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The 18th Santiago Int’l Film Festival (Sanfic) is paying tribute to Chile’s most internationally renowned and arguably hardest working actor, the peripatetic Alfredo Castro who will attend Sanfic’s inauguration Aug. 14 to receive his lifetime achievement award and kick off a retrospective of his films.

Also a playwright and theater director, Castro has worked across Europe and Latin America, acting in French, Spanish, Portuguese and a number of accents and dialects from Latin America, including neutral Spanish. “I haven’t worked in English but I certainly hope to one day,” he says. Meanwhile, he has won a boatload of awards from festivals and award events across the world.

Yet, he would also be high up the order of figures who have helped shape Chile’s post-Pinochet film, theater and now TV scene into one of the most vibrant, surprising and constantly questioning of any country in Latin America.

Closing out the summer, Mubi has unveiled their August 2021 lineup, kicking off most fittingly with Brett Story’s acclaimed recent documentary The Hottest August. Also among the lineup is Akira Kurosawa’s epic Ran, Fritz Lang’s hugely entertaining two-parter The Tiger of Eschnapur and The Indian Tomb. As his latest films arrive, Pablo Larraín’s The Club is also part of the lineup.

Xinyuan Zheng Lu’s Rotterdam winner The Cloud in Her Room is coming to Mubi in August, plus a “late film” special featuring Manoel de Olviera’s Gebo and the Shadow and The Last Sentence by Jan Troell. There will also be a canine double feature of Heddy Honigmann’s Buddy and Los Reyes by Bettina Perut and Ivan Osnovikoff.

See the lineup below and get 30 days of Mubi free here.

August 1 | The Hottest August | Brett Story

August 2 | Gebo and the Shadow | Manoel de Oliveria | Twilight...

Post-credits scenes have become a dime a dozen in the last decade. Previously a great way for filmmakers to give a wink and a nudge to the most devoted audiences who stuck around to see all the names scroll by, they’ve now become makeshift trailers in the 21st century—advertisements for some future movie intended to make you forget about what you just watched. In the Heights, though? Here’s a movie musical that does post-credits right.

Yes, Jon M. Chu’s big screen adaptation of the Lin-Manuel Miranda musical has a post-credits scene, and it’s an utterly delightful one. Without spoiling anything (yet), it acts as a fitting exclamation mark to the film’s overarching love letter for Washington Heights, and as a nudge-nudge for audiences who just can’t get enough of the multi-hyphenated talent that is Miranda. Fans of both the In the Heights stage...

Fabula, the Chile-based film and TV production house of Pablo and Juan de Diós Larrain, is set to produce “Maquíllame Otra Vez,” the first feature film to go into production at Fabula Mexico, launched to complement Fabula’s Santiago de Chile H.Q. and Fabula U.S., run out of Los Angeles.

Slated to go into production from October in Mexico City, “Maquíllame Otra Vez” also marks the directorial debut of Guillermo Calderón, Chile’s foremost living playwright as well as screenwriter of films – Pablo Larrain’s “Neruda” and “The Club,” and Andrés Wood’s “Violeta Went to Heaven,” for example – that have helped propel Chile into the vanguard of Latin American cinema.

“A comedy for our times,” Calderón told Variety, “Maquíllame Otra Vez” will star three Mexican actors who are at the forefront of their generation: Ilse Salas, the female lead of Alonso Ruizpalacios’ “Güeros” and Alejandra Márquez’s “The Good Girls”; Paulina Gaitán,...

When discussing a film movement, it’s always difficult to pin down the exact moment it began. With Heroic Bloodshed it’s often considered that “A Better Tomorrow” was the key movie but “The Story of Wu Viet” and “Coolie Killer” before it could be said to have demonstrated themes prior. Going back, we have “The Club” by Kirk Wong in 1981 but even two years before that we have “Cops and Robbers”. So a genre evolves organically rather than emerging fully formed. So it’s an interesting release on blu ray and provides a chance to catch a moment in time as a new style of action began to emerge in Hong Kong.

A team of cops headed by Inspector Chow (Kam Hing-Yin) and Sergeant Kei (Wong Chung) successfully foil a robbery on a security van despite Kei being wounded. A gang of bank robbers including the...

Korean-American star Don Lee (aka Ma Dong-seok), star of the upcoming Marvel film “The Eternals” will produce and star in “The Club,” an action series derived from South Korean scripted format “The Trap.”

The production brings together Gorilla 8 Productions, a company owned by Don Lee and B&c Content’s Chris S. Lee, and U.S.-based Starlings Television. No broadcaster or streaming partner has been announced.

Starlings Television president Chris Philip and Starlings Entertainment CEO Karine Martin, who set up the project and take executive producer credits, have attached Jack LoGiudice as showrunner.

The series pitches Lee as a veteran detective investigating a mysterious group of hunters who have attacked a famous news anchor and his family while on a camping trip. The detective, who lost his own son in a hit-and-run, finds himself mired in a twisted mystery orchestrated by an elite and powerful group with disturbing appetites.

Korean-American action star Don Lee and producing partner Chris S. Lee are teaming with Starlings Television to develop The Club, a drama series based on the popular Korean format Trap. Writer Jack LoGiudice has been tapped as writer-showrunner.

The Train to Busan actor, who will next be seen in Marvel’s Eternals, is set to star in The Club, a rare American adaptation of a Korean format to feature a Korean lead.

Known in Asia by his Korean name Ma Dong-Seok, Lee will play a veteran detective investigating a mysterious group of hunters who have attacked a famous news anchor and his family on a camping trip. The detective, who lost his own son, finds himself mired in a twisted mystery orchestrated by an elite and powerful group with disturbing appetites. He will slowly learn that nothing is as it seems and that there are killers hiding in plain sight.

France’s Manny Films has boarded Chilean feature “Maybe It Is True What They Are Saying About Us,” and will co-produce alongside leading Chilean independent label Storyboard Media and Argentina’s Murillo Cine, whose credits include Cannes sidebar entries “The Snatch Thief” and “Land of Ashes.”

“We are thrilled that Manny Films is joining as a co-producer on this exciting film,” Storyboard’s Carlos Nuñez told Variety. “Their involvement will go a long way in our continued efforts to promote this project internationally. Our idea is now to film later this year.”

Manny’s history of working with top Latin American talent is long and lauded. The company has co-produced award-winning fare such as Cannes players “Ardor” from Pablo Fendrik and “The Chosen Ones” from David Pablos, Venice competition player “Compañeros” from Alvaro Brechner and last year’s best film in a foreign language winner “Tragic Jungle” from Yulene Olaizola.

Since mid-January, Pelin Distas, Netflix’s director of original content for Turkey, has happily started going back to work in a physical office in Istanbul. It’s still just a temporary base for the streaming giant, which has plans to launch a proper Turkish outpost in the second half of 2021.

The new Netflix office “will be our commitment to the local creative industry,” Distas says, noting that it’s been “really hard” for her team to manage the 10 Turkish originals that Netflix currently has in different stages of production remotely. Opening the Netflix hub “will be really healthy [for both Netflix and Turkish producers]” as the streamer ramps up plans to “more than double down” on its Turkish output that so far has averaged four or five local shows per year, Distas notes.

But the key aspect of Netflix’s boots-on-the-ground presence in Turkey won’t just be an uptick in content.

“It’s about how...

That's the first shot of Kristen Stewart as Diana in Pablo Larraín's next film Spencer, one of our presumed Oscar hopefuls for 2021 though the release plans aren't at all firm yet. Let's hope it goes better for Kristen than it did for Naomi Watts!. So we might be looking at our first Best Actress nominee of the new film ye -- No, we can't get into that yet; we're still in this season.

There's no word yet on who is playing Prince Charles but the film takes place over a single weekend (the best kind of biopic!) and we trust Larraín to make this totally interesting since his films always are, even the ones that are totally filled with hard-to-watch hatefulness. Larraín's films are always exquisitely put together and this one will be no exception with the cinematographer of Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Claire Mathon), two time...

The Recording Academy knows when to hold ’em, where it’s fun to stay and that there’s a choice we’re making. Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler,” Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.” and USA for Africa’s benefit single “We Are the World” are among the 29 songs and albums added to the Grammy Hall of Fame today.

Also making the cut are seven debut LPs: Bruce Springsteen’s Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J., Pearl Jam’s Ten, Patti Smith’s Horses, Beastie Boys’ Licensed to Ill — the first rap disc to top Billboard 200 album chart — the Cars’ eponymous disc, John Mayall with Eric Clapton’s Blues Breakers and Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble’s Texas Flood.

The Gammy Hall now includes 1,142 recordings. See this year’s full list below.

“We are proud to announce this year’s diverse roster of Grammy Hall of Fame inductees and...

Following Chile’s most successful theatrical release of 2020 and high-profile streaming premieres in Latin America and the U.S. as an Amazon Prime Video Exclusive, Argentina’s Meikincine, sales agents on this year’s Argentine Oscar submission “The Sleepwalkers,” has sold Chilean political thriller “Jailbreak Pact” to Swift Productions in France and Sbs in Australia.

Recent deals struck following Meikincine’s summer sales push, including June’s virtual Marché du Film, which achieved sales to Movement Pictures in South Korea and Av-Jet International Media in Taiwan.

In September, the company shared with Variety that negotiations are in the final stages for deals in the U.K. and Ireland and offers are being considered from theatrical distributors in China, Canada and India, among others.

“Jailbreak Pact” was released theatrically in Chile in January by Fox, and quickly pulled the highest box office for a domestic film in more than two years...

Bad Boy Chiller Crew hail from a northern English city, Bradford, that few people outside the region often think about, and they specialize in a kind of music, bassline, that hasn’t been popular since the mid-2000s — and yet embracing both these things has made Bbcc one of the most exciting and intriguing acts to emerge in U.K. rap this year. After releasing their first proper mixtape, Full Wack No Brakes, in September (its predecessor, Git Up Mush, was only available at local vape shops and corner stores...

Chilean director Rodrigo Sepúlveda Urzúa, whose latest film “My Tender Matador” world premiered in Venice Days at the Venice Film Festival, is developing a story inspired by his parental nightmares. Variety spoke to him at the El Gouna Film Festival, where he is serving on the Feature Narrative Competition jury, as well as presenting “My Tender Matador” out of competition.

In his new project, which has the working title “Bomb Girl,” a doctor working in a public hospital finds out her child has planted a bomb and hurt another person as a result. But here is the twist: it was all according to what she has taught him over the years.

“I am a left-leaning person and I have told my children what I think about capitalism, for example,” says Sepúlveda Urzúa. “But what if one of my sons had planted a bomb in a bank, only to say: ‘That’s what you taught me.

This Fear the Walking Dead review contains spoilers.

Fear the Walking Dead Season 6 Episode 3

I have to say, we may only be three episodes in, but I’m really enjoying Fear the Walking Dead season 6 so far. Sure, maybe it’s the prolonged cabin fever talking—we are seven months into a pandemic, after all. Or maybe Fear the Walking Dead has finally hit its stride.

Before we really delve into this episode, though, I will say this: I haven’t given many 5-star ratings to Fear over the last five seasons I’ve reviewed the show, but “Alaska” is as close to perfect as you can get. So much of what makes this episode work is due to Colman Domingo’s solid direction and Mallory Westfall’s smart, heartfelt script. But in the end, strong performances from Austin Amelio, Maggie Grace, and newcomer Devyn Tyler carry the day. In short,...

That was refreshing. 

Fear the Walking Dead Season 6 is taking an anthology approach to storytelling, and it is proving to be a nice change of pace for the series. 

Fear the Walking Dead Season 6 Episode 2 got us up to speed on what happened to Alicia, Daniel, and Strand and was filled with must-see moments from start to finish. 

It's clear the writers have taken the criticism toward Fear the Walking Dead Season 5 on board and are now telling stories that are intriguing, scary, and help advance the overall plot of the series. 

If you watch Fear the Walking Dead online, you know that Alicia and Daniel have been given some truly abysmal plots in recent years, making them seem like completely different people. 

"Welcome to the Club" was the best writing for both of those characters in years, putting them on paths that feel true to the characters. 

Alicia is no longer worried about radiation,...

María Elena Wood, producer of Turner’s “Mary & Mike,” Joyn’s “Dignity” and now “News of a Kidnapping” for Amazon Studios, is re-launching her own production house, María Wood Producciones.

Shaping up already as a key Latin American production partner for top high-end fiction producers in Europe and the U.S., Maria Wood Producciones will focus, as in past series produced by Wood, on premium scripted drama of substance, with a social or political underbelly and frequent recourse to creative film talent.

“It’s what we’ve always done and know how to do,” Wood told Variety in the run-up to Mipcom. In contrast to the past, however, she said that “rather than talk about villains, despicable people,” Maria Wood Producciones will “cherry pick more luminous, happier content which talks about how we are today.”

First up on Maria Wood Producciones’ slate is “Mujeres Grandes” (Big Women), an original half-hour...

In down-to-the-wire San Sebastian Festival business, Madrid-based Latido Films has pounced on world sales rights to Nicolás Postiglione’s debut feature “Immersion” (“Inmersión”), a Chilean suspense-thriller – and potential political metaphor for those who want to see it – starring Pablo Larraín regular Alfredo Castro.

“Immersion” is based on a screenplay by Postiglione and two film directors in their own right: Fast-rising Argentine director Agustín Toscano whose 2018 “The Snatch Thief” played in Cannes Directors’ Fortnight; and Moises Sepúlveda, whose “The Illiterate” premiered at Venice’s International Critics’ Week.

Before being shopped at San Sebastian, “Immersion” was screened in late August at the inaugural Lima-Toulouse Cine en Construcción.

Postiglione’s feature debut, “Immersion” turns on a middle-class father Ricardo (Castro) who takes his two daughters to their lakeside family house in southern Chile.

Out on a yacht one day, they see three young local fishermen waving at them from another boat which is rapidly taking on water.

After successful streaming premieres in Latin America and the U.S. as an Amazon Prime Video Exclusive, Argentina’s Meikincine, one of Latin America’s leading sales agents for independent, festival fare, has sold Chilean political thriller “Jailbreak Pact” in South Korea and Taiwan, and is in advanced negotiations in several other key territories.

Shopping the film at this summer’s major film markets, Meikincine has closed deals with Movement Pictures in South Korea and Av-Jet International Media in Taiwan. Additionally, the company shared with Variety that negotiations are in the final stages for deals in the U.K. and Ireland and offers are being considered from theatrical distributors in China, Canada, France and India, among others.

“Jailbreak Pact” was released theatrically in Chile in January by Fox, and quickly pulled the highest box office for a domestic film in more than two years before its international premier at the...

Amazon Prime Video has clinched U.S. and Latin American rights to Pacto de Fuga” (“Jailbreak Pact”), the biggest Chilean smash-hit at domestic cinemas in Chile over the last few years.

Negotiated by “Jailbreak Pact’s” sales agent, Buenos Aires-based Meikincine, the rights deal was struck during the Marché du Film Online, said sales agent Lucía Meik.

The fiction feature debut of David Albala, produced by Calibre 71, Storyboard Media, Enlazo Capital Films and Tora Investments, the thriller is based on real-life events which led to Chile’s most celebrated prison escape on Jan. 29, 1990, at the tail-end of Augusto Pinochet’s brutal dictatorship. During it, 49 prisoners, some members of the anti-Pinochet armed resistance group Frente Patriótico Manuel Rodríguez, managed to escape from a penitentiary on Santiago de Chile through a series of tunnels dug over 18 months using spoons, screwdrivers and other rudimentary tools.

A symbolic victory over Pinochet, the film...

The #MeToo sexual harassment scandal that shook up the Nobel Prize for Literature, and led to the unprecedented cancellation of the award in 2018, will be turned into a feature film.

Scandinavian studio Nordisk Film will adapt The Club, a non-fiction book by investigative journalist Matilda Voss Gustavsson on the scandal, as a feature film. 

Working for Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, Gustavsson published an exposé, in which 18 women came forward detailing rape, threats and harassment centered around the Forum, a prestigious club lead by well-known cultural figures, including members of the Swedish Academy, the group which awards the Nobel Prize....

The #MeToo sexual harassment scandal that shook up the Nobel Prize for Literature, and led to the unprecedented cancellation of the award in 2018, will be turned into a feature film.

Scandinavian studio Nordisk Film will adapt The Club, a non-fiction book by investigative journalist Matilda Voss Gustavsson on the scandal, as a feature film. 

Working for Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, Gustavsson published an exposé, in which 18 women came forward detailing rape, threats and harassment centered around the Forum, a prestigious club lead by well-known cultural figures, including members of the Swedish Academy, the group which awards the Nobel Prize....

Chile’s Forastero has shared with Variety the first trailer for it is highly anticipated, pan-Latin American co-production “My Tender Matador,” staring the country’s most prolific lead actor Alfredo Castro “The Club”).

Co-produced by Forestero in Chile, Tornado in Argentina, Caponeto in Mexico and Zapik Films in Chile, the feature is directed by Rodrigo Sepúlveda Urzúa and based on the the novel by celebrated Chilean writer Pedro Lemebel, a figure decades ahead of his time is his advocacy of gender issues, in an archly conservative Chile under and after the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

Turning on an intimate friendship, the 1986-set feature tells the story of an impoverished, elderly, cross-dresser known as the Queen of the Corner (Castro). After falling in love with a charming guerrilla, the character gets swept up in a covert anti-Pinochet operation.

In the trailer we see the first encounter between the two, and the...

(L-r) Rhys-Muldoon, Hugh Parker, William McInnes and Colin Smith in the Qtc play (Photo credit: Jeff Busby).

In their third collaboration following Don’s Party and The Club, David Williamson and Bruce Beresford are developing Nearer the Gods, a biopic about Sir Isaac Newton, the eccentric 17th Century English scientist and mathematician.

Adapted from Williamson’s play which was staged by the Queensland Theatre Co. in 2018, the drama laced with humour will trace Newton’s struggles to persuade the sceptical Royal Society to publish his revolutionary discoveries including formulating the laws of motion and universal gravitation.

The comedy revolves the latter part of his life, much of which he dedicated to theology and predicting the end of the world and the second coming of Christ in the year 2060.

“It’s an amazing story; I’m surprised it hasn’t been filmed before,” says Beresford, who is working with producers Al Clark,...

Berlinale Series will showcase projects from Jason Segel, Damian Chazelle, and Cate Blanchett.

An internationally vibrant and high-calibre Berlinale Series Market and conference kicks of today (February 24), reflecting a sense of opportunity and dynamism in contrast to the somewhat muted air that hangs over the film component of the Efm.

The small screen showcase premieres new shows from opening speaker Jason Segel (Dispatches From Elsewhere), Damian Chazelle (The Eddy), and Cate Blanchett, scheduled to speak with Tony Ayres and Elise McCredie, her co-creators on the detention centre drama Stateless for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Chazelle’s La La Land was...

Chilean producers to track, who will be forming part of the Berlinale’s 2020 Country in Focus dedicated to Chile. Five are well-known, another five on the rise :

Up-and-coming

María José Díaz

Dos Be Producciones

An executive producer and investigative journalist for TV series and doc-features, Diaz is an executive producer at Dos Be Prods. and founder of Galgo Storytelling, a transmedia content producer. Projects in development: Doc “Haganse la Luz,” Ignacia Merino and Isabel Reyes’ debuts, and docu series “Nepen” about Chile’s indigenous Mapuches.

Yeniffer Fasciani

Niebla Producciones

A 2015 Berlinale Talents participant, Fasciani is a partner/co-founder of Niebla Prods. In 2016 she produced TV series “Martin, Man and Legend” for La Santé Films and was executive director of Dci, a Chilean film distributor. Upcoming projects: Carola Quezada’s “Perros sin Cola,” Chilean-Japanese co-production “Green Grass” by Ignacio Ruiz, and pregnant boxer drama “A La Deriva.”

Cynthia García

Cyan Prods

Founder of Cyan Prods.

Before the title card in Pablo Larrain's film Ema is a following shot of the platinum-blonde title character walking down the middle of an empty road lit by neon and fire. It is perhaps the only truly familiar authorial element in Larrain's latest feature. Ema marks Larrain's return to his homeland of Chile after a successful Hollywood debut in Jackie, and he also returns, for the first time since Tony Manero, to apolitical subject matter. There are no coups, riots, or assassinations in Ema; nobody even dies. Instead, a dancer couple (Mariana Di Girolamo as Ema and Gael Garcia Bernal as Gastón) spars after Ema returns their son to foster care after he immolates a family member, trying alternately to destroy and repair the atypical family. The film was co-written by playwright Guillermo Calderón, the scribe behind Neruda and The Club, and like those, it has the hallmarks of a...

by Abe Fried-Tanzer

Chilean director Pablo Larraín was last at the Sundance Film Festival with frequent collaborator Gael García Bernal in 2013 for the Oscar-nominated No. Since then, he’s earned two additional bids from the Golden Globes in the foreign language category for The Club and Neruda. He even made his first film in English: Jackie. Now, Larraín is back with another Bernal film, showing in the Spotlight section after its premiere at the Venice International Film Festival.

Though Bernal plays a substantial role, this film is all about actress Mariana Di Girolamo. She stars as the title character, who is married to Bernal’s choreographer character...

Exclusive: Music Box Films has acquired U.S. distribution rights to Pablo Larraín’s (Jackie) Venice Film Festival drama Ema, starring newcomer Mariana Di Girolamo, Gael García Bernal (Mozart In The Jungle), and Santiago Cabrera (Big Little Lies).

Music Box plans to theatrically release the Sundance-bound drama in summer 2020. The deal was negotiated by Music Box President William Schopf and CAA Media Finance.

Ema charts a woman’s odyssey of personal liberation after a shocking incident upends her family life and marriage to a tempestuous choreographer.

“I feel proud and excited to be working again with Music Box Films, a wonderful company for a movie like Ema in the USA,” said feted Chilean director Larraín. “It’s truly amazing.” The distributor previously released the director’s 2015 film The Club.

“This is one of those films that you have to see to believe,” added Music Box Films’ President William Schopf. “Entirely singular,...

Leading Argentine sales agent Meikincine has signed on to sell David Albala’s highly anticipated fiction debut “Jailbreak Pact,” (“Pacto de fuga”) on the international market.

Chile’s Storyboard Media produces the feature, with co-founders Carlos Núnez and Gabriela Sandoval executive producing and Calibre 71 and Enlazo Capital Films co-producing out of Chile and Colombia respectively.

Fox will distribute theatrically in Chile starting in 2020.

The political thriller is a 130-minute nail-biter based on the real-life events which proceeded one of Chile and the world’s greatest prison escapes on Jan. 29, 1990. At the tail-end of Pinochet’s brutal dictatorship, 49 prisoners managed to escape their incarceration in Santiago de Chile through a series of tunnels dug using spoons, screwdrivers and other rudimentary tools.

Albala says that the practical aspects of the story impressed him most, and he felt compelled to show how a group of political prisoners were engineered to dig a tunnel more than 60 meters long,...

HBO and Sky drama Chernobyl was a double winner at the Rose D’Or awards. The event, which was held in London and presented by Lenny Henry, awarded The Golden Rose Award to the Sister Pictures-produced limited series, which also picked up the best drama award, ahead of Killing Eve, Succession, Years and Years, 8 Days and Escape at Dannemora. The Studio Entertainment award was won by BBC One’s Michael McIntyre’s Big Show, with the Comedy category going to Canadian series Baroness von Sketch Show and the Comedy Drama and Sitcom to Spanish series Arde Madrid. Orphans of a Nation, the Brazilian drama from Globo, won in the Soaps and Telenovelas category, while the Children and Youth award was presented to Norwegian series ZombieLars, which pairs slapstick gags with social commentary. The Reality and Factual Entertainment category was won by BBC2’s The Repair Shop, the Arts category...