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Universal’s “Despicable Me 4” has claimed the top spot at the U.K. and Ireland box office, earning £8.8 million ($11.4 million) in its opening weekend, according to numbers from Comscore.

The animated sequel’s strong debut pushed Disney’s “Inside Out 2” to second place after a five-week run, with the latter adding £2.2 million, bringing its running total to £44.4 million. Newcomer “Longlegs” from Black Bear secured the third position with a £1.3 million opening, while Sony Pictures’ “Fly Me To The Moon” debuted at No. 4, collecting £862,358.

Paramount’s “A Quiet Place: Day One” held steady in its third week, rounding out the top five with £824,948, bringing its cumulative total to £8 million. Other notable entries include DJ Tech Ltd’s Tamil-language “Indian 2,” which opened at No. 6 with £213,245, plus a further £39,127 for its Telugu-dubbed version “Bharateeyudu 2,” and Sony Pictures’ “Bad Boys: Ride Or Die,” maintaining its presence in the chart after six...

Zar Amir Ebrahimi as Shayda and and Selina Zahednia as Mona in Shayda Photo credit: Jane Zhang. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.

Shayda (Zar Amir Ebrahimi) flees her abusive husband in Iran, along with her six-year-old daughter Mona (Selina Zahednia), and goes into hiding at an international women’s shelter in Australia, in the moving, semi-autobiographical Australian drama Shayda.

Set in the 1990s, Shayda is partly based on writer/director Noora Niasari’s own childhood experiences, when her mother fled Iran. Zar Amir Ebrahimi gives a charismatic, emotionally moving performance as Shayda, in a touching, emotionally-powerful drama that follows the mother’s and daughter’s journey. Young Selina Zahednia is a charmer as cute, mischievous Mona, effectively portraying her growth in understanding and maturity as they stay in the shelter. The drama premiered at Sundance in 2023, where it won the Audience Award in the World Cinema Dramatic competition, and it...

“House of Gods,” a Matchbox Pictures six-part series, boasting an entirely Arab Australian cast, presents a perspective seldom seen on screen, a Muslim community in Fairfield, Australia.

“You can’t manufacture authenticity. Audiences are so intuitive and adept, they can smell if something is off a mile away. So for us, having actors who understood the idiosyncrasies of Arab/Muslim culture added an intangible layer of soul to the show,” explained Osamah Sami, co-creator and one of the stars of the show.

“We both were raised in a religious setting where culture, traditions and spiritual beliefs govern daily lives. Immigration often reinforces our desire to cling on to our motherland customs even tighter” Shahin Shafaei co-creator shared with Variety. “As storytellers, we have both previously highlighted the lived experiences of our community in film and theater. But with ‘House of Gods’ we found an opportunity to explore this “living organism...

Welcome to Global Breakouts, Deadline’s fortnightly strand in which we shine a spotlight on the TV shows and films making noise in their local territories. The industry is as globalized as it’s ever been, but breakout hits are appearing in pockets of the world all the time and it can be hard to keep track. So we’re going to do the hard work for you.

This week we’re coming to you early, with our pick from Australia, House of Gods, playing in International Competition at Series Mania this coming week. The series follows an Australian-Iraqi family, whose progressive patriarch challenges a conservative rival to become head cleric at a mosque in the suburbs of Sydney.

Name: House of Gods

Country: Australia

Network: ABC

Producer: Matchbox Pictures

International sales: NBCUniversal Global TV Distribution

For fans of: The Sopranos, Succession, Ali’s Wedding

Osamah Sami took the idea for...

“Do you know what they would do to you in Iran?” he asks, and it’s as if she’s supposed to feel lucky.

We meet Shayda (Zar Amir Ebrahimi) as she’s touring an Australian airport with her young daughter Mona (Selina Zahednia). The seven-year-old needs to learn where to go, who to talk to, what to do if she finds herself there without her mother. They never talk, in so many words, about the possibility of her being abducted, but viewers will see Shayda’s fear. That’s about to get worse as – despite the fact that the pair have moved into a women’s shelter – a court decides that, for the meantime at least, the man they are afraid of should have unsupervised alone time with the child.

He is Hossein (Osamah Sami), and he comes bearing gifts, showering his kid with affection as such men are wont to do.

Noora Niasari was editing “Shayda” when the world changed — again — for Iranians.

It was September 2022, and Mahsa Amini had just died in police custody, igniting the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement in Iran. Halfway around the world, Iranian-born filmmaker Niasari struggled to concentrate on completing her film, which she hoped would offer a portrait of female defiance very much in line with the burgeoning movement. She would finish the film that fall and dedicate it to “my mother and the brave women of Iran.”

Since its Sundance 2023 premiere (where it won an audience award and was picked up by Sony Pictures Classics), it has screened at roughly 50 festivals and earned a DGA Award nomination. Last year, Australia picked it as its Best International Feature Film submission.

Set in 1995 during the lead-up to the Persian New Year, “Shayda” marks Niasari’s feature debut. She previously directed a string of shorts films that,...

Almost the day after production wrapped on 'Ali's Wedding' in 2016, Osamah Sami pitched Matchbox Pictures his next project, one that would once again see him draw on his experiences as the son of a lead cleric, but was instead a drama that showed his community in "all its realism".

The post “The show isn’t about ‘us’ and ‘them’. The show’s just about us”: The making of landmark ABC series ‘House of Gods’ appeared first on If Magazine.

Rotten Tomatoes and the Academy Awards don’t often go hand in hand. In fact, the Rt scores of Best Picture nominees/winners are a mixed bag. “Parasite” won Best Picture with a Rt score of 99% while “Green Book” emerged victorious with a score of just 77%. The site dishes out percentage scores to movie’s based on the film’s collection of critical reviews. The higher the score, the better the movie. Supposedly.

But, that’s not how it always work in tandem with the Oscars. For instance, “Black Panther,” “BlacKkKlansman,” and “Roma” all scored 96% but lost Best Picture to “Green Book.” Perhaps, if the Oscars listened to Rotten Tomatoes more, things would go a little more smoothly? Probably not but, just for fun, let’s pretend that Rotten Tomatoes are in charge of this year’s Academy Awards.

With that in mind, here are the 10 Best Picture nominees the...

Sundance audience award winner received one-week awards-qualifying run earlier this month.

Sony Pictures Classics has set a March 1, 2024, release date for Noora Niasari’s Australian Oscar submission Shayda.

The film will open in New York and Los Angeles and expand nationwide in the following weeks. It received a one-week awards-qualifying run earlier this month.

Shayda premiered in Sundance where it won the audience award in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition.

The Origma 45 production centres on the titular Iranian woman living in Australia, who finds refuge in a women’s shelter with her six-year-old daughter, Mona, when she learns a court...

Danger is never very far away in Noora Niasari’s confident debut, a deeply personal tribute to a generation torn between tradition and modernity. Focusing on the title character, Shayda hangs on a vulnerable but powerful performance from Holy Spider’s Zar Amir Ebrahimi as an Iranian divorcée hiding out from her abusive ex, who may or may not be planning to smuggle their daughter Mona (Selina Zahednia) back to Iran.

This fear is played out in the jittery opening sequence, set in 1995, when Shayda and Joyce (Leah Purcell), a social worker of sorts, scope out an airport with Mona in tow. Both women impress upon Mona what to do if she should ever end up there against her will, noting repeatedly that blue uniforms equate with safety. Back at the women’s shelter, a shared hostel in a fiercely secret suburban location, Shayda wonders how she got to this...

The Australian drama premiered at Cannes and stars Cate Blanchett.

Warwick Thornton’s The New Boy leads the nominations for the 2024 Aacta (Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts) Awards with 12 nods, closely followed by horror Talk To Me with 11 nominations.

The New Boy is up for best film, actress for Cate Blanchett and actor for newcomer Aswan Reid while Australian Indigenous filmmaker Thornton is nominated for best director, screenplay and cinematography.

The film is set in 1940s Australia and stars Blanchett (who also serves as a producer) as a nun who takes in a nine-year-old Aboriginal orphan boy. It...

Director Noora Niasari’s debut Shayda––and Australia’s submission for Best International Feature at next year’s Oscars––is quite literally a lifetime in the making. Largely inspired by traumatic events from her own childhood as an Iranian immigrant in Australia, Niasari has repeatedly expressed that she still has a difficult time speaking about her film, the events depicted continuing to touch a raw nerve even as she’s separated from them by decades. And while the resulting work is too narrative-focused to ever be described as a pure “memory piece,” it’s littered with highly specific, lived-in details that appear to be directly lifted from her own experiences.

The prominence of a Simba Happy Meal toy as a recurring factor in the plot, for example, feels like an inclusion only afforded relevance because the director was a child when first bearing witness to similar events. Of course a...

"Shayda" is a harrowing yet gentle exploration of an Iranian woman's life after escaping an abusive husband in Australia. The film sensitively addresses the trauma of domestic abuse while showcasing love for Iranian culture. The performances and cinematography contribute to a powerful portrayal of Shayda's emotional journey, offering both heart-wrenching and tender moments.

The directorial debut of Noora Niasari, Shayda is a harrowing but gentle exploration of an Iranian woman’s life after escaping an abusive husband in Australia. From the film’s opening scene to its final moments, Niasari exhibits empathy while sensitively handling a delicate topic. Shayda is sorrowful, distressing, and intense; the film, which was also written by Niasari, is equally full of love for Iranian culture as it is a story about trauma. Bolstered by an emotionally sensitive and heartbreaking performance by Holy Spider’s Zar Amir Ebrahimi, Shayda explores the unnerving, arduous journey of...

"I am not afraid." Sony Pictures Classics has debuted a new US trailer for the outstanding film Shayda, marking the feature directorial debut of filmmaker Noora Niasari. It first premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, winning the Audience Award in the World Cinema Dramatic section. I saw it at Sundance and it's fantastic - one of the best feature debuts of this year. A young Iranian mother named Shayda and her six-year-old daughter find refuge in an Australian women's shelter during the two weeks of the Iranian New Year. When the girl's father shows up, it takes all of her courage to fight back and stop him from taking over. The extremely talented Zahra Amir Ebrahimi (also from last year's Holy Spider) stars, with Osamah Sami, Leah Purcell, Jillian Nguyen, Mojean Aria, Selina Zahednia, Rina Mousavi. Australia has submitted Shayda as their entry for the Academy Awards...

Australian filmmaker Noora Niasari has spent the entire year taking Shayda around the world. Earlier this year, the movie made its world premiere at Sundance Film Festival. From there, it screened at the Melbourne International Film Festival in Australia and closed Switzerland's Locarno Film Festival before making its Canadian premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, which is where Niasari spoke with us about her film. Next month, it will head to the Busan International Film Festival in South Korea before returning home to Australia for its theatrical release.

"I've been able to find a distance from it in sharing it with audiences," Niasari said of her global tour of Shayda. We were on the 19th floor of the historic Fairmont Royal York hotel in a salon that overlooked the downtown core below and the horizon peeking beyond the skyscrapers. It wasn't hard to feel on top of the world in that room,...

Screen is profiling every submission for best international feature at the 96th Academy Awards.

Entries for the 2024 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

The 96th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 10, 2024 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between December 1, 2022, and October 31, 2023. The deadline...

Screen is profiling every submission for best international feature at the 96th Academy Awards.

Entries for the 2024 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

The 96th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 10, 2024 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between December 1, 2022, and October 31, 2023. The deadline...

Screen is profiling every submission for best international feature at the 96th Academy Awards.

Entries for the 2024 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

The 96th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 10, 2024 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between December 1, 2022, and October 31, 2023. The deadline...

Screen is profiling every submission for best international feature at the 96th Academy Awards.

Entries for the 2024 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

The 96th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 10, 2024 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between December 1, 2022, and October 31, 2023. The deadline...

Screen is profiling every submission for best international feature at the 96th Academy Awards.

Entries for the 2024 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

The 96th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 10, 2024 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between December 1, 2022, and October 31, 2023. The deadline...

Screen is profiling every submission for best international feature at the 96th Academy Awards.

Entries for the 2024 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

The 96th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 10, 2024 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between December 1, 2022, and October 31, 2023. The deadline...

Australia has selected Shayda, from Iranian-Australian debut writer and director Noora Niasari, as its submission for the Best International Feature Film Oscar race.

The drama, which counts Cate Blanchett among its executive producers and was acquired by Sony Pictures Classics for North America among other markets, world premiered at Sundance in January where it won the World Cinema Audience Award.

It went on to open the Melbourne International Film Festival and was the closing-night screening at Locarno. It is next set for TIFF and will be released in Oz on October 5 via Madman.

The story follows a young Iranian mother and her 6-year-old daughter who find refuge in an Australian women’s shelter during the two weeks of Iranian New Year (Nowruz), which is celebrated as a time of renewal and rebirth. Aided by the strong community of women at the shelter, they seek their freedom in this new world of possibilities,...

"How do you plan on surviving there all alone?" Madman Films in Australia has revealed an official trailer for a wonderful film titled Shayda, marking the feature directorial debut of a talented filmmaker named Noora Niasari. This is screening soon at the 2023 Melbourne Film Festival before it opens in Australia this September. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, winning the Audience Award in the World Cinema Dramatic section. I saw it during Sundance and it's fantastic - one of the best feature debuts of the entire year. A young Iranian mother named Shayda and her six-year-old daughter find refuge in an Australian women's shelter during the two weeks of the Iranian New Year. When the girl's father shows up, it takes all of her courage to fight back and stop him from taking over. The extremely talented Zahra Amir Ebrahimi (also from last year's Holy Spider) stars,...

J.P. Pomare’s page-turning crime thriller The Clearing was a potent mix of intrigue and darkness as it tracked the real-life cults in Australia and around the globe. Hulu’s eight-part adaptation does the bestseller justice and then some. It’s a psychological thriller, as intriguing to watch as it is thought-provoking. Chilling, in fact. You can’t keep your eyes off it.

The Clearing follows the nightmares of a cult and a woman who’s forced to face the horrors of her past so that she can stop the kidnapping and coercion of innocent children. The standout cast here features Teresa Palmer (Discovery of Witches), Miranda Otto (Homeland), Guy Pearce (Mare of Easttown), Hazem Shammas, Mark Coles-Smith, Kate Mulvany, and Julia Savage in a head-turning role.

Filmed across Victoria, The Clearing was created and written by Elise McCredie (Stateless) and Matt Cameron (Jack Irish), with co-writer Osamah Sami. Jeffrey Walker...

The Family, also known as the Santiniketan Park Association and the Great White Brotherhood, was an Australian New Age cult led by Anne Hamilton-Byrne, one of few women to ever lead a cult. Elements of this story inspired J. P. Pomare’s novel “In the Clearing,” which in turn is the basis for the new Hulu limited series “The Clearing,” co-created by Matt Cameron (“Baron”) and Elise McCredie (“Stateless”), with additional writing from Osamah Sami (“Ali’s Wedding”).

Continue reading ‘The Clearing’ Review: Teresa Palmer & Miranda Otto Can’t Save An Underwhelming Hulu TV Drama About Cults at The Playlist.

A couple weeks ago, the Hulu streaming service unveiled a teaser trailer for their upcoming eight-part psychological thriller series The Clearing, which is set to premiere with two episodes on May 24. With the premiere date now just three weeks away, the streamer has released a full trailer for the show, and you can check it out in the embed above.

Based on the best-selling crime novel In the Clearing by author J.P. Pomare and said to be “inspired by the darkness of real-life cults in Australia and around the world“, The Clearing is an emotional and psychological thriller that follows the nightmares of a cult and a woman who’s forced to face the demons from her past in order to stop the kidnapping and coercion of innocent children in the future. The series burrows under the skin and inside the mind, blurring the lines between past and present, reality...

The upcoming Hulu Original Series “The Clearing,” based on the best-selling crime thriller In The Clearing by author J.P. Pomare, unveiled a first trailer this afternoon that gives a closer look at the cult at the center of the series.

In the new trailer, one character ominously asks a child, “Are you ready for your Clearing?”

Watch it below.

“The Clearing” is created and written by Elise McCredie and Matt Cameron, with co-writer Osamah Sami, and draws inspiration from real-life cults in Australia and around the world. Look for this series to arrive next month, on May 24, 2023.

The eight-episode series is “an emotional and psychological thriller that follows the nightmares of a cult and a woman who’s forced to face the demons from her past in order to stop the kidnapping and coercion of innocent children in the future.”

Teresa Palmer (“Discovery of Witches,” Lights Out), Miranda Otto (Talk to Me,...

The Hulu streaming service has released a teaser trailer for their upcoming psychological thriller series The Clearing, and you can check it out in the embed above. Based on the best-selling crime novel In the Clearing by author J.P. Pomare, this eight-part series is set to premiere with two episodes on May 24. The remaining six episodes will be released on a weekly basis, with a new episode arriving on Hulu every Wednesday.

Said to be “inspired by the darkness of real-life cults in Australia and around the world“, The Clearing is an emotional and psychological thriller that follows the nightmares of a cult and a woman who’s forced to face the demons from her past in order to stop the kidnapping and coercion of innocent children in the future. The series burrows under the skin and inside the mind, blurring the lines between past and present, reality and nightmare in a truly unnerving way…...

The upcoming Hulu Original Series “The Clearing,” based on the best-selling crime thriller In The Clearing by author J.P. Pomare, unveiled a first look teaser today that introduces its cast and nightmarish psychological thrills.

“The Clearing” is created and written by Elise McCredie and Matt Cameron, with co-writer Osamah Sami, and draws inspiration from real-life cults in Australia and around the world. Look for this series to arrive next month, on May 24, 2023.

The eight-episode series is “an emotional and psychological thriller that follows the nightmares of a cult and a woman who’s forced to face the demons from her past in order to stop the kidnapping and coercion of innocent children in the future.”

Teresa Palmer (“Discovery of Witches,” Lights Out), Miranda Otto (Talk to Me, Annabelle: Creation), and Guy Pearce (Prometheus, Ravenous) lead the Australian cast that also includes Hazem Shammas (“Safe Harbour”), Mark Coles-Smith (“Mystery Road”), Kate Mulvany...

Shayda Review — Shayda (2023) Film Review from the 45th Annual Sundance Film Festival, a movie directed by Noora Niasari, starring Zar Amir-Ebrahami, Mojean Aria, Leah Purcell, Osamah Sami, Jillian Nguyen, Lucinda Armstrong Hall, Eve Morey, Luka Sero, Selina Zahednia, and Rina Mousavi. Writer/director Noora Niasari takes a fresh spin on an all too [...]

Continue reading: Film Review: Shayda: Familiarity Breeds Fascination for an Iranian Mother’s Bid for Independence [Sundance 2023]...

Sony Pictures Classics has secured distribution rights to “Shayda,” which won the Audience Award at Sundance’s World Cinema Dramatic Competition last month.

The distributor holds all media rights in North America, Latin America, Benelux, Eastern Europe, Portugal, the Middle East, and Turkey.

Executive produced by Cate Blanchett’s Dirty Films, the first feature by writer-director Noora Niasari follows Shayda and her six-year-old daughter Mona, two Iranians living in Australia. After divorcing her husband Hossein, Shayda moves them into a women’s shelter, where she struggles to adjust to her new life while trying to create one for Mona. Encouraged by the start of the Persian New Year, Nowruz, to embrace her newfound freedom, Shayda is thrown off when Hossein wins visitation rights, raising the possibility that he’ll attempt to take his daughter back to Iran.

Also Read:

Zach Cregger and New Line Biggest Deal Not Made at Sundance...

The Audience Award goes to SPC for North America and bundle of international markets.

Sony Pictures Classics (SPC) has acquired all media rights to Sundance Audience Award winner Shayda for North America, Latin America, Benelux, Eastern Europe, Portugal, the Middle East and Turkey.

Written and directed by Iranian-Australian filmmaker Noora Niasari as her feature debut, the film had its world premiere in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at Sundance and is currently being offered for remaining territories by HanWay Films at Berlin’s European Film Market.

Shayda stars Zar Amir Ebrahimi, Osamah Sami and Leah Purcell in the story of...

It’s a Sunday evening in London in early February and two-time Oscar winner Cate Blanchett is freshly changed from an award show when she logs onto a Zoom with Noora Niasari, the writer and director behind “Shayda,” the powerful Sundance award-winning film executive produced by Dirty Films, the production company co-founded by Blanchett.

“I’m so happy. It’s fantastic. It’s great for Todd [Field], it’s so great for the film,” Blanchett says as she fields congratulations on accepting the London Critics Circle’s best actress prize. “And I just read that Viola Davis became an Egot!”

The topic of awards is the conversation du jour this time of year because awards are capital in the entertainment business — and Blanchett knows a thing or two about this topic, with eight Oscar nominations to her name. Ultimately, the accolades help a film reach audiences far and wide. In the case of “Shayda,...

Editor’s Note: This review was originally published at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Sony Pictures Classics will release “Shayda” in select U.S. theaters on March 1, 2024.

The actress Zar Amir Ebrahimi’s eyes are an arresting contradiction. In “Shayda,” dark circles hang heavy below them, contributing to her world-weary, anxious gaze. But if you look deeper into her uneasy stare and almost translucently hazel irises, there lurks a bit of light, and a sense of hope that hasn’t been completely stamped out.

In Noora Niasari’s debut feature, Ebrahimi is cast as the eponymous Shayda, an Iranian woman living in Australia in 1995, trying to break free of her abusive husband Hossein (Osamah Sami), who’s finishing his medical studies in Brisbane. Her immense exhaustion is visible from the film’s first scene, in which she instructs her six-year-old daughter Mona (Selina Zahednia) what to do if Hossein tries to kidnap her.

In resiliently fighting for their human rights and dignity, Iranian women were deservedly named Time magazine’s Heroes of the Year in 2022. Their fierce uprising erupted last fall, after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini was arrested by the morality police for not fully complying with the government’s antiquated dress code, and died three days later in police custody. Set in the ’90s in an Australian city, writer-director Noora Niasari’s quietly powerful “Shayda” doesn’t, on the surface, have a direct connection to these recent events. But one can’t help but detect the same strength and heroic spirit in the film’s eponymous protagonist, a young Iranian woman who demands a free life on her own terms, away from the shadow of her abusive husband, and the patriarchal norms and codes of conduct that suffocate her existence.

If “Shayda” (with Cate Blanchett among its executive producers) skews too predictable at...

Within the unassuming exterior of a suburban house, the central setting in Shayda, a handful of women are working to reclaim their lives. The title character is one of them, determined to leave an abusive marriage with her young daughter and not return to their native Iran. Unfolding in 1995 Australia, Noora Niasari’s debut feature is drawn from her experiences as a child in such a shelter and is at its core a tribute to the writer-director’s mother. Fueling the drama is the quiet ferocity of Zar Amir Ebrahimi’s performance and her tender chemistry with Selina Zahednia as 6-year-old Mona.

Early scenes are thick with shadows, a sense of danger lurking. Four years earlier, Shayda moved to Australia with Hossein (Osamah Sami) and their toddler daughter so that he could attend medical school. A student too, she has stopped wearing the hijab and embraced the relative freedoms of a Western woman,...

Five years ago, Noora Niasari asked her mother to write a memoir in order to fill in the gaps of some fuzzy childhood memories. The Iranian Australian director had been just five years old when her mother fled an abusive relationship and left her entire community to raise Niasari on her own in a foreign country.

An early draft of “Shayda,” which opens the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at Sundance on Friday, was based on that memoir and tracks Niasari’s mother’s life from her arranged marriage in Iran as a teenager to finding independence in Australia with her child. The resulting film stars “Holy Spider” breakout Zar Amir-Ebrahimi as Shayda, and Selina Zahednia as her daughter, Mona.

“There are a lot of fictional elements within the current version of the film, but it’s very much grounded in the emotional truth of our experience,” the Melbourne-based Niasari tells Variety.

After two years of hosting an online festival due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Sundance Film Festival returns to Park City this year for its 2023 edition from Jan. 19-29. Film lovers, filmmakers, industry insiders, actors, artists and more are expected to return en masse for the festivities that will include a packed calendar of parties, panels, concerts, gatherings and networking opportunities, in addition to all the big-screen showings.

Below is a roundup of all of the intel The Hollywood Reporter has gathered thus far, featuring events in Park City. All times listed are local.

Thursday, Jan. 19

Sundance Scoop – Day One

Filmmaker Lodge, 550 Main St., 1:30-2:30 p.m.

A conversation and Q&a for media featuring Sundance Institute CEO Joana Vicente, Sundance director of programming Kim Yutani, senior programmer and strategic initiatives director John Nein with moderator Eugene Hernandez, incoming Sundance festival director and head of public programming.

Opening...

Miranda Otto, Jesse Spence and Guy Pearce are among the high-profile stars featuring on Disney+’s debut slate in Australia and New Zealand.

Announced at an event at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art, the 2022/23 slate comprises three dramas, four documentaries and two lifestyle/general factual entertainment series. Several are for Disney+’s adult vertical Star.

On the scripted drama front, The Clearing is adapted from Jp Pomare’s novel ‘In the Clearing’ and is inspired by Australian cult The Family and its founder Anne Hamilton-Byrne, one of the few female cult leaders in history.

Teresa Palmer (A Discovery of Witches), Miranda Otto (The Usual Suspects) and Guy Pearce (Jack Irish) lead the cast, alongside the lies of Hazem Shammas (Safe Harbour), Mark Coles-Smith (Mystery Road), Tom Budge (Bloom).

Written and created by Matt Cameron (Jack Irish) and Elise McCredie (Stateless) alongside co-writer Osamah Sami (Ali’s Wedding), it comes from...

Aquarius Films has optioned the film development and production rights to Abdul Karim Hekmat’s acclaimed article “True Love in Nauru,” and aims to produce it as feature film “Paradise.”

“Paradise” is the powerful true story of two men who meet and fall in love in an Australian offshore detention center. Their relationship becomes a life-affirming source of strength as they take on institutional indifference and overcome hopelessness, finally making their way to freedom.

Hekmat’s original article was published in The Monthly, an Australian political and society magazine. Hekmat, who resides in Australia, arrived as a refugee from Afghanistan and spent five months in detention will co-write the screenplay with Roger Monk.

“Paradise” will be co-directed by Rhys Graham and Phoenix Raei, an Australian actor-director of Persian descent. Rae, who will be making his feature directorial debut, has recent performance credits including Netflix series “The Night Agent,” Netflix mini-series “Clickbait,...

Production in Australia’s Victoria state has begun on “Savage River,” a six-part crime thriller being directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the U.S. distributor Dynamic Television.

The show, about a female ex-con who is accused of a fresh murder in her small-town home, stars Katherine Langford. As she attempts to prove her innocence she discovers long-buried secrets that cast doubt on everything she thought she knew.

Langford is joined by Jacqueline McKenzie, Cooper Van Grootel, Nadine Garner (“The Doctor Blake Mysteries”), James Mackay (“Dynasty”), Bernard Curry (“Wentworth”), Mark Coles Smith (“Mystery Road: Origin”), Virginia Gay, Daniel Henshall (“Snowtown”), Amesh Edireweera (“The Serpent”) and Osamah Sami (“Ali’s Wedding”). Additional cast, some undertaking their first major role, include Miranda Anwar, Maia Abbas, Haya Abbas, Bill Zeng and Hattie Hook.

The 6×57 minute series is co-created by writers Belinda Bradley, Franz Docherty and lead writer Giula Sandler. After...

A psychological drama from Iranian filmmaker Amin Palangi is currently shooting in Nsw, starring Osamah Sami, Faezeh Alavi, and Robert Rabiah.

Tennessine was written by Sami, who also plays Arash, a Persian man who arrives in Australia against his family’s wishes to reunite with the love of his life, the elusive Nazanin (Alavi).

While the couple is about to spend a romantic weekend in a cabin in the woods, the arrival of Nasser (Rabiah) interrupts the idyllic reunion and raises doubts about his connection with Nazanin. Soon, Arash learns of deep harboured secrets, which leads him down a path of self-destruction.

The independently financed feature is being directed by Palangi, who is also producing with Ulysses Oliver and Ben Ferris for Palangi Productions and Breathless Films.

The creative team also includes director of photography Daniel Hartley-Allen, production designer Ellen Doolan, and costume designer Cc Williams.

Sami, who is based in Melbourne,...

(L-r) Jason Lee, an unidentified extra and Frank Lotito on the set of ‘Growing Up Smith.’

Actor Robert Rabiah is frustrated with the lack of on-screen representation of Australia’s diverse communities despite some recent TV shows and movies that are more reflective of race, gender, class and colour.

That prompted Rabiah to create AussieWood, a TV comedy which follows the daily life of casting agent Steve “Aussie” Wood, a high-achieving, slightly neurotic and affable rogue who is trying to do the best he can in a pandemic-ridden world.

Rabiah pitched his idea to director/producer Frank Lotito, who wholeheartedly agreed and will helm a half-hour pilot with a top name cast.

“I wanted to challenge all that mythologising about who can carry a show or who can lead a film or who can play which role and why,” the actor whose credits include Below, Secret City, Safe Harbour and Ali’s Wedding tells If.

‘Relic’

While some distributors are cutting back, Umbrella Entertainment plans to release approximately 18 titles in cinemas this year, up from 14 in 2019.

The distributor has high hopes for its Australian acquisitions which run the gamut of genres from drama, horror and Western to sci-fi.

“We’re passionate about overcoming the cultural cringe that Australian audiences still have a tendency to display and are dedicated to fostering new Australian talent,” Umbrella head of acquisitions Ari Harrison tells If.

“As a small, close-knit team, we aim to concentrate our efforts on films that we love and can support from the ground up. We want to work hand-in-hand with the filmmakers with the goal of getting their film ‘out there’ so that it finds its audience.

“Essentially we aim to ensure that the films we acquire have the capacity for national theatrical success in Australia and New Zealand, with potential for continued growth via their ancillary platforms.

Veteran actor, David Wenham and rising star Ahmed Malek are set to star in “The Furnace.” The adventure drama is by first time feature director Roderick MacKay, with production by Timothy White (“I Am Mother”) and Tenille Kennedy (“H Is For Happiness”).

Set in Western Australia’s 1890s gold rush, “The Furnace” is an unlikely hero’s tale, navigating greed and the search for identity in a new land. It illuminates the forgotten history of Australia’s ‘Ghan’ cameleers, predominantly Muslim and Sikh men from India, Afghanistan and Persia, who opened up the country’s desert interior, and formed unique bonds with local Aboriginal people.

Malek, an Egyptian actor who was named one of the Rising Stars at the Toronto Film Festival in 2018, will play a camel driver who teams up with a bushman, played by Wenham. Together, they must outwit zealous troopers in a race to reset gold bars at a secret furnace.

Ahmed Malek.

Writer-director Roderick Mackay’s feature debut The Furnace is set to kick off in Wa next month, headlined by a cast that includes Egyptian actor Ahmed Malek, David Wenham and The Nightingale’s Baykali Ganambarr.

Set in the during the 1890s gold rush, the film is described as an “unlikely hero’s tale” navigating greed and identity. It illuminates a history of Australia’s ‘Ghan’ cameleers, predominantly Muslim and Sikh men from India, Afghanistan and Persia, who opened up the desert interior, and formed unique bonds with local Aboriginal people.

Malek, named a Rising Star at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival, will play Hanif, a young cameleer who forms a partnership with a bushman on the run with Crown gold. The bushman, Mal, will be played by Wenham, a long-time supporter of the project. Together, they must outwit zealous troopers in a race to reset the gold bars at a secret furnace.

Yvonne Strahovski, Cate Blanchett and Jai Courtney.

Cate Blanchett co-created, co-produces and will play a key supporting role in Stateless, a six-part drama about four strangers in an immigration detention centre in the Australian desert commissioned by the ABC.

Yvonne Strahovski, Jai Courtney, Fayssal Bazzi and Asher Keddie will play the leads in the series scripted by showrunner Elise McCredie and Belinda Chayko, to be directed by Emma Freeman and Jocelyn Moorhouse.

Strahovski is cast as an airline hostess who is escaping a cult-like self-improvement group, with Bazzi as an Afghan refugee fleeing persecution. Courtney is a young Australian father escaping a dead-end job and Keddie is a bureaucrat who is caught up in a national scandal.

When their lives intersect they are pushed to the brink of sanity, yet unlikely and profound emotional connections are made within the group.

In her first Australian TV role since Rake in 2014, Cate...

Alastair McKinnon.

A generational change is sweeping through Matchbox Pictures as the NBCUniversal-owned production company develops a raft of projects with emerging writers and producers.

“Talent development has always been a priority for Matchbox,” says Alastair McKinnon, who started as MD last December after three years with the ABC, most recently as head of content investment and planning,

McKinnon signed on just as the company founded by Penny Chapman, Tony Ayres, Helen Bowden, Michael McMahon and Helen Panckhurst was celebrating its 10th anniversary. “That was the perfect time to reflect and think about what Matchbox has done incredibly successfully over that time as the leading drama production company in Australia,” he tells If in his first interview since taking charge.

“But the industry has transformed in that 10 years and is unrecognisable if you think about the sorts of shows, how they are financed and the distribution models of drama.

The male cast of ‘Fighting Season’ (Photo: Mark Rogers).

The casting directors of 1%, Breath, Sweet Country and The Merger are the finalists in the feature film category of the Casting Guild of Australia Awards.

The Cga has also announced the 10 winners of this year’s Rising Stars awards, who are nominated by Cga members and chosen by a committee comprising Kirsty McGregor, Nikki Barrett, Anousha Zarkesh, Tom McSweeney, Faith Martin and Nathan Lloyd.

The recipients are George Pullar (Fighting Season), Michael Sheasby (The Nightingale), Harry Greenwood (True History of the Kelly Gang), Tess Haubrich (Bad Mothers), Markella Kavenagh (The Cry), George Zhao (The Family Law), Milly Alcock (Upright), Kimie Tsukakoshi (The Bureau of Magical Things), Harvey Zielinski and Alexandra Jensen.

McSweeney tells If: “I’ve watched Kimie grow as a performer over the past decade from a kid with a fantastic singing voice to an actress of conviction, dedication and positivity.

Film won best screenplay from Australian Academy.

Netflix has acquired worldwide rights excluding China, Australia and New Zealand to the Australian rom-com Ali’s Wedding from Beta Cinemas.

Ali’s Wedding won best original screenplay from the Australian Academy and the Sydney Film Festival audience award, as well as the Awgie Award from the Australian Writers’ Guild for best original feature film.

Jeffrey Walker directed Ali’s Wedding, based on a convoluted true-life state of affairs in which the film’s star and co-writer Osamah Sami found himself in an arranged marriage that lasted less than two hours, while falling in love with another person.