Very little has been heard from Indonesian filmmaker Mouly Surya since her buzzy 2017 Cannes title Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts.
12.10.2023 - 00:25 / deadline.com
Three filmmakers assessing the impact of 2023’s dual strikes took a less-than-upbeat tone, citing uncertainty about the state of SAG-AFTRA negotiations with the AMPTP and the ongoing threat posed by artificial intelligence.
While the WGA’s gains from its 146-day strike are noteworthy, producer Sam Bisbee acknowledged during a Hamptons International Film Festival panel, SAG-AFTRA “is an even bigger part of the equation.”
Bisbee, a producer of documentary Rule of Two Walls, was joined on the panel by Jennifer Esposito and Tonje Hessen Schei. Esposito, best known for her acting credits on The Affair, The Boys and many other series and movies, wrote, directed and stars in fest selection Fresh Kills. Hessen Schei directed current fest title Praying for Armageddon.
“The writers have been underpaid and really absent from the conversation for a very long time,” Esposito said. “The powers that be are making all of the money off the backs of these people. When you’re out on your yacht saying times are tough, I know a writer who’s been writing for 25 years taking babysitting jobs. Don’t tell me times are tough. You can share the pie.”
Hessen Schei, whose 2019 film iHuman anticipated the current conversation around AI and included interviews with the architects of ChatGPT, said AI is justifiably on the guilds’ bargaining agenda but also has far broader implications. “This is just the beginning. AI is going to change everything, and already has,” she said. “We’re at this watershed moment right now, and it is really up to us what kind of rules we lay down for our industry, for our work. AI, what it really does is that it makes everything more efficient. But there are processes in the creative work of the filmmaking industry that
Very little has been heard from Indonesian filmmaker Mouly Surya since her buzzy 2017 Cannes title Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts.
Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent The Marrakech International Film Festival has announced its full jury, signaling that the event is forging ahead with its 20th edition despite the Israel-Hamas conflict — which has caused cancellations of several other fests in the region — and the earthquake that hit the country in September. Joining Jessica Chastain – who is the fest’s previously announced jury president – will be Iranian actor Zar Amir; French actor Camille Cottin; Australian actor and director Joel Edgerton; British director Joanna Hogg; U.S. director Dee Rees; Swedish-Egyptian director Tarek Saleh; Swedish actor Alexander Skarsgård and French-Moroccan writer Leïla Slimani.
“Ticket sales have gone up 27%, and we’re only at the midway point, so I’m quite happy,” Ando Hiroyasu, Tokyo Film Festival (TIFF) Chairman, told Deadline as he shuttled between engagements at this year’s busy and buzzy comeback edition.
Veteran Hong Kong actor Tony Leung passed through the Tokyo Film Festival this afternoon, where he led a masterclass session following a screening of 2046, his sixth collaboration with filmmaker Wong Kar-Wai.
Godzilla Minus One, the latest edition in Toho’s monster franchise and the closing film at this year’s Tokyo Film Festival, has locked a deal for distribution in the UK and Ireland.
Marcelo Cajueiro “A Batalha da Rua Maria Antonia,” directed by Vera Egito, nabbed the main Redentor prize for fiction film at the 2023 Rio de Janeiro International Film Fest which wrapped this year’s edition last weekend, consolidating its position as South America’s largest fest and world’s main showcase of Brazilian productions. The fest held the world premieres of 40 Brazilian features and four TV series.
Jean-Jacques Annaud has worked with an impressive roster of actors across his 60-year career including big names such as Sean Connery, Tony Leung and Brad Pitt as well as Christian Slater and Jane Marsh, who were emerging talents when he cast them in The Name Of The Rose and L’Amant respectively.
Actress Charlotte Gainsbourg made a moving presentation of her documentary Jane By Charlotte, capturing her complex relationship with her late mother Jane Birkin, ahead of a screening at the Lumière Film Festival on Saturday.
Between the Rains and The Echo are among the big winners at the prestigious Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival in Arkansas.
Ellise Shafer Daniel Kaluuya world premiered his feature directorial debut, “The Kitchen,” at the BFI London Film Festival on Sunday night, calling it “one of the best days of my life.” Kaluuya was on hand alongside his co-director Kibwe Tavares, producer Daniel Emmerson and several of the film’s actors, including “Top Boy” star Kane Robinson and newcomer Jedaiah Bannerman. Set in a dystopian London where all social housing has been banned, the film follows the residents of a community called the Kitchen who must fight to save their home. Speaking before the premiere, Kaluuya and Tavares explained that it’s taken nearly a decade to bring the Netflix film to the screen.
EXCLUSIVE: The BFI London Film Festival closes Sunday with the world premiere of The Kitchen, a movie set in a dystopian London where an impoverished community is forced to fend for themselves in ramshackle apartment blocks. It marks the feature directorial debut of Oscar- winning actor Daniel Kaluuya and architect-turned-filmmaker Kibwe Tavares.
Anna Tingley Up until Thursday night, New York Film Festival had never once featured a TV show on its annual premiere lineup, so when Benny Safdie approached NYFF artistic director Dennis Lim with a new series he created alongside Nathan Fielder, the likelihood that it would get a big-screen premiere was low. But Lim gave it a chance, and after he finished the fifth episode he knew he had to figure out how to make something work.
The co-heads of Egypt’s El Gouna Film Festival, which was rescheduled at the eleventh hour this week due to the Israel-Gaza crisis, have vowed that the event will go ahead in some shape or form.
Monsoon Wedding and A Suitable Boy filmmaker Mira Nair has been announced as the Head of Jury for the South Asia Competition at this year’s Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival (October 27-November 5).
Cailee Spaeny dazzles while promoting her new film Priscilla at the 2023 BFI London Film Festival on Monday (October 9).
After a World Premiere at the San Sebastian International Film Festival and its North American Premiere over the weekend at the Hamptons International Film Festival, Noah Pritzker’s (Quitters) second film goes for a mix of Woody Allen, John Cassavetes, Paul Mazursky, Noah Baumbach and other white male filmmakers, past and present, who enjoy basking in the midlife marital crisis in which many guys find themselves trapped. While not on the level of those acclaimed filmmakers, in this case though Pritzker manages to cast his net wider into an early, mid, and late life crisis over three generations of the men in the Pearce clan. The result is an engaging indie exercise that in an age of highlighting diversity in films puts the focus solely on its white male central characters and their personal woes, thus oddly taking what was once common Hollywood storytelling into a bit of an anomaly in 2023. It is for sale to any distributor who finds promise in a premise that might be a tough sell for mainstream buyers despite a game cast that lifts it up a notch or two. Art Houses would seem to be its theatrical future, if not PVOD.
Dear Jassi arrives with echoes of Madonna’s 1989 hit “Dear Jessie” and its sugary promise of pink elephants and lemonade, but none of that turns out to be forthcoming in Tarsem Singh Dhandwar’s beautiful and brutal sixth feature. Instead, we have perhaps the most disturbing bait-and-switch since George Sluizer’s original iteration of The Vanishing, a Punjabi Juliet-meets-Romeo story that’s much harsher that any so-far-filmed version of West Side Story and a whole lot funnier. This dissonance takes a while to reveal itself, but when it does, the shock is visceral. The fact that almost everything is true is the killer blow, and the shockwave of that reverberates through the poignant final credits, a static shot that forces the audience, or maybe just simply dares them, to think about what they’ve just seen.
China’s Pingyao International Film Festival has announced the line-up for its seventh edition (October 11-18), which will open with Wei Shujun’s Only The River Flows and close with the world premiere of Fei Yu’s Football On The Roof.
The Cannes Film Festival has admitted six filmmakers, five women and one man, to its 2024 residency program.
Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent The Berlin Film Festival has created a new scouting role to curate a rising generation of German filmmakers. The next edition, which is set to take place from Feb. 15-25, will see its section dedicated to newcomer German films merged into the main program.