Author: Deadline

Former management consultant Cyril Aris broke into directing with the hit mini-series Beirut, I Love You which aired on the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation from 2011 to 2012. A joint collaboration with then architect student Mounia Akl, the series – in which they both co-starred – followed the lives of twentysomethings living in Beirut as they navigated work, love and life. Akl would go on to write and direct the 2021 feature Costa Brava, Lebanon, while Aris shot the making-of documentary Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano, capturing the crew’s determination to shoot the film in the aftermath of the devastating…

Paramount Australia‘s Daniel Monaghan Jumps To Foxtel Paramount Australia and New Zealand (ANZ)’s Daniel Monaghan is exiting for a senior role at DAZN’s pay-TV giant Foxtel. Currently Senior Vice-President, Content & Programming at Paramount, he is taking on a post as Executive Director – Entertainment Content, working across Foxtel and streamer Binge, per an internal note from Hilary Perchard, CEO of Foxtel, Binge and sports streamer Kayo. He has been at Paramount-owned Network 10 for two decades, spearheading work on shows such as The Masked Singer, Australian Survivor, Hunted, Have You Been Paying Attention?, The Cheap Seats, MasterChef, Taskmaster and I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! and commissioning Fake, The…

In the opening moments of Edward Berger‘s new film, Ballad Of A Small Player, Colin Farrell, as a con man hiding from his past in Macau, groggily tries to climb out of bed, rubbing his eyes, and simply says, “Oh, f*ck!” It is a great beginning, even if it did remind me of myself after the alarm rudely awakened me at 7:30 a.m. for this 9:00 a.m. screening after being up until 2:15 a.m. writing my Hamnet review. Nevertheless, it got my attention and this wild ride of a movie, which had its World Premiere this weekend at the Telluride…

Movies about the relationship between a person and one of God’s creatures is becoming a virtual genre of its own. My Penguin Friend, Penguin Lessons, The Starling and Penguin Bloom are recent examples, the latter starring Naomi Watts who was also on hand in Telluride last year with another similar story, this time with a Great Dane in the sublime The Friend. This year, we have Claire Foy and the goshawk in H Is For Hawk, which world premiered Friday at the Telluride Film Festival and has much to offer, not just for bird lovers but for those suffering sudden…

EXCLUSIVE: Willem Dafoe and Greta Lee hit the Venice Film Festival this weekend in Kent Jones’ playful drama Late Fame, which world premieres in the Orizzonti sidebar. Dafoe leads the cast with a quietly authentic performance as protagonist Ed Saxberger, a forgotten New York poet who works in the post office. With his life on the poetry circuit a distant memory, Saxberger is suddenly propelled out of his humdrum life, when he is ‘redisovered’ by a group of young admirers wallowing in nostalgia for the lost downtown New York of the late 1970s and early 80s. Past Lives star Greta…

Taiwan has chosen Shih-Ching Tsou’s Left-Handed Girl as its candidate for Best International Feature Film at the 98th Academy Awards. Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture announced the news on their website on Thursday. The film, directed, co-written, and produced by Tsou and co-written and edited by Oscar-winning director Sean Baker, follows a single mother and her two daughters as they relocate to Taipei to open a night market stall.  Left-Handed Girl received a buzzy world premiere in Cannes Critics’ Week, with Netflix then most of the global rights in June. Netflix will release the film in theaters in on November 14 before launching it on…

With the curtain about to go up on the 82nd Venice Film Festival, a press conference was held this morning in front of the event’s main venue to promote a march that will take place on the Lido this Saturday denouncing Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. In the foreground of the Sala Grande, a dozen or so supporters waving Palestinian flags chanted, “Free, free Palestine” and “Stop, stop genocide” before a spokeswoman, Martina Vergnano, addressed members of the media. The worsening humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip is set to take center stage at the…

EXCLUSIVE: Cameron Crowe and Shepard Fairey, the artist behind the iconic Barack Obama ‘OBEY’ posters, will be guests on First Timers, a docuseries from multimedia artist, writer, director and producer Yi Zhou. Billed as an exploration of what it means to take a first step in high pressure creative and professional worlds, the series can be bought or rented via Apple. Alongside Oscar winner Crowe and artist Fairey, cosmetic surgeon Dr. Simon Ourian rounds out the guest list.“ This series is really about the social and emotional labor of showing up for the first time,” said Zhou. “These participants are stepping…

Danish filmmaker-producer Per Holst, who worked with fellow auteurs and countrymen Lars von Trier, Nils Malmros and Bille August, has died at the age of 86. The Hollywood Reporter cited one of his four sons, actor Morten Holst. A cause of death was not given. According to Denmark’s government-owned broadcast channel TV 2, son Anders Holst explained his father died peacefully in his sleep Saturday morning. “He leaves behind a cultural legacy that we are proud of on his behalf,” Anders Holst told the outlet, adding, “He has been active until the end. Of course not like in his youth,…

Though John Turturro has led a storied career, there’s one director he regrets not being able to work with. During a recent interview on Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, the Emmy winner revealed he inadvertently passed on working with Stanley Kubrick, who had penned a role for him for the twisty erotic thriller Eyes Wide Shut, which was released posthumously in 1999. “I didn’t turn down Stanley Kubrick, but Stanley Kubrick called me up for Eyes Wide Shut, and I was, like, shocked that he knew all about me,” the actor said, explaining that at the time he had…