Ed Meza Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Ed Meza @edmezavar International distributor Eccho Rights has inked landmark deals for Turkish drama series “Golden Boy” with broadcasters in Sweden and Finland.The show, which has enjoyed huge success on Turkey’s Star TV since launching in September 2022, is the first Turkish drama to be picked up by Swedish and Finnish broadcasters. In Sweden, TV4 acquired “Golden Boy” for its TV4Gold and Sjuan linear channels, as well as streamers CMore and TV4 Play. In Finland, Eccho Rights’ deal with MTV Oy represents the first time ever that a Turkish series has been licensed by a Finnish broadcast group, with “Golden Boy” to stream on CMore and Katsomo in Finland.

Ed Meza @edmezavar The Barcelona-set feature “La nit no fa vigília” and Argentine film “Hidden City” (“Ciudad Oculta”) won the Malaga Festival Work in Progress awards for Spanish and Latin American projects on Friday. “La nit no fa vigília” (which roughly translates to “The Night Does Not Keep Watch”) centers on a young man who lives with and cares for his aging, frail grandmother, but still finds time for a nocturnal social life. It was among the frontrunners to win at the awards ceremony. A joint project from a student collective comprising Laura Corominas Espelt, Laura Serra Solé, Clara Serrano Llorens, Gerard Simó Gimeno, Ariadna Ulldemolins Abad and Pau Vall Capdet, “La nit no fa vigília” also won the industry magazine Cine y Tele prize.

Ed Meza @edmezavar Estíbaliz Urresola Solaguren’s celebrated Spanish feature “20,000 Species of Bees” and Kattia G. Zúñiga’s Panamanian drama “Sister & Sister” took the top prizes at the Malaga Film Festival, garnering the Golden Biznagas for Spanish and Latin American pictures respectively.   “20,000 Species of Bees” also won best supporting actress for Patricia López Arnaiz and picked up theSpanish Cinematographic Informers Association’s Feroz Puerta Oscura award. The film’s success follows two awards in Berlin, including a Silver Bear for Sofía Otero for her portrayal of a young girl going through a gender crisis. For Zúñiga, the Golden Biznaga is sure to help further propel “Sister & Sister,” an autobiographical story about two teenage sisters who travel from Costa Rica to Panama in search of their absent father.

Ed Meza @edmezavar This year’s Malaga Festival and its industry section’s Latin American Focus are celebrating Peruvian cinema and talent. A number of Peruvian films are screening in the festival and industry section, including “El Caso Monroy,” by Josué Mendez, and Leonardo Barbuy’s debut feature “Diógenes,” which unspool in the fest’s main section and Zonazine sidebar. As a meeting point for producers and directors from Latin American and investors from Spain and the rest of Europe, the Malaga Festival Industry Zone (MAFIZ) serves as a key hub that promotes the co-production of Latin American projects aimed at the international market.

Ed Meza @edmezavar Paramount+ is launching its first-ever mobile-only streaming subscription plan in Mexico and Brazil. Paramount+’s Basic Plan, described as “competitively priced,” will be available from April 18. It will allow subscribers to stream content on one mobile device or tablet at a time, uninterrupted and without ads. “This new offering is part of our broader strategy to scale Paramount+,” said Marco Nobili, executive vice president and international general manager for Paramount+. “With multi-tier pricing options, Paramount+ will reach even more subscribers by fitting diverse customer choices and grow our global direct-to-consumer distribution. With mobile entertainment consumption increasing around the world, a mobile-only option will make our slate of programming more accessible to our audiences in mobile-first countries.”

Ed Meza @edmezavar Panamanian-Costa Rican director Kattia G. Zúñiga, whose debut feature “Las hijas” (“Sister & Sister”) premieres at the Malaga Film festival, is developing a new feature project about women finding their and a tougher attitude late in life through the power of dance. The project re-teams her with “Las Hijas” producer Alejo Crisóstomo. “Rabiosas” (“Raging”, their project, follows a group of 55-year-old friends in Panama who decide to take ballet classes together, as they did when they were schoolgirls, in order to cheer up a friend going through a difficult time and also to get out of the routine of daily life. Inspired by their 26-year-old teacher, however, they soon switch to bolder dancing moves.

Ed Meza @edmezavar Spanish SVOD platform Movistar+ wowed viewers at the Málaga Film Festival on Tuesday with the first episode of “La Unidad Kabul,” the third season of its special police unit thriller. The latest instalment is set in Afghanistan, where Spanish agents are on a new mission to meet an infiltrator with information about a possible attack in Europe. The elite unit is in the war-torn country as the U.S. ends its 20-year occupation, leaving Kabul to be taken by the Taliban. As Spanish authorities begin the evacuation of civilians and collaborators, the agents get caught up in clashes between the Taliban, Mujahideen and Islamic State-Khorasan Province (ISIS-K) forces.

Ed Meza @edmezavar Santiago Requejo has not only turned his hit short, “All in Favor,” into a theatrical play set to premiere in Buenos Aires in April, he’s also working on a feature film version. The award-winning work, which was shortlisted for this year’s live-action short film Oscar, sets the scene with a friendly meeting of apartment owners discussing a new elevator that becomes increasingly tense when they find out one of the neighbors has rented his flat to a work colleague with mental health issues. The stage adaptation, which Requejo co-wrote with Javier Lorenzo and Raul Barranco, begins with the story depicted in the short film and expands its. The play (titled “Votemos” in Argentina rather than “Votamos” as in Spain) premieres April 6 at the Teatro Metropolitan in Buenos Aires.

Ed Meza @edmezavar Jose Pozo, director of the celebrated Spanish short “Plastic Killer,” is traveling to the Western U.S. for his next feature film, “Unusual Cowboys,” which he plans to shoot this year. The story follows Milton, a peaceful rancher and occasional musician who loses his daughter in a traffic accident. Her death has a further tragic impact on Milton’s life, leading him to sell his ranch and travel to Montana in search of Caleb, the man who failed to help his daughter in the accident. It’s a film about two men who in other circumstances could have been good friends. Although separated by terrible circumstances, they share a common passion: Music.

Ed Meza @edmezavar David Pujol, whose enchanting drama “Waiting for Dalí” premiered at the Malaga Film Festival on Sunday, has a new feature film project and an international TV series in the works. Pujol has just completed the script for “Rehearsal for a Kiss,” the story of a passionate yet hapless movie theater owner in Barcelona whose love of classic movies has left his cinema in a precarious position. On the verge of losing the family business, he seeks help from his uncle in America, who has made a career for himself as a character actor in Hollywood. A flashy, larger-than-life personality, the uncle returns to his native city after 40 years to help his nephew save the theater while also reconnecting with his own past.

Ed Meza @edmezavar Spanish filmmaker Félix Viscarret, known for tackling such heavy subject matter as the Basque conflict (“Patria”), crime in the Cuban capital Havana (“Four Seasons in Havana: Winds of Lent”) and psychological drama (“Staring at Strangers”), has made perhaps his most personal film yet with a touching and engrossing story of fatherhood and the pitfalls of success.      In “Not Such an Easy Life,” 40-year-old Isaías (Miki Esparbé), a once promising young architect, is struggling to balance career and family, wanting to raise his young children while desperate to achieve the fleeting professional success he once enjoyed as he strives against more ambitious rivals.  

Ed Meza @edmezavar In Álvaro Carmona’s award-winning short, “The Treatment,” Miguel, a middle-aged man unhappy with his baldness, visits a clinic that promises to reverse his hair loss with a new remedy, but with a potentially problematic side effect. The black comedy is a satirical critique of the vanity that is so celebrated in today’s social media-drenched society and it has struck a chord with festival goers, so far picking up 67 domestic and international awards. It’s was also one of four Spanish works shortlisted for this year’s live-action short film Oscar. “Everything arises from trying to play with the idea of this obsession with aesthetics that has become somewhat accentuated in recent years in the modern world,” Carmona tells Variety.

Ed Meza @edmezavar Filmax has acquired international rights to “Ashes in the Sky,” the first narrative feature from director Miquel Romans. The film is inspired by the life of Neus Català, a feminist and republican who, after fighting in the Spanish Civil War, was captured by the Nazis and sent into forced labor at a weapons factory in Czechoslovakia. There she became the head of an anti-fascist group of women known as the Gandulas Commando, which resisted the Nazis by sabotaging the factory. The film, based on the book of the same name by Carme Martí, stars Nausicaa Bonnín (“Dating in Barcelona”), Rachel Lascar (“Elite”), Iria del Río (“Visitor”), Thomas Sauerteig, Daniel Horvath (“The Burning Cold”), Fernando Corral, Laura Conejero, Roger Batalla, Natascha Wiese and Joaquín Caserza.

Ed Meza @edmezavar Daniela Fejerman and Elvira Lindo’s “Someone Who Takes Care of Me,” a celebration of actors, their passion, craft and historical legacy, opened this year’s Malaga Film Festival in a fitting tribute to the Spanish entertainment industry.   The film, which screened out of competition, centers on three women whose careers have spanned stage, film and television, actresses of different generations whose fortunes in life have greatly differed and who struggle with untold secrets and unresolved conflicts. Aura Garrido stars as Nora, a young, award-winning actress with a promising future who carefully balances between the two main pillars in her life, her grandmother Lilith (Magüi Mira), who reigned for decades as a renowned theater star, and her mother Cecilia (Emma Suárez), whose career has languished after having achieved some glory in the 1980s, a decade of excess in which she heavily partook.

Ed Meza @edmezavar The new genre-focused Fantastic Pavilion at the Cannes Film Festival’s Marché du Film has unveiled plans for a series of six yet-to-be-announced special market screenings as well as an original logo that promises to unlock the imagination. Due to the strong response and interest from independent producers, sales agents and distributors – seen again at Berlin’s European Film Market — Fantastic Pavilion organizers are presenting the Fantastic Pavilion Galas. Offering a prime example of what participating sales companies will be offering to worldwide buyers at the Marché du Film, the six special market screenings will serve “as a magnifying glass, giving them a wide promotion to stand out among the crop of content available at the market,” organizers said. The Galas’ six films will be announced prior the Cannes market. Interested parties may contact Fantastic Pavilion organizers via their website.

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.  

Ed Meza @edmezavar “Ctrl: Z. Russian Voices,” a documentary that examines the impact of the Ukraine war on the everyday lives of people in a small Russian town, has sold to broadcaster across Europe, including Franco-German channel Arte, TV 3 in Spain and CNN in Portugal. Distributed internationally by Paris-based Java Films, the documentary was filmed in the small Russian town where director Natacha Rostova, using a pseudonym, grew up. It examines the lasting effects the ongoing conflict is having on the lives of families and couples, ordinary people who are silenced, often too afraid to speak out, while others have become fervent opponents of the war.

Ed Meza @edmezavar Spanish producers taking part in a Spanish content showcase at the Berlinale Series Market on Monday debated what was jokingly referred to as the “devil’s bargain” offered by major streaming platforms that are propelling Spanish shows around the globe often at the cost of IP ownership.    Álex de la Iglesia of Madrid-based production powerhouse Pokeepsie Films said the company for years retained the IP of films that played in local cinemas. “We assumed there was no other model. Now, maybe we lose our IP, but suddenly our movies are in the houses of the whole planet. Maybe you have to sell your soul to these ‘diabolical’ platforms,” he joked. “But I can only say that working with the devil is worth it.,” he added.

Ed Meza @edmezavar “Snow,” an Austrian-German co-production and one of 16 titles presented in the Berlinale Series Market Selects showcase, weaves the timely issue of climate change and local folklore into a suspenseful mystery drama set in the picturesque Austrian Alps. Brigitte Hobmeier stars as Lucia, a physician who with her husband and children moves to the village, where she is replacing the local doctor, who is retiring. Things take a troubling turn when her daughter is visited by a strange woman at night. The series presentation at the EFM event brings the title back to Berlin, where it came together in 2020 at the Berlinale Co-Production Market’s Co-Pro Series event.

Ed Meza @edmezavar Political assassinations, war, espionage, royal scandals, teen angst and magic: new German series are setting the bar ever higher in terms of challenging and risky subject matter. The Berlinale Series Market’s Up Next: Germany showcase on Monday presented four forthcoming series projects that look set to entice international buyers: Presenting “Herrhausen,” creator Christer von Lindequist and actor Oliver Masucci discussed the impact of the 1989 assassination, which continues to reverberate in Germany. It was also the subject of Andres Veiel’s acclaimed 2001 documentary “Black Box BRD.”

Ed Meza @edmezavar German distributor and world sales company Kinostar has acquired Polish filmmaker Maria Sadowska’s erotic thriller “Temptation.” Based on the bestselling novel by Edyta Folwarska, “Temptation” tells the story of young journalist Inez, whose assignment to cover soccer star Maks Wygoda leads her onto a dangerous journey. “Temptation” was produced by Daniel Markowicz of Warsaw-based Lightcraft, who also produced and directed the recent hit Netflix actioner “Lesson Plan,” and executive producers Paulina Nowak and Anita Dabrowska. “Maria and Daniel are extremely talented, and we are very happy to start working with Lightcraft on this movie, with hopefully many more to follow,” said Kinostar head Michael Roesch.

Ed Meza @edmezavar German cinema looks set for a major boom this year with a strong lineup of diverse works that span historical dramas, coming-of-age tales, high-octane nostalgia, animation and sci-fi fun. The Berlin Film Festival is bowing a muscular selection of local titles, among them “Afire,” by Berlinale mainstay Christian Petzold (“Undine”), screening in competition. The films centers on a group of young people staying at a holiday house near the Baltic Sea during a hot, dry summer, exploring volatile emotions that start to sizzle when a wildfire spreads through the surrounding forest. Likewise vying for the Golden Bear is Margarethe von Trotta’s biopic “Ingeborg Bachmann: Journey Into the Desert,” starring Vicky Krieps (“Corsage”) as the radical Austrian author. The film examines her relationship with Swiss writer Max Frisch and her 1964 journey of self-discovery through the Egyptian desert.

Ed Meza @edmezavar After a hugely successful year for domestic films, Austria’s movie industry is looking forward to another impressive crop of titles, including many international co-productions that reflect not only cultural and historical ties with neighboring countries but also the sector’s strong cross-border partnerships. Highly anticipated films this year include Hans Steinbichler’s “A Whole Life,” the story of a humble man’s existence in an Alpine valley that spans more than eight decades; Dieter Berner’s “Alma and Oskar,” which explores the passionate and tumultuous affair between Viennese composer and socialite Alma Mahler and artist Oskar Kokoschka in the early 1900s; and Timm Kröger’s “The Theory of Everything,” a black-and-white, 1960s-set mystery-thriller that takes place in a scientific conference in the Alps.

Ed Meza @edmezavar With two new funding programs that could cover as much as 60% of costs for international feature film productions and the new state-of-the-art HQ7 Studios set to open in Vienna next year, Austria is stepping up its game in the film and TV sector in a major way. Approved by the government last year and in effect since Jan. 1, the FISA Plus incentive provides funding for international and domestic films and series, including TV and streaming production. The subsidy, which is not capped, also covers documentaries, animation, virtual reality projects and post-production services, including sound, music and VFX. Specifically, FISA Plus offers a 30% rebate plus an additional 5% “green bonus” for productions that follow environmental sustainability criteria, with maximum funding set at €5 million ($5.4 million) per film and $8.2 million per series.

Ed Meza @edmezavar Lars Kraume, who explores Germany’s 19th-century, bloody colonization of Southwest Africa (present-day Namibia) in his latest work, “Measures of Men,” has lined up his next project, a feature film inspired by a California prison program that brings together young inmates with aging prisoners suffering from dementia. Developed at the California Men’s Colony State Prison in San Luis Obispo, the Gold Coat program selects inmates, known as Gold Coats, to assist severely cognitively impaired inmates. Kraume’s story is set in a Berlin prison with a multi-ethnic population, where a young man signs up for the program in an effort to get early parole only to realize that he has first the first time in his life started to love and care for someone.

Ed Meza @edmezavar The Berlin Brandenburg Airport announced Thursday the cancellation of flights on Friday to and from Frankfurt, Munich and Stuttgart due to planned strikes at other German airports. Planned strikes on Friday have been announced at airports in Frankfurt, Munich, Stuttgart, Hamburg, Hanover, Dortmund and Bremen. The move has the potential to impede industry travel to the Berlin Film Festival, which kicks off Thursday, as Munich and Frankfurt are the country’s main airline hubs, and serve thousands of transit passengers per day. The Berlin airport is advising passengers to check with their airlines. German news service Deutsche Welle reported that a number of airports, including Düsseldorf, Nüremberg, Erfurt-Weimar and Dortmund, suffered website disruptions due to a suspected hacker attack.

Ed Meza @edmezavar International exhibitors gathered at Berlin’s majestic Kino International on the eve of the Berlin Film Festival on Wednesday to discuss challenges and innovative concepts that are pulling audiences back into theaters. Opening the Berlinale edition of Cinema Vision 2030 conference, Christian Bräuer, chairman of Germany’s AG Kino – Gilde e.V. cinema association, which organized the event, said the country’s cinemas were “still suffering from the effects of the pandemic and we still find ourselves in a world in crisis, we feel the consequences of the war, such as the massive increase in energy prices.” He therefore welcomed the opportunity to hear about new ideas and business models that could bolster the sector.

Ed Meza @edmezavar After a long break from feature films, director Uwe Boll is back and ready to roll with his latest project, a crime drama about two mismatched New York City cops on their first day as partners. “First Shift” stars Kristen Renton (“Sons of Anarchy”) and Gino Anthony Pesi (“Shades of Blue”) as the badge-carrying duo, she a transplant from Atlanta new to the Big Apple, he a jaded Brooklyn cop who prefers to work alone but forced to take on the new partner. Set to start shooting in New York City next month, “First Shift” has moved ahead of two other projects Boll has in the works, a South Africa-set thriller and a feature about Prohibition-era federal agent Eliot Ness — famously played by Kevin Costner and Robert Stack in the 1987 film and the 1959 series “The Untouchables” — during the latter part of his career.

Ed Meza @edmezavar German culture commissioner Claudia Roth has called for a fundamental reform of Germany’s €600 million ($640 million) per year film funding system, saying that profound changes in filmmaking, a declining admissions and too much bureaucracy made far-reaching alterations necessary. Writing in a guest column in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Roth pointed to the success of Netflix’s “All Quiet on the Western Front,” which has garnered nine Oscar nominations, including best picture and international feature, to illustrate how film production has changed. Roth, who is expected to address the issue at the opening ceremony of the Berlin Film Festival on Thursday evening, noted that the “environment for creating, making and experiencing movies” was changing drastically as streaming and global internet providers make films ever less dependent on television broadcasters and theatrical releases.

Ed Meza @edmezavar Cohen Film Collection is continuing its restorations of classic Merchant Ivory productions, among them 1963’s “The Householder,” the first film collaboration between Ismail Merchant and James Ivory. The classics label of Cohen Media Group, Cohen Film Collection is lining up the restorations of four titles that also include the 1977 episodic romantic drama “Roseland,” with Teresa Wright and Christopher Walken, and two films directed by Merchant, “In Custody” (1994), featuring Shashi Kapoor, and “The Proprietor” (1996), starring Jeanne Moreau. Tim Lanza, Cohen Film Collection vice president and archivist, says he chose “In Custody” – Merchant’s feature directorial debut — and “The Proprietor” in particular “because James Ivory was keen to have a rerelease of some of the films that were directed by Ismael Merchant himself.”