News

Warner Bros’ Twisters is the leading title at this weekend’s UK-Ireland box office, opening in 675 cinemas 28 years after the original film was a hit in the territory.

Twisters stars 2020 Screen Star of Tomorrow Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell, as a meteorologist and social media tornado chaser who team up with a new team and new technologies. The film has over £1m banked already from previews on Wednesday 17 and Thursday 18.

Jan de Bont’s Twister opened to over £3m in July 1996, ending on an impressive £15m total – equivalent to £29.3m today. This new film is not a direct sequel, although...

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...

“Shayda,” a breakout indie movie from Noora Niasari, and Kitty Green’s high-temperature drama “The Royal Hotel” were named best film winners at the annual Spa Awards, presented by the Screen Producers Australia association.

The ceremony took place Thursday at Queensland’s Gold Coast, during the annual Screen Forever conference. The event was hosted by actor and comedian Matt Okine.

Production company Werner Film, which this week announced its acquisition by the BBC, took three awards including the coveted Media Super Production Business of the year prize.

“It’s clear that our production community continues to thrive in the face of a rapidly changing landscape. Each winner exemplifies the creativity, innovation, and dedication that define our industry and showcase the vital role producers and production businesses play in sharing our unique stories and culture with audiences worldwide,” said Spa CEO Matthew Deaner.

The awards ceremony also saw Amy Parry named...

Bye-bye Bunya

Australian TV producer Bunya Entertainment says that Sophia Zachariou will step down as co-managing director, after a five-year stint. Bunya Entertainment is one part the Bunya Group of companies and was established by Zachariou, David Jowsey and Greer Simpkin in 2019.

Zachariou is currently in post-production on “The Office” (Amazon) and “Ladies in Black” (ABC) and will deliver these series before she departs the company. Other productions from Bunya Entertainment include the six x half-hour sketch comedy series “The Moth Effect” (Amazon) and the comedy series “Nice Shorts.”

In 2020 Zachariou also created the Bunya Talent Indigenous Hub, in partnership with Netflix and Screen Australia, which funded and developed 10 First Nations writers and directors to further develop their TV projects. The Hub was later extended to include a partnership with Safc, Screen Nt and Screen Nsw.

Jowsey and Simpkin will continue as co-MDs of Bunya Entertainment. The separate Bunya Group entities,...

Julio Torres’s directorial debut Problemista from A24 posted the highest per-screen average of the weekend with a solid limited opening, grossing $140.9k on five screens in New York and LA with multiple sold out Q&As.

The film starring Torres and Tilda Swinton saw a PSA of $28k and strong exits at all locations.

A surreal comedy about a young aspiring toy designer from El Salvador navigating New York City and the U.S. immigration system, it premiered at SXSW last year. Expands to select top markets this weekend with a nationwide rollout to follow.

Oscar-Nominated Shorts from ShortsTV and Magnolia hit a solid $330k on 258 screens in week three, looking set to surpass last year’s $3.025 million, likely by the end of this week, Magnolia said. It’s grossed about $200k more so far this year than it had at the same point in 2023. The program, broken into...

My Rep and Me is a recurring Culture Shift feature in which reps and clients from the same historically marginalized background sit down to discuss the chemistry and business advantages of their special connection, in order to underscore the importance and benefits of diverse representation.

UTA partner Keya Khayatian and actress-filmmaker Zar Amir Ebrahimi are both from Iran but left the country under somewhat traumatic circumstances: Khayatian as a child with his parents fleeing the Islamic Revolution and Ebrahimi in 2008 when she ran afoul of the conservative regime and faced blacklisting and imprisonment. Now based in France, the latter has rebuilt her career and in 2022 became the first Iranian performer to win best actress at Cannes with her role as a journalist investigating a serial killer targeting sex workers in Holy Spider.

It was at the 2023 Sundance premiere of Ebrahimi’s latest film, Shayda, in which she plays an immigrant...

Two well-reviewed indies are taking a bow in limited release in the shadow of Dune, A24’s Problemista by Julio Torres, and Shayda from Sony Pictures Classics, the feature debut of Noora Niasari.

Torres, the comedian, actor and writer, in his directorial debut, stars with Tilda Swinton as Problemista gets its release at last after being bumped from August due to the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. He also penned the screenplay, and produced alongside Fruit Tree’s Dave McCary, Ali Herting and Emma Stone. Premiered at SXSW last year, see Deadline review, and sits at 91% with critics on Rotten Tomatoes.

This surreal comedy adventure amid the treacherous worlds of New York City and the U.S. Immigration system follows Torres’ Alejandro, an aspiring toy designer from El Salvador trying to land a spot at Hasbro’s incubator program. When he’s fired from the cryogenic center where he tends...

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,...

The director Noora Niasari deeply understands the personal struggles of people who often go unnoticed by the mainstream flow of life. Her last short film, the 2020 thriller Tâm, about a Vietnamese woman trapped in a cataclysmic sexual encounter, is a haunting gut punch.

Noora and I are from different generations and cultures. Yet she lived in the same suburb of Melbourne that I grew up in, and we were both raised by isolated single mothers in predominantly female environments. So the moment I read Shayda — Noora’s first feature script...

It was a celebration of film and TV directors at the 2024 DGA Awards on Saturday, February 10. The ceremony emceed by Judd Apatow honored the year’s top helmers of narrative films, documentaries, television and variety, sports and news programs. Gold Derby associate editor Latasha Ford and senior editor Denton Davidson enjoyed an exclusive spot on the red carpet, interviewing many of the celebrities who were nominated, presenting or part of their movie or TV show’s ensembles.

Watch each short video below by clicking that person’s name:

Celine Song (“Past Lives”), winner for Film First-Time Directing

Noora Niasari (“Shayda”), nominee for Film First-Time Directing

Mark Ruffalo (“Poor Things”), Feature Film Nomination presentation to Yorgos Lanthimos

Glenn Weiss (“The 95th Annual Academy Awards”), nominee for Variety/Talk/News/Sports — Specials

Moses Bwaya & Christopher Sharp (“Bobi Wine: The People’s President”), nominee for Film Documentary Director

Madeleine Gavin (“Beyond Utopia”), nominee for...

With the 96th Academy Awards now only a month away, each weekend brings a new award show that reveals a new look at the shape of the Oscar race. Tonight, the auteurs behind some of 2023’s biggest films gathered at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles to celebrate the craft of filmmaking at the Directors Guild of America Awards.

Martin Scorsese, Greta Gerwig, Christopher Nolan, Yorgos Lanthimos, and Alexander Payne were nominated for the night’s top prize, Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Theatrical Feature Film, with Oscar frontrunner Nolan walking away with the coveted trophy. Celine Song, Cord Jefferson, A.V. Rockwell, Manuela Martelli, and Noora Niasari competed for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in First-Time Theatrical Feature Film, which ultimately went to Song.

The show celebrated some of the best directors working in television, with awards in a variety of categories ranging from TV dramas and sitcoms to commercials and reality TV.

“Oppenheimer” director Christopher Nolan, Christopher Storer of FX’s “The Bear” and Peter Hoar of HBO’s “The Last of Us” were the top winners Saturday night at the Directors Guild of America’s 76th annual DGA Awards.

The DGA win seals Nolan’s frontrunner position to land the director Oscar at the March 10 Academy Awards. Celine Song took home the DGA medallion for first-time director for her much-praised A24 drama “Past Lives.” “Guys, this is so amazing,” Song told the crowd.

Judd Apatow hosted the three-hour ceremony at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. The multi-hyphenate opened his monologue with a zinger rooted in the DGA’s image as being friendly with the studio CEOs and its history of never mounting a significant strike against Hollywood’s major studios. Apatow joked that his agents told him to hold out for more money for his fifth time as host of the DGA ceremony.

The 76th Directors Guild of America Awards took place on Saturday, February 10 at 7:30 p.m. Pt with Judd Apatow hosting the in-person, non-televised ceremony. These kudos honored the best helmers of the year in movies and television, as voted on by more than 18,000 members of the directing guild. Scroll down for the 2024 DGA Awards winners list in three film and eight TV categories.

As always, the all-important feature film category is one of the most telling bellwethers for the eventual Best Director Oscar. The guild and the academy have only disagreed for Best Director eight times over the past seven decades, with the last three years lining up perfectly for Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert (2022’s “Everything Everywhere All at Once”), Jane Campion (2021’s “The Power of the Dog”) and Chloé Zhao (2020’s “Nomadland”).

This year, just three of the DGA’s nominees also reaped directing Oscar bids: Yorgos Lanthimos...

The Directors Guild of America Awards are on February 10, and while the race for Best Film Director looks like a runaway for Christopher Nolan (“Oppenheimer”), Best First-Time Feature Director could be a little more suspenseful. The top two contenders are also first-time Oscar nominees this year: Celine Song for “Past Lives” and Cord Jefferson for “American Fiction.” They’re both Oscar-nominated for their screenplays, though. So which will be the industry’s choice for their direction?

As of this writing Song is the heavy favorite to win with leading odds of 31/10. Betting on her to win are all 11 of the Expert journalists currently making their predictions, 10 out of the 11 Gold Derby Editors who cover awards year-round, 23 of the Top 24 Users who got the best scores predicting last year’s DGA winners and 23 of the All-Star Top 24 who got the highest scores when you combine multiple years’ results. Jefferson trails in...

Barbie director Greta Gerwig was notably snubbed in the best director category during the Oscar nominations on Tuesday. But following last year’s omission of any female filmmaker in the category, Anatomy of a Fall’s Justine Triet received a nomination.

Triet, Yorgos Lanthimos (Poor Things), Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer), Jonathan Glazer (The Zone of Interest) and Martin Scorsese (Killers of the Flower Moon) were nominated in the coveted category Tuesday morning.

Gerwig is a notable snub, as the Barbie director, throughout the awards season, received various best director nominations (the Directors Guild of America, the Golden Globes, Critics Choice) and wins (Palm Springs International Film Fest). She was also on various pundits’ prediction lists for best director, including from The Hollywood Reporter. Frontrunner Alexander Payne (The Holdovers) was also omitted.

Last year, no woman was nominated for best director. The nominees were Martin McDonagh (The Banshees of Inisherin), Todd Field...

Judd Apatow will return to host the 2024 Directors Guild of America Awards, the organization announced on Friday.

This will be Apatow’s fifth time hosting the annual awards show, which will take place this year on Feb. 10 at The Beverly Hilton hotel in Los Angeles, California. The filmmaker hosted in 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2023.

“It’s an honor to be hosting the DGA Awards for the 5th time,” said Apatow. “Just three more times and I’ll be eligible for health insurance.”

It was also announced that Beth McCarthy-Miller will return as awards chair this year.

“I’m honored to return as awards chair and to be a part of such a stellar night that highlights the amazing work my colleagues have done this year,” McCarthy-Miller said in a statement. “I’m thrilled that Judd will return as our host, keeping our ceremony grounded in connection, camaraderie, and, comedy.”

Apatow has directed, produced...

Winners to be announced at 76th Annual DGA Awards on February 10.

‘Barbenheimer’ filmmakers Christopher Nolan and Greta Gerwig are among the Directors Guild of America’s (DGA) Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Theatrical Feature Film nominees for 2023.

Gerwig is the sole female nominee in the main category for Barbie (Warner Bros) alongside last weekend’s Golden Globe winner Nolan for Oppenheimer (Universal), Martin Scorsese for Killers Of The Flower Moon (Apple Original Films/Paramount), Alexander Payne for The Holdovers (Focus Features), and Yorgos Lanthimos for Poor Things (Searchlight Pictures).

The DGA nominations are a reliable guide to best director Oscar nominees,...

In the wake of the Golden Globes and the guild noms, only “Barbie,” “Oppenheimer,” and “Killers of the Flower Moon” are ticking every pre-Oscar box: Major Globes awards, making the DGA list, and receiving the SAG Ensemble nod.

While “The Holdovers” director Alexander Payne can cheer his inclusion as a DGA nominee, the comedy three-hander did not land a SAG Ensemble slot, even if Globe winners Paul Giamatti and Da’Vine Joy Randolph got SAG nominations. For the DGA, popular hit “The Holdovers” was a predictable choice; voters include assistant directors and production managers who often lean more mainstream than the Oscars. Last year, Joseph Kosinski landed a DGA nod for “Top Gun: Maverick,” while the Oscar nomination went to “Triangle of Sadness” director Ruben Ostlund. Yorgos Lanthimos made this year’s DGA list, along with Martin Scorsese, Christopher Nolan, and Greta Gerwig.

In addition to his SAG nomination, “Oppenheimer” star...

The Directors Guild of America has nominated Barbie’s Greta Gerwig, Oppenheimer’s Christopher Nolan, Poor Things’ Yorgos Lanthimos, Killers of the Flower Moon’s Martin Scorsese and The Holdovers’ Alexander Payne for the top feature film prize at its 76th annual DGA Awards. See the full list below.

After nominating no women for its marquee prize last year, the guild only went 1-for-5 this time, after Gerwig’s Barbie became the No. 1 movie of 2023.

Also following its 2023 script, the guild’s nominees for its First-Time Feature Film Prize include four women and one man: Manuella Martelli (Chile ’76), Noora Niasari (Shayda), A.V. Rockwell (A Thousand and One) and Celine Song (Past Lives), along with Cord Jefferson (American Fiction).

The DGA is a strong predictor of Oscar success historically, missing the eventual Best Director winner only eight times in 75 years. The group handed its top trophy to the Daniels for Everything...

“Barbenheimer” forever! Greta Gerwig and Christopher Nolan, the filmmakers behind last summer’s blockbusters “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” are among the best feature film director nominees at the 76th annual DGA Awards.

The Directors Guild of America nominated five directors in total, including Martin Scorsese for “Killers of the Flower Moon,” Yorgos Lanthimos for “Poor Things” and Alexander Payne for “The Holdovers.”

“In a year full of so many extraordinary films, DGA members have nominated an incredible group of gifted storytellers,” Directors Guild of America president Lesli Linka Glatter said in a statement. “Their films fused technical prowess with unique artistic visions that captured the depth of the human experience and left an indelible impact on audiences around the world. Congratulations to these superb directors on their well-deserved nominations.”

The DGA Award nominees are considered to be an important precursor to the Oscars. Conspicuous absences among this year’s crop include...

On Wednesday, the Directors Guild of America (DGA) announced its film nominations for the 2024 DGA Awards.

Nominees include Greta Gerwig (Barbie), Yorgos Lanthimos (Poor Things), Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer), Alexander Payne (The Holdovers) and Martin Scorsese (Killers of the Flower Moon). In the first-time director category, Cord Jefferson (American Fiction), Manuela Martelli (Chile ’76), Noora Niasari (Shayda), A.V. Rockwell (A Thousand and One) and Celine Song (Past Lives) received nominations.

This is Scorsese’s 11th DGA nomination in the same category — he won for The Departed in 2007. Only Steven Spielberg has received more, with 13. Nolan now has five under his belt, with no wins so far. Payne was nominated twice before but didn’t win the award either year. Gerwig, whose nomination is the 13th time a woman has been nominated in the category, received a nod in 2018 for Lady Bird.

Last year, female directors were notably shut out from the nominations,...

The Directors Guild of America has officially unveiled the film nominees for the 2024 DGA Awards.

After announcing the TV nominations January 9, the Guild shared the film directors now in the running for the top prizes. The ceremony takes place on Saturday, February 10. Guild members can vote online starting today through Friday, February 9.

Greta Gerwig for “Barbie,” Christopher Nolan for “Oppenheimer,” Yorgos Lanthimos for “Poor Things,” Alexander Payne with “The Holdovers,” and Martin Scorsese with “Killers of the Flower Moon” are this year’s DGA nominees for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Theatrical Feature Film. Payne took a surprise best director spot from the likes of Jonathan Glazer (“The Zone of Interest”), Bradley Cooper (“Maestro”), or Celine Song (“Past Lives”), featured in the next category instead.

For Outstanding Directorial Achievement in First-Time Theatrical Feature Film, Nominated are: Cord Jefferson for “American Fiction,” Manuella Martelli for “Chile ’76,” Noora Niasari for “Shayda,” A.V. Rockwell...

For all its many, many faults, 2023 was a banner year for international films. The awards season buzz for global gems like Justine Triet’s French courtroom thriller Anatomy of a Fall (released by Neon stateside), Jonathan Glazer’s German-language Holocaust drama Zone of Interest (A24), Hayao Miyazaki’s Japanese anime The Boy and the Heron (GKids), and J.A. Bayona’s Spanish-language real-life survival tale Society of the Snow (Netflix) only scratches the surface.

Among the many many other foreign highlights from last year are Mubi’s Fallen Leaves and How to Have Sex — the first a laconic triumph by Finnish film master Aki Kaurismäki, the latter a stunning debut by Brit first-timer Molly Manning Walker — Sony Pictures Classics’ The Teachers’ Lounge, a German school drama from director Ilker Çatak and Iranian drama Shayda from director Noora Niasari; Agnieszka Holland’s harrowing The Green Border, about Poland’s treatment of would-be...

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...

A 5-year-old Iranian child and her mother find refuge in an Australian women’s shelter while on the run from an abusive ex in Noora Niasari’s Shayda. It’s a very personal story for Niasari because she was that little girl, played in the film by new discovery Selina Zahednia, with Zar Amir Ebrahimi starring as her mom, Shayda. Niasari knew it was a risk to make her debut with a project so close to her heart. “There’s a really deep challenge when making work about one’s trauma,” she says. Produced by Cate Blanchett’s Dirty Films, the film is Australia’s Oscar entry for Best International Feature Film.

Deadline: What made you want to tell this deeply personal story based on your own childhood? The whole experience must have been very emotional and difficult.

Noora Niasari: Yeah, absolutely. I lived in the women’s shelter...

Deadline on Monday launched the streaming site for its Contenders Film: International, featuring the full panel videos from Saturday’s award-season showcase of 12 movies submitted by their countries to this year’s Oscar International Feature race.

Click here to launch the streaming site.

Actors who took part in the discussions included South Korean entry Concrete Utopia‘s Lee Byung-hun, Renée Soutendijk from Netherlands’ Sweet Dreams, Eli Skorcheva from Bulgaria’s Blaga’s Lessons and Eliane Umuhire from Belgium’s Omen.

They were joined among others by directors including J.A. Bayona from Netflix’s Society of the Snow, Hugh Welchman from Poland’s The Peasants, Noora Niasari from Australia’s Shayda, llker Çatak from Germany’s The Teachers’ Lounge, Concrete Utopia‘s Um Tae-hwa, Ena Sendijarević from Sweet Dreams, Stephan Komandarev from Blaga’s Lessons, Omar Hilal from Egypt’s Voy! Voy! Voy!, Jude Anthany Joseph from India’s 2018 – Everyone Is a Hero,...

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...

For Iranian-Australian filmmaker Noora Niasari, her debut feature Shayda has served as an authentic and honest exploration into her own personal childhood trauma. The film, which is being released by Sony Pictures Classics and won the World Cinema Dramatic Competition Audience Award in Sundance earlier this year, is Australia’s Oscar submission for the Best International Feature Oscar.

The film follows Shayda, a brave Iranian mother who finds refuge in an Australian women’s shelter with her 6-year-old daughter. Over Persian New Year, they take solace in Nowruz rituals and new beginnings, but when her estranged husband re-enters their lives, Shayda’s path to freedom is jeopardized.

It’s anchored by a heart-rendering performance by Zar Amir Ebrahimi, who won the best actress award in Cannes last year for her role in Holy Spider. Niasari writes, directs and produces with Dirty Films’ Cate Blanchett, Andrew Upton and Coco Francini.

Related:...

Deadline’s Contenders Film: International award-season event launches Saturday beginning at 9 a.m. Pt, the latest in our series of showcases that this time turns the focus toward global cinema via discussions with the casts and creatives of 12 movies submitted by their countries for the 2024 Academy Awards’ International Feature race.

Click to sign up for and watch today’s livestream.

The 2023 Oscar ceremony was a triumph for international film. Going into the ceremony, Edward Berger’s All Quiet on the Western Front was a winner already, having earned a spectacular seven nominations. If that wasn’t enough, it came away with four statuettes: one for International Feature, and three for Cinematography, Music and Production Design. Clearly this can’t happen every year, but, like Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite before it, Berger’s World War I epic proved that boundaries are being broken down, and international film, once synonymous with arthouse,...

The annual 16 Days 16 Films short movie festival is running: more details and this year’s finalists all here.

Finalists are now being revealed for this year’s 16 Days 16 Films festival, an annual competition that’s attracted entrants from around the world.

To qualify, films are directed by a filmmaker who identifies as female, with their films 25 minutes or under. This year’s selection all, in the words of the festival, ‘explore, emote, or educate on a form of violence against women.’

Partners for the festival include Un Women, The Geena Davis Institute and the BFI. Previous finalists have included How To Have Sex director Molly Manning Walker, and Girl director Adura Onashile.

This year’s finalists – and we’ll be adding the films as they become available over the 16 day period – are…

Esperanza (Mexico) – Mayra Veliz

A Very Nice Guy (Mexico) – Minerva R. Bolaños Rodrigo Fierro

After Fred (UK) – Rachel Meyrick...

It’s the final month of the year, which means much of our attention will be turned to sharing various best-of-2023 rundowns throughout December. The month also brings many of the year’s most noteworthy films, which we’ve rounded up before––some of which will be opening in a more limited capacity and expanding next month.

We should also note some top November picks like The Boy and the Heron and May December are finally getting in front of wider audiences, with the former getting a wide release on December 8 and the latter arriving on Netflix this Friday. For this round-up we’re also not including films getting limited one-week-only runs this month, such as Noora Niasari’s Shayda on December 1 and Ava DuVernay’s Origin and Alice Rohrwacher’s La Chimera on December 8.

14. Memory (Michel Franco; Dec. 22)

Every year there’s at least one film that premieres at...

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...

“Auto-bio Pamphlet,” a Marathi-language film that is both a love story and a rage against class divisions, will open the 18th edition of the Jogja-netpac Asian Film Festival later this month. The festival will close with the world premiere of spy thriller “13 Bombs in Jakarta.”

Jaff run Nov. 25 – Dec. 2 and include 205 films from 25 countries and territories across Asia-Pacific.

Directed by Angga Dwimas Sasongko, “13 Bombs in Jakarta” (aka “13 Bom di Jakarta”) tells of a group of terrorists who launch their attack with the threat of bombs scattered throughout the Indonesian capital. Sasongko is also the founder of local studio Visenema, which has four films at the festival.

“As the opening film for this year’s edition, we choose something light-hearted, which is ‘Autobio Pamphlet’ from India. Its coming-of-age story will be perfect to set the festival’s spirited and entertaining mood,” said Alexander Matius, Jaff program director. The film had...

The submissions for this year’s Oscar for best international feature include some of the best of world cinema. Below is a rundown of the entries for the 96th Academy Awards. The 15-title shortlist is slated to arrive on Dec. 21, prior to the nominations announcement on Jan. 23 and the ceremony itself, which is dated for March 10.

Albania

Alexander

Director: Ardit Sadiku

Logline: A documentary about an engineer who, after being fired by the navy for dissidence, hijacked a warship to get himself an dhis family to freedom.

Prodco: Ardit Sadiku Film

Argentina

The Delinquents

Director: Rodrigo Moreno

Logline: A ticklish, gently surreal saga following two colleagues who collude in robbing the bank where they work.

U.S. distribution: Mubi

Armenia

Amerikatsi

Director: Michael A. Goorjian

Logline: An Armenian-American relocates to Armenia after WWII and ends up in a Soviet prison for the crime of wearing a tie.

U.S.

Exclusive: Golden Globe winner Emma Corrin (The Crown) and Cesar nominee Lucie Zhang are set to star in Jenny Suen’s English language feature debut Peaches, which Coco Francini (Fingernails) will produce and Oscar winner Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton will executive-produce for Dirty Films.

Set in contemporary Hong Kong, the movie will follow two spoiled best friends who scam sugar daddies for a living. When they discover a Hermes Birkin bag they were gifted is a fake, their “boyfriends” and crimes catch up with them.

The film is an adaptation of Vera Chitylova’s 1966 Czech New Wave comedy Daisies.

Paris-based MK2 Films, whose slate includes Cannes Palme d’Or winner Anatomy of a Fall and Cannes Un Certain Regard winner How to Have Sex, is handling international sales and discussed the project with buyers at last week’s AFM. The film will start production early next year in Hong Kong.

Exclusive: United Talent Agency (UTA) has signed up Iranian-French actress, director, producer, and casting director Zar Amir.

Amir, best known for her breakout turn in Ali Abbasi’s 2022 Cannes competition title Holy Spider, has signed with UTA for representation in all areas and will continue to be represented by Untitled Entertainment, Das Imperium in Berlin, Adequat in Paris, and Alh PR.

With Holy Spider, Amir picked up the best actress award at Cannes. She also served as an associate producer and casting director on the pic, which was Denmark’s submission for the Academy Awards. As an actor, she can next be seen in the Cate Blanchett-produced Shayda, which debuted at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. The pic, directed by Noora Niasari, took the audience award in the World Cinema competition at Sundance and has since been chosen as Australia’s submission for the best international feature race at this year’s Oscars.

Oscar voters in the Best International Feature Film category have received their group assignments for this year’s initial round of voting, with 89 films included on the seven lists that the Academy has sent to members.

The lists, which were obtained by TheWrap, include presumed favorites “The Zone of Interest” (United Kingdom), “The Taste of Things” (France), “The Promised Land” (Denmark) and “Perfect Days” (Japan), along with a number of documentaries, among them Estonia’s “Smoke Sauna Sisterhood,” Brazil’s “Pictures of Ghosts” and Ukraine’s “20 Days in Mariupol.”

The 89 films are four short of the record of 93 qualifying films in the category. The list of group assignments does not make up the Academy’s official list of eligible films; it’s possible that assigned films might still fail to qualify before first-round voting begins on Dec. 18. For the most part, though, films that are included in the group...

"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...

Final five nominations to be announced on November 2.

Steve McQueen’s Occupied City, Justine Triet’s Anatomy Of A Fall and Todd Haynes’ May December are among the titles on the latest British Independent Film Awards (BIFA) longlists, for Best Feature Documentary and Best International Independent Film.

15 films are on the documentary longlist, with five of them by first-time directors; with 17 films on the international list.

Scroll down for the longlists

Alongside McQueen’s film combining analysis of Amsterdam during the Second World War with the present day, documentary titles include Kevin MacDonald’s High & Low: John Galliano about the...

Industry talks include masterclass with David F Sandberg and Stockholm Bloodbath case study.

The Stockholm International Film Festival will honour filmmakers including Ken Loach (lifetime achievement award), Ethan Hawke (achievement award) and Catherine Breillat (visionary award) at its 2023 festival, which runs Nov 8-19.

The festival will open with Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things, winner of Venice’s Golden Lion.

In all, the festival will screen 130 films from 50 countries. The country focus this year is the UK – with selections including How To Have Sex by Molly Manning Walker, In Camera by Naqqash Khalid, and All Of Us Strangers by Andrew Haigh.

Other...

The festival runs October 21 - 29.

Molodist Kyiv International Film Festival will have world premieres of three new Ukrainian films as well as Portuguese director Andrés Marques’ The Drunk in its first complete edition with both competition and non-competition programmes since the beginning of the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Ukrainian director-DoP-artist-exhibition curator Ivan Sautkin’s debut documentary feature A Poem For Little People about a group of volunteers at the front-line zone and two elderly female friends from a village in the Chernihiv region will premiere in the documentary competition which will also feature Leandro Koch and Paloma Schachmann’s...

The German festival posted its biggest ever audience in 2023.

Filmfest Hamburg came to a close on October 7 with an awards ceremony that saw the Cicae’s arthouse cinema award presented to UK filmmaker Molly Manning Walker’s directorial debut How To Have Sex which premiered in Un Certain Regard in Cannes in May

The cash prize €5,000 is provided by Hamburg’s local film fund Moin to be spent on the film’s PR campaign by its German distributor capelight pictures which will release the film in German cinemas on December 7.

The €5,000 Ndr young talent award, sponsored by local public broadcaster Ndr,...

Sometimes when you have a terrific film but it doesn’t quite have the hook for mainstream audiences, you sometimes need a catchy ace in the hole. And that’s exactly what the Australian film “Shayda” has in its executive producers, in this case, a little actor you may know named Cate Blanchett, plus her husband and producing partner Andrew Upton and Coco Francini. Blanchett has been lending her name to a lot of international cinema worthy of a boost of late (Greece’s “Apples”), and along with recent collaboration with Sparks and Guy Maddin (and an almost collaboration with Pedro Almodovar that came close), it appears as if Blanchett has really reaffirmed her commitment to global and left-of-field cinema this year, so good for her.

Continue reading ‘Shayda’ Trailer: Noora Niasari’s Acclaimed Australian Drama, Exec Produced By Cate Blanchett, Arrives In December at The Playlist.

"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...

As a child, the Australian director fled family violence with her mother. Now she’s storming the global festival circuit with a movie about their past

Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email

When Noora Niasari was five years old, she lived in a women’s shelter with her Iranian mother. They were fleeing family violence in a country that wasn’t entirely familiar, trying to make a new life.

That personal experience has informed Niasari’s debut feature, Shayda, which has been storming the global festival circuit since it premiered at Sundance film festival in January, winning an audience award. Released in Australia on 5 October, the film has already claimed the top prize at CinefestOz, opened the Melbourne international film festival, and been selected to represent Australia in the international film category at the Oscars.

Sign up for our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend,...

When Tehran-born writer-director Noora Niasari told producer Vincent Sheehan about the time she spent living in a women's shelter during her childhood, on which her film 'Shayda' was to be based, he realised he was being told a "distinctly Australian" story, but one he had never seen on the screen before.

The post ‘It’s an Australian film, but it’s a very outward-looking film’: Vincent Sheehan on bringing Noora Niasari’s ‘Shayda’ to screen appeared first on If Magazine.

The 141 titles set to screen include 18 of this year’s international feature Oscar submissions.

Freud’s Last Session and Albert Brooks: Defending My Life are to get their world premieres at this year’s AFI Fest, running October 25-29 in Los Angeles.

Also among the 141 titles in the festival’s full line-up are All Of Us Strangers, American Fiction, Fallen Leaves and The Taste Of Things.

Matthew Brown’s Freud’s Last Session, with Anthony Hopkins and Matthew Goode, and Rob Reiner’s documentary about Albert Brooks will be part of AFI Fest’s Special Screening line-up.

Previously announced world premieres at...