Cannes: Hong Sang-soo’s ‘In Our Day’ Nabbed by Cinema Guild

EXCLUSIVE: Gaga Corp. and Goodfellas have revealed new sales on Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Cannes 2023 Palme d’Or contender Monster as the drama enjoys a strong theatrical kick-off at the Japanese box office.

ATEEZ have announced new concert dates for their ‘The Fellowship: Break The Wall’ world tour – get the full list of cities and dates below.The eight-member group announced on social media that they would be bringing their third world tour, ’The Fellowship: Break The Wall’, to Asia and Latin America later this year from July to September.The upcoming Asia leg will kick off in Taipei, Taiwan on July 8, with stops in Hong Kong and Bangkok in the following month. After which, the boyband will play three shows in Latin America in late-August and early-September.ATEEZ will return to Asia for concerts in Singapore and Manila in mid-September.

Prof Kathleen Stock is the daughter of a council boss who introduced a four-day working week. Riz Possnett’s mother Liz Watts was working on a PhD thesis on the topic when South Cambridgeshire District Council last year became the first to implement a trial to cut hours while staff remain on the same pay. The 19-year-old’s father Robert Possnett is an Extinction Rebellion protester who has been arrested a number of times.

Wim Wenders’ Tokyo-based Cannes Competition title Perfect Days has clocked a series of international deals for The Match Factory.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Wim Wenders’ “Perfect Days,” which won the best actor award for Koji Yakusho at the Cannes Film Festival, has sold out worldwide. The Match Factory is handling international sales. As previously announced, North American rights went to Neon and France went to Haut et Court. Further sales included U.K./Ireland/Latin America/Turkey (MUBI), Australia/New Zealand (Madman), Benelux (Paradiso), China (DDDream), Italy (Lucky Red), Spain (A Contracorriente), Switzerland (DCM), Baltics (A-One Baltics), Bulgaria (Art Fest), CIS (A-One), Czech Republic and Slovakia (Aerofilms), Former Yugoslavia (MCF), Greece (Feelgood Entertainment), Hong Kong (Edko Films), Hungary (Cirko), Israel (Lev Cinemas), Poland (Gutek), Portugal (Alambique), Romania (Bad Unicorn), Scandinavia (Future Film) and Taiwan (Applause).

An army veteran grabbed his terrified partner by the neck and strangled her as she tried to call the police for help in a booze-fuelled attack.

The average South Korean consumes around 80 packets of ramyeon a year. The rehydrated mix of dried, curly noodles, freeze-dried vegetables and a sachet of powdered soup is one of the country’s most beloved comfort foods, a quickly-whipped, heartwarming meal that sits at the tricky intersection of tasty and convenient.

Anthony Chen’s well-regarded Mainland China-set “The Breaking Ice” has found favor with multiple European and Asian buyers in the few days since its Sunday premiere as part of the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard. The film narrates a love triangle story among China’s lost youth generation and is set in the middle of winter in Yanji, a town that is heavily populated by ethnic Koreans. It is headlined by a star-studded Chinese cast of Zhou Dongyu (“Better Days”), Liu Haoran (“Detective Chinatown” franchise) and Qu Chuxiao (“The Wandering Earth”). “The Breaking Ice” has been newly licensed to Challan for release in South Korea, Trigon-Film for Switzerland, One From the Heart for Greece, Tucker Film for Italy and Edko Films for Hong Kong.Rights sales are handled by Rediance, Mainland China’s leading indie sales company, which reports that addition territory deals are currently being negotiated.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Magic Fair, a Miami-Paris based indie sales company and Hong Kong- and Paris-based All Rights Entertainment have launched rights sales on upcoming feature animation “Pigsy,” directed by Chiu Li-Wei (“Barkley”) during the Cannes Film Festival’s Marche du Film. The film is a reimagining of the classic Chinese tale “Journey to the West.” The story follows a self-absorbed and lazy pig on a journey to lasting happiness. Set in a distant future, the film sees Pigsy embark on a deceitful quest for a better life, only to find that true happiness may be closer than he thinks. The production has recently added Taiwanese stars Greg Han, Liu Kuan-Ting, Harlem Yu, Tuo Tsung-Hua, Chung Hsin-Ling, Ivy Shao, Waa Wei and K.R. Bros. The film is to be completed in time for release at Chinese New Year in early 2024. Production is by the Netherland’s studio Submarine (“Where is Anne Frank,” TV series “Undone” Season 2, “Apollo 10 ½ : A Space Age Childhood”) with Taiwan’s Greener Grass (“GrX”) and Studio2 (“Barkley,” “Get the Hell Out,” “The Tag-Along”).

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Hong Sang-soo’s latest film “In Our Day,” which will premiere on closing night of Cannes’ Directors Fortnight, has been acquired by Cinema Guild for North America. Cinema Guild will release the film in theaters following its North American festival premiere later this year. “In Our Day” stars Kim Minhee as Sangwon, an actress who has recently returned to South Korea and is temporarily staying with her friend, Jungsoo (Song Sunmi), and her cat, Us. Elsewhere in the city, the aging poet Uiju (Ki Joobong) lives alone, his cat having recently passed away. On this ordinary day, each of them has a visitor: Sangwon is visited by her cousin, Jisoo (Park Miso) and Uiju, by a young actor,Jaewon (Ha Seongguk). Each of them wants to learn about a career in the arts, but they alsohave bigger questions.

Hong Sangam is soo’s In Our Day, the closing night film at Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight sidebar, has sold to Cinema Guild for North America.

In the early ’90s, Japan’s Takeshi “Beat” Kitano was on a roll, with a superb string of nuanced crime movies that stood in stark contrast to the good-vs.-evil bullet operas that were coming out of Hong Kong at the time. Kitano’s darkly funny cynicism (who else could have made Violent Cop?) made him stand out by miles, but it soon became his weakness, as became evident in the lean period after the success of Zatoichi in 2013. The experimental, semi-autobiographical trilogy that followed — Takeshis’, Glory to the Filmmaker and Achilles and the Tortoise — seemed to offer little more than self-sabotage, the work of a frustrated artist trying to take a blowtorch to his populist image without much thought for the future.

Lise Pedersen Award-winning US producer and distributor Karin Chien (“Robot Stories,” “Circumstance”), whose latest co-production, “Man in Black,” is one of two films by Chinese director Wang Bing running in Cannes’ official selection, shared her experience with the crowd during a masterclass at Cannes Docs, the Film Market section dedicated to documentary films. “Man in Black” premiered at a special screening in Cannes on May 22. Wang’s other film selected in this year’s edition is main competition title “Youth.” In the talk, moderated by Documentary Association of Europe co-founder Brigid O’Shea, Chien put on her distributor’s hat to talk about a job she said was “not pitched enough but [represented] some of the most meaningful work she [had] ever done.”

Fatima Djoumer has been appointed General Director of independent exhibitor network Europa Cinemas, replacing Claude-Eric Poiroux who is stepping down after 30 years in the role.

Lise Pedersen Newcomer Docs-by-the-Sea, the international documentary Labs and Forum for creative doc projects from Asia, will present and works-in-progress showcase for the first time at the Marché du Film’s Cannes Docs.  Featuring four films in late production stage, the showcase is highly necessary, argues its curator, Gugi Gumilang, the executive director of In-Docs, the non-profit org behind Docs by the Sea.   A member of last year’s Docs-in-Progress jury, he said this gave him a chance to see what people are looking for. “There’s a lack of Asian representation [in documentaries],” he tells Variety, adding: “It’s really tough for documentary filmmakers in Asia, few countries have film funds,” he said, citing Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, the Philippines and, more recently, Hong Kong. “There are few dedicated festivals, the biggest being South Korea’s DMZ. Other international film festivals like Busan, Singapore and Jeonju cater for documentary film, but the competition is tough as they don’t just focus on Asian projects.”

Seoul-based sales agent Finecut has sold Hong Sangsoo’s In Our Day to France’s Capricci, Spain’s L’Atalante Cinema and Ama Films for Greece. 

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “In Our Day,” the film by South Korean auteur Hong Sang-soo which closes the Directors’ Fortnight section of the Cannes film festival, has seen distributors in multiple territories move early to strike rights deals. French rights were picked up by Capricci), Spanish rights by L’Atalante Cinema and Greek rights by Ama Films. The film has its official premiere on May 25. Seoul-based Finecut has long been the sales agent for Hong’s plentiful output. In addition to the deals on “In Our Day,” Finecut signed agreements with L’Atalante, with France’s Ariona Films and Taiwan’s Cola Films for “In Water,” Hong’s first film of 2023 which premiered in the Encounters section in Berlin in February. The film was previously sold to Cinema Guild for North America.

I am still searching for my words; my thoughts first ran dry in the opening minutes of the shattering and evocative “Killers of the Flower Moon.” It begins with the Osage tribal elders mourning the loss of their language and customs as they bury a sacred pipe. The scene breaks, next revealing these Indigenous folks — forcibly moved from Missouri to present-day Oklahoma (thought to be terrible, barren land) — discovering oil as psychedelic music erupts with the splash of the black liquid.

Hong Sang-soo shows no signs of slowing down, does he? After two feature films a year for the past two years, the South Korean director will do it again in 2023, with his 30th film, “In Our Day,” ready to close the Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival on May 25. Hong’s latest comes after “In Water” premiered at the Berlinale in February to universal acclaim.

WayV, the Chinese sub-group of K-pop boyband NCT, have announced the European leg of their Fanmeeting Tour ‘Phantom’.WayV will head to two European cities as part of their wider 2023 Fanmeeting Tour ‘Phantom’. In less than a month, the boyband will perform at London’s Eventim Apollo on June 8, followed by the La Seine Musicale in Paris on June 11.According to WayV’s official Twitter account, only five of the group’s six members will be in attendance at the fanmeeting: namely Kun, Ten, Xiaojun, Hendery and YangYang.