Sideshow, Janus Films Acquire Berlin Award-Winning Family Drama ‘Tótem’

Stacey Solomon has shared an exciting update with fans as she revealed that she has booked a family holiday for the first time in four years. Celebrating the milestone, an elated Stacey took to Instagram to reveal that she and husband Joe Swash had finally settled on a destination for the long awaited break, after weeks of careful consideration and research.

Loose Women panelist Stacey Solomon gave fans an insight into her family life as she shared a video of their whole morning routine getting ready for the school run. Stacey, 33, recently became a mum of five after giving birth to baby Belle, whom she shares with partner Joe Swash, earlier this year.

Despite fans hoping Prince Harry and Meghan Markle would be among the A-listers walking the red carpet at this year’s Met Gala, it's now been claimed the pair won't be in attendance. The royal duo, who currently reside in California, could have been high up on Anna Wintour’s list of guests she wanted to invite, but their ongoing row with the royal family has reportedly stunted their chances of attending the prestigious affair.The Met Gala takes place annually on the first Monday on May, with this year’s event set to take place just days before King Charles’ coronation.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Sales agency Taskovski Films has acquired “!Aitsa” and “Fighters,” which both have premieres at CPH:DOX, the Copenhagen Intl. Documentary Film Festival. Dane Dodds’ “!Aitsa” has its world premiere in the festival’s Science Program. The film focuses on the spiritual lives of the inhabitants of South Africa’s Great Karoo desert. This is the place where some of the first humans likely lived. Here, in the Blombos cave, an unearthed piece of engraved ochre represents perhaps the earliest ever example of abstract human thinking. At the other extreme of the Karoo, bordering the Kalahari in the North, the town of Carnarvon is home to one of the biggest science projects in the world, the so-called Square Kilometer Array. Still under construction, the SKA will consist of hundreds of satellite dishes the size of three-story buildings. Its stated objectives are to explore dark matter, dark energy and the beginning of the universe, and search for extra-terrestrial intelligence.

EXCLUSIVE: Drafthouse Films has acquired North American rights to the documentary Chop & Steele, about the creators of the Found Footage Festival, announcing plans to release the film in April at Alamo Drafthouse theaters as part of a double bill with another newly-acquired doc, A Life on the Farm.

Kristin Bjorklund, a longtime member of the Family Feud game show producing team, died in Phoenix, Arizona, on March 5 of sepsis after undergoing a kidney transplant. She was 67.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Sideshow and Janus Films have bought North American rights for “Orlando, My Political Biography,” Paul B. Preciado’s film which won four awards at the Berlinale. In “Orlando, My Political Biography,” Preciado sheds light on Virginia Woolf’s “Orlando,” the first novel in which the main character changes sex in the middle of the story.  A century later, Preciado, who is a trans writer and activist, decides to send a film letter to Woolf, telling her that Orlando has come out of her fiction and is living a life she could have never imagined. Preciado organizes a casting and gathers 26 contemporary trans and non-binary people, from 8 to 70 years old, who embody Orlando.

Sideshow and Janus Films have picked up the North American rights to “Afire,” which won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at Berlinale 2023. A theatrical release is planned for Summer 2023.From writer-director Christian Petzold, the film follows four young people who convene at a holiday house by the Baltic Sea.

Sideshow and Janus Films have acquired North American rights for German director Christian Petzold’s new film Afire, following its award-winning world premiere in competition at the Berlin Film Festival.

Sideshow & Janus Films have snapped up North American rights for Mexican director Lila Avilés’s family drama Tótem following its world premiere in competition at the Berlinale last week.

EXCLUSIVE: HBO Documentary Films has acquired worldwide and television streaming rights to the Oscar-nominated short How Do You Measure a Year?, a film director Jay Rosenblatt shot over the course of 17 years with his daughter Ella. 

Ed Meza @edmezavar Madrid-based Latido Films is partnering with the organizers of the new genre-focused Fantastic Pavilion at the Cannes Film Festival’s Marché du Film on a new award that will offer international distribution to selected Spanish-language Iberoamerican films. The prize will also provide theatrical release in Latin America for winning titles. News of the prize comes as plans for the Fantastic Pavilion, one of the major innovation of this year’s Cannes Film Market, are beginning g to emerge, based on a undeniable market reality: Elevated genre films and thrillers, if they are shaped by an auteurist vision, are proving to be among the surest sellers on the international market and genre is embraced by a new generation of young filmmakers who are often creating artistically ambitious films of substance, sometimes dealing with urgent gender and social issues.  

Pop royalty! Pink rose to fame in the 2000s and thanks to her edgy sound and rebellious attitude she became a music sensation.

EXCLUSIVE: HBO Films has closed a deal for U.S. rights to the Berlin Film Festival buzz competition title Reality. Directed by Tina Satter, the docudrama is a breakout turn for Sydney Sweeney as convicted classified document leaker Reality Winner. Sweeney stars in the hit HBO series Euphoria.

When “CODA” won the Best Picture Oscar, many film fans were shocked and disappointed. Sure, the film is perfectly serviceable, if not a bit too sentimental, but is it a true Best Picture? Eh, maybe not.

Can life end on our own terms? A family’s journey through end-of-life care is explored in “Everything Went Fine.” The film sees a man ask for help ending his life after a devastating stroke, his appeal pushes a daughter to confront her complicated feelings as well as a bureaucratic nightmare. The project hails from celebrated filmmaker François Ozon; his recent works have become critically-acclaimed favorites, including “Peter von Kant.” “Everything Went Fine” is not the only Ozon project to hit theaters soon — the crime dramedy “Mon Crime” comes to French theaters on March 8.

EXCLUSIVE: India’s Zee Studios, headed by CEO Shariq Patel, is starting to become a regular on the international film festival and TV market circuit. 

Manori Ravindran Executive Editor of International Vanessa Redgrave and Freida Pinto have boarded the family feature “The Boy at the Back of the Class,” based on the acclaimed children’s book. Directed by Stephen Herek (“101 Dalmations”), the film centers on a mysterious new boy called Ahmet who joins nine-year-old Alexa’s school. As Alexa learns that he is a refugee, separated from his family, she will do anything she can to help. With the adults out of the way, Alexa and her school friends come up with a daring plan to reunite Ahmet with his family – the start of an adventure that will take them all the way to Buckingham Palace. The film is penned by “A Street Cat Named Bob” screenwriter Tim John. Adam Rolston and David Braithwaite at Studio Pictures are producing. Nicola Pearcey of Picnik Entertainment and Paul Grindey are executive producing. Casting director is BAFTA nominee Carolyn McLeod.

Manori Ravindran Executive Editor of International One of the hottest packages at the EFM has been taken off the table for international. Sources tell Variety that Prime Video has snapped up all international rights, excluding the U.S., to Justin Kurzel’s “The Order,” which stars Jude Law and Nicholas Hoult in a story about the titular white supremacist organization that operated in the 1980s. The project is penned by Oscar- and BAFTA-nominated writer Zach Baylin (“King Richard”), who based the screenplay on Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt’s book “The Silent Brotherhood.” Published in 1989, the book details the activities of the radical-right hate group The Order, which was one of the most sinister organizations to emerge in America since the Ku Klux Klan.

Former This Morning host Eamonn Holmes has not held back his criticism as he discusses Prince Harry's best-selling memoir Spare. Appearing in his regular slot on GB News, Eamonn, 63, launched into a scathing rant about the royal, beginning: "All this Will and Harry nonsense.