Liu Jian’s Berlin Competition Entry ‘Art College 1994’ Unveils Clip, Poster (EXCLUSIVE)

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor The first image has been unveiled from Miguel Gomes’ upcoming late 1910s drama “Grand Tour,” which is being sold by The Match Factory. The film is currently shooting in Italy, and stars Gonçalo Waddington and Crista Alfaiate. “Grand Tour” comes after the successful international sales and distribution of Gomes’ critically acclaimed features “Tabu,” “Arabian Nights” and “The Tsugua Diaries” – all titles sold by The Match Factory. “Grand Tour” kicks off in Rangoon, Burma, 1917. Edward, a civil servant for the British Empire, runs away from his fiancée Molly the day she arrives to get married. During his travels, however, panic gives way to melancholy. Contemplating the emptiness of his existence, the cowardly Edward wonders what has become of Molly… Yet Molly, determined to get married and amused by his move, follows his trail on this Asian grand tour.

Lise Pedersen Dogwoof has shared with Variety the trailer of “Theatre of Violence,” nominated in main competition at CPH:DOX, the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival, one of Europe’s biggest documentary events. Shot over the course of six years, it follows the trial of Dominic Ongwen, the first former Ugandan child soldier to be convicted and sentenced by the International Criminal Court. Abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebel group when he was just nine years old, Ongwen became himself a feared rebel commander. He was jailed for 25 years in 2021 on multiple counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes, including sexual slavery, torture, and rape.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Autlook Filmsales has sold “Smoke Sauna Sisterhood,” which won the directing award for Anna Hints in the World Cinema Documentary section at Sundance, to more than 20 territories in North America, Europe and Australia. Deals are confirmed with Neue Visionen in Germany, Trigon in Switzerland, Against Gravity in Poland, Fidalgo in Norway, Ost For Paradise in Denmark, Vedetta in Benelux, Filmtrade in Greece and Cyprus, FilmIn in Spain, Alambique in Portugal, Filmladen in Austria, Pasaka Films in Lithuania, Artcam in Czech Rep. and Slovak Rep., Best Film in Latvia, Mozinet in Hungary, and Madman in Australia and New Zealand. The rights in U.S. have been picked up by Greenwich Entertainment and in Canada by Sherry Media Group. The theatrical release in Estonia is by ACME Film.

This is one killer lottery.

Jean Smart is on the mend — and her co-stars are sending her all their love!The 71-year-old actress revealed earlier this week that she recently underwent a «successful heart procedure» and was recovering well.Unfortunately, this meant the actress wasn't able to attend Sunday's SAG Awards with her fellow castmates and nominees — the HBO comedy earned its second consecutive nomination for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series this year — though Johnny Sibilly, Meg Stalter, Mark Indelicato and Rose Abdoo were keeping her in mind as they celebrated the nomination.«She's doing better,» Sibilly shared with ET's Denny Directo on the SAG Awards red carpet. «She is stronger than probably everyone in this room, and I feel like we're all just sending her love.

Jessica Kiang The quote that opens Chinese director Liu Jian’s shaggy but amiable new animated feature is instructive. “To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life” is a passage from James Joyce’s “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,” and indeed, Liu was himself at art college as a young man in the early ’90s, when and where “Art College 1994” is, unsurprisingly, set. The quasi-memoir feel to the movie does have its charm — it’s always a kick to see animation techniques applied not to extravagant flights of fancy but to slices of real, ordinary life — but it’s also its chief flaw. In re-creating life out of life, Liu is quite successful; whether he makes it into drama is another question. Like its characters, “Art College 1994” gives the impression of having just too much time on its hands.

EXCLUSIVE: Following bidding wars in multiple territories, A24 has sold Past Lives, probably the year’s most critically acclaimed new film, to a raft of key territories.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Berlinale competition film “Music” opens with gray clouds racing across the face of a Greek mountain as a storm prepares to break. It is a suitably dramatic prelude to the tumultuous events that will unfold, albeit rendered in an understated manner by German director Angela Schanelec, who won the Berlinale best director award in 2019 for “I Was at Home, But.” As the storm lifts, an abandoned baby boy is rescued a paramedic, who names him Jon. Years later, Jon, now a young man, kills another man, accidentally, and ends up in prison. Here, he is tended to by a female guard, Iro, as his eyesight begins to deteriorate. When he is released, the two get married and have a child. But several years later, his wife discovers a terrible secret.

Danish actor Nikolaj Lie Kaas is best known for his work on-screen with filmmakers such as Lars von Trier and Anders Thomas Jensen, but he’s in Berlin this week with Agent, his first project as a writer-director.

American distribution following its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival. Cinema Guild will release the film in theaters following its North American festival premiere later this year. The film tells the story of a a pair of wayward young people who abandon theirnewborn child on a stormy night in the mountains of Greece. Taken in by a family of farmers, Jon grows up without knowing his father or mother. Years later, after a tragic accident, he is sent to prison, where he meets Iro. The two form a connection, expressed through music, that will, by turns, haunt them and uphold them the rest of their days. Freely inspired by the story of Oedipus, Schanelec’s latest is as terrifying as myth and as gentle as a folk song.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The Vesoul International Film Festival of Asian Cinema has unveiled its 85-title lineup for the edition that starts later this month (February 28 to March 7, 2023). Elements include a 10-film competition section, a 10-film documentary film section, a tribute to the Turkish director Semih Kaplanoglu; a thematic section “Asian Diaspora Cinema” offering a panorama of works by directors from Asian countries living in exile; and a Philippines cinema sidebar. Fiction films in competition include: Azerbaijan’s “Cold as Marble,” by Asif Rustamov; China’s “In Our Prime,” by Liu Yulin; Korea’s “A Letter from Kyoto,” by Kim Min-ju; India’s: “Behind Veils,” by Praveen Morshhale; Iran’s “No End,” by Nader Saievar; Mongolia’s “The Sales Girl,” by Sengedorj Janchivdorj; The Philippines’s “Feast,” by Brillante Mendoza; Singapore’s “#LookAtMe,” by Ken Kwek; and Vietnam’s “Memento Mori: Earth,” by Marcus Vu Manh Cuong. The president of the jury is Lee Yong-kwan, president of the Busan film festival.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor The Berlin Film Festival has returned to its first fully in person edition since 2020. But this year, the Berlinale has come back with a vengeance, and added something that it wasn’t especially known for in its pre-pandemic days: star power. Indeed, it’s been hard not to bump into a famous person in the German city — almost giving this previously mostly auteur driven gathering a vibe that more closely resembles the latest versions of Sundance or Toronto. Artistic director Carlo Chatrian told Variety Sunday that A-list names help raise awareness for the festival’s core mission – to celebrate movies and encourage audiences to return to theaters.

Naman Ramachandran Acclaimed “Phantom Thread” actor Vicky Krieps’ latest film, “Ingeborg Bachmann – Journey into the Desert,” directed by German cinema legend Margarethe von Trotta, has its world premiere in competition at the Berlin Film Festival. Krieps plays the titular Austrian Bachmann, one of the most renowned German-language poetry and prose writers of the 20th century. The film follows her life and career and her relationships with Swiss playwright (Ronald Zehrfeld), Austrian author Adolf Opel (Tobias Samuel Resch) and German composer Hans Werner Henze (Basil Eidenbenz) during a six-year period in her life from 1958. The actor was familiar with the writer from her formative years. “I knew about Bachmann because in Germany she’s very famous. I grew up with her in school,” Krieps told Variety. “I was very into poetry when I was younger, so I knew her poetry.” Krieps familiarized herself further with Bachmann’s work once she was cast.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Paris-based Italian director Giacomo Abbruzzese says making the Berlin Film Festival competition cut with his first feature, “Disco Boy,” which toplines German star Franz Rogowski (“Passages,” ”Undine”), is “certainly a dream come true.” But he also points out that his remarkable debut was a long time coming.  A graduate of several film schools, including France’s prestigious Le Fresnoy, Abbruzzese started developing “Disco Boy” in 2013 following an encounter in a French disco with a classical dancer who had been a soldier.  

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor When Frank Doelger, a six-time Emmy award-winning showrunner, whose credits include “Game of Thrones,” “John Adams” and “Rome,” was preparing to adapt Frank Schätzing’s 900-page novel “The Swarm” into an eight-part eco-thriller, he resolved to place it in a different genre. Whereas the novel read like a “disaster movie,” Doelger wanted the series to be a “monster movie” — but with a twist, the monster was us. In the first few episodes of the show, which premieres at the Berlin Film Festival on Sunday, seemingly random, unconnected events occur in different parts of the world in which marine creatures start behaving in abnormal ways that threaten the lives of those who come in contact with them. After each event, scientists are given the task of finding the cause of the change in behavior, and they slowly start to wonder whether the events are connected, and ask what is triggering them.

Manori Ravindran Executive Editor of International One of the hottest packages at the EFM has been taken off the table for international. Sources tell Variety that Prime Video has snapped up all international rights, excluding the U.S., to Justin Kurzel’s “The Order,” which stars Jude Law and Nicholas Hoult in a story about the titular white supremacist organization that operated in the 1980s. The project is penned by Oscar- and BAFTA-nominated writer Zach Baylin (“King Richard”), who based the screenplay on Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt’s book “The Silent Brotherhood.” Published in 1989, the book details the activities of the radical-right hate group The Order, which was one of the most sinister organizations to emerge in America since the Ku Klux Klan.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Uncork’d Entertainment has acquired the North American rights for suspense sci-fi thriller “I’ll Be Watching” from Iuvit Media Sales at the European Film Market in Berlin. The film has also been picked up by Falcon Films in the Middle East and North Africa, while Dolphin Medien has taken German-speaking territory rights. The film is directed by Erik Bernard (“Free Dead or Alive”), and stars “The 100” stars Eliza Taylor and Bob Morley, along with Bryan Batt (“12 Years a Slave”), David Keith (“An Officer and a Gentleman”), Hannah Fierman (“VHS”), and Seth Michaels (“Red Notice”).

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor 101 Films Intl. has secured worldwide distribution rights for World War II adventure film “War Blade,” starring Joseph Millson (“Casino Royale,” “The Last Kingdom”), Paul Marlon (“Trigger Point”), Michael McKell (“Murder Investigation Team,” “Doctors”) and Rebecca Scott (“The Capture,” “Transhuman”). The sales company is presenting the film to buyers at the European Film Market in Berlin. The film was written and directed by Nicholas Winter (“Robin Hood: The Rebellion,” “Breathe,” “Bone Breaker”). “War Blade” follows Robert Banks, an agent of the British Special Operations Executive, who is tasked with rescuing a French resistance fighter from a hidden Nazi bunker. With the help of a German nurse and a ragtag group of allies, Banks must journey to the belly of the beast.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Russian documentary filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky and the production team behind his Oscar-shortlisted feature “Gunda” will follow up with the second instalment in his “Empathy Trilogy.” AC Independent will handle the North America sale and Cinephil will be selling international rights. They will be kicking off sales this week at the European Film Market in Berlin. The new film focuses on the health of the oceans and the effects of industrial fisheries. The “Empathy Trilogy,” of which “Gunda” formed the first part, looks at the sentience of non-human animals.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor AnnaSophia Robb has joined Kathy Bates, John Malkovich, Tim Blake Nelson, Stephen Root and Lewis Pullman in the cast of “Thelma.” The Exchange is selling the film at Berlin’s European Film Market. Robb starred in Hulu’s Emmy-winning series “The Act,” Hulu’s “Little Fires Everywhere” and HBO Max’s “The Carrie Diaries,” and is toplining Netflix’s upcoming “Rebel Ridge.” “Thelma” tells the true story of the 11-year battle by the mother of John Kennedy Toole, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of “A Confederacy of Dunces,” to get his novel published after his suicide.