MK2 Films Unveils Clip of Venice Film ‘For My Country’ (EXCLUSIVE)

Looking out the window Muriel MacIntyre waves to the postman who carries a letter addressed to her. But it isn’t any ordinary letter, this envelope bears a royal “C” from the Queen Consort Camilla.

A Mexican boxer has revealed she will never return to the ring after a brain injury she suffered during a fight in Glasgow. Alejandra Ayala was knocked out in the 10th round of her WBA and IBO super-welterweight title fight against Scotland’s Hannah Rankin at the OVO Hydro in May.

A severely delayed new 999 IT system for Scotland’s fire service hasn’t been delivered four years into a 10 year contract. The £10million command and control software is being delivered by French firm Systel but is yet to go live, the Sunday Mail can reveal.

Two of the men who accused a former youth charity chief of sexual ­misconduct say they have been failed after a ­watchdog took no action. Officials from the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR) looked at allegations about Jordan Linden, the former chairman of the Scottish Youth Parliament (SYP).

The woman behind a vodka firm said to be a front for an international money laundering ring married her mobster husband in a lavish bash at a Scots castle. Gangster’s moll Nicola Morrissey’s life of luxury homes, designer clothing and expensive cars came crashing down last week when she was thrown into a Spanish prison cell over alleged links to an organised crime gang.

Prince William is addressing the future of Queen Elizabeth‘s corgis.

Kandi Burruss has been a staple on The Real Housewives of Atlanta since joining the Bravo franchise for its second season. With Season 15 ahead, the Grammy-award winner is teasing she’s returning which would make her the longest-running housewife across all franchises.

Jones was ordered to pay nearly $50 million in compensatory and punitive damages to the family of a 6-year-old Sandy Hook victim for claiming the 2012 shooting was a hoax. He now faces two additional damages hearings after he and his media company, Free Speech Systems, were found liable in Nov.

Queen Elizabeth II's youngest grandchild, James, Viscount Severn, joined his cousins as they paid their respects to the late monarch on Saturday. James, who is the 14-year-old son of Prince Edward and Sophie, Countess of Wessex, took part in a 15-minute silent family vigil at the queen's lying-in-state in Westminster Hall. The vigil was attended by the queen's seven other grandchildren, including James' sister Lady Louise, 18 and cousins Prince William, 40, Prince Harry, 38, Peter Phillips, 44,  Zara Tindall, 41, Princess Beatrice, 34, and Princess Eugenie, 32.

Jennifer Coolidge was sent to the ER right before she started filming The White Lotus!

Margot Robbie and husband Tom Ackerley are enjoying a rare outing!

Alan Alda is looking back on one of the most emotional scenes that occurred on “M*A*S*H”‘s 11-season run.

Remembering all she overcame. Queen Consort Camilla reflected on Queen Elizabeth II‘s life in a TV tribute for the late monarch.

Grimes says her new album, ‘Book 1’, is “done”, taking to social media today (September 17) to share a handful of details.On Twitter, Grimes wrote: “Album is done we’re mixing. My friend and I.” She went on to share details of how the release’s final track was completed.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) has unveiled its leaderships in the Nordics, including Pil Gundelach Brandstrup, who will be in charge of all content and planning across the region. Brandstrup will also continue leading content for Denmark. Other key appointments include Magnus Vatn, Axel Eriksson and Katja Santala who will continue as country content leads, with Lina Friman continuing to head up planning, reporting to Brandstrup. Roni Patel will be responsible for content licensing; Kasper Kryger will be responsible for the ad sales business in the region; Jesper Steenberg will be responsible for the new consolidated distribution team; Tore Fredrik Dreyer will head up distribution for theatrical, games and home entertainment; and Jessie Ross Skarvad will be responsible for marketing and publicity of theatrical, games and home entertainment.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent MK2 Films has scored key territory deals on Japanese director Koji Fukada’s “Love Life,” which makes its world premiere in competition at the Venice Film Festival. Set in contemporary Japan, “Love Life” is a character-driven film revolving around Taeko and her husband, Jiro, who are living a peaceful existence with her young son, Keita. When a tragic accident brings the boy’s long-lost father, Park, back into her life, Taeko throws herself into helping this deaf and homeless man to cope with the pain and guilt. Popular Japanese actress Fumino Kimura (“The Fable: The Killer Who Doesn’t Kill”) headlines the film. MK2 Films has now sold the movie to Teodora (Italy), Imagine (Benelux), Leopardo (Portugal), Demiurg (Ex Yugoslavia), New Cinema (Israel), Swallow Wings (Taiwan), Edko (Hong Kong), Impact Films (India) and Encore Inflight (Airlines).

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent On Sunday night, an hour before the hotly anticipated Sept. 5 world premiere of “Don’t Worry Darling” on the Lido, Variety celebrated director Olivia Wilde with a cocktail party hosted at the posh Danieli Hotel in Venice. Wilde, who is unveiling her second feature as a director out of competition at the festival, graces the cover of Variety’s Venice issue, on newsstands now. It marks the first dedicated Venice magazine issue that Variety has done, as the magazine’s co-editor-in-chief Ramin Setoodeh pointed out. “We couldn’t think of a better subject than Olivia,” Setoodeh said. Setoodeh praised Warner Bros., the studio behind “Don’t Worry Darling,” for championing theatrical releases.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Best-known for her role as Noemie in the hit French series “Call My Agent!,” Laure Calamy has emerged in recent years as one of France’s biggest stars and most versatile actors. After a busy career in theater and many notable supporting roles, she finally got a shot at leading roles, and kudos have followed, for Caroline Vignal’s romantic comedy “My Donkey, My Lover and I,” which was part of Cannes’ Official Selection and earned her a Cesar award, and Eric Gravel’s social drama “A Plein Temps,” for which she won best actress at Venice in the Horizons section. Calamy is now on a roll and she’s shown that she can play anything. Case in point: Over this summer, she was at Locarno to present Blandine Lenoir’s period drama “Angry Annie,” in which she plays a working mother who joins the Movement for the Liberation of Abortion and Contraception (the film won Variety‘s Piazza Grande Award), and she’s now at Venice with Sebastien Marnier’s psychological thriller “The Origin of Evil,” in which she flirts with genre. In-between Locarno and Venice, she also made a stop at Angouleme Film Festival, where she presented “Angry Annie” and Marc Fitoussi’s “Two Tickets to Greece.”

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent It took a pandemic and a lockdown for “Drive” director Nicolas Winding Refn to make a directorial comeback in Denmark, where he had delivered the “Pusher” trilogy early in his career. “Sometimes the strangest things come in mysterious ways, and this is one of those,” Refn says of “Copenhagen Cowboy,” his Netflix original series, slated to world premiere Sept. 9 at the Venice Film Festival. Since “Drive,” Winding Refn has directed the Bangkok-set thriller “Only God Forgives,” with “Drive” star Ryan Gosling; “The Neon Demon,” with Elle Fanning playing an aspiring model in Los Angeles.; and the Amazon Prime Video series “Too Old to Die Young,” starring Miles Teller as a grieving cop in crime-ridden Southern California. He was preparing another project set abroad when the pandemic hit.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Ari Folman (“Waltz With Bashir”), Nadav Lapid (“Ahed’s Knee”) and Hagai Levi (“Our Boys”) are among a group of 250 Israeli filmmakers that has signed an open letter to protest against the recently launch of the Shomron (Samaria/West Bank) Film Fund. The Fund, which held its inaugural film festival in the occupied West Bank in July , was founded by Miri Regev, the controversial former culture minister of Israel who was highly criticicized within the local film community for her right-wing views. Regev was believed to have put pressure on the Israel Film Fund to ban films that were critical of Israel from receiving subsidies. The signatories of the public letter said they will not seek funding from, nor cooperate with the Shomron (Samaria/West Bank) Film Fund and have urged the Israeli Academy of Film and Television not to partake in “whitewashing the Occupation” ahead of the Ophir Awards, the country’s version of the Academy Awards, later this month. The filmmakers claim that the Shomron (Samaria) Film Fund has one goal: inviting “Israeli filmmakers to actively participate in whitewashing the Occupation in exchange for financial support and prizes.”

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent After taking a break from his filmmaking career to preside over the French film promotion org Unifrance, Jean-Paul Salomé has made a big comeback with a pair of films with Oscar-nominated French actor Isabelle Huppert. The latest one, “The Sitting Duck,” is world premiering at Venice in the Horizons section. Adapted from Caroline Michel-Aguirre’s book “La Syndicaliste,” “The Sitting Duck” tells the true story of Maureen Kearney, the head union representative of a French multinational nuclear powerhouse who becomes a whistleblower, denouncing top-secret deals that shook the French nuclear sector. One day, Kearney is found in her home, tied to a chair, the letter “A” carved into her abdomen, and a knife handle inserted into her vagina. Traumatized, she has no memory of the assault. However, after an investigation, the police accused her of staging the attack herself.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Iconoclast, the international production group behind Romain Gavras’ Venice competition film “Athena,” is setting a wide-ranging slate of projects with emerging filmmakers from different audiovisual fields, including Leo Berne from the artists collective Megaforce, and Elias Belkeddar and Said Belktibia from the collective Kourtrajmé. The company is also producing the next projects of Harmony Korine and Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre, among others. In a rare interview, Nicolas Lhermitte, who co-founded Iconoclast with Mourad Belkeddar, says the company has emerged from the pandemic with a record number of developed projects. “We took the opportunity during the pandemic to develop a lot of projects, and today we have around 30 projects in the pipeline, spanning films and series that are set up at our studios in France, the U.S. and Germany,” says Lhermitte, who adds that Iconoclast aspired to “accompany multi-disciplinary artists to venture from one field to another, films, TV series, branded content, and music videos.”

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent MK2 Films, which is at Venice with “Love Life” playing in competition, is reteaming with Fiona Gordon and Dominique Abel on “The Falling Star,” a darkly comic mystery thriller. The directing duo is rolling off “Lost in Paris,” their international breakout film, which had a buzzy premiere at Telluride in 2016. The film was also a commercial success, grossing nearly $3 million outside of France, with strong performances in the U.S., Italy, Germany, Brazil and Australia/New Zealand. “The Falling Star” tells the story of Boris, a former activist who’s been a fugitive for 35 years, and works as a bartender. Boris’ past finally catches up with him when a mysterious stranger appears at the bar, armed and wanting revenge. The appearance of a double, the depressed and solitary Dom, provides Boris’ cunning partner Kayoko and their faithful friend Tim with the perfect escape plan, but they haven’t accounted for Dom’s ex-wife, Fiona, a detective on their trail.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent After the edgy crime comedy “The World Is Yours,” Romain Gavras is back with thriller “Athena.” Produced by Paris-based Iconoclast for Netflix, the ambitious, €15 million film ($15 million) unfolds in the aftermath of the tragic killing of a young boy. A leaked video showing the boy as a victim of police brutality goes viral and ignites an all-out war in an imaginary community called Athena. It’s the first French movie that Netflix is presenting in competition at the Venice Film Festival. “Athena” tells the story of the boy’s three siblings, who are responding to the tragedy in different ways. French star Dali Benssalah (“Les Sauvages,” “No Time to Die”) plays the older brother, Abdel, a French soldier. Faced with an impossible moral dilemma, Abdel is called back from the frontline to help diffuse the all-out war that has been sparked by his younger brother Karim (Sami Slimane), who wants revenge. Athena becomes the backdrop of a tragedy for both the family and its entire community. The film’s stellar cast also includes Ouassini Embarek, Anthony Bajon and Alexis Manenti.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Cécile Gaget, a former senior executive at Anton Capital and Gaumont, is set to join Wild Bunch as head of film. It’s a new era for Wild Bunch, which was previously co-headed by Vincent Maraval, Vincent Grimond and Brahim Chioua. It’s now led by Ron Meyer, a veteran studio chief and CAA co-founder, and Sophie Jordan, a former beIN Media Group executive. Gaget will lead the film group reporting to Meyer and Jordan. Gaget, who is well-regarded in the industry and enjoys close relationships with talent, will be overseeing French acquisitions, distribution and local production. She’ll also be ramping up an international production slate, including English-speaking projects for Wild Bunch AG, who will act as producer and financier.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Loco Films has acquired international sales rights to Petr Václav’s buzzed-about film “Il Boemo” which is world premiering in the official selection at the San Sebastian Film Festival. The epic period movie sheds light on the extraordinary life of Josef Myslivecek, one of the most prolific opera composers in 18th century Italy who inspired Mozart and became his friend. Speaking of the film, Václav’ said he “did everything I could in order to understand the daily life of Josef Mislivecek, his work, his social interactions, his feelings and opinions he could have had.”

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Studiocanal has boarded Quentin Reynaud’s timely disaster thriller “The Blaze” ahead of its world premiere at the BFI London Film Festival. The film reteams Reynaud with popular French actor Alex Lutz, who headlined the director’s feature debut “Final Set.” Lutz stars alongside revered French actor André Dussolier (“Tell No One”). “The Blaze” follows Simon and his father Joseph who embark on a race-against-the-clock to escape a wildfire. The first-look image features Simon and Joseph who must leave everything behind to escape their coastal region alongside multiple evacuees who are fighting to survive. 

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Gregoire Melin’s Kinology, the banner behind “Annette,” has boarded “Queens,” Yasmine Benkiran’s feature debut, which will make its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival. The uplifting Moroccan movie will unspool on closing night of Critics Week. Kinology represents the film in international markets. The sprawling, colorful adventure film opens in Casablanca, where a trio of rebellious female outlaws – a mother, her daughter and a young girl – drive through the Atlas desert to reach the Atlantic coast with local police forces on their trail. Benkiran said her film “celebrates freedom and the power of imagination,” as well as conveying the need for women to free themselves from patriarchal traditions in contemporary Moroccan society.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent SND has picked up the international distribution rights to “Visions,” Yann Gozlan’s (“Black Box”) psychological thriller starring Diane Kruger (“Inglorious Basterds”) and Mathieu Kassovitz (“The Bureau”).  The French Riviera-set movie, produced by Eagles Team Entertainment, 24 25 Films and SND, just finished shooting in the South of France and Japan. SND handles French distribution and worldwide sales rights. The theatrical release is planned for 2023.  Kruger stars as Estelle, a brilliant airline captain who leads a seemingly perfect life with her husband Guillaume, a renowned doctor. When she accidentally bumps into Ana, a former flame, Estelle falls in love all over again. As their affair gets more intense, Estelle has recurring visions, nightmares and hallucinations, and when Ana disappears mysteriously, she starts losing grip on reality.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Swedish director Ruben Ostlund has reacted to the sudden death of Charlbi Dean, the star of his Palme d’Or winning film “Triangle of Sadness.” Ostlund posted an emotional tribute on social media, saying her death was “a shock and a tragedy.” “It is an honor to have gotten to know and work with her. Charlbi had a care and sensitivity that lifted her colleagues and the entire film crew,” Ostlund wrote. “The thought that she will not be by our side in the future makes me very sad,” the director continued.  The up-and-coming South African actor, who died on Monday in New York from an unexpected illness, had a breakthrough performance in “Triangle of Sadness” which was about to begin its theatrical roll-out around the world. After winning the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, “Triangle of Sadness” will make its North American premiere at Toronto and will play at the New York Film festival. Neon will release it in the U.S. on Oct. 8.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Mediawan Rights has boarded the highly anticipated “Zorro” series reboot, produced by leading Spanish company Secuoya Studios. Mediawan Rights is set to distribute the event series internationally. The show started shooting on July 25 in Spain and will be filming until the end of the year. Written by Carlos Portela (“Velvet Collection”), the modern reboot will mark the IP’s big television comeback almost two decades after its last live-action adaptation. John Gertz, founder of Zorro Productions and a producer on “The Mask of Zorro” and “The Legend of Zorro” movies titles, is an executive producer on the show.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Paris-based company Indie Sales has boarded Emad Aleebrahim Dehkordi’s feature debut “A Tale of Shemroon” which is set to premiere in the New Directors competition at San Sebastian. Set in the north of Tehran, “A Tale of Shemroon” follows Iman and his younger brother Payar who live with their father. After the death of their mother, Iman starts a business thanks to his connections with the city’s affluent youth, but these new opportunities bring him on a dangerous path affecting his family’s destiny. “We are proud to be a part of San Sebastian’s New Directors competition with this new voice from Iranian cinema,” said Nicolas Eschbach at Indie Sales. “Emad (Aleebrahim Dehkordi) depicts the reality of the Iranian youth living in parts of Tehran that have seldom been seen before,” Eschbach continued.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Strand Releasing has acquired all North American rights to Matt Carter’s “In From the Side” which had its world premiere at the British Film Institute’s Flare Festival. The movie will be released in the the U.K. by Verve Pictures on Sept. 16. Set in the world of gay rugby, “In From the Side” follows two men from a cash-strapped gay rugby club who unwittingly embark into an adulterous affair and must confront their growing feelings or risk destroying the club that they love. Produced by Andrew Faure, “In From the Side” marks the debut feature of Carter who has a background in visual effects. “Strand is the perfect partner for any independent filmmaker- we are delighted they are brining our film to a wide American audience” said Adam Silver, the film’s co-producer who reps the title and negotiated the deal with Jon Gerrans at Strand Releasing.