International Insider: Sundance Global; EFM Gears Up; Reporting For Duty; French Windows

Nestled in between a dog groomers and a men’s barbershop lies one of Stockport's best eateries.

Livingston forward Sebastian Soto hopes a successful spell in Scotland can fire him into the USA national team for this year’s World Cup.

Leanne Crichton believes the SPFL taking control of elite women's football is the next step step for a better future.

Rihanna covers up her baby bump with a casual Mets t-shirt while arriving for a dinner out in New York City on Friday (February 18).

Bella Thorne is calling on world politicians, including President Biden, to assist in putting an end to the suffering of citizens in Cuba on the heels of the country's new 10% tax on food sales. Cuba announced the tax earlier this month.

The UK government has forged a £21M ($28M) Global Screen Fund to help build the nation’s reputation for independent film internationally.

inside that room, and they’re not leaving. Jared Leto is hilarious as one of the criminals, Forest Whitaker is aces as a conflicted thief and Dwight Yoakam (of all people) is absolutely chilling.If you’re in the mood for a great period drama, you can’t go wrong with “Sense and Sensibility.” Director Ang Lee’s 1995 Jane Austen adaptation was written by Emma Thompson, who also co-stars and picked up an Oscar for her adapted screenplay.

Dakota Johnson had two highly anticipated movies that premiered during the 2022 Sundance Film Festival and both of them have now sold to streaming services!

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media ReporterWarner Bros. and HBO Max has nabbed “Am I OK?,” a romantic comedy starring Dakota Johnson as a woman grappling with her sexuality.

The deals keep coming at the 2022 Virtual Sundance Film Festival. MUBI closed the docu Free Chol Soo Lee, including North America, and Warner Bros is negotiating a near $7 million WW rights deal for the Tig Notaro/Stephanie Allynne film Am I Ok? to place the film on HBO Max. The Lauren Pomerantz-scripted film stars Dakota Johnson, Sonoya Mizuno, Jermaine Fowler, Molly Gordon, June Diane Raphael, and Sean Hayes.

You’re probably aware by now that Gwyneth Paltrow and Dakota Johnson are basically family.

Moving on and feeling the love. Gwyneth Paltrow opened up about moving on after divorce and how she feels about ex-husband Chris Martin‘s girlfriend Dakota Johnson.

A drama about an undocumented nanny in New York City, a documentary about three exiled dissidents from Tiananmen Square and another doc about Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny won top prizes at the Sundance Film Festival. Winners were announced Friday evening in a virtual ceremony.

The Sundance Film Festival is revealing award winners for its 2022 edition on Friday afternoon beginning at 2 p.m. PT. Like the rest of this year’s festival, which was forced to go all-virtual because of the recent Omicron surge, the awards ceremony is playing out on Twitter.

said upon introducing the awards ceremony. “This year’s festival expressed a powerful convergence; we were present, together, as a community connected through the work. And it is work that has already changed those who experienced it,” festival director Tabitha Jackson added.

TheWrap-Up,” host Sharon Waxman and special guest co-host and TheWrap assistant managing editor, audience, Adam Chitwood, take a look at the latest Hollywood headlines, including Disney’s response after the studio was called out for its upcoming live-action remake of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves” by “Game of Thrones” star Peter Dinklage.Then, Sharon and Adam are joined by TheWrap senior TV reporter Tim Baysinger who shares the significance of the recent astronomical Sunday night football ratings for the two NFL playoff games last weekend, the first of which saw Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs come back against the Buffalo Bills to tie the game in the last 13 seconds, before ultimately winning in overtime. TheWrap Awards editor Steve Pond then arrives to talk all things Sundance 2022, including the film that sold out of the festival for a reported $15 million.And, for this week’s interview segment, Sharon shares her discussions with the stars and filmmakers of “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande” (featuring Emma Thompson), and Eva Longoria Bastón and Oscar de la Joya, the director and one of the subjects of “La Guerra Civil.”In her interview with Emma Thompson, who plays a retired school teacher who hires a younger sex worker (Leo Grande, played by Daryl McCormack) to experience adventure and some good sex, opens up about aging in Hollywood, and doing a full-nude scene at 62.

At first glance, actor-writer-director Cooper Raiff’s “Cha Cha Real Smooth” might look like your typical cutesy and whimsical Sundance dramedy, about a twenty-something college graduate learning a valuable life lesson and experiencing a bit of a delayed coming of age. While that’s not an inaccurate description of Raiff’s disarmingly lovely film (programmed in this year’s US Dramatic Competition), what feels miraculous about “Cha Cha” is: it doesn’t come with even an ounce of that cringe-inducing Sundance fancifulness, a brand that many love to hate.

reportedly sold in a competitive situation in the range of $7.5 million. Thompson in “Leo Grande” plays Nancy Stokes, a retired school teacher yearning for some adventure, but most importantly, some good sex.

EXCLUSIVE: Searchlight Pictures has closed a deal around $7.5 million for U.S. rights to Good Luck To You, Leo Grande. the Sophie Hyde-directed film that stars Emma Thompson and Daryl McCormack (The Wheel of Time & Peaky Blinders). Deadline reported yesterday  that Searchlight was poised to win the film that was bid on by several distributors, and the plan is to wage an awards season campaign for Thompson in a standout turn. Searchlight will release through Hulu, in a deal similar to the preemptive one it made for another Sundance film, Fresh. Hyde directed 52 Tuesdays and Animals. The film is scripted by Katy Brand, whose credits include Nanny McPhee Returns, which starred Thompson, and Walking On Sunshine.

EXCLUSIVE: Searchlight Pictures has emerged as the favorite to acquire Good Luck To You, Leo Grande, the Sophie Hyde-directed drama that stars Emma Thompson as a widow who decides to seek out something that has eluded her over a 31-year marriage: a proper, mind-blowing, toe-curling orgasm. Negotiations are underway and will hopefully climax into the first narrative film deal at 2022 Sundance, after a weekend of foreplay but no consummation beyond the docu Fire of Love.

$25 million Apple paid for “CODA,” the $15 million Netflix paid for “Passing” or documentary-record $15 million Searchlight/Hulu paid for “Summer of Soul.”  There’s still plenty of time for dealmaking, but not much time for new films to grab the spotlight: All of the festival’s movies were programmed to launch in the first five days, with Monday’s lineup – which included “Emily the Criminal,” “The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales,” “Dos Estaciones,” “The Janes” and “Am I OK?” – scheduled as the last of this year’s premieres.

In 2009, when I was in the Air Force and stationed in Germany, I traveled to Berlin on New Year’s Eve to celebrate. As my friends and I were getting turnt up in the bar, I came out as a lesbian. The moment was random and unprovoked. I shared the news with all my friends and had a dope night ringing in the 2010s, but panic set in when I woke up the next day. I’m 27 years old and a lesbian: what do I do now? 

“There is no timeline to figuring this out,” Jane tells her best friend Lucy in Tig Notaro and Stephanie Allynne’s directorial debut feature film “AM I OK?” This is a film for late bloomers of any kind but will resonate particularly with anyone who came into their sexual identity later in life. Screenwriter Lauren Pomerantz (“Me, Myself and I”) took inspiration from her own late in life, coming out and close relationship with her best friend, producer Jessica Elbaum (“Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar,” “Hustlers”).

Dakota Johnson participated in the Sundance Film Festival‘s virtual programming this year for her movie, Cha Cha Real Smooth.

Emma Thompson is opening up about going nude in her new movie.

In 2020, the SXSW Film Festival was taken by storm by 23-year-old wunderkind filmmaker Cooper Raiff, who starred in, wrote, and directed “S#!%house,” a disarmingly funny and tender coming-of-age story about the connection that develops between a sensitive, lonely freshman, homesick and struggling at college, and a slightly-older sophomore that attends his school (that film bore shades of Richard Linklater indie-flavored meet-cutes). Having won the top prize at SXSW that year, Raiff now returns with “Cha Cha Real Smooth,” an endlessly charming, equally sensitive, bittersweet follow-up that proves he’s no one-hit-wonder.

With a promising start with his first film Shithouse for which he starred, directed and wrote and won the Grand Jury Narrative Prize at SXSW, Cooper Raiff looms now also to be one of the breakouts of this year’s Sundance Film Festival where Cha Cha Real Smooth, his small but splendid second film for which he performs the same triple threat duties debuted Sunday as part of the Dramatic Competition lineup. I can only imagine if the festival had managed to be in person as originally planned rather than virtual in this Omicron-stricken year it would be met with a massive standing ovation. Raiff is bound to become an indie darling as if further proof was needed, but Cha Cha Real Smooth cements him as the real deal both in front of and behind the camera.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticHe’s a cha cha real smooth talker. He’s 22, tall and handsome with a beard, but not a scruffy hipster beard — more like a post-millennial, post-ironic traditional beard, which sets off features that are finely chiseled in a Middle American corporate way. (When he grins, he looks like Donny Osmond.) He’s just out of college but has no idea what he wants to do.