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If endless sequels, prequels, reboots, spin-offs, teamups, callbacks and shout-outs have put you off the idea of the “shared cinematic universe,” you haven’t been spending enough time in Karatas, world cinema’s smallest, wildest, weirdest crossover microcosm. The fictional village in rural Kazakhstan, populated exclusively by the clueless, the cowardly, the comic and the corrupt has provided a stark, absurdist backdrop for most of prolific Kazakh director Adilkhan Yerzhanov’s films, including his newest, the dark, funny, freaky “Assault.”

It may not be the most essential Yerzhanov entry — it’s not the darkest, funniest or freakiest — but “Assault” is a droll refresher on his singular sensibilities, and his borderline miraculous ability to maintain a coherent tone while narrative logic and consistency are highly expendable commodities. Good taste, too, can be as casually tossed out as one of the stuttered insults that make up about 80 percent of the dialogue. Here,...

Cannes title “Petrov’s Flu” has been picked up for the U.K. and Ireland by Sovereign Distribution.

The U.K.-based producer-distributor bought rights for Kirill Serebrennikov’s film from French sales agent Charades. The sci-fi drama, which was written and directed by the Russian helmer, enjoyed its world premiere at the 74th Cannes Film Festival, where it competed for the Palme d’Or, earlier this month.

Charades has closed deals for the title in France (Bad Films), Benelux (Imagine), Greece (Weird Wave), Italy (I Wonder Pictures), Portugal (Films4you), Poland (Gutek Films), Czech Republic and Slovakia (Film Europe), Baltics (Kino Soprus) and ex-Yugoslavia (Megacom), Israel (Lev Cinema/Shani Films), Turkey (Fabula Films), Mexico (Cine Canibal) and Indonesia (Falcon Pictures).

Adapted from the novel “The Petrovs In And Around Flu” by Russian author Alexey Sainikov, the film was described by Variety as a delirious, deadpan romp through post-Soviet Russia. The story...

"Is it okay that we kidnapped a corpse and kind of mocked it?" A festival promo trailer has debuted for the new Russian film titled Petrov's Flu, the latest from acclaimed Russian filmmaker / theater director Kirill Serebrennikov. It's premiering at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival next month in the Competition section. His last feature, a rock band film called Leto (which is a Great film), also premiered at Cannes in 2018 while Serebrennikov was under house-arrest in Russia (for political reasons). Based on the novel titled "The Petrovs In and Around the Flu" by Alexey Sainikov, Petrov’s Flu is described as a “deadpan, hallucinatory romp through Post-Soviet Russia”. A day in the life of a comic book artist and his family in post-Soviet Russia, as he is taken on a long walk by his friend while he has the flu. Starring Semyon Serzin, Chulpan Khamatova, with Yuriy Borisov, Yuliya Peresild, Yuri Kolokolnikov,...

Chris Tucker, Adrien Brody and Paul Haggis were on hand Saturday to give a huge high-tech finale to the fifth edition of the Jackie Chan Action Film Week. So too were Crystal Liu Yifei, star of Disney’s upcoming “Mulan,” and a bevy of top Chinese talent.

Moving the event from the fringes of the Shanghai festival in June, to a new date and spectacular outdoor venues provided by provincial town of Datong, some 200 miles East of Beijing in Shanxi Province, may have revitalized the Action Film Week. Upbeat organizers now talk of franchising the event to other countries.

If the opening on July 21 was reportedly relatively quiet, the closing ceremony was a razzamatazz of stunts, choreography and pyrotechnics with ambitions of matching an Olympic Games or World Cup opening.

Held in a full-sized sports arena, with perhaps 20,000 spectators, the show opened with a troop of astronauts arriving from the skies,...