News

Mubi has received fresh push back over a recent $100 million investment it received from Silicon Valley-based private equity firm Sequoia Capital, over the latter’s backing of a number of Israeli defence-tech start-ups.

Filmmakers with connections to Mubi – including Nate Fisher, Sarah Friedland, Cherien Dabis, Tyler Taormina, Aki Kaurismäki, Radu Jude and Joshua Oppenheimer – have signed a letter calling on the arthouse distributor and streamer to reconsider its relationship with the investment firm.

The signatories do not include the directors of Mubi’s recent high-profile Cannes acquisitions such as Lynne Ramsay, Mascha Schilinski (Sound of Falling), Oliver Hermanus (The History of Sound) and Kelly Reichardt (The Mastermind) and Akinola Davies Jr. (My Father’s Shadow).

In the statement, first reported by Variety, the filmmakers highlighted Sequoia Capital’s growing investments in Israeli military technology companies.

It cited Kela Technologies, which was founded in the wake of the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Southern Israel,...

Filmmakers including Robert Greene, Joshua Oppenheimer, Sarah Friedland, Radu Jude, Levan Akin, and Miguel Gomes are among the more than 35 who have signed an open letter from Film Workers for Palestine calling on indie distributor Mubi to part ways with investor Sequoia Capital.

The venture capital firm has recently invested in Israeli military-aligned businesses, and backlash against Mubi has been growing since the investor’s ties came to light in June. Sequoia had just given Mubi a $100 million investment. But since February 2024, Sequoia has also invested in Kela, a military tech startup that finds weapons and military-grade applications for AI and drone tech. Sequoia itself touts the partnership with Kela on its website as a way to “leverage Israel’s unique cadre of technowarriors to help defend the Western world order.”

When reached by IndieWire, Mubi had no comment.

Since June, the backlash against Mubi has been growing. These are...

The Hollywood Insider - Kill The Jockey

Luis Ortega’s latest blends crime, dark comedy, and dream logic in a visually bold story set on the fringes of Buenos Aires. Argentinian director Luis Ortega’s 'Kill the Jockey', which opened in limited U.S. release on July 2nd, is not just a film; it’s an experience filled with dreamy visuals, unbridled energy of nonstop self-destruction, self-discovery, and relentless gender play. The film begins as a raw, earthy portrait of a burnt-out jockey, but finishes in a far more hypnotic place, much stranger, and ultimately much more gratifying. Ortega’s second feature feels like a fever dream filled with sweat, sequins, and cigarette smoke, where identity can feel like both prison and playground. Luis Ortega, recognized as one of Argentina's most courageous cinematic voices, is breaking new ground as a director with 'Kill the Jockey', an...

Fans are rocking out to This Is Spinal Tap over the holiday weekend.

The beloved 1984 Rob Reiner mockumentary of a fictional British rock band on a disastrous U.S. tour, restored and remastered, will pull in an estimated $931.7k at 1,015 locations Saturday and Sunday, no. 10 at the domestic box office. The Bleecker Street and Fathom release is looking at $138k on Monday for a total of $1.069 million over its three-day special engagement with limited showtimes.

Due to fan demand, the distributors said, they are adding additional playdates July 8, 9 and 10.

Bleecker will release sequel Spinal Tap II: The End Continues on September 12 with Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer reprising their star turns as as members of the heavy metal band reuniting after 15 years for one final show.

“We are thrilled with these early results of our re-release of Rob’s original This is Spinal Tap. While showtimes were limited this weekend,...

Cannibals and a beloved rock band hit the indie circuit for the long holiday weekend as Magnolia Pictures opens action thriller 40 Acres and This Is Spinal Tap returns for a special engagement from Bleecker Street and Fathom. A24 expands Eva Victor’s critically acclaimed directorial debut Sorry, Baby to 14 screens from 4.

Magnolia acquired 40 Acres out of TIFF this year where it was named one of Canada’s Top 10 films of the festival. It’s in 300+ theaters nationwide. The directorial debut of R.T Thorne set in a post-apocalyptic world chronicles a multi-racial Canadian farming family fighting to protect their piece of land from rabid cannibals. Star Danielle Deadwyler is the shoot-first matriarch of an angsty family put to the test when her son (Kataem O’Connor) makes a grave misstep that puts their collective in great danger. Thorne wrote the screenplay with Glenn Taylor and Lora Campbell. Also stars Michael Greyeyes and Milcania Diaz-Rojas.

Holed up in an attempt to go cold turkey before a crucial race, once-renowned jockey Remo (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart) asks his pregnant partner and fellow jockey Abril (Úrsula Corberó), “What can I do to make you love me again?” To which she replies, “Die and be reborn.” Accordingly, director Luis Ortega sets out with Kill the Jockey to tell a prototypical sports-movie comeback story, albeit through far from conventional means.

Set in Buenos Aires, the film is a sports movie in the same way that Alejandro Jodorowsky’s El Topo is a western. It could just as easily be shelved under crime drama, rock mockumentary, or ghost story. While Ortega’s style doesn’t quite transcend the influence of filmmakers such as Lynch, Godard, Fellini, and Almodóvar, it melds them with surprising assurance. Kill the Jockey’s originality consists not just in taking the clichéd metaphor of rebirth literally, but...

"He was a good boy..." Music Box has revealed an official US trailer for Kill the Jockey, the Argentinian film starring Nahuel Pérez Biscayart as a rogue horse racing jockey who goes on the run. Thi premiered at the 2024 Venice Film Festival last year, and also played at the Toronto, San Sebastian, Viennale, Tokyo, and Stockholm Festivals. It's a gem! One of my favorites from last year – an especially clever, perfectly shot fable with an unforgettable lead performance. Spanish-Argentina actor Nahuel Pérez Biscayart stars as Remo, the on-the-run jockey at the center of this cinematic tale of a man in the midst of transition. Remo's self-destructive behavior and alcoholism overshadows his talent. Abril, an upcoming jockey is pregnant by Remo and has to decide between child or continuing to race. They both race for Sirena, a businessman who saved Remo's life in the past. Also starring Úrsula Corberó, Daniel Giménez Cacho,...

Molly Manning Walker and her jury of Louise Courvoisier, Croatian director of the International Film Festival Rotterdam Vanja Kaludjercic, Italian director, producer and screenwriter Roberto Minervini and Argentinian actor Nahuel Pérez Biscayart handed on the prizing late last week for the Un Certain Regard section. Diego Céspedes‘ feature debut The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo was the top winner of the section in 2025. The Chilean filmmaker was joined by Colombia cinema in with Simón Mesa Soto claiming the Jury Prize (for Un Poeta). Soto is a filmmaker who won the Palme d’Or for this short less than a decade back.…...

And the wins keep on coming for Neon. But also for Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, currently in exile from his home country of Iran for how he’s voiced opposition through his cinema. This includes his latest film and now Palme d’Or winner, “It Was Just an Accident,” a moral thriller that finds five dissidents debating whether or not to murder their former torturer.

In IndieWire’s review out of Cannes, David Ehrlich said of the film, “From the plot description alone, it’s obvious that ‘It Was Just an Accident’ finds Panahi working in a very different register than he had to while “banned” from making films — a period that saw his long-standing penchant for metafiction become considerably more pronounced, as he was forced to make himself the subject of iPhone/camcorder masterpieces like ‘This Is Not a Film.’ This one still had to be shot in secret...

The 2025 Cannes Film Festival came at precarious moment in the history of cinema, yet still managed to revel in the splendors this art form can provide. While the annual international event may be coming to a close, it leaves behind a bevy of gems that will continue to be discussed throughout the year and may even land on the Oscars stage in 2026, as was the case with Sean Baker’s 2024 Palme d’Or winner, “Anora.” But before all that, there still remains the important act of closing out the festivities with the ever-important awards ceremony.

Predicting the Palme d’Or recipient has become a cherished pastime for fans and critics alike, but as is the case every year, the final decision rests in the hands of the Main Competition jury. This year it’s led by French actress and current European Film Academy president Juliette Binoche, and also includes Halle Berry,...

The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo, Chilean writer-director Diego Céspedes’ AIDS bigotry drama and feature debut, spotlighted by THR as a festival gem, has claimed the top prize in the Cannes Film Festival’s 2025 Un Certain Regard competition.

The winning drama, set in the 1980s, portrays a small mining town in Chile where an unknown illness spreads and gay men are accused of transmitting it with their gaze. That leaves Lydia, an 11 year-old girl, to find out the truth. The Un Certain Regard competition winners were revealed in an awards ceremony in the Debussy Theatre on Friday.

Other honorees included A Poet, by Colombian director Simón Mesa Soto, taking home the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize for the drama about a failed poet mentoring a talented, young woman. The best director prize went to Tarzan Nasser and Arab Nasser for Once Upon a Time in Gaza, a Palestinian crime thriller...

Chilean Drama The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo by Diego Céspedes won the main Un Certain Regard Prize this evening in Cannes.

Set in 1982, the film follows eleven-year-old Lidia lives with her beloved queer family in a desert mining town in northern Chile. As an unknown and deadly disease begins to spread, legend has it that it is transmitted between two men, through a simple glance, when they fall in love. While people are accusing her family, Lidia must find out whether this myth is real or not.

A Poet, by Colombian filmmaker Simón Mesa Soto, won the Jury Prize. The film is Soto’s second feature, and it follows Oscar Restrepo, whose obsession with poetry brought him no glory. Aging and erratic, he has succumbed to the cliché of the poet in the shadows. Meeting Yurlady, a teenage girl from humble roots, and helping her cultivate her talent brings some light to his days,...

Diego Céspedes’ “The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo” has been named the best film of the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival, the Ucr jury announced on Friday.

The film follows an 11-year-old girl growing up in the early 1980s in a queer family in a small Chilean mining town, where suspicion is growing over a mysterious disease that is rumored to be spread by glances between gay men.

Simón Mesa Soto’s “A Poet” won the Jury Prize, the second-place award.

The directing award went to Tarzan and Arab Nasser for “Once Upon a Time in Gaza,” while Cléo Diara and Frank Dillane won the performance prizes for “I Only Rest in the Storm” and “Urchin,” respectively. Writer-director Harry Lighton won the screenplay award for “Pillion.”

Un Certain Regard focuses on films from younger directors and often spotlights experimental work. This year, Ucr was also the...

The Cannes Film Festival’s second-most prestigious competition, Un Certain Regard, is typically dominated by newer, less heralded names in world cinema. But there was more star power than usual at stake in this year’s awards ceremony, as pundits wondered whether one of the three debut features by prominent actors-turned-directors in this year’s lineup — Kristen Stewart, Scarlett Johansson and Harris Dickinson — could land a prize.

As it turned out, people needn’t have worried about a Hollywood takeover. Stewart’s “The Chronology of Water” and Johansson’s “Eleanor the Great” both went unawarded, as the jury threw a relative curveball in handing the Prix Un Certain Regard to Chilean director Diego Céspedes for his alluringly titled first feature “The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo,” an offbeat study of a transgender commune living in the Chilean desert around the onset of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s.

The film...

Angelina Jolie is bestowing a great honor on two rising stars: Marie Colomb and Finn Bennett!

The ceremony of the 25th edition of the Trophée Chopard took place at Carlton Beach during the 2025 Cannes Film Festival on Friday night (May 16) in Cannes, France.

Keep reading to find out more…

It was co-hosted by Festival President Iris Knobloch, General Delegate Thierry Frémaux, and President of Chopard Caroline Scheufele.

Following a moving retrospective of their careers, the 30-year-old Culte actress and the 26-year-old Warfare actor were presented with the iconic gold-coated silver film reel trophy by the 49-year-old acclaimed actress and activist, acting as the official “Godmother” of this year’s edition.

Angelina offered words of encouragement to the two actors as she presented the award, met with applause by an audience of film industry luminaries and

international stars.

Attendees included President of the Cannes Festival jury Juliette Binoche, Members of the Cannes Festival jury Halle Berry,...

The French Riviera is set to host international cinema again this year. Getting featured in the Cannes Film Festival is a lifelong ambition for many filmmakers, and once again, its 78th edition is going to fulfill many of these dreams. The Festival will take place from May 13 to May 24, 2025, and this year is particularly interesting for some new reasons.

One of the reasons is the recent announcement by President Donald Trump about potential tariffs on films from countries across the border. Other than these, there will be the usual glamorous red carpets, neck-to-neck competition, and maybe a bit of political drama as well, which makes the Cannes Film Festival a special event.

Jury of the Cannes Film Festival 2025

The jury lineup is quite stacked this year. It’s French actress Juliette Binoche who is leading the Main Competition jury, and she is joined by a talented team. Halle Berry’s...

From left: Molly Manning Walker © Dr / Roberto Minervini © Olga Prudka / Vanja Kaludjercic © Anne Reitsma / Louise Courvoisier © Laurent Le Crabe / Nahuel Pérez Biscayart © Dr

The British director, screenwriter and cinematographer Molly Manning Walker will be the President of the Un Certain Regard Jury of the With Cannes Film Festival.

Manning Walker whose debut feature How To Have Sex, won Un Certain Regard Prize at Cannes in 2023 and received multiple BAFTA nominations. said: "This selection will forever hold a special place in my heart. Being a part of it really changed my world. I can’t wait to discover the films at the epicentre of new cinema. Right now more than ever I feel that cinema is so key to bringing us together and allowing us to feel, to connect with each other. To escape, wonder and learn about each other. I’m excited to go on this journey with the other...

Molly Manning Walker will serve as jury president for the Un Certain Regard section at the 78th Festival de Cannes, running from May 13 to May 24, 2025. The British filmmaker received the top prize in this section in 2023 for her debut feature, How to Have Sex.

Walker expressed enthusiasm about returning to the festival in this capacity. “It’s such an honour to return to Cannes as the President of the Un Certain Regard Jury,” she said in a statement. “This selection will forever hold a special place in my heart. Being a part of it really changed my world. I can’t wait to discover the films at the epicentre of new cinema. Right now more than ever I feel that cinema is so key to bringing us together and allowing us to feel, to connect with each other. To escape, wonder and learn about each other.”

Joining Walker on the...

UK filmmaker and cinematographer Molly Manning Walker will preside over the jury of Cannes Film Festival’s sidebar Un Certain Regard.

Walker’s debut feature How To Have Sex premiered in the strand in 2023 where it won the top prize.

Joining Walker is French-Swiss director and screenwriter Louise Courvoisier, whose debut Holy Cow won the youth award in Un Certain Regard in 2024, and Italian filmmaker Roberto Minervini who took home best director the same year for The Damned.

Rounding out the jury is Vanja Kaludjercic, director of the International Film Festival Rotterdam, and Argentinian actor Nahuel Pérez Biscayart.

There are...

UK director, screenwriter and cinematographer Molly Manning Walker has been named as president of the Un Certain Regard Jury at the 78th edition of the Cannes Film Festival this May.

She will be joined by French-Swiss director and screenwriter Louise Courvoisier, Croatian director of the International Film Festival Rotterdam Vanja Kaludjercic, Italian director, producer and screenwriter Roberto Minervini and Argentinian actor Nahuel Pérez Biscayart.

They will be decided the prizes in Un Certain Regard section, which showcases art and discovery films by young auteurs and features 20 titles this year, including nine debut features.

The section opens with Tunisian-French director Erige Sehiri’s Promised Sky on May 14, the day after the festival’s opening ceremony.

Manning Walker has a special connection with Un Certain Regard having won its main prize for first feature How To Have Sex in 2023. She turned up late for the ceremony, leading then Jury President John C. Reilly...

Molly Manning Walker will be president of the Un Certain Regard jury at the 78th Cannes Film Festival, which takes place May 13 – May 24, 2025. The British filmmaker won the prize in this category in 2023 for her first feature film, “How to Have Sex.”

“It’s such an honour to return to Cannes as the President of the Un Certain Regard Jury,” the director, writer and cinematographer said in a statement. “This selection will forever hold a special place in my heart. Being a part of it really changed my world. I can’t wait to discover the films at the epicentre of new cinema. Right now more than ever I feel that cinema is so key to bringing us together and allowing us to feel, to connect with each other. To escape, wonder and learn about each other. I’m excited to go on this journey with the other Jury members...

Two years after her debut “How to Have Sex” won Un Certain Regard’s top prize, British director, screenwriter and cinematographer Molly Manning Walker will be back at Cannes Film Festival to preside over the section’s jury.

Manning Walker will be joined by French-Swiss director and screenwriter Louise Courvoisier, who presented her film “Holy Cow” last year at Cannes; Vanja Kaludjercic, the Croatian director of the International Film Festival Rotterdam; Italian filmmaker Roberto Minervini; and Argentinian actor Nahuel Pérez Biscayart (“Bpm Beats Per Minute”). Together, they will hand out the prizes for Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section, which centers on films by young auteurs.

“It’s such an honor to return to Cannes as the president of the Un Certain Regard Jury,” Manning Walker said in a statement. “This selection will forever hold a special place in my heart. Being a part of it really changed my world. I...

The jury for the Cannes Un Certain Regard program has been announced, with “How to Have Sex” director Molly Manning Walker as the president.

The 2025 Un Certain Regard jury includes French-Swiss director and screenwriter Louise Courvoisier; Vanja Kaludjercic, Croatian director of the International Film Festival Rotterdam; Italian director, producer, and screenwriter Roberto Minervini; and Argentinian actor Nahuel Pérez Biscayart. The jury will award prizes for the section, which showcases first- and second-time filmmakers of promise. The Un Certain Regard program will open with Tunisian director Erige Sehiri’s “Promised Sky” on Wednesday, May 14.

This year, a total of 20 films have been selected for Un Certain Regard, including nine first films, such as Harris Dickinson’s “Urchin,” Scarlett Johansson’s “Eleanor the Great,” and Kristen Stewart’s “The Chronology of Water.”

Un Certain Regard Jury President Walker previously won the 2023 Un Certain Regard Prize for her directorial debut “How to Have Sex.

How to Have Sex director Molly Manning Walker will head up this year’s jury for Cannes’ Un Certain Regard sidebar.

The British filmmaker, whose debut feature won the section’s top prize in 2023, will be joined on the jury by French-Swiss director Louise Courvoisier, whose Holy Cow won Un Certain Regard’s Youth Award last year, Italian filmmaker Roberto Minervini, the 2024 ex-aequno best director winner for The Damned, Argentinian actor Nahuel Pérez Biscayart (120 Bpm), and International Film Festival Rotterdam director Vanja Kaludjercic.

“It’s such an honour to return to Cannes as the President of the Un Certain Regard Jury,” Walker said in a statement. “This selection will forever hold a special place in my heart. Being a part of it really changed my world. I can’t wait to discover the films at the epicentre of new cinema. Right now more than ever I feel that cinema is...

“It’s not for us.” Anyone who has ever pitched a movie has heard those words. But when Luis Ortega was looking for financing for his latest feature, the surrealist, gender-bending Kill the Jockey, he heard it a lot.

It didn’t matter that Ortega’s work had been making waves in Argentine cinema since his first feature, 2003’s Caja Negra, or that his prior feature, El Angel, competed in Un Certain Regard in Cannes in 2019. Kill the Jockey, about a jockey whose identity — already fragmented by trauma, drugs and alcohol — repeatedly transforms following a racing accident and its accompanying head injury, was just too esoteric.

“This movie is not pitchable,” Ortega admits.

Another potential reason for all those passes? “Pineapple Head. That’s [what] the film was called,” Ortega says, alluding to a homeless man in Buenos Aires who — walking around the city in a fur coat, one sandal and one woman’s high-heeled shoe,...

Argentinian coming-of-age drama Los Frikis by Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz won best film at the 13th Evolution Mallorca International Film Festival (Emiff) at the closing ceremony on November 5.

Set in Cuba in the early 90s, the film follows a group of punk rockers who deliberately inject themselves with HIV so they can live in a treatment home.

Alonso Ruizpalacios’ black-and-white feature La Cocina walked away with both best director and best cinematography (Juan Pablo Ramírez) after opening the festival on October 30. Rooney Mara and Raúl Briones star In the Berlinale premiere surrounding a kitchen in New York.

Saoirse Ronan...

The Argentine Film Academy selected “Kill The Jockey” as the country’s official submission for the Best International Feature Film category at the 2025 Academy Awards. The dark comedy movie, directed by Luis Ortega, follows a talented but troubled jockey whose dangerous behavior threatens his career and relationship.

“Kill The Jockey” made its debut this year at film festivals in Venice and Toronto. It stars Nahuel Pérez Biscayart as the reckless rider and Úrsula Corberó as his girlfriend Abril. On the day of an important race, the jockey suffers a bad accident and disappears from the hospital. He then roams the streets of Buenos Aires while evading a mobster named Sirena, played by Daniel Gimenez Cacho.

Biscayart and Corberó are internationally known actors. Biscayart appeared in well-reviewed movies like “120 Beats per Minute” and “My New Friends.” Corberó gained fame on the Netflix series “Money Heist” and will star in an upcoming Sky show.

Argentina is backing Luis Ortega’s equestrian-themed surreal comedy-thriller Kill the Jockey for the 2025 Oscar race in the best international feature category.

The film, which premiered in Venice, features Bpm star Nahuel Pérez Biscayart as Remo Manfredini, a troubled jockey who begins to question his masculine identity shifts after a serious accident on the track. When he disappears from the hospital and wanders the streets of Buenos Aires, trying to discover who he is truly meant to be, he is pursued by mobster boss Sirena (Daniel Gimenez Cacho), to whom he is deep in debt, and who wants Remo found, dead or alive.

A mash-up of psychological thriller and comedy of manners, with a heavy dose of surrealist camp, the film will be a unique Academy Award entry this season.

Kill the Jockey was produced by Ortega and Esteban Perroud via their production label El Despacho together with Rei Pictures’ Benjamín Domenech,...

Argentina has selected Luis Ortega’s latest flick Kill The Jockey as its candidate for the Best International Feature Film category at the 97th Academy Awards.

The announcement was made yesterday by the Argentine Film Academy.

Kill the Jockey debuted in competition at this year’s Venice Film Festival before going on to screen at TIFF.

Nahuel Pérez Biscayart stars in the absurdist comedy as a legendary jockey whose self-destructive behaviour is beginning to outshine his talent and threaten his relationship with his girlfriend Abril (Úrsula Corberó).

On the day of the most important race of his career that will clear him of his debts from mobster boss Sirena (Daniel Gimenez Cacho), he has a severe accident, disappears from the hospital and wanders the streets of Buenos Aires. Free from his identity, he starts to discover who he is truly meant to be. But Sirena wants him found, dead or alive.

Argentina’s National Academy has selected Kill The Jockey (El Jockey) as the country’s submission in the best international feature film Oscar category.

‘Kill The Jockey’: Venice Review

Luis Ortega’s comedy plays in San Sebastian’s Horizontes Latinos section dedicated to Latin American productions after premiering in Venice and received its North American premiere in Toronto.

Nahuel Perez Biscayart from Robin Campillo’s 120 Bpm stars in the tale of identity and reinvention as a gifted jockey who falls foul of a mobster.

The cast includes Ursula Corbero from Money Heist, Daniel Giménez Cacho, Mariana Di Girólamo, and Daniel Fanego,...

Argentina’s Nahuel Pérez Biscayart (“120 Bpm”) and Spain’s Mona Martínez (“Adios”) play pivotal roles in the international co-production, “Narciso” by Paraguay’s Marcelo Martinessi, whose feature debut “The Heiresses,” (“Las Herederas”) took home two Silver Bears and a Fipresci award at the 2018 Berlinale.

Originally titled “Who Killed Narciso?,” Martinessi’s second feature was presented at the San Sebastian Film Festival’s Europe-Latin America Co-production Forum in 2020.

The drama’s Asunción-based lead producer La Babosa has re-teamed with the film’s sales agent, Paris-based Luxbox Films, as well as some key producers of “The Heiresses”: Germany’s Pandora Filmproduktion, France’s La Fábrica Nocturna Prods., Esquina Filmes (Brazil) and Mutante Cine (Uruguay). They are joined by Bteam (Spain) and Oblaum Filmes (Portugal).

Thrilled to continue Luxbox’s collaboration with Martinessi and producer Sebastian Peña Escobar, Luxbox president Fiorella Moretti said: “In this new film, Martinessi portrays a universe full of music,...

Caramel Films traerá la película a las salas de cine de España. © Rei Pictures

Se ha publicado el primer tráiler de El Jockey (Kill the Jockey), del director argentino Luis Ortega. La película acaba de tener su estreno mundial en el Festival de Cine de Venecia, donde aspira al León de Oro, y pasará posteriormente por el Festival de Toronto y el Festival de Cine de San Sebastián, dentro de la sección Horizontes Latinos.

El Jockey sigue a Remo Manfredini, una leyenda de las carreras de caballos, pero su conducta excéntrica y autodestructiva comienza a eclipsar su talento. Abril, jinete y pareja de Remo, espera un hijo suyo y debe decidir entre continuar con su embarazo o seguir corriendo. Ambos trabajan para Sirena, un empresario obsesionado con el jockey. Un día, Remo sufre un accidente y desaparece del hospital sin dejar rastro. Sirena le está buscando y Abril tendrá que...

Luis Ortega’s “Kill the Jockey” gallops onscreen with a surreal drama of mob hit men, romance, and spiraling self-destruction.

The feature, which premiered at Venice and will screen at TIFF, is directed by Ortega from a script he co-wrote with Rodolfo Palacios and Fabián Casas. Nahuel Pérez Biscayart leads the film as a wayward jockey caught up in a mob-run racing syndicate while suffering from substance abuse. Oh, and he’s trying to outrun someone they’ve sent to kill him.

The official synopsis reads: “Remo Manfredini (Biscayart) is a legendary jockey, but his self-destructive behaviour is beginning to outshine his talent and threaten his relationship with his girlfriend Abril (Úrsula Corberó). On the day of the most important race of his career that will clear him of his debts from his mobster boss Sirena (Daniel Giménez Cacho), he has a severe accident, disappears from the hospital and wanders the streets of Buenos Aires.

by Elisa Giudici

Kill The Jockey © Rei Pictures, El Despacho, Infinity Hill, Warner Music Entertainment) 

Kill The Jockey by Luis Ortega

There is a certain aesthetic in the self-destruction of genius. In El Jockey (or Kill the Jockey), this is encapsulated in a visually seductive scene where Nahuel Pérez Biscayart prepares his signature cocktail: a base of horse medicine in a glass of whiskey, drowned in a cloud of cigarette smoke. He downs it in one gulp and then mounts his horse for a race that ends sooner than expected.

Kill the Jockey has an explosive first half-hour...

We first meet Remo Manfredini in a rundown Buenos Aires bar, nursing one too many drinks. As a champion jockey once feared on the racetrack, Remo now finds himself in a downward spiral. Alcohol and debts to the local gangsters have him firmly in their grasp. Into this gloomy scene emerge the thugs, who come to haul Remo to his next race. Though talented in the saddle, his drinking makes winning a losing bet.

This sets the stage for Luis Ortega’s genre-bending drama Kill the Jockey. Ortega proves himself a director to watch, weaving together elements of sports movies, gangster thrillers, and magical realism. When an accident leaves Remo badly injured, he awakens changed, embarking on an unexpected journey of self-discovery.

Led by a committed performance from Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, Kill the Jockey takes us on a shape-shifting ride. Through colorful visuals and a surreal soundtrack, Ortega explores identity...

Produced by El Deseo, the company owned by Almodóvars Pedro and Agustin, Luis Ortega’s last film, El Angel (2018) was the gloriously kitsch, sexually mischievous, and very loosely fictionalized true story of a notorious Argentine serial killer known for his baby-faced looks and crimes so hideous that Ortega balked at portraying even half of them. Though it comes without the Almodóvar imprimatur, Kill the Jockey (just The Jockey in Spanish) is a more subdued yet somehow even stranger piece of work, starting out like a deadpan Wes Anderson spoof of a Stanley Kubrick gangster movie and slowly mutating into a genderfluid/trans version of Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin.

The jockey is Remo Manfredini (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart), a once-famous horse racer, and we find him in a catatonic state in a jaw-droppingly bizarre dive bar frequented by literally legless drinkers. Manfredini is out cold, and a gang of mobster types comes to take him.

Luis Ortega’s absurdist comedy “Kill the Jockey,” which plays in Venice competition, is set in Argentina’s horse-racing community. “It’s a wild, wild world,” he tells Variety. “I encountered some very exotic jockeys and horse owners and I thought it’s so great. They’re so crazy and exciting, and [the jockeys] risk their life every race.”

The central character, Remo Manfredini, is clearly psychologically damaged – abusing drugs and alcohol to the extent that we see him fall off his horse even before it leaves the gate – but nonetheless he retains the self-possession and panache of a matador. “There is a lot of pride in that attitude,” says the Argentine filmmaker, whose previous film “El Angel,” about a baby-faced killer, premiered in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard.

Remo, played by Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, always keeps his race-track cronies at a distance and can seem aloof. “The only way I could relate...

Nahuel Pérez Biscayart (Bpm) stars as a troubled jockey whose identity shifts radically after a serious accident on the track in Kill the Jockey (El Jockey), a Venice Film Festival entry by Argentinian director Luis Ortega (El Angel, Dromómanos). Visually lush and full of playful mystery, this equestrian-themed psychological thriller-comedy-whatsit strikes plenty of poses that may tickle the fancy of viewers with a taste for camp, surrealism and/or the absurd. However, others might feel underwhelmed by the film’s strenuous efforts to charm and find it slows to a trot by the end.

Ortega’s knack for nifty needle drops has been noted before, and Kill the Jockey, partly financed by Warner Music Entertainment, stays true to form with a killer soundtrack mixing Latin pop, synth-heavy Edm, local tangos and original music by Sune Rose Wagner. Paired with the saturated color palette, boxy 1:85 aspect ratio and deliberately still and stilted performances,...

To be a jockey is to be both athlete and adjunct. While the horse gets the glory, its human partner is a literal hanger-on: ostensibly in control, but subject to animal impulses. That paradox allows Remo Manfredini, the star rider at the center of “Kill the Jockey,” more scope for invisibility than most top-of-their-game sportsmen — though when an accident in a crucial race lands him in hospital, his very identity begins to disintegrate. Restlessly switching lanes from frenzied farce to pulpy gangster movie to gender-confusion musing, Argentine director Luis Ortega’s alternately dark and daffy eighth feature is suitably untethered for a story concerned with the malleability of the self. That comes at some cost to its impact, however: Awash with kooky gags and bolstered by the strange, soulful presence of leading man Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, it’s fun but flighty, liable to throw some viewers from the saddle.

Ortega...

Venice film festival

Luis Ortega’s film veers off the racetrack as jockey Remo drifts around the city streets, pursued by a pregnant girlfriend who wants him back and a gangster who wants him dead

People ride horses for all sorts of reasons, explains the jockey hero of Luis Ortega’s offbeat and stylish Argentinian crime drama. They ride to arrive at their destination more quickly, or to wage war more effectively. Mostly, he says, they ride to escape. This jockey is familiar with the nagging urge to take flight. He is a study in motion, a figure in flux. Show him a fence and he will promptly jump it – or die trying.

There is much to relish in Kill the Jockey, not least Nahuel Pérez Biscayart’s wonderfully stone-faced performance as Remo Manfredini, the rider who absolutely, positively has to win his next race in order to keep a gangster off his back.

Luis Ortega’s slow, unpredictable dramedy set in the world of mob-run racing in Buenos Aires, “Kill the Jockey,” plays its cards close to its chest. If surprising shifts into magical realism and existential rumination mean we are kept guessing about the film’s ambitions, there is also a sense that Ortega has let the material get away from him like a runaway horse.

Someone bested by a beast before the title even has a chance to flash up on screen is our titular jockey. We are first introduced to Remo Manfredini (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart) catatonic in a bar before he is found by a menacing male search party. They revive him by the uncharming method of inserting a riding crop into his mouth and drive him to a race track. Here he pre-games with horse drugs mixed with booze and cigarettes and then takes a slow walk through a...

Making good on a recent slew of awards at Venice for Chilean films, Chile will be the Venice Production Bridge’s Focus Country in 2025.

The announcement will be made Thursday from the Venice Film Festival by Carolina Arredondo, Chile’s Minister of Culture, Arts, and Heritage as Chilean director Pablo Larraín’s “María,” starring Angelina Jolie as the legendary opera singer Maria Callas, world premieres on Venice’s Lido.

“This is a significant achievement for our creators, who have found in Venice a crucial platform to internationalize their projects,” Arredondo underscored. “Being the Focus Country will allow us to strengthen Chile’s audiovisual industry and attract new opportunities for co-production and global promotion.”

The honor comes after a decade or more, broadly dating back to Larraín’s 2012 “No,” starring Gael García Bernal, when Chile has punched way above its weight as an international film force. Chilean films’ Academy Award tally...

Caramel Films traerá la película a las salas de cine de España. © Variety

Se ha publicado el primer teaser tráiler de El Jockey (Kill the Jockey), del director argentino Luis Ortega. La película tendrá su estreno mundial en el Festival de Cine de Venecia, donde aspira al León de Oro, y pasará posteriormente por el Festival de Toronto y el Festival de Cine de San Sebastián.

El Jockey sigue a Remo Manfredini, una leyenda de las carreras de caballos, pero su conducta excéntrica y autodestructiva comienza a eclipsar su talento. Abril, jinete y pareja de Remo, espera un hijo suyo y debe decidir entre continuar con su embarazo o seguir corriendo. Ambos trabajan para Sirena, un empresario obsesionado con el jockey. Un día, Remo sufre un accidente y desaparece del hospital sin dejar rastro. Sirena le está buscando y Abril tendrá que encontrarle antes de que sea demasiado tarde.

La...

La 69 edición del Festival de Cine contará con 18 producciones españolas. © Seminci

La Semana Internacional de Cine de Valladolid, en su 69 edición, que se celebra del 18 al 26 de octubre, ha anunciado las producciones españolas que formarán parte de su programación.

Entre las películas anunciadas, cinco películas La Espiga de Oro competirán por la Espiga de Oro: la película inaugural de Carlos Marques-Marcet, Polvo serán, Javier Rebollo con En la alcoba del sultán, Mar Coll con Salve Maria, Marta Nieto con La mitad de Ana y Elena Manrique con Fin de fiesta.

La inaugural Polvo serán, de Carlos Marques-Marcet, tendrá en la Seminci su estreno nacional después de pasar por el Festival Internacional de Cine de Toronto (TIFF). En esta película, definida como una tragicomedia musical y protagonizada por Ángela Molina, Alfredo Castro y Mònica Almirall, Tras ser diagnosticada con una enfermedad terminal, Claudia decide hacer su último viaje a Suiza y Flavio,...

Caramel Films traerá la película a las salas de cine de España. © Ssiff

Hoy se han anunciado las películas que formarán parte de la sección Horizontes Latinos en el Festival Internacional de Cine de San Sebastián, entre ellas, y probablemente la más destacada, El Jockey (Kill the Jockey), del director argentino Luis Ortega. Antes de su paso por Donostia, la película tendrá su estreno mundial en el Festival de Cine de Venecia, donde aspira al León de Oro, y pasará posteriormente por el Festival de Toronto.

El Jockey sigue a Remo Manfredini, una leyenda de las carreras de caballos, pero su conducta excéntrica y autodestructiva comienza a eclipsar su talento. Abril, jinete y pareja de Remo, espera un hijo suyo y debe decidir entre continuar con su embarazo o seguir corriendo. Ambos trabajan para Sirena, un empresario obsesionado con el jockey. Un día, Remo sufre un accidente y desaparece del hospital sin dejar rastro.

Disney’s Star Distribution has struck a deal with U.K. sales agent Protagonist Pictures for the rights to Luis Ortega’s Venice, Toronto and San Sebastian player “Kill the Jockey.” The film will be released theatrically in Argentina on Sept. 26 and will later be streamed on Disney+ across Latin America.

“The Jockey” is a multi-country co-production from Rei Pictures (“Zama”), El Despacho, Infinity Hill (“Argentina 1985”), Warner Music Entertainment, and Exile. It was also produced in association with ViX, Dim Films and the Ernesto Sábato Foundation in association with Pampa Films (“El Bar”) and the Spanish offices of Gloriamundi. Financial support was provided by Argentina’s Incaa and the city of Buenos Aires, Eficine and the Danish Film Institute. Protagonist Pictures is handling international sales.

Already confirmed for a Venice world premiere and Toronto Centerpiece screening, the film was included in San Sebastian’s Horizontes Latinos lineup, announced earlier today.

Protagonist Pictures has acquired Luis Ortega’s absurdist comedy “Kill the Jockey” for worldwide sales. The film will make its world premiere in competition at the Venice Film Festival, and will make its North American premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in the Centrepiece section.

The story revolves around Remo Manfredini (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart), a legendary jockey whose self-destructive behavior is beginning to outshine his talent and threaten his relationship with his girlfriend Abril (Úrsula Corberó).

On the day of the most important race of his career that will clear him of his debts from his mobster boss Sirena (Daniel Gimenez Cacho), he has a severe accident, disappears from the hospital and wanders the streets of Buenos Aires. Free from his identity, he starts to discover who he is truly meant to be. But Sirena wants him found, dead or alive.

The film, co-written by Ortega with Rodolfo Palacios and Fabián Casas,...

There are so many questions surrounding the search for identity and one's own place under the sun that I can relate to in Nele Wohlatz' dreamy drama “Sleep With Your Open Eyes” that I don't even know where to start. As an immigrant who changed houses so many times that every move involved more costs, logistic planning and emotional investment than it was healthy, I felt an instant connection with the film's protagonists who dream big, while struggling to make ends meet pressured by the big question of where they really belong to. I also understood that Wohlatz, who herself has lived for 12 years far away from her native Germany, to study and work in Argentina, knew how to tell the story of a double-sided cultural alienation and solidarity among those ‘lost in translation', right from the film's opening scene which didn't even reveal much about what was going to happen.

The road to bad movies is often paved with good intentions, and that’s unfortunately the case with My New Friends (Les Gens d’à côté), a sappy social drama from seasoned French director André Téchiné.

Starring Isabelle Huppert as a grieving cop who finds herself living next door to an anti-police activist, the film tells a worthy and timely story, but strains credulity from the get-go and never manages to win us over.

Téchiné, who’s now 80, has had some hits and misses in his long career, which includes a string of arthouse successes from the 1990s (My Favorite Season, Wild Reeds and Thieves) that turned him into an esteemed international auteur. His most memorable recent work was the beautifully acted gay teen drama Being 17, which premiered in Berlin back in 2016. The three features he’s made since then have been less impressive.

On paper, My New Friends, which...

Tucked deep into Don DeLillo’s Underworld is an exchange between the novel’s protagonist, Nick Shay, and one of his teachers, a Jesuit priest. It concerns language. The priest, to make a point about the boy’s abysmally poor vocabulary, taunts him to name the parts that make up his shoe. Aglet, grommet, vamp, quarter; Nick has never heard of them, but instead of shrugging it off, he turns the lecture into a wake-up call. He runs back to his dorm wanting to look up words, memorize them, spell them, learn them––for this, DeLillo quips in one of his most fulminating sentences, “is the only way in the world you can escape the things that made you.” Time and again during Nele Wohlatz’s Sleep with Your Eyes Open, I found myself going back to that line. Language serves in Wohlatz’s cinema the same function it plays...