Jia Zhangke on Experimenting With AI for Cannes Entry ‘Caught by the Tides,’ Respecting the Audience

EXCLUSIVE: A24 has acquired North American rights to Parthenope, the new film from Oscar winning filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino, ahead of its world premiere at the 77th Festival de Cannes.

EXCLUSIVE: DreamWorks Animation/Universal’s Kung Fu Panda 4 crossed the $500M mark globally this past weekend, reaching the milestone on a staggered release pattern that has worked well for the partners in the past (think Puss in Boots: The Last Wish). Through Wednesday, it’s at $324M international box office and $509M worldwide.

Murtada Elfadl “Daughter of Genghis” has been billed as a portrait of a nationalist gang leader at this year’s Hot Docs Film Festival. And while it follows Gerel Byamba, the leader of an entirely-female, ultra-nationalist Mongolian group called Gerel Khas, it is also a surprisingly poignant documentary portrait of a widow and her orphaned son trying to connect under grief.

Fontaines D.C. have announced a 2024 European ‘ROMANCE’ tour.

Theo James is getting in a workout.

When did Columbia become Kanye State? Bill Maher asked that question at the top of Friday’s Real Time on HBO, setting the tone for a show that focused on the national campus unrest and what’s behind it.

The Annecy International Animation Film Festival has unveiled the line-up for its 2024 edition, running from June 9 to 15. (scroll down for full list of titles and events)

EXCLUSIVE: ‘Peaky Blinders’ and ‘Gangs of London’ star Joe Cole and ‘True Spirit’ and ‘Titans’ actor Teagan Croft have both just wrapped contemporary neo-noir thriller Override, the fourth feature from directing duo Natasha Merkulova and Alexey Chupov. It marks the English-language debut for the Russian helmers, whose Captain Volkonogov Escaped played in Venice’s Competition strand in 2021.

New Order’s Bernard Sumner has made a rare public statement to condemn Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and the government at large.The frontman took to his website to share a message, beginning his statement: “I don’t normally post much and don’t normally post about stuff like this – but I do care about it.” He went on to highlight two news stories: firstly, the announcement that the government looking to overhaul Personal Independence Payments for people with mental health issues, which Sumner branded as “a disgusting way to cut costs.”Sumner went on to suggest the move was “probably an attempt to recoup some of the money they wasted on ineffective personal protective equipment (PPE) during the Covid pandemic,” calling it “a scandalous waste of money.”“According to the government’s own figures the Department for Health & Social Care (DHSC) lost 75% of the £12 billion it spent on PPE in the first year of the pandemic to inflated prices and kit that did not meet the required standards – including fully £4 billion of PPE that will never be used by the NHS and needs to be disposed of, ie burnt,” he wrote. “A scandalous waste of money and, as usual, it’s the sick and vulnerable who suffer for it.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor TikTok could be banned in the U.S. as soon as January 2025. Here’s what the new law means for users of the popular short-form video app.

Eurovision Song Contest 2024.According to Eurovision World, the favourites to win the competition have been revealed. Coming in first place is Switzerland’s NEMO, who currently has a 25 per cent chance at snagging the crown this year with their song ‘The Code’.Behind Switzerland in second place is Croatia, whose entry Baby Lasagna is predicted to have a 17 per cent chance of winning with his song ‘Rim Tim Tagi Dim’.

Paramount+ has renewed the animated preschool series Dora for a second season.

EXCLUSIVE: Charades and New Europe Films are joining forces to co-sell Oscar-winning Hungarian director Laszlo Nemes’ long-awaited new feature Orphan, as the production gears up to commence shooting in and around Budapest this June.

EXCLUSIVE: Goodfellas has acquired world sales rights to Romanian actor and director Emanuel Parvu’s thriller Three Kilometers To The End Of The World.

Lise Pedersen In an exclusive interview with Variety after picking up the top industry prize at Swiss documentary festival Visions du Réel, Franco-Iranian director Mehran Tamadon outlined the intention of his upcoming feature documentary “The Last Days of the Hospital.” Set against the backdrop of France’s public health crisis and shortage of personnel, the film will show patients from a psychiatric hospital on the outskirts of Paris taking charge of their own ward. Tamadon has been running film workshops with the patients at the hospital for the past eight years, and decided it was time to make a film to denounce what he describes as “the ultra-liberal policy which plans the death of the public hospital.” “French public hospitals are not doing well, nurses and caregivers are leaving because they are mistreated and poorly paid.

EXCLUSIVE: US-Bangladeshi action movie MR-9: Do or Die, starring ABM Sumon, Michael Jai White and Frank Grillo, has been picked up by Quiver Distribution for a North American VOD/digital release this month.

The 2024 Formula 1 race season is heating up!

Lise Pedersen Two new cash prizes introduced this year in Swiss film festival Visions du Reel’s industry section, VdR-Industry, were among a flurry of awards handed out as the program wrapped in Nyon, Switzerland, on Wednesday. The Eurimages Co-production Development Award, created to promote the fund’s role in encouraging international co-production from the initial stages of a project, and which comes with a cash prize of €20,000 ($22,000), went to “The Last Days of the Hospital” by Mehran Tamadon (“My Worst Enemy,” “Bassidji”).

Formula 1‘s Charles Leclerc dons a white striped suit while attending the Rolex Monte-Carlo Masters held at Monte-Carlo Country Club on Sunday (April 14) in Monte-Carlo, Monaco.

Michael Schneider Variety Editor at Large Netflix has acquired “Rather,” the documentary about veteran journalist Dan Rather‘s landmark career in news. The film, which premieres April 24 on the streamer, utilizes the story of of Rather’s life on television to also explore the evolution of broadcast journalism, the troubles a free press now faces, along with the slide of American society from hard-fought advances in social justice and democratic freedoms.