Berlin Showbiz Latest News and Updates

Small Things Like These,” based on the novella by Claire Keegan, opened the Berlin Film Festival, scored solid reviews for both Murphy’s quietly intense starring role and Emily Watson’s turn as a tyrannical nun (a performance that won her the Golden Bear). Yet a domestic deal for the film — which Murphy also produced for his new Big Things Films banner — has yet to be announced by FilmNation. But “Small Things Like These” is just part of a growing new trend of starry indie titles that are struggling — or at least taking much longer than usual — to secure a U.S.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Berlin-based sales agency Films Boutique has closed the first international sales for Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof’s “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” ahead of its world premiere on Friday in the Competition section of the Cannes Film Festival. The film has been acquired in Italy by BiM Distribuzione and Lucky Red, Benelux by September Film Distribution, Spain by Bteam Pictures, Greece by Ama Films, Hungary by Cirko Film, Norway by Selmer Media, Portugal by Leopardo Filmes, Taiwan by Hooray Films and Turkey by Bir Film.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Spain’s Latido Films has clinched world sales rights to “Sacamantecas,” the third feature by writer-director David Pérez Sañudo, whose Latido-repped debut feature, “Ane,” swept three Spanish Academy Goya Awards in 2021. Latido is already handling Pérez Sañudo’s second feature, “Los últimos románticos,” which it announced at the Berlin Film Festival as the first title in a two-picture deal with Sañudo.

Annika Pham Unspooling May 18 as part of an overall Swiss Focus at the Marché du Film, Solothurn Film Festival Goes to Cannes marks the first collaboration between the long-standing Swiss festival and the Cannes market, but also a first for many of the talents and producers carefully picked for the event. Two of Switzerland’s top documentary filmmakers Jacqueline Zünd, winner of a 2019 Crystal Bear nominated for “Where We Belong,” and Nicholas Steiner, director of “Above & Below”, ranked among Variety reviewer Peter Debruge’s Top 10 films of 2015, are set to attract buyers, sales agents and programmers’ attention with their star-stubbed fiction debuts.

EXCLUSIVE: Studiocanal has been rolling out sales on the first instalment of Germany-language film trilogy Woodwalkers in Cannes.

Adria Arjona and Edgar Ramirez have been announced to co-star in Jayro Bustamante’s dystopian thriller El Sombreron as The Match Factory launches worldwide sales on the project in Cannes, with CAA Media Finance representing North America.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Movistar Plus+, Spain’s most-viewed pay TV operator, is partnering on “Los domingos,” a new film from “Lullaby” director Alauda Ruíz de Azua and the producers of that critically acclaimed film. “Los Domingos” is set in and will shoot in Ruíz de Azúa’s native Basque country, said Nahikari Ipiña at Sayaka Producciones (“Colossal”). Now in development, “Los Domingos” is produced by Movistar Plus+ and Sayaka and Marisa Fernández Armenteros’ Buenapinta Media (“The Mole Agent”), Sandra Hermida at Think Studio and Colosé Producciones (“Society of the Snow”) and Manu Calvo (“Wounded”).

Annika Pham Billed the ‘Trollywood’ of the North for its close ties to talent, the leading Scandinavian regional film fund Film i Väst in Sweden’s Trollhättan has boarded the Noomi Rapace starrer “Mother, to be helmed by Macedonia’s Teona Stugar Mitevska. The biopic, in which Rapace will play the legendary religious figure Mother Teresa, will mark the English-language debut of esteemed auteur Mitevska, credited for the 2019 Berlin entry “God Exists, Her Name is Petrunya”.

Addie Morfoot Contributor Oscar-nominated filmmaker Nicole Newnham (“Crip Camp”) is at work on her next documentary — “Tunnel 29,” about a secret escape tunnel built under the Berlin Wall in 1962. The film, co-produced by NBC News Studios and Story Force Entertainment, will chronicle the story of a group of students who risked their lives and defied the Iron Curtain by digging a tunnel under the Berlin Wall, enabling 29 East Germans to escape to the West. “‘Tunnel 29’ will cinematically immerse the audience in the fraught and tense time when the world grappled with the trauma and consequences of the Wall and the Cold War — a time that bears an astonishing resemblance to today,” says Newnham.

Ireland’s screen industry is having a moment. With the Cannes Film Festival well underway, there’s a notable strong Irish presence in this year’s line-up including Element Pictures’ three entrants – Competition title Kinds of Kindness from Yorgos Lanthimos, Rungano Nyoni’s sophomore feature On Becoming A Guinea Fowl and Ariane Labed’s directorial debut September Says (both in Un Certain Regard). There’s also Competition title The Apprentice, which is co-produced with Irish outfit Tailored Films and Lorcan Finnegan’s Nicolas Cage starrer The Surfer premiering in the Midnight Screenings strand. Even Andrea Arnold’s Competition title Bird is rich with Irish talent with star Barry Keoghan and Oscar-nominated cinematographer Robbie Ryan both having worked on the film. 

Before making Joachim Trier’s 2021 hit The Worst Person in the World, Renate Reinsve was about to jack it all in. Three years later — after A Different Man, with Sebastian Stan, Another Life, with Gael García Bernal, and Handling the Undead, a chiller from Let the Right One In writer John Ajvide Lindqvist — she now finds herself not just back in Cannes but doing double duty at the Sundance, Berlin and Tribeca film festivals (“It’s a running joke that I have two movies everywhere”). Reinsve takes the lead in the Swedish drama Armand, directed by Ingmar Bergman’s grandson Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent “La Mesías” star Carmen Machi, Almodóvar muse Rossy de Palma and Blanca Portillo, a Cannes best actress co-winner for Almodóvar’s “Volver,” are set to star in “The Prey” (“Dia de Caza”), billed as a contemporary revision of Carlos Saura’s 1965 pic “The Hunt,” quite possibly his crowing achievement. The film is set to shoot in July in Spain’s Extremadura, with theatrical release scheduled for summer 2025. Brutal, kinetic at times and taking no prisoners, Saura’s original won a Berlin Silver Bear.

EXCLUSIVE: Michael Cera caught Tyler Taormina’s feature directing debut Ham on Rye after a friend suggested he check it out. He was so impressed that he signed himself up as a sort of producing “cheerleader” on the filmmaker’s latest picture Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point, which plays in Directors’ Fortnight on Thursday at the Cannes Film Festival.

Jamie Lang Brazil’s O2 Play, the distribution arm of O2 Filmes group, will host a Cannes market screening for director Marcelo Gomes‘ latest feature, “Portrait of a Certain Orient,” on Friday, May 17 at 1:30 p.m. in Lerins 4. Ahead of the screening, O2 has given Variety exclusive access to the romantic period drama’s international trailer.

You Me At Six appear to be teasing the UK venues they are set to play on their 2025 farewell UK tour.The band revealed earlier this year that they would be breaking up in 2025 after two decades together. At the time, they teased a run of gigs this year and next where they’d “say goodbye to fans”.The trek is due to kick off in Paris on November 15 ahead of further dates in Hamburg, Copenhagen, Berlin, Warsaw, Prague and other locations throughout that month.And although UK dates are yet to be confirmed, the band have teased a clip on their social media platforms showing various venues including Dublin Olympia, Glasgow Barrowlands, O2 Apollo Manchester, Nottingham Rock City, Cardiff Students’ Union and London’s OVO Arena Wembley.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent German actors Elisa Schlott (“Das Boot” TV series), Max Riemelt (“Sleeping Dog”) and Alma Hasun (“Corsage”) are set to star in Italian director Silvio Soldini‘s drama “The Tasters,” which reconstructs the untold true story of the women conscripted to be Adolf Hitler’s food tasters. Shooting is set to start on Friday in Italy’s northern Alto Adige region on the Nazi-era drama, which is being pre-sold at the Cannes Marché du Film by Rome-based Vision Distribution, headed by sales agent Catia Rossi.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent New films by Julio Medem, Alejandro Amenábar, Alberto Rodríguez, Isaki Lacuesta, Jonas Trueba and Oliver Laxe join a brace of smart thrillers in a rich Cannes lineup from Spain. “8,” (Julio Medem) Medem (“The Red Squirrel,” “Julia and Sex”) returns towhat he does best: a love story transcending time and space and a poetic critique of recent history, according to sales agent Latido Films. “Fariña’s” Javier Rey and “La Mesías” Ana Rujus star as the lovers.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Principal photography has begun on “The Captive,” a historical epic from “The Others’” Alejandro Amenábar, starring Julio Peña (“Berlin”) as “Don Quixote” author Miguel de Cervantes, a prisoner of Ottoman corsairs, seen in a very first still from the film, alongside Alessandro Borghi (“Suburra”), playing his captor, which has been shared in exclusivity with Variety. Paris and London-based production, finance and sales house Film Constellation handles worldwide sales.

Them: The Scare.Created by Little Marvin, the second season, set in 1991, follows LAPD detective Dawn Reeve (Deborah Ayorinde) who is assigned to a new case involving a gruesome murder. As she investigates the case, a malevolent force starts to affect her family.Other cast members include Pam Grier, Luke James, Joshua J.

Jamie Lang Catalonia has a rich filmmaking tradition backed by public investment in local artists and production companies. Four years ago, the region expanded its existing financing structures by launching its Minority Co-Production Fund. It’s now beginning to prove to be a success story.

Jamie Lang Catalan films routinely punch above their weight at high-profile international festivals: Think 2022 Berlin Golden Bear winner “Alcarràs.” That trend looks primed to continue in 2024. Catalan auteur Albert Serra will debut “Afternoons of Solitude,” co-produced by Catalan companies Andergraun Films and LaCima, with Ideale Audience and Tardes de Soledad.

EXCLUSIVE: German actor Matthias Schweighöfer, who most recently starred in Oscar-winning film Oppenheimer, is joining forces with German director Erik Schmitt for upcoming project The Life of Wishes (working title). 

Ed Meza @edmezavar Zurich and Berlin-based distrib DCM has nabbed Ali Abbasi’s “The Apprentice” ahead of its May 20 world premiere in Cannes, where its screening in competition. Written by Gabriel Sherman, “The Apprentice” follows Donald Trump’s real estate career in New York during the 1970s and ’80s and his relationships with lawyer Roy Cohen (Jeremy Strong), wife Ivana (Maria Bakalova) and father Fred Trump (Martin Donovan).

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Berlin-based sales agency Films Boutique has closed first sales and released the first-look image from Oscar-nominated Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland‘s biopic of the Czech novelist Franz Kafka, “Franz.” The project has sold to September Film in Benelux, Filmin in Spain, Vertigo in Hungary, MCF Megacom for the former Yugoslavia and Movies Inspired in Italy. The film was previously acquired for theatrical distribution by Bac Films Distribution in France, X Verleih in Germany and Austria, Bioscop in Czech Republic and TVP in Poland.

The Last Dinner Party have announced an autumn 2024 European tour set to kick off later this year.The 13-date trek will kick off on October 28 in Paris and will see the band make stops in various cities such as Brussels, Amsterdam, Cologne, Lyon, Munich, Berlin and more. The tour will wrap up on November 16 in Luxembourg.It immediately follows the band’s long-since sold-out UK tour throughout September and October.

Nilüfer Yanya has announced a 2024 UK, European and North American tour set to kick off later this year.Kicking off on September 28 at the Underground Arts in Philadelphia, Yanya will make her way across the US with stops in major cities such as Washington D.C., New York, Boston, Montreal, Chicago, Nashville and more. The North American leg of the tour will wrap up on October 24 at the Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles.From there, she will make her way to Europe with shows in Brussels, Amsterdam, Berlin and Paris before heading over to the UK for gigs in Brighton, Bristol, London and Nottingham.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof has left Iran and traveled to Europe clandestinely after being sentenced to eight years in prison by the country’s authorities, who pressured him to pull his latest work “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” from the Cannes Film Festival and harassed the film’s producers and actors. “We are very happy and much relieved that Mohammad has safely arrived in Europe after a dangerous journey,” said Jean-Christophe Simon, CEO of Films Boutique and Parallel45, who are distributing the film.

Jimmy Eat World have announced details of a 2024 tour across the UK and Europe. Find ticket details below.Announced today (May 13), the run of tour dates are set to kick off with an opening night at the Columbiahalle in Berlin on November 7, and continue with two more shows in Germany, before heading to the Netherlands for a show in Amsterdam on November 9.From there, the Arizona rock icons will head over to the UK for three final shows.

German-French international sales veteran Tanja Meissner has been appointed as the new director of the Berlinale Pro, the department overseeing all of the Berlin Film Festival’s professional activities, in a role that encompasses director of the European Film Market (EFM).

Following a highly successful collaboration on Hulu’s Pam & Tommy, Sebastian Stan and Lily James are set to reteam on Let the Evil Go West, a psychological horror thriller from director Christian Tafdrup (Speak No Evil).