John Landis, Louis Garrel, Ernest Dickerson & Ariane Labed Among 300 Signatories Of Open Letter In Support Of Cannes Worker’s Strike

After starting his career being best known as the hunky guy in the “Divergent” film series, Theo James has started to pick some really interesting roles as of late. With starring roles on TV series such as “The Time Traveler’s Wife,” “White Lotus,” and “The Gentlemen,” as well as a film like “Dual,” James has quickly turned into an actor worth keeping an eye on.

Michaela Zee Theo James is set to star alongside Aaron Taylor-Johnson in the heist thriller “Fuze.” Directed by David Mackenzie (“Hell or High Water,” “Outlaw King”) from a script penned by Ben Hopkins (“Limonov: The Ballad of Eddie,” “Simon Magus”), “Fuze” “opens on the discovery of an unexploded World War II bomb in a London construction site sparking a mass evacuation the perfect cover for a heist,” according to the film’s synopsis. Filming will begin in early July. “Fuze” is produced by Gillian Berrie (“Outlaw King,” “Tetris”) for Sigma Films, as well as Sebastien Raybaud (“The End We Start From,” “Greenland”) and Callum Grant (“Jackdaw,” “Cleaner”) for Anton.

French producer Dimitri Rassam is enjoying a high-profile Cannes Film Festival as producer of Competition title Limonov: The Ballad and The Count Of Monte Cristo, which scored a rousing 12-minute ovation at its Out of Competition debut.

Weird sisters have been spinning their witchy webs in stories dating back to Greek mythology, which included a macabre trio of sisters who passed a single eye between them. There is something of that sense of a closed circle of unknowable femininity between the two teenage girls in September Says, the first film to be directed by Greek Weird Wave actor Ariane Labed, based on the 2020 novel Sisters by Daisy Johnson and set between England and Ireland.

Anita Gou is no stranger to the festival circuit. Her L.A.-based Kindred Spirit banner saw a raft of its first projects debut at Sundance (think Lulu Wang’s Mandarin-language comedy The Farewell, which made $23M worldwide, Shia LaBeouf-starrer Honey Boy and Sam Levinson’s Assassination Nation) but, more recently, her co-production Silent Twins was selected in Un Certain Regard in 2022, while Dominic Savage’s Close To You premiered in Toronto last year. The company’s Mubi-acquired doc The Last Year of Darkness, which explores the lives of alternative Chinese youth, was awarded a Special Mention prize in the Next:Wave section at the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival last year.

Lise Pedersen Danish-Spanish co-production “Only On Earth,” by award-winning Danish filmmaker Robin Petré (“Pulse,” “From the Wild Sea”), has picked up the top IEFTA Docs-in-Progress Award at Cannes Docs, the Cannes Film Market sidebar dedicated to documentary film. The film forms part of the Five Nordics Showcase, one of eight showcases presenting a total of 34 docs-in-progress this year. The others include Chile, Scotland, Palestine Circle Women Accelerator, Docs By The Sea, the East Doc Platform, and newcomer Switzerland.

Marta Balaga International filmmakers are calling for solidarity with Mohammad Rasoulof and persecuted filmmakers in Iran in an open letter, shared with Variety. Rasoulof – about to screen his latest film “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” in Cannes’ main competition – was sentenced to imprisonment and torture by the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Steven J. Horowitz Senior Music Writer Metro Boomin has announced his initiative to donate $100,000 to five women-focused nonprofits in his native St. Louis, MO in honor of his late mother’s legacy.

Ben Croll Ariane Labed simply describes herself as European. Herein is the most concise and expansive way to encompass a career with many footholds, a professional path that kicked off in Greece — where Labed became the emblematic star of the early 2010’s Greek Weird Wave — before winding towards American indie fare from the likes of Richard Linklater, followed by lead roles on primetime French dramas.

Kevin Costner was honored with France’s Order of Arts and Letter at the Cannes Film Festival on Sunday, ahead of the Out of Competition world premiere of his two-part Western epic Horizon: An American Saga.

“I’m not afraid to testify at all, I’m just not going to out of fear,” said James Austin Johnson ‘s Donald Trump from the hall of a Manhattan courthouse in the cold open tonight of the final show of SNL’s 49th season.

Anne McCarthy The 49th season finale of “Saturday Night Live” opened with James Austin Johnson as Donald Trump speaking at the barricades of a Manhattan courthouse, in a nod to Trump’s ongoing legal woes amid his presidential campaign. Johnson as Trump spoke about his “weird and depressing” state at the courthouse, saying, “I don’t like being in court because they say very mean things about me as I’m trying to sleep.” (It was reported that Trump fell asleep in court during proceedings.) He goes on to say, “now that my defense is supposed to begin on Monday, I would love to testify; I’m not afraid to testify at all, I’m just not going to out of fear.” He continues to say how he doesn’t want to go back to the White House, “but it appears people want to send me there.” Johnson’s Trump pokes fun at Trump’s rigged election claims, too.

The first iteration of the Cannes Film Festival, planned for 1939, was scuppered when Germany invaded Poland to trigger the start of World War II. But when the festival finally got off the ground in 1946, Indian cinema came out swinging. Mounted shortly after the conclusion of the war, the first “real” Cannes Film Festival featured competition entries from Billy Wilder (The Lost Weekend), Roberto Rossellini (Open City), and David Lean (Brief Encounter). In the spirit of post-war peace and reconciliation, the competition jury, headed by French historian Georges Huisman, handed the top prize — then the Grand Prix — to films from 11 of the 18 countries represented that year.

In Quentin Dupieux’s new satirical comedy The Second Act, which kicked off the Cannes Film Festival on Tuesday night, the pic takes poke at myriad culture wars, including France’s latest #MeToo movement. Asked front and center about her take on the latest wave, the pic’s star Léa Seydoux said “It’s a wonderful thing that women are speaking out. It’s about high time they did.”

Christopher Vourlias In the past decade, Swedish-Polish filmmaker Magnus von Horn has become something of a fixture on the French Riviera, with his latest film, “The Girl With the Needle,” the director’s third feature to debut at the Cannes Film Festival and his first to compete for the Palme d’Or. But the dark historical drama, which is set in post-WWI Copenhagen, marks a departure for the 40-year-old.

The Cannes Film Festival always has incredible fashion on the red carpet and the opening ceremony just kicked off the next week of amazing looks!

The Second Act

EXCLUSIVE: Natalie Portman has joined the voice cast for French director Ugo Bienvenu’s upcoming animated feature Arco about a boy who uses rainbows to travel through time and his adventures as he gets stuck in the wrong era.

Johnny Marr has announced a “mega” North American tour with James later this year – see the full list of tour dates below.Yesterday (May 7), Marr took to social media to announce the North American tour dates for his ‘Spirit Power’ shows with James, which will take place between September and October.The 20-date trek will see Marr and James play shows in Denver, Vancouver, Los Angeles, Brooklyn, Montreal, Chicago and more. Pre-sale tickets to the shows go live today (May 8) at 10am local time, while general tickets to the tour will go on sale at 10am local time this Friday, May 10.

Matt Donnelly Senior Film Writer Dozens of top Hollywood creatives and activists have signed an open letter in response to the shuttering of production company Participant — imploring the industry to continue to effect change through film and television as the defunct company once did. George Clooney, Aflonso Cuarón, Ava DuVernay, Jane Fonda, Regina King, Viola Davis, #MeToo founder Tarana Burke, civil rights attorney Bryan Stevenson, Color of Change president Rashad Robinson and more are signators, in addition to groups like GLAAD and Human Rights Watch.