Syria Showbiz Latest News and Updates

A dad-of-three says he was booted out of Turkey and forced to fly back to the UK because he shares the same name as a man from Manchester who had terror charges against him dropped.

“Cousins” was selected as a finalist in this year’s ShortList Film Festival, presented by TheWrap. You can watch the films and vote for your favorite here.To paraphrase one of the many quips Billy Crystal throws down in “When Harry Met Sally”: “In a city of 8 million people, you’re bound to run into your ex.” This is the shrewd setup for Karina Dandashi’s “Cousins,” a 13-minute, Brooklyn-set short centering on Layla (played by Dandashi) and Tarek (Ribal Rayess), two cousins whose reunion is turned upside down when Layla’s ex (Monica Sanborn) turns up at the same bar.“This is the first time I’ve actually done a comedy,” Dandashi told TheWrap.

John Bleasdale Guest Contributor When Variety talks to Zoe Saldana and her husband, the artist and film director, Marco Perego, they’ve only just arrived in Taormina and are in the process of unpacking. Room service arrives and Zoe apologizes about having to tuck into the salad straightaway. They’re here attending the world premiere of Perego’s debut film as a director, “The Absence of Eden,” a drama that takes place in the murky world of the U.S.’s southern border, a hellish landscape inhabited by Coyotes, ICE officers, desperate immigrants and refugees. It’s a universe away from the Pandora of the “Avatar” pictures or the science fiction blockbusters “Star Trek” and “Guardians of the Galaxy” Saldana is more usually associated with. “When I was picked for those films, I had no idea they were going to become franchises. I thought it was going to be a one and done kind of thing. I hold all of those films responsible for any kind of global notoriety I may have. However, it’s time consuming. Between ‘Star Trek,’ ‘Guardians’ and ‘Avatar,’ I had solid work for over 10 years. As I became an asset that had a certain value in this industry, I could turn that to films like this.”

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Los Angeles-based Syrian director and producer Sam Kadi, who helmed the doc “Little Gandhi” about the life and death of young Syrian peace activist Ghiyath Matar and produced the Oscar-shortlisted animation film “Lamya’s Poem,” has signed for representation with management company Bohemia Group. Kadi’s first feature was the 2012 indie immigrant drama “The Citizen,” starring Egyptian actor Khaled Nabawy as a Lebanese immigrant who wins a green card through the U.S. lottery system and arrives in New York to claim his documents on Sept. 10, 2001. The drama, also starring Cary Elwes, then follows the protagonist’s hellish 10-year path to citizenship in post-9/11 America, including his detainment by homeland security and his deportation trial.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Samuel Goldwyn Films has unveiled the trailer for “Simone: Woman of the Century,” a biopic of Simone Veil, an Auschwitz survivor who became health minister of France and championed the 1975 law that legalized abortion in France.  Directed by Olivier Dahan, best-known for his Oscar-winning Edith Piaf biopic “La Vie en Rose,” “Simone” boasts powerful performances by Elsa Zylberstein and Rebecca Marder. The key cast is completed by Elodie Bouchez, Sylvie Testud and Olivier Gourmet. The film was a box office hit in France, where it was released by Warner Bros and ranked as 2022’s third highest-grossing French-language hit with over 2.5 million tickets sold. Samuel Goldwyn Films is planning to release the film in U.S. theaters, opening in New York and Los Angeles on Aug. 18, followed by a wider rollout.

McKinley Franklin editor The Palm Springs International ShortFest winners were announced on Sunday, with Japan and the U.S.’s “The Old Young Crow” taking the prize for best of the festival. Lithuania’s “Way Better” won best animated short and China’s “Will You Look At Me” landed best documentary short. Additionally, the award for best live-action short over 15 minutes went to France’s “Sèt Lam” and Spain’s “Mystic Tiger” took home the award for the best live-action short 15 minutes and under. The festival handed out cash prizes worth $25,000, as well as five awards to help winners qualify for the Academy Awards. The competition included some 299 short films within the official selection. The annual festival began on June 20 and will conclude Monday, June 26.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The Skip City International D-Cinema Festival, in Saitama, on the outskirts of Tokyo, will hold its 2023 edition with both in-person and online components, long after COVID, which necessitated such hybrid formats, has retreated. The festival, which sees itself as a gateway for emerging talent, and has operated since 2004, will hold its physical edition July 15-23 and its online from July 22- 26, organizers said on Wednesday. This year, the festival will begin with the world premiere of “Confetti,” which was produced to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the festival as well as the 90th anniversary of its Kawaguchi City base.

Addie Morfoot Contributor Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia is the latest high-net-worth individual to get involved in the documentary business. As a producer on Waad Al-Kateab’s “We Dare to Dream,” about the refugee Olympic team at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, Gebbia not only helped fund the project, he also played an active role in the film’s pre-production, production, and edit. “We Dare to Dream” is Al-Kateab’s second feature docu. In her first film, “For Sama,” which was nominated for an Academy Award, the Syrian director used her camera to capture her daily life during the siege of Aleppo.Gebbia produced “We Dare to Dream” alongside Violet Films’ Joanna Natasegara (“Virunga”) and Abigail Anketell-Jones (“The Edge of Democracy”) and XTR’s Bryn Mooser and Kathryn Everett. Angelina Jolie recently signed on as an executive producer on the project. Gebbia joins fellow philanthropists Laurene Powell Jobs (Concordia Studio), Jeff Skoll (Participant Media) and Jim Swartz (Impact Partners) in the docu investment business.

Manchester City players met with children injured in the devastating Turkey-Syria earthquake - even in the nerve-wracking days ahead of their historic match as they trained for the historic Champions League final.

Pat Saperstein Deputy Editor The Annecy International Animation Festival has postponed outdoor screenings until Monday after Thursday’s knife attack at a playground near the lakeside screening venue in the French mountain resort town. However, the festival will open as planned on Sunday. Six people, included four young children, were wounded in the attack, which was characterized as an isolated incident. The suspect, a 31-year-old Syrian national with refugee status in Sweden, is in custody. Festival head Mickaël Marin and his team said in a statement, “The people of Annecy, France, and farther afield, have all been shaken to the core by yesterday’s tragic events. It has now been established that this was an isolated act.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent The chief of the Annecy Film Festival, Mickael Marin, has addressed the tragic knife attack that injured five people, including four children, on Thursday morning (June 8) at a busy lakeside park, just days before the start of the international animation film festival. “We are all shocked here. So far, the only thing that I can say is that we really hope that kids and other people injured will be fine. Of course, we will do something (to express our solidarity). For the time being, the only thing that we can do is to pray for the people who were attacked,” Marin told Variety. Two children and one adult are severely injured, according to France Info. The suspect, arrested by police shortly after the attack, is a Syrian refugee who applied for asylum in France and eventually got it from Sweden in April, according to local reports. France’s anti-terrorist prosecutors office hasn’t yet been seized.

A recent episode of Vice newsmagazine series, which contains a report about Florida governor and GOP presidential candidate Ron DeSantis, was removed from the schedule ahead of its previously announced premiere on Showtime.

Benedict Cumberbatch and his family have suffered a break-in by a knife-wielding chef at their home in North London.According to the Daily Mail, Cumberbatch, his wife Sophie Hunter, and their three young children were in the home when Jack Bissell, a former chef at the Beaumont Hotel in Mayfair, kicked his way through the front garden’s iron gate at the actor’s £3.5million house, used a fish knife to rip the intercom off the wall and made a series of threats.Bissell eventually fled the scene before things could escalate further. He was arrested after police found his DNA on the intercom.

Inspirational footballers returned to their former club after beating cancer to help others. Rochdale legend Joe Thompson was joined by former Dale youth player Bader Al-Akkad at Spotland for the Goals for A Cure match.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor In “The Old Oak,” which played in Competition in Cannes, Ken Loach portrays a village in the North-East of England where the indigenous white community comes into conflict with Syrian refugees – a conflict fuelled by the despair, deprivation and decline of the rust-belt region. Such conditions can be a seed-bed for far right groups, the director tells Variety. Such issues have not been explored sufficiently in film and television, Loach says, and he draws a parallel with the portrayal of the rise of Nazism in Germany in the mass media. “We have endless programs about the Second World War, about the horrors of Nazism and fascism, about the racism, about the Holocaust. Quite properly, we have endless programs about that, but what they refuse to point out is that that arose from alienation, anger, feeling cheated, and finding scapegoats. And that’s how we ended up with Hitler, and that’s the ground in which the far right flourishes. One of the points of the film is to say: This is the cause of fascism. This is where it comes from. This is its seed-bed, and it comes as an inevitable consequence of our economic system. Because if the neoliberal agenda was an essential development for capitalism, to use the old-fashioned word, then that’s where fascism comes from. Implicit in that is that the far right will rise because that’s how people will be heading. And they know that and yet the mass media, the press, just turn their backs on that. They’ll tell us all about the horrors of Hitler. Sure. But they won’t tell us how he came to power. And that’s the huge lesson. And we see it in essence now all the time.”

The Old Oak will be his last.Speaking at a press conference for his new movie at the Cannes Film Festival, Loach was asked by Deadline whether reports about his retirement are true.“One day at a time,” he responded. “If you get up in the morning, and you’re not in the obituary column; one day at a time.”It comes after he told The Hollywood Reporter last month that “it would be hard to do a feature film again” because “your facilities do decline.”He said: “Films take a couple of years and I’ll be nearly 90,” he said of a potential next movie.

Ken Loach still has more to say against The Man in society with his cinema, that was clear coming away from the Cannes press conference for his latest movie The Old Oak.

By Hanna RantalaCANNES (Reuters) - Ken Loach said on Friday he does not know if "The Old Oak," the 86-year-old British director's attempt to win the Cannes Film Festival's top prize for a third time, would be his last. "Oh, I don't know, I live day by day," said Loach, who turns 87 in June. "If you read the obituary columns and you're not in them, it's a good day.

What could well be Ken Loach’s final film has as much fire and fury as his debut Poor Cow did in 1967, if we discount his pioneering TV work in the run-up. The visual style hasn’t changed a great deal in the years since, but that’s because the British movie veteran, soon to turn 87, isn’t much fussed about surfaces, it’s the inner lives of his characters that he wants to capture. In that respect, The Old Oak would make a fitting swansong, capping the recent North-East trilogy with a vital film that is clearly the work of the team behind previous Cannes Competition hits I, Daniel Blake and Sorry We Missed You.

Imad Mughniyeh killed thousands of people with car bombs — including 220 Marines stationed in Beirut in 1983 — before he himself was blown to bits in Syria 25 years later.The story of Mughniyeh an Islamic Jihadist dubbed “The Man of Smoke,” is dramatized, for the first time and in detail, in “Ghosts of Beirut,” a four-part Showtime series mixing real, documentary-style on-camera interviews with scripted drama that goes inside the joint CIA/Mossad operation to track down and assassinate Mughniyeh … or so the story goes, since US and Israeli officials have never officially confirmed their agencies’ roles in sending him to kingdom come.“Ghosts” was created by Lior Raz and Avi Issacharoff, who also developed the hit Netflix series “Fauda,” in which Raz stars as Israeli Defense Force team member Doron Kavillio. (Raz himself was a commando in an IDF counter-terrorism unit.)Raz and Issacharoff also co-wrote “Ghosts of Beirut,” filmed in Morocco, with Joëlle Tauma and Greg Barker (who directed all four episodes).

The CIRCLE Women Doc Accelerator today announced the projects that will take part in the sixth edition of the prestigious training program for women-identifying nonfiction filmmakers. 

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Kaouther Ben Hania, the Oscar-nominated director of “The Man Who Sold His Skin” whose latest film “Four Daughters” is competing at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, will next direct “Mimesis,” an epic love story set in Tunisia. While the plot is under wraps, the story is set in two different periods, the 1990s and the 1940s, paying tribute to cinema and Arab-Muslim cultural heritage. It’s being produced by Nadim Cheikhrouha at Tanit Films, who produced Ben Hania’s “Four Daughters” and her previous film “The Man Who Sold His Skin” which world premiered at Venice where it won best actor for Yahya Mahayni and was nominated for best international film at the Oscars in 2021.

EXCLUSIVE: Egyptian-U.S. company Ambient Light has acquired North American sales rights for Sudanese director Mohamed Kordofani’s Cannes Un Certain Regard title Goodbye Julia.

Christopher Vourlias With Jonathan Glazer’s Auschwitz-set Holocaust drama “The Zone of Interest” competing for the Palme d’Or and a host of Polish producers bringing buzzy upcoming projects to the Marché du Film, the Polish industry should again have Cannes talking. Here’s a rundown of some of the highlights: The Zone of Interest(Competition)Director: Jonathan GlazerProducers: James Wilson, Ewa Puszczyńska (JW Films, Extreme Emotions)Sales: A24The veteran British filmmaker’s first film in nearly a decade, which will compete for the Palme d’Or, is a Holocaust drama loosely based on the novel by Martin Amis that’s sure to be among the festival’s most talked-about films.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Leading French producer Michael Gentile’s Paris-based outfit The Film is about to start shooting Julie Delpy’s next directorial outing, “The Barbarians,” and Laurence Arné’s “Les Hennedricks” starring Dany Boon. Delpy’s comeback to French filmmaking since “Lolo,” “The Barbarians” is a satirical comedy unfolding in a small town in Brittany which is preparing to welcome Ukrainian refugees after voting unanimously to greet them in exchange for subsidies from the government. But instead of seeing Ukrainians come into town, they see Syrian refugees, causing some tensions among locals and testing their liberal beliefs. Delpy will star in the film opposite Sandrine Kiberlain (“Mademoiselle Chambon”), Laurent Lafitte (“Elle”) and Ziad Bakri (“The Weekend Away”), India Hair (“Angry Annie”), Mathieu Demy (“The Bureau”) and Delpy’s father Albert Delpy.

Films Boutique has closed multiple territory deals on Agnieszka Holland’s “The Green Border,” which just completed principal photography in Poland. The film has been sold to Condor (France), September Films (Benelux), Movies Inspired (Italy), Leopardo Filmes (Portugal), MCF Megacom (former Yugoslavia), Kino Swiat (Poland) and AQS (Czech Rep./Slovakia). “The Green Border” tells the story of a family of Syrian refugees, a solitary English teacher from Afghanistan and a young border guard, all of whom meet on the Polish-Belarusian border during the most recent humanitarian crisis triggered by Belarus’ president Alexander Lukashenko, who opened the country’s doors to migrants as a back door to enter the EU.

In May 2020, two months into the production shutdown caused by the global pandemic, NBC acquired Canadian medical drama Transplant, which landed on the network’s Covid-impacted fall schedule. In December of that year, NBC picked up Season 2 of the show.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor MAD Solutions has acquired the distribution rights to “Concrete Valley” for multiple territories. The film focuses on a Syrian family living in Toronto. The film, from Canadian-French filmmaker Antoine Bourges, premiered at Toronto Film Festival, before travelling to Berlinale, and it just screened at Jeonju. The deal covers the following territories: UAE, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Palestine, Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Mauritania, Djibouti, Somalia, Sudan, South of Sudan and Comoro Island. The writers are Bourges and Teyama Alkamli. The producer is Shehrezade Mian at Markhor Pictures.

Letitia Wright is stepping into the ring for In the Shadows, a drama based on the true story of Ramla Ali, the first Somali British professional boxing champion. 

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Rolling off a successful collaboration on “Charlatan,” Films Boutique has boarded Agnieszka Holland’s next film “The Green Border,” which just completed principal photography in Poland. Now in post production, “The Green Border” tells the fateful story of a family of Syrian refugees, a solitary English teacher from Afghanistan and a young border guard, all of whom meet on the Polish-Belarusian border during the most recent humanitarian crisis triggered by President Lukaschenko opening doors to migrants in Belarus as a back door to enter the EU.  The screenplay, penned by Holland, Gabriela Łazarkiewicz-Sieczko and Maciej Pisuk, is inspired by real events. Research for the film included hundreds of hours of document analysis, interviews with refugees, border guards, borderland residents, activists and experts.