Thirty-five years after the animated story of Ariel, a flame-haired siren of the sea who falls for a prince, charmed audiences, a live-action remake of “The Little Mermaid” dominated the Memorial Day weekend box office. The Disney release is on track to debut to a massive $118 million over the four-day…
Arthouse
It’s 11 years since Anurag Kashyap’s electrifying five-hour crime opus “Gangs of Wasseypur” jolted Cannes audiences, triggering renewed global interest in Indian genre cinema and vaulting Kashyap to auteur status with several subsequent films granted A-list festival premiere status — even if none quite matched his breakout feature for ambition…
Austrian actor Helmut Berger, the groundbreaking star of European cinematic masterpieces such as Luchino Visconti’s “The Damned” and Vittorio De Sica’s “Garden of the Finzi-Continis,” has died at the age of 78. Berger died at home in Austria from natural causes. In one of European cinema’s most storied and creative…
K5 Media Group has rebooted its international sales arm, K5 Intl., recruiting five industry veterans. It will sell and distribute eight to 10 new titles a year, across both film and TV. In its former incarnation, K5 Intl., which was founded by Oliver Simon and Daniel Baur, represented premium film…
Few European arthouse-crossover film sales agents have better weathered the ebb and flow of international market dynamics than Madrid’s Latido Films, which turns 20 in 2023. Proof of that came at April’s Platino Awards, where Latido scored six statuettes, split between an acting double for Alauda Ruiz de Azúa’s “Lullaby”…
The stars are out at this year’s Cannes, and not just on the red carpet that leads up to the splashy premieres that make the festival the most glamorous celebration of movies in the world. From Daisy Ridley to Alicia Vikander, Angelina Jolie to Sylvester Stallone, Idris Elba to Jude…
Paris-based distributor ARP Sélection has snapped up the timely Sudanese drama “Goodbye Julia” for French distribution ahead of its Cannes Un Certain Regard premiere next week. The film, which is Sudanese director Mohamed Kordofani’s feature debut, marks the first feature from Sudan to bow from the Croisette and takes place…
Paris-based Luxbox has snapped up sales rights on “Puan,” the awaited new film from María Alche and Benjamín Naishtat, two of Argentina’s fastest-rising directors. The new title co-stars Leonardo Sbaraglia (“Pain and Glory,” “Wild Tales”). “Puan” catches Alché after she won San Sebastian’s prestigious Horizontes Award in 2018 for her…
“The Eight Mountains,” Belgian directors Felix Van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch’s Italian-language drama about friendship, mountains and growing up, scored the top prize at Italy’s 68th David di Donatello Awards. Besides winning best picture, the film also scooped statuettes for best non-original screenplay, photography and sound. Given that the directors…
The 57th edition of Karlovy Vary Intl. Film Festival, which runs June 30-July 8, has planned a retrospective program focused on Iranian cinema with a selection of films made in the past four years. The festival will also celebrate the work of Japanese filmmaker Yasuzo Masumura. Commenting on the Iranian cinema…
No, the box office hasn’t fully rebounded from COVID-19 — as evidenced by the peaks (“Top Gun: Maverick,” “The Super Mario Bros. Movie) and valleys (“Shazam: Fury of the Gods,” “Babylon”) of the last year. But despite all of the obituaries, the movie theater industry is poised to recover. A…
Quentin Tarantino has been named honorary guest at the upcoming edition of Directors’ Fortnight, the selection running alongside the Cannes Film Festival. The tribute will take place on May 25, on the closing of Directors Fortnight. “As an exceptional and generous cinephile, Tarantino is at home at the Fortnight. He will…