Showcasing Stress-Filled Reality of Emergency Medicine, Gritty Hospital Drama ‘KRANK Berlin’ Strives for Authenticity (EXCLUSIVE)

NME’s latest stars of The Cover, Been Stellar, have shared a playlist exclusively to accompany the story’s launch – check it out below.The New York band are on this week’s (March 11) edition of The Cover, a renewal of NME’s commitment to supporting emerging talent across the globe on a weekly basis. Every week, a rising artist will feature on The Cover – you can read Been Stellar’s profile here, written by Anagricel Duran and featuring photography by Sam Keeler.Accompanying the story is an exclusive playlist curated by the band, titled ‘Our DJ Set’.

Siddhant Adlakha A scattered but intimate drama about a queer immigrant left adrift, Marco Calvani’s “High Tide” boasts an impeccable leading performance that buoys the movie even at its weakest. Strung together by gentle moments, it follows Brazilian émigré Lourenço (Marco Pigossi) as he anticipates the return of his American lover in Provincetown — Massachusetts’ gay promised land — while running out the clock on his visa.

When a world famous cookie store opens its first shop in the north of England, there are likely to be queues. When that shop is inside the shopping mecca that is The Trafford Centre, well, you can guess the result.

Diego Ramos Bechara editor When discussing the industry-wide changes needed for television to more authentically capture the lived experiences of disabled people, actor Eileen Grubba passionately implored the industry to end what she described as the tokenization of the community. “The industry has got to stop saying, ‘OK, let me go find some kid that’s cute that’s in a wheelchair and give them a series.’ That is soul-crushing to the people who’ve been fighting for decades to make a living,” said the “New Amsterdam” actor, who has faced disabilities since the age of 5.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Ahead of its U.S. premiere at SXSW, “The Queen of My Dreams” has been sold to a flurry of international markets, including in the U.K. and Ireland to Peccadillo Pictures.

Alex Ritman Production banner FlipNarrative, set up by Waleed Zuaiter — the BAFTA-nominated star of “Baghdad Central” and “Gangs of London” and Oscar-nominated producer of “Omar” — has optioned the rights to Shannon Chakraborty’s latest novel “The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi,” with plans to develop it into a multi-season series and gaming platform. The book — the first in a trilogy being published by Harper Voyager — is a swashbuckling high seas adventure following a notorious Muslim pirate captain who has survived backstabbing rogues, vengeful merchant princes, several husbands and an actual demon before retiring to a life of piety.

Lise Pedersen Paris-based outfit Cat&Docs has acquired world sales for “Immortals,” the sophomore feature film by Swiss director Maja Tschumi (“Rotzloch”), which will compete in the main competition at leading European documentary festival CPH:DOX. “We’re excited to bring this exceptional and important documentary to the international market.

Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer Meghan, The Duchess of Sussex is coming to SXSW.

Ed Meza @edmezavar Spain’s Movistar Plus+, the pay TV/SVOD service of telco giant Telefónica, has picked up the Sky and Peacock original series “The Tattooist of Auschwitz,” starring Harvey Keitel and based on the bestselling novel by Heather Morris. The six-part limited series is one of the key draws on the sales slate of All3Media International, which hosts a showcase at the London TV Screenings on Feb.

Alex Ritman “La Cocina,” the Rooney Mara-starring drama that recently bowed in competition at the Berlinale, has been acquired for most international territories. HanWay Films has closed sales for France (Originals Factory), Australia and New Zealand (Vendetta), Spain (Avalon), Italy (Teodora Film), Benelux (Cherry Pickers), Switzerland (Filmcoopi), Scandinavia (Mis.

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV Critic Netflix made clear from the start that they were running a different kind of awards show. Presenter and quasi-host Idris Elba indicated to the attended nominees that, in their speeches, they were free to let expletives fly, but that none of them should say anything “you wouldn’t say in front of Oprah.” (Shortly after that, Meryl Streep walked directly into the mic stand — seeming to suggest a kooky and wild awards show that didn’t quite arrive.) After the SAG Awards had fully moved to streaming — after a liminal year, in 2023, in which the ceremony had aired on Netflix’s YouTube channel, preceded by a long tenure on the Turner cable networks — it felt like a sort of safe space for speaking frankly.

Selome Hailu Ryan Murphy Productions has dropped a teaser on Instagram for a previously unannounced FX series titled “Grotesquerie.” The promo, which was uploaded to the shingle’s account on Friday, described it as a “new horror drama series” that will premiere this fall. The teaser didn’t contain any footage, and only flashed the names of cast members Niecy Nash-Betts, Courtney B. Vance and Lesley Manville over a black screen as Nash-Betts’ voice delivered a monologue, seemingly over a phone call.

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor Oscar nominee America Ferrera has been cast in her next role outside of Barbie World. Ferrera has signed on to star in Oscar nominee Paul Greengrass’ upcoming drama “The Lost Bus” alongside Academy Award winner Matthew McConaughey, Variety has learned exclusively.

Martin Scorsese was presented with the Berlin Film Festival’s Honorary Golden Bear for Lifetime Achievement on Tuesday evening, with old friend German director Wim Wenders paying a warm personal tribute to the director.

Ed Meza @edmezavar An ambitious new production company is making waves in Germany, where it’s following up its successful 2020 comedy pic debut with a stylish erotic thriller that harkens back to Hollywood classics of the 1980s. Launched in 2020 by Andreas Kröneck and Antonio Fernandes Lopes in the southwestern Baden-Württemberg city of Heilbronn, Hnywood is aiming high with plans to recapture the cinematic magic of yesteryear, including Edgar Wallace masked-killer mysteries and sexy swashbuckling space operas.

Ed Meza @edmezavar Since its establishment in 2018, Gaumont Germany has produced a wide range of series and TV movies, among them such timely shows as the critically acclaimed “Deutsches Haus” (“The Interpreter of Silence”), which was nominated for the Critics Choice Awards, and the Ukrainian series “In Her Car.” A subsidiary of the French entertainment powerhouse, the Cologne and Berlin-based company also created such ambitious shows as Netflix’s historical epic “Barbarians” – the first season of which was one of the streamer’s most successful non-English-language series worldwide – and the award-winning Sky Original comedy “The Wasp,” about a professional dart player seeking to return to his former glory. Discussing the company’s latest productions, Gaumont Germany President Sabine de Mardt says it’s important to combine broader entertainment with relevance, something both “The Interpreter of Silence” and “In Her Car” offer.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Playtime has had a busy EFM, where it’s locked a raft of major deals on “The Devil’s Bath,” a period psychological thriller in competition at the Berlin Film Festival. “The Devil’s Bath” is directed by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, the Austrian filmmaking duo behind “Goodnight Mommy.” Set in rural Austria in 1750, “The Devil’s Bath” stars Anja Plaschg, the up-and-coming singer and composer known as Soap & Skin. Plaschg plays Agnes, a young married woman who feels oppressed in her husband’s world, which is devoid of emotions and limited to chores and expectations.

Annika Pham Copenhagen-based sales and financing outlet REinvent has inked major deals on the Danish/German thriller “Oxen”, ahead of its screening Feb. 19 as part of the Berlinale Series Market Selects label. The show, produced by Scandi major SF Studios with Germany’s Square One for TV2 Denmark and ZDF, has been acquired by GSN Networks for the UK, AMC for Spain/Portugal as well as Orion Group for Poland.

Ed Meza @edmezavar An unsung master of movie magic, Solon Luigi Colani has worked on some of the biggest Hollywood movies ever shot in Germany and beyond, among them works by Quentin Tarantino, Ron Howard, George Clooney, Denis Villeneuve, Paul W.S. Anderson, Gore Verbinski and the Wachowskis.

Ed Meza @edmezavar Aslı Özarslan’s “Elbogen” (“Elbow”), an adaptation of Fatma Aydemir’s award-winning novel of the same name, tells the story of Hazal (played by Melia Kara), a young woman in Berlin struggling to find a job and start a life of her own. After a violent incident on her 18th birthday, she flees to Istanbul, a strange city in a country she doesn’t know and where she is forced to survive. Produced by Jamila Wenske‘s Berlin-based Achtung Panda!, the film premieres in the Berlinale’s Generation 14plus.