Norway’s Oscar Entry ‘Songs of Earth’ Finds North American Distribution With Strand Releasing (EXCLUSIVE)

Lupita Nyong’o has joined Goodbye Julia, Sudan’s entry for this year’s Best International feature race at the Oscars, as an executive producer.

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard have announced South American, UK, European and North American tour dates for next year – see the list of dates below.Yesterday (November 7), King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard took to social media to announce the upcoming 2024 tour, which will see the six-piece perform 58 concerts across South America, Europe and North America, beginning in March and ending in November.Announcing 58 new shows for 2024 WOO!Argentina, Chile, Brasil, Colombia, Belgium, Germany, Czechia, Austria,…Posted by King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard on Tuesday, November 7, 2023Tickets to all of King Gizzard & The Wizard Lizard’s announced tour dates go on public sale on Friday (November 10) with pre-sales going live today (November 8) at 9am GMT via the band’s official website.The band most recently released their 25th studio album, ‘The Silver Chord’, last month.

EXCLUSIVE: Vanessa Kirby and Lauren Dark have come aboard as exec producers for Swiss Oscar entry Thunder from writer-director Carmen Jacquier. Kirby & Dark’s Aluna Entertainment will back the awards push for the film in the race for Best International Feature. 

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent U.K. based sales agency Film Republic has picked up Peru’s 2024 Oscar entry “The Erection of Toribio Bardelli,” the latest film from Adrián Saba, one of Peru’s most prominent auteurs on the festival scene. Film Republic has also shared a first international trailer with Variety.

EXCLUSIVE: United Talent Agency has signed Zarrar Kahn, director of Pakistan’s Oscar entry In Flames, for representation in all areas. 

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent REinvent International Sales has boarded Howard J. Ford’s “River of Blood,” a psychological thriller that’s about to start shooting in Thailand. The company will unveil the project to buyers at the American Film Market.

Caligula: The Ultimate Cut,” which premiered at the 2023 Cannes International Film Festival. Following the 1980 release of “Caligula,” producer and reconstructionist Thomas Negovan re-edited the film for three years utilizing the original materials for “Caligula: The Ultimate Cut,” which includes never-before-seen footage shot in 1976. Negovan’s reconstruction was created from 4K scans of the original camera negatives and features the complete performances of Malcolm McDowell and Helen Mirren for the first time.

EXCLUSIVE: On the eve of AFM, Lionsgate has picked up North American and UK rights to Indian action movie Kill for theatrical release in 2024.

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard have both officially entered the Oscar race for their extraordinary performances in Michel Franco’s “Memory.” However, the awards campaign has announced that Sarsgaard’s riveting turn as a man suffering from Alzheimer’s disease will be submitted for supporting actor consideration at the major ceremonies, including the Golden Globes, SAG and Academy Awards. His Oscar-winning co-star Chastain (“The Eyes of Tammy Faye”) will vie for lead actress.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Bhutan’s official Oscar entry “The Monk And The Gun,” Pawo Choyning Dorji‘s follow-up to “Lunana: A Yak in The Classroom,” has been bought by a raft of well-established international theatrical distributors. Following its festival premieres at Telluride, Toronto, Rome and Busan, “The Monk and the Gun” has been sold by Films Boutique to Pyramide Distribution (France), September Films (Benelux), Rialto Distribution (Australia), Future Films (Scandinavia), A Contracorriente (Spain), Lev Films (Israel), Aurora Films (Poland), Trigon (Switzerland), Alambique Films (Portugal) and Impact Films (India and Indian Subcontinent). Earlier this week, the crowdpleaser was also acquired by Roadside Attraction for the U.S.

Christopher Vourlias XYZ Films has acquired North American sales rights to the horror-thriller “Deus Irae,” the debut feature of Argentine filmmaker Pedro Cristiani, and will introduce the film to buyers at the upcoming AFM. Variety has been given exclusive access to the film’s bone-chilling trailer (see below).

EXCLUSIVE: Concrete Utopia, South Korea’s International Film Oscar entry this year, will hit theaters in NY and LA on Dec. 8 with a wide release on Dec. 15.  In the U.S, 815 Pictures and Seismic Releasing are releasing the Lotte Entertainment feature.

Naman Ramachandran Abramorama has acquired North American theatrical rights for Leslie Shampaine and Pip Gilmour‘s feature documentary “Call Me Dancer.” The deal was revealed on the sidelines of TIFFCOM, the film market attached to the Tokyo International Film Festival. The film follows Manish Chauhan, a young and talented street dancer from Mumbai who struggles against his parents’ insistence that he follow a traditional path.

Blink-182 will hit stadiums and arenas for the just-announced North American leg of its 2024 “One More Time” tour, with a stop in Los Angeles (at SoFi Stadium) set for July 6 and in New York on July 21 (at Citi Field).

Anna Marie de la Fuente New York-based Cinema Tropical has pounced on the U.S. theatrical rights to Fabián Hernández’s debut feature “A Male” (“Un Varón”), Colombia’s official submission to the 2024 Oscar race. The drama, which had its world premiere at Cannes Directors’ Fortnight last year, will open in New York City on Dec.

The number of unscripted shows commissioned in North America fell by 14% in the run-up to the writer-actor strikes, as the unscripted boom seen in the previous labor action failed to materialize.

Christopher Vourlias Annecy Cristal Prize winner Áron Gauder, who won the festival’s top prize in 2005 for his time-traveling love story “The District!”, returned to the prestigious French animation event this year with “Four Souls of Coyote,” an epic adventure inspired by a Native American myth about the creation of the universe that scooped the festival’s Jury Award. Produced by Budapest-based animation studio Cinemon Entertainment and written and created by Gauder, the 2D-animated project is Hungary’s selection for the best international feature film race at the 96th Academy Awards and plays next at the Hungarian Film Festival of Los Angeles, which runs Oct. 27 – Nov.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent “All of Us Strangers,” Andrew Haigh, U.K., U.S.) Setting a high benchmark for Valladolid’s main competition, “a curious kind of ghost story, at once incredibly tender and profoundly devastating as it slowly reveals its secrets,” Variety wrote in its review. Written and directed by Haigh.

Malaysian filmmaker Amanda Nell Eu has distanced herself from the cut of her feature film Tiger Stripes, which is being released theatrically in Malaysia on October 19 for one week in an Oscars-qualifying run. 

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Variety has been given exclusive access to the trailer for Una Gunjak’s debut feature “Excursion,” which is Bosnia and Herzegovina’s entry for the Oscars’ international feature film category. Salaud Morisset is handling international sales. HBO Europe has just picked up the SVOD and pay TV rights to the movie in 15 countries in Central and Eastern Europe.