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Locarno’s industry platform Locarno Pro sits right at the heart of the Swiss film festival, housing all its activities for arthouse film professionals – from sales agents, distributors, exhibitors, producers through to filmmakers.

Running from August 7-12, Locarno Pro is home to initiatives including work-in-progress strand First Look, networking platform Match Me!, co-development programme Alliance 4 Development, financing strand Locarno Investment Community and the StepIn conference.

It also envelopes the wide-rangingco-production platform Open Doors and theclassic film focus Heritage Online, as well as initiatives aimed at young professionals such as the U30 think tank and workshop programme Industry Academy.

Last year,...

Italian director Nanni Moretti was reported to be in intensive care in stable condition Wednesday evening after suffering a heart attack earlier in the day.

Italian media reported that the Dear Diary and The Son’s Room filmmaker had fallen ill in the afternoon and been taken to Rome’s San Camillo Hospital, where he was operated on immediately.

Moretti previously suffered a heart attack last October, which forced him to cancel an appearance at the premiere of Alessandro Cassigoli and Casey Kauffman’s drama Vittoria, which he produced under the banner of his company Sacher Film.

He was seen most recently at the Bari International Film & TV Festival in southern Italy in March for a retrospective of his work.

One of Italy’s best known directors, Moretti has premiered nine films in Competition at the Cannes Film Festival, winning Best Director for Dear Diary in 1994 and the Palme d...

If you have never heard about the Luxembourg City Film Festival before, it may surprise you to know that the biggest annual film event in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, which is surrounded by France, Germany and Belgium, is turning 15 this year.

Long considered a hidden gem on the global fest circuit, the event has steadily gained in stature, routinely attracting big industry names to a country with a population of only around 670,000. Just take last year as an example, when the fest set an attendance record with a 10 percent increase to 19,962. For its 2024, LuxFilmFest, it attracted the likes of Viggo Mortensen, Chinese director Wang Bing, Mauritanian director Abderrahmane Sissako, French director Gaspar Noé — who hosted a retrospective and a masterclass — and a jury that included Luxembourg star Vicky Krieps, German actor Sebastian Koch, and U.S. director Ira Sachs.

For this year’s 15th edition, which kicks off on Thursday,...

Italian sales agent Intramovies has unveiled a string of deals for Alessandro Cassigoli and Casey Kauffman’s prize winning Vittoria, which premiered in the 2024 Venice Film Festival’s Horizons Extra strand.

The film has sold to France (Les Films Du Camélia), Benelux (Cineart), Japan (Starcat), Australia and New Zealand (Palace Films) and Latin America, Portugal, English speaking Africa and Spain (Sun Distribution / Diamond Films), and Greece (Filmtrade).

Vittoria centres on a Naples hairdresser, with three sons and a devoted husband, who is consumed by the dream of having a daughter. Determined to make it a reality, she decides to adopt,...

Rich Peppiatt’s Irish comedy Kneecap has won the Crystal Arrow for best film atFrance’s Les Arcs Film Festival, which ran from December 14-21, 2024 in the mountain resort town.

The origin story of the titular Irish-language hip-hop group earned a €20,000 digital promotional campaign in partnership with France Televisions for its release. Wayna Pitch will release the film in France on June 18, 2025 and Charades handles international sales.

Kneecap,whichhas been shortlisted in the best international feature and best song categories for the 2025 Oscars, racked up several prizes at the festival including the young jury prize voted on by high-school students,...

The 45th edition of the Cairo Film Festival concluded with the top prize, the Golden Pyramid Award, going to Bogdan Mureșanu’s “The New Year That Never Came.” The black comedy, which previously won the Horizons sidebar at the Venice Film Festival, is set in 1989 during the festive season that immediately precedes the downfall of the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu.

The Special Jury Award for best director, the Silver Pyramid, went to Russian director Natalia Nazarova for “Postmarks,” which also picked up a best actor award for Maxim Stoyanov and a special mention for the female lead, Alina Khojevanova. The other male lead award went to Lee Kang-Sheng for his performance in “Blue Sun Palace.”

The International Jury led by Danis Tanović (“No Man’s Land”) also awarded the Bronze Pyramid for best debut or second feature award to Pedro Freire’s “Malu.” The Rio-set film was inspired by his...

Bogdan Mureșanu’s The New Year That Never Came, a tragicomedy set on the brink of revolution in 1989 Romania, has won the Golden Pyramid for best film at the 45th Cairo International Film Festival (Ciff).

The international competition jury was unanimous in selecting the film, which premiered at Venice in September where it won best film in the Horizons strand as well as the Fipresci prize.

Scroll down for full list of winners

Ciff handed out an expanded set of awards at a glitzy closing cermony of this year’s edition, which marked a return for the longest-running film festival...

The tale of a woman who desperately wants to adopt a daughter, “Vittoria” is the third feature from directing partners Alessandro Cassigoli and Casey Kauffman. At the Cairo Film Festival, where the film is showing in the International Competition, Kauffman sat down with Variety.

How did you start out?

I always wanted to be a photojournalist. I worked for Al Jazeera as a one-man-band reporter. My directing partner Alessandro was a cinephile and he was in Berlin working in documentaries. We were good friends from Florence where I partly grew up. I started to get tired of TV. There were so many stories I couldn’t film because they weren’t newsworthy. We ended up both moving back to Italy because our dads were dying both at the same time. Weird coincidence.

We did a documentary “Butterfly” (2018) on Italy’s first female boxer to go to the Olympics, Irma Testa.

Happy Holidays, the latest feature from Palestinian Filmmaker Scandar Copti, has taken the top prize at the Thessaloniki Film Festival in Greece.

Copti’s film won the Best Feature Film Award, which comes with a 10,000-euro cash prize. Awarding the prize, the jury, headed by Sara Driver, praised the film for “intricately weaving different narratives and perspectives that fully expose the complexity of national, gender and class dynamics that can divide societies and for seeing the future in the face of a young woman the Golden Alexander goes to Happy Holidays by Scandar Copti.”

Happy Holidays debuted at this year’s Venice Film Festival. The story open after a minor accident sets off a chain of events, unraveling lies and unspoken truths that sow division within a multifaceted patriarchal society.

The festival’s Best Director Award, which comes with a 5,000-euro cash prize, was picked up Leonardo Van Dijl for Julie Keeps Quiet.

Palestinian filmmaker Scandar Copti’s Israel-set family drama “Happy Holidays” won the top prize Sunday at the Thessaloniki Film Festival, taking home the Golden Alexander for best feature film.

Copti’s sophomore feature, his first film since his Oscar-nominated 2009 debut “Ajami,” premiered in the Venice Film Festival’s Horizons sidebar, winning the best screenplay prize. Variety’s Siddhant Adlakha described it as “a piercing, realistic family drama, the inflection points of which reveal deep cultural and political dimensions surrounding gender and ethnicity.”

“Happy Holidays” follows four interconnected characters who share their unique realities, highlighting the complexities between genders, generations and cultures. The ensemble cast — comprised of Arab and Jewish characters alike — creates a multifaceted portrait of life in Haifa, Israel’s third-largest city.

The Thessaloniki jury, which included filmmaker and producer Sara Driver (“Boom for Real”), filmmaker Denis Côté (“Vic + Flo Saw a Bear”) and producer Konstantinos Kontovrakis (“How to Have Sex...

France’s Les Arcs Film Festival has unveiled the line-up for its 16th edition of its mountaintop movie marathon, taking place from December 14-21, 2024.

Eight European films will vie for the festival’s Crystal Arrow awards.

They include Rich Peppiatt’s Kneecap, a comedy about titular west Belfast hip-hop trio that is Ireland’s entry for the best international feature Oscar race and leads the Bifa 2024 nominations, Runar Runarsson’s Icelandic drama When the Light Breaks that opened this year’s Cannes Un Certain Regard, and Kurdwin Ayub’s Moon about a former Austrian martial arts master hired to train...

The Cairo International Film Festival (Ciff) has unveiled the line-up for its comeback 45th edition, taking place from November 13-22.

The world premiere of Palestinian filmmaker Rashid Masharawi’s Passing Dreams will open the festival, as part of a focus on Palestinian cinema.

Passing Dreams is a drama about a 12-year-old boy who embarks on a journey across Palestine, while chasing a carrier pigeon, convinced it has returned to its original owner.

The line-up includes three Palestinian feature documentaries competing for the best Arab film awards in the Horizons of Arab Cinema programme, and the best Palestinian film award.

Carol Mansour...

Welcome to the bustling port town of Torre Annunziata in southern Italy. It’s here that we find hairdresser Jasmine, the central figure in Alessandro Cassigoli and Casey Kauffman’s new film Vittoria.

Cassigoli and Kauffman have crafted another true-to-life drama in their popular trilogy set within this community. Like their previous documentaries Butterfly and Californie, Vittoria features everyday people from Torre Annunziata playing versions of themselves.

We meet Jasmine as she goes about her daily routine—cutting and styling hair at her salon while also caring for her husband, sons, and elderly clients. But Jasmine has a yearning deep inside that she’s keeping private. She’s been troubled by dreams of a little blonde girl who she feels is meant to be her daughter. As a mother of three boys, Jasmine becomes determined to adopt a daughter despite facing disapproval from her family.

By filming without a script...

Filmmaking duo Alessandro Cassigoli and Casey Kauffman continue their success in crafting authentic and heartfelt drama from real-life situations with Vittoria. The third of their films to be shot against the working class backdrop of the Neapolitan port city of Torre Annunziata, each film has spawned the next. Coming-of-age docudrama hybrid Californie, centred on Khadija Jaafari, who the pair had met shooting their documentary Butterfly, and it also featured the non-professional star of this film Marilena Amato in a supporting role.

Amato plays Jasmine - in a verite story that both features and is structured around the real experiences of her and her family. A hairdresser with a penchant for leopard print and brassy attitude to life, she also has a busy homelife with her carpenter husband Rino (Gennaro Scarica) and three sons, with the oldest Vincenzo (Vincenzo Scarica) at something of a crossroads as he mulls following his mother into.

Italy’s Intramovies has acquired international sales rights to Vittoria from Venice prize winning directors Alessandro Cassigoli and Casey Kauffman.

Directing duo Cassigoli and Kauffman’s first fiction feature, 2021’s Californie, premiered at Venice’s Giornate degli Autori winning the Europa Cinema Label Award. They also collaborated on 2018 documentary feature Butterfly, which played at IDFA and HotDocs.

Vittoria centres on a Naples hairdresser, with three sons and a devoted husband, who is consumed by the dream of having a daughter. Determined to make it a reality, she decides to adopt, risking her marriage, her sons’ well-being, and her own moral compass.

When East Meets West (Wemw), is the co-production forum of January’s Trieste Film Festival in Italy.

Fresh projects from Czeck director Barbora Chalupová, Greece’s Asimina Proedrou and Brazil’s Caru Alves de Souza are among the 18 features to be showcased at When East Meets West (Wemw), the Italian co-production forum of the Trieste Film Festival, taking place from January 21-24.

First-time feature directors Anna Llargués Lala Aliyeva, and Leo Černic will also be presenting projects at what will be the 14th edition of Wemw, to some 500 industry professionals.

Scroll down for the full list

“This year, we received an exceptional number of submissions,...

This new Italian series The Good Mothers, offers a unique twist on the crime genre: this is the mafia seen entirely from the women’s perspectives. The series is a multifaceted, choral work that tells the true story of three women, raised within the fiercest and richest clans of ‘Ndrangheta. They decide to cooperate with a courageous magistrate working to destroy it from within. These women will then have to fight against their own families for the right to survive and build a new future for themselves and their children.

A Star Original for Disney+, the series is directed by BAFTA and Emmy nominee Julian Jarrold and Elisa Amoruso (Sirly, Chiara Ferragni: Unposted) and executive produced by Juliette Howell and Tessa Ross for House Productions (Brexit: The Uncivil War) and Mario Gianani and Lorenzo Gangarossa for Wildside, written by BAFTA Award-winning Stephen Butchard (Baghdad Central), and based on the...

Wissam Charaf’s Dirty Difficult Dangerous also won the Europa Cinemas Label.

Graham Foy’s The Maiden has won Venice’s Giornate degli Autori (GdA) Cinema of the Future award.

The Canadian-us film was among seven titles from the GdA sidebar, all first or second features, competing for the €3,000 prize.

Foy’s debut follows three suburban teenagers whose lives are intertwined when one of them disappears and strange occurrences begin cropping up.

The jury was made up of five students from an Italian film school who said: “The film impressed us with its emotional density and the immediacy of its unrestrained,...

The Lebanese film will now receive promotional support from Europa Cinemas.

Wissam Charaf’s Dirty Difficult Dangerous has won the Europa Cinemas Label at Venice Film Festival.

The Lebanese film, which opened the programme, entwines multiple love stories against the backdrop of Lebanon’s near collapse and stars Clara Couturent, Ziad Jallad, Rifaat Tarabey and Darina Al Joundi.

A jury of European exhibitors crowned the film as the best in the Giornate degli Autori (GdA) sidebar.

European cinemas will now receive financial incentives from Europa Cinema if they include Dirty Difficult Dangerous in their programming.

This is Charaf’s second feature film,...

World premieres include debut from Happy Hour co-writer Tadashi Nohara and new works from Brillante Mendoza and Mikhail Red.

Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) has announced the full line-up for its 34th edition, including the main competition section of 15 films, among which 10 titles are world premieres. Other sections include Asian Future, Gala Selection, World Focus, Nippon Cinema Now and Japanese Animation.

The competition section includes the world premieres of two Japanese films – Third Time Lucky, the debut feature of Tadashi Nohara, who co-wrote Happy Hour and Wife Of A Spy; and Just Remembering from Daigo Matsui (Ice Cream And The...

Alessandro Cassigoli and Casey Kauffman’s drama is the only Italian title selected for the Venice sidebar.

Italian sales agent Fandango Sales has boarded Alessandro Cassigoli and Casey Kauffman’s Californie, the only Italian title selected for Venice sidebar Giornate degli Autori this year.

The film straddles documentary and fiction and follows Jamila, a Moroccan girl with street smarts, from ages nine to 14, as she grows up in a small Italian town.

Ang Film and La Mansarde Cinéma are producing with Rai Cinema, while Fandango is also distributing the film in Italy.

Cassigoli and Kauffman previously directed documentary Butterfly about Irma Testa,...

The programme for the 2021 Venice Film Festival has been unveiled, and includes new films from Pedro Almodóvar, Jane Campion, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Michelangelo Frammartino, Pablo Larraín, Paul Schrader, Ridley Scott, and more.Parallel MothersCOMPETITIONParallel Mothers (Pedro Almodóvar)Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon (Ana Lily Amirpour)Un Autre Monde (Stephane Brize)The Power of the Dog (Jane Campion)America LatinaL’Evenement (Audrey Diwan)Official CompetitionThe Hole (Michelangelo Frammartino)Sundown (Michel Franco)Lost Illusions (Xavier Giannoli)The Lost Daughter (Maggie Gyllenhaal)Spencer (Pablo Larrain)Freaks Out (Gabriele Mainetti)Qui Rido Io (Mario Martone)On The Job: The Missing 8 (Erik Matti)Leave No Traces (Jan P. Matuszyński)Captain Volkonogov EscapedThe Card Counter (Paul Schrader)The Hand of God (Paolo Sorrentino)Reflection (Valentyn Vasyanovych)The Box (Lorenzo Vigas)Out Of COMPETITIONFeaturesDune (Denis Villeneuve)Il Bambino Nascosto (Roberto Andò)Les Choses Humaines (Yvan Attal)Ariaferma (Leonardo Di Costanzo)Halloween Kills (David Gordon Green...

“Madeleine Collins,” the buzzy psychological drama directed by France’s Antoine Barraud (“Portrait of the Artist”) and toplined by popular Belgian actress Virginie Efira who plays the lesbian nun in Paul Verhoeven’s “Benedetta,” is among ten competition titles set to launch from the Venice Film Festival’s independently run Venice Days section.

The Venice section modeled around the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight is largely made up of international first works this year. All entries are world premieres.

Besides “Madeleine” in which Efira (pictured) plays a woman who leads a double life –– and which also features Nadav Lapid, who is also the Israeli director of “Synonyms” and also Jacqueline Bisset –– the three other pics competing in Venice Days that are not first works are: the drama “Private Desert,” by Brazilian director Aly Muritiba (“Rust”) that is centered around a 40-year-old-cop’s Internet love interest who goes missing; “Dusk Stone,” by Argentina...