Manchester United are poised and ready to resume their Premier League charge after watching their players strut their stuff across the October international break.
29.09.2023 - 05:45 / variety.com
Callum McLennan Witscript and Hyperrate.io took home the prizes at San Sebastian’s 5th Zinemaldia Startup Challenge on Thursday afternoon. Each received €10,000 ($10,600) and access to incubation to nurture their fledgling companies, with the potential to vie for €500,000 ($530,000) in funding. Speaking with Variety following her win, Hendrikje Wagner CEO of Hyperate.io was delighted with the validation: “Other people think it’s a really good idea and it enables us to move discussions forward.” The startup integrates heart rate data into live streams, events, and games.
Its goal is fewfold: One is to help streamers automate the creation of short highlight videos from their streams using heart rate as a guide. It meets a need from streamers who attract users across social channels via manually edited short form video. A second was to enhance visibility of emotional impact further to facilitate hyper personalisation across a wide breadth of media.
The taking of a simple idea of heartbeat capture and elevating it impressed the judges. ”The potential for it to go outside the entertainment industry is quite staggering,” Harry Chadwick, director at Interflix Media told Variety, citing the fact that 23,000 streamers signed up to it with 57 million heartbeats pumped through the app. The Spanish judges were equally enamored with Witscript.
Co-Founder Mercè Delgado walked us through the tech which minimizes the time and costs associated with voice-over quality control processes. A slide showed the negative press “Squid Game” received when poorly executed. The presentation stood out for the level of due diligence on show as she drew attention to their TPN Gold status.
Manchester United are poised and ready to resume their Premier League charge after watching their players strut their stuff across the October international break.
Marta Balaga Pole-vaulting champion Armand “Mondo” Duplantis might be on his way to another record, as Red Bull Studios continues selling “Born to Fly,” a documentary feature about his life. So far, the film has been picked up by Germany (Sky), France (Canal+), Switzerland (3+ and RTS), Norway (NRK), Finland (MTV3), Spain (Movistar Plus+), Belgium (VRT) and Estonia (ERR). “We are delighted to partner with broadcast partners throughout the world to showcase this incredible athlete and his sport to global audiences,” said Sebastian Burkhardt, head of partnerships and commercial strategy at Red Bull Studios.
EXCLUSIVE: Hollywood vet Gianni Nunnari, producer on movies including the 300 franchise, Immortals, and From Dusk Til Dawn, is teaming with producer Simon Horsman (Legacy: The True Story of the LA Lakers, Magazine Dreams) to launch Euro Gang Entertainment.
A dad spent £25 to jet off to Ibiza to go on a 24-hour bender with nothing but a change of clothes in an Asda bag.
The San Sebastian Film Festival awarded O Corno (The Rye Horn) with the Golden Shell for Best Film. San Sebastián native Jaione Camborda took the top prize of the night for the feature she directed.
Jessica Kiang A predictably spectacular sunset spreads streaks of pink and orange across a northern Spanish late September sky, heralding the end of another packed edition of the San Sebastian Film Festival, where at the closing gala, “The Rye Horn” the second feature from Spanish director Jaione Camborda has just been handed the Golden Shell, the festival’s top award. It is perhaps a surprising win, but does now mark the fourth consecutive year that the festival’s most prestigious prize has gone to a female director. But in another way it has to be a first: the international jury, comprising French director Claire Denis, alongside Chinese actor and producer Fan Bingbing, Colombian producer-director Cristina Gallego, French photographer Brigitte Lacombe, Spanish actor Vicky Luengo, Canadian producer and distributor Robert Lantos and German director Christian Petzold, has chosen to award not just a Spanish film, but one from a director who was born right here in San Sebastián.
Women Rule Still Coming into the festival, many of the biggest main competition buzz pictures were directed by women. Many now figure, according to a El Diario Vasco Spanish critics’ poll, as Golden Shell frontrunners: Isabel Helguera’s animated pic “Sultana’s Dream,” Raven Jackson’s Sundance hit “All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt,” Jaione Camborda’s Toronto platform screener “The Rye Horn” and Tzu-Hui Peng and Ping-Wen Wang’s “A Journey in Spring.” New Talent All of these four films are debuts or sophomore outings in a competition where 10 of the 16 tiles are indeed first or second films.
Liza Foreman SAN SEBASTIAN — Legendary Spanish writer-director Victor Erice received a standing ovation from a packed press conference on Friday, ahead of receiving the festival’s Donostia Award tonight. The award ceremony for San Sebastian’s accolade for career achievement follows on from the San Sebastian screening this morning of his first feature film in 30 years, “Close Your Eyes,” which, already pre-sold to France’s Haut et Court, world premiered in Cannes Premiere in May with the Basque director notably absent. “Close Your Eyes” sparked highly positive reviews.
the end of the Writers Guild of America’s 148 day strike. That set the tone of proceedings at the two-day confab and maybe added a slightly larger sense of forward momentum to the central issue at stake: a State of the Union take on the challenges and opportunities for the U.S and global film industry, from a market and producers’ perspective. Multiple audience members, many from Spain and Europe, commented on their delight at the caliber of panelists and attendees, many at the top of their game.
Jessica Chastain is making a glamorous arrival at the 2023 San Sebastian Film Festival.
A Ryanair flight from Scotland was forced to divert to Manchester Airport after a passenger fell ill on board.
Manchester United are ready to "listen to offers" for ousted forward Jadon Sancho - according to reports.
Isabel Coixet recounts that she vowed to never to do another literary adaptation after her 2017 English-language feature The Bookshop based on Penelope Fitzgerald’s critically acclaimed 1978 novel of the same name.
Holly Jones Frenetic and high-flying ‘90s rock emblem Mauricio Aznar trades his position as enigmatic frontman of Zaragoza’s Más Birras for a journey towards the soul of his craft in Spanish writer-director Javier Macipe’s highly-anticipated second feature, “The Blue Star” (“La Estrella Azul”) saw its world premiere in the New Directors strand of the San Sebastian Film Festival on Monday. Macipe’s (“Los inconvenientes de no ser dios”) short efforts, 2014 release “Children of the River” and 2019’s “Gastos incluídos,” earned Spanish Academy Goya nominations, placing him among Variety’s 10 Spanish talents to track in 2021.
Emiliano De Pablos European production-distribution giant Studiocanal is teaming with Spain’s Mr. Fields and Friends and Bambú, both led by producer Ramón Campos, on dramatic comedy “Rondallas,” written-directed by Daniel Sánchez Arévalo (“BlueDarkAlmostBlack,” “Cousinhood,” “Seventeen”).
Callum McLennan A salute to Basque cinema, the 71st edition of the San Sebastian Festival has once again unfurled its Zinemira section, a brainchild conceived in collaboration with the Basque government’s Department of Culture. Serving as more than just a showcase, Zinemira comes wrapped in the financial backing of sponsors Irizar and EiTB, with collaborative support from Urbil, the Basque Film Archive, EPE/APV, IBAIA, and Zineuskadi.
Holly Jones Incendiary Spanish director Isabel Coixet (“The Secret Life of Words”) heads to San Sebastian for the international premiere of her latest drama “Un Amor,” a take on devouring love starring Laia Costa (“Lullaby”) and Hovik Keuchkerian (“Money Heist”) that sets Coixet up to compete on the festival’s main stage for the first time. “Un Amor” is produced by Buenapinta Media’s Marisa Fernández Armenteros (“The Mole Agent”) alongside “Society of the Snow” producers Sandra Hermida and Belén Atienza, here producing out of Perdición Films. World sales are handled by Film Constellation (“Return to Reason”).
Anna Marie de la Fuente Not long after the Miami episode of Netflix’s hit show “’Street Food: USA” dropped, its Emmy-nominated director Mariano Carranza received an Instagram message. It was from Gastón Acurio, Peru’s preeminent chef-restaurateur of Astrid & Gastón fame, but Carranza thought it was a prank.
J.A. Bayona was given a homecoming hero’s welcome at the San Sebastian Film Festival over the weekend as he touched down for the Spanish premiere of air crash survival drama Society Of The Snow.
Callum McLennan Latido Films is venturing yet more into the inspiring world of e-sports and viral fame with Goya Award winning producer-helmer Alvaro Longoria’s new doc-feature, “La vida de Brianeitor.” The film serves as a spin-off from Javier Fesser’s Spanish box office smash hit, “Championext,” which Latido is also selling. The doc follows Brian Albacete, better known as Brianeitor2022. With millions of social media followers, an acting role in a top-charting Spanish film “Championext” and a spot on Team Heretics—one of Spain’s leading e-sport entities—Brian is redefining what it means to be a star.