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Constantin Film and Sony Pictures’ horror reboot “Resident Evil” secured its fourth consecutive weekend at number one across mainland China, grossing RMB28.5 million ($4.3 million) over the Oct. 30–Nov. 1 frame, according to data from Artisan Gateway. Since launching during the Golden Week corridor on Oct. 5, the video game adaptation has generated a cumulative […]
Bollywood filmmaker Vikas Bahl has finished filming in the U.K. on “Bolo Bolo Bolo,” a coming-of-age musical drama set during the boom in Punjabi music across Britain in the early 1990s. Jimmy Shergill, Siddhant Chaturvedi, Mona Singh and Alizeh lead the cast. Katha Studios is producing the film alongside Good Co, Fusion Flicks and Monk […]
Chinese artist and filmmaker Sun Xun never expected “Magic Atlas” to become the first animated feature selected for the Tokyo International Film Festival’s competition. “I never thought of ‘Magic Atlas’ as an animated film. To me, it brings together many art forms. Animation is simply the label we use for its form. I’m glad people […]
Jakarta World Cinema aims to bring back its First Feature Competition next year, open to filmmakers from around the world and judged by an international jury. This year’s edition did not accept submissions. The competition was put on hold because of the difficulty of assembling an international jury. “[Previously] we’ve only had Indonesian judges,” festival […]
A lack of funding, and ignorance in the institutions that control it, keeps women at an inherent disadvantage in the film industry, Afghan director Shahrbanoo Sadat said at a Tokyo International Film Festival talk on the future of women’s cinema. “The discrimination did not start at the festival, but it started at the development level,” […]
A man conceived through sperm donation, unsure of his place in the world, sets out on a journey to Korea in “The Blue Breaks,” an adaptation of Machiya Ryohei’s 2016 novel by Japanese filmmaker Uchiyama Takuya (“Numb”). The Japan-Italy co-production was among the projects at this year’s Tokyo Gap-Financing Market. The protagonist, Shukichi, is a […]
Japanese animated phenomenon “Chiikawa the Movie: The Secret of the Mermaid Island” held the No. 1 position at the South Korean box office over the weekend of Oct. 30–Nov. 1, securing its third consecutive weekend atop the rankings. According to data from KOBIS, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council, the Toho-distributed fantasy […]
Unspoken emotional wounds linger throughout “Between Us,” Japanese director Matsumura Shingo’s new film playing in the Tokyo International Film Festival’s Nippon Cinema Now section, its strand for Japanese films. The film follows Makoto and Kasumi, childhood best friends who drift apart after an incident on a joint family camping trip and reunite six years later […]
Cristian Mungiu’s Palme d’Or winner “Fjord” opened the fifth edition of Jakarta World Cinema at CGV Grand Indonesia. Dan Adrian Bălănescu, Romania’s ambassador to Indonesia, said he was proud of the film, which is Romania’s submission for the international feature Oscar at the 2027 Academy Awards, and hoped it would speak to local audiences. “Many […]
Italian filmmaker Fabrizio Cattani brought “Forever With You,” his exploration of childhood, grief and the loss of a parent, to the Middle East for the first time this week, with the film receiving a Green Carpet premiere at the 13th Sharjah Intl. Film Festival for Children and Youth in the UAE. With Italy celebrated as […]
Double Oscar nominee James Longley, who won the top award at Ji.hlava Documentary Film Festival on Saturday with “Mohabat,” will focus next on the Rohingya genocide. Longley – who was Oscar nominated for “Iraq in Fragments” and “Sari’s Mother” – tells Variety at the Czech event, “I’ve already filmed act one of this project, working […]
“Gintama: Yoshiwara in Flames” – the latest iteration of the “Gintama” story – previewed this week at Lucca Comics and Games, Europe’s largest Comic-Con, prior to a theatrical release in Italy. Variety spoke with director Naoya Andô and producer Ryo Nakamuray about their continuation of the saga. “Gintama” started life as a manga, authored and […]
Over the last few days, Lucca Comics and Games, Europe’s largest Comic-Con, has been celebrating its 60th anniversary. The medieval city located in Italy’s Tuscany region hosted creative leaders, artists and players of games, authors of comic books, manga, showrunners and animators of TV series and anime, actors and directors of films. Around 80,000 ticket-paying […]
While Western TV audiences of the 80s surveying the Soviet world were following Mikhail Gorbachev, those inside the bloc were just as likely to be interested in a bizarre mass hypnosis artist by the name of Anatoly Kashpirovskiy, as Ji.hlava doc fest audiences have seen this week. A trained medical doctor who said he first […]
Why do humans tend to vent abuse at their AI bots – and should they think about apologizing? That question is central to “Searching for SmarterChild,” the project that won the New Visions Award for the most promising U.S. project at the Ji.hlava Documentary Film Festival this week. Zan Gillies is co-directing the U.S.-Canadian film […]
