MUBI Buys Aki Kaurismaki’s Cannes Darling ‘Fallen Leaves’ for Major Markets

The European Commission has given the greenlight for French conglom Vivendi’s acquisition of the Lagardère Group.

Bryan Cranston has announced that he is taking a break from acting for a year which will include “unplugging from social media”. The 67-year-old American actor, known for portraying chemistry teacher-turned-crime boss Walter White, said he was making the decision to spend more time with his “beautiful” wife Robin Dearden and have “a sort of reset” on his career. His decision follows British actor Tom Holland telling Extra on Wednesday that he is taking a “year off” after psychological thriller series The Crowded Room “broke” him.

Manori Ravindran Executive Editor of International Israeli crime drama “Your Honor,” which was adapted by Showtime as the Bryan Cranston-led thriller, has been revealed as the most successful new scripted format in the last three years by U.K. media intelligence consultancy K7 Media. The Yes Studios-produced scripted format has had seven adaptations since 2020, including the Showtime series, alongside versions in India, France, Russia, Germany, Italy and Turkey. Other top-performing scripted formats with five or six new adaptations since 2020 include ITV’s he said-she said thriller “Liar” out of Britain; Stan’s Australian police comedy “No Activity”; Argentinian parenting telenovela “Dear Daddies” from Telefe; and the French showbiz dramedy “Call My Agent!” from M6.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent The Cannes Film Festival has unveiled the dates of its 77th edition which will take place May 14-25, 2024. This year’s festival wrapped May 27 with Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall” winning the Palme d’Or, Jonathan Glazer’s “A Zone of Interest” take home the Grand Prize, and Aki Kaurismäki’s “Fallen Leaves” nabbing the Jury Prize. The jury of the 76th edition was presided over by Ruben Ostlund, the two-time Palme d’Or winning director of “The Square” and “Triangle of Sadness.” The first post-pandemic edition, 2023 was marked by an overall well-received Official Selection lineup and a strong presence of American talent and studios. Some of the anticipated films spotlighted at the festival included Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon”, Todd Haynes’ “May December” and Wes Anderson‘s “Asteroid City,” as well as Disney’s “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” Pedro Almodóvar’s short film “Strange Way of Life” and Pixar’s “Elemental.”

Naman Ramachandran Sovereign has acquired U.K. and Ireland distribution rights for Lisandro Alonso’s Cannes title “Eureka,” starring Viggo Mortensen. The film recently had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival’s Cannes Premiere strand in May. “Eureka” follows the story of Alaina (Alaina Clifford), a police officer in the Pine Ridge Reservation who decides to stop responding to her radio, leaving her niece Sadie waiting in vain for her return. Hurt by Alaina’s absence, Sadie embarks on a journey with the guidance of her grandfather. The journey transcends time and space, taking her to South America and transforming her perception of the world. As Sadie encounters the dreams of the forest dwellers, she learns that birds, if understood, hold truths that humans can’t grasp.

A law student who is living in Glasgow has been selected by a massive international beauty brand as one of their boundary-breaking innovators nominated for an award for pushing international 'green gaming.'

William Earl While many horror movies are saddled with two-dimensional characters, the biggest strength of “The Boogeyman” is centering the story around a family that genuinely seems to love each other, which ratchets up the tension. The film’s cast had a unique path to finding the chemistry before the cameras even rolled, taking two weeks to act as a family in real life to deepen their bonds. “Mindy Project” alum and “Air” scene-stealer Chris Messina stars as Will Harper, a widowed dad who, despite being a therapist, can’t communicate with his daughters about the pain they’re all feeling. Messina said he was able to get in the right zone with “Yellowjackets” star Sophie Thatcher, who played his teen daughter Sadie, and Vivien Lyra Blair, who played the younger Sawyer, because of their family outings.

It’s a wrap for the 2023 edition of the Cannes Film Festival, where French director Justine Triet’s courtroom thriller “Anatomy of a Fall” has won this year’s Palme d’Or for best film.

Mubi has snapped up rights to the acclaimed feature Fallen Leaves, written and directed by Aki Kaurismäki, in a competitive situation, following its world premiere in Official Competition at the Cannes Film Festival.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic Aki Kaurismäki, the deadpan cockeyed minimalist of Finland, has become the ultimate illustration of the principle that if you make movies in the same mood and style, with the same monosyllabic bombed-out hipster vibe, for a period of 30 years, your movies may not have changed — but the world around them has, so the films will have a totally different effect. In “Fallen Leaves,” the Kaurismäki bauble that’s showing at Cannes this year, there’s actually a scene in which a character uses a computer. The film’s heroine, Ansa (Alma Pöysti), loses her job as a supermarket worker, and to find another gig she rents an HP laptop at a makeshift Internet café that charges 10 Euro for half an hour. Apart from that, the movie unfolds in that scruffy and sparsely decorated so-familiar-it’s-cozy pre-tech Kaurismäki zone, where people still use electric adding machines or listen to a bulky kitchen radio that looks like it’s from the early ’60s. “Fallen Leaves” is set in Helsinki, the capital of Finland, but to our eyes it’s a weirdly underpopulated place where shopping, as a pastime, doesn’t exist, and neither, in any meaningful way, does conversation.

“It felt like this bloody world needed some love stories now,” Fallen Leaves director Aki Kaurismäki said of his Palme d’Or contender this afternoon.

Marta Balaga Finnish actors Alma Pöysti and Jussi Vatanen have been making names for each other for a while now. But playing leads in Aki Kaurismäki’s latest film, “Fallen Leaves,” was a whole different story. “He has always been that household name, even when I was growing up on a farm in the 1980s, kicking a ball against our cowhouse. It’s crazy that now, we are here together. Also, he is really just a regular guy. Funny and he actually talks a lot,” Vatanen tells Variety in Cannes. A household name himself thanks to the “Lapland Odyssey” franchise, he has been exploring dramatic roles in “Forest Giant” or “The Man Who Died.”

nothing in common.)“Fallen Leaves” is the first movie Kaurismaki has made since 2017’s “The Other Side of Hope” – which was, he said at the time, the last movie he would ever make. And if it’s odd that it’s the first movie after his last movie, the Cannes program says that it’s also the fourth part of a working-class trilogy (“Shadows in Paradise,” “Ariel” and “The Match Factory”) that he made three decades ago. Ansa (Alma Pöysti) works in a supermarket, at least until she’s fired for taking home a sandwich with an expired sell-by date.

The very first winner of the Palme d’Or in 1955 was future Best Picture Oscar winner Marty which starred Ernest Borgnine and Betsy Blair as two lonely middle aged adults beginning a tentative relationship in search of love. Before it was called the Palme d’Or, the top Cannes prize known then as the Grand Prix went in 1946 at the festival’s beginning to David Lean’s Brief Encounter, also the story of two adults who meet by chance and get together.

Harrison Ford had a hard time fighting back tears at the Cannes Film Festival in the South of France Thursday night. Ford attended the festival with wife Calista Flockhart for the premiere of "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny." This marks Ford's fifth and final movie in the franchise. Variety reported that once the film concluded, there was a standing ovation that lasted more than five minutes in the Palais des Festivals.

Following its out-of-competition world premiere this evening at the Cannes Film Festival, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny was treated to a five-minute standing ovation as the audience inside the festival’s Grand Théâtre Lumière.

Firebrand,” a period drama about Katherine Parr, the sixth and final wife of Henry VIII, has sold out internationally ahead of its world premiere on Sunday. Sources tell Variety that the film has sold into STXInternational for the U.K. and to Sony Pictures for most other overseas markets. FilmNation has sold remaining international markets to independent international distributors. In the U.K., Variety understands that Prime Video is in the process of buying the film from STX. This could mean that STX is handling a theatrical release, while Prime Video takes the film for streaming, or that the streamer will also handle theatrical in the territory. Sources indicate that Prime Video is also picking up streaming rights in a number of other international markets.

Marta Balaga The Sitges–International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia has revealed the opening film for its 56th edition at Cannes’ Fantastic Pavilion: “Hermana Muerte” by Paco Plaza. Produced by El Estudio for Netflix, it was written by Jorge Guerricaechevarría. Shot almost entirely in the Valencian monastery of San Jerónimo de Cotalba, Plaza’s seventh feature is “a horror tale with a feminine touch,” it was stated, which will take its viewers all the way back to post-Civil War Spain, when a convent is shaken up by the arrival of Narcisa, a young novice with supernatural powers.

Manori Ravindran Executive Editor of International MUBI has acquired all rights for Kevin Macdonald’s John Galliano documentary from Newen Connect. The film “High & Low — John Galliano” has sold to MUBI for North America, U.K. and Ireland, Germany, Austria, Latin America, Benelux, Turkey and India. The streamer and distributor will reveal its theatrical release plans and streaming dates in the near future. Macdonald’s credits include the Oscar-winning “One Day in September,” “Touching the Void,” “The Last King of Scotland,” “Whitney” and, most recently, “The Mauritanian.” Widely recognized as one of the most influential and successful fashion designers of our time, Galliano dressed the most beautiful and famous women in the world for almost 15 years at Givenchy and Dior. He reinvented the fashion industry by transforming his runway shows into immersive fantasies and helped turn high-fashion from an elitist niche into a multi-billion-dollar global business.

While Southeast Asian films have premiered at the Cannes Film Festival many times before, and even won the Palme d’Or, there’s an energy around the region this year that we haven’t felt on the Croisette at previous editions.