Author: Hollyood rep

Korean film maestro Park Chan-wook is keeping in motion. The internationally acclaimed auteur, 60, will begin production on Saturday on his 12th feature, an adaptation of American novelist Donald Westlake’s 1996 novel The Ax. The movie, which is currently going by the working title I Can’t Help It, will star Korean screen royalty Lee Byung-hun and Son Ye-jin, with financing and distribution coming from local studio heavyweight CJ ENM.  Westlake’s novel was previously adapted into French by Costa Gavras as the 2005 film Le Couperet (The Axe). Like its predecessor, Park’s adaptation follows a man — named Man-soo this time…

Turkish writer-director Gürcan Keltek (Meteors, Gulyabani) has so far focused on shorter films and documentaries. On Thursday, he brought the world premiere of his fiction feature debut New Dawn Fades (Yeni șafak solarken), a contemplation on sanity, to the competition program of the 77th edition of the Locarno Film Festival. The film’s cinematographer is Peter Zeitlinger (Encounters at the End of the World), known for his collaborations with the likes of Abel Ferrara, Ulrich Seidl, and especially Werner Herzog. The movie’s cast includes Cem Yiğit Üzümoğlu, Ayla Algan, Erol Babaoğlu, Suzan Kardeş, Dilan Düzgüner, and Gürkan Gedikli. “New Dawn Fades reflects on…

Oscar, Emmy and Tony-award-winning actress Ellen Burstyn will be honored at this year’s Venice Film Festival with the Liberatum Pioneer Award for her lifetime contribution to cinema. The 91-year-old acting legend will be honored at a “Women in Creativity” event and gala dinner in Venice on Sept. 4 at the Blue Pavilion in the Palazzina Grassi Hotel on the Grand Canal. Burstyn will also take part in an on-stage discussion of her decades-long career. Burstyn made her acting debut on Broadway in Fair Game in 1957 and was a TV regular throughout the 1960s but her breakthrough came on screen…

Open Doors, the co-production and talent development program for artists from underrepresented communities around the world that is part of the Locarno Film Festival’s Locarno Pro industry strand, unveiled its 2024 winners on Tuesday. Eight projects in development were selected for its co-production platform, the Projects Hub, and were eligible for the three main cash prizes. In addition, nine producers participated in the program’s talent incubator, the Producers Lab, while the directors of the films of the Open Doors Screenings, who form the Directors Club, made up the rest of this year’s program. The initiative’s biggest award for the Projects…

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…