ESPN Films Unveils ’30 for 30′ Summer Slate, Debuts Trailer (EXCLUSIVE)

Ruth Langsford, who is dealing with the aftermath of her divorce from Eamonn Holmes, is reportedly planning to lean on her 'biggest support', Rylan Clark.

EXCLUSIVE: The first trailer for Sony Pictures and Wayfarer Studios‘ It Ends With Us, exec produced by and starring Blake Lively, has made quite an impact since its launch last Thursday.

EXCLUSIVE: Film Independent has named the six filmmakers selected for its third annual Episodic Directing Intensive: John Gutierrez, Lorena Lourenço, Alfonso Morgan-Terrero, Huriyyah Muhammad, Kelsey Taylor and So Young Shelly Yo.

Sideshow and Janus Films have acquired the North American rights for Gints Zilbalodis’s animated feature Flow, following an enthusiastic standing ovation at its world premiere in the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard on Wednesday.

Arts nonprofit Frameline announced the full program for the 48th San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival (Frameline48). Curated from over 1,600 submissions and invitations, the Frameline48 slate will screen from June 19–29 in theaters across the San Francisco Bay Area, including the Roxie Theater, the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre, the Herbst Theatre, the Vogue Theatre, and The New Parkway Theater in Oakland. The 11-day celebration of film and queerness will carry on—and amplify—the spirit of the 2023 Festival’s “Neighborhood Nights.”

Addie Morfoot Contributor HamptonsFilm’s 16th annual SummerDocs series will feature three Sundance favorites: “Skywalkers: A Love Story,” “War Game,” and “Super/Man:The Christopher Reeve Story.” HamptonsFilm and Hamptons Intl. Film Festival artistic director David Nugent and chairman emeritus Alec Baldwin will lead conversations with attending filmmakers and guests. The series will kick-off on July 5 with Jeff Zimbalist and Maria Bukhonina’s “Skywalkers: A Love Story.” Following a successful Sundance debut, Netflix acquired the worldwide rights to the docu about daredevil couple Angela Nikolau and Ivan Beerkus from Moscow, as they take their relationship to terrifying new heights in a wild scheme to climb the world’s last great skyscraper and perform a death-defying stunt on its spire.

The idea of a film about queer rodeo performers is pretty powerful stuff. Rodeos are typically seen in film as these hyper masculine events where real cowboys prove their mettle.

Naman Ramachandran British filmmakers Sean Cronin and Peter Stylianou’s latest feature, “Drained,” has wrapped post-production and is being sold by Cronin’s Magnificent Films at the Cannes Film Market. Cronin is also an actor who has appeared in “Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation” and “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.” He has played villains in some 89 films, besides directing several titles. “Drained,” a vampire film, co-directed and produced by Cronin and Stylianou from a screenplay by Stylianou, follows Thomas, a jobless post-graduate artist who falls for Rhea, a mysterious woman who is revealed to be a vampire.

Annika Pham The Swiss/French “Dog on Trial” is set to disrupt, move and entertain the Croisette from what is revealed in a first clip from sales outfit MK2 Films, exclusively shared with Variety. The film world premieres at Cannes Un Certain Regard May 19. Writer/actor-turned-director Laetitia Dosch, who delivered what Variety reviewer Peter Debruge called a ‘blazing-wildfire performance’ in the 2017 Camera d’or winner “Jeune Femme”, is herself taking a chance this year on the coveted award. Meanwhile Cosmos the Dog (aka Kodi in the film) will battle for the leather dog collar Palme Dog win.

Naman Ramachandran A first clip has been unveiled for Emma Benestan‘s “Animale,” which closes the Cannes Film Festival‘s Critics’ Week strand this year. The film is set in the Camargue region of the south of France, where daring youths participate in the local tradition of bull running. Only one woman, 22-year-old Nejma, takes her place in the arena.

Addie Morfoot Contributor Arnaud Desplechin‘s hybrid documentary “Spectateurs!” (“Filmlovers”) debuted a first trailer ahead of the film’s world premiere at Cannes on May 22. The 88-minute docu is a love letter to cinema, inspired by Desplechin’s own discovery and passion for cinema.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Berlin-based sales agency Films Boutique has closed first sales and released the first-look image from Oscar-nominated Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland‘s biopic of the Czech novelist Franz Kafka, “Franz.” The project has sold to September Film in Benelux, Filmin in Spain, Vertigo in Hungary, MCF Megacom for the former Yugoslavia and Movies Inspired in Italy. The film was previously acquired for theatrical distribution by Bac Films Distribution in France, X Verleih in Germany and Austria, Bioscop in Czech Republic and TVP in Poland.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor The trailer (below) has debuted for Leonardo Van Dijl‘s “Julie Keeps Quiet” ahead of its world premiere in Critics’ Week in Cannes. The film’s world sales agency New Europe Film Sales has revealed the first territory deals. New Europe has sold the film to New Horizons for Poland, Kino Pavasaris for the Baltic states, and I Wonder Pictures for Italy.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief French sales agent Pyramide International has dropped a dark and subtle trailer for “Việt and Nam” a gay drama about two young miners who must complete a mission before fate pulls them apart. Directed by Vietnamese auteur Trương Minh Quý, the film plays at the Cannes Film Festival in Un Certain Regard with its world premiere on May 22. Per a synopsis from lead producer Epicmedia: “Nam and Việt, both young miners, cherish fleeting moments, knowing that one of them will soon leave for a new life across the sea. But the departure cannot happen as, lying in a far-off forest is Nam’s father, a soldier, whose remains they’re compelled to find.

Venice Film Festival Artistic Director Alberto Barbera, whose current mandate is due to expire after the upcoming 81st edition, has been renewed in the role for 2024 and 2025.

EXCLUSIVE: Oscar-winning producers See-Saw Films (The King’s Speech) are gearing up on Tenzing, about the inspirational life of Sherpa Tenzing Norgay and his summit of Mount Everest in 1953 alongside fellow outsider New Zealander Edmund Hillary.

Jack Dunn While filming episode one of “Doctor Who” season 14, entitled “Space Babies,” Millie Gibson had to do the impossible: keep the attention of 20 infants at once. Although she was bearing her soul in a speech integral to her character’s backstory, the babies kept dozing off and losing their attention to the flashing lights of the space-age set. So, to keep their little eyes focused on her, she delivered her lines while a nursery rhyme played on her phone just out of camera view.

Addie Morfoot Contributor MTV Documentary Films has acquired U.S. rights to Shiori Ito’s “Black Box Diaries.” The docu, about the investigation of the director’s own alleged sexual assault, debuted in the World Cinema Documentary Competition at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival and has been an audience favorite at this year’s CPH:DOX, South by Southwest and Hot Docs film festivals. MTV will theatrically release “Black Box Diaries” this fall, beginning in October at New York’s Film Forum.

Jamie Lang VFX icon and “Mad God” director Phil Tippett is working on a new stop-motion feature titled “Sentinel,” which will be pitched for the first time at this year’s Frontières section of Cannes’ Marché du Film. Variety has been given exclusive access to the first plot details and set images from “Sentinel,” which shares a visual fidelity with “Mad God.” However, in terms of production, things will be very different this time around.

With less than a week to go until the kick-off of the 81st Cannes Film Festival, speculation is mounting in the French media and local film industry over rumors that a bombshell #MeToo exposé will drop on the day of the opening.