Berlin Jury Announced; Includes Golshifteh Farahani, Johnnie To & ‘12 Years A Slave’, ‘Babylon’, ‘She Said’ Casting Director Francine Maisler

There’s a pretty traditional formula that most music documentaries follow. They’ll often center around a standard birth to mainstream success overview, populated with talking heads and contemporaries to contextualize the music, politics, and social scenes.

Director Vasilis Katsoupis tells the audience exactly what “Inside” is about to do from its very first scene. The disembodied voice of Willem Dafoe narrates a childhood fable fished from the depths of memory.

From “Rosa Luxemburg” in 1986 to 2012’s “Hannah Arendt,” the films of Margarethe Von Trotta, an icon of the New German cinema, have put strong female protagonists center-stage in renditions of German history. For her latest, Von Trotta paints a portrait of German poet Ingeborg Bachmann, author of essays, radio dramas, and opera libretti.

According to Joel Thurm, David Hasselhoff was "blessed with looks, luck and me." The veteran casting director said he was the one "who paved the way" for the actor’s "best years" in shows like "The Young and the Restless," "Knight Rider" and "Baywatch." He also witnessed a new star make a major splash on "Baywatch," the series about lifeguards who tackled rescues and relationships. Thurm, who recently wrote the tell-all "Sex, Drugs & Pilot Season: Confessions of a Casting Director," claimed to Fox News Digital that Hasselhoff was hesitant about having Pamela Anderson join the cast. "I’m sure [Pamela] is a lovely woman in person from what I can see and certainly from what I’ve learned from her new Netflix documentary, but it’s no surprise the ratings went up when she joined," said Thurm.

The audiences at Berlin International Film Festival tend to be respectful and engaged.

As the 73rd Berlin Film Festival rolls into its first weekend, one of the buzziest titles on the ground is the taut political thriller Reality, starring Euphoria and White Lotus breakout Sydney Sweeney.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Paris-based Italian director Giacomo Abbruzzese says making the Berlin Film Festival competition cut with his first feature, “Disco Boy,” which toplines German star Franz Rogowski (“Passages,” ”Undine”), is “certainly a dream come true.” But he also points out that his remarkable debut was a long time coming.  A graduate of several film schools, including France’s prestigious Le Fresnoy, Abbruzzese started developing “Disco Boy” in 2013 following an encounter in a French disco with a classical dancer who had been a soldier.  

Like so many young performers, Sydney Sweeney proved that she was a star before she could get the chance to prove that she was a well-rounded actor. Her name-making gigs as a vindictive, canonically gorgeous high schooler on TV’s “Euphoria,” a vindictive, canonically gorgeous college sophomore on “The White Lotus,” and a vindictive, canonically gorgeous recent grad in the “The Voyeurs” all required her to channel an innate charisma toward variations on a broadly consistent type, her abilities yet to be stretched far enough to chart their full potential.

With an admirable cohesiveness, Mexican-Salvadoran director Tatiana Huezo (“Prayers for the Stolen”) has curated a body of work that often returns to familiar questions, subjects, and even precise images of evolving girlhood and untarnished nature. The filmmaker’s most fixed preoccupation is the spaces women carve for themselves and each other in communities where their safety, needs, and aspirations often suffer the tacitly violent tactics of patriarchal social norms.  Back to her documentary roots, Huezo follows her acclaimed fiction debut, “Prayers for the Stolen” (“Noche de Fuego”), with another multigenerational saga of mothers and daughters in a remote locale.

There is a particular kind of audacity reserved for the wealthy and the well-meaning. Multi-award-winning actor and humanitarian Sean Penn co-directs “Superpower” with Aaron Kaufman, known mostly for his commercial work and his collaboration with writer-director Robert Rodriguez.

To this day, I am traumatized by the notion I could have killed my little brother. Six years younger, we had an age difference primed to maximize annoyance, his constant nagging the spark for my first foray with untethered fury.

There’s been much speculation about the location for the third season of “The White Lotus” after HBO’s unsurprising renewal of the hit comedy.

The White Lotus season three in a recent interview.The first season of the acclaimed HBO drama series took place in Hawaii, with last year’s follow-up relocating to Sicily. A third run of episodes was confirmed last November, but specific details remain under wraps.During a conversation with Vulture published this week, however, Jackass co-creator and star Knoxville seemingly let slip that the forthcoming third season may be set in Tokyo, Japan.The White Lotus came up in the interview after Knoxville was asked whether he’d further pursue sitcom acting following the cancellation of his Hulu series Reboot.

Hello and welcome back to your weekly International Insider. Berlin’s back and with most of our team in the German capital, it’s Jesse Whittock here bringing you the latest from the worlds of TV and film.

dramatic Season 2 finale of “The White Lotus,” fans have been anxiously waiting for the location of Season 3 to be announced.Season 1 of the show took fans to Hawaii, filmed at the Four Seasons Resort Maui at Wailea, while Season 2 brought us out of the country to Sicily, filmed at the Four Seasons San Domenico Palace in the town of Taormina.In a new interview with Vulture, Knoxville, 51, might have accidentally let slip where the next season will take place when talking about his friendship with show creator Mike White, 52.“Mike White is a very close friend of mine. He and I had been in Tokyo together,” he shared “I think that’s where the next…Oh, I’m not giving anything away.”“I might call him again as soon as this is over,” Knoxville added.Before TVLine confirmed the renewal of the HBO Max show that follows guests and employees of the fictional hotel chain White Lotus, White was already thinking about where the next location would be — and hinted at Asia.“I think it’d be fun to maybe go to a whole different continent.

A Scots spy in Berlin who sold secrets to Russia has been jailed for more than 13 years for betraying his country and colleagues.

Christopher Vourlias Athens-based Heretic has acquired worlds sales rights for “Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World,” the latest film from Berlinale Golden Bear winner Radu Jude (“Bad Luck Banging or Looney Porn”), who is serving on the international jury at this year’s Berlin Film Festival. Divided into two parts, Jadu’s latest follows an overworked and underpaid production assistant who must drive around the city of Bucharest to film the casting for a workplace safety video commissioned by a multinational company. In the film’s second half, one of her interviewees makes a statement that ignites a scandal, forcing him to re-invent his story to suit the company’s narrative.

A slip of the tongue? Johnny Knoxville potentially revealed the next location for the third season of The White Lotus thanks to his friendship with the show’s creator Mike White.

Kristen Stewart wasted no time making her presence felt as jury president of the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival. Screendaily reports that Stewart had some cutting things to say about the state of the film industry at the festival’s Competition press conference, particularly its obsession with money over artistic merit.

Kristen Stewart, President of the International Jury, poses for photos at the International Jury photo call during the 2023 Berlinale International Film Festival at the Grand Hyatt Hotel on Thursday (February 16) in Berlin, Germany.