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Brent Lang Executive Editor Nicolas Cage and Joel Kinnaman will star in “Sympathy for the Devil,” a new psychological thriller from director Yuval Adler. Production on the film is underway in Las Vegas. Capstone Global is handling worldwide sales on the film, and will introduce it to buyers during the upcoming Toronto International Film Festival.   Written by Luke Paradise (“Lost on a Mountain in Maine”), “Sympathy for the Devil” follows “The Driver” (Kinnaman) as he finds himself in a high-stakes game of cat and mouse after being forced to drive a mysterious man known as “The Passenger” (Cage). That sets things up for a white-knuckle ride. 

Jennie Punter “The Maiden,” Graham Foy’s finely tuned story of adolescent mythmaking, togetherness and grief, has its world premiere Tuesday in Venice Days before heading to Toronto, but the film’s impressive international journey actually began in Cannes two years ago. Based in Toronto since 2008, Foy grew up in suburban Calgary where “Maiden” is set, spent teenage summers near the graffiti-covered railroad bridge and ragged ravine, where much of the film was shot, and, like one of the characters, was an avid skateboarder. He had been tapping away at the “Maiden” script — which draws from his experiences but is not autobiographical — for several years when his short “August 22, This Year” was selected for the 2020 Cannes’ Critics’ Week.

A lesbian gym teacher navigates Margaret Thatcher’s Britain under the “Section 28” law in Blue Jean, Georgia Oakley’s debut feature premiering in the Venice Days section of the Venice Film Festival.

Manori Ravindran International Editor It’s Timothée Chalamet Day in Venice. This isn’t a national holiday, but perhaps it should be. It’s just past 1:30 p.m. outside the Venice Film Festival’s Sala Casino, and a crowd of youth have set aside work and school commitments to travel into the Lido to catch a glimpse of the American superstar arriving for a press conference. Every generation has their movie star heartthrob — from Jonathan Taylor Thomas to Brad Pitt in the ’90s and Robert Pattison at the dawn of the Twilight movies. For many young women, Chalamet represents the pinnacle of Gen Z cool. The Chalamet stans arrived as early as 7 a.m. on Friday to catch a glance of Timothée. They are, not surprisingly, mostly female. They describe their favorite performances as “Call Me By Your Name” and “The King” but are mostly drawn to Chalamet because of his kind and friendly nature.

Shia LaBeouf plays the title character in this period piece, and his face dominates the promotional material, but the latest film from the ridiculously prolific Abel Ferrara, now into his 70s, is really more of an ensemble with a supporting cast that’s near-unknown outside Italy.

Anna Tatarska Dystopian narratives have been popular with filmmakers lately, in times when dark prophecies resonate. But sometimes life pens a much better script than any screenwriter could, as is the case with Giulia Amati’s “Kristos, The Last Child,” which has its world premiere Friday in Venice Days, a sidebar of the Venice Film Festival. Leipzig-based Deckert Distribution has taken on world sales duties. Arki is a small island on the east side of the Aegean Sea, populated by approximately 1,000 goats and 30 people. There is no mayor, no pharmacy, no police station and no cinema. But there is a school – and it has only one student, Kristos. If the boy wants to continue his education, he’ll have to leave his home and family. Will he decide to take this risk? Or will he stay with the loved ones to help preserve the family business and long-kept traditions?

EXCLUSIVE: Fresh off multiple rave reviews last night, we can reveal that Altitude has secured UK and Ireland distribution rights to writer-director Georgia Oakley’s buzzy Venice, Toronto and London Film Festival-bound drama Blue Jean from London and Paris-based Film Constellation.

The stars are giving us major fashion moments at the 2022 Venice Film Festival!

EXCLUSIVE: Bankside Films has boarded international sales for Steve Buscemi-directed Venice Film Festival drama The Listener, starring Tessa Thompson (Creed).

Clayton Davis In a world where politicians use mental health as mere talking points when discussing gun violence and suicide rates, Steve Buscemi’s “The Listener” addresses the crisis head-on. Written by Alessandro Camon, the Oscar-nominated scribe of “The Messenger” (2009), the film follows a helpline volunteer named Beth, played by Tessa Thompson, who is an integral part of the small army of counselors who field calls from all kinds of people who feel lonely and broken. The film unspools at the Venice Festival’s Giornate degli Autori and is the closing film of Venice Days on Sept. 9. Buscemi can sympathize with anyone who feels lost and broken, especially as he is still reeling from losing his wife Jo Andres in January 2019; they had been married for over 30 years. While in pre-production, the director and producer called a helpline number. “At first, it was in the name of research,” Buscemi told Variety. “I had these dreams in the night involving my late wife, and it was reason enough for me to call. I had an amazing 15-minute talk with this person. I’ll never know who she was, and I never told her who I was. I just talked about Jo, and it was important.”

Right at the beginning of The March On Rome, a special screening in the Venice Days section of the Venice Film Festival, Mark Cousins draws our collective gaze to a piece of graffiti saying that cinema is most powerful weapon of all. It isn’t clear — to me, anyway — whether that joyful proclamation dates back to 1922, when Benito Mussolini led a Fascist march from Naples to Rome, or to some other eruption of historical optimism. Cinema isn’t as powerful as all that — if it were, Fascism would have been clobbered to a pulp by Chaplin, Lubitsch and all the other filmmakers who lampooned its vainglorious leaders. But images do matter. They certainly mattered to Italian Fascism.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor In “The March on Rome,” which world premieres in the Venice Days sidebar of Venice Film Festival Wednesday, Northern Irish-Scottish filmmaker Mark Cousins tracks the ascent of fascism in Italy in the 1920s, and its fall-out across 1930s Europe. He also draws a dotted line from those events to the storming of the Capitol in Washington, D.C., in January 2021. The documentary, illustrated with archive footage and Cousins’ characteristic cinematic analysis, starts with Donald Trump defending his decision to retweet a quote from Italian dictator Benito Mussolini: “It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep.” Later in the film, Cousins inserts footage of Trump supporters attacking the Capitol, hoping to overturn Joe Biden’s electoral victory.

Will Tizard Contributor Spontaneous flames, dysfunctional warning alerts and a sense of impending catastrophe feature in Hungarian-Romanian director Cristina Grosan’s sophomore feature “Ordinary Failures,” premiering in Venice Days, a sidebar to the Venice Film Festival. Variety is launching the trailer for the film (below), which is being sold by Totem Films. The Czech-Hungarian-Italian-Slovak co-production, filmed entirely in the Czech Republic, mainly in Prague but also featuring Pilsen, is based on a screenplay by Klára Vlasáková, which Grosan says evolved for three years and continued morphing right up through the shoot. The ominous tale revolves around the lives of three strangers: a teenager, a young mother, and a woman in her early sixties, who cross paths during one day in which their city is rocked by mysterious explosions.

Thanks to interviews with Olivia Wilde about her upcoming sophomore feature “Don’t Worry Darling,” actor Shia LeBeouf is back in the news.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor MPM Premium has picked up Cláudia Varejão’s queer coming-of-age drama “Wolf and Dog” (Lobo e cão), which has its world premiere in Venice Days, a sidebar to the Venice Film Festival. Variety has been given exclusive access to the trailer. The film centers on Ana, who was born in São Miguel, an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, ruled by religion and traditions. She is the middle child of a family of three, growing up with her mother and grandmother. As she grew up, Ana realized that girls and boys were given different tasks. Through her friendship with Luis, her queer best friend who loves dresses as much as pants, Ana questions the world that is promised to her. When her friend Cloé arrives from Canada, Ana embarks on a journey that will take her beyond her limited horizons.

Venice Days – or the Giornati Degli Autori – is an independent side bar to the Venice Film Festival in the vein of Cannes’ Director’s Fortnight section and is not directly associated with the larger La Biennale. But Ferrara’s “Padre Pio” will make its premiere at the fest as part of a larger lineup that was announced Thursday.LaBeouf in the film plays the title character Padre Pio, also known as Francesco Forgione and Saint Pius of Pietrelcina. In real life, Padre Pio was the subject of both adoration and controversy because he displayed bodily wounds or stigmata that many believed to be aligned and associated with the crucifixion of Christ.

Abel Ferrara has had several premieres of his films at the Venice Film Festival over the years. Now, Variety reports that Ferrara is back again this year with “Padre Pio,” one of the highlights of the Venice Days lineup announced today.

Abel Ferrera has had several premieres of his films at the Venice Film Festival over the years. Now, Variety reports that Ferrera is back again this year with “Padre Pio,” one of the highlights of the Venice Days lineup announced today.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentAbel Ferrara’s “Padre Pio,” starring Shia LaBeouf as an Italian monk who gained rock-star status among the Catholic faithful, is among the titles set to launch from the Venice Film Festival’s independently run Giornate Degli Autori.The section, also known as Venice Days, will see LaBeouf back on the big screen after the actor — best known for his roles in the Transformers and Indiana Jones franchises — took a break from acting in 2020 following allegations made by his ex-girlfriend Tahliah Debrett Barnett. The singer, known as FKA twigs, sued the actor for sexual battery, assault and emotional distress.It is not yet known whether LaBeouf will be on the Lido to promote “Padre Pio.” In the latest film by Ferrara, who is known for cult classics such as “Bad Lieutenant,” LaBeouf puts in what Giornate chief Gaia Furrer called an “extraordinary” performance as the “mystic and feverish” Capuchin monk born in the late 19th century in a small Southern Italian town.

Christopher Vourlias Bogdan George Apetri’s “Miracle” took home the top prize in the Romanian Days competition at the Transilvania Intl. Film Festival, which saw nine first-time directors among the 12 filmmakers competing in the annual showcase of domestic cinema.It’s the first time such a formidable number of debuts have featured in the competition, offering a snapshot of what the fest’s artistic director Mihai Chirilov describes as a “balanced landscape” of new and established voices in Romania’s celebrated film industry.It’s been nearly two decades since Cristi Puiu’s “The Death of Mr.

UK LGBTQ+-focused distributor Peccadillo Pictures has claimed that Amazon Prime Video UK is refusing to make Canadian artist and filmmaker Bruce LaBruce’s provocative dark comedy Saint-Narcisse available on its online store.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentSpecialty U.S. distributors Uncork’d Entertainment and Dark Star Pictures have acquired Italian director Pasquale Marrazzo’s LGBTQ drama “The Neighbor” for release in North America from Rome-based Coccinelle Film Sales.“The Neighbor” (which is titled “Hotel Milano” in Italy) is about two young men who are in love but get bullied by a gang of neo-Nazi skinheads that makes their life impossible as hatred and intolerance seeps into the rapport between their respective families.It’s the fifth feature written and directed by Marrazzo whose debut “South of the Sun” launched from Toronto’s Discovery section in 2001.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentAlmost two weeks into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Europe’s film industry continues to parse the complexities of a boycott on Russian cinema in order to express solidarity with the Ukrainian film community.While some film festivals, such as Stockholm and Glasgow, haven’t hesitated in boycotting Russian state-funded films outright, others like Cannes and Venice are taking a more nuanced approach, banning official delegations, but not necessarily Russian films and directors.The war’s more immediate effect, however, is that Ukrainian cinema is set to gain an increased visibility in the festival arena and beyond.On Monday evening, Rome’s Cinema Troisi hosted a free screening in collaboration with the Venice Film Festival of Ukrainian director Valentyn Vasynovych’s “Reflection” (pictured), set during the war in Donbass, in eastern Ukraine, in 2014. The film, which premiered in competition on the Lido last September, “asks, with brutal austerity, what happens to the soul of a man — and a nation — at war,” as critic Jessica Kiang put it in her Variety review.The Rome event, introduced by Venice Biennale president Roberto Cicutto, is being followed by other screenings of “Reflection,” organized by the fest in Italy.

Naman Ramachandran “Drive My Car” filmmaker Hamaguchi Ryusuke, director Karim Ainouz (Berlin-winner “Central Airport THF”) and actor Connie Nielsen (“Wonder Woman”) will join president M. Night Shyamalan on the international jury of the Berlin Film Festival.

Jeffrey Sipe Every now and then, a country emerges from decades of oppression and a film industry, once squashed lest it tell truths uncomfortable for the powers that be, begins to blossom with new, unfettered voices.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent“Madeleine Collins,” a psychological thriller with “Benedetta” star Virginie Efira, has been sold by Charades in major territories. The movie world premiered at Venice Days and played at San Sebastian.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentIn Italian director Francesco Lettieri’s “Lovely Boy,” which is the closing film of Venice’s independently run Venice Days section, a rising star of Rome’s never before depicted trap music scene gets sucked into a spiral of self-destruction.“Lovely Boy” is the sophomore feature by Lettieri, who made his debut with “Ultras,” a drama about Neapolitan soccer hooligans that plays worldwide on Netflix.Both “Ultras” and “Lovely Boy” were lead produced by

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentDina Amer, an Egyptian-American filmmaker and award-winning journalist, explores the roots of radicalization through a contemporary coming-of-age story in her bold feature debut “You Resemble Me,” which world premieres today at the Venice Film Festival.“You Resemble Me” delivers a nuanced character study of Hasna Aït Boulahcen, the troubled young woman who became connected to the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris and was erroneously believed to be

EXCLUSIVE: Here’s a first clip from You Resemble Me, the debut feature of NY-based Egyptian-American director Dina Amer which has its world premiere in the Venice Days section of the Venice Film Festival this week.