French-Moroccan Acting Star Jamel Debbouze Urges Tourists To Keep Visiting Quake-Hit Marrakech; Film Fest Posts Support For Victims

The San Sebastian Film Festival awarded O Corno (The Rye Horn) with the Golden Shell for Best Film. San Sebastián native Jaione Camborda took the top prize of the night for the feature she directed.

International execs from Unifrance, MK2 and TrustNordisk kicked off the annual Zurich Summit on Saturday to discuss the importance of film festivals when promoting a title and if fests are drifting away from what works in cinemas. 

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent The Montpellier Mediterranean Film Festival’s Cinemed industry section has teamed up with Beirut-based cultural nonprofit Aflamuna on a new initiative, under which 10 film and doc projects from a wide range of Arab countries will soon be unveiled to prospective partners. The new program, called Cinemed and Aflamuna Professional Encounters, features 10 Arab works in development that reflect a slew of themes relevant to the region, including political turbulence, societal changes, female empowerment and climate change concerns.

Pat Saperstein Deputy Editor The 27th annual American French Film Festival set for October has been canceled in light of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, the Franco American Cultural Fund announced. “The FACF Board of Directors determined this week that it was not possible to continue with business as usual,” the board said in a statement. The Los Angeles festival, formerly known as Colcoa, had been set for Oct.

The American French Film Festival (TAFFF), which had been due to take place in L.A. from October 18 to 22, has been shelved due to the writers and actors strikes.

Pop the cork and celebrate Haley Bennett in Widow Clicquot, a fast-paced and sexy biopic of the woman known as Madame “Veuve” Clicquot, or by her actual full name, Barbe Nicole Ponsardin-Clicquot, who triumphed over all odds to become the force that created and brought to the world the leading brand of Champagne. The film premiered at the Toronto Film Festival.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Bosnian director and screenwriter Danis Tanović, whose “No Man’s Land” won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, has been selected as the president of the Official Competition Jury at the 45th edition of the Cairo Film Festival. As well as the Oscar, “No Man’s Land” won best screenplay at Cannes in 2001.

Addie Morfoot Contributor Three documentaries have been selected to to participate in the inaugural Diane Weyermann fellowship program, which will kick off Sept. 15 at Maine’s 19th edition of the Camden Intl.

The San Sebastian Film Festival has issued a statement standing by its decision to screen a film about Josu Urrutikoetxea, the former leader of the Basque separatist militant group ETA.

It’s interesting how the Venice Film Festival has gone from one of the festivals of the fall festival season to arguably the best film festival in the world now, even overshadowing Cannes in recent years thanks to the fact that Netflix now avoids the Croisette for the most part because of France’s theatrical laws and save their Oscar contenders for the Lido. Venice has had an amazing run, arguably since 2017 when Guillermo del Toro’s “The Shape Of Water” won the top prize and then went on to win the Oscar for Best Picture, which has happened one more time since with “Nomadland” and several key Oscar contenders since).

Writer/Director Azazel Jacobs has made a couple of indie pictures I really loved. French Exit gave Michelle Pfeiffer one of her meatiest roles in years and she ran with it in a delicious Paris-set tale. He also provided Debra Winger and Tracy Letts with terrific roles in the sophisticated The Lovers. And now Jacobs shows once again he knows how to attract top actors with well-written characters in the intimate drama, His Three Daughters which stars Carrie Coon, Elizabeth Olsen, and Natasha Lyonne as a trio of sisters gathering in the New York City apartment where their father (Jay O. Sanders) is down the hall (unseen for most of the film) and near death. They have arrived to spend his final days with him, stretched out here to three, but also to renew their own dysfunctional dynamic in what could easily have been made as a play rather than a film, and feels just a bit too stagey for its own good.

Ben Croll Seated before a photo of filmmaker Sarah Moldoror, panelists at this year’s Women in Film roundtable shared strategies for greater industry parity, while reflecting on recent successes and standstills in that ongoing pursuit. Variety has been give access to the video of the panel discussion.

It is only appropriate that Sony’s terrific new comedy, Dumb Money starts with the Columbia Pictures logo. That was the studio that Frank Capra famously helped build with his movies where the little guy triumphs over the corporate bad guys. Dumb Money is positively Capraesque in the way it tells its David vs Golitath improbable story about how an internet geek started a movement that blew up the heretofore loser stock of shopping mall game store GameStop and became the toast of Wall Street while bankrupting a couple of billionaire hedge funds in the process. It had its World Premiere tonight at the Toronto International Film Festival before its theatrical release later this month.

Spanish film star Gabriel Guevara was arrested on sexual assault charges while in attendance this weekend at the Venice International Film Festival. The 22-year-old was the star of Prime V

Woody Allen’s Coup de Chance premiered at the Venice Film Festival on Monday. The film, which was directed and written by Allen himself, received a five-minute ovation from the audience.

Exactly who are these people? They’re rich, obviously. They’re Parisian, which means that they are already fantasy figurines in the European curiosity shop of Woody Allen’s imagination. But does any actual modern man, no matter how rich and unfathomably French, come home from work in 2023 to request a cognac from his wife, who then calls out to the maid to bring Monsieur a cognac while she configures herself into a glamour position on the couch? Is this actually 1953? Or maybe 1923 – the Gatsby era, where Woody Allen is clearly a very enthusiastic visitor?

Emilia Clarke sparkles in a chic black dress at the 2023 Deauville American Film Festival on Sunday (September 3) in Deauville, France.

The plan was for renowned director William Friedkin to be appearing at the Venice Film Festival presenting the out of competition World Premiere of his latest production, an adaptation of Herman Wouk’s 1954 play The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial. Unfortunately Friedkin died August 7th, but the show goes on anyway.

Spanish actor Gabriel Guevara travelled to Venice to accept an award at this year’s Venice International Film Festival; instead, he found himself under arrest due to an outstanding warrant for a previous charge of sexual assault.

Gabriel Guevara has been arrested.