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The HollyShorts Film Festival is pulling out all the stops for its 21st edition, assembling a powerhouse lineup featuring global music icon Stormzy, the late Michael Madsen, Viola Davis, Stephen Fry, Idris Elba, Letitia Wright and a host of other A-list talent.

Running Aug. 7-17 at the Tcl Chinese Theatres in Los Angeles, the festival will also stream globally via Bitpix, showcasing films selected from a record 7,000 submissions worldwide.

Stormzy stars in Academy Award winner Aneil Karia’s “Big Man,” while Viola Davis takes center stage as narrator of Emmai Alaquiva’s documentary “The Ebony Canal: The Story of Black Infant Health.” Idris Elba stars in the west coast premiere of “Victory,” the cinematic visual album from hip-hop icon Slick Rick, also featuring Nas and Giggs and directed by Meji Alabi. Stephen Fry stars alongside Miriam Margolyes in Lee Knight’s “A Friend of Dorothy.”

Among other marquee entries, Madsen...

"We don't pay enough attention. Things happen that we don't see." Film Movement has revealed an official US trailer for the French film titled Red Island, an intimate drama about living on Madagascar in the 1970s. This is finally getting a theatrical US release this August, after first opening in French cinemas last May (original trailer here) to mixed reviews more than a year ago. L'île Rouge, aka Red island, is set in the 1970s on the African island of Madagascar - taking place at one of the last French outposts at the end of their time as colonialists. The 10-year-old Thomas begins to find cracks in the surface of his family's blissful existence on the idyllic island. Taking inspiration from his comic book hero Fantomette, Thomas spies on those around him, discovering the hidden & tangled political and sexual lives of colonizers & the colonized. With Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Quim Gutierrez, Charlie Vauselle,...

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

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

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

Memento Distribution in France has revealed the first official trailer for a film titled Red Island, the latest from acclaimed director Robin Campillo - best known for his AIDS drama 120Bpm before this. That one first premiered at Cannes 2017, but his next one is skipping the festival entirely - which seems a bit strange. L'île Rouge, aka Red island, is set in the 1970s on the African island of Madagascar - taking place at one of the last French outposts at the end of their time as colonialists. The synopsis says it's about "soldiers and their families living through the last illusions of colonialism," with a very specific focus on a 10-year-old boy named Thomas, observing it all through young eyes. This stars Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Quim Gutierrez, Charlie Vauselle, Amely Rakotoarimalala, Hugues Delamarlière, Sophie Guillemin, and David Serero. This is opening in France at the end of May, though there's...

After earning much acclaim and some awards at Cannes Film Festival in 2017 for Bpm (Beats per Minute), Robin Campillo is back this year with a new feature, but curiously one that is not part of the festival’s lineup. Set for a May 31 release in France, the first trailer has now arrived for Red Island, with the film’s runtime also confirmed at 116 minutes.

Here’s the synopsis: “At the beginning of the 70s, in Madagascar, a few armed forces and their families live in one of the last French military bases abroad, a relic of the ending French colonial empire. Influenced by his reading of the intrepid comic book heroine Fantômette, Thomas, a ten-year-old boy, sweeps with a curious glance what surrounds him. Beneath the carefree expatriate life, his eyes are gradually opening to another reality.”

See the trailer below for the film starring Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Quim Gutierrez, Charlie Vauselle,...

École de l’air

We thought there might be an outside chance that this might shore up in 2021 – but we were dead wrong as it appears that production might have taken place in several locations and over the course of more than one season/backdrop with shooting days as far back as July and as recent as this past December. Robin Campillo‘s highly anticipated fourth feature comes five years after his Cannes-winning Bpm (Beats Per Minute) in 2017. Starring Quim Gutiérrez, Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Charlie Vauselle, Sophie Guillemin, Hugues Delamarliere, David Serero, Luna Carpiaux, Mathis Piberne and Sacha Cosar-Accaoui, École de l’air was written by Campillo and filmmaker Gilles Marchand and is produced by Les Films de Pierre’s Marie-Ange Luciani while cinematographer Jeanne Lapoirie Bpm (Beats Per Minute) lens.…...

This past spring, Charles Gray was new to Backstage—and he ended up booking a principal role in the Mozart opera “Don Giovanni.” The gig pushed him as a performer.“I performed the role of the servant Leporello, [who] is sent running all over the place by his master, Don Giovanni. The role is challenging and requires various operatic techniques, from singing long lines to patter both high and low in range.” Honesty will elevate you.“Be honest about your strengths as a performer in your profile. [It’s important to have] really good audio and/or video clips of your work, [which] make you stand out to casting agents who know what they want.” Backstage has the most to offer.“I use Backstage as much as possible since it offers such a vast array of opportunities for the aspiring performer. I just joined in April and was [quickly] cast in ‘Don Giovanni’! There are so many different opportunities to apply to,...