First Look: Jan Bülow, Olivia Ross Star in Mystery Thriller ‘The Theory of Everything’ (EXCLUSIVE)

‘Righteous Thieves’ First Look

Christopher Vourlias Russian production and distribution powerhouse Central Partnership will launch two new animated features at this year’s European Film Market, along with a live-action film that will have its world premiere in competition at SXSW next month.“The Swiss Adventure” (pictured) is the first big-screen animated film from SMF Animation Studio, the venerable Russian animation house formerly known as Soyuzmultfilm. It tells the story of a 16-year-old servant who falls in love with the daughter of a wealthy merchant, who’s determined to marry her off to a rival of high social standing and low moral values.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor“1341 Frames of Love and War,” which world premieres in the Berlinale Special section of the Berlin Film Festival, has debuted its trailer with Variety. World sales are being handled by Reservoir Docs, excluding North America, Israel, Greece and Portugal, which are being sold by the filmmakers.The film is a documentary portrait of one of the world’s leading war photographers, Israel’s Micha Bar-Am.

Christopher Vourlias Heretic, the Athens-based boutique production company and sales agent, has acquired world sales rights for “Convenience Store,” by director Michael Borodin, which will have its premiere in the Berlin Film Festival’s Panorama strand.Borodin’s feature debut follows an Uzbek immigrant working at a convenience store on the outskirts of Moscow. As with the rest of the immigrants at the store, she’s forced to work without pay and to endure mental and physical abuse, until the day she overcomes her fear and takes her fate into her own hands.Based on real-life events and the active legal cases of immigrants in Russia, “Convenience Store” captures the horrors of modern slavery in a visceral blend of realism, documentary-style filmmaking and grand-scale cinema.

Christopher Vourlias Loco Films has taken world sales rights on Alexander Zolotukhin’s “Brother in Every Inch” ahead of its world premiere in the Berlin Film Festival’s competitive Encounters section. The Paris-based sales agent has also acquired “The Land of Sasha,” the feature debut of Julia Trofimova, which plays in the festival’s Generation 14plus strand.Zolotukhin’s sophomore feature is the story of twin brothers whose inseparable bond complicates their efforts to fulfill their shared dream of becoming military pilots.

In the birthplace of Western philosophy, Bill Murray dropped some wisdom on a receptive audience.

Naman Ramachandran Principal photography has wrapped on “He Went That Way,” the true crime thriller starring Jacob Elordi (“Euphoria”) and Zachary Quinto (Star Trek Franchise). Mister Smith Entertainment have revealed a first look image and will be showing the first footage to buyers at the upcoming European Film Market in Berlin.Set in 1964, “He Went That Way” is based on the true crime story of celebrity animal trainer Dave Pitts and his famous TV chimp, Spanky, centerpiece of the traveling entertainment show The Ice Capades in the 1960s, and his fateful three-day encounter with the serial killer Larry Lee Ranes.

MOSCOW -- Russia's Foreign Ministry on Thursday announced that it is shutting down the Moscow office of German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle and is withdrawing its staff's accreditations, in retaliation for a German move against Russian state RT TV.A ministry statement said the decision was “the first stage” of measures in response to Germany ordering RT to cease broadcasting its German-language programs in the country earlier this week.The statement said Deutsche Welle will stop broadcasting in Russia, and staff accreditations to work will be withdrawn. It added that authorities will “initiate the procedure” of declaring Deutsche Welle a “foreign agent” — a designation that carries additional government scrutiny and strong pejorative connotations aimed at discrediting the recipient.In the past year, dozens of Russian media outlets and individual journalists have been slapped with the “foreign agent” label, with some saying it has proved crippling for their operation.Moscow will also compile a list of German officials and “representatives of public organizations” involved in banning RT's broadcasting in Germany and bar them from entering Russia, the statement said.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorWorld sales company Global Screen has released the first-look image of “Recipes for Love and Murder,” which has been chosen for Berlinale Series Market Selects lineup at the European Film Market. Acorn has the rights to the series for the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Ireland, Australia and New Zealand.The 10-part South African and U.K.

Matt Donnelly Senior Film WriterThe small and powerful Sundance drama “A Love Song” has found worldwide distribution in Sony’s Stage 6 Films and Bleecker Street, Variety has learned exclusively.The acclaimed two-hander about love, loss and loneliness is led by Dale Dickey (“Winter’s Bone,” “Hell or High Water”) and honorary Academy Award winner Wes Studi (“Hostiles,” “The Last of the Mohicans”).The film, sitting at 93% Fresh on critic aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, marks the writer-director debut of Max Walker-Sliverman. Bleecker Street will release the film to domestic theaters this summer, while Stage 6 is currently charting the international release strategy.Dickey plays Faye, a wanderer who stations herself at an idyllic \ campsite in the Colorado Mountains – cooking simple meals, retrieving crawfish from a trap, and scanning her old box radio for a station.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent“Kompromat,” an anticipated spy thriller directed by Jerome Salle (“Zulu,” “L’Odyssée”) with Gilles Lellouche (“The Stronghold”) and Joanna Kulig (“Cold War”), has been sold by SND to distributors in key territories. Inspired by a true story, “Kompromat” stars Lellouche as a French diplomat working Siberia who discovers he is being framed by FBI and has to find his way out of the trap.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorBerlin-based sales agency Picture Tree Intl. has added to its European Film Market slate “Love Thing,” starring top German actor Elyas M’Barek, whose credits include “The Collini Case.” Also on the slate is “Soul of a Beast,” which debuts its trailer below.Despite the virtual nature of the EFM, the company has taken additional office space at the Marriott Hotel in Berlin’s Potsdamer Platz.“Love Thing,” which also stars Lucie Heinze, Peri Baumeister and Alexandra Maria Lara, is directed and written by Anika Decker, whose last feature “High Society” sold widely.

EXCLUSIVE: Eric Bana (Munich) and Kiernan Shipka (Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina) have been set to star in Ridley Scott-produced thriller Berlin Nobody, which Protagonist and Augenschein will be launching sales on at the virtual EFM next month.

Alexei Navalny, Russia’s highest-profile opposition figure, perennial thorn in Putin’s side and currently a guest in state prison, gets a vigorous up-close-and-personal look in this eventful, fest-moving, never-a-dull-moment documentary from Daniel Roher. A collaboration between HBO Max and CNN Films, Navalny, provides a sustained look at a good-looking, articulate and seemingly unafraid family man who came very close to being murdered on August 20, 2020 by what were quite clearly politically hired killers. The privileged access provides the opportunity for an international public to get a handle on a driven personality who consistently said things very few others are willing to risk. Anyone who follows contemporary international politics will eat it up.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticThere’s an extraordinary scene in the middle of “Navalny,” a must-watch documentary that tells the inspiring, scary, and profoundly important story of Alexei Navalny, the vitally popular Russian opposition leader who, as a presidential candidate, became such a threat to Vladimir Putin that the Kremlin tried to poison him. Most of the documentary, which was unveiled as a last-minute “surprise” entry in the U.S.