‘The Eight Mountains’, ‘Exterior Night’ Take Top Honors At Italy’s David di Donatello Awards – Full Nominees and Winners List

Wim Wenders’ Tokyo-based Cannes Competition title Perfect Days has clocked a series of international deals for The Match Factory.

The 76th Cannes Film Festival is wrapping up this evening with the main awards, including the Palme d’Or, to be handed out by Ruben Ostlund’s jury inside the Palais. Scroll down for the list of winners which is being updated as prizes are announced.

A Chimera is something one tries to achieve but alas, never manages to find. It is the heart and soul of a quest in life, in different ways, for the cast of characters in writer/director Alice Rohrwacher’s beautiful new film La Chimera premiering today as one of the last entries in competition at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. It also happens to be one of the best.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italy’s RAI Cinema, which has four titles in this year’s Cannes selection, has closed a deal on Ron Howard’s next movie “Origin of Species,” a hot project at the Cannes market starring Daisy Edgar-Jones, Ana de Armas, Jude Law and Alicia Vikander. RAI Cinema chief Paolo Del Brocco said the company – which is the film arm of Italian state broadcaster RAI – has teamed up with Rome-based Lucisano Media Group to acquire Italian rights from CAA Media Finance on Howard’s survival thriller penned by Noah Pink (“Tetris”) about a a group of eclectics who turn their backs on civilization and head to the Galapagos. In Cannes, RAI Cinema also picked up Italian rights from Gaumont on family movie “Moon The Panda,” by French humans and animals adventures specialist Gilles de Maistre, known for “Mia and the White Lion”and “The Wolf and the Lion.” De Maistre’s latest, about the friendship between a boy and a panda, is set to shoot later this month in China’s Sichuan mountains.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Italian auteur Marco Tullio Giordana, best known internationally for sweeping terrorism-themed epic “The Best of Youth” (2003) is set to soon return behind the camera on “La Vita Accanto” a psychological drama about a talented young woman contending with profound rejection due to her looks. Shooting is set to start on June 5 in Vicenza, Northern Italy, on “Vita Accanto,” (the title can be translated as “the life beside”) which is co-written and produced by Marco Bellocchio – the Italian master who is currently competing for a Cannes Palm d’Or with “Kidnapped.” Italy’s Intramovies has started launching pre-sales on “Vita Accanto” in Cannes.

Fresh off the debut of “Firebrand,” it appears that acclaimed filmmaker Karim Aïnouz has already lined up his next film, “Rosebushpruning.” And as you might expect, he’s already landed an incredible cast to lead the feature. According to The Match Factory and MUBI, Karim Aïnouz’s next film will be titled “Rosebushpruning,” and it will be a remake of the classic Italian film, “Fists in the Pocket.” Exact details about the plot are unknown, but if it follows ‘Fists,’ which was directed by Marco Bellocchio, the film will tell the story of a family dealing with various medical conditions and the effect it has on their relationships.

Snacking is a habit we all indulge in, whether it be from hunger, thirst or just plain boredom.

“I didn’t make a film against the pope or to condemn the Pope,” Italian filmmaker Marco Bellocchio said of his Cannes competition title Kidnapped at the official festival presser this morning.

Jessica Kiang Solid, stately and — like the collapsing Papal States of the Italian Peninsula in the late 1800s — just a little too tradition-bound for its own good, Marco Bellocchio’s “Kidnapped,” based on a 19th-century case of religious abduction, opens with an eavesdrop. Anna (Aurora Camatti), the Catholic servant to the Jewish Mortara family of Bologna, pauses on the stairs after a tryst and spies her employers, Momolo Mortara (Fausto Russo Alesi) and his wife Marianna (Barbara Ronchi), murmuring a blessing in Hebrew over their newborn baby boy. It is not clear yet why the sight should make her stop in her tracks, but over the course of over two sedate but mostly absorbing hours, the veteran director follows its repercussions with a singleminded, narrow dedication that sits strangely at odds with the film’s immaculately expansive production design.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Revered Italian auteur Marco Bellocchio is returning to Cannes with “Kidnapped,” a drama that reconstructs the true tale of Edgardo Mortara, a young Jewish boy who was kidnapped and forcibly raised as a Christian in 19th century Italy. It’s a story that Steven Spielberg had his eye on, having announced in 2016 that he would make a drama about Mortara for which he began scouting locations in Italy. Last year, Bellocchio was in Cannes with another kidnapping drama, the limited TV series “Exterior Night,” about the abduction and assassination of former Italian premier Aldo Moro by Red Brigades terrorists. The veteran auteur’s first foray in TV has had the rare distinction of playing well in Italian cinemas — in two installments — before airing on RAI and selling globally. Earlier this month it also scored a slew of statuettes, including best director, at Italy’s David Awards, the country’s top film prizes.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Cinema Italiano is on a roll, as reflected by the fact that this year Italy has scored three Cannes competition slots. Despite the persisting sore spot that sees the country still lagging behind other European territories in terms of post-pandemic box office returns, Italy “continues to produce and invest heavily in film and is overcoming the crisis,” noted Cannes artistic director Thierry Fremaux after announcing the lineup. The robust Croisette contingent marks the second time in 20 years that Italy lands three Cannes competition berths. Though the trio of selected directors — Marco Bellocchio, Nanni Moretti and Alice Rohrwacher — are all Cannes regulars “they represent three different generations of auteurs,” said Paolo Del Brocco, chief of state broadcaster RAI’s RAI Cinema arm that co-produced all three titles. And each of these films, he went on to point out, displays “very different ideas and cinematic visions.”

Jon Burlingame Some of today’s most talked-about film and TV composers walked off with Composers Choice Awards at Tuesday night’s annual Screen Music Awards of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) in West Hollywood. Michael Abels won Film Score of the Year for Jordan Peele’s sci-fi horror movie “Nope.” Cristobal Tapia de Veer and Kim Neundorf won Television Score of the Year for HBO’s black comedy “The White Lotus” And Bear McCreary won Video Game Score of the Year for Sony Interactive’s acclaimed “God of War: Ragnarok.” In a tie, Documentary Score of the Year went to both Amanda Jones for the National Geographic nature series “Super/Natural” and Jeff Cardoni for HBO Max’s skateboarding doc “Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Fall Off.” Cristobal Tapia de Veer also won a second award for Television Theme of the Year for “The White Lotus.”

A top star is billed to give a performance during this evening’s Eurovision Song Contest Grand Final.

Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas are traveling the world with their children, who are all grown up now!

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic At the 58th annual Academy of Country Music Awards, the top prize, entertainer of the year, was handed out to Chris Stapleton, even as Lainey Wilson and Hardy won in the the greatest number of categories, with four each — two of which they shared for the duet “Wait in the Truck.” Technically, Hardy walked away with six trophies, since the ACMs offer double awards for artists who co-write their nominated songs. Accepting for album of the year, Wilson said, “I wrote 300 songs during the pandemic.” Noting that some fans have said listening to her “Bell Bottom Country” album helped save their lives, Wilson said, “Writing these songs saved mine.” She quoted one of her own lines: “Be who you are, ’cause everybody else is taken.”

Don’t mess with Texas! The 58th Academy of Country Music Awards honors the brightest stars in the genre – and the full list of nominees and winners is jam-packed with celebrity names.   

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent “The Eight Mountains,” Belgian directors Felix Van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch’s Italian-language drama about friendship, mountains and growing up, scored the top prize at Italy’s 68th David di Donatello Awards. Besides winning best picture, the film also scooped statuettes for best non-original screenplay, photography and sound. Given that the directors are not Italian, it was a particularly significant victory for “Mountains,” which was praised as “quietly magnificent” by Variety critic Jessica Kiang. The film, which is currently playing well on the U.S. arthouse circuit, tracks the decades-long friendship between two Italian boys named Pietro and Bruno — one from the city, the other a shepherd boy from the Alps.

From the day he walked in the door, Erik ten Hag has gone about making big changes at Manchester United.

Apple’s comedy series Bad Sisters and Martin McDonagh’s latest feature, The Banshees of Inisherin, took the top honors at this year’s Irish Film & TV Awards (IFTAs). Scroll down for the complete list of winners.

Prince Andrew made a low-key appearance at his older brother King Charles III’s official coronation on Saturday, May 6.