Canada’s HighballTV Unveils $15.6M Slate Of Five Original Indie Productions As It Continues “Careful Organic Growth”

Manori Ravindran Executive Editor of International Ramsay Street is gearing up to welcome a few more familiar faces. Seven long-time characters are joining Amazon Freevee’s continuation of Australian soap “Neighbours.” The new additions include Annie Jones (as Jane Harris), Rebekah Elmaloglou (as Terese Willis), Georgie Stone (as Mackenzie Hargreaves) and Tim Kano (as Leo Tanaka). All cast members will return as series regulars. Meanwhile, those returning in guest roles are Ian Smith (as Harold Bishop), April Rose Pengilly (as Chloe Brennan) and Melissa Bell (as Lucy Robinson). They will be joined by “Neighbours” stalwarts Stefan Dennis, Alan Fletcher, Ryan Moloney and Jackie Woodburne, who were previously announced.

EXCLUSIVE: Fremantle is launching sales on Portuguese relationship format The Second Chance Ex-periment and musical gameshow The Beatbox as the London TV Screenings gets underway.

Rio Ferdinand has handed a number of Manchester United players praise for their performances against Barcelona on Thursday, including goal-scorers Fred and Antony.

One year since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, networks continue to rotate reporters in and out of the country. Media outlets reassess security precautions as the nature of the battle changes. Correspondents are preparing for the possibility of an even longer and more brutal war, perhaps with even more risks and uncertainties.

There is a narrative brewing amongst a large portion of Manchester City fans, one which many will be unaware of and would become baffled once they were. One that claims Ederson isn't that good.

Aamu Film Company will invest in Jenni Jauri’s new production company Silmu Films, Variety has found out exclusively. Aamu, founded in 2001 and co-owned by Jussi Rantamäki and Emilia Haukka, has become a local arthouse powerhouse thanks to its festival-friendly slate, especially Juho Kuosmanen’s “The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki” and Golden Globe-nominated “Compartment No. 6,” awarded the Grand Prix in Cannes. “We had a good film with decent sales and we started to think about what we should do next,” Rantamäki said. “Aamu’s brand is simple and clear: we only work with a select few directors. We don’t want to change that; we don’t want to turn into a factory where you don’t know what is happening and with whom. So first we decided not to grow, and then realized we could invest in a new company instead.”

Berlinale Series and one of Disney+’s early big plays in Southern Europe, U.K.-Italian mafia series “The Good Mothers” walked off on Wednesday night with the Berlin Festival’s inaugural Berlinale Series Award.  A large virtue of the series is to come in at the mafia from a novel angle: a real story of women who dare to defy the Italian mob.  The title forms part of the first European slate by new Disney+ international streaming service Star. It tells how bosses at the the Calabrian mob were targeted by a female prosecutor – thanks to the collaboration of three women inside the ‘Ndrangheta organized crime clan. 

EXCLUSIVE: Virginia Madsen (Sideways), Vondie Curtis-Hall (Harriet), Lilli Cooper (Broadway’s Tootsie), Dominic Fumusa (13 Hours) and Matt Dallas (Kyle XY) have signed on to star alongside Steven Grayhm in the indie drama Sheepdog, which Grayhm is directing from his own script.

Cillea Houghton Italian auteur Vittorio De Sica triumphed at the Berlin Film Festival when his 1971 masterpiece “The Garden of the Finzi-Continis” claimed the Golden Bear, on its way to the best foreign-language Oscar in 1972. “Finzi” also earned Italian film and TV star Fabio Testi an Italian Golden Globe for best breakthrough actor. A half-century later, with over 100 credits on his resume, Testi remains active and game for parts that utilize his still stunning looks and hearty appetite for performing. He’s also game for the role he seems destined to play in the Italian tabloids. A quick Google search of Testi’s current film and TV projects is dominated by stories – which Testi playfully plays along with – of current and past romantic adventures with women all over the globe.

Shakira and Gerard Piqué’s break up continues to have an impact. The couple made an indirect appearance in an unexpected place: this year’s Carnival parades and celebrations hosted across Colombia, Brazil, Spain and more.

One of Stanley Kubrick’s lost projects, a large-scale biopic of Napoleon Bonaparte, has been in the works for HBO for the last seven years.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The Vesoul International Film Festival of Asian Cinema has unveiled its 85-title lineup for the edition that starts later this month (February 28 to March 7, 2023). Elements include a 10-film competition section, a 10-film documentary film section, a tribute to the Turkish director Semih Kaplanoglu; a thematic section “Asian Diaspora Cinema” offering a panorama of works by directors from Asian countries living in exile; and a Philippines cinema sidebar. Fiction films in competition include: Azerbaijan’s “Cold as Marble,” by Asif Rustamov; China’s “In Our Prime,” by Liu Yulin; Korea’s “A Letter from Kyoto,” by Kim Min-ju; India’s: “Behind Veils,” by Praveen Morshhale; Iran’s “No End,” by Nader Saievar; Mongolia’s “The Sales Girl,” by Sengedorj Janchivdorj; The Philippines’s “Feast,” by Brillante Mendoza; Singapore’s “#LookAtMe,” by Ken Kwek; and Vietnam’s “Memento Mori: Earth,” by Marcus Vu Manh Cuong. The president of the jury is Lee Yong-kwan, president of the Busan film festival.

Mark Schilling Japan Correspondent One of Japan’s most commercially successful and highly acclaimed animators, Shinkai Makoto has been called a successor to anime titan Miyazaki Hayao. Known for his mix of photo-realistic visuals and gorgeously realized fantasies, Shinkai surpassed the master when his 2016 smash “Your Name” became the highest-earning Japanese film of all time worldwide, beating Miyazaki’s 2001 “Spirited Away.” (That record was later broken by the 2020 anime sensation “Demon Slayer.”) His latest film, “Suzume,” about a teen girl’s quest to halt an apocalypse triggered by the opening of magical doors all over Japan, is also the first Japanese animated feature to screen in the Berlin competition since “Spirited Away” in 2002. Variety sat down with Shinkai to hear his views on his own work and the state of the anime industry.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Sales agency Memento Intl. has unveiled the first clip and poster from Liu Jian’s Berlin competition title “Art College 1994,” which world premieres on Feb. 24. The film is a portrait of youth set on the campus of the Chinese Southern Academy of Arts in the early 1990s. Against the backdrop of reforms opening China to the Western world, a group of college students live in full swing as they take their first steps into adulthood, where love and friendships are intertwined with artistic pursuits, ideals and ambitions. Caught between tradition and modernity, they now have to choose who they want to become. It is the director’s third animation feature after 2010’s “Piercing I” and “Have a Nice Day,” which premiered in competition at the Berlinale in 2017, and quickly built a cult following. “Have a Nice Day” was also honored with the best animated feature award at the Golden Horse Awards in Taiwan.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Luc Besson’s ”Dogman,” starring Caleb Landry Jones, wowed buyers at the Berlin’s European Film Market, where it was screened for select buyers. “We hosted only one private screening of the completed film and buyers were stunned, they all came out saying that it was Luc Besson’s best film to date, his most mature movie and some even called it a masterpiece,” said Gregoire Melin, founder of Kinology, which is handling sales on the film. On the heels of the screening, Kinology closed deals with some of the biggest distributors in key international territories, including Italy (Lucky Red), Germany and Austria (Capelight Pictures), Spain and Latin America (Sun Distribution Group), Scandinavia (Svensk Filmindustri), Benelux (Belga Films), Switzerland (Elite Film), Middle East (Front Row), Poland (Monolith), Portugal (Nos Lusomundo Audiovisuais), Czech Republic and Slovakia (AQS) and former Yugoslavia (Blitz).

EXCLUSIVE: Pig and Manodrome producer Ben Giladi is formally launching his production banner Liminal Content at this year’s Berlin Film Festival where Manodrome debuted in Competition.

EXCLUSIVE: Millennium Media has revealed plot and production details about its upcoming Hellboy reboot at the EFM in Berlin.

Naman Ramachandran Singapore and India-based Mumba Devi Motion Pictures is screening two films at Berlin’s European Film Market (EFM) and has unveiled a slate of future titles. The company, headed by producer Sweta Chhabria and producer-director Aditya Kripalani, makes issue-based films focusing on stories that are mostly to do with gender and burning topics like suicide prevention and mental health. The outfit makes it a point to minimize the male gaze by bringing on board heads of department who are all women. Kripalani and Chhabria’s just-completed Singapore-set film “Grand Sugar Daddy,” which has its market premiere at EFM on Feb. 18, follows a 70-year-old widower who is introduced to the world of Sugar Daddies and Sugar Babies. The film traces his conversations with a Singaporean Chinese woman, an Indian woman and a transgender Malay.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italy’s Kino Produzioni, the indie shingle that co-produced 2022 Berlin Golden Bear winner “Alcarràs,” is ramping up production with new films by emerging Italian filmmakers Carlo Sironi, Laura Luchetti and Irene Dionisio, as well as also Dutch director Michiel Van Erp and Argentine filmmakers María Alché and Benjamín Naishtat.  “We reached a turning point last year that started out well with the ‘Alcarràs’ victory,” said Kino chief Giovanni Pompili, speaking at the EFM. He noted that in 2022, the Rome-based outfit shot four films, “which for us was pretty challenging, but worked out well.” Meanwhile, the Kino team has grown. Producer Lara Costa-Calzado, who has been working for a decade between the U.S. and Europe on films such as Eliza Hittman’s Silver Bear winner “Never Rarely Sometimes Always,” Sally Potter’s “The Roads Not Taken” and Halina Rejin’s “Bodies Bodies Bodies,” has joined Kino as head of production.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were brutally roasted on the latest episode of "South Park" titled "The Worldwide Privacy Tour." Though the Duke and Duchess of Sussex were not directly named in the episode, it featured characters described as Canadian royalty and dubbed "the prince and his wife," which clearly parodied the couple. "The Worldwide Privacy Tour" was also filled with references to the pair including Harry's bombshell memoir and their six-part Netflix series "Harry & Meghan." In the episode, the red-headed prince and his wife – who wore a pink ensemble that clearly resembled one that Markle, 41, donned for the 2018 Trooping the Colour – decide to leave Canada after a falling-out with the royal family following the death of the queen.