News

Marvel’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps leads this week’s new releases in the UK and Ireland, opening in 665 cinemas.

Marvel parent company Disney is distributing the second reboot of the Fantastic Four franchise. The first Fantastic Four film opened to £3.5m in 2005 and ended on £12.7m. Its 2007 sequel, Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer opened with £4.1m and closed on £12.4m. The franchise was then rebooted for a first time in 2015 withFantastic Four,opening to £1.9m and ending on £6.2m.

In the latest reboot Pedro Pascal plays Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic, alongside Vanessa Kirby as Sue, Joseph Quinn...

"Everything I have to give is in this place." Picturehouse has debuted an official trailer for the upcoming UK release this summer of the German family drama film titled Dying – yes that's the direct translation from the film's original Sterben in German. This premiered at the 2024 Berlinale Film Festival and already won awards – including Best Film at the German Film Awards just last year. An epic and darkly funny symphony of family dysfunction, Dying follows the estranged members of the Lunies family as they wrestle with chaotic private lives. Lars Eidinger stars as an acclaimed conductor, juggling working and his parent and the rest of his family. It already played at tons of fests and has 100% on Rt for now. Dying is a brilliant and sharply comic portrayal of a family unraveling...with outrageous consequences. The cast includes Lars with Lilith Stangenberg, Corinna Harfouch, Robert Gwisdek, Ronald Zehrfeld, Saskia Rosendahl,...

Mihal Brezis and Oded Binnun’s fearlessly original and smart Dead Language (a highlight in the Viewpoints programme of the 24th edition of the Tribeca Festival), evolving out of their Oscar-nominated short, Aya, begins in the arrival area of an airport, where Aya, instead of picking up her husband Aviad pretends to be the driver for the unwitting Mr. Esben (Ulrich Thompsen of Thomas Vinterberg’s Festen), who is in Jerusalem on a business trip as a lighting designer.

Lars Eidinger, playing a hotel guest with the sang froid of a werewolf, at first not interested in whatever Aya is offering, functions as uncanny catalyst to desires as the plot unfolds in unpredictable ways, better left to enjoy...

Tribeca Festival Artistic Director Frédéric Boyer with Anne-Katrin Titze on David Verbeek’s The Wolf, the Fox and the Leopard and Naomi Kawase, in the Spotlight program Matt Tyrnauer’s Nobu on chef Nobu Matsuhisa, and in Spotlight Documentary Ebs Burnough's Kerouac's Road: The Beat Of A Nation. Susan Lacy and Jessica Levin’s two-part documentary Billy Joel: And So It Goes is the Opening Night Gala selection.

Aviad (Yehezkel Lazarov) and Aya (Sarah Adler) dancing to Depeche Mode’s Enjoy The Silence (imported by Ed Bahlman for the US) in Dead Language

The British bands Culture Club and Depeche Mode (first heard in the United States at music producer and 99 Records...

Beta Cinema has given a sales update on a trio of titles on its slate as the Cannes Film Festival’s Marché du Film gets into its stride.

Swedish comedy Let It Rain, directed by two-time Oscar-nominee Hannes Holm, has sold to All German speaking territories (Leonine), to Benelux and Singapore (September Film), Czech Republic (Film Europe), Former Yugoslavia (Blitz), Bulgaria (Beta Film) and Israel (Lev Cinemas).

Robert Gustafsson (The 100-year-old Man) stars as a grumpy widower who finds himself at the center of an event that could transform not only his own life but the fate of his entire village, and possibly the world.

The Physician II – sequel to the 2013 hit, with Tom Payne reprising the role of gifted healer Rob Cole – has pre-sold to Spain (Dea Planeta), Portugal (Outsider Pictures), Austria (Orf), Czech Republic and Slovakia (Bonton), Former Yugoslavia (Blitz), Poland (Monolith), Lithuania, Latvia and...

Exclusive: Here’s a very cool project bubbling at this year’s Cannes market.

We can reveal that Jacob Elordi and Lily-Rose Depp, two of the industry’s buzziest young names, are set to star in Outer Dark, a film based on iconic author Cormac McCarthy’s (No Country For Old Men) dark 1968 novel.

The “dark fairytale”, which is being lined up to shoot in 2026, will mark the English-language debut of Oscar-winning Son Of Saul filmmaker Laszlo Nemes.

Outer Dark is set in Appalachia during the Great Depression and tells of a young woman who bears her brother’s baby. The brother leaves the nameless infant in the woods to die, but tells his sister that the newborn died of natural causes and had to be buried. The sister discovers this lie and sets out to find the baby for herself. But as both brother and sister separately move through the countryside,...

Leading sales agency Beta Cinema has revealed a tranche of sales to major territories for “Let It Rain,” “The Physician II” and “The Light.”

The Swedish comedy “Let It Rain,” directed by two-time Oscar-nominee Hannes Holm, was sold to Leonine (German-speaking territories), Benelux and Singapore (September Film), Czech Republic (Film Europe), Former Yugoslavia (Blitz), Bulgaria (Beta Film) and Israel (Lev Cinemas).

Robert Gustafsson (“The 100-Year-Old Man”), Jonas Karlsson (“The Snowman”) and Karin Lithman (“The Bridge”) star in the tale of a grumpy widower who, by miracle or coincidence, finds himself at the center of an event that could transform not only his own life but the fate of his entire village—and possibly the world. Holm earned two Academy Award nominations for “A Man Called Ove” in 2015. The film became an international box office hit in 2016, grossing over $30 million worldwide, and was later remade as “A Man Called Otto,” starring Tom Hanks.

Exclusive: France’s Studio TF1 has hired Julia Stuart, the former director of original Film at Sky, on a consultancy basis, and appointed Warner Bros. France exec Cristina Batlle as the head of its budding theatrical distribution operation.

The hires follow the rebranding in January of Newen Studios to Studio TF1, followed by an internal restructuring in March, and an announcement that the Paris-based pan-European production and distribution group would be expanding its cinema activities in France and getting behind more ambitious international co-productions.

The strategy is being spearheaded by Pierre Branco, who joined Studio TF1 (then Newen Studios) as CEO in March 2024, after 17 years at Warner Bros. France, where he rose to the position of General Manager France, Benelux and Africa.

Originally acquired by commercial TV giant the TF1 Group in 2015, the rebranded Studio TF1 group encompasses 50 production and distributions labels in 12 territories in Europe and predominantly focuses on audiovisual content.

Lazlo Nemes, the Hungarian filmmaker whose harrowing Holocaust drama “Son of Saul” won the Oscar for best international feature in 2016, is returning to WWII for his latest movie.

“Moulin” is set to tell the story of French Resistance hero Jean Moulin, and will be a French-language film starring Gilles Lellouche (“Tell No One”) and Lars Eidinger (“Clouds of Sils Maria”). The film will be introduced to buyers at this year’s Cannes Film Market, with Patrick Wachsberger’s 193 representing sales rights.

Based on true events, the story will follow Moulin (Lellouche) as he’s parachuted into occupied France to unite the French resistance fighters under Charles de Gaulle’s leadership. The film depicts how, despite all efforts to stay in the shadows, Moulin is ultimately betrayed and tortured at the hands of the ambitious head of the Gestapo in Lyon, Klaus Barbie (Eidinger). But even when locked in a tense,...

Patrick Wachsberger and Legendary’s Jv 193 will rep sales rights in Cannes to French-language biopic Moulin, about WWII resistance fighter Jean Moulin.

Gilles Lellouche (Tell No One) and Lars Eidinger (Clouds of Sils Maria) will star in the film from Oscar-winning filmmaker László Nemes (Son of Saul).

Based on true events, the film will chart how Jean Moulin (Lellouche) parachuted into occupied France to unite the French resistance fighters under Charles de Gaulle’s leadership. Despite efforts to stay in the shadows, Jean Moulin is ultimately betrayed and tortured at the hands of the ambitious Head of the Gestapo in Lyon, Klaus Barbie (Eidinger). But even when locked in a tense, deadly standoff with the vicious Barbie, Moulin doesn’t break, and his courage and silence helps lead to the liberation of France, while leaving behind a new spirit of strength and resistance.

The film is produced by Alain Goldman...

“Dead Language,” the feature adaptation of 2014’s Oscar-nominated short film “Aya,” is heading to Cannes, where WestEnd Films will launch world sales.

The film was recently announced as screening in Tribeca’s Viewpoint Section in June.

Shot under the radar, “Dead Language,” stars Sarah Adler, Ulrich Thomsen, Yehezkel Lazarov and Lars Eidinger. It was co-directed by husband-and-wife filmmakers Mihal Brezis and Oded Binnun, based on their original short, which also starred Adler and Thomsen.

“Dead Language” tells the story of a chance encounter that propels Aya, a young woman waiting for her husband at an airport, to pick up a complete stranger instead. The intimacy that sparks between the two ends abruptly when the man disappears, leaving Aya with a key to his hotel room and a yearning that perhaps only a stranger can fulfill.

The film marks the director duo’s second feature following their award-winning debut “The Etruscan Smile,...

24 years ago, Isabelle Huppert starred in an erotic psychological drama called The Piano Teacher, which won the Grand Prix award at the Cannes Film Festival, where Huppert also earned a Best Actress award (and her co-star Benoît Magimel won Best Actor). The Piano Teacher was based on a novel by Elfriede Jelinek – and now, Huppert and Jelinek have reteamed for a vampire movie called The Blood Countess, where Huppert takes on the role of the title character, Countess Elizabeth Báthory, a 16th-century Hungarian serial killer! Magnify sales recently acquired U.S. and global sales rights to the film, and today they have unveiled the first image of Huppert’s character. You can check it out at the bottom of this article.

German New Wave artist and filmmaker Ulrike Ottinger directed The Blood Countess and wrote the screenplay with Jelinek. Huppert plays Báthory as she awakens from her long beauty sleep and emerges from the underworld.

Isabelle Huppert stars as the infamous Countess Elizabeth Báthory in the twisted new vampire mystery film The Blood Countess, and a first look image arrives today giving us a closer look at Huppert in character as the titular vampire.

The Blood Countess is directed by Ulrike Ottinger, who co-wrote the screenplay with the Nobel Prize in Literature winner Elfriede Jelinek (The Piano Teacher).

The feature is inspired by Countess Elizabeth Báthory, a Hungarian noblewoman who purportedly tortured and murdered hundreds of young women in the 16th and 17th centuries, the crimes so heinous that her serial killing ways evolved into folkloric tales of vampirism.

Tom Neuwirth (aka Eurovision Song Contest 2014 winner Conchita Wurst ), Birgit Minichmayr, Lars Eidinger, Thomas Schubert (Afire), and André Jung (The Forger) also star.

As for the plot, “After ‘The Blood Countess’ (Isabelle Huppert) awakens from her long beauty sleep and emerges from the underworld, she and...

Tom Neuwirth aka Conchita Wurst, the bold Austrian bearded diva who won the 2014 Eurovision Song Contest, will make her acting debut in a twisted vampire mystery, “The Blood Countess,” starring opposite Isabelle Huppert.

Magnify handles global and U.S. sales rights on the hot title and has unveiled a striking first-look image (pictured) from the film ahead of the Cannes film market where Austin Kennedy, head of global sales, and Phoebe Liebling, manager of global sales, will be pursuing deals.

Directed by renowned German New Wave filmmaker Ulrike Ottinger, “The Blood Countess” draws inspiration from the life and legend of Countess Elizabeth Báthory, the infamous 16th-century Hungarian noblewoman which is played by Huppert. The screenplay was penned by Ottinger and Elfriede Jelinek, the Nobel Prize in Literature winner and acclaimed author of “The Piano Teacher.” The film is currently in post-production.

The cast is completed by Birgit Minichmayr (“Daughters”), Lars Eidinger,...

Crowds of filmmakers, producers and actors braved the frigid temperatures on Saturday to attend the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg’s annual outdoor soiree at the riverside Holzmark venue to celebrate Germany’s most successful regional funder and bid farewell to outgoing CEO Kirsten Niehuus, who is stepping down later this year after two decades at the helm.

Among the throngs of warmly dressed guests were Volker Schlöndorff, Martin Moszkowicz, Tom Tykwer, Lana Wachowski, Sam Riley, Matthias Schweighöfer, Aaron Altaras, Leo Altaras, Florence Kasumba, Sunnyi Melles, Lars Eidinger, Nicolette Krebitz, Helena Zengel, Kida Khodr Ramadan, Karoline Herfurth, Julia von Heinz, Heike Makatsch, Philippe Bober, Albrecht Schuch, Helena Zengel and Annabelle Mandeng.

Kirsten Niehuus, Volker Schlöndorff

“It’s been a fun ride,” Niehuus told Variety.

“I think we really had it all. When I started 20 years ago, the capital region of Berlin was not the place to be for film in Germany. That developed over the past 20 years,...

Veteran director Tom Tykwer sends a magical Syrian cleaner into a bohemian yet unhappy family, bringing with her a flashing-light treatment for depression

Here is a weirdly incoherent and very long aria of semi-comic dismay from white-liberal Europe, and from a Germany whose bold “Wir schaffen das” – or “We can handle this” – Angela Merkel-era attitude to refugees has turned to anxiety. Veteran German director Tom Tykwer has created a heavy-footed magical-realist romp lasting two hours and 40 minutes about a complicated extended family in Berlin whose painful lives are turned around by a magic refugee whose purpose is to salvage their happiness. The film twice uses Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody to provide a jukebox blast of energy – the second time at the very end, worryingly indicating that the classic track is being brought on to save the day because the film is out of ideas.

Lars Eidinger gives a muscular,...

Tilda Swinton brought the heat on a snowy night as the 75th edition of the Berlin Film Festival opened with a gala that included a career achievement honor presented to the Scottish Oscar winner known for her versatility and adventure.

https://twitter.com/raminsetoodeh/status/1890187574960091425?s=46

As reported by Variety‘s Ellise Shafer in Berlin, Swinton took square aim at the surge of far-right governments that promise to reshape the U.S. and Europe in the coming years.

“The inhumane is being perpetrated on our watch. I’m here to name it without hesitation or doubt in my mind and to lend my unwavering solidarity to all those who recognize the unacceptable complacency of our greed-addicted governments who make nice with planet-wreckers and war criminals, wherever they come from,” Swinton said during the event held at the Berlinale Palast, about a mile away from the Brandenburg Gate.

This year’s...

A bloatedly operatic saga about a liberal Berlin family coming apart and together again with the arrival of a Syrian housekeeper (Tala Al-Deen), German director Tom Tykwer’s “The Light” almost rudely keeps its audience in their seats for a very long 160-plus minutes. A discordant symphony of ideas around white guilt wherein the filmmaking itself does much of its own virtue-signaling despite trying to critique that very gesture, this slog of a Berlin Film Festival opener feels destined to languish on the European film circuit, a quote-unquote epic that would’ve been better framed as a four-part miniseries than a single feature that lacks the compression and punch of Tykwer’s 1998 breakout “Run Lola Run.”

Here is a quasi-musical, pseudo-sci-fi set in the drabbest pockets of a rain-drenched Berlin, unless it’s flinging us to Nairobi where Melina (Nicolette Krebitz) does penance for her own white guilt through Ngo work,...

On a snowy Thursday night, the 75th annual Berlin Film Festival launched with some heat — thanks to some fiery speeches about politics — as film executives, European buyers and movie stars trekked through the slush to celebrate cinema.

The prestigious festival in Germany kicked off with Tom Tykwer’s drama “The Light,” starring Lars Eidinger and Nicolette Krebitz as a dysfunctional married couple whose lives change with the hiring of a housekeeper (played by Tala Al-Deen).

But the real fireworks arrived in the form of a tearful speech delivered by Tilda Swinton. The actress, in a glamorous sparkling black gown, talked about the perils of political dictatorships around the world as she accepted an honorary Golden Bear for career achievement.

Swinton, 64, who has been coming to the festival since she was 26, spoke about Berlin as “a borderless realm and with no policy of exclusion, persecution or deportation.” She added that the...

Beware novel psychological therapies from Austria: You never know where they may lead.

In the curious case of German director Tom Tykwer’s The Light, which opened the Berlin Film Festival, such a quacky therapy — mostly involving a flashing LED light and an egg-timer — is Syrian refugee Farrah’s comfort, an escape hatch from the horrors of her life and, ultimately, a tool to heal the multiple afflictions tearing apart the German family for whom she is keeping house. The parents are in failing couples therapy, the kids are disaffected, and Farrah appears from nowhere to sort them out. Sort of like Mary Poppins, but with extra lashings of fragrant Orientalism.

At first, a handful of characters are introduced, the connections between them drip-fed, Magnolia-style, over a long series of intercut scenes where we see them at work and play. Milena Engels (Nicolette Krebitz) is working in Kenya on an arts project funded from Germany,...

The 75th edition of the Berlin International Film Festival opens today and, following the rather unceremonious end of its previous two directors’ respective tenure, all eyes are on new Berlinale head Tricia Tuttle and whether she can help the wintry film fest level up vis-à-vis competitors in Cannes and Venice. While we have ten days to reach a verdict, the opening-night selection isn’t the surprise some might have hoped for. Screening out of competition, The Light is a wannabe urban fairytale that finds German filmmaker Tom Tykwer succumbing to his worst maximalist impulses. Bombastic and nearly charm-free, this misfire may have its heart in the right place but is so deeply inarticulate one can’t even be sure of such.

Its story revolves around a bourgeois family in Berlin: Tim (Lars Eidinger) is a successful advertising executive who no longer has the coolest ideas; Milena (Nicolette Krebitz) works on...

Independent international production company and financier Gold Rush Pictures has signed a deal with Ilya Stewart’s Hype Studios to participate in financing and co-producing a slate of at least five feature films, Variety can exclusively reveal.

The news comes ahead of the world premiere of Tom Tykwer’s contemporary German drama “The Light” (pictured), which was co-produced by Gold Rush Pictures and will open the Berlin Film Festival on Feb. 13.

Two of the five titles on the companies’ slate will be collaborations with the Polish screenwriter-director and two-time Berlinale prizewinner Małgorzata Szumowska, including “The Gambler Wife,” a dark comedy about Russian literary figures Anna and Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The anticipated feature, which was announced in Variety, is due to begin principal photography this spring. A second feature from Szumowska is currently in development.

Rounding out the slate are three titles with long-time Hype Studios collaborator Kirill Serebrennikov, whose previous four...

The Light Photo: © Frederic Batier/X Verleih Ag/courtesy of Berlinale

Berlin Film Festival opens its 75th edition tonight with Tom Tykwer’s The Light about a family whose lives are disrupted by the arrival of a Syrian housekeeper (Tala Al-Deen). Screening out of competition, it also stars Lars Eidinger, who was so good in last year’s Berlin alumni Dying.

This edition marks the first for former London Film Festival director Tricia Tuttle, who will be hoping for a less controversial edition this year, which saw unrest over everything from the invitation of members of the far-right AfD (Alternative For Germany) party to the opening ceremony to a row which blew up after No Other Land won the documentary prize when several filmmakers, including the film’s Israeli co-director Israeli Yuval Abraham expressed support for the people of Palestine. This led minister of cultural affairs Joe Chialo to brand...

German auteur Tom Tykwer and producer Uwe Schott decried the limited funding opportunities available to make German-language films, ahead of the world premiere of their film The Light opening this year’s Berlinale.

“It’s always too costly, too expensive if you try and come up with really juicy cinema,” said Tykwer, who holds the record for having directed the most films to open the Berlinale. The Light is his third, after Heaven in 2002 and The International in 2009.

“At least in my life, the public broadcasters are real heroes,” he continued. “There are always these discussions about their role in society…...

After a decade spent exploring the lives “of my grandparents’ generation” in the 1930-set period series Babylon Berlin, Tom Tykwer has returned his focus to modern-day Germany with the cinematic opus The Light, the opening night film of the 75th Berlin International Film Festival.

Tykwer, along with The Light stars Lars Eidinger and Nicolette Krebitz, and first-timer Tala Al Deen discussed the inspiration behind the feature at the Berlinale press conference ahead of the movie’s world premiere on Thursday.

Lars Eidinger and Nicolette Krebitz play Tim and Milena Engels, a late-40s couple juggling privilege and discontent: He’s a trend-chasing ad exec, holding onto his left-wing progressive views while assisting major corporations in their greenwashing; she’s wrestling with a doomed arts project in Kenya. Their teenage twins spiral in opposite directions — one lost in Berlin’s club scene, the other in a VR fantasy — while their eight-year-old drifts alongside unnoticed.

Lars Eidinger, the star of Tom Tykwer’s latest film “The Light,” said during a Berlin Film Festival press conference that the drama exposes “the reason the world is on the brink”: narcissism.

The German-language film, which is set to open the fest on Thursday night, stars Eidinger and Nicolette Krebitz as Milena and Tim, the 40-something parents of irate 17-year-old twins. Tala Al-Deen (“Tatort”) portrays Farrah, their housekeeper, who challenges the family in unexpected ways but turns out to have her own agenda.

When asked about the hot-button topics the film addresses, Tykwer said that the generational divide between the parents and the children “is an abyss … You’ve missed the train! That’s what the other generation tells us.”

Eidinger added that “The Light’s” main statement is that “we are the reason the world is on the brink,” he said, referring to the generation of the parents in the film.

Tom Tykwer has long been a filmmaking innovator, and he’ll be pushing boundaries again with his Berlinale opener “The Light,” making its world premiere February 13.

The English-language release for “The Light” will be dubbed into English using the ethical AI company Flawless’s TrueSync technology which seamless fits the translated words to fit actors’ mouth movements — solving a problem for dubbing that until now was all but impossible to fix.

In an article for the World Economic Forum earlier this year, SAG-AFTRA National Executive Director and Chief Negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland praised Flawless for securing “actors’ explicit informed consent before creating or editing digital replicas of their performances, using its Artistic Rights Treasury (A.R.T.) system to manage rights and ensure compliance.”

Crabtree-Ireland added, “The system will also integrate with standard industry tools such as Avid and Final Cut Pro, making it easier for productions to align with ethical standards. This...

Flawless has partnered with XYZ Films to sell US rights at EFM on an English-language version of Tom Tykwer’s Berlinale opening night film The Light that used the AI company’s immersive dubbing technology.

The process involves Flawless’s visual translation tool TrusSync, which has been praised by SAG-AFTRA’s top negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, and matches up manipulated lip movements of consenting original actors to a dubbed dialogue track in another language.

The Light is the latest in a growing pipeline of international films to undergo this process that Flawless and XYZ Films have acquired and, in some cases,...

Flawless has partnered with XYZ Films to sell US rights at EFM on an English-language version of Tom Tykwer’s Berlinale opening night film The Light that used the AI company’s immersive dubbing technology.

The process involves Flawless’s visual translation tool TrusSync, which has been praised by SAG-AFTRA’s top negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, and matches up manipulated lip movements of consenting original actors to a dubbed dialogue track in another language.

The Light is the latest in a growing pipeline of international films to undergo this process that Flawless and XYZ Films have acquired and, in some cases,...

Has Hollywood reached peak AI paranoia? This awards season, before Karla Sofía Gascón’s posts on X (formerly Twitter) about George Floyd and Islam became the focus of consternation, the Oscar uproar was centered on the use of artificial intelligence in the tweaking of voice performances in Emilia Pérez — for Gascón’s singing — and in Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist, to improve the pronunciation of Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones’ Hungarian-language dialog.

The virulence of the backlash against such minor and technical applications of AI — used, in both cases, with the full participation and approval of the artists involved — illustrates the widespread perception, inside the film industry and among the general public, that AI is a threat to jobs and to artistic integrity. An AI zero-tolerance policy has become fashionable for celebrities, with the likes of Robert Downey Jr., Glenn Close and Hank Azaria raising the alarm. Distributors have taken...

What Martin Scorsese is for New York; what Paul Thomas Anderson is for Los Angeles; Yasujiro Ozu is for Tokyo and Federico Fellini is for Rome, so Tom Tykwer is for Berlin.

Tykwer has only made three films set in the German capital — his 1998 breakout Run Lola Run, the mid-career highlight 3 (2010) and now The Light, the opening film of the 75th Berlin International Film Festival — but no other director so exemplifies the city, in all its messy glory and contradictions.

“I’ve spent nearly 40 years in Berlin, and everything I need is here,” says Tykwer from his apartment in Prenzlauer Berg. “I have the people I love, the cinemas I need, and the city’s strange aesthetic — these beautiful districts next to catastrophically ugly architecture. It’s what delights and infuriates and inspires me.”

The Light is also Tykwer’s third Berlinale opening-night film, following Heaven (2002) and The International (2009) and...

Tom Tykwer opens the Berlin Film Festival for a third time on Thursday with his dazzling snapshot of life in contemporary Berlin, taking stock of German society as the first quarter of the 21st century draws to a close.

It is his first feature-length film since 2016’s Saudi Arabia-set drama A Hologram for the King starring Tom Hanks.

Tykwer, who has spent the past decade immersed in the final years of Germany’s 1918-1933 Weimer Republic with hit series Babylon Berlin, has returned to the present with gusto.

He plunges his protagonists into a reality marked by digitization, globalization, climate change, job insecurity, global migration, conflict-driven displacement and rising political extremism, and watches them navigate this age of disruption.

Lars Eidinger and Nicolette Krebitz play chaotic, comfortably-off, late 40s couple Tim and Milena Engels, who are parents to 17-year-twins Frieda (Elke Biesendorfer) and John (Julius Gause), and 8-year-old Dio (Elyas Eldridge...

As the European Film Market kicks off Feb. 13 in Berlin with a new market head, Tanja Meissner, at the helm, this year’s buzziest titles suggest the industry will be looking toward tried-and-true genre fare and splashy, star-driven packages to thaw the winter chill.

Bankable stars are expected to heat things up in Berlin, with Ari Aster and A24’s “Eddington”, Guy Ritchie’s “Wife & Dog”, Ernest Dickerson’s untitled hitman thriller and Kantemir Balagov’s “Butterfly Jam” showcasing how marquee names remain a safe bet as uncertainty continues to reign in the theatrical market.

On the genre side of things, horror is still expected to scare up sales, with buyers looking to sink their fangs into Isabelle Huppert’s 16th-century vampire mystery “The Blood Countess” and Jacob Chase’s killer canine genre-bender “Bad Boy,” starring Ke Huy Quan and Lili Reinhart. Meanwhile, comedy could be making a comeback,...

24 years ago, Isabelle Huppert starred in an erotic psychological drama called The Piano Teacher, which won the Grand Prix award at the Cannes Film Festival, where Huppert also earned a Best Actress award (and her co-star Benoît Magimel won Best Actor). The Piano Teacher was based on a novel by Elfriede Jelinek – and now, Huppert and Jelinek are set to reteam for a vampire movie called The Blood Countess, where Huppert will be taking on the role of the title character, Countess Elizabeth Báthory, a 16th-century Hungarian serial killer!

Variety reports that German New Wave artist and filmmaker Ulrike Ottinger will be directing The Blood Countess and wrote the screenplay with Jelinek. Huppert will be playing Báthory as she awakens from her long beauty sleep and emerges from the underworld. She and her devoted maid (Birgit Minichmayr) embark on a baroque quest through Vienna to recover the red elixir of life.

Big names, high concepts, and crowd-pleasing thrills are the order of the day at this year’s European Film Market, where commercial fare is dominating over the usual arthouse prestige plays, reflecting an industry uncertain of the future of the theatrical business in the post-covid world. Action, horror, and comedy are leading the charge, with star-driven projects like Guy Ritchie’s Wife & Dog (Benedict Cumberbatch, Rosamund Pike), Mary Bronstein’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (Rose Byrne, Conan O’Brien, A$AP Rocky), and Ernest Dickerson’s untitled hitman thriller (Samuel L. Jackson, Daveed Diggs) among the titles generating early buzz.

Genre filmmakers are also stepping up in a big way, with The Raid’s Iko Uwais launching a new production/sales outfit in Berlin for his brand of martial-arts madness, and horror entries like Bad Boy — starring Ke Huy Quan and Lili Reinhart — and the body-horror thriller...

An auteur-actor pairing to nearly match last week’s word of Johnnie To and Tony Leung comes via Variety, who tell us Ulrike Ottinger will direct Isabelle Huppert in The Blood Countess, a vampire feature based on the infamous Elizabeth Báthory from a script by Ottinger and Elfriede Jelinek (The Piano Teacher). Lars Eidinger (Irma Vep), Thomas Schubert (Afire), and Birgit Minichmayr (Everyone Else) will co-star; sales start at the European Film Market imminently.

The Blood Countess is described by “immersive and delightfully eccentric vampire mystery” that unfolds as “a highly visual, narrative scavenger hunt.” Here’s sales agent Magnify’s official synopsis

“[Madame Báthory] and her devoted maid (Birgit Minichmayr) embark on a baroque quest through Vienna to recover the red elixir of life. The book, if found and read by the vampire’s enemies, threatens their vampire realm. Hot on their heels are a vegetarian nephew (Thomas Schubert), his psychotherapist (Lars Eidinger), two vampirologists,...

Timothée Chalamet and Robert Pattinson were among the latest high-profile names confirmed this afternoon as attendees for this year’s Berlin Film Festival.

The pair were included this afternoon in an updated guest list shared by the festival.

Chalamet will attend for the German premiere of his Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown while Pattinson will debut his Bong Joon-ho flick Micky 17. Both films play in the Berlinale Specials sidebar.

Other confirmed guests include Conclave filmmaker Edward Berger who will present Tilda Swinton her Honorary Golden Bear. Jessica Chastain will hit the German capital with Michel Franco’s Golden Bear Contender Dreams, and Jacob Elordi will make the trip to Berlin for the world premiere of his Justin Kurzel series The Narrow Road to the Deep South.

Other celebrity guests confirmed today by the festival include Naomi Ackie, Rose Byrne, Toni Collette, Denis Côté, Marion Cotillard, Lars Eidinger, Mala Emde,...

Isabelle Huppert is starring as the notorious Countess Elizabeth Báthory in the upcoming vampire mystery feature The Blood Countess, which is set to launch sales next week at EFM, Variety reports today.

The Blood Countess is directed by Ulrike Ottinger, who co-wrote the screenplay with the Nobel Prize in Literature winner Elfriede Jelinek.

The film follows Elizabeth Báthory as “She and her devoted maid (Birgit Minichmayr) embark on a baroque quest through Vienna to recover the red elixir of life. The book, if found and read by the vampire’s enemies, threatens their vampire realm. Hot on their heels are a vegetarian nephew (Thomas Schubert), his psychotherapist (Lars Eidinger), two vampirologists, a police inspector, and more lively characters in this twisted and humorous vampire tale.”

For the uninitiated, Countess Elizabeth Báthory was a Hungarian noblewoman who purportedly tortured and murdered hundreds of young women in the 16th and 17th centuries,...

Magnify has boarded “The Blood Countess,” a vampire mystery movie starring Isabelle Huppert as Countess Elizabeth Báthory, a 16th-century Hungarian serial killer.

Directed by renowned German New Wave artist and filmmaker Ulrike Ottinger, the movie is inspired by the life and legend of Countess Elizabeth Báthory. The screenplay was penned by Ottinger and Elfriede Jelinek, the Nobel Prize in Literature winner and acclaimed author of “The Piano Teacher.”

Huppert stars in the film opposite Birgit Minichmayr (“Daughters”), Lars Eidinger (“Dying”), Thomas Schubert (“Afire”) and André Jung (“The Forger”).

“The Blood Countess” is one of the hottest European projects to head to the EFM next week where Magnify’s sales team, led by Lorna Lee Torres, will be introducing the movie to buyers.

Huppert plays the Countess Elizabeth Báthory (aka ‘The Blood Countess’), as she awakens from her long beauty sleep and emerges from the underworld. “She and her devoted maid...

Jessica Chastain, Ben Whishaw, Rebecca Hall, Chloë Sevigny, Tilda Swinton and Marion Cotillard were among a first wave of star guests confirmed for the 75th edition of the Berlinale at its line-up press conference on Tuesday.

Chastain will hit the festival as the co-star of Michel Franco’s Golden Bear Contender Dreams, while Whishaw and Hall will attend with Ira Sach’s Peter Hujar’s Day, which plays in the competitive Panorama sidebar. Sevigny is the star of another Panorama title, Magic Farm by Amalia Ulman.

Cotillard tops the cast of Lucile Hadzihalilovic’s Golden Lion Contender The Ice Tower in the role of the enigmatic star of a production of The Snow Queen, who bewitches a young runaway.

Other confirmed guests include Archie Madekwe, who co-stars in Berlinale Special Gala title Lurker; Rose Byrne, who tops the cast of Golden Bear contender If I Had Links I’d Kick You and Lars Eidinger,...

Ahead of the Berlinale 2025 taking place February 13-23, they’ve unveiled their lineups for Berlinale Special, Panorama, Generation and Forum sections. Highlights include confirmation of Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17 alongside Ira Sachs’ Peter Hujar’s Day, Ancestral Visions of the Future from This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection director Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese, a documentary on the making of Shoah, a new Jacob Elordi-led series from Justin Kurzel, and more.

See the lineup below via Deadline and check back for the competition lineup next week.

Berlinale Special

Ancestral Visions of the Future

by Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese | with Siphiwe Nzima, Sobo Bernard, Zaman Mathejane, Mochesane Edwin Kotsoane, Rehauhetsoe Ernest Kotsoane

France / Lesotho / Germany / Saudi Arabia 2025

Berlinale Special | World premiere | Documentary form

A poetic allegory of the filmmaker Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese’s childhood, an ode to cinema and an inner nod to his mother. Through fragmented narratives and mythic imagery,...

Aussie filmmaker Justin Kurzel’s series adaptation of Richard Flanagan’s Booker Prize-winning novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North, starring Jacob Elordi, will screen at this year’s Berlin Film Festival.

The Narrow Road to the Deep North was among several titles added to Berlin’s lineup this morning.

The festival describes the series as a “riveting new Australian drama” about a WWII hero haunted by his past. The show will screen as a Berlinale Special Gala. Also in Specials strand is The Thing with Feathers starring Benedict Cumberbatch. The pic screens at Berlin following a debut bow at Sundance and is from filmmaker Dylan Southern. The pic is an adaption of Max Porter’s novel about a grieving father wrestling with the sudden death of his wife while also raising their young children. As previously reported, Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17 will also screen. Scroll down...

There are many war movies that military experts praise for realism. However, just as many TV shows do an excellent job of touching upon the true cost of war. Conversely, since the realities of war are so intense, there are some series that omit the harsher aspects. The toll war takes on the psyches of the soldiers and, most prominently, how many civilian lives are lost are at the forefront of many of these narratives. By centering on the individual experiences of people paying the everyday price of war, the realities feel more immediate and impossible to ignore.

Many of these series feature the best TV show battle scenes, as the violence of infamous clashes is frequently portrayed on television. However, it's not just the big bombastic moments that make these projects memorable. The quieter, more intimately devastating moments typically hit the hardest in these narratives, as this is more...

"We are the reason why the world is on the brink of disaster..." The truth right there. Whoa! X Verleih has revealed the full German trailer for the film titled The Light, also known as Das Licht in German. It's the latest feature film from acclaimed German filmmaker Tom Tykwer, his first feature since A Hologram for the King in 2016, because he's also been working on the "Babylon Berlin" series for the last 8 years. The film has a March 2025 release date in Germany and will premiere at the upcoming 2025 Berlin Film Festival in February as the big Opening Night film. A family faces collapse as they deal with modern issues, searching for new beginnings in a troubled world. Their life is disrupted by the arrival of a mysterious Syrian woman, who "puts the Engels' emotional world to an unexpectedly wild test." Filming took place in Berlin and North Rhine-Westphalia and Kenya.

A “typically dysfunctional German family” gets a spiritual makeover in Das Licht (The Light), the new film from Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run, Cloud Atlas), which will open the 2025 Berlin International Film Festival.

The first (German) trailer for the film dropped Thursday, via local distributor X Verleih and Warner Bros. Germany (see below). It shows Lars Eidinger and Nicolette Krebitz as Tim and Milena, the unhappy heads of the Engels family. In the words of their daughter Frieda, played by Elke Biesendorfer: “We’re typically dysfunctional German family, where everyone does their own thing and does give a sh** about one another.”

The Engels get help in the form of a mysterious woman, Farrah (Tala Al Deen), a housekeeper from Syria, who enters their lives, bringing to light feelings that have long been hidden. But Farrah is pursuing a plan all of her own that will fundamentally change the family’s life.

Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Pérez” won best film, director, screenwriter and actress at the 37th European Film Awards, which were held Saturday in Lucerne, Switzerland.

The best film nominees included narrative features “The Room Next Door,” “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” “The Substance” and “Vermiglio,” as well as documentaries “Bye Bye Tiberias,” “Dahomey,” “In Limbo,” “No Other Land” and “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat,” and animated films “Flow,” “Living Large,” “Savages,” “Sultana’s Dream” and “They Shot the Piano Player.”

The statuette for actress was won by Karla Sofía Gascón for “Emilia Pérez.” The other nominees were Renate Reinsve in “Armand,” Trine Dyrholm in “The Girl With the Needle,” Vic Carmen Sonne in “The Girl With the Needle” and Tilda Swinton in “The Room Next Door.”

The director award went to Audiard for “Emilia Pérez,” who beat Andrea Arnold for “Bird,” Pedro Almodóvar for “The Room Next Door,” Mohammad Rasoulof...

Emilia Pérez got an early boost in its awards campaign on Saturday night by cleaning up at the 37th European Film Awards, handed out in Lucerne, Switzerland.

Jacques Audiard’s Spanish-language transgender musical won best film, best director and best screenplay honors for Audiard. Karla Sofía Gascón, who plays the titular character, won best actress, becoming the first trans performer to win in the category.

“I didn’t prepare anything because I was sure I wasn’t going to receive anything tonight,” said Gascón, accepting her prize. She thanked Audiard, “the best European director for making the best European actress.” Gascón dedicated here prize “to my mother and to all mothers in this world because their values and their function are sometimes undervalued, [and] I would like to devote this prize to all families and ask all parents to love their children, because, unfortunately, in this world, there are families that...

The European Film Awards is taking place in the Swiss city of Lucerne tonight (December 7) and Screen is revealing the winners live from the ceremony, which kicked off at 20.00 Cet.

Scroll down for winners

To read the winners as they are announced, you can refresh the page and scroll down to the full list below.

The ceremony is also being live-streamed below.

Emilia Pérez and The Room Next Door are the front-runners for this year’s awards with four nominations apiece.

Fifteen features compete for the best European film prize, up from five last year. This follows a recent rule...

The world premiere of “Das Licht (The Light),” the latest feature film from Tom Tykwer, will open the 75th Berlin International Film Festival on February 13, 2025. The German-French production will be presented as a Berlinale Special Gala out of competition in the Berlinale Palast.

“We knew as soon as we saw ‘Das Licht (The Light)’ that we wanted to have it open the 75th Berlinale,” the festival’s director Tricia Tuttle said in making the announcement. “Tom Tykwer finds beauty and joy in our often fractured and challenging world, and magically captures the essence of our modern life on screen. It is our great pleasure to welcome Tom back to the Berlinale with ‘Das Licht (The Light).'”

Tykwer has already opened the Berlinale — twice, as a matter of fact. In 2022 it was his first international production, “Heaven,” that had the honor. The director and screenwriter most recently opened the festival...

Tom Tykwer is returning to the Berlinale.

The acclaimed German director of Run Lola Run, Cloud Atlas and Drei will open the 75th Berlin International Film Festival with his new feature, Das Licht (The Light).

Tykwer’s first feature since 2016’s A Hologram for a King is a family drama set in modern-day Germany featuring Lars Eidinger, Nicolette Krebitz and Tala al Deen. It tells the story of the Engels family, parents Tim (Eidinger) and Milena (Krebitz), their twins Frieda (Elke Biesendorfer) and Jon (Julius Gause) and Milena’s son Dio (Elyas Eldridge). The family has been growing apart for years before housekeeper Farrah (Al-Deen), a mysterious woman from Syria, enters their lives, bringing to light feelings that have long been hidden. Farrah is pursuing a plan all of her own that will fundamentally change the family’s life.

“We knew as soon as we saw Das Licht (The Light...