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Cannes — For years, reports of MipTV’s terminal decline were somewhat exaggerated. Now, however, they’re real. On March 26, Rx France, organizers of MipTV, announced the launch of Mip London, over Feb. 23-28, 2025. MipTV’s 2024 edition will be its last.

Attendance, once 10,000 in 2018, 9,500 in 2019, had plunged to 5,510 on-site delegates last year. That still made it the second biggest TV event in the world. Still dwindling participation this year, is down to around 3,000.

What a MipTV swan song, bulwarked by Canneseries, can deliver, is another question. 10 takes on this year’s edition:

MipTV Sticking to Its Guns

Traditionally, MipTV delivered a straight sales market where sales companies or divisions hold back-to-back meetings with distributors who get links to their shows. History has hardly been on MipTV’s side. As simply raising the finance for a show in an environment of rising costs and declining commissions has become more and more of a challenge,...

Michael Douglas, Kyle MacLachlan, Ella Purnell and Daniel Brühl are among the high-caliber stars who will take part in the seventh edition of Canneseries. The robust lineup, unveiled today by Canneseries’ artistic director Albin Lewi at a press conference in Paris, boasts the world premiere of Apple TV+’s “Franklin,” starring Michael Douglas as one of the Founding Fathers, and Disney+’s “Becoming Karl Lagerfeld” with Daniel Brühl as the acid-tongued designer.

“Franklin,” which will also close the event, is directed by industry veteran Tim Van Patten, behind “Boardwalk Empire” and “Games of Thrones.” Douglas won an Emmy for playing Liberace in “Behind the Candelabra.”

MacLachlan and Purnell will be on the ground to present the international premiere of “Fallout,” the much-anticipated Prime Video show that’s based on a massively popular video game. Both will be feted during the 7th edition of the event, picking up the Canal+ Icon...

Felipe Sholl’s feature directorial debut earned top honours as the 18th edition of the Rio Film Festival concluded on Sunday night by honouring new voices of Brazilian cinema.

The Redentor awards were handed out at Espaco Cultural Bnds, where The Other End also received the best actress prize for Karine Teles, who stars in the unusual love story between a teenage boy and the female patient of his psychoanalyst mother.

The Other End explores the idea that love can be found in unexpected places with irony and lightness. Sholl dealt with a similar theme in Tá (2007), the winner of the Teddy award for best short film at Berlinale that centres on two young men who meet in a public bathroom.

A Woman And The Father, Cristiane Oliveira’s first feature, picked up three awards. Oliveira took the best director award, while the young newcomer Verónica Perrotta was named best supporting actress and cinematographer Heloisa Passos won the...

Felipe Sholl’s feature directorial debut earned top honours as the 18th edition of the Rio Film Festival concluded on Sunday night by honouring new voices of Brazilian cinema.

The Redentor awards were handed out at Espaco Cultural Bnds, where The Other End also received the best actress prize for Karine Teles, who stars in the unusual love story between a teenage boy and the female patient of his psychoanalyst mother.

The Other End explores the idea that love can be found in unexpected places with irony and lightness. Sholl dealt with a similar theme in Tá (2007), the winner of the Teddy award for best short film at Berlinale that centres on two young men who meet in a public bathroom.

A Woman And The Father, Cristiane Oliveira’s first feature, picked up three awards. Oliveira took the best director award, while the young newcomer Verónica Perrotta was named best supporting actress and cinematographer Heloisa Passos won the...

Already released in Brazil, "Paulo Coelho's Best Story" recounts the ups and downs in the life of author most famous for "The Alchemist," the 1988 novel about an Andalusian shepherd boy's journey to Egypt. Starring Julio Andrade and Paz Vega ("Sex and Lucia," "Talk to Her," "Spanglish"), the film features art direction from Pedro Almodovar regular Antxón Gómez and Oscar-winning make-up artists Montse Ribé and David Marti. The film traces the prolific author's journey, which begins humbly in Brazil, to his triumph as an international literary celebrity who endured bouts of mental disorders, drug-taking and success as a rock musician and lyricist. Look for the film on July 31.

Exclusive: Us-based FiGa Films has lined up a Cannes slate that includes Paz Fabrega’s Tribeca 2015 selection Viaje and Berlin entry The Fire from Juan Schnitman.

Kattia Gonzalez and Fernando Bolanos star in Viaje, which marks the Costa Rican Fabrega’s second film and centres on a casual encounter.

The Fire (El Incendio) stars Pilar Gambo and Juan Barberini and tells of a couple whose love is tested during a tense attempt to buy a home.

FiGa, which as of June 1 will relocate from Los Angeles and Florida, will also tout Berlin selection and rites-of-passage drama Seashore (Beira Mar) from Filipe Matzembacher and Marcio Reolon and stars Mateus Almada and Mauricio Jose Barcellos.

Gregoria Graziosi’s Brazilian drama Obra (pictured) premiered in Toronto last year and stars Irandhir Santos, Lola Peploe and Julio Andrade.

Thriller I Swear I’ll Leave This Town (Prometo Um Dia Deixar Essa Cidade) from Daniel Aragao launched at the Rio de Janeiro...

Name and focus changes for every section, which are now all competitive, resulting in the festival’s structure being “slimmer’.

The ninth Rome Film Festival (Oct 16-25) has revealed a diverse line-up including the Italian premieres for potential awards contenders including David Fincher’s Gone Girl. the world premiere of Takashi Miike’s As the Gods Will and Burhan Qurbani’s We are Young, We are Strong and European premiere of Oren Moverman’s Time Out of Mind, Toronto hit Still Alice and Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet.

This year for the first time the award-winners in each section of the programme will be decided by the audience on the basis of votes cast after the screenings.

Each section has changed name and focus for 2014 and are all competitive, resulting in the festival’s structure being “slimmer’.

Italian comedies Soap Opera and Andiamo a Quel Paese bookend the line-up.

Full line-up

Cinema D’Oggi

World premiere

• Angely...

The lineups for the Mavericks, Discovery, and Tiff Kids parts of the Toronto Film Festival were announced, wrapping up a series of lineup announcements for the Toronto International Film Festival.

With the added films, the festival’s entire slate is now a whopping 393 movies. Two hundred eighty-five of those movies are feature films, of which 143 are world premieres.

The Mavericks portion of the festival includes onstage discussions following the screening of each film. Do I Sound Gay? will be followed by a talk between director David Thorpe and sex-advice guru Dan Savage. Also premiering in that space is The 50 Year Argument,...

Bill Murray is coming to Toronto folks. Actually, the film he stars in (Theodore Melfi’s St. Vincent) is having its official World Premiere launch at the jaw-dropping 285 feature film 2014 Tiff line-up. In the final batch of items we finally get the confirmation that 2014′s Palme d’Or Winner Winter Sleep (which gets added along with a trio of others to the Masters Programme) will show, and Tomm Moore’s highly anticipated Song of the Sea (among the four item line-up for Tiff Kids) also lands. Worth mentioning are the sprinkling of add-ons to the various other sections (Marjane Satrapi’s Sundance preemed The Voices, Matt Shakman’s Cut Bank and the world preem of Danis Tanovic’s Tigers) with a Studio Ghibli docu item being fitted into the Tiff Docs, but it is the Discovery Programme that finally takes shape.

The “up-and-comers” include Berlin Film Fest (and future Nyff...

The 15th annual Rio International Film Festival winners were announced on October 10 at an awards ceremony held at the festival’s downtown Armazem 6 dockland pavilion.Scroll down for full list of winners

As in every year, the awards were exclusively for domestic films that screened in the Premiere Brasil section, dedicated to new work from local directors.

For the first time in festival history the most prestigious prize, the Redentor award presented to the Best Fiction Feature, was shared between two films, both from first-time directors: Caru Alves de Souza’s Underage (De Menor) and Fernando Coimbra’s Wolf At The Door (O Lobo Atrás da Porta).

Underage touches on a topical subject that divides Brazilian society about reducing the age of criminal responsibility for heinous crimes.

It follows the steps of a young woman, Helena (Rita Batata), a recently graduated attorney who works as a public defender of children and adolescents and also takes care of...

Joe Cole and Phil Davis are starring in crime film Peterman, while shooting is about to finish on The Pilgrim: The Best Story of Paulo Coelho.

Shooting has just commenced in Dunstable on Mark Abraham’s Peterman, which follows the story of a young junkie (Joe Cole) who is kidnapped by a criminal gang and forced to crack open a safe using skills taught to him by the gang’s former ‘Peterman’ (safe cracker), his deceased grandfather (Phil Davis). Alison Steadman, Peter Bowles, Brian McCardie, Kenny Doughty, Stuart Graham and Adam Nagaitis also feature.

The crime film is based on the screenplay by Andy Bloom and is produced by Control Films and Talent Films with Darren Pratt and Tim Phillips acting as producer and Tony Humphreys executive producing.

For more updates and new projects visi

Principal photography will finish this week on The Pilgrim: The Best Story of Paulo Coelho, directed by [link...

Film about the Brazilian writer behind The Alchemist to wrap in Spain this week.

The Pilgrim: The Best Story of Paulo Coelho is to finish shooting in Spain’s Santiago de Compostela this week, after filming began in Rio de Janeiro on April 3.

For production details visit

The Pilgrim: The Best Story of Paulo Coelho

The film is an 80-20 co-production between Brazil’s Dama Filmes, led by Carolina Kotscho and Iôna de Macedo, and Angélica Huete’s Babel Films in Spain.

Directed by Daniel Augusto, the script was informed by conversations between Coelho and producer-scriptwriter Carolina Kotscho.

Ravel and Júlio Andrade will play the young and old Coelho. Other cast members include Fabiana Gugli, Nancho Novo and Paz Vega.

De Macedo told Screen: “The film tells the story of a man who has a dream. It’s a little like Alice in Wonderland - he’s someone who is too big for his house.

“His parents...

• #9. Hotel Atlantico Director: Suzana Amaral Cast: Júlio Andrade, João Miguel, Mariana Ximenes, Gero Camilo, Marcia Martins, Helena Ignez, Luis GuilhermeDistributor: Rights Available. Buzz: Amaral might be considered the Terrence Malick of Brazil - not for her style, but her total output of films. Born in 1932, she first came onto the scene with The Hour of the Star in 86', and Hotel Atlantico is only her third feature film. Tiff's Latin film programmer Diana Sanchez mentions that there is "a palpable Lynchian aura to the film, with a vaguely defined threat seeping through the scenes. At the same time, the narrative and the performers are going with the flow, exuding a “living in the moment” energy that may be due to Amaral's Buddhist beliefs." In general, I'm a fan of "drifter" films (e.g. Antonioni's The Passenger) and I'm sold on the trailer - which you can check out below.

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