Author: Hollyood rep

With devices increasingly providing access to augmented reality and virtual realities, what constitutes “reality” in the digital age? Italian director Adele Tulli (Normal) is exploring this question in her new documentary Real, which world premiered at the 77th Locarno Film Festival on Monday in the Cineasti del Presente section, which puts the spotlight on first and second features. Produced by Pepito Produzioni and FilmAffair with RAI Cinema and Luce Cinecittà, in collaboration with French company Les Films d’Ici, the movie also debuts at a time when artificial intelligence and other technology topics are hotly debated. “Real aims to delve into the ongoing metamorphoses triggered by our relationship with digital…

Writer and director Kurdwin Ayub was born in Iraq, but her family came to Austria as refugees when she was still a baby. Now, she is 34 and has been making a name for herself in the film world as an auteur. Her 2016 feature documentary Paradise! Paradise!, which she wrote, directed, and handled the cinematography for, won the best camera honor at the Diagonale – Festival of Austrian Film. It follows Omar, the father of a family that has lived in Austria since 1991. Now, he plans to buy an apartment in Kurdistan as an investment. THR‘s review called…

Nine Inch Nails, the band headlined by musician Trent Reznor, is composing the score for Tron: Ares, Disney announced Friday at D23. The reveal occurred during a first-look at the sci-fi movie that is being headlined by Jared Leto and directed by Joachim Ronning. And featured some snippets of the score work done so far. The previous installment, Tron: Legacy, had a genre-defining score from Daft Punk, so when it came to the new movie, the bar is set high. Reznor created NIN in the late 1980s as an industrial hard rock band even though for the albums, it was…

“I don’t want to sound like a fanboy,” Giona A. Nazzaro, artistic director of the Locarno Film Festival says sheepishly, “but Shah Rukh Khan is the quintessential power of cinema. There is no cynicism, there is no manipulation. Just this basic faith that you can tell a story through your persona and touch on the very profound building blocks of emotions.” Nazzaro, it is fair to say, is a Khan fanboy. Discussing the Bollywood superstar — winner of Locarno’s 2024 lifetime achievement award, the Pardo alla Carriera Ascona-Locarno Tourism — he compares Khan to the “popular glamor of a hero of…

British icon Jennifer Saunders has joined the star-studded cast for the film adaptation of Enid Blyton‘s beloved children’s book, The Magic Faraway Tree. Hiran Abeysekera (The Life of Pi, The Father and the Assassin) and Pippa Bennett-Warner (Gangs of London, See How They Run, Chloe) will also feature alongside the previously-announced cast of Andrew Garfield, Claire Foy, Nicola Coughlan, and Jessica Gunning. From Neal Street Productions, Elysian Film Group and Ashland Hill Media Finance, The Magic Faraway Tree is currently shooting. Based on the Faraway Tree series of novels for children, the film follows Polly (Foy) and Tim Thompson (Garfield) and their children, Beth,…

India Amarteifio, star of Netflix’s Bridgerton prequel series Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story, will lead a new coming-of-age romance alongside Maxton Hall‘s Damian Hardung. From Shot of Tea, Into The Deep Blue is the winner of the Nicholl Fellowship, awarded by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. It follows Nick (Hardung) and Fiona (Amarteifio), best friends who meet in group therapy and are struggling to piece their lives together after experiencing loss. “When a weekend trip brings their deepening feelings to the surface, they might sooner cut each other off than face them,” a plot synopsis reads. The…

The First Purge director Gerard McMurray is heading to Louisiana for Goons, a new horror feature set amid the eerie backdrop of the state’s cane fields and plantations. Power‘s Michael Rainey Jr. and The Exorcism‘s Chloe Bailey will star in Goon, which is now filming in New Orleans and nearby areas. Tommy Oliver is producing via his Confluential Films, which will make the project under its New Fear Unlocked Productions, a new genre label dedicated to what the company says are “bold, elevated, culturally specific horror films from creators of color.” McMurray co-wrote the script with Hodge K. Johnson. “I…

Ryan Reynolds is infamous for lacing his Deadpool movies with industry jokes. In the 2018 sequel, the irreverent antihero ponders whether his movies will ever be able to pass up the $370.8 million collected by Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ in North America and become the biggest R-rated film of all time, not adjusted for inflation. While the first Deadpool overtook Passion of the Christ globally ($782 million versus $612 million), it couldn’t claim that same feat stateside. Reynolds finally got to see that wish come true over the Aug. 2-4 weekend, thanks to Deadpool & Wolverine, which…

The international Oscar race has begun. Ireland and Austria have put up their national contenders for the 2025 Academy Awards in the best international feature category. And the two movies could hardly be more different. For its Oscar contender, Austria has selected The Devil’s Bath, Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala’s inspired-by-history feminist horror film. Ireland has, unsurprisingly, gone for the craic, picking Rich Peppiatt’s cheeky doc-comedy Kneecap, about the real-life Belfast rappers of the title. Franz and Fiala, known for their 2014 horror classic Goodnight Mommy and 2019’s The Lodge, explore a dark corner of history with The Devil’s Bath.…

French director Claude Lelouch (A Man and a Woman, Happy New Year, The Beautiful Story) will be honored at this year’s Venice Film Festival with the Cartier Glory to the Filmmaker Award, a prize dedicated to a “personality who has made a particularly original contribution to the contemporary film industry.” Lelouch will receive the prize on Monday, Sept. 2 at Venice’s Sala Grande ahead of the out-of-competition screening of his latest feature, of his new feature, Finalement, a musical fantasy starring Kad Merad (Welcome to the Sticks, The Chorus). Elsa Zylberstain, Michel Boujenah, Sandrine Bonnaire, Barbara Pravi, and Françoise Gillard co-star. The film was produced by Les Films 13 in…