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Erik Barmack’s “Fusion,” Sally Wainwright’s “Riot Women” and epic fantasy “War of the Kingdoms” feature as potential highlights at the Series Mania Forum’s first Buyers Upfront, whose lineup was announced Tuesday by Series Mania founder and director general Laurence Herszberg.

Kicking off with a Beta Brunch on March 24, the Buyers Upfront also features latest series from Ard, Zdf Studios, Mediawan, Sidus, Beta Film, Slot Machine, REinvent and Bande à Part Films – making for a mouthwatering prospect.

The Upfront also underscores two trends: a move into English-language production which has larger U.S. streamer sales prospects; an increasingly attractive financing model, at least for selectively produced foreign-language shows, based on tying down partners and pre-sales among local broadcasters in Europe rather than waiting for currently highly challenging U.S. deal with a streamer.

Part of producer-distributor Erik Barmack’s drive at Wild Sheep Content into “top talent from smaller countries,...

Five leading Swiss production companies including Elite Filmproduktion and Contrast Series have joined forces to found Swiss Studios Ag in Zurich.

Other shareholders in the new film and TV development and production alliance are Praesens-Film Production, Bavaria Fiction Switzerland and Kinescope Film.

Dr. Malte Probst, chief product officer fiction at Swisscom subsidiary blue Entertainment, has been appointed as the alliance’s chairman and CEO.

He described the founding of Swiss Studios as “a groundbreaking step for the Swiss and European creative industries” and “time to bring the new opportunities arising from the ‘Lex Netflix’ for Switzerland to life with exciting content.

A trucker being blackmailed by a criminal gang has to flee with the 12-year-old girl she was trafficking when the drop-off goes wrong. Cue Morgan Freeman

Juliette Binoche is incapable of giving a bad performance, but here she is, probably as close as she’ll ever get to a stinker, playing a long-distance lorry driver on the wrong side of the law in Mississippi. For about five minutes there’s novelty watching La Binoche in trucker mode, wearing a bandana and filthy jeans, stomping around yelling “motherfucker” at anyone who messes with her. But, her acting, like everything else in this sluggish crime drama written and directed by Norwegian film-maker Anna Gutto, feels implausible; more like tourism than anything in the real world.

Binoche plays Sally, a French Canadian we meet on the highway, shooting the breeze over the radio with her friends on the female trucker scene. A film...

Georgia Bayliff was formerly head of film at Silver Reel

Georgia Bayliff has joined UK-based Tempo Productions as a co-producer.

Bayliff was formerly head of film at Silver Reel where she most recently produced Anna Gutto’s Paradise Highway.

As a co-producer, Bayliff will work with Tempo founder Piers Tempest and Lauren Cox on the executive team.

Tempo Productions is based in Yorkshire and London. Its previous projects include Netflix title Bank Of Dave, Frances O’Connor’s Emily, Jon Wright horror Unwelcome and Bjorn Runge’s The Wife.

UK awards campaigners react to 2023 Bafta nominations...

EuropaCorp and Village Roadshow have partnered up to develop and produce a spinoff series based on “Lucy,” the hit action movie starring Scarlett Johansson. Morgan Freeman is in advanced negotiations to star in the series, the plot details of which are being kept under wraps.

The movie, which was directed by Luc Besson, earned over 460 million worldwide at the box office, ranking as the highest grossing French-produced film ever. Freeman was part of the cast of the original movie, which saw Johansson portraying a woman who gains psychokinetic skills when a drug is absorbed into her bloodstream. Freeman is expected to reprise his role as the wise Professor Norman in the spinoff series.

Both EuropaCorp and Village Roadshow are owned by the New York fund Vine Alternative Investments. The series is the second EuropaCorp project greenlit since the company was acquired by Vine in 2019. Besson recently wrapped the shoot of “DogMan,...

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The Oldenburg Film Festival, Germany’s leading fest for independent cinema, has announced its 2022 lineup.

The 29th Oldenburg Festival will kick off Sept. 14 with The Ordinaries, the first feature from German director Sophie Linnenbaum. The meta tragicomedy stars Fine Sendel as Paula, a simple Supporting Character in a repressive three class-society where there are Main Characters, Supporting Characters and the untouchable Outtakes. The Ordinaries premiered at the Munich festival this year, winning Linnebaum and her production team the German Cinema New Talent Award.

Also screening at Oldenburg this year will be Lola Quivoron’s Rodeo, which premiered in Cannes, Colin West’s SXSW sci-fi comedy Linoleum starring Jim Gaffigan and Better Caul Saul‘s Rhea Seehorn; TIFF 2022 title The Gravity from French director Cédric Ido; Andrea Bagney’s Spanish drama Ramona, which prmiered in Karlovy Vary this year; and Jean-Paul Civeyrac’s A Woman...

One of the most unnerving realizations people can have in life is that the links that are meant to physically and emotionally connect them with their communities can often times become the things that divide them. That’s certainly the case for actress Juliette Binoche‘s character of Sally in the new thriller, ‘Paradise Highway,’ in which […]

The post Interview: Anna Gutto Talks Paradise Highway (Exclusive) appeared first on Shockya.com.

The Scene 2 Seen podcast is back in a major way!

This week I’ve already published conversations with actor Michael Greyeyes and Naturi Naughton. Today, I chat with legendary actress Juliette Binoche about her newest film that tackles a difficult subject.

Paradise Highway, directed by Anna Gutto, is a riveting thriller set in the trucking industry and underbelly of human trafficking. The film stars Binoche, ​​Morgan Freeman and Frank Grillo.

To save the life of her brother Dennis (Grillo), Sally (Binoche), a truck driver, reluctantly agrees to smuggle illicit cargo: a girl named Leila (Hala Finley). As Sally and Leila begin a danger-fraught journey across state lines, a dogged FBI operative (Freeman) sets out on their trail, determined to do whatever it takes to terminate a human-trafficking operation—and bring Sally and Leila to safety.

Binoche has won an Academy Award, a BAFTA award and multiple European Film Awards. An...

Locarno kicked off its latest edition on Wednesday evening with the international festival premiere of David Leitch’s latest action-comedy Bullet Train and a surprise video call from Brad Pitt to celebrate the event’s 75th anniversary.

The packed opening night celebration in Locarno’s famed Piazza Grande square was a return to form for the festival after a full cancellation in 2020 and a slimmed-down version last year.

Bullet Train received hearty applause and cheers from festivalgoers as the screening was introduced with a surprise video call from the movie’s star Brad Pitt.

“Congratulations to the whole festival crew on your 75th anniversary. It’s a fantastic achievement and what an honor it is for us to be a part of this festival with our movie Bullet Train,” he said.

Pitt stars as an experienced assassin whose first day back at work is complicated by a series of other...

Easy to overlook in the looming shadow of the Venice, Telluride, Toronto, and New York Film Festivals (and all of the awards season hoopla they portend), Switzerland’s historic Locarno Film Festival has remained so distinct and essential precisely because of its refusal to concede to industry pressures or chase attention over artistry.

While the magical Piazza Grande has been home to its fair share of glitzy outdoor screenings over the years — the next few days will see the 8,000-seat town square transform into an impromptu “Bullet Train” station, for example — Locarno has always prided itself on providing a more curious and less hostile platform for elite auteurs whose work may not conform to the commercial demands of the international marketplace; recent winners of the festival’s prestigious Golden Leopard award include Pedro Costa (“Vitalina Varela”), Lav Diaz (“From What Is Before”), and the great Chinese documentarian Wang Bing (“Mrs.

Paradise Highway Review — Paradise Highway (2022) Film Review, a movie written and directed by Anna Gutto and starring Juliette Binoche, Morgan Freeman, Frank Grillo, Hala Finley, Cameron Monaghan, Christiane Seidel, Veronica Ferres, Jackie Dallas, Walker Babington, Tommie Earl Jenkins, Susan McPhail, Diva Tyler, Jwaundace Candece, Tracy Pfau, Raymond McAnally, Jim Dougherty, Jayden Hamilton [...]

Continue reading: Film Review: Paradise Highway (2022): Solid Performers Can’t Get Problematic but Well Meaning Film on the Right Road...

Lena Dunham is back. Sharp Stick — the writer/director/actor’s follow to HBO series Girls and her first film since Tiny Furniture (2010) – opens in LA at Landmark’s renovated single-screen NuArt Theatre and at the Quad Cinema in NYC. It expands to 40 to 50 screens next weekend, heading to about 100 thereafter – a mix of AMC, Alamo, Laemmle and Harkins circuits and top U.S. arthouses.

Presales have been strong, said Utopia’s marketing and distribution VP Kyle Greenberg. A handful of showings with Dunham Q&As are sold out, natch. The film, which Utopia acquired out of Sundance, releases on PVOD August 16. Deadline review here.

Dunham writes directs, produces and stars with Kristine Froseth, Jon Bernthal, Luka Sabbat, Scott Speedman, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Taylour Paige and Jennifer Jason Leigh.

Sarah Jo (Froseth) is a sensitive and naive 26-year-old living on the fringes of Hollywood with her disillusioned mother (Leigh) and influencer...

Locarno Film Festival artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro is gearing up for the lakeside event’s 75th-anniversary edition from August 3 to 13. In his second year in the job, he has pulled together an eclectic programme spanning mainstream Hollywood and experimental filmmaking.

David Leitch’s action-comedy Bullet Train, starring Brad Pitt, makes its international festival premiere as the opening film on Locarno’s famed Piazza Grande square. Pitt will not be in attendance, but his co-star, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, is set for the Piazza and will receive the festival’s Excellence award alongside Daisy Edgar Jones, Jason Blum, and Matt Dillon who are also set to receive honors.

Other films set to screen in the festival’s famed 8,000-capacity open air venue include Laurie Anderson’s Home Of The Brave, Anna Gutto’s Paradise Highway, starring Juliette Binoche as a truck driver who traffics a young girl, and post-Bataclan terror attack drama...

For those of you who have always wanted to see Juliette Binoche play a foul-mouthed truck driver — and you know who you are — “Paradise Highway” delivers the goods, and then some. This counterintuitive casting is actually just one of the selling points for writer-director Anna Gutto’s solid and satisfying thriller, a shrewdly constructed melodrama that does not transcend cliches and conventions so much as show how useful and effective they can be in the right hands.

Offering a précis of the plot could arguably do the movie a disservice, since the narrative pivots on human trafficking — specifically, the trafficking of prepubescent girls. It’s a subject that often brings out the excessive worst in even the most well-intentioned directors, and more often elicits an understandable “thanks, but no thanks” response from many potential viewers. Throughout “Paradise Highway,” however, Gutto demonstrates welcome restraint and a meticulous avoidance of anything that resembles exploitation,...

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On Aug. 23, 1946, just a few months after the inaugural Cannes Film Festival, the very first Locarno International Film Festival opened with a screening of Giacomo Gentilomo’s Italian neorealist classic O sole mio.

From the start, the festival aimed to represent the full spectrum of cinema, showcasing what current festival managing director Raphaël Brunschwig calls “a culture with a thousand facets.”

The 75th Locarno Festival, which runs Aug. 3-13, is sticking to those first principles. Perhaps more than any other major A-list fest, Locarno continues to straddle the gap between mainstream Hollywood and experimental avant-garde movie making.

Locarno 2022 will kick off with the world premiere of Brad Pitt action-thriller Bullet Train directed by the Deadpool 2 helmer David Leitch, who returns to Locarno after the 2017 screening of Atomic Blonde. This year’s event also includes gala screenings of Medusa Deluxe, a British murder...

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The summer box office season is typically filled with milestones of the blockbuster variety but this July, Columbia University’s film program is toasting one of its own. Four international female filmmakers (and Mfa grads) have their first features hitting theaters this month.

The roster includes Nathalie Alvarez Mesen’s Clara Sola, Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic’s Murina, Mounia Akl’s Costa Brava, Lebanon, and Anna Gutto’s Paradise Highway. The latter film, about a truck driver who reluctantly agrees to smuggle illicit cargo (a little girl), is the most star-studded, with Juliette Binoche, Morgan Freeman, Cameron Monaghan and Frank Grillo. Also of note: Columbia grad Ellie Foumbi’s debut feature Our Father, the Devil, picked up an audience award last month during the Tribeca Festival in New York.

Jack Lechner, chair of film at Columbia University School of the Arts, says that every...

More than two decades after delivering an Oscar-winning performance in “The English Patient” and starring in “Chocolat,” Juliette Binoche still possesses that je ne sais quoi. It’s that certain something that seduces and beguiles. In many of her films, particularly those with French director Claire Denis, such as “Let The Sunshine In,” “High Life” and her latest collaboration, “Both Sides of the Blade,” the Binoche mystique has manifested itself in a kind of erotic boldness.

In addition to “Both Sides of the Blade,” a drama about a disintegrating relationship that IFC will release in the U.S. on July 8, Binoche recently appeared in HBO Max’s “The Staircase.” She’s now in Paris shooting Apple TV+’s period show “The New Look” in which she plays fashion designer Coco Chanel. We met her at the Loews Regency hotel in New York, where she appeared relaxed and stylish as ever,...

Medusa Deluxe (Thomas Hardiman).The lineup for the 75th-anniversary edition of the festival has been announced, including new films by Helena Wittmann, João Pedro Rodrígues, Aleksandr Sokurov and others, alongside retrospectives, tributes, and much more.Piazza GRANDEAlles über Martin Suter. Ausser die Wahrheit. (Everything About Martin Suter. Everything but the Truth.) (André Schäfer)Annie Colère (Blandine Lenoir)Bullet Train (David Leitch)Compartiment tueurs (The Sleeping Car Murder) (Costa-Gavras)Delta (Michele Vannucci)Home of the Brave (Laurie Anderson)Imitation of Life (Douglas Sirk)Last Dance (Delphine Lehericey)Medusa Deluxe (Thomas Hardiman)My Neighbor Adolf (Leon Prudovsky)Paradise Highway (Anna Gutto)Piano Piano (Nicola Prosatore)Printed Rainbow (Gitanjali Rao)Semret (Caterina Mona)Une femme de notre temps (Jean Paul Civeyrac)Vous n'aurez pas ma haine (You Will Not Have My Hate) (Kilian Riedhof)Where the Crawdads Sing (Olivia Newman)Human Flowers of Flesh (Helena Wittmann).Concorso INTERNAZIONALEAriyippu (Declaration) (Mahesh Narayanan)Balıqlara xütbə...

Paradise Highway Trailer — Anna Gutto‘s Paradise Highway (2022) movie trailer has been released by Lionsgate. The Paradise Highway trailer stars Juliette Binoche, Morgan Freeman, Hala Finley, Cameron Monaghan, Frank Grillo, and Christiane Seidel. Crew Anna Gutto wrote the screenplay for Paradise Highway. “Produced by Georgia Bayliff, Claudia Bluemhuber, and Mike Leahy.” Plot Synopsis Paradise [...]

Continue reading: Paradise Highway (2022) Movie Trailer: Morgan Freeman & Juliette Binoche star in Anna Gutto’s Human-trafficking Thriller...

Juliette Binoche as Sally and Hala Finley as Leila in Paradise Highway. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Lionsgate

Lionsgate has dropped the trailer for director Anna Gutto’s film Paradise Highway.

Academy Award® winners Juliette Binoche and Morgan Freeman lead this riveting thriller set in the trucking industry and its seamy underbelly of human trafficking. To save the life of her brother (Frank Grillo), Sally (Binoche), a truck driver, reluctantly agrees to smuggle illicit cargo: a girl named Leila (Hala Finley). As Sally and Leila begin a danger-fraught journey across state lines, a dogged FBI operative (Freeman) sets out on their trail, determined to do whatever it takes to terminate a human-trafficking operation — and bring Sally and Leila to safety.

Paradise Highway is available on Digital, On Demand, and in Select Theaters July 29, 2022.

Rated R

Morgan Freeman and Juliette Binoche as Sally in Paradise Highway. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Lionsgate Frank...

"We're in this together." Lionsgate has revealed an official trailer for Paradise Highway, a thriller from filmmaker Anna Gutto making her feature directorial debut. This is premiering at the 2022 Locarno Film Festival, strangely, before being dumped onto VOD at the end of this month. It's described as a "riveting thriller set in the trucking industry and its seamy underbelly of human trafficking." A truck driver has been forced to smuggle illicit cargo to save her brother from a deadly prison gang. With FBI operatives hot on her trail, Sally's conscience is challenged when the final package turns out to be a teenage girl. The impressive cast features Juliette Binoche as the truck driver (really?! but she pulls it off!!), Morgan Freeman as an FBI agent, plus Hala Finley, Cameron Monaghan, Frank Grillo, and Christiane Seidel. They really made an epic movie out of a crime thriller, my goodness! Almost sounds...

Would you risk one life to save another? A truck driver faces this unimaginable choice in “Paradise Highway.” And not only that: the new thriller also tackles the thorny, jarring world of human trafficking and its repercussions throughout society. In her feature film directorial debut, Anna Gutto presents an unflinching inspection of how each person must come to terms with difficult decisions. “Highway” also marks a departure from Gutto’s work as second director/co-director on the Norwegian dramedy series “Home for Christmas.”

Read More: ‘Both Sides Of The Blade’: Juliette Binoche Talks Trust With Director Claire Denis, “Warm Pool” Sex Scenes & More

Oscar-winner Juliette Binoche stars in “Highway” as one driver who comes up against this distressing underworld.

Continue reading ‘Paradise Highway’ Trailer: Juliette Binoche Stars As A Truck Driver Caught Up In Human Trafficking On July 29 at The Playlist.

Anna Gutto‘s directorial debut Paradise Highway (starring Juliette Binoche), Blandine Lenoir‘s third feature Annie Colère (starring Laure Calamy), Kilian Riedhof’s sophomore film Vous n’aurez pas ma haine (with Pierre Deladonchamps), Olivia Newman‘s book to film sophomore film Where the Crawdads Sing and Thomas Hardiman‘s debut Medusa Deluxe – a murder mystery set in a competitive hairdressing are part of the 75 edition of the Locarno Film Festival (August 3rd to the 13th). Here are the selections for the Piazza Grande, Concorso Cineasti del presente and Fuori concorso sections:

Piazza Grande

Alles ÜBER Martin Suter. Ausser Die Wahrheit.…...

Ten world premieres among 17 international competition titles.

The Locarno Film Festival (August 3-13) has revealed the line-up for its 75th edition, which includes the world premiere of Russian filmmaker Aleksandr Sokurov’s Fairytale.

The international competition will comprise 17 films, including 10 world premieres, which will vie for the coveted Golden Leopard awards.

Scroll down for full line-up

These titles include Fairytale, a Belgium-Russia co-production written and directed by Sokurov, whose films have played in Competition at Cannes five times with features including Russian Ark in 2002. His debut The Lonely Voice Of a Man received the Bronze Leopard in Locarno in 1987.

The...

Returning for its milestone 75th edition, Locarno Film Festival has now unveiled its full lineup. Taking place from August 3 through 13th, the selection includes Helena Wittmann’s Human Flowers of Flesh, Jean-Paul Civeyrac’s Une femme de notre temps, Aleksandr Sokurov’s Fairytale, Patricia Mazuy’s Bowling Saturne, Abbas Fahdel’s Tales of the Purple House, Ana Vaz’s It Is Night In America, Leon Prudovsky’s My Neighbor Adolf, a massive Douglas Sirk retrospective, and much more.

“The selection of films that we have put together, after watching and appraising over 3,000 titles (of every length and format), is intended to be the mark of a time and of a cinema in motion,” Artistic Director Giona A. Nazzaro said. “A historic time that is moving in multiple directions simultaneously, and a cinema that is probing the issues facing the world, and how to live in it re- sponsibly, sustainably. The...

The Locarno Film Festival has announced the full line-up and juries for its 75th edition, which is due to unfold August 3-13.

The festival will get a starry kick-off on August 3 with the international festival premiere of David Leitch’s action-comedy Bullet Train, starring Brad Pitt alongside an ensemble cast featuring Joey King, Michael Shannon, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Brian Tyree Henry, Sandra Bullock, Hiroyuki Sanada, Andrew Koji and Benito A Martínez Ocasio.

The film will be given a gala screening in the festival’s trademark 8,000-seat, open-air Piazza Grande arena.

Other titles due to get a splash on the Piazza Grande include Laurie Anderson’s Home Of The Brave, U.K. director Thomas Hardiman’s Medusa Deluxe and German director Kilian Riedhof’s French-language drama You Will Not Have My Hate, based on the memoir of a man on how he and his son coped following the death of his wife in the 2015 Bataclan terror attack.

Switzerland’s Locarno Film Festival has revealed the lineup for its 75th edition, sticking to its promise of discovering new talent.

A slew of debuting filmmakers will showcase their works, from Italy’s Nicola Prosatore with “Piano Piano” to Caterina Mona, focusing in “Semret” on an Eritrean single mother working at a Zurich hospital and dreaming of becoming a midwife.

Thomas Hardiman’s U.K.’s proposition “Medusa Deluxe,” a murder mystery set in a competitive hairdressing competition — boarded by New Europe Film Sales — is also bound to generate some excitement.

“‘Medusa Deluxe’ is one of the coolest debuts of the year,” the company’s CEO Jan Naszewski enthused to Variety.

“I’m sure it will rock the Piazza Grande and give the festival a great spark.”

But Locarno will also bring in heavyweights, starting with a screening of the much-anticipated Brad Pitt vehicle “Bullet Train,” directed by “Atomic Blond” helmer David Leitch,...

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The Locarno Film Festival has unveiled the lineup for its 2022 edition, to be held from Aug. 3-13.

And the Swiss festival will be hoping Brad Pitt will be kicking some butt when Locarno gives an international festival premiere to Sony’s upcoming Bullet Train. The action thriller, set to hit theaters Aug. 5, comes from the director of Deadpool 2, David Leitch, and has an ensemble cast that includes Joey King, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Brian Tyree Henry, Andrew Koji, Hiroyuki Sanada, Michael Shannon and Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio.

Locarno also booked world premieres for the Sophie Marceau starrer Une Femme de Notre Temps, by director Jean Paul Civeyrac; Leon Prudovsky’s My Neighbor Adolf; John Swab’s horror thriller Candy Land; Blandine Lenoir’s Annie Colere; and Delta, by director Michele Vannucci. Debut features bowing at Locarno include Jeff Rutherford’s A Perfect Day for...

Soon to be premiering Berlin comp entry Both Sides of the Blade by Claire Denis, Juliette Binoche has been spending more time working in the United States filming a trucker narrative in Paradise Highway for Anna Gutto and Antonio Campos‘ series “The Staircase” in 2021. Now comes word (via a tiny blurb in Variety) that she is set to return to work on Lance Hammer‘s long awaited sophomore feature. We knew that there was a project secretly making the rounds several years back but this is the first mention of the film’s existence.

Hammer was a major break-out filmmaker when Ballast premiered at Sundance and Berlin in 2008 with several year-end mentions and accolades to what would be radio silence for a decade plus (we even logged a formal complaint in our Mia series).…...

Oscar-winning French actor Juliette Binoche has given her sprawling career a second wind with striking performances in Claire Denis’ comedy drama “Let The Sunshine In” and sci-fi “High Life” (opposite Robert Pattinson). Best known by American audiences for her romantic roles in Anthony Minghella’s “The English Patient” and Lasse Hallström’s “Chocolat,” Binoche has worked with some of the most revered filmmakers worldwide, including Abbas Kiarostami (“Copie Conforme”), Leos Carax (“Les amants du Pont-Neuf”), Michael Haneke (“Caché”) and Olivier Assayas (“Clouds of Sils Maria”).

In her latest film, “Between Two Worlds,” Binoche stars as a well-known author from Paris who goes undercover in Northern France for her new book on low-paid workers facing injustices. Hired as a cleaner, she experiences the brutal and precarious work conditions while bonding with other women. The movie, whose cast was primarily made up of non-professionals and locals, was adapted from Florence Aubenas’ bestseller “Le Quai de Ouistreham.

Exclusive: Lionsgate has boarded Paradise Highway, a Silver Reel and Zdf thriller starring Oscar winners Juliette Binoche and Morgan Freeman, and Captain America actor Frank Grillo.

Lionsgate has taken North America distribution rights and will handle international sales. Zdf boards as co-producer and German distributor. Both deals were secured by Silver Reel’s Claudia Bluemhuber.

In Paradise Highway, written and directed by Anna Gutto, Sally (Binoche), a truck driver, has been forced to smuggle illicit cargo to save her brother Dennis (Grillo) from a deadly prison gang. With FBI operative Gerick (Freeman) hot on her trail, Sally’s motivations and conscience are challenged when the final package turns out to be a teenage girl (Hala Finley).

Cameron Monaghan, Veronica Ferres, Christiane Seidel and Walker Babington also star in the feature.

Gutto (Netflix’s Home for Christmas) wrote her screenplay off of years of research and immersion in the trucking community.

Exclusive: We Can Be Heroes and Man With A Plan star Hala Finley is joining Oscar winner Ben Affleck and Alice Braga (Queen Of The South) in Robert Rodriguez action-thriller Hypnotic, which is due to get underway on Monday 27 September in Austin, Texas.

The movie will follow a detective (Affleck) who becomes entangled in a mystery involving his missing daughter (Finley) and a secret government program.

Pic is written by Sin City and Alita: Battle Angel filmmaker Rodriguez and Max Borenstein. Rodriguez, Studio 8 CEO Jeff Robinov and his colleagues Guy Danella and John Graham are producing with Mark Gill’s Solstice Studios.

Fast-rising child star Finley will next be seen in Anna Gutto’s Paradise Highway with Morgan Freeman and Juliette Binoche and Shelter alongside Zazie Beetz and Melissa Leo. She is best known for playing Emme Burns on four seasons of Man With A Plan on CBS alongside Friends star Matt LeBlanc.