV festival Series Mania.

Series Mania founder and general director Laurence Herszberg announced the winner at an event Monday night ahead of the Series Mania Forum launch on Tuesday.

The six-part thriller stars Veerle Baetens (The Broken Circle Breakdown) as Alexandra Weiss, a Swiss diplomat charged with navigating the high-stakes 2015 nuclear negotiations between the U.S. and Iran. When a former lover, now an endangered Iranian engineer, reappears in her life, Alexandra is forced to make decisions that could alter the course of history.

The Deal is produced by Bande à Part Films, Les Films Pelléas, Gaumont Télévision, Bidibul Productions and Versus Production. Gaumont is handling international sales on the series.

The Deal was picked from a slate of 10 sales titles by a six-person jury of key international buyers.

International series do not lack scale and ambition.

The lineup of this year’s Series Mania, the TV festival and industry meet that runs through March 28 in Lille, France, includes historic epics like Joe Wright’s rise-to-fascism biography Mussolini: Son of The Century, real-life action thriller Kabul, which traces the fall of Afghan capital to the Taliban in 2021, and Liongate’s spy drama The German, from the creators of Fauda and Tehran, about Holocaust survivors recruited to track down Nazi war criminals.

Add to that the screenings at the festival’s upfront event, held Monday, March 24, where top-tier buyers get a sneak peek at upcoming international series. The 10 featured upfront shows include German fantasy epic War of the Kingdoms, Korean sci-fi series S Line and Swiss thriller The Deal, starring The Broken Circle Breakdown star Veerle Baetens as a diplomat tasked with brokering last-chance nuclear negotiations between the U.S.

Series Mania has unveiled the selection of 10 series for its inaugural buyers upfront event, scheduled for March 24, 2025, in Lille.

The invitation-only gathering aims to link top-tier buyers with exclusive previews of upcoming international series, serving as a prelude to the Series Mania Forum, the festival’s industry section, which runs March 25-27.

The event kicks off with the Beta Brunch, a market presentation from the veteran German outfit, followed by 12-minute presentations of each selected series. The lineup, curated by the festival’s artistic team based on artistic merit and broad audience appeal, includes:

Dangerous Truth (Germany) a thriller sold by OneGate Media that follows Alex Jaromin, who has spent 20 years in witness protection in Athens, believing his father was killed by Serbian nationalists. When his mother dies, he discovers the truth behind his family’s past, uncovering a secret government operation linked to Baghdad.

Escaping Bolivia (Norway) – a drama/thriller from REinvent International Sales.

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The Empress is a German historical romantic drama series created by Katharina Eyssen. Based on the life of Empress Elisabeth of Austria, the Netflix series follows Elisabeth of Bavaria as she falls for and marries the Emperor Franz of Austria. This marriage pushes Elisabeth into the stressful life of an Empress. What started as a love story becomes so much more as time goes on, and the duties of the Emperor and Empress begin to create distance between Elisabeth and Franz. We see Elisabeth fall in love, deal with the consequences of being an Empress, and put Royal duties first to become a beloved Royal figure among her subjects. The Empress stars Devrim Lingnau, Philip Froissant, Melika Foroutan, Johannes Nussbaum, and Elisa Schlott. So, if you loved the royal intrigue, historical drama, and compelling characters in The Empress,...

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The Devil’s Hour is a British supernatural thriller drama series created by Tom Moran. The Prime Video series follows Lucy, a social worker who mysteriously wakes up every night at exactly 3:33 am in the middle of the so-called devil’s hour and after having some terrifying visions she soon finds herself connected to a series of brutal murders in the area. The Devil’s Hour stars Jessica Raine, Peter Capaldi, Nikesh Patel, Alex Ferns, Meera Syal, Barbara Marten, Phil Dunster, Benjamin Chivers, and Brandon Bendell. So, if you loved the thrilling mystery, complex story, and compelling characters in The Devil’s Hour here are some similar shows you should check out next.

Shining Girls (Apple TV+) Credit – Apple TV+

Shining Girls is a psychological thriller drama series created by Silka Luisa. Based on the 2013 novel The Shining Girls by author Lauren Beukes,...

Some tales are so powerful they require more than adaptation. This is certainly the case for the upcoming Mothers' Instinct, the movie adaptation of the 2012 Barbara Abel novel, Derrire La Haine, that blew readers away with its detailed, gripping tale of love, loss, and paranoia. The first adaptation came in the form of Olivier Masset-Depasse's 2018 film, which screened as a special presentation at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival. The film, starring Veerle Baetens as Alice Brunelle and Anne Coesens as Cline Geniot, received ten nominations at the 10th Magritte Awards, winning in nine of its categories and earning Masset-Depasse Best Director and Best Film accolades.

A trio of French sales houses have made a flurry of appointments ahead of the summer break and before the autumn festival season.

Núria Palenzuela Camon has joined Paris-based Indie Sales as head of festivals and will co-run marketing alongside the company’s sales executive Constance Poubelle. She is taking over for Clement Chautant who is heading to French arthouse distributor Arizona Distribution to lead on acquisitions.

Palenzuela Camon is fresh off a four-year stint as head of festivals and marketing at sales outfit Totem Films. Salomé Rizk will take over in the same position at Totem after running the festivals team for Loco Films.

Not every good film is necessarily a good time, and vice versa. On the latter front, see “Mothers’ Instinct,” a 1960s-set suburban psychodrama too silly to secure our belief and too reserved to pass muster as go-for-broke camp — but still compulsive enough, twisty enough and finally berserk enough to keep us hooked through all its tonal and narrative lane-changing. As a pair of model homemakers and next-door neighbors whose close friendship is severely undone by sudden tragedy, even stars Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain don’t always seem to be making entirely the same movie: Hathaway’s sly, high-gloss vamping points to a more brittly amusing one than Chastain’s earnest emotional commitment, turning their characters’ escalating picket-fence battle into a compelling tussle for the soul of the script itself. One wins, and not predictably so.

First-time feature director Benoît Delhomme, however, doesn’t have much command over this strange,...

France’s Indie Sales has picked up Come Back, the directorial debut from Flemish brothers Jan and Raf Roosens starring Veerle Baetens and her real-life daughter Billie Vlegels.

The film is in post and Indie Sales is launching it at the European Film Market later this month. Kinepolis Film Distribution is handling the Belgian release.

Vlegels plays the teenage daughter of a once-successful techno DJ couple, living with her father after her parents’ divorce. When her mother (Baetens) sets off to make an international comeback, her daughter is thrust into the nocturnal club scene world and finds herself torn between...

Through The Night. Delphine Girard: 'The characters stuck with me and so for months after the screening of the short film, I was like, but what would happen to those characters?' Delphine Girard’s debut film Through The Night expands on her short Sister to explore the aftermath of a rape. Beginning with a tense night-time scene in which Aly (Selma Alaoui), who has just been assaulted, is in contact with an emergency call centre as her attacker Dary (Guillaume Duhesme) drives the car. On the other end of the phone is Anna (Veerle Baetens). Soon the film will split into a three-part character study that holds the effects of the slow-moving legal system up to the light while also calling in to question society’s expectations of “good victimhood”. We caught up with Girard after the film’s premiere at San Sebastian Film Festival to talk about its themes.

Academy Award-winning actresses Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway are having a literal mother-off in the first official trailer for Mothers’ Instinct. The forthcoming directorial debut from cinematographer Benoît Delhomme stars Chastain and Hathaway as Alice and Céline, respectively and follows their picture-perfect life in Sixties suburbia: they’re best friends raising sons of the same age in the same neighborhood together.

But the seeds of guilt and paranoia begin to blossom into an ugly, monstrous plant when Alice sprints into her neighbor’s home to warn Céline that her son...

Belgian filmmaker Delphine Girard‘s debut film takes a plunge into the murky world she created with her 2018 short film Une sœur – an Academy Award nominee for Best Live Action Short Film. Using the identical ensemble welcoming back players Veerle Baetens, Selma Alaoui, and Guillaume Duhesme, Quitter la nuit (Through the Night) broadens their horizons by delving deeper into the humanity of the trio. Similar to the recent wave of intricate courtroom dramas, this first feature discards simplistic characterizations and favors a more complex journey into the nigh….and collective psyche.

Selected in the Giornate degli Autori at the Venice Film Festival where the film won the Audience Award, Quitter la nuit is impactful cinema — its a complex thinking piece of a text.…...

It’s late at night on the road and the breathing is too ragged for this to be a normal car journey for the man and the woman in the front seats. Aly (Selma Alaoui) is the passenger, on the phone, and we soon realise she’s not chatting to her sister, as the driver Dary (Guillaume Duhesme) thinks, but to an emergency call centre. At the other end of the line is Anna (Veerle Baetens), who quickly works out this is a call for help. Using this springboard, which was also crucial to Delphine Girard’s Oscar-nominated short film Sister, the first-time feature director allows her film to split into a triple portrait of each of these characters in the aftermath of the event, to see what happens, not just in the days after but the weeks and months after that.

This is not about the moment of the rape - Girard deliberately.

The Giornate degli Autori folks will be celebrating the twentieth edition of the section and a pair of auteurs in Céline Sciamma and Teona Strugar Mitevska will be gifting them with specially made (insubordination-friendly) new cinema. The spirit and memory of Quebecois filmmaker Jean-Marc Vallée will be honored with a special screening of C.R.A.Z.Y and we’ve got some buzz-worthy titles in the shape of Élise Girard (Isabelle Huppert is front and center in Sidonie au Japon), Delphine Girard‘s Quitter la nuit (with Selma Alaoui and Veerle Baetens), Chong Keat Aun‘s Snow in Midsummer, and sticking with the French Canadian theme we got Ariane Louis-Seize‘s feature debut coming-of-ager comedy Vampire humaniste cherche suicidaire consentant among the dozen plus features (ten comp films) and trimmings — including world cinema’s new shinning filmmaker stars in Lila Avilés and Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović packing their Miu Miu Women’S Tales shorts.

Paris-based Playtime has unveiled a strong Cannes film market sales slate, which includes competition titles “About Dry Grasses” and “Homecoming.”

“About Dry Grasses” is by Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan, who won the Palme d’Or in 2014 for “Winter Sleep.” The film follows Samet, a young art teacher, who is finishing his fourth year of compulsory service in a remote village in Anatolia. After a turn of events he can hardly make sense of, he loses his hopes of escaping the grim life he seems to be stuck in, and hopes that his encounter with fellow teacher Nuray will help him overcome his angst. Deniz Celiloğlu, Merve Dizdar and Musab Ekici are among the cast.

“Homecoming,” by French director Catherine Corsini who won the 2021 Queer Palm for “The Divide,” follows Khédidja, who minds a wealthy Parisian family’s children for a summer in Corsica. She brings along her own two...

The debut feature from The Broken Circle Breakdown star Veerle Baetens is an uncompromising adaptation of Lize Spitz’s novel Het Smelt (It Melts), which tells the story of a woman confronting the trauma of her past. The story unfolds over two time periods as the adult Eva (Charlotte De Bruyne) prepares to travel back to the small town where she grew up. Action in the present is interwoven with what happened to her one fateful summer as a child.

We caught up with the Belgian director over Zoom to chat about the film. The very spoiler-averse may want to wait until after they have seen the film before reading the second half.

Reading the press notes, it seems...

Without spoiling anything, there’s a particularly horrifying and disturbing scene that happens near the end of the film When It Melts involving the younger version of the main character, and the way that scene plays out left me incredibly uncomfortable and disturbed and will forever haunt me.

The use of a hand-held cam and the performances from all the child actors in that scene really enhanced this terrifying moment and was probably the most scared I’ve ever been in a film that is not technically labeled as horror. However, it is because of this one scene that I feel frustrated about When It Melts because as powerful as that scene was, the rest of the film does not even closely match that level of quality.

When It Melts is the directorial debut of Belgian actress Veerle Baetens and follows the story of Eva (Charlotte De Bruyne), a lonely...

A couple of times over in “When It Melts,” the directorial debut of Belgian actor Veerle Baetens, Eva, played as a morose, withdrawn adult by Charlotte De Bruyne, looks at a photograph of herself as a 13-year-old. In the picture, child Eva (Sundance prizewinner Rosa Marchant) is grinning a lopsided, optimistic tomboy grin, unaware of the violent end of innocence lying in wait for her. The space between these two Evas — a vast gulf not just temporal but scarringly psychological — is territory painstakingly mapped out by Baetens, whose grip on the tone of gathering dread is sure, until it becomes suffocating. As the story pivots back and forth between its two timelines, as though hoping one will hold the key to the other’s release, it grows oppressive, as hard to witness as a cornered bird battering itself helplessly against one window, then the next.

Eva is a shy photographer’s assistant,...

The feature film debut from actress Veerle Baetens, When It Melts follows Eva (Charlotte De Bruyne) as she returns to her hometown for a childhood friend’s funeral with an ice block stashed in the back of her car. As the bitter winter rages on (and the ice block slowly begins to shrink) Eva recalls via flashback a sweltering summer from her adolescence that forever altered her life and identity. Cinematographer Frederic Van Zandycke discusses his previous collaboration with Baetens, working with the young actors of When It Melts and the film’s most emotionally challenging scene to shoot. See all responses […]

The post “From the Beginning I Knew This Film Was About Performance”: Dp Frederic Van Zandycke on When It Melts first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

The feature film debut from actress Veerle Baetens, When It Melts follows Eva (Charlotte De Bruyne) as she returns to her hometown for a childhood friend’s funeral with an ice block stashed in the back of her car. As the bitter winter rages on (and the ice block slowly begins to shrink) Eva recalls via flashback a sweltering summer from her adolescence that forever altered her life and identity. Cinematographer Frederic Van Zandycke discusses his previous collaboration with Baetens, working with the young actors of When It Melts and the film’s most emotionally challenging scene to shoot. See all responses […]

The post “From the Beginning I Knew This Film Was About Performance”: Dp Frederic Van Zandycke on When It Melts first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Actress Veerle Baetens’s feature debut When It Melts, adapted from Lize Spit’s novel The Melting, follows Eva (Charlotte De Bruyne) as she returns to her hometown for a funeral with an ice block packed in the back of her car. While she waits out this frigid winter (and as the ice block slowly shrinks), she recalls a scorching summer during her adolescence that forever altered the course of her life. Editor Thomas Pooters shares his experience cutting Baetens’s film, a process that entailed many Post-it notes and enlightening conversations about gender. See all responses to our annual Sundance editor interviews […]

The post “Post-it Notes Always Are a Huge Help”: Editor Thomas Pooters on When It Melts first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Actress Veerle Baetens’s feature debut When It Melts, adapted from Lize Spit’s novel The Melting, follows Eva (Charlotte De Bruyne) as she returns to her hometown for a funeral with an ice block packed in the back of her car. While she waits out this frigid winter (and as the ice block slowly shrinks), she recalls a scorching summer during her adolescence that forever altered the course of her life. Editor Thomas Pooters shares his experience cutting Baetens’s film, a process that entailed many Post-it notes and enlightening conversations about gender. See all responses to our annual Sundance editor interviews […]

The post “Post-it Notes Always Are a Huge Help”: Editor Thomas Pooters on When It Melts first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

The Sundance Film Festival roared back to life this year with the first in-person version of the event since 2020, and TheWrap was there with bells on to talk to some of the performers and filmmakers involved in this year’s pre-eminent films. With any luck, these films will go on to join the ranks of previous Sundance debut features like “Coda” or “Whiplash” or “Boyhood” once they hit audiences at large (and possibly even the Oscar stage).

Below, we’ve rounded up some of our interviews for you to watch along with links to every interview conducted at TheWrap’s Portrait and Video Studio at The Music Lodge during the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, sponsored by Nfp along with support from Sylvania and HigherDOSE.

Actor Jonathan Majors and the team behind the challenging drama “Magazine Dreams” spoke about how the story of an obsessed bodybuilder is a “time capsule” for modern day America.

Vengeance on a Wet Afternoon: Baetens Prepares a Fatal Reckoning in Grim Debut

Home is most certainly not where the heart is in When It Melts, the directorial debut of Belgian actor Veerle Baetens, adapted from the celebrated novel by Lize Spit. Baetens has long been a recognizable force in Belgian cinema over the past two decades, appearing in slick genre fare, like Erick Van Looy’s Loft (2008), Robin Pront’s The Ardennes (read review) and Oliver Masset-Depasse’s Mothers’ Instinct (2018), while most renowned for Felix Van Groeningen’s searing 2013 drama The Broken Circle Breakdown (read review). She’s chosen a troubling, and perhaps somewhat familiar approach in this trauma induced thriller, which features a disturbed, complex characterization deftly performed by two actors portraying the central character.…...

A push toward onscreen inclusivity, for reasons both artistic and commercial, can be summed up in two films released in early 2018. Walt Disney’s “Black Panther” featured mostly Black actors and Black characters. Universal’s “Pacific Rim: Uprising” featured a protagonist who just happened to be played by an actor who looked more like John Boyega than Charlie Hunnam.

Both serve the worthwhile end-game of more varied onscreen representation. Randall Park’s directorial debut, “Shortcomings,” is explicitly a character comedy about Asian American characters that isn’t entirely or just about being Asian American.

Penned by Adrian Tomine and based on his 2007 graphic novel, “Shortcomings” focuses on young Aapi protagonists who are flawed, complex, messy and still figuring things out. That’s what the cast liked best about the film, as explained when Justin Min, Sherry Cola and Ally Maki stopped by TheWrap’s Portrait and Video Studio at The...

Angus MacLachlan burst onto the Sundance scene as the screenwriter behind the Phil Morrison-directed “Junebug” in 2005. That drama is best known for what became a star-making performance from then-unknown Amy Adams and since then MacLachlan graduated to directing self-written features like “Goodbye to All That” and “Abundant Acreage Available.”

His latest feature, “A Little Prayer,” concerns a close-knit family that threatens to collapse when a father (David Strathairn) discovers that his adult son (Will Pullen) may be having an affair.

MacLachlan was joined by Pullen and fellow cast members Jane Levy and Celia Weston, at TheWrap’s Portrait and Video Studio at The Music Lodge for a conversation with Executive Awards Editor Steve Pond.

When asked why he chose to make another family drama set in North Carolina, MacLachlan noted it was the region in which he grew up.

“I started [this film] when my daughter was 15. She’s now 21. I realized in retrospect,...

Best known for playing a bluegrass-singing mother with an ill daughter in the Oscar-nominated “The Broken Circle Breakdown” and a relentless cop on the television show “Code 37,” actress Veerle Baetens donned a director’s cap for her feature debut “When it Melts.”

Based on Lize Spit’s novel “The Melting,” the film premiered in this year’s Sundance World Feature Competition. The actress-turned director and Rosa Marchant — who plays the film’s protagonist in her childhood years — joined Sharon Waxman to discuss the picture’s unflinching, uncompromising look at the lingering impact of childhood trauma with TheWrap’s Portrait and Video Studio at The Music Lodge.

Explaining the film’s cryptic title, Baetens argued it’s about how the protagonist isolates herself after a childhood incident, and how such trauma makes her a frozen person. “It’s a beautiful metaphor for people who have experienced trauma to be in a frozen state of mind,...

It’s a backhanded compliment to Sundance to see such an emotionally stunning film as Belgian director Veerle Baetens’ When It Melts, which premiered tonight in the festival’s World Cinema Dramatic Competition, and wonder, right away, why a film of this power won’t be debuting in the official selection at Cannes this year. This is in no way to suggest that the American indie showcase is a kind of second-best place for it, more an indictment of Europe’s biggest cinema event, which routinely takes such harrowing stories of tortured and troubled women — as long as they are directed by men.

Ironically, at least two of those men (notably Michael Haneke and Lars Von Trier) are recognisable for their influence here, in an intense and uncompromising debut that sets a very high bar for this year’s international arthouse sector. In terms of investigating the cruelty of youth,...

It’s somehow been a decade since Veerle Baetens was named best European actress for her incandescent, heart-wrenching turn in The Broken Circle Breakdown. As a bluegrass-loving tattoo artist gradually obliterated by tragedy, Baetens’ performance was complex, unflinching and emotionally raw. When It Melts, the Flemish filmmaker’s Sundance-premiering feature directorial debut, cuts similarly close to the bone. Adapted by Baetens and co-writer Maarten Loix from Lize Spit’s bestselling Flemish novel, it centers on an isolated woman named Eva (Charlotte de Bruyne) who returns to the village she grew up in with an ice block in the back of her car. There, […]

The post “I Wanted To Take a Closer Look at How People Shut Down”: Veerle Baetens on When It Melts first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

It’s somehow been a decade since Veerle Baetens was named best European actress for her incandescent, heart-wrenching turn in The Broken Circle Breakdown. As a bluegrass-loving tattoo artist gradually obliterated by tragedy, Baetens’ performance was complex, unflinching and emotionally raw. When It Melts, the Flemish filmmaker’s Sundance-premiering feature directorial debut, cuts similarly close to the bone. Adapted by Baetens and co-writer Maarten Loix from Lize Spit’s bestselling Flemish novel, it centers on an isolated woman named Eva (Charlotte de Bruyne) who returns to the village she grew up in with an ice block in the back of her car. There, […]

The post “I Wanted To Take a Closer Look at How People Shut Down”: Veerle Baetens on When It Melts first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Versatile Belgian actress Veerle Baetens, known for her incandescent turn as the bluegrass-singing mom whose daughter takes ill in Oscar-nominated “The Broken Circle Breakdown,” joins the Sundance World Feature Competition with her provocative feature directing debut, “When It Melts,” an unflinching portrait of the lasting impact of untreated trauma. Film screens Jan. 21.

What drew you to adapt Lize Spit’s prize-winning novel “The Melting”?

At first, it was an offer a producer made. I read the book and I was touched by young Eva’s desire to be valued, to be loved. With the adult Eva, I felt sorry, but I found her difficult to grasp and thus fascinating. I know people who have been silenced and later on silence themselves. By making this movie I wanted to get closer to understanding people who have buried their pain deep inside of them, where no one can see it and where it silently hollows them out.

Tenure starts January 30.

Rosalie Cimino has been named managing director and producer of Anonymous/Federation, the Paris-based joint venture between US management and production house Anonymous Content and rapidly expanding European independent studio Federation Studios.

Cimino is a former talent agent and partner at Ubba since 2010 after eight years at Intertalent alongside top French agent François Samuelson. She has managed the careers of several turned global stars including Matthias Schoenaerts, Mélanie Thierry, Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre, Albert Dupontel, Alexandra Lamy, Anouk Grinberg, Nadine Labaki and Veerle Baetens.

Cimino is currently working on the follow-up to Baetens’ feature directorial debut When It Melts,...

Rosalie Cimino, a talent agent and partner with French agency Ubba, has been named the new managing director at Anonymous Federation, the recently-launched production joint venture owned by Anonymous Content and Federation Studios.

Cimino will take over in her new role Jan. 30, running Anonymous Federation alongside Federation’s Pascal Breton, Lionel Uzan and Patrick Wachsberger and Anonymous’ Dawn Olmstead, David Levine and David Davoli.

True Detective and Mr. Robot producer Anonymous launched the new Paris-based group with Federation, whose productions include French series The Bureau, German drama Bad Banks and pan-European limited series Around The World In 80 Days, late last year. It’s the latest international expansion for Anonymous, which already has production outlets in the U.K. (Chapter One), Scandinavia (AC Nordic) and South America (AC Brazil).

As an agent, Cimino has managed the careers of such European stars as Matthias Schoenaerts (The Swimmer), Veerle Baetens (The Broken...

Exclusive: Anonymous Content and Federation Studios have appointed Ubba agent Rosalie Cimino as MD and producer for Anonymous Federation, their French joint venture.

She will lead the Jv alongside Pascal Breton, Lionel Uzan and Patrick Wachsberger on behalf of Federation, and Dawn Olmstead, David Levine and David Davoli on behalf of Anonymous Content.

Ciminio begins her new role effective January 30. Among projects already underway, she is working on Veerle Baetens’s new film. The actress and director’s first movie, When It Melts, is currently in competition at Sundance in the World Drama category.

Cimino was a talent agent and partner at French talent agency Ubba since 2010 and before that spent eight years at agency Intertalent. She has repped or worked closely with talent including Matthias Schoenaerts, Mélanie Thierry, Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre, Albert Dupontel, François-Xavier Demaison, Alexandra Lamy, Jérémie Guez, Coralie Fargeat, Anouk Grinberg, Nadine Labaki, Veerle Baetens, Hervé Hadmar,...

Le plus vivant possible

We had Delphine Girard‘s Le plus vivant possible has a possible 2022 drop, but perhaps there wasn’t enough time in post for this to happen. Winner of the Arte Kino International Award as part of the Coproduction Village of Les Arcs Film Festival in 2020, this feature is based on her short film Une soeur, production on her debut took place in March of 2021 in Brussels. Girard re-teamed with Veerle Baetens and a supporting cast comprised of Selma Alaoui, Guillaume Duhesme, Anne Dorval. Previously, the Belgian filmmaker had three shorts and was a second assistant director for Maïwenn’s Polisse and Bavo Defurne’s Souvenir.…...

When It Melts

Belgian actress Veerle Baetens (best known for The Broken Circle Breakdown and Mothers’ Instinct) moved behind the camera for her directorial debut on a project that was getting terrific buzz (plus Prix Arte Kino Intl. coin) before it even went into production. A book-to-film adaptation based on Lize Spit’s Het Smelt — When It Melts is a film that highlights loneliness, burying the pain and as Baetens illustrates … it is the quiet people who have the loudest minds. Rosa Marchant and Charlotte De Bruyne share the same character and….the same traumas. Savage Films’ Bart Van Langendonck (Racer and the Jailbird) is producing.…...

Goteborg will screen nearly 250 films in 700 screenings, making it the largest film festival in Scandinavia.

The 46th Goteborg Film Festival (Jan 27-Feb 5) will kick off with the world premiere of Exodus, directed by Abbe Hassan, about a smuggler who tries to save a Syrian girl; the closing film will be Camino, directed by Birgitte Stærmose, about a 30-year-old woman on a long hike with her father to honour her mother’s last wish.

Goteborg will screen nearly 250 films in 700 screenings, making it the largest film festival in Scandinavia.

About 50 of the films – including all in the International Competition – will be...

The Göteborg Film Festival has unveiled the competition titles selected for its 46th edition, which runs from January 27 – February 5. (Scroll down for the full list).

Göteborg is split into four competition strands. The main strand is the Nordic Competition, which features nine films from the Nordic region. The competition’s winner takes home the Dragon Award and a Sek 400 000 cash prize. The rest of the festival comprises the Nordic Documentary Competition, the Ingmar Bergman Competition for first-time filmmakers, and the International Competition.

Among the Nordic highlights is Swedish filmmaker Isabella Carbonell’s thriller Dogborn, starring Swedish rap star Silvana Imam. The pic debuted at Venice last year and follows two homeless twins and their struggle to survive. Hlynur Pálmason’s well-received period piece Godland also screens in competition. Set in the late 19th Century, the drama revolves around a young Danish priest who travels to a remote part of...

Event ran December 10-17.

Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel’s Austrian Vera has won the Crystal Arrow award at the 14th Les Arcs Film Festival which wrapped on Friday night in the French mountain resort.

A jury presided over by prolific French actor-director Roschdy Zem gave its great jury prize to Teona Strugar Mitevska’s The Happiest Man In The World. Acting prizes went to Yothin Clavenzani for Ghost Night and Annabelle Lengronne for Léonor Serraille’s Mother And Son, which also won a prize for best photography for Helene Louvart. The film is distributed by Diaphana in France and sold by MK2 Films.

The Les Arcs Film Festival will launch a new sidebar showcasing this year’s European entries to the Best International Feature Film Oscar category at its 14th edition, running December 10 to 17 in its namesake French Alps skiing resort home of Les Arcs.

The dates of the European cinema-focused festival overlap with voting for the Oscar Shortlists, running December 12 to 15 ahead of the Shortlists announcement on December 21.

Eight submissions will screen in the new section entitled “Oscar Au Ski”: Cristèle Alves Meira’s Alma Viva (Portugal), Viesturs Kairišs’s January (Latvia), Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson’s BeautifuInt’l Critics Line: Iceland’s Oscar Entry Beautiful Beings (Iceland), Maryna Er Gorbach’s Klondike (Ukraine), Marie Kreutzer’s Corsage (Austria), Colm Bairéad’s The Quiet Girl (Ireland), Alli Haapasalo’s Girl Picture (Finland) and Carla Simón’s Alcarràs (Spain).

“The festival takes place in a period when the Oscar race is in full swing.

Flemish auteur’s latest is one of the buzz projects being presented as a work in progress at Connext.

Back in 2016, leading Flemish auteur Fien Troch won the best director award in the Venice Film Festival’s Horizons section for her drama Home, about troubled adolescents. Now, a full six years later, she is in post-production on, and putting the final touches to, her next feature Holly.

The film is one of the buzz projects being presented as a work in progress at Connext, the annual industry showcase for new films and TV dramas made in Flanders and Brussels which...

Hamburg-based Fünferfilm co-produced, lining up third film with writer-director Helena Wittmann.

Cinema Guild has picked up North American rights to Helena Wittmann’s Locarno selection Human Flowers Of Flesh, which screens at Filmfest Hamburg this week.

Wittmann’s follow up to her 2017 debut feature Drift will receive its US premiere at New York Film Festival next week.

Cinema Guild plans a theatrical release in 2023 on the story starring Dogtooth’s Angeliki Papoulia as a woman who enlists the help of five men who don’t speak each other’s languages and embark on a trip around the Mediterranean.

“A film...

Connext is a crucial promotional event for Flanders filmmakers and projects.

Connext, the annual industry showcase for new films and TV dramas made in Flanders and Brussels, will present new projects from some of the region’s leading filmmakers including Kevin Janssens, Veerle Baetens, and Fien Troch.

The 2022 hybrid edition will run onsite in Antwerp from October 9-11 and online from October 10-24.

The 82 titles being presented range from project pitches to works in progress through completed films and series.

Many familiar names from Flemish film and TV are participating. Janssens will be pitching his new TV series Breendonk, a...

Flanders Image, the promotional arm of the Vaf film fund of Belgium’s Flemish-speaking community, has unveiled the 80 projects selected for its annual Connext showcase, running as a hybrid event from October 10-24.

The showcase, which will hold a physical component in Antwerp from October 9-11, unfolds against the backdrop of a high-profile year for Belgian film and the cinema of its Flemish-speaking community in particular.

Lukas Dhont’s Close won Cannes Grand Prize and is now a frontrunner in the best international film category of the Oscars as Belgium’s submission; while Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch clinched Cannes Jury Prize for Italian-language drama The Eight Mountains (ex-acquo with Jerzy Skolimowski’s Eo).

Rebel, the homecoming film of Bad Boys For Life directorial duo Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, has also been making waves internationally after debuting Out of Competition at Cannes.

These films were all showcased at previous editions of Connext.

We’re praying to Kaelego that Netflix’s dark horse hit “Archive 81” gets a second season, but until then, if you’re craving more strange cults, peel-back-the-wallpaper moments, and mind-bending, non-linear mysteries, these 11 series might fill the void. We’ve rounded up a list of shows like “Archive 81” that will give you your fix, ranging from series that are spooky, mysterious and mythological to horrifically devastating.

Ares Netflix

Biracial first-year medical student Rosa Steenwijk (Jade Olieberg) joins the mysterious secret society Ares in this Netflix Dutch series set in Amsterdam. What exactly are the membership fees to this elite, and largely white, group? In the first episode, a student stabs herself with a pair of scissors and Rosa’s friend Jacob (Tobias Kersloot) has disturbing visions of a terrifying black figure when he gets cold feet during their initiation ceremony.

Where to Stream It: Netflix

Castle Rock Hulu...

Le plus vivant possible

With three shorts under her belt and noteworthy second assistant director gigs for Maïwenn’s Polisse and Bavo Defurne’s Souvenir, Belgian filmmaker Delphine Girard has in part charted a course into feature filmmaking with a project that is, in some capacity, based on Une soeur – the short film that won her a trip to the final round of the Oscars in the Best Live Action Short Film (2020). With production set to begin in March in Brussels, Girard with reteamed with Veerle Baetens, Selma Alaoui and Guillaume Duhesme with the added presence of Anne Dorval. Le plus vivant possible won the ArteKino International Award as part of the Coproduction Village of Les Arcs Film Festival in 2020.…...

Les Arcs Film Festival has unveiled the 15-title lineup of its Work-in-Progress session, the popular industry sidebar whose alumni roster include Vladimar Jóhannsson’s “Lamb,” Lukas Dhont’s “Girl” and Nora Fingscheidt’s “System Crasher.”

The section, curated by Frederic Boyer, the artistic director of Tribeca and Les Arcs Film Festival, will include “Opponent,” a drama by Swedish up-and-comer Milad Alami (“The Charmer”) and produced by Sweden’s Tangy and Norway’s Ape&Bjørn; “Preparations for a Miracle,” directed by Tobias Nölle and produced by Switzerland’s Hugofilm Features and Germany’s Flare Film; and “Silver Haze,” helmed by Sacha Polak and produced by Dutch banner Viking Film and the U.K.’s Emu Films.

Spanning 18 countries across Europe, the selection comprises films in post-production, eight of which are by female directors. Jeremy Zelnik who spearheads Les Arcs’s Industry Village received a record 164 projects, which reflects the fact that many...

15 feature projects chosen from 164 submissions.

Silver Haze, the new feature from Dirty God director Sacha Polak, is among 15 feature projects in post-production selected for the 2021 edition of the Les Arcs Film Festival Work in Progress session.

The event is intended to help projects find sales agents, distributors and festival prremieres; it will run on Sunday, December 12 as part of the Industry Village at the 13th edition of the festival (December 11-18).

Scroll down for the full list of projects

Excerpts from the films will be screened to industry professionals, in a session moderated by the festival’s artistic director Frederic Boyer,...