Luxbox Swoops on Argentine Mystery Adventure ‘Trenque Lauquen’ Before Venice Horizons Premiere (EXCLUSIVE)

Brent Lang Executive Editor Yellow Veil Pictures has acquired U.S. distribution rights to “Ashkal,” following its screening at the Toronto International Film Festival. The murder mystery is the second feature from Tunisian director Youssef Chebbi and had its world premiere earlier this year at Cannes as part of the Directors’ Fortnight section. Yellow Veil Pictures plans to release the film theatrically in 2023. “Ashkal” is set amongst derelict, half-finished apartment complexes of a former regime, where a mysterious burnt body is discovered by two police officers. The corpse reveals a puzzling repetition of events. As the investigation progresses, a network of violence and corruption is uncovered throughout the city. Fatma Oussaifi and Mohamed Houcine Grayaa star in the picture.

Magnolia Pictures acquired North American rights to Blue Jean, the directorial debut of Georgia Oakley which just world-premiered in the Venice Days section of the Venice Film Festival. Pic stars Rosy McEwen and won Venice’s Giornate degli Autori (GdA) People’s Choice award. Magnolia plans to release the film next year.

Manori Ravindran International Editor Magnolia Pictures has acquired the North American rights to Venice Film Festival sensation “Blue Jean.” The directorial debut of Georgia Oakley, which just world-premiered in the Venice Days section of the Italian festival, is set in England in 1988, where Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government is about to pass a law stigmatizing gays and lesbians. The new legislation forces Jean (Rosy McEwen), a closeted gym teacher, to live a double life. But as pressure mounts from all sides, the arrival of a new student catalyzes a crisis that will challenge Jean to her core.

Valentina Zenere joined the cast of Netflix’s hit show Elite this year and now she’s at the Venice Film Festival!

Christopher Vourlias Paris-based sales agency and production company Luxbox has released the trailer for “Trenque Lauquen,” Argentine director-producer Laura Citarella’s adventure mystery that has its world premiere Sept. 8 in the Horizons sidebar of the Venice Film Festival. Variety has been given exclusive access to the trailer, which can be seen below. Filmed in two parts, Citarella’s fourth feature begins with a pair of men both searching for a woman who has mysteriously vanished. While one of them claims to be her boyfriend, the other has also forged an intimate bond with the missing woman, with a series of flashbacks revealing that he’s also fallen in love with her.

Oliver Stone is in Venice this year to debut his latest documentary, Nuclear. Written alongside political scholar Joshua S. Goldstein, the film sets out to re-examine the role nuclear power can play in our lives and makes the case that the energy source is humanity’s only realistic alternative to fossil fuels in the fight against climate change. Deadline sat down with Stone and Goldstein prior to the film’s premiere on the Lido to discuss why the pair decided to link up and how the lengthy production process almost “took the life” out of Stone.

Following the premiere of Olivia Wilde’s new film Don’t Worry Darling at the 2022 Venice International Film Festival, one piece of footage prompted fierce online debate. The clip in question, however, wasn’t from the film itself but from its screening’s aftermath, and it depicts what many are convinced is Harry Styles spitting on his co-star, American actor Chris Pine.

cast at the Venice Film Festival is going viral, this time involving the film's leading men, Harry Styles and Chris Pine. A viral clip is circulating online of 28-year-old Styles taking his seat next to 42-year-old Pine at the film's premiere in Italy. In the clip, the «As It Was» singer appears to do something with his mouth at the exact moment that Pine stops clapping, smiles and shakes his head.Soon after the clip began making the rounds, many fans were convinced that Styles had, in fact, spit on Pine in front of hundreds of attendees at the premiere. #HarryStyles appears to spit on Chris Pine i won't sleep until i know the truth pic.twitter.com/wLXjIHTYgUBut others think that Pine was simply realizing he'd put his own sunglasses, which he picks up a moment after the alleged spit, in his lap. «Chris Pine just wondered where his sunglasses were after the applause.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Berlin-based sales outfit M-Appeal has closed distribution deals for Italy and Greece following the film’s world premiere at the Venice Film Festival. The Israeli-Ukrainian co-production plays in Venice’s Horizons Extra section, and will have its North American premiere on Sept. 14 at Toronto Film Festival in the Contemporary World Cinema section. Rome-based P.F.A Films Srl will distribute the film in Italy, with a theatrical release planned for April 2023. The company’s recent titles include “Fabian – Going to the Dogs” by Dominik Graf, “The Audition” by Ina Weisse, and “Border” by Abbasi Ali.

Five years on from their thrilling diplomatic drama “The Summit,” icons of Argentinian cinema Santiago Mitre (“White Elephant,” “Paulina,” ) and Ricardo Darín (“Wild Tales,” “The Secret in Their Eyes”) have teamed up once more for the Venice-bound “Argentina, 1985.” This time, however, their collaboration is much more fact than fiction, as the film seeks to bring one of Argentina’s most historic judicial trials to the big screen.

As the 49th Annual Telluride Film Festival comes to a close on this Labor Day holiday, it once again could be a fest that ignites the Oscar chances of a number of films that have either had their World Premieres or North American Premieres this weekend. As part of the so-called Fall Festival Trifecta of Venice/Telluride/Toronto (the latter beginning this Thursday), this is where the six month+ awards season officially starts, even if the even longer Emmy season doesn’t conclude until a week from today.

Colin Farrell suits up sharp for the premiere of his new movie, The Banshees of Inisherin, during the 2022 Venice International Film Festival on Monday (September 5) in Venice, Italy.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge stands next to partner Martin McDonagh during the premiere of his new film, The Banshees of Inisherin, during the 2022 Venice International Film Festival on Monday (September 5) in Venice, Italy.

Christopher Vourlias On the eve of the 79th Venice Film Festival, where his powerful Ukraine war documentary “Freedom on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom” will premiere out of competition on Sept. 7, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Evgeny Afineevsky was in a frantic race against time. Footage was still being shot in Ukraine into the second week of August, with Afineevsky only completing the film on Aug. 31 — the same day that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed the A-list celebrities and foreign press at the festival’s opening ceremony, urging the world not to forget the war in Ukraine with the impassioned plea: “Don’t turn your back to us.”

To love is to want to consume someone whole, to pick their skin and sinews out of the gaps between your teeth, to swallow their pancreas and wash it all down with gulps of throat-fizzing stomach acid. Take the age-old question that dominates the Grindr lexicon: do you want to be someone, be with them, or be inside them? “Bones and All,” Luca Guadagnino’s typically sumptuous, deeply romantic American parable — about a pair of teen cannibals, coming of age against the backdrop of ‘80s Reaganism — literalizes this allure, as any great anthropophagist love story should.

Manori Ravindran International Editor It’s Timothée Chalamet Day in Venice. This isn’t a national holiday, but perhaps it should be. It’s just past 1:30 p.m. outside the Venice Film Festival’s Sala Casino, and a crowd of youth have set aside work and school commitments to travel into the Lido to catch a glimpse of the American superstar arriving for a press conference. Every generation has their movie star heartthrob — from Jonathan Taylor Thomas to Brad Pitt in the ’90s and Robert Pattison at the dawn of the Twilight movies. For many young women, Chalamet represents the pinnacle of Gen Z cool. The Chalamet stans arrived as early as 7 a.m. on Friday to catch a glance of Timothée. They are, not surprisingly, mostly female. They describe their favorite performances as “Call Me By Your Name” and “The King” but are mostly drawn to Chalamet because of his kind and friendly nature.

Alpha Violet founding co-heads Virginie Devesa and Keiko Funato are in Venice this year with Indonesian filmmaker Makbul Mubarak’s first film Autobiography, which plays in Horizons ahead of trips to TIFF and London BFI  among other festivals.