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Exclusive: Guy Burnet (Oppenheimer), John Ross Bowie (Speechless), Adrian Rawlins (Mary & George) and Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson (Vikings: Valhalla) will round out the cast of Reykjavik, writer-director Michael Russell Gunn’s historical drama for Anyone But You producer Sk Global. Additionally, 2521 Entertainment has been set to produce and finance the film in partnership with Sk Global.

Others in the cast, as previously announced, include Jeff Daniels, Jared Harris, J.K. Simmons, Hope Davis, Branka Katic and Aya Cash.

Entering production in Iceland in early October, with extensive filming at Höfði House, the actual site of the 1986 Reykjavik summit, Reykjavik explains why the event marked one of the most significant diplomatic achievements of modern times. The film takes place at the most dangerous point of the Cold War, watching as political enemies Ronald Reagan (Daniels) and Mikhail Gorbachev (Harris) meet in Iceland over one long, tense weekend to decide if there will...

Within the context of film discourse, the quote ‘every frame a painting’ is a figurative saying that refers to the fact that a movie is stunningly photographed to the point that each still image in isolation could stand as an artwork in and of itself. However, in the breathtaking work of Polish directors, Dk and Hugh Welchman, this takes a more literal meaning, as every frame of their films is indeed an oil painting handcrafted by a crew of around a hundred artists.

The Welchmans first used this arduous but incredibly rewarding animation technique in their previous film, the Oscar-nominated “Loving Vincent” (2017), which paid tribute to van Gogh by emulating his own brushwork, with the added difference of movement. Moreover, the color palette used for the film also resembled that found in the work of the late artist—different tonalities of blues, yellows, and greens. This time around, the filmmakers...

Earlier this year, Denis Villeneuve released the masterpiece Dune: Part Two and blew us all away with his stunning vision of the desert planet Arrakis, the sandworms that live there, and the rise of unwilling space messiah Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet). But that's not the only Dune thing that'll be coming to our screens this year. Believe it or not, we're but a few short months away from the release of Dune: Prophecy, a brand new spinoff series coming to Max.

Dune: Prophecy is set 10,000 years before the Dune story covered in Denis Villeneuve's movies, which adapt the seminal 1965 novel by Frank Herbert. This new series is all about the founding of the Bene Gesserit sisterhood of space witches, who manipulate the levers of power in the galaxy from the shadows. By Paul's time, they're one of the most powerful factions around. But in Dune: Prophecy, they're just beginning to find their footing.

Das Danish Film Institute hat kürzlich das neue Projekt von Lars von Trier gefördert. Der berühmte dänische Filmemacher, der seine Parkinson Erkrankung 2022 publik gemacht hatte, inszeniert „After“, so der Titel, nach eigenem Drehbuch.

Lars Von Trier (Credit: Imago / Depositphotos)

Lars von Trier arbeitet an einem neuen Kinofilm. Dies geht aus der jüngsten Förderliste des Danish Film Institute hervor, in der „After“, so der Titel, mit rund 175.000 Euro gefördert wurde. Worum es in „After“ geht, ist geheim. Auch, wer darin mitspielen soll. Es ist das erste Projekt seit Bekanntwerden der Parkinson-Erkrankung des dänischen Enfant terrible, das Meisterwerke wie „Breaking the Waves“, „Melancholia“, „Dancer in the Dark“ und „Dogville“ hervorbrachte. Seine letzte Arbeit war die späte dritte Staffel seiner Kult-Serie „Geister“, die 2022 in Toronto Weltpremiere feierte. Seinen bislang letzten Spielfilm, den Horrorthriller „The House That Jack Built“, hatte von Trier 2018 auf dem Filmfestival von Cannes vorgestellt, wo er 2011 wegen Nazi-Äußerungen zur Persona non grata erklärt worden war,...

As the prophets of De La Soul once proclaimed, "Three, that's the magic number!" Yes folks, that's right — for the second week on the bounce we have a terrific trio of guests joining us on the Empire Podcast. First up, our features editor Alex Godfrey speaks no evil — and speaks Speak No Evil — with the psychological thriller remake's star (and podcast regular) James McAvoy [19:49 — 34:40 approx]. Then, Amon Warmann sits down for a chat with Kate Winslet, star of wartime biopic Lee [56:50 - 1:12:15 approx]. And last but most certainly not least, we have for your listening delectation the interview that the entire podteam did with Reawakening star and all-round acting legend Juliet Stevenson during last week's live show at the London Podcast Festival [1:41:33 — 1:57:42 approx].

Either side of those, Chris is back in the pod booth after a rare holiday and hosts Helen, James and Alex Godfrey as they discuss films from 1996 that deserve sequels — and...

Focus Features has boarded worldwide rights to Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet and announced that Steven Spielberg has joined as producer, while Emily Watson and Joe Alwyn have joined the cast.

Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal star in the adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s novel, which Amblin Partners, Hera Pictures and Neal Street Productions are producing in association with Book Of Shadows.

Principal photography began in Wales last month on the story, which sees upcoming Gladiator II star Mescal portray William Shakespeare in a fictionalised account surrounding the death of his only son, Hamnet, who inspired the name of arguably his most famous play,...

Margaret Menegoz, the producer of world-famous auteurs such as Michael Haneke and Wim Wenders, has died at the age of 83.

Menegoz was celebrated for her leadership of Les Films du Losange, an acclaimed production and distribution company which she ran for 46 years with an iron fist, guided by her passion for independent filmmaking and new voices.

Born in Hungary in 1941, during WW2, Menegoz grew up in Germany and ventured into the film industry after meeting her husband, Robert Menegoz, and traveled the world with him to shoot documentaries. She joined Les Films du Losange in 1975 and started as an assistant for revered directors Eric Rohmer and Barbet Schroeder who had co-founded the company in 1962. She quickly rose through the ranks and became manager of the company.

Under her helm, Les Films du Losange won an Oscar, three Palmes d’Or at Cannes. The company built a library of about 100 prestige films,...

Famously press shy, but often going an extra mile in order to shock, Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier has been a mischievous and frustrating spirit who tormented arthouse audiences as much as he teased them. But the provocateur-in-chief is now too established to still be considered an enfant terrible.

Von Trier’s 40 years in the film business are now to be celebrated by South Korea’s leading cinema chain Cj-cgv in a two-week retrospective that kicks off on July 10.

The multiplex giant is dedicating 15 of its art-house screens nationwide to playing 12 von Trier titles, including his debut feature, 1984-release “The Elements of Crime.” The film was part of his so-called “trauma trilogy” and was followed by “Epidemic” and “Europa.”

The showcase will continue with his 1996 Cannes Grand Jury prize-winner “Breaking the Waves” and “Idiots,” an emblem of his Dogma 95 back-to-basics filmmaking manifesto, and “Dancer in the Dark,” which won von...

The Swedish actor is playing a bamboozled police officer in What Remains, a film written by his wife and starring one of his sons. He looks back on mixing Marvel with arthouse, taking risks with Lars von Trier and Sweden joining Nato

Stellan Skarsgård is speaking to me from his cabin, outside Stockholm, and why shouldn’t he look relaxed and happy, in those clement, sun-dappled surrounds? But it is so disconcerting. His performance in What Remains, as a battle-scarred police officer, trying to keep hold of his family, his bearings and his scepticism in the face of a criminological modernity that puzzles him, joins a body of knotty work that UK audiences would probably date back to Breaking the Waves, Lars von Trier’s 1996 classic. His smallest facial gesture speaks fathomless emotion. I am a huge Mamma Mia! fan – in which he plays Bill Anderson – so I have seen Skarsgård smile,...

Lionsgate is snapping up the North American distribution rights for Cillian Murphy’s latest feature, Small Things Like These. Based on the acclaimed novel by Claire Keegan, the historical drama explores a dark secret kept in a convent and the father who uncovers the harsh truth. Murphy produces Small Things Like These in addition to his starring role with Emily Watson co-starring.

Tim Mielants directs Small Things Like These from a script by Enda Walsh. The following description arrives courtesy of Lionsgate’s official press release:

Small Things Like These, which was the opening night film playing in competition at the Berlin Film Festival this year and won a Silver Bear for Emily Watson’s performance, takes place over Christmas in 1985, when devoted father Bill Furlong (Murphy) discovers the startling secrets being kept by the convent in his town, and some shocking truths about his own life as well.

Murphy...

Denis Villeneuve's "Dune" movies are truly the definition of "star-studded." Bleak though "Dune: Part Two" may be, the sequel in particular is packed with big-name actors, from stars Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya to Florence Pugh, Austin Butler, and Javier Bardem. Villeneuve even managed to coax Christopher Walken out of a four-year acting hiatus for his follow-up to 2021's "Dune." All of which amounted to a set that must have been intimidating for even seasoned actors.

Take Dave Bautista, for example. When shooting "Dune: Part Two," the wrestler-turned-actor was particularly intimidated by "Elvis" star Austin Butler, before being surprised at how warm and supportive he was. Even Butler himself admitted to being unnerved by the scale of the production, revealing in a behind-the-scenes clip that he was nervous about the shoot and that arriving on set felt like "the first day of school."

Then, there's David Dastmalchian, who played Piter De Vries,...

Denis Villeneuve's new hit film "Dune: Part Two" sees the rise of a villain not glimpsed in "Dune: Part One." In the film, the evil Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård), having lost faith in his nephew Rabban (Dave Bautista) and his ability to exterminate the Fremen on Arrakis, turns to his far more sociopathic, aggressive nephew Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler), a young man with no remorse and a murderous streak a mile wide. A large section of "Dune: Part Two" is devoted to describing Feyd's horrible evil, with several Bene Gesserit witches noting that he can only be controlled through flattery and sexuality, not conscience. Feyd is a violent, walking id, and the film ultimately culminates in a knife fight between him and the Messianic Paul Atreaides (Timothée Chalamet).

In David Lynch's eccentric 1984 "Dune" adaptation, rock star Sting played Feyd, and there is a notorious scene wherein Sting emerges from a bizarre,...

Spoiler Alert: The following interview reveals plot points.

Exclusive: Babylon Berlin star Liv Lisa Fries recently sat down with us to discuss powerful and timely Berlin Film Festival Competition entry From Hilde, With Love, which debuts at the festival this coming weekend.

Andreas Dresen’s affecting and pared back film, set in Berlin during the Second World War, charts the little known story of Hilde and Hans Coppi, a young couple who courageously become members of an anti-Nazi group known as The Red Orchestra (Die Rote Kapelle). The two spend a summer together until they get caught by the Gestapo and Hilde is imprisoned, eight months pregnant.

Fries gives a memorable performance as Hilde. In the above first footage from the movie, she and co-star Johannes Hegemmann discuss an act of resistance for the first time. Pandora Film produces from a script by Laila Stieler. Beta Cinema handles sales.

Director...

Seasoned Danish writer-director Birgitte Stærmose, recently credited for the Netflix show “In From the Cold,” Starz’s “The Spanish Princess” and Göteborg 2023 closing pic “Camino,” debuted her hybrid pic “Afterwar” in the Berlin Film Festival’s Dokument program, after which the film plays at Cph:dox.

Variety has secured in exclusivity the trailer for the helmer’s anti-war pamphlet produced by Magic Hour Films in Denmark (“Burma VJ”) in co-production with Sweden’s Vilda Bomben Film (“Excess Will Save Us”), Finland’s Bufo (“Fallen Leaves”) and Kosovo’s Kabineti.

A meditation on the long-term effects of war, “Afterwar” is the feature-length spinoff of Stærmose’s short film “Out of Love.” The story of a bunch of street kids in Pristina trying to survive in the aftermath of the Kosovo war, snagged multiple awards in 2010, including a Berlinale Generation 14Plus Special Mention.

15 years in the making, “Afterwar” was co-created with four of...

Peter Garde, European film financing vet and frequent collaborator of filmmakers like Lars Von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, has died aged 67 in Fakse, Denmark, after a long battle with cancer. Garde’s wife, Nanna, confirmed the news to Deadline alongside his close associates, Peter Aalbæk Jensen and Anders Kjærhauge.

Garde began his education in finance in the small town of Store Heddinge in Denmark, where he was a student set to become a banker. He ultimately went on to start his own financial exchange company.

After the success of Lars Von Trier’s Breaking The Waves, Garde was convinced by his close friend producer Peter Aalbæk Jensen to join Zentropa and help manage all the money that was pouring into the studio, which ultimately became the beginning of Garde’s long career with Lars Von Trier and Zentropa Studios’ films. He joined the company in 1997.

Garde was responsible for piecing...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

The Beekeeper (David Ayer)

It’s the time of year for smooth-brained relaxation. Moviegoers can recover from the holidays with the comfort of knowing Gerard Butler, Liam Neeson, or Jason Statham will be here to satisfy their mid-budget, action-programmer needs. Is it really the new year if one of those cherished Kings of January doesn’t appear on the release slate? There’s no Gerry or Liam, but the ever-reliable Statham dons a trucker hat and blue jeans to grit his way through David Ayer’s The Beekeeper, an overall valiant, occasionally fun attempt to take us out of Q1 doldrums. – Conor O. (full review)

Where to Stream: VOD

Brawl in Cell Block 99 (S. Craig Zahler)

S. Craig Zahler is the...

“Any kind of a first encounter with something is out to make an impact,” reflects Celine Song about the power of first love. The subject lies at the heart of the writer-director’s first feature film, “Past Lives,” in which two people from Korea who had once formed a close relationship when they were 12 reunite in person in New York City after 24 years apart. The screenwriter believes the feelings between characters Nora (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) are especially strong, even after over two decades, because Nora “effectively disappeared” when she immigrated with her family to the United States and “in that way, it’s almost as though she’s passed.” Watch our exclusive video interview above.

Song has a background in playwriting, but when she had the idea for “Past Lives,” she “knew that it needed to be told cinematically because of the way that time and space works in the film.

Mubi has unveiled their December 2023 lineup, featuring notable new releases such as Rodrigo Moreno’s The Delinquents, Argentina’s Oscar this year; the Lily Gladstone-led drama The Unknown Country; Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s The Beasts; and the José González documentary A Tiger in Paradise. Additional highlights include films from Olivier Assayas, Takeshi Kitano, Jean-Luc Godard, Kelly Reichardt, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, the Shaw Browers, Lars von Trier, Arnaud Desplechin, and more.

Check out the lineup below and get 30 days free here.

December 1st

The House that Jack Built, directed by Lars von Trier | Chaos Reigns: The Films of Lars von Trier

Breaking the Waves, directed by Lars von Trier | Chaos Reigns: The Films of Lars von Trier

The Element of Crime, directed by Lars von Trier | Chaos Reigns: The Films of Lars von Trier

Europa, directed by Lars von Trier | Chaos Reigns: The Films of Lars von Trier

Epidemic, directed...

In my opinion, the two greatest directors to emerge from the nexus of international cinema in the 1990s were both Scandinavian. One of them, Lars von Trier, became quite famous, for reasons both good and bad. The other director I’m speaking of never got famous, and his movies, even during his brief heyday, didn’t become art-house sensations. Yet for a time, Sweden’s Lukas Moodysson burned with an intoxicating flame.

He made three films of astonishing organic craft and humanistic purity: “Show Me Love” (1998), a shockingly lyrical love story about two high-school girls who fall for each other in a small town that didn’t look very tolerantly upon them; “Together” (2000), an ensemble comedy set in a sharehome commune in Stockholm in 1975 that is one of the only films that totally gets the counterculture; and “Lilya 4-ever” (2002), a haunting tragedy about a wayward girl in the former Soviet...

The list of directors who put their trust in Robby Müller could constitute a nice history of post-war cinema. A retrospective of films on which he served as Dp reflects accordingly––so’s the case with Metrograph’s “Robby Müller: Remain in Light,” which starts on Friday, September 29, and for which we’re glad to debut the trailer.

Contained therein are bits and pieces of what Metrograph attendees can anticipate. The series will offer a chance to see (among others) 24 Hour Party People, Alice in the Cities, The American Friend, Barfly, Breaking the Waves, Dead Man, Down by Law, Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai, Kings of the Road, Korczak, Living the Light – Robby Müller, Mystery Train, Repo Man, Saint Jack, To Live and Die in L.A., When Pigs Fly, The Wrong Move, and Paris, Texas. The opening night will be anchored by “a panel on Müller’s continued influence on filmmaking,...

Keeping it in the family is very much a Hollywood tradition at this point, and in the 21st century acting families are still thriving. Whether it be Cuba Gooding Jr.’s son Mason joining the cast of the last two Scream movies, Lily-Rose Depp leading The Idol, Maya Hawke becoming a fan favorite in Stranger Things, or Ethan Peck (grandson of Gregory) roaming the bridge of the Enterprise in Star Trek, there’s always a new generation of nepo babies lurching from crib to screen.

But one man is overwhelmingly leading the pack in terms of famous male offspring these days. A man who could conceivably consider the Kardashians his Warios. And that’s Stellan Skarsgård.

A Swedish gentleman well into his 70s with an effortlessly friendly demeanour and a soothingly craggy face, Skarsgård now has eight children, and it’s a solid bet that if you see the name...

Producer Marianne Slot will continue her successful collaboration with Icelandic director Benedikt Erlingsson, following 2018 “Woman at War” with TV show “The Danish Woman” and upcoming feature film “Normal Men.”

“It’s a comedy, as you can imagine. Benedikt Erlingsson and a feminist producer – that’s a good combination,” she laughs, recalling their previous film about an environmental activist going rogue.

“’Woman at War’ was so joyful to make. It is still being shown and used as a reference, even by politicians in many different countries.”

Slot talks to Variety in Locarno, when she is picking up the Raimondo Rezzonico Award, given to industry figures who have played a major role in international production.

A French producer of Danish origin, she has collaborated with such directors as Lucrecia Martel, Lisandro Alonso and Sergei Loznitsa and has been co-producing Lars von Trier’s films since 1995’s “Breaking the Waves,” including “The House That Jack Built.

In Lars von Trier’s otherwise ridiculous film, Watson brings generous substance to a punishing role as a dangerously selfless wife

Lars von Trier’s deadpan-tragic fantasy of emotional pain from 1996 is now re-released as part of a retrospective dedicated to this director; it is magnificently acted, stylishly composed and entirely ridiculous from beginning to end. An operatically extravagant artsploitation ordeal that devastated saucer-eyed audiences at the Cannes film festival, Breaking the Waves won Von Trier the Grand Prix, though missed out on the Palme d’Or. It also launched him as a world-cinema superstar, though it is surely only the blazing passion of his lead Emily Watson that gives this film its substance; she varnishes it with her own luminous talent and commitment. It is perhaps to Watson that Von Trier owes his entire career.

Breaking the Waves is set in a quaintly imagined remote Scottish community in the...

A deranged killer clown…

A mad bride covered in blood…

A desperate man sells his soul to the Devil…

Horror movie villains? Of course. But also, surprisingly, protagonists of world-famous operas.

Because while it might not seem immediately obvious, opera and horror are genres with many commonalities. Like horror, traditional classical opera thrives on grandiosity, with overwhelming visuals and soaring soundtracks to imply the conflict, intrigue and drama. Like horror, opera focuses on the extremes of human emotion and interaction: obsessive vengeance, unresolved despair, consuming passions. Both genres are stereotyped by outsiders–opera as a tedious or incomprehensible ordeal, horror movies as tawdry and tasteless. And fans of both will cry betrayal at anything that deviates from long-standing, deeply cherished genre tropes–they like what they like and they’ll throw down to defend their opinions. (Forget about your heated Freddy vs. Jason arguments; start a debate on whether a...

He will receive the Leopard Club award at next month’s festival.

Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård is to be honoured at next month’s Locarno Film Festival (August 2-12), where he will receive the Leopard Club award.

Skarsgård will be attending the Swiss festival to present What Remains, the feature he stars in alongside his son Gustaf Skarsgård, directed by Ran Huang and co-written by Megan Everett-Skarsgard, wife of honouree Skarsgård.

His career started at an early age, in Swedish children’s TV series Bombi Bitt, back in 1968. Feature credits include five films with Lars von Trier, such as Cannes...

Veteran Swedish star Stellan Skarsgård, who plays villain Baron Harkonnen in Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune” – part two of which will be released in November – will be honoured by the Locarno Film Festival with its Leopard Club Award.

Skarsgård, who started his Hollywood career working with top directors such as Steven

Spielberg in “Amistad” (1997) and Gus Van Sant in “Good Will Hunting,” the same year, and segued to memorable roles in Gore Verbinsky’s “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise and in “Mamma Mia!,” among other films. He is being feted by the Swiss fest dedicated to indie cinema with its Leopard Club Award dedicated to a film industry artist who has made a “mark on the collective imagination.”

Outside Hollywood, Skarsgård’s stellar career comprises groundbreaking work in European cinema working with directors such as Lars von Trier with whom he has made five films starting with “Breaking The Waves,” which...

Legendary Swedish star Stellan Skarsgard (Good Will Hunting, Mamma Mia!, Nymphomaniac) will be honored with the Leopard Club Award, a lifetime achievement honor, at this year’s Locarno International Film Festival.

Skarsgard will receive the prize on Aug. 4 at a ceremony at Locarno’s Piazza Grande and will take part in an audience Q&a on Aug. 5. In his honor, Locarno will screen Good Evening, Mr. Wallenberg (1990), Kjell Grede’s period drama in which Skarsgard plays Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews during the final months of World War II. The festival will also screen What Remains, Ran Huang’s crime drama, co-written by his partner Megan Everett-Skarsgard, which features Skarsgard and one of his actor sons, Gustaf (Vikings, Oppenheimer). Huang and the Skarsgards will attend the Locarno screenings.

The 72-year-old has successfully balanced a career as a European art house star. He has made...

The Locarno Film Festival will fete Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård with its Honorary Career Leopard award at the upcoming edition, running August 2 to 12.

The award ceremony will take place August 4 at the Piazza Grande, followed by an audience Q&a at the Spazio Cinema on August 5, while the actor’s 1990 pic Good Evening, Mr. Wallenberg by Kjell Grede, will screen on August 3.

Alongside his work with European filmmakers such as Lars von Trier, for whom he starred five times, including Breaking The Waves, which won the Jury Prize at Cannes, Skarsgård is known for his roles in big Hollywood films such as Pirates of the Caribbean films, Mamma Mia!, Thor, and Denis Villeneuve’s Dune — the second part of which will be released this fall.

Also active in television, Skarsgård won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor in a miniseries in the HBO drama Chernobyl. He recently starred in...

The 2023 Cherry Orchard Festival, running from June – July 2023 across the nation, presents Polina Osetinskaya at 92Ny on June 10, 2023 at 8pm at 1395 Lexington Ave, New York, NY 10128. As part of her North American tour, Osetinskaya will perform some of the most enduring musical masterpieces in history featured in some of the world’s greatest films. For more information and to purchase tickets, please visit https://www.92ny.org/event/polina-osetinskaya-piano.

Polina Osetinskaya

Polina Osetinskaya makes a triumphant solo return to the United States, after a critically acclaimed appearance at Carnegie Hall with Maxim Vengerov in October 2022. With her signature virtuosity, Osetinskaya brings to life seminal works by Bach, Handel and Rameau, from epic films such as Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather,” Anthony Minghella’s “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” Stanley Kubrick’s “Barry Lyndon,” and others. The dramatic qualities of the music, which had once enhanced the pivotal moments in these great films,...

Mubi has released a new trailer for the 25th anniversary 4K restoration of Lars von Trier‘s dark comedy The Idiots. The only film that von Trier made under the Dogme 95 “Vow of Chastity”, The Idiots centers on a commune in the Danish suburbs where members aim to disrupt wider “bourgeoisie” society by pretending to have mental and physical ailments in public. It is the second film in von Trier’s Golden Heart Trilogy, preceded by Breaking the Waves and followed by Dancer in the Dark. The Idiots will open theatrically at […]

The post Trailer Watch: 25th Anniversary 4K Restoration of Lars von Trier’s The Idiots first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Mubi has released a new trailer for the 25th anniversary 4K restoration of Lars von Trier‘s dark comedy The Idiots. The only film that von Trier made under the Dogme 95 “Vow of Chastity”, The Idiots centers on a commune in the Danish suburbs where members aim to disrupt wider “bourgeoisie” society by pretending to have mental and physical ailments in public. It is the second film in von Trier’s Golden Heart Trilogy, preceded by Breaking the Waves and followed by Dancer in the Dark. The Idiots will open theatrically at […]

The post Trailer Watch: 25th Anniversary 4K Restoration of Lars von Trier’s The Idiots first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Lars von Trier founded the Dogme 95 movement alongside Thomas Vinterberg in the 1990s as a stripped-down, chaste approach to filmmaking — chaste, at least, on visual terms, as there is never anything chaste about a movie from the director of “Breaking the Waves,” “Antichrist,” and “The House That Jack Built.”

But in reality, von Trier only actually made one movie that adhered to Dogme 95’s criteria: including all shooting done on location, no props or sets brought in, diegetic sound and natural light only, and no credits for the filmmaker. That film was 1998’s Danish comedy-drama “The Idiots,” which upon release at the Cannes Film Festival provoked a firestorm of fiercely divided reactions for its fictionalized treatment of disability. Now, independent film distributor and streaming platform Mubi will re-release the film, restored and uncut, on June 16 theatrically at the Metrograph before it hits streaming on July 7. Watch the trailer for the new restoration,...

Mubi has acquired 11 films by Lars von Trier for North America, including the director’s Dogme 95 entry The Idiots. It will release a new uncut 4K restoration of the film June 16 theatrically timed to its 25th anniversary, followed by an exclusive streaming release.

Other titles, most newly restored, include Dogville (2003), The Five Obstructions (2003), Manderlay (2005), The Boss of it All (2006), Breaking the Waves (1996), the Europa Trilogy, Antichrist (2009) and Dancer in the Dark (2000). Some are streaming on Mubi now, others will roll out on through September 2025.

Mubi acquired new restorations of von Trier series, The Kingdom Seasons 1 and 2, along with its latest season, The Kingdom Exodus in 2022.

TrustNordisk brokered the deal with Mubi.

The Idiots, which premiered at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival, was made under the Dogme 95 school started by von Trier and other Danish filmmakers. It centers on a commune, whose members aim to disrupt...

Prominent Paris-based producer Marianne Slot, who has been instrumental to bringing works by auteurs such as Lars Von Trier, Lucrecia Martel, and Argentina’s Lisandro Alonso to the big screen, is being honored by the Locarno Film Festival.

Slot will receive the Swiss festival’s Raimondo Rezzonico prize for a producer who epitomizes the indie ethos. She will be bestowed with the award on Aug. 5 with a tribute that will include a screening of Icelandic director Benedikt Erlingsson’s environmental-themed black comedy “Woman At War,” followed by an on-stage conversation on Aug. 6.

Born in Denmark, Slot set up the Paris-based production company Slot Machine in 1993. She has been Von Trier’s French producer since 1995, starting with “Breaking the Waves.” Over the years Slot has shepherded works by a slew of indie auteurs at various stages of their careers. Besides Martel and Erlingsson these include Bent Hamer, Małgorzata Szumowska, Paz Encina,...

The producer of ‘Women at War’ and ‘Dancer in the Dark’ will receive the Raimondo Rezzonico Award

French producer Marianne Slot, known for her collaborations with Lars von Trier, will receive the Raimondo Rezzonico Award at the 76th Locarno Film Festival (August 2-12).

After working with Von Trier on his 1995 film Breaking the Waves, she became his French producer. Throughout her career Slot has worked with international directors and producers including Lucrecia Martel, Lisandro Alonso, Naomi Kawase, Sergei Loznitsa and Benedikt Erlingsson, specialising in auteur features.

In 1993, she set up her production company Slot Machine in Paris.

Slot will be...

Locarno Film Festival will honor French-Danish producer Marianne Slot with its Raimondo Rezzonico Award, given to figures who have played a major role in international production, at its 76th edition running from August 2 to 12.

Over the course of her 30-year career, Slot has worked with a host of internationally renowned auteurs including Lars von Trier, Lucrecia Martel, Bent Hamer, Malgoska Szumowska, Paz Encina, Lisandro Alonso, Sergei Loznitsa, Naomi Kawase and Benedikt Erlingsson.

Slot broke into producing on the early works of von Trier, taking co-producer credits on the original The Kingdom TV series as well as Breaking The Waves and The Idiots, and has since become a key figure on the international arthouse co-production scene.

The producer will be in Cannes this year with Lisandro Alonso’s ambitious historical drama Eureka starring Viggo Mortensen, which world premieres in the Cannes Premiere section.

“Marianne Slot’s approach to film production has...

In Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s “Pirate Jenny” from “The Threepenny Opera,” a peasant hotel maid avenges herself for the cruelty she suffers from her fellow townspeople by imagining a pirate ship that sweeps into town, flattening the village and everyone in it. So, of course, the Danish king of saintly put-upon martyrs, Lars von Trier, found this material suitable for making a film every bit as alienating to the audience as the works of Brecht: 2003’s “Dogville.” Von Trier also centered his film around a blockbuster movie star, whose under-a-bell-jar image he set upon to deconstruct: Nicole Kidman.

Freshly off her Best Actress Oscar win for “The Hours” and also out of her messily public but oddly inscrutable divorce from Tom Cruise, Kidman flew to rural Trollhättan in Sweden to get on a soundstage with a truly there-are-no-words-amazing cast: Paul Bettany, Lauren Bacall, Harriet Andersson, Stellan Skarsgård,...

How did we get here?” Emily Watson asks, frustratedly. “Where the victims of a horrific crime aren’t believed and the perpetrators are protected?” In her new film God’s Creatures, the Oscar-nominated star of Breaking the Waves and Punch-Drunk Love plays Aileen, a seafood processor in rural Ireland whose son Brian (Normal People’s Paul Mescal) is accused by a local girl of rape. The residents of the small fishing town they live in rally around him. The accuser, on the other hand, is exiled. “This is baked into our institutions and how our society is structured,” Watson continues, forcefully now. “Somehow sexual assault doesn’t matter. Somebody breaks into your house? The police will sort you out in five minutes. If someone rapes your daughter… good luck!”

Watson has been an internationally acclaimed star and one of Britain’s very best actors for more than 25 years, but there’s still something mysterious about her.

The actor grew up in an alleged cult and was expelled after her explicit role in Breaking the Waves. She discusses method acting, the #MeToo movement and mixing work and family

Emily Watson had big plans to turn up for our interview looking immaculately made up, but then family members started getting sick and her morning fell apart. “When my husband’s ill, chaos descends,” she says, with a sigh. Despite this, she doesn’t seem ruffled. If anything, she is serene and calm, her skin glowing and those expressive blue eyes as piercing and soulful in life as they are on screen.

We meet at the BFI Southbank in London, a regular haunt of hers over the years, to talk about her new film God’s Creatures. Dressed in a short black dress, a black corduroy jacket and a black and white scarf, she has a gentle presence. In the film,...

Stars: Emily Watson, Paul Mescal, Aishling Franciosi | Written by Shane Crowley | Directed by Saela Davis, Anna Rose Holmer

In a small Irish fishing town, a son unexpectedly comes home from Australia out of the blue. Though his mother is delighted, the rest of his family appear to be wary — up until the night of an alleged sexual assault. In the wake of the son’s actions, the mother tells a lie that changes the course of their dynamic and community relationships.

Cinema — in general terms — deserves its kudos for passing the floor to varying perspectives of sexual assault and harassment. It’s a matter that the bulk of the world are still struggling to take seriously, and seeing a salt-of-the-earth mother risk it all in order to protect her perverse son is something that should be a head jolt. Even when its heart (and head) is in the right place,...

Actress Rhea Seehorn discusses a few of her favorite movies with hosts Josh Olson and Joe Dante.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

The Swimmer (1968)

Linoleum (2023)

Close Encounters of The Third Kind (1977)

Young Frankenstein (1974)

The Bride Of Frankenstein (1935)

Glengarry Glenn Ross (1992)

Short Cuts (1993)

Lars And The Real Girl (2007)

Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind (2004)

Synecdoche, New York (2008)

Breaking The Waves (1996)

Sound Of Metal (2020)

Starman (1984)

The Worst Person In The World (2021)

Beatriz At Dinner (2017)

Frida (2002)

The Shape Of Water (2017)

Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)

Nightmare Alley (2021)

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (2022)

The Creature From The Black Lagoon (1954)

The Lobster (2015)

Delicatessen (1992)

The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989)

The Favourite (2018)

World’s Greatest Dad (2009)

Birdman (2014)

The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)

Jojo Rabbit (2019)

The Stepford Wives (1975)

The Stepford Wives (2004)

Triangle Of Sadness (2022)

Get Out (2017)

Nope (2022)

Brazil (1985)

Safe (1995)

Withnail & I (1987)

The Fisher King (1991)

Regarding Henry (1990)

Lost in La Mancha (2002)

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote...

Filmmakers Milad Alami, Kasper Barfoed and up-and-coming creatives Emma Sehested Høed and Jennifer Vedsted Christiansen are some of the Scandi talents plotting projects for the new Danish production banner Uma Film, formerly Good Company Films.

The Copenhagen-based shingle is run by three pedigreed female producers with a solid track record in Danish drama series and features. Stinna Lassen has produced for the Danish pubcaster Dr their biggest hit in the last six-to-seven years,“Carmen Curlers”, under the spotlight at this week’s Göteborg’s TV Drama Vision as contender for the Nordic Film & TV Fond Prize for best screenplay of a Nordic series. Her earlier productions take in Alami’s acclaimed feature debut “The Charmer” and series “When the Dust Settled.”

Lassen’s colleagues Claudia Saginario and Marie-Louise Gyldenkrone were respectively producer and line producer on another Dr’s smash local and international hit,“Cry Wolf.”

Uma Film’s fourth partner,...

BFI Distribution has picked up the well-received Irish drama God’s Creatures for theatrical release in the UK. The deal also includes a partnership with independent Irish distributor Volta Pictures, who have acquired the film for Ireland.

Volta Pictures will release the film in Ireland on March 23, 2023, and BFI Distribution will take it to UK cinemas a week later on March 31.

The film was acquired from A24, marking the first time the BFI has picked up a film from the prolific American studio. A24 released the film in the US in September.

Directed by New York-based filmmakers Saela Davis and Anna Rose Holmer (The Fits) in their feature debut as a duo, God’s Creatures debuted in the Directors’ Fortnight sidebar at Cannes last year. The film stars Emily Watson (Breaking the Waves), Paul Mescal, and Aisling Franciosi (The Fall). Billed as a “quietly devastating drama,” the film is...

Mubi is exclusively streaming restored versions of Lars von Trier's The Kingdom I (1994) and The Kingdom II (1997), and will be premiering episodes of The Kingdom: Exodus (2022) beginning November 27, 2022.The Notebook Primer introduces readers to some of the most important figures, films, genres, and movements in film history.Lars von Trier. Photo by Peter Hjorth.While many may proclaim the death of the author, and even more acknowledge that cinema is an art far more collaborative than the idea of a film's auteur suggests, there are nevertheless certain directors whose name on a film carries undeniable connotations. Among contemporary filmmakers, Danish provocateur Lars von Trier is one of the hardest to ignore. But this is not to say one knows exactly what one is getting with every von Trier picture. On the contrary, not only are his stylistic tendencies extensive and varied, but the stories he tells, even those ostensibly contained within thematic trilogies,...

Plot: A mysterious voice calls upon the sleep walker, Karen, during a nightmare. The Kingdom is in need of her assistance, and at the hospital, she finds an ally in the porter, Bulder.

Review: Lars Von Trier is a filmmaker who has amassed a cult following thanks to his unique brand of storytelling and boundary-pushing cinematic experiments. From Melancholia to Antichrist, Nymphomaniac to Breaking the Waves, Von Trier has accomplished everything from musicals to dramas and more. His exercise in small-screen storytelling, The Kingdom (aka Riget), has itself garnered a distinctive cult following for its combination of medical soap operas and supernatural thrillers. Spread over two series of four episodes each that premiered in 1994 and 1997, The Kingdom also spawned an English-language remake courtesy of Stephen King. Now, twenty-five years since the series left off, Von Trier concludes The Kingdom with a five-episode closing series subtitled Exodus. An absurd blend of...

The “Dune” prequel series at HBO Max from Legendary Television has cast Emily Watson and Shirley Henderson in lead roles, Variety has learned.

Officially titled “Dune: The Sisterhood,” the series was ordered at HBO Max in June 2019. The show is set 10,000 years before the events of “Dune” and is based on the novel “Sisterhood of Dune” by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson. Per the official logline, the show “follows the Harkonnen Sisters as they combat forces that threaten the future of humankind, and establish the fabled sect known as the Bene Gesserit”

Watson will play Valya Harkonnen and Henderson will play Tula Harkonnen. The character descriptions say the two sisters “have risen to power in the Sisterhood, a secret organization of women who will go on to become the Bene Gesserit.”

Watson is a two-time best actress Oscar nominee — one for her work in “Breaking the Waves” and another for “Hilary and Jackie.

Emily Watson is an easy talker. After three decades in Hollywood (and plenty of adulation and awards to match), the British star could put on plenty of airs. Instead, she comes across as approachable, candid, and kind — even when she’s placed mere feet away from this interviewer’s snotty Covid test (negative!).

So when she admits that being first choice for a role can be “quite scary”— as she was for the leading part of Aileen in Anna Rose Holmer and Saela Davis’ Irish gothic “God’s Creatures” — you believe her, even though she became an Oscar-nominated actress with her very first on-screen performance in Lars von Trier’s “Breaking the Waves.”

“‘Why me? What is it about me? What is it in my bag of tricks that you are interested in?,” When directors pursue her, those are the questions she asks herself. For “God’s Creatures,” she went even further:...

“We’re all God’s creatures in the dark.” It’s a mysterious, yet resonant, sentiment, a pebble of wisdom about humanity that one might roll over again and again, worrying its surface. This line — which gives Anna Rose Holmer and Saela Davis the title of their intimate family drama “God’s Creatures,” set in a blustery Irish fishing village — is one of the life lessons Sarah has accrued in her young, tough life. She shares it, ruefully, with Aileen (Emily Watson), her friend and manager at a fish processing plant, over a cigarette.

Sarah is referring to her abusive ex Francie when she speaks to Aileen, but the opaque statement, which straddles the line between the dark and the divine, an insight at once profound, ambiguous, and cutting, becomes a prophecy as “God’s Creatures” evolves into a subtly striking suspense thriller.

In 2015, Holmer and Davis collaborated on the critically acclaimed and award-winning “The Fits,...

(from left) Emily Watson and Paul Mescal in God’s Creatures. Photo: A24 Emily Watson has a face made for the movies. Like all the great actors, she can telegraph volcanic emotions with just a flicker of her eyes or a tightening of her mouth. Watson made her big screen debut...

Emily Watson has a face made for the movies. Like all the great actors, she can telegraph volcanic emotions with just a flicker of her eyes or a tightening of her mouth. Watson made her big screen debut in Lars von Trier’s Breaking the Waves (1996) one of the most memorable of the 1990s. Since then she has appeared in…...