Italian indie thriller “The Contract,” starring Kevin Spacey as a character named “The Devil,” is set to world premiere at the Cairo Film Festival this week, without Spacey on the red carpet in the Egyptian capital’s Opera House. In the film, Spacey plays a role that has been described in promotional materials as somewhat akin […]

Viola Davis will be honored by Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Film Festival, where the Oscar winner and four-time nominee will also be holding a master class highlighting her career. On Monday, the festival — which will run Dec. 6 to 14 in Jeddah, on the Red Sea’s eastern shore — announced the main lineup of […]

Hulu’s Amanda Knox series is causing an uproar in the Italian city of Perugia, where the show – executive produced by Knox herself – has been filming 17 years after the murder of Meredith Kercher. The arrival of the show’s cast and crew last week in the university town, where Knox’s British roommate was found […]

Justin Kurzel’s timely thriller “The Order,” starring Jude Law as a FBI agent fighting neo-Nazi terrorists, will open the Marrakech International Film Festival with Law and producer Stuart Ford in tow. The festival – which runs Nov. 29 to Dec. 7 in the ancient Moroccan city – has announced its lineup of more than 70 films which, […]

Luca Guadagnino will preside over the jury of the upcoming Marrakech International Film Festival, replacing Thomas Vinterberg, who had previously been appointed president of the fest’s jury but “had to excuse himself for family reasons,” according to a festival statement. The fest also announced that Guadagnino will be joined by a top notch roster of […]

Netflix has officially boarded “The Sand Castle” that sees Lebanese multi-hyphenate Nadine Labaki reunite on screen with “Capernaum” siblings Zain and Reman Al Rafeea. The streaming giant has set a Jan. 24, 2025, global drop date for the hotly anticipated thriller. U.S. director Matty Brown — whose shorts have won accolades — makes his feature film […]

Kerem Bürsin never planned to be a Turkish megastar. Though he was born in Istanbul, he spent his formative years living internationally and attended high school in Texas, where he began acting in theater productions. He then set off for L.A., where he worked with the legendary Roger Corman, but still “kept coming across the […]

News of Donald Trump’s apparent victory in the U.S. presidential election rapidly reverberated around the world early Wednesday, with leaders of different stripes wasting no time in congratulating him. Among the first to trumpet their support on social media were leaders of countries embroiled in conflict. “I appreciate President Trump’s commitment to the ‘peace through […]

Films from Saudi Arabia form the core of the Red Sea International Film Festival’s Arab Spectacular five-picture strand, which features world premieres of a trio of new Saudi titles exploring societal changes in the kingdom. One case in point is “Hobal,” the new allegorical drama by Saudi director Abdulaziz Alshlahei (“The Tambour of Retribution”). The […]

New Italian company PiperFilm is launching sales at AFM on English-language psychological horror film “Beasts of Prey” starring Carolyn Bracken. The Irish actor recently broke out playing the blind protagonist of Damian McCarthy’s chiller “Oddity.” In the previously announced film, Bracken plays a rich art collector whose life is shattered by a tragic event. “Destroyed by […]

Billy Zane is set to make the trek to Italy’s Torino Film Festival which has secured the world premiere of hotly anticipated indie film “Waltzing With Brando” directed by Bill Fishman  in which Zane plays Marlon Brando during the period when he was preparing to star in “The Godfather” and “Last Tango in Paris.” “Waltzing With Brando,” […]

Sean Penn, David Cronenberg and late great Moroccan actor Naïma Elmcherqui are set to be celebrated with career tributes by the Marrakech International Film Festival. Elmcherqui, who was one of Morocco’s best-loved personalities, died in Casablanca on Oct. 5. After becoming a household name during the 1960s and 70s working with Moroccan theatre director and […]

A group of prominent Swiss production companies has joined forces and founded a new outfit called Swiss Studios AG in Zurich. The groundbreaking move was prompted by the so-called “Lex Netflix,” the Swiss law that forces streamers such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video to re-invest 4% of their local revenues in Swiss film and […]

On Oct. 1, as Iran was firing a fusillade of missiles on his country, Israeli director Eran Riklis was in Tel Aviv “trying to cling on to the fact” that he would hopefully soon be premiering his new film “Reading Lolita in Tehran” — which he calls “an iconic Iranian story, featuring iconic Iranian actresses” — at […]