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Vicky Krieps have joined the cast of The Idiots, the upcoming feature by Polish filmmakers Małgorzata Szumowska and Michał Englert.

They join previously announced cast members Aimee Lou Wood and Johnny Flynn in the feature, which is being sold internationally by The Match Factory.

The drama is adapted from Andrew D. Kaufman’s novel The Gambler Wife: A True Story of Love, Risk, and the Woman Who Saved Dostoyevsky.

Szumowska and Michał Englert, whose previous joint directorial credits include Woman Of… (2023) and Never Gonna Snow Again (2020), have also co-written the adaptation with Kasper Bajon and Bríd Arnstein. Englert will also serve as cinematographer.

The novel follows the lives of Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky and his wife Anna during a period that inspired him to write The Idiot. The novel was...

“Corsage” and “Phantom Thread” actor Vicky Krieps and “The Zone of Interest” and “White Lotus” star Christian Friedel have joined Aimee Lou Wood and Johnny Flynn in the cast of “The Idiots.”

Krieps won Cannes’ Un Certain Regard best performance award and the European Film Award for “Corsage” in 2022. Friedel is a two-time nominee for best actor at both the European and German film awards.

Other actors joining the cast are Barbara Marten and three-time German Film Award nominee Rainer Bock.

The film is to be directed by Polish filmmakers Małgorzata Szumowska and Michał Englert, and is co-written by Szumowska and Englert together with Kasper Bajon and Bríd Arnstein. Englert will also serve as cinematographer. International sales are being handled by the Match Factory.

The story is based on the novel “The Gambler Wife: A True Story of Love, Risk, and the Woman Who Saved Dostoyevsky” by Andrew D. Kaufman,...

Award-winning European actors Vicky Krieps (Corsage, Phantom Thread) and Christian Friedel (The Zone of Interest, White Lotus) have joined the ensemble cast of The Idiots, the new film from Polish directors Malgorzata Szumowska and Michal Englert (Woman of…, Never Gonna Snow Again).

Friedel’s White Lotus co-star Aimee Lou Wood, and Ripley actor Johnny Flynn headline the project in a cast that also includes Dune: Prophecy actress Barbara Marten, and Rainer Bock (Wonder Woman, The White Ribbon).

Szumowska and Englert co-wrote The Idiots together with Kasper Bajon and Bríd Arnstein, basing the story on Andrew D. Kaufman’s 2021 novel The Gambler Wife: A True Story of Love, Risk, and the Woman Who Saved Dostoyevsky, which follows the lives of the famous Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky and his wife Anna during a period that inspired him to write his classic The Idiot.

Wood and Flynn play Anna and her husband, nicknamed Fiedya.

Vicky Krieps and Christian Friedel have joined the cast of Malgorzata Szumowska and Michal Englert’s The Idiots.

Krieps, Friedel, Barbara Marten and Rainer Bock join previously-announced cast members Aimee Lou Wood and Johnny Flynn, with filming scheduled to begin next month.

The Idiots is based on Andrew D. Kaufman’s 2021 novel The Gambler Wife: A True Story of Love, Risk, and the Woman Who Saved Dostoyevsky. The film will tell the story of Russian writer Dostoyevsky and his wife Anna on their honeymoon trip to Baden – the period in his life that inspired him to write The Idiot.

Szumowska...

The Match Factory has come on board as sales agent for “The Idiots,” the new feature by Polish filmmakers Małgorzata Szumowska and Michał Englert.

The film stars “White Lotus” actor Aimee Lou Wood, a BAFTA winner for best female performance in a comedy program for “Sex Education,” alongside Johnny Flynn, nominated for the best supporting actor at the Critics Choice Award for his role in “Genius.”

The film’s principal photography is set to start next month.

The story is based on the novel “The Gambler Wife: A True Story of Love, Risk, and the Woman Who Saved Dostoyevsky” by Andrew D. Kaufman, published in 2021, which follows the lives of the writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky and his wife Anna during a period that inspired him to write “The Idiot” – at the time a commercial flop, but today, considered one of the greatest novels in the history of literature.

The film follows...

Project UFO unfolds across four chapters, each around fifty minutes, on Netflix. Kasper Bajon, both writer and director, frames the story in Communist Poland’s anxiety-ridden early 1980s; crisp lensing and period-accurate design ground the series in its era. It’s a methodical build: a rural electronics repairman, Zbigniew Sokolik (Mateusz Kościukiewicz), claims underwater beings emerge from a lake via hidden tunnels. His appearance on Jan Polgar’s televised debunking program, Close Encounters, exposes him to national shame.

Polgar (Piotr Adamczyk) anchors the primary viewpoint, his transformation from assured skeptic to uneasy state instrument driving the plot’s center. Julia Borewicz (Julia Kijowska), a provincial police corporal, brings grounded urgency as her personal obligations collide with political demands. Wera Wierusz (Maja Ostaszewska), Polgar’s rival, injects ambitious tension both on and off camera. Their interactions steer the narrative’s pulse, shifting from investigative suspense into sharp satire of propaganda and power.

My trilogy of awful projects starring Mateusz Kosciukiewicz is finally complete. To be clear, I don’t have any personal vendetta with Mateusz. I don’t know the guy personally, and vice versa. It’s just that everything I see him in turns out to be one of the worst pieces of media in existence. I don’t know if the problem lies in my taste or Mateusz’s choice of screenplays, but this sure is an interesting phenomenon. My tryst with the Polish actor started with a movie called Kiss Kiss, which was basically a mixture of every sexist trope and stereotype we’ve encountered throughout the history of cinema, with Mateusz giving an irredeemably awful performance. Then there was Hound’s Hill, where Mateusz was actually good, but everything around him was downright atrocious. And now, here we are with Project UFO, which is one of the most boring miniseries of the year,...

Netflix has unveiled nine new movies and series from Poland including the directorial debut of High Water writer Kasper Bajon and a thriller from the team behind Forgotten Love.

As the streamer continues to unveil international originals by the bucket load, Project UFO leads the Poland slate, a mini-series helmed by Bajon that will transport fans of stories inspired by real events to the 1980s in order to investigate the alleged UFO landing in a remote countryside village.

Bajon wrote the popular High Water series, one of the biggest to come from Netflix Poland, about the 1997 Central European flood and how it was managed by the authorities of the Polish city of Wrocław.

Meanwhile, Michał Gazda (director) and Magdalena Szwedkowicz (producer), the team behind last year’s Netflix Poland movie Forgotten Love, are re-teaming on a movie following a retired policeman trying to bring to justice to those behind a ruthless bank robbery case,...

Isabelle Adjani and Famke Janssen are to star in thriller series for Netflix coming from France and the Netherlands.

Two-time Oscar nominee Adjani is leading an untitled thriller from France about a young mother on the run who finds an unexpected opportunity to bounce back by becoming a picker in a prestigious flower farm in Provence. The mysterious death of the family patriarch of the company then casts her under the spotlight as the prime suspect.

The French TV series is being created by Nils Antoine Sambuc, directed by Marie Jardillier and produced by Newen-backed Itinéraire Productions and Ugc.

Storied actress Adjani recently starred in Mélanie Laurent’s Netflix movie Wingwomen.

The show was revealed by Netflix Emea boss Larry Tanz at Series Mania.

From Benelux, he unveiled Amsterdam Empire, the first series to emerge from the deal between the streamer and Belgian-Dutch Undercover creator Nico Moolenaar. Moolenaar is creating...

Aimee Lou Wood and Matt Dillon have signed on to play Anna and Fyodor Dostoevsky in Małgorzata Szumowska’s ‘The Gambler Wife.’

Written by Szumowska and Kasper Bajon adapted from Andrew D. Kaufman’s book The Gambler Wife: A True Story of Love, Risk and the Woman Who Saved Dostoyevsky, is a dark comedy about one of literature’s most towering figures.

The project follows Fyodor, or Fyedya to his intimates, and his much younger, pregnant wife, Anna, as they travel to Switzerland for their honeymoon. Anna tolerates Fyedya’s gambling addiction as this will serve as inspiration for his burgeoning literary career. However, Fyedya’s compulsive roulette playing continues to cause problems for the couple until they are forced to return to a Russia that is not quite as they remember.

Also in news – First look image revealed for Sky original film ‘Arthur’s Whisky’

Szumowska describes the feature as...

BAFTA-winning “Sex Education” star Aimee Lou Wood and Oscar-nominee Matt Dillon (“Crash”) have been tapped to star as Anna and Fyodor Dostoyevsky in “The Gambler Wife,” a dark comedy about one of world literature’s most towering figures, by two-time Berlinale prize winner Małgorzata Szumowska.

“The Gambler Wife” follows the Russian novelist and his much younger, pregnant wife, Anna, as they travel to Switzerland for their honeymoon. Anna tolerates her husband’s gambling addiction, which will serve as inspiration for his burgeoning literary career. However, Fyodor’s compulsive roulette playing continues to cause problems for the couple until they are forced to return to a Russia that is not quite as they remember.

“This dark comedy explores the patriarchal, nationalistic Russian identity which keeps on waging war between the West and the East, which is as relevant today as it was two hundred years ago,” said Szumowska.

Pic is produced...

Exclusive: Netflix’s Director of Local Language Originals for the Cee, Anna Nagler, has outlined the streamer’s ambitions in region, as its biggest drama series from the region, High Water, launches globally today.

In an exclusive interview, Nagler said the streamer’s “doors are open” to creatives and their ideas in Central and Eastern Europe, as Netflix pushes into original shows from international territories despite the company’s well-documented stock price drop this year.

This comes after Netflix opened its regional Cee office in Poland this year. Since launching in Poland in 2016, the SVoD player has claimed to have invested more than 490M Pln (115M) on original films and series such as erotic movie franchise 365 Days in the country, creating more than 2,600 jobs across the production sector in 2020 and 2021.

“Opening the Warsaw office was important but also we’re getting closer to the creative community in general,” Nagler told Deadline.

Ten world premieres are among the 12 films competing for the Crystal Globe at Central and Eastern Europe’s premier film festival, Karlovy Vary, which runs June 29-July 7. The competition titles include leading Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude’s “I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians,” an exploration of nationality and national trauma; Argentine Ana Katz’s family drama “Sueno Florianopolis”; and Canadian filmmaker Sebastien Pilote’s “The Fireflies Are Gone,” the story of a rebellious teen relationship.

A standout performance by Caleb Landry Jones dominates Peter Brunner’s dark Austro-American drama “To the Night,” while two filmmakers returning to Karlovy Vary present “noticeably more poetic new films”: Russia’s Ivan Tverdovsky (“Zoology”) will screen “Jumpman,” while Israeli director Joseph Madmony brings his third premiere to West Bohemia, the drama “Redemption,” co-directed by cinematographer Boaz Y. Yakov.

Czech Republic-based filmmaker Olmo Omerzu will screen a road movie centered on boyhood friendship,...

Variety has been given exclusive access to the trailer for “Via Carpatia,” the feature debut from Student Oscar medalist Klara Kochańska and her directing partner Kasper Bajon. The movie premieres Saturday in the East of the West Competition section of the Karlovy Vary Intl. Film Festival.

The film centers on a middle-class couple from Poland, Piotr and Julia, who have been planning their holiday for months. Their plans are ruined by Piotr’s mother, who wants them to travel to a refugee camp on the Macedonian-Greek border and bring Piotr’s father home.

The film stars Julia Kijowska, who appeared in Agnieszka Holland’s “In Darkness” and Tomasz Wasilewski’s “United States of Love,” and Piotr Borowski, who starred in “Quo Vadis.”

It is produced by MD4’s Agnieszka Kurzydło, whose credits include Małgośka Szumowska’s “In the Name Of,” winner of the Berlinale’s Teddy Award. International sales are...

Dating back to 1948, the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival is one of the oldest film festivals in the world and has become one of Eastern and Central Europe’s most prominent events for cinema. The festival, which takes place in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic every July, has now announced the program of films for its Official Selection, East of the West, and Documentary competitions.

The Official Selection is composed of 12 films – ten world premieres and two international premieres – and is led by renowned Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude’s latest film I Do Not Care If We Go Down In History As Barbarians, which plays as an investigation on the large idea of nationality, and esteemed Argentinian director Ana Katz’s film Sueño Florianópolis, a family drama structured with elements of both trite and humorous storytelling. Among them, the line-up includes the complex romance The Fireflies Are Gone (by Canada’s...

Line-up includes films from Radu Jude, Ivan Tverdovsky and Ana Katz.

The 53rd Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (June 29 - July 7) has unveiled the competition titles in its Official Selection, East of the West and Documentary sections.

Scroll down for full line-ups Main competition

The 12-strong main competition will comprise ten world premieres and two international premieres, including ”I Do Not Care If We Go Down In History As Barbarians” from Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude, whose 2012 title Everybody In Our Family won best film at the Sarajevo Film Festival.

Other films in competition include Ana Katz’s family drama Sueño Florianópolis,...