Diego Céspedes’ “The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo” has been named the best film of the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival, the Ucr jury announced on Friday.

The film follows an 11-year-old girl growing up in the early 1980s in a queer family in a small Chilean mining town, where suspicion is growing over a mysterious disease that is rumored to be spread by glances between gay men.

Simón Mesa Soto’s “A Poet” won the Jury Prize, the second-place award.

The directing award went to Tarzan and Arab Nasser for “Once Upon a Time in Gaza,” while Cléo Diara and Frank Dillane won the performance prizes for “I Only Rest in the Storm” and “Urchin,” respectively. Writer-director Harry Lighton won the screenplay award for “Pillion.”

Un Certain Regard focuses on films from younger directors and often spotlights experimental work. This year, Ucr was also the...

First there was “Barbenheimer,” now there’s…”Mission: Stitchpossible”? Disney’s live-action “Lilo & Stitch” and Paramount and Skydance’s last “Mission: Impossible” movie “The Final Reckoning” are combining for a huge Memorial Day Weekend at the box office.

“Lilo & Stitch” has made $14.5 million at the box office in previews, while “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” earned $8.3 million. “The Final Reckoning’s” preview haul is the franchise’s best ever, beating the $7 million that “Dead Reckoning” made in 2023. “Lilo & Stitch” now holds the record for the year’s highest preview haul.

Disney’s latest live-action remake, produced by Rideback, is expected to rule the box office with a massive $150 million to $160 million over the four-day holiday weekend, though some projections are even higher. Tom Cruise’s eighth and seemingly last “Mission: Impossible” entry is on track to make $75 million to $85 million for a strong second place. Combined...

Mubi’s shopping spree of Cannes competition titles is continuing at pace.

The distributor, streaming platform and production company has now picked up “Sirât,” Oliver Laxe’s hugely well-received feature, marking the 9th film vying for the 2025 Palme d’Or to now join Mubi’s upcoming slate.

The Match Factory is handling international sales of the film, with Mubi to announce release plans in the near future.

“Sirât” follows a father (Sergi López) and his son who arrive at a rave deep in the mountains of southern Morocco. They’re searching for Mar — daughter and sister — who vanished months ago at one of these endless, sleepless parties. Surrounded by electronic music and a raw, unfamiliar sense of freedom, they hand out her photo again and again. Hope is fading but they push through and follow a group of ravers heading to one last party in the desert. As they venture deeper into the burning wilderness,...

Pluto TV, the free streaming service, is bringing back its free movie weekend program this summer with help from an Oscar-winning indie filmmaker – Sean Baker.

The initiative supports family-run and independent theaters across the country by offering complimentary movie tickets on select weekends, encouraging local attendance, and this year Baker became the first filmmaker to team with Pluto TV on the initiative.

“Free Movie Weekend is a meaningful initiative that shares a cause close to my heart. Local cinemas are cultural touchstones, they are gathering places where communities come together to experience stories as they were meant to be seen: on the big screen,” Baker said in a statement. “I’m honored to partner with Pluto TV to help spotlight the independent theaters that play such a vital role in sustaining the art of cinema.”

For this year’s “Free Movie Weekend,” Baker nominated Los Angeles local theater Gardena Cinema.

As part of its latest slate-wide shuffle, Disney will re-release “Avatar: The Way of Water” on Imax screens on October 3 ahead of the next chapter of James Cameron’s saga, “Fire and Ash,” in December.

The re-release takes over an Imax release slot that is currently being held by Lionsgate/Universal’s “Michael,” but which Lionsgate said in its earnings call on Thursday will be moved back to a date to be determined in 2026.

The return of “The Way of Water” also joins other shifts in Disney’s release schedule headlined by a mammoth move of the next two “Avengers” films, “Doomsday” and “Secret Wars,” from their traditional summer kickoff slots in May 2026 and 2027 to December of those respective years.

The May 2026 slot will be filled by 20th Century’s upcoming sequel to “The Devil Wears Prada” starring Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep.

“Avatar: The Way of Water” grossed $2.32 billion...

Alex Garland will direct a live-action film adaptation of the hit video game “Elden Ring” film, produced by A24 and Bandai Namco.

Garland, who recently wrote and directed “Warfare” for A24, will also write the coming feature, based on the mythological story by George R. R. Martin. Garland had been previously rumored to be attached to the project. “Elden Ring” will be produced by Peter Rice alongside Andrew Macdonald and Allon Reich from DNA, Martin and Vince Gerardis.

The original 2022 role-playing action video game was directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki, with Yui Tanimura co-directing. Set in an authentic dark fantasy world, “Elden Ring” is a fantasy epic with swathing environments and grim dungeons. Developed by FromSoftware and released by Bandai Namco Entertainment, this game has shipped more than 30 million units worldwide since its launch.

After its release, “Elden Ring” became a sweeping success at the 2022 Game Awards, taking home prizes for game of the year,...

Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer says that his company’s film studio will likely delay the release of Antoine Fuqua’s Michael Jackson biopic “Michael” to next year, though remained light on details during an earnings call on Thursday.

“We’re excited about the 3½ hours of amazing footage from producer Graham King and director Antoine Fuqua, and we will be announcing a definitive release strategy & timing in the next few weeks,” Feltheimer said. “I would note that it is likely we will move ‘Michael’ out of the fiscal year which will impact fiscal ’26 financial results but will bolster an already strong fiscal ’27 slate.”

Based on Feltheimer’s comments on the fiscal year schedule, “Michael” would move its release back to at least April 2026, if not later. Lionsgate is handling domestic distribution for the film with Universal handling overseas release.

“Michael” is currently set for a release this October, with Jackson played...

“Devil Wears Prada 2,” the sequel to the hit 2006 film starring Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway, will officially hit theaters on May 1, 2026.

Early development for the sequel, which welcomes back producer Wendy Finerman and screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna, started up at 20th Century last year. As TheWrap previously reported, the story’s next chapter will see Miranda Priestly, Streep’s character in the original film, dealing with the decline of magazine publishing.

With her magazine Runway in dire need of money, Miranda must turn for advertising dollars to Emily Charlton (Emily Blunt), who was consumed by stress as Miranda’s beleaguered assistant in “Devil Wears Prada,” but has now risen to become a powerful executive at a luxury brand.

Right now, there are still no details about if Streep, Blunt or Hathaway will reprise their roles, but here’s to hoping.

Based on Lauren Weisberger’s 2003 novel that in turn was...

Alex Garland is set to write and direct a live-action film adaptation of FromSoftware Inc.’s world-renowned video game “Elden Ring” for A24 and Bandai Namco Entertainment, the companies announced on Thursday.

“Elden Ring” was created under the guidance of FromSoftware’s Hidetaka Miyazaki, based on a mythological story written by George R. R. Martin, author of the fantasy novel series, “A Song of Ice and Fire.”

“Elden Ring” is an action RPG set in an authentic dark fantasy world. The game allows players to explore vast environments and dungeons to discover the unknown and enjoy the sense of accomplishment that comes from overcoming obstacles and challenges. Combining the development capabilities of FromSoftware and the marketing power of Bandai Namco Entertainment’s overseas network, this title was released on Feb. 25, 2022, and has shipped more than 30 million units worldwide.

The film will be produced by Peter Rice alongside Andrew Macdonald and Allon Reich from DNA,...

Joey King is in talks to star in “Practical Magic 2” alongside Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman.

She’s reportedly playing the daughter of Bullock’s character. Bullock and Kidman are reprising their roles as Sally and Gillian Owens, two sisters who descend from a long line of witches. In the original 1998 movie, the duo finds themselves fighting off a curse that kills the men they fall in love with. Plot details for the second film haven’t been revealed, though sources say the story is based on a later installment in Alice Hoffman’s “Practical Magic” book series.

Susanne Bier is directing “Practical Magic 2” from a screenplay by Akiva Goldsman, who co-wrote the first film. It’s aiming to start production in London later this summer, according to the Hollywood Reporter, which broke the new of King’s casting. Warner Bros. will release the witchy sequel in theaters on Sept.

Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Trier returns to Cannes with Sentimental Value, which had its world premiere Wednesday night in the festival’s Competition section.

Trier and his cast, including Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgard and Elle Fanning, strolled up the famous steps of Palais des Festivals.

The film marks Trier’s follow-up to The Worst Person in the World, which premiered in Competition at Cannes in 2023, launching the international career of star Reinsve, who won the festival’s best actress honor. Worst Person became a crossover art house hit and was nominated for two Oscars, including best international feature and best original screenplay for Trier and co-writer Eskil Vogt.

Sentimental Value is a family drama centered on the estranged relationship between Gustav (Skarsgard) and his two daughters, Nora (Reinsve) and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas). In an attempt to reconnect, Gustav, a film director, offers Nora, an actress, the role of playing a...

Cici Cooper might be dead, but Sarah Michelle Gellar‘s hopes of reprising her Scream 2 role for the upcoming installment are alive and well.

Despite shutting down hopes of a resurrection for her I Know You Did Last Summer character, the Golden Globe nominee expressed interest in returning to the Scream franchise for the upcoming Kevin Williamson-helmed seventh installment.

“I’m not in [Scream 7]. I tried to get in [Scream 7], nobody wanted me,” she told Et. “They were bringing everybody back. I kept thinking I would get a call, I didn’t get a call.”

Gellar noted, “There’s a lot of people that died in all the Scream movies that are back. Skeet [Ulrich], [Matthew] Lillard. I’m just saying, I’m waiting for my call.” Additionally, David Arquette and Scott Foley are reprising their roles in Scream 7.

In the 1997 slasher sequel Scream 2, Gellar played Omega Beta Zeta sober sister Cici,...

In Cannes to promote The History of Sound, the actor said ‘I don’t see the parallels at all, other than we spent a little time in a tent’

The actor Paul Mescal has hit out at critics who have drawn comparisons between The History of Sound, a gay romance in which he stars opposite Josh O’Connor, and Ang Lee’s landmark western Brokeback Mountain.

Speaking at a press conference in Cannes the day after the film’s premiere, Mescal – who followed a supporting performance in Andrew Haigh’s acclaimed gay ghost story All of Us Strangers with playing the lead in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II – said he believes cinema is “moving away” from alpha male roles.

We know for sure that Danny and Michael Philippou, the sibling directing duo behind the Australian horror film Talk to Me are going to be making a sequel to that movie. The film not only racked up over $90 million at the global box office, it also earned praise from the likes of Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson, Jordan Peele, George Miller, and Ari Aster… so it was no surprise when A24 announced they had given a greenlight to the a follow-up, titled Talk 2 Me. But two years have passed and there’s no sign of the sequel going into production any time soon, as the Philippous have been busy with a different horror project, Bring Her Back (which reaches theatres on May 30th). Now, the directors have revealed that they actually have two different...

Mubi has acquired writer/director Mascha Schilinski’s acclaimed drama “Sound of Falling” after the film’s Cannes debut, marking the distributor’s second major pickup of the festival thus far. It comes on the heels of Mubi nabbing Lynne Ramsay’s “Die, My Love,” a domestic drama starring Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson.

“Sound of Falling” follows four girls in Germany, each who spend their youth on the same farm. As the home evolves over a century, echoes of the past linger in its walls. Though separated by time, their lives begin to mirror each other.

“Mubi is an oasis for everyone who loves cinema,” Schilinski said in a statement.

“Here arthouse classics stand shoulder to shoulder with new exciting cinema as well as little movie gems that we would otherwise not get to see. We are very happy that ‘Sound of Falling’ is now part of Mubi’s movie family.

Zuzana Kirchnerová’s road-trip movie “Caravan” opens with a series of idyllic holiday scenes. A wide shot of a tranquil swimming pool. A beach ball, close up, with iridescent sequins inside. Lambent rays of sunshine bouncing lazily off the surface of the pool. A breathy voiceover whispers, “It’s going to be nice, David. You’ll see.” The whisperer is revealed as a mother, reassuring her child as they lie next to each other in bed under a white sheet. If Terrence Malick directed a commercial for an Italian holiday home, it would go something like this sequence. However, the idyll is a short-lived mirage.

Filmed mainly in Italy’s Reggio Calabria, as well as Bologna and the Czech Republic, this is the story of 45-year-old single mom Ester (Ana Geislerova) and 15-year-old David (David Vodstrcil), whose holiday with comfortable middle-class friends is disrupted when the pair are asked by...

Ethan Coen’s raunchy, gory detective movie “Honey Don’t!,” starring Margaret Qualley, Aubrey Plaza and Chris Evans, premiered to a rowdy Cannes crowd at midnight on Friday. The film earned a six-minute standing ovation, with writer Tricia Cooke declaring: “More queer cinema all the time!”

“That’s a fun way to end the festival,” Coen said as he took the microphone and quieted the clapping crowd. “Oh, and short, for a movie that started after midnight. Very humane.”

Indeed, the 90-minute “Honey Don’t” didn’t begin unspooling until nearly 12:30 a.m., after a half-hour delay entering the Palais. But the Cannes crowd didn’t seem to mind the wait, cheering loudly for Coen, Qualley, Plaza and the rest of the team when they finally entered the theater, then clapping vigorously for every producer and distributor card before the movie began.

One audience member even yelled, “I love you Aubrey!

Directed by the twin duo of Tarzan and Arab Nasser, “Once Upon a Time in Gaza” is about a collaboration of a different sort: a small-time drug scheme concocted by timid university student Yahya (Nader Abd Alhay) and burly restaurant owner Osama (Majd Eid). Although set in 2007, the well-meaning, tongue-in-cheek drama has a penchant for connecting its setting to the contemporary political zeitgeist, which it vocalizes loudly and overtly. However, its self-reflexive, bifurcated story — about using cinematic images to create a revolution — ends up ironically flaccid.

Captured with careful compositional intent, the movie’s first half sees Osama, the brains of the operation, sending Yahya to acquire pain meds using forged prescriptions, which they plan to sell by hiding them in pita sandwiches from Osama’s hole-in-the-wall falafel joint. As this plot unfolds, it’s buoyed by the light and humorous tension of the duo’s disagreements — which the Nassers...

How does one follow up on a series that defined a decade of prestige television?

For “Succession” creator Jesse Armstrong, the answer was to move so fast that there was no time for overthinking.

At the world premiere of “Mountainhead” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City on Thursday night, Armstrong explained why he didn’t wait too long to succeed his own “Succession.”

“It’s a little bit scary after a ‘Succession’ type of thing that’s well-regarded,” Armstrong told Variety Thursday night. “I knew it was going to be a big thing for me to do the next thing. Maybe it’d be a good idea to run at it fast rather than stewing on it for five years on my second album.”

Armstrong’s tight production timeline isn’t for the faint of heart. After pitching the story idea for “Mountainhead” about six months ago,...

Cinema is a collaborative medium, and as such, there have been numerous directing teams peppered throughout film history. As with any collaboration, there's no guarantee that the band will be together forever, and sometimes the teams do indeed split up. The Coen brothers, Ethan and Joel, underwent such a creative breakup around the beginning of this decade, with both men moving on to make their own movies without each other. Unlike some creative split-ups, however, the Coens post-breakup works couldn't be more different from one another. Where Joel made 2021's "The Tragedy of Macbeth" an austere, intensely moody Shakespeare adaptation that recalled Ingmar Bergman and Carl Theodor Dreyer, Ethan teamed up with his wife Tricia Cooke to make "Drive-Away Dolls," a mash-up of B-movie tropes (homaging everything from "Badlands" to '60s psychedelia flicks) that retained the Coens' prior interest in dry humor and film noir.

Upon the release of "Dolls,...

Margaret Qualley swans through “Honey Don’t!” like a movie star who might have been born in the wrong era, but she’s going to make the most of it. Regally tall, in red heels and a white-flowered red dress, her hair in flowing ringlets, her lips pursed with purpose, Qualley plays Honey O’Donoghue, a private detective in Bakersfield who has the deep voice and steady gaze of a hard-boiled femme fatale from the 1950s.

Honey, who drives a vintage turquoise Chevrolet SS, has to keep flicking away the propositions of a local cop (Charlie Day) by telling him, “I like girls.” She’s not lying, but the fact that he can’t hear it says a lot about the skewed way the world still looks at queer women. The movie, meanwhile, looks up to its heroine in a stylized way that’s very Tarantino-meets-Jane-Russell. In another era, Honey...

Leading US independent A24 is closing its documentary department, producer of recent features including The Last Of The Sea Women and Steve McQueen’s Occupied City, Screen Daily has confirmed.

The closure will result in five lay-offs at the company, though division head Nicole Stott and head of documentary production Emily Osborne will stay in their roles while they finish work on current projects.

The company will continue to handle recently completed documentary films including Architecton and Andre Is An Idiot and to work on in-production projects such as Danny and Michael Philippou’s film on the world of deathmatch wrestling.

[Editor’s note: this list was originally published in May 2023. It has since been updated to include new Disney remakes, including “Lilo & Stich.”]

To quote one of the best sitcoms ever: “Did you just double-dip that chip?”

If George Constanza was a real person — and the opinions of “Seinfeld” characters had any bearing on major movie slates — Disney CEO Bob Iger would be forced to answer in the affirmative some 20 times over thanks to his company’s buffet of CGI-laden remakes, sequels, and spin-offs. The entertainment giant has spat out scads of these so-called “revivals” of its animated classics in recent years, with critics routinely pointing out the bottom line motivating the mostly mediocre trend.

And yet, no matter how poor the reception, the Disney live-action revisits just keep coming. In 2025, fans were treated to “Snow White,” a remake of the company’s groundbreaking original film that bombed at the box office and (because no bad film can just be a bad film anymore) was at the center of intense right-wing blowback. “Lilo and Stitch...

Spoiler Alert: This article contains spoilers about “Fear Street: Prom Queen,” now streaming on Netflix.

Growing up in the U.K., “Fear Street: Prom Queen” director and co-screenwriter Matt Palmer wasn’t too familiar with R. L. Stine’s teen horror novel series that launched the Netflix film franchise. They had “Goosebumps,” Stine’s more popular series for younger readers, but “Fear Street” hadn’t made as much impact across the pond.

Luckily, Palmer was still approached to direct “Prom Queen,” the fourth chapter in the “Fear Street” film series, before producers had cemented which of the ten titles they had narrowed down to consider adapting next. This book spoke to him, even as he was well out of high school.

“The idea was like, ‘What if you tried to write a teen movie in the John Hughes mold — the kids were in “The Breakfast Club” — but there was a...

[Editor’s note: This article was first published in August 2022 and has been updated multiple times since.]

Movies might seem like magic, but Hollywood’s favorite actors, directors, producers, stunt performers, props masters, costumers, script coordinators, and cinematographers are still only human. Since before that child extra prematurely covered his ears for Eva Marie Saint shooting Cary Grant in Alfred Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest,” audiences have delighted in finding the little moments that make their favorite films imperfect.

Like freckles on a human face, mistakes can make movies infinitely more special to the audiences that love them. Consider the clumsy stormtrooper of “A New Hope,” whose hilariously audible collision with an Imperial spaceship doorframe turned the extra’s true identity into an ongoing mystery for the Star Wars ages. Or, for “The Lord of the Rings” fans among us, there’s the anachronistic automobile appearing in “Fellowship of the Ring” right alongside Sam and Frodo. As for the Wizarding World, how about that bike seat on Harry’s broomstick?...

The expansion of the California film and TV tax credit, which industry stakeholders argue is key to protecting jobs in the state, hit a snag on Friday, as lawmakers deleted references in bill language to raising the program cap to $750 million.

Gov. Gavin Newsom vowed last fall to increase the program from $330 million to $750 million. Two bills, Ab 1138 and Sb 630, have been working their way through the legislative process to enact that increase and other changes to make the program more attractive to producers.

On Friday, the bills passed through the appropriations committees in the Assembly and Senate, but the references to $750 million were removed. That dollar figure could be added back in later in the budget process, but for now it is not guaranteed.

“We’re certainly disappointed in this direction, and it’s something we are going to push back against as budget negotiations begin to heat up,...

Julia Max’s feature debut “The Surrender” goes to some surreal and troubling places. But the core of the film begins with something both horrible and commonplace that often isn’t portrayed on the big screen: Caretaking for a dying relative.

“The Surrender,” now streaming on Shudder, is the story of Megan (Colby Minifie) and her mother Barbara (Kate Burton) as they’re caring for their family’s patriarch during his final hours. After he passes, Barbara hopes to resurrect her husband through a ritual that will open them up to immense darkness.

Max knew that before any supernatural stuff took place, there needed to be enough characterization within the family to ground them once the unthinkable started happening. Unfortunately, that vision was met with early resistance.

“A lot of producers initially thought the mother-daughter stuff needed to be condensed to get to the scarier stuff much earlier,” Max says.

Prime Video's "Wheel of Time" series is officially over. Even as the show was still basking in the glow of a triumphant third season that was hailed by many as a cinematic achievement worthy of any fantasy story, it has now abruptly (though not unexpectedly) come to a halt.

As for so many other members of the "Wheel of Time" passionate fan base, this is tragic news for this poor writer. It's a production that is near and dear to my heart. Along with being a fan of the original book series, I was invited to visit Jordan Studios in Prague a couple of years back. I saw dozens of the over 300 sets the studio built for the show. I interviewed producers, cast, and crew, saw choreography sequences practiced in real time, and even watched the first two episodes of season 2 right in the warm comfort of the Winespring Inn...

Ahead of the 2025 awards ceremony on Saturday, May 24, the festival has announced the winners for the Un Certain Regard section, with the top prize going to “The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo.” A co-production between Chile, France, Belgium, Spain, and Germany, the 1980s-set drama marks the feature directorial debut of Chilean filmmaker Diego Céspedes.

The Best Screenplay award for the Un Certain Regard section went to Harry Lighton for his feature directorial debut, A24’s “Pillion,” starring Harry Melling and Alexander Skarsgård. In his Critic’s Pick review out of Cannes, IndieWire’s Ryan Lattanzio said of the film, “Dick-sucking, boot-licking, and ball-gagging are de rigueur for a movie like writer/director Harry Lighton’s wildly graphic and strangely moving Bdsm romance, ‘Pillion.’ But for a British queer film that puts the particulars of a gay dominant-submissive affair up front and up close, actors Alexander Skarsgård and Harry Melling find...

The 2025 Cannes Film Festival came at precarious moment in the history of cinema, yet still managed to revel in the splendors this art form can provide. While the annual international event may be coming to a close, it leaves behind a bevy of gems that will continue to be discussed throughout the year and may even land on the Oscars stage in 2026, as was the case with Sean Baker’s 2024 Palme d’Or winner, “Anora.” But before all that, there still remains the important act of closing out the festivities with the ever-important awards ceremony.

Predicting the Palme d’Or recipient has become a cherished pastime for fans and critics alike, but as is the case every year, the final decision rests in the hands of the Main Competition jury. This year it’s led by French actress and current European Film Academy president Juliette Binoche, and also includes Halle Berry,...

No one was expecting Nadav Lapid to hold back in his first feature since the events of October 7, 2023: The Israeli filmmaker has long been cinema’s most vigorously expressive and outspoken critic of government policy in his birth country, with films like 2019’s “Synonyms” and 2021’s “Ahed’s Knee” bristling with fury and shame over Israel’s national military culture and artistic censorship. Even with those expectations firmly in place, however, Lapid’s new film “Yes” startles with the sheer, spitting intensity of its rage against the state, projected onto its amoral blank-slate protagonist: a self-abasing musician commissioned to compose a rousing new national anthem, explicitly celebrating the demolition of Palestine. A whirling, maximalist satire at once despairing and exuberant, subtle as a cannonball in its evisceration of the ruling classes and those who obey them, it’s both absurdist comedy and serious-as-cancer polemic: as grave as any film...

Spoiler Alert: This story contains spoilers for the ending of “Friendship,” out now in theaters.

You’ll be forgiven for assuming that A24’s “Friendship” is one long “I Think You Should Leave” sketch. After all, Tim Robinson’s lines like “There’s a new Marvel out that’s supposed to be nuts” could easily fit into the outrageous world of the Netflix sketch comedy series. But as gut-bustingly funny as “Friendship” can be, it’s got a sneaky emotional core that may even make you shed a tear or two.

“Even though his show goes wild, Tim acts as if there’s no joke, and I think that’s why people respond to him, because he’s so committed to the emotion,” writer-director Andrew DeYoung tells Variety.

Speaking with Variety ahead of the film’s nationwide release, DeYoung breaks down the most outrageous moments “Friendship” moments, from a psychedelic...

Long before Alfred Hitchcock became a household name associated with classics like “Psycho” and “Dial M for Murder,” he began his filmmaking career in the U.K.

But even before releasing 1930s British films like “The 39 Steps” that many people associate him with, he was working in silent film. For both Ben Roberts, the British Film Institute’s chief executive, and Arike Oke, the executive director of knowledge, learning and collections, there’s continued value in drawing a line back to his silent films made between 1925 and 1929.

“There are things in those films that you can see echoes of in his later work, where he becomes a known filmmaker,” Oke tells Variety. “You also see him start to experiment with shot styles and storytelling, with some of the mystery and murder kind of elements and the melodrama.”

Hitchcock’s 1925 directorial debut, the British-German “The Pleasure Gardener,” is just one of...

Diego Céspedes’ The Mysterious Gaze Of The Flamingo has won the top prize in the Un Certain Regard section of this year’s Cannes Film Festival (May 13-24).

The Chilean drama centres around an unknown illness said to be transmitted through a man’s loving gaze. Chile’s Quijote Films and France’s Les Valseurs produce, with Charades handling sales.

The jury prize went to Simon Mesa Soto’s A Poet. Shot in Medellin, Colombia, it follows an ageing man obsessed with poetry who mentors a talented teenage girl.

Best screenplay went to Harry Lighton for Pillion, starring Harry Melling and Alexander Skarsgård.

Since 1979, the Emmy Awards have made space, between the many live-action series it honors, to hand out some recognition to animated programs through its Outstanding Animated Program category. But in the nearly 50-year history of the trophy, a large, increasingly important subset of the medium hasn’t even been eligible to compete: anime.

The rules for the Emmy Awards state that, for a show to be submitted in the Primetime Emmys ceremony, the show needs to be produced at least partially by an American company. As a result, the uniquely Japanese art form — despite its growing popularity in the West — has only been able to compete in the international category for “Best Kids Animation.”

Six series produced in Japan have been nominated in that category since 2012: “Digimon Xros Wars,” “Ronja, the Robber’s Daughter,” “Shimajiro’s Wow!,” “Design Ah!,” “To Your Eternity,” and “Rilakkuma’s Theme Park Adventure”; “Ronja, the Robber’s Daughter...

Lilo & Stitch and Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning are set to drive the North American box office to a huge Memorial Day holiday weekend, with the aggregate gross for all films over the four-day period expected to be as high as $300m.

The total will certainly beat last year’s Memorial Day weekend tally of $132m and could approach the record for the late May holiday span of $314m, set in 2013 when Fast & Furious 6 and The Hangover Part III were the weekend’s new releases.

Disney’s Lilo & Stitch is looking like a powerful draw...

This article contains spoilers for "Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning."

For 30 years, star and producer Tom Cruise has chosen to accept eight impossible missions as Imf agent Ethan Hunt, and one impossible mission as himself. That latter mission was for him to take a successful, long-running, and generally well-regarded TV series and bring it to the big screen, turning it into a massively successful and influential film franchise. Although Cruise's long career is littered with hits and milestone movies, the "M:i" films represent his signature work. They're also, along with "Top Gun," only one of just two long-running film series that he's a part of.

Given how important "Mission" has been to Cruise, to his frequent collaborator Christopher McQuarrie, and to action/spy/blockbuster films in general over the last couple decades, it feels strange to consider this month's "Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning" (the 8th film...

At IndieWire’s annual “Screen Talk” live podcast at the American Pavilion in Cannes, Neon CEO Tom Quinn returned to share his Oscar whisperer secrets after his victory lap on “Anora,” which won the Palme d’Or last year followed by five Oscars including Best Picture, Director, Actress, Editing, and Original Screenplay. Quinn is the talk of Cannes because, as anticipated, the movie he acquired at last year’s festival, Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value,” starring Stellan Skarsgård and Renate Reinsve, is the frontrunner for the Palme.

While Quinn talked about the four films he brought to the festival (listen below), after our podcast, he acquired three Competition titles: Jafar Panahi’s family drama “It Was Just an Accident,” Brazil’s popular entry “The Secret Agent,” from Kleber Mendonça Filho, and Oliver Laxe’s tragic French-Spanish production “Sirât,” which polarized many Cannes watchers. Even if these four Neon titles don...

The Cannes Film Festival’s second-most prestigious competition, Un Certain Regard, is typically dominated by newer, less heralded names in world cinema. But there was more star power than usual at stake in this year’s awards ceremony, as pundits wondered whether one of the three debut features by prominent actors-turned-directors in this year’s lineup — Kristen Stewart, Scarlett Johansson and Harris Dickinson — could land a prize.

As it turned out, people needn’t have worried about a Hollywood takeover. Stewart’s “The Chronology of Water” and Johansson’s “Eleanor the Great” both went unawarded, as the jury threw a relative curveball in handing the Prix Un Certain Regard to Chilean director Diego Céspedes for his alluringly titled first feature “The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo,” an offbeat study of a transgender commune living in the Chilean desert around the onset of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s.

The film...

Weapons-grade zingers come thick and fast in this chamber piece about four plutocrats on a weekend in a lodge that goes awry when the planet descends into chaos

Jesse Armstrong has returned with what feels like a horribly addictive feature-length spin-off episode from the extended Succession Cinematic Universe – though without Succession cast members. It is set in a luxurious Utah megalodge which winds up resembling the Dr Strangelove war room, mixed with the apartment from Hitchcock’s Rope. Mountainhead is a super-satirical chamber piece about the deranged, cynical and facetious mindset of the uber-wealthy, the kind of people who think about ancient Rome every day, though not about Nero and his violin. It may not have the dramatic richness of Armstrong’s TV meisterwerk while the pure testosterone of this all-male main cast (minus any Shiv figure) is oppressive – though that is kind of the point. The pure density of...

This article contains spoilers for "The Final Reckoning."

Ever since the rise of Geek Culture, various pre-existing properties and series have tended to be treated with the utmost respect. While this is generally a good approach, corporations and studios have kowtowed to the fandom hordes too much and too often, to the point where major live-action adaptations are little more than copy-and-paste affairs and "superfan focus groups" are assembled to ensure that every whim of the fanbase is catered to. In our current IP-mad era, the notion of anyone actively insulting a long-running TV series with a new feature film adaptation is essentially anathema. It's almost impossible that such a venture would ever make it before cameras.

Needless to say, the '90s were a different time. Not only did a motion picture version of a long-running TV show get made where the only major retained material was the show's theme song and basic premise,...

Kelly Reichardt’s latest film “The Mastermind,” starring Josh O’Connor as an art thief on the run, earned a 5.5-minute standing ovation at its Cannes premiere on Friday night.

Reichardt’s subdued, ‘70s-set movie was essentially a one-man show for O’Connor, with him appearing in nearly every scene. Haim plays his quiet wife, who is aware of his husband’s schemes but leaves with their twin boys once the cops start tracking him down.

In tears, Reichardt humbly accepted the applause, but as the standing and clapping went on and on, she seemed eager to take the mic and get on with her remarks. She poignantly told the crowd, “America’s in a ditch right now, but maybe we’ll get out of it. But in the meantime we have the movies.”

Though the film doesn’t have an outwardly strong political message, it’s set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War,...

Cannes film festival

Reichardt’s quietist, observational style is unexpectedly successful at creating a super-naturalistic depiction of an art gallery robbery

It needs hardly be said that the title is ironic. The abject non-hero of Kelly Reichardt’s engrossingly downbeat heist movie, set in 1970s Massachusetts, is weak, vain and utterly clueless. By the end, he’s a weirdly Updikean figure, though without the self-awareness: going on the run with no money and without a change of clothes, to escape from the grotesque mess he has made for himself and his family.

This is James, played with hangdog near-charm by Josh O’Connor; he is an art school dropout and would-be architectural designer with two young sons, married to Terri (a minor complaint is that the excellent Alana Haim is not given enough to do). James depends on the social standing of his father Bill, a judge, formidably played by Bill Camp,...

French President Emmanuel Macron wasn’t kidding when he told Variety the country would fight to get “Emily in Paris” back to France after the hit Netflix show’s Roman escapade.

Netflix boss Ted Sarandos was one of the few top U.S. players invited by Macron to take part in the eighth edition of Choose France, a summit dedicated to promoting the country’s attractiveness to draw investments. Held on May 19 at Versailles, the event marked the first time Choose France included a focus on cinema and audiovisual.

While the summit’s cultural program was initiated well before U.S. President Trump proposed a 100% tariff on foreign films amid rising tensions between French and U.S. guilds, it turned out to be an auspicious timing for a transatlantic meeting. Since little is known about Trump’s plan so far, attendees continued to focus on increasing France’s piece of the production pie.

The waves of the Spanish coastal Atlantic are as alternately prone to crashing against the rocks and as calmly breaking as the soul of the protagonist of Carla Simón‘s visually sumptuous new film, “Romería.”

Newcomer Llúcia Garcia, in her first major film role and whom the Spanish director found on the street amid a wide-ranging casting call for actors to play an 18-year-old woman at a pivotal spiritual turn, becomes the surrogate eyes and ears who embody Simón’s real-life story: Simón’s parents died of AIDS when she was a small child, sending her to northern Catalonia with an uncle. She was left, as a hardly formed six-year-old, to contend with little knowledge and fewer memories of her parents.

“Romería” finds the “Alcarràs” and “Summer 1993” filmmaker operating behind her most intensely personal lens yet. Where her family history was previously abstracted in her prior films about families fractured by circumstance,...

Just when you think coming-of-age animated series “Big Mouth” on Netflix couldn’t be any raunchier, co-creator and star Nick Kroll reveals the time that he and his cohorts realized they probably went too far.

“Maury [Kroll] was allowed to have sex with the decapitated skull of Garrison Keillor, and this was before Keillor went down, mind you, and [Netflix] still let that go,” Kroll told me Thursday at the show’s series finale premiere at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood. (Minnesota Public Radio cut ties with Keillor in 2017 after an investigation found he had engaged in dozens of sexually inappropriate incidents over many years.)

“But there’s another moment in that scene where…Rick takes a thermometer out of his sick little dick, and a little bit of blood spurts out,” Kroll laughed. “It’s the grossest thing. Netflix was like, ‘Could you maybe…’ and we were like, ‘Yeah, we saw.

In collaboration with Los Angeles’ American Cinematheque, New York’s Paris Theater will be presenting the second annual “Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair” from June 8 to June 14. This beloved film series embraces the darker side of cinema with empathy, introspection, and unflinching honesty.

The series features a stellar lineup of special guests for post-screening conversations:

Kathleen Turner will be present for a screening of the dark comedy “The War of the Roses” (1989), which has recently been remade by Jay Roach starring Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch. John Turturro discusses “Miller’s Crossing” (1990), one of his standout collaborations with the Coen Brothers. Writer/Director Kenneth Lonergan returns to the Paris for a Q&a following “Manchester by the Sea” (2016), starring Academy Award-winner Casey Affleck and Lucas Hedges. Hot off their success with “The Brutalist,” Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold, joined by actor Daniel London, will discuss their work on “Vox Lux” (2018). Closing the series,...

When the jazzy, jittery opening of Kelly Reichardt’s “The Mastermind” begins with slow, vertically crawling title cards in Bauhaus-like font, you know you’re about to be thrown back in cinematic time.

Shot on film with the grainy warmth that evokes a sleepy 1970 New England municipality as much as it does actual movies from the ‘70s, “The Mastermind” is Reichardt’s version of a heist movie — meaning that the filmmaker hijacks conventions laid by filmmakers like Jean-Pierre Melville and Sidney Lumet for a spin that still retains her patient bent for long, luxuriating takes. Here, Josh O’Connor plays J.B. Mooney (what a name!), an art thief who falls down a hole of his own digging, as a poorly hatched job to rip off a series of Arthur Dove abstract paintings from a fictional Massachusetts museum sends his private and family lives careening out of his grasp.

“The Mastermind...

With an anti-eco-thriller, an anti-buddy-road-movie and a couple of anti-westerns under her belt, Kelly Reichardt may never have met a genre she couldn’t meticulously deconstruct. But rarely has she done so with such offbeat wit and bluesy wisdom as with anti-heist movie “The Mastermind,” a canny rejoinder to the glamorous high drama of the traditional robbery-gone-wrong plot, in which an extraordinary act gradually comes undone when exposed to nothing more malign than the everyday forces of ordinary life, and the fatal flaws of an ordinary man. Very possibly her most accessible and enjoyable film to date, still it remains an unmistakably Reichardtian investigation into the fabric of ordinariness and what happens when it frays.

It is 1970 in suburban Massachusetts where it’s forever windbreaker weather, and the Mooney family are taking a trip to the Framingham Art Museum. Aside from father Jb (Josh O’Connor) staring rather too intently at some Arthur Dove abstract paintings,...

A24 is scaling back its documentary division, laying off five employees from its nonfiction branch, IndieWire has learned. It’s potentially the sign of a shift away from documentary films at the indie distributor.

A24 in recent years has backed docs that have been or will be released theatrically by A24 itself, like the upcoming “André Is an Idiot,” which made its premiere at Sundance 2025, or last year’s “Look Into My Eyes.” Other recent A24 docs include some licensed films for streaming, including “The Last of the Sea Women,” the two-part Steve Martin documentary “Steve!,” and other bio-docs like “Amy,” “Val,” “Stephen Curry: Underrated,” and “The Deepest Breath.”

Nicole Stott, who leads the division, is remaining at A24, as is Emily Osborne, the head of documentary production. They will stay on to work on other documentary projects already in the works, including Victor Kossakovsky’s doc “Architecton” about concrete,...