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Finnish director Juho Kuosmanen – awarded the Grand Prix at Cannes for “Compartment No. 6” – has joined forces with Finland’s Elisa Viihde on upcoming six-episode series “Yours, Margot.” Elisa Viihde is an entertainment service of Elisa, which has been commissioning original drama series since 2014.

“The project has been in stand-by mode and I’m happy to see it proceed with Elisa. We are still writing, because the script is crucial – even more in TV than in cinema,” he told Variety.

“We are not interested in making a TV series; we are interested in making a good TV series. And that takes time.”

What makes a good TV series? “A good script and a great ensemble. And a brilliant location scout,” he added. Previously, Kuosmanen directed series “Zone B” and “Alice & Jack,” the latter starring Andrea Riseborough and Domhnall Gleeson. He also served as the show’s executive producer.

“Yours,...

[Editor’s note: This interview was originally published on October 18, 2024. For his work in “Anora,” Yura Borisov is now nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, one of six nominations for the film.]

Casting is Sean Baker’s great skill. He casts all his own films, walking through the world looking for talent to populate his stories. On his Palme d’Or winner “Anora,” Baker had characters in mind before he finished writing the script. He offered the roles of Anora to Mikey Madison and Russian muscleman Igor to Yura Borisov, who waited some six months before they got to read the final screenplay.

Baker saw the Russian actor for the first time in “Compartment Number 6” and “Petrov’s Flu.” “Those films were playing at Cannes the year that I had ‘Red Rocket’ there,” said Baker at Telluride. He called Finnish director Juho Kuosmanen and asked him how it was to work with Borisov. “He said, ‘He’s the best guy in the world.

Yura Borisov isn’t a name many are familiar with (yet), though the spotlight on him has intensified following his scene-stealing performance in “Anora.” In the modern-day fairy tale, Borisov plays Igor, the quiet, unassuming yet charming henchman hired to keep a watchful eye on Ani (Mikey Madison’s fiery Brooklyn stripper), who begins to show subtle signs of attraction to his mark. The 32-year-old Russian actor — who is already well-known in his native country with over 50 screen credits to his name — has gained favor in awards and critics circles for his standout role in “Anora,” earning supporting actor nominations at the Golden Globes and Independent Spirit Awards.

“It’s a big surprise for me,” Borisov said over Zoom, recruiting his interpreter to help translate a few random words during the conversation. “I absolutely didn’t know that it was going that way when we were shooting our film.”

Writer-director...

U.S. director-screenwriter Paul Schrader will serve as president of the features jury of the 30th Sarajevo Film Festival, which runs from Aug. 16 to 23.

Schrader will be joined on the jury by Swedish actor and producer Noomi Rapace, Finnish director-writer Juho Kuosmanen, Sarajevo-born, Paris-based director, writer and editor Una Gunjak, and Slovenian actor Sebastian Cavazza.

The jury will announce the winners of the Heart of Sarajevo awards on Aug. 23.

Schrader first made his mark as a screenwriter with “Taxi Driver” (1976), directed by Martin Scorsese, and his collaboration with Scorsese continued with films like “Raging Bull” (1980).

He made his directorial debut with “Blue Collar” (1978) and went on to direct critically acclaimed films such as “American Gigolo” (1980) and “Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters” (1985).

In 2017, he wrote and directed “First Reformed,” which earned him an Academy Award nomination for best original screenplay.

Recent projects include “The Card Counter” (2021), “Master Gardener” (2022) and “Oh Canada...

Doc specialist house Autlook Film Sales has picked up world sales on the Finnish film “Once Upon a Time in a Forest,” ahead of its world premiere in the main competition of Copenhagen’s Cph:dox festival. Variety is premiering its trailer (below).

The film, directed and produced by Virpi Suutari, scooped the $15,000 Al Jazeera Documentary Pitch Award at the last Cannes Marché du Film.

“We are proud to follow Virpi Suutari’s body of work,” says Salma Abdalla, CEO of Vienna-based Autlook Film Sales, attached to the director’s previous films “Aalto” and “Garden Lovers.” “With her distinctive cinematic language, Virpi creates a timely portrait of a generation that builds the most beautiful and responsible relationship to our economy, nature and other human beings.”

The film is indeed both an ode to nature, the wonders of Finnish old-growth coniferous forests and woodland animals, and to the passionate youths fighting to protect them.

Andrea Riseborough and Domhnall Gleeson are set to star in the romantic drama “Alice & Jack” for U.K. broadcaster Channel 4.

The series is lead directed by Juho Kuosmanen, helmer of the Golden Globe-nominated Cannes title “Compartment Number 6,” with a second block directed by BAFTA-nominated “Lilting” helmer Hong Khaou. The show is written by “Mad Men” scribe Victor Levin. It is a Fremantle production in partnership with BAFTA- and Emmy-winning Me + You Productions (“I Am Ruth”), Academy Award-nominated Groundswell Productions (“The Visitor”) and De Maio Entertainment. Fremantle is handling global sales on the project.

Rounding out the cast are Aisling Bea (“Greatest Days”), Aimee Lou Wood (“Sex Education”) and Sunil Patel (“This Time with Alan Partridge”).

Created and written by Levin, “Alice & Jack” is billed as “a love story for the ages.” An official synopsis for the show reads: When Alice (Riseborough) and Jack (Gleeson) first meet, they...

LevelK has boarded “The Invisible Fight,” Estonian director Rainer Sarnet’s kung fu comedy set in an Orthodox monastery in the former Soviet Union. The film world premieres Aug. 11 in the main competition of the Locarno Film Festival.

“The Invisible Fight” is set in 1973 on the Soviet-Chinese border, where Private Rafael is on guard duty when his border post is attacked by a band of Chinese warriors schooled in the ancient art of kung fu. The only one to miraculously survive, Rafael, is fascinated by the long-haired, black-clad, kung fu hippies flying through the treetops while blasting forbidden Black Sabbath music from their portable radio. He’s suddenly struck by a revelation: he, too, wants to become a kung fu warrior.

Faith leads Rafael to an Orthodox monastery where the black-clad monks do their training, but his road to achieving the almighty power of humility required is long, winding and full of adventures.

A project from Finland and a Belgium-Uruguay co-production have won the Seriesmaker initiative here at Series Mania.

The projects, Yours, Margot and The Invisible Ink, both bag €50,000 each after winning the Beta Development Awards.

They were announced minutes ago at Lille’s Series Mania Forum event, which is into its second day.

Yours, Margot is an eight-part drama from Finnish director Juho Kuosmanen and producer Jussi Rantamäki. The logline is: “After discovering her father’s letters to an unknown lover, Vilja unearths her family’s traumatic past in 1980s East Berlin.”

Kuosmanen’s 2021 road movie Compartment No 6 won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival official competition, and his biographical film The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki won Prix Un Certain Regard at Cannes Film Festival.

The Invisible Ink comes from director César Díaz and producer Fernando Epstein, and also runs to eight parts. It...

Finnish director Juho Kuosmanen, behind “Compartment No. 6” and “The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki”– both awarded in Cannes – will now turn his attention to new series “Yours, Margot.”

The upcoming series is one of the 10 projects chosen for Series Mania and Beta Group’s Seriesmakers.

Based on Meri Valkama’s novel, “Yours, Margot” will be produced, just like his previous films, by Helsinki-based Aamu Film Company, with “Compartment” scribes Andris Feldmanis and Livia Ulman also on board. This time Kuosmanen dissects the experiences of Vilja, who spent her childhood in East Berlin, following her foreign correspondent father. After his death, she finds old letters to “Erich,” all from mysterious “Margot.” Now, as an adult, she decides to return to Berlin and track her down.

“It’s a great story about a person who looks for the truth about her childhood years, but finds only different interpretations and contradictory memories.

Series Mania, Europe’s biggest TV fest, and German film-tv powerhouse Beta Group has revealed the 10 projects in the first edition of Seriesmakers, unveiling what must be one of the most talent-packed project lineups at any festival, film or TV, in 2023,

A mentoring program for filmmakers making their TV creator debut, Series Mania features in development drama series from “Compartment No 6’s” Juho Kuosmanen, ‘Bang Gang’s’ Eva Husson and “Birds of a Passage’s” Ciro Guerra and Cristina Gallego.

Also in the mix is “Amigas,” the first TV project of Beatriz Seigner (“Los Silencios”), one of Brazil’s foremost young movie directors, “The Invisible Ink,” teaming Cannes best first feature winner César Díaz (“Our Mothers”)and New Uruguay Cinema founding father Fernando Epstein; and Indian arthouse filmmaker Pushpendra Singh, who scored with Berlin Encounters’ title “The Shepherdess and the Seven Songs.”

All in all, Seriesmakers, which is just...

Finland’s Aamu Film Company will invest in Jenni Jauri’s new production company Silmu Films, Variety has found out exclusively.

Aamu, founded in 2001 and co-owned by Jussi Rantamäki and Emilia Haukka, has become a local arthouse powerhouse thanks to its festival-friendly slate, especially Juho Kuosmanen’s “The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki” and Golden Globe-nominated “Compartment No. 6,” awarded the Grand Prix in Cannes.

“We had a good film with decent sales and we started to think about what we should do next,” Rantamäki said. “Aamu’s brand is simple and clear: we only work with a select few directors. We don’t want to change that; we don’t want to turn into a factory where you don’t know what is happening and with whom. So first we decided not to grow, and then realized we could invest in a new company instead.”

Apart from Kuosmanen,...

Running Jan. 13-Feb. 13, this year’s MyFrenchFilmFestival, an online fest organized by France’s film-tv promotional body Unifrance, will mark its 13th edition with an emphasis on debut features and dynamic new voices.

Showcasing star power, animated auteur fare and award-winning documentaries – all subtitled in 15 languages – the 12 features and 17 shorts of this year’s selection will reach home viewers via 70 partner platforms as well on MyFrenchFilmFestival.com, where all the shorts will be available to screen free of charge.

In an effort to cast as wide a net as possible, this year’s competition will feature projects that run the gamut from Alice Diop’s breakthrough documentary “We” – which finds connections in the lives of immigrants, lovesick teens and retirees all connected by a commuter rail line north of Paris – to Jean-Christophe Meurisse’s satirical sketch comedy “Bloody Oranges,” which shreds polite society with anarchic glee.

In between are everything...

The Nordic screen industries are riding a tide of recent success, from Joachim Trier’s dual Oscar-nominated “The Worst Person in the World” (Norway), and Juho Kuosmanen’s Cannes prize winner “Compartment No. 6” (Finland), to Apple TV’s hit Norwegian crime drama “Exit.”

But the Nordics have a ways to go on diversity and inclusion and can do more to support emerging talents — including taking a more mindful approach toward how on-set practices can create an unhealthy work environment.

Those were the key takeaways of a panel discussion on Sept. 21 at the Finnish Film Affair, the industry arm of the Helsinki International Film Festival — Love & Anarchy. Moderated by Finnish TV presenter Andrea Reuter, the event brought together three up-and-coming film professionals from Nordic countries to discuss the hopes and challenges for the next generation of filmmakers from the region.

The event was a collaboration with Nordisk Film & TV Fond,...

“The Woodcutter Story,” a Finnish drama with a surreal touch, has been sold to Australia (Palace Films), Baltics (Estinfilm), Sweden (Njuta), Germany (Eksystent) and France (Urban), Paris-based Totem Films shared exclusively with Variety.

Directed by Mikko Myllylahti, it sees a good man who runs into bad luck: he loses his job and his wife leaves, but Pepe (Jarkko Lahti) is trying to keep his head high. Even when strange things start to happen in his sleepy village.

The film, which premiered in Cannes’ Critics Week, screens Wednesday at the Helsinki Film Festival – Love & Anarchy. It will have its North American premiere at Chicago Film Festival and its U.K. premiere at the London Film Festival.

“It’s a very strange film,” said Myllylahti back in May. Also opening up about a real-life encounter – and real-life woodcutter – that inspired him.

“There was something very Finnish about the way he was dealing with his ordeals: sometimes,...

Cannes Critics’ Week film “The Woodcutter Story” has debuted its trailer. It’s the feature film directorial debut from Mikko Myllylahti, the writer of Cannes Un Certain Regard winner “The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Makki.” The film is being sold by French sales outfit Totem Films.

“The Woodcutter Story” centers on Pepe, a woodcutter in an idyllic small town in Finland. In the span of a couple of days, a series of tragic events gradually destroys his quiet and happy life – but Pepe seems to be fine with it all, as if he held a secret to existence that is hard to grasp.

Myllylahti was inspired to write the story following an encounter with a woodcutter who – despite having lost everything – “accepted his ordeals with a smile on his face.”

Myllylahti said: “The more I thought of him and his attitude towards life I started to realize a potential for a story,...

The third instalment in the Harry Potter spin-off series took £5.9m.

RankFilm (distributor)Three-day gross (Apr 8-10)Total gross to date Week 1. Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets Of Dumbledore (Warner Bros) £5.9m £5.9m 1 2. Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (Paramount) £2.9m £10.6m 2 3. The Bad Guys (Universal) £1.1m £4.9m 2 4. Morbius (Sony) £734,000 £5.1m 2 5. The Batman (Warner Bros)

£623,964 £39.2m 6

Gbp to Usd conversion rate: 1.30

Warner Bros’ Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets Of Dumbledore comfortably topped the UK-Ireland box office in its debut weekend, but could not match previous titles in the franchise.

The third instalment in the spin-off series received the widest-ever opening for Warner Bros, with 714 locations,...

Two wildly mismatched travellers find themselves sharing a sleeping compartment from Moscow to Murmansk in Finnish director Juho Kuosmanen’s beguiling romance

Back in the early 1990s, while covering the filming of the bizarre Russian-backed, Ukraine-set horror movie Dark Waters, I spent 17 hours on a midnight train from Moscow to Odesa. To this day I can still vividly recall the noise, smell and claustrophobia of that journey, crammed into a damp, four-bunk berth with tiny corridors whose windows were sealed shut, leading to toilets that were best avoided. All those memories came rushing back as I watched Compartment No 6, a 1990s-set drama in which a young woman boards a Moscow train heading the other way – up towards the port city of Murmansk. The film’s trajectory may be north rather than south, and the timescale far longer than my trip, but the expression on Finnish actor Seidi Haarla’s...

Update: An Iranian court has determined that film director Asghar Farhadi violated the copyright of a former student, Azadeh Masihzadeh, for Farhadi’s latest film, “A Hero.” According to The Hollywood Reporter, which first broke the news early on Tuesday, “The case will now pass to a second judge, whose ruling can then be challenged in an appellate court. The judge can also order the case to be re-examined.” It was previously reported that Farhadi had been convicted of plagiarism, but that has not yet occurred according to a new report from Entertainment Weekly.

Earlier, Deadline noted that Farhadi’s lawyer, Kaveh Rad, said on social media that the reports are premature, and that “the decision is not the final verdict of the court and is considered part of the trial process.” In a statement to EW, French producer Alexandre Mallet-Guy said, “We firmly believe that the court will dismiss Ms.

Juho Kuosmanen’s new film Compartment No 6 won the Cannes Grand Prix last year. He talks of how it was received in Russia, his underdog status and whether he is a romantic

I am speaking to the Finnish film-maker Juho Kuosmanen, director of the prize-winning new film Compartment No 6, under conditions very different from our previous encounter at last autumn’s London film festival. That was a garrulous face-to-face chat about this film in the amiably chaotic surroundings of his central London distribution company. Now it’s our two subdued faces side-by-side on a computer screen, as we dwell on the fact that the phrase “third world war” used to be an essentially comic phrase, or category error, or a piece of intentionally ironic numerical wrongness like “sixth sense” or “fifth horseman of the apocalypse”.

Compartment No 6 is set in the spring of 1998, the era that Kuosmanen...

Anyone tracking Andrea Riseborough’s career will notice a certain tendency to tackle dark material. That was certainly the case for “Here Before,” an unsettling thriller about a woman who comes to believe the reincarnated spirit of her daughter has moved in next door.

“It’s a huge mountain to climb, the journey of knowing what it’s like to have a grown child pass away,” she told IndieWire during a recent interview. “Stepping into what that might be like for a couple of months while making the film was certainly very difficult. It’s actually quite a lonely experience.”

But she quickly moved on to the next project — and the next one after that, and the next one after that. In total, Riseborough has completed seven films since pandemic shutdowns started in 2020. She only stopped working for three months. “In some ways, I feel safer at work than anywhere else,...

As the industry starts paying closer attention to Finnish films and talent – following the Cannes success of Juho Kuosmanen’s “Compartment No. 6” and Zaida Bergroth’s crowd-pleasing “Tove” – Finnish TV drama is next in line, argued the participants of the Berlinale Series Market Focus on Finland drama showcase. Kuosmanen premiered short-form series “Zone B,” which he co-created, at the Red Sea International Film Festival in December.

“We have seen a rise in Finnish stories, because as content creators and writers, we got to be a little bit braver,” said Minna Panjanen, now behind “Next of Kin”. “The truth is, everyone needs content right now. It’s almost a mathematical impossibility to say what would be the next big thing – we all saw it with ‘Squid Game’. But we need to be braver in order to stand out.”

In “Next of Kin”, set in the near future – the series is...

Danish debut feature helmer-writer Tea Lindeburg’s period drama “As In Heaven,” that portrays a fateful summer day and night in 19th century farming society, came away the biggest winner at the 44th Göteborg Film Festival, scoring on Saturday the best Nordic film kudo, this year worth approx. $44,000.

Meanwhile, Seidi Haarla of Finland’s Oscar-shortlisted drama, “Compartment No. 6” took the best acting prize. The film, helmed by Juho Kuosmanen, also nabbed the Fipresci critics nod.

Norway-born Dp Sturla Brandth Grøvlen claimed the Sven Nykvist Cinematography Award for his work on the Norwegian film “The Innocents,” directed by Eskil Vogt. The perfectly executed thriller about rival playmates with paranormal abilities also took the audience award for best Nordic film.

Danish helmer Simon Lereng Wilmont captured the best Nordic documentary title and a purse of approx. $27,000 for “A House Made Of Splinters,” a masterful portrayal of the children and daily life at an orphanage in Eastern Ukraine.

Paris-based company had a high-profile 2021 with titles including ’Compartment No. 6’ and ‘My Sunny Maad’.

Paris-based Totem Films will launch a quartet of first features with 2022 festival hopes at the EFM next week (February 10-17), including directorial debuts by The Happiest Day In The Life Of Olli Mäki co-writer Mikko Myllylahti and Italian actress Jasmine Trinca.

The company’s 2021 slate enjoyed a buzzy festival run, led by Cannes Grand Prix winner Compartment No. 6 as well as Berlinale best documentary winner We, Berlin Competition title Ballad Of A White Cow and My SunnyMaad, which took the jury award at Annecy.

Finnish...

The academy released the 2022 Oscars shortlists in 10 categories on Tuesday, December 21. The hopefuls in a wide range of races found out if they remain in contention for the 94th annual Academy Awards. Among these are the marquee categories for Best International Feature Film (which was pared down to 10 films from the 92 submitted) and Best Documentary Feature (which went from 138 to 15).

Both music awards – Best Original Song and Best Original Score — were winnowed down to just 15 contenders from 84 and 137 submissions respectively. Likewise for the three awards for shorts – animated, documentary and live-action. The Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Sound and Best Visual Effects races were culled from dozens of entries to 10 apiece.

Documentary Feature

One hundred and thirty-eight films were eligible for consideration; there are 15 on the shortlist. Members of the Documentary Branch vote to determine the shortlist and the nominees. The films, listed in alphabetical order by title, are:

“Ascension...

If you wanted to name a winner from the Oscar international film shortlist right now, it would be the Cannes Film Festival. Nine of the 15 titles that made the cut came from the fest, even though the Palme d’Or winner, France’s submission “Titane,” did not. But then only those who were not paying attention to past trends in stage one voting assumed that it would be included.

Although a record 93 countries put forward an entry, only 15 are moving on. The ones selected for the shortlist come from almost every continent, although Africa, despite some exciting entries such as Somalia’s “The Gravedigger’s Wife,” Chad’s “Lingui: The Sacred Bonds” and Morocco’s “Casablanca Beats,” was ignored (all three titles premiered at Cannes).

Cannes players that are in the mix include Iran’s “A Hero,” helmed by previous Oscar-winner Asghar Farhadi; Norway’s “The Worst Person in the World...

Energized by the second strong year in a row for Scandinavian cinema, a hybrid 45th Göteborg Film Festival will open with Christoffer Sandler’s “So Damn Easy Going” in main Nordic Competition, alongside Juho Kuosmanen’s “Compartment No. 6” and Eskil Vogt’s “The Innocents.”

Despite new theater capacity controls announced by Swedish prime minister Magdalena Andersson on Monday, Göteborg, which had anticipated the tighter restrictions, is pressing ahead with its plans for an on-site festival with select online screenings of some 50 films for Sweden, festival artistic director Jonas Holmberg told Variety.

Luca Guadagnino will receive an Honorary Dragon Award, attending the festival and participating in an on-stage conversation after the screening of “Call Me By Your Name” on Feb. 3.

Playing Lady Jessica Atreides in “Dune,” Rebecca Ferguson (“Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation”) will pick up a Nordic Honorary Dragon Award.

Produced by Sweden’s Cinenic Film, the company behind Sundance...

Without much fanfare, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association announced the winners of the 2022 Golden Globes via Twitter on Sunday night, with no media in attendance or celebrities walking the red carpet like years past.

The awards body has been embroiled in scandals since the 2021 show, around when it was revealed that the HFPA had no Black members and participated in questionable business practices. NBC pulled out of the telecast for this year’s ceremony, and since then the HFPA has diversified its membership and revamped its bylaws in attempts to save face in Hollywood.

HFPA President Helen Hoehne announced this year’s nominees at a scaled-down even in December, where she was joined bizarrely by Snoop Dogg in reading the nominations. This year, Netflix’s “The Power of the Dog” and Focus Features “Belfast” led all film nominees with seven nods. On the TV side, HBO’s “Succession” topped all other shows with five nominations.

A big hit at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, the Finnish film “Compartment No. 6” has been compared to Richard Linklater’s “Before Sunset” in its ideas of romance on board a train and the philosophical, dialogue-heavy scenes it features. Directed by Juho Kuosmanen, “Compartment No. 6” stars Seidi Haarla and Yuriy Borisov in what is primarily a two-hander.

Continue reading ‘Compartment No. 6’ Trailer: Strangers On A Train Find Human Connection at The Playlist.

After his debut feature “The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki” won the top Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes in 2016, Finnish filmmaker Juho Kuosmanen found similar success when he returned to the festival this year with his sophomore effort “Compartment No. 6.” The film, which follows the journey of two strangers brought together in a tiny sleeper car during their train ride to the Arctic, shared the Cannes Grand Prix, was selected as Finland’s Oscar entry, and this week was shortlisted for Best International Feature. Below, watch the first trailer for the movie, exclusively on IndieWire.

“Compartment No. 6.” stars Seidi Haarla as a young Finnish woman who escapes an enigmatic love affair in Moscow by boarding a train to the Arctic port of Murmansk. She’s forced to share the ride in a tiny sleeping car with a larger-than-life Russian miner (Yuriy Borisov). The pair find their...

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences today unveiled its shortlist of 15 films that will advance to the next stage of voting in the International Feature Film category at the Oscars. Notable among omissions is Julia Ducournau’s Titane, the entry from France which won the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or — becoming only the second movie directed by a woman to scoop that prize.

Elsewhere, there are no major shocks, though neither Costa Rica’s well-received Clara Sola nor Chad’s Lingui: The Sacred Bonds factor.

Overall, 12 of the movies on the shortlist are ones we recently put forth as strong contenders. Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car from Japan made the roster today, and has picked up great momentum in the past few weeks, scoring overall Best Film honors from both the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the New York Film Critics Circle.

Other international...

Cary Joji Fukunaga’s Bond film No Time to Die and Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi epic Dune led in craft recognition today when the Academy’s shortlists for the 2022 Oscars were unveiled.

The former secured slots in the areas of Makeup and Hairstyling, Music (Original Score), Music (Original Song), Sound and Visual Effects, with the latter preparing to compete in all of the same categories apart from Song.

Four additional studio films snagged slots in Score and Song, including Adam McKay’s Netflix satire Don’t Look Up, Jared Bush and Byron Howard’s Disney animated pic Encanto, Jeymes Samuel’s Netflix Western The Harder They Fall and Reinaldo Marcus Green’s Warner Bros. drama King Richard.

Jane Campion’s Netflix Western The Power of the Dog, Kenneth Branagh’s semi-autobiographical Focus pic Belfast and and Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of West Side Story all scored additional slots in the Sound category,...

Composers Hans Zimmer and Jonny Greenwood came in strong on the Academy’s shortlist for Best Original Score, securing two slots apiece from a total of 15. Zimmer enters the next phase of Oscars competition with his scores for Denis Villeneuve’s Dune and Cary Fukunaga’s Bond film No Time to Die. Greenwood, meanwhile, moves forward with his soundtracks for Jane Campion’s Western The Power of the Dog and Pablo Larraín’s Princess Diana drama, Spencer.

Zimmer is an 11-time nominee who won an Oscar for his score to The Lion King in 1995, most recently vying for gold with Christopher Nolan’s 2018 World War II drama, Dunkirk. Greenwood—who also scored Paul Thomas Anderson’s recently released Licorice Pizza—earned his first nomination that same year with Anderson’s Phantom Thread.

The only past Oscar winner in contention this year, apart from Zimmer, is Alexandre Desplat—who nabbed a slot with The French Dispatch.

Compartment Number 6 Review — Compartment Number 6 (2021) Film Review, a movie directed by Juho Kuosmanen and starring Yuriy Borisov, Seidi Haarla, Yuliya Aug, Dinara Drukarova, Polina Aug, Galina Petrova, Konstantin Murzenko and Lidia Kostina. Finnish filmmaker Juho Kuosmanen has crafted an entertaining and very compelling human drama with his new film, Compartment Number [...]

Continue reading: Film Review: Compartment Number 6 (2021): A Terrifically Acted Movie About the Need for Human Connection...

AwardsKoozhangal has been nominated under the Best International Film category for the 37th edition of the Independent Spirit Awards, held a day before the Oscars. Tnm StaffAfter winning critical acclaim at several film festivals and being selected as India’s official entry to the 2022 Academy Awards, debutant director Ps Vinothraj’s Tamil film Koozhangal (Pebbles) has been nominated for the 37th edition of the prestigious Independent Spirit Awards, 2022. Koozhangal has been nominated under the Best International Film category of the award, which honours independent filmmakers. Other nominees under the category include Finnish director Juho Kuosmanen’s film Compartment No 6, Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Japanese film Drive My Car, Spanish film Parallel Mothers directed by Pedro Almodóvar and starring Penelope Cruz, French film Petite Maman directed by Céline Sciamma, and Mexican film Prayers For The Stolen directed by Tatiana Huezo. The Spirit Awards are among the most prestigious award shows in...

Update: Jasmila Žbanić’s Quo Vadis, Aida? was the big winner at the 34th European Film Awards tonight. The story of a woman’s fight to save her family during the true events of the 1995 Bosnian War genocide in Srebrenica scooped the top European Film prize as well as European Director for Žbanić and European Actress for Jasna Đuričić. (Scroll down for the full list of winners.)

Quo Vadis, Aida? was nominated for an Oscar at the 93rd Academy Awards and its triumph tonight was indicative of how the European Film Academy leaned this year. While the EFAs can be somewhat predictive of the Oscar for Best International Feature, this evening’s ceremony saw a fair bit of crossover from the 2021 Oscars.

Other winners that had already achieved Oscar recognition included Florian Zeller’s The Father which repeated with wins for Anthony Hopkins as European Actor and for Zeller and Christopher Hampton’s screenplay.

For Finnish director Juho Kuosmanen, it was always an ambition of his to shoot a film on a train as well as a film in Russia. So, when he first read the 2011 novel Compartment No. 6 by Rosa Liksom, he was immediately compelled to take it to the big screen.

“I read this book when it came out and I felt in this book that there were lots of cinematic qualities like the train where most of the story takes place and the fact that it happens in Russia, where there are lots of cinematic locations to be found,” Kuosmanen said during the film’s panel at Contenders Film: International. “That was one of my dreams – to make a film in Russia. I felt that this book would be leading me to a film where I can actually make my dream come true and make a film in a train in Russia.

Film festivals have been the primary hatching-ground for Oscar contenders ever since the Academy’s tastes shifted predominantly from studio to independent cinema earlier this century — though in the international feature category, this has been the case for far longer. Rare is the non-English-language nominee that captures voters’ imaginations without a profile boost from one of the major fests — you have to go back to 2008’s Japanese sleeper “Departures” to find a film that won without an assist from Cannes, Venice, Berlin or Toronto.

This year, with the festival circuit largely back to business as usual after the disruptions of the pandemic, a vast number of submissions in the category are hot with festival buzz, with Cannes — making up for lost time after last year’s canceled edition — leading the way.

The French festival has long been a kingmaker in this category, with such recent Oscar winners as “Parasite,” “Son of Saul,...

Paolo Sorrentino’s “The Hand of God,” Julia Ducournau’s “Titane,” Jasmila Žbanić’s “Quo Vadis, Aida?,” Florian Zeller’s “The Father,” and Juho Kuosmanen’s “Compartment No. 6” are the five nominees for best film at the upcoming 34th European Film Awards, which see no clear frontrunner this year.

The more than 4,100 academy members will now vote for the winners, who will be honored at a Dec. 11 ceremony in Berlin.

And the nominees are: European Film

“Compartment No. 6,” Juho Kuosmanen

“Quo Vadis Aida?” Jasmila Žbanić

“The Father,” Florian Zeller

“The Hand of God,” Paolo Sorrentino

“Titane,” Julia Ducournau

European Comedy

“Nijababy,” Yngvild Sve Flikke

“The Morning After,” Méliane Marcaggi

“The People Upstairs,” Cesc Gay

European Documentary

“Babi Yar. Context,” Sergei Loznitsa

“Flee,” Jonas Poher Rasmussen

“Mr Bachman and his Class,” Maria Speth

“Taming The Garden,” Salomé Jashi

“The Most Beautiful Boy in the World,” Stina Gardell

European Animated Feature Film

“Even Mice Belong in Heaven,...

The European Film Academy has announced nominations for the 34th European Film Awards which will be handed out in Berlin on December 11. Julia Ducournau’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner, Titane; Florian Zeller’s 2020 drama and double Oscar winner The Father; and Jasmila Zbanic’s Quo Vadis Aida?, which was nominated for an Oscar at the 93rd edition, are tied with four mentions each.

Titane is the Oscar submission from France this year and, likewise, several other candidates for the International Feature Academy Award figure at the EFAs. They include Paolo Sorrentino’s The Hand Of God and Juho Kuosmanen’s Compartment No. 6, from Italy and Finland, respectively. Each of those films, alongside the titles above, is nominated in the European Film 2021 category, and both figure in three races.

Ducournau, Zeller, Zbanic and Sorrentino are all up for European Director 2021 while Radu Jude rounds out the field for his Bad...

Finland has picked Compartment No. 6, an Arctic road movie from director Juho Kuosmanen, to be the country’s official contender for the 2022 Oscar race in the best international feature category.

The film takes its title from the number on the cramped quarters of a second-class sleeping car on a train from Moscow to the Arctic port city of Murmansk. As the train weaves its way up to the arctic circle, two strangers, Laura (Seidi Haarla) a student from Finland studying Russian in Moscow, and Ljoha (Yuriy Borisov), an uncouth Russian miner, find themselves stuck with each other on a journey that ...

A massive fire that broke out at Egypt’s El Gouna Film Festival on Wednesday is now under control, organizers have confirmed.

Shortly after the fire broke out, dramatic videos of the incident were posted on social media.

Watch: A massive fire has broken out in the main hall of the El Gouna Film Festival site in Egypt, one day ahead of the opening ceremony, according to local media reports. #Gff https://t.co/13Z78ZM5ik pic.twitter.com/J1HYCjLSj8

— Al Arabiya English (@AlArabiya_Eng) October 13, 2021

“El Gouna Film Festival Management announced the control of a fire that broke out in El Gouna Conference and Culture Center. The fire damaged a small part of the hall prepared to receive the opening activities of the festival,” the festival management said in a statement. “Once the fire broke out, El Gouna Film Festival Management coordinated with the Civil Protection Forces...

Helsinki International Film Festival – Love & Anarchy’s return to live, in-person screenings is an occasion for national celebration, says Anna Möttölä, the executive director of the event, now marking its 34th edition.

While cinemas in Helsinki must still be limited to 50% capacity for pandemic precaution reasons, screenings of hot new titles such as opening gala film Leos Carax’s tragicomic musical “Annette” and closer Mia Hansen-Løve’s “Bergman Island” have already sold out, Möttölä says, with audience anticipation for the beloved fest feeling palpable this year following a mainly online event in 2020. Foreign guests such as Ninja Thyberg, screening her Sundance sensation “Pleasure,” are also generating buzz this year, she notes.

Meanwhile the event has managed to maintain its dedication to diversity and inclusion despite Covid challenges, with some 46% of the 131 features and 149 shorts screening by women or non-binary filmmakers.

The popular Spotlight section has seen brisk ticket sales for its program,...

Natasha Merkulova and Aleksey Chupov, directorial duo behind the Venice title “Captain Volkonogov Escaped” – vying for a Golden Lion – thought about Jean-Paul Belmondo when creating their main character, a Ussr law enforcer who suddenly goes on the run and finds himself pursued by his former colleagues. The legendary French actor, known for “Breathless” and “Pierrot le Fou,” died on Sept. 6.

“In one of the earlier versions of the script, we even had a similar ending to ‘Breathless’. Then we changed it, but its spirit remained,” Chupov tells Variety in Venice after the film’s world premiere. “We grew up on his movies.”

The Russian-Estonian-French co-production, though set in 1938, is not a faithful take on the politically charged period, with the directors opting for a “retro-utopia” instead and, as they say, reinventing the past.

“Making a typical historical drama just wasn’t interesting to us. I know people who like making them,...

In an ornate palace ballroom overhung by an immense chandelier, a gang of strapping, shaven-headed young men play volleyball on a makeshift court. Stripped down to their undershirts, the game degenerates into vigorous roughhousing, and finally into a wrestling match. As flesh slaps flesh, amid the fading grandeur of Old Russia and the grunts and catcalls of its self-anointed revolutionary inheritors, the superb opening scene of Natasha Merkulova and Aleksey Chupov’s “Captain Volkogonov Escaped” builds a cleverly keyed-up, yet also stylishly pared-back vision of pre-war Leningrad as a purgatorial proving-ground from which, contrary to the film’s title, there can be little hope of escape.

For these young men, bonded together by their sense of untouchability as the enforcers of the regime’s oppressive, arbitrary cruelty, masculinity is expressly defined by competitive aggression. And young Captain Volkonogov (Yuriy Borisov) is the fittest, perhaps smartest and certainly the most paranoiacally intuitive of the bunch.

Acquisition

Abacus Media Rights (Amr) has picked up global distribution rights to BBC Two’s Joan Collins documentary, produced by Salon Pictures and commissioned by Mark Bell at BBC Arts. Promising to tell the life story of the Hollywood actor from her point of view, the 90-minute documentary will be narrated by Collins herself. Clare Beavan (“Bricks!”) will direct as well as co-produce with Karen Steyn, Nick Taussig and Annabel Wigoder. Karen Steyn (“Tea With the Dames”) is executive producer.

“National treasures don’t come more glamorous than Dame Joan Collins and after seven decades of stardom her shine remains undimmed,” said Bell. “Her story too is priceless; this film will be an account of the ups and downs of an entertainment career like no other – candid, revelatory and occasionally hilarious.”

Amr managing director Jonathan Ford added: “This will be the definitive story of Dame Joan Collins told in her...

After the Viking conquest at July’s Cannes Festival, where Norway (“The Worst Person in the World”), Finland (“Compartment No. 6”) and Iceland (“Lamb”) collected kudos, more than 60 possible gems from the North are to be unveiled at the hybrid market New Nordic Films which will unspool over Aug. 24-27.

Scandinavia’s major film showcase, New Nordic Films runs parallel to Haugesund’s Norwegian Intl. Film Festival, which takes place Aug. 21-27.

Sony Pictures Classics’ Finnish pick-up “Compartment No. 6”, a Grand Jury Prize co-winner in Cannes, is set to kick-start the annual event and lead the pack of 24-plus finished titles. Most pics will screen online only, except those bowing in Haugesund cinemas as well, as fest official selections, such as “The Innocents,” “The Gravedigger’s Wife,” “Margrete-Queen of the North,” and “a-ha-The Movie.”

“It’s been a bit hard to finalize the market screenings, due to social distancing measures still in place in cinemas,...

New nonfiction films from directors Liz Garbus, Stanley Nelson, and E. Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin will screen at the Toronto International Film Festival as part of the TIFF Docs program, TIFF organizers announced on Wednesday.

Nelson’s documentary “Attica” will serve as the opening-night film in the section, while other docs at the festival will include Garbus’ “Becoming Cousteau,” Barry Avrich’s “Oscar Peterson: Black + White,” Penny Lane’s “Listening to Kenny G” and Vasarhelyi and Chin’s “Rescue.”

The festival’s Midnight Madness section will open with the Cannes Palme d’Or winner “Titane,” by Julia Ducournau, while TIFF has also added three Special Presentations films that also premiered in Cannes: Nadav Lapid’s “Ahed’s Knee,” Bruno Dumont’s “France” and Ari Folman’s “Where Is Anne Frank?”

In the Contemporary World Cinema section, additions include Juho Kuosmanen’s “Compartment No. 6” and Khadar Ayderus Ahmed’s “The Gravedigger’s Wife.

Memento International has acquired the international sales rights to “Captain Volkonogov Escaped,” from Russian writing and directing duo Natasha Merkulova and Aleksey Chupov, which will world premiere in competition at the Venice Film Festival, Variety can reveal.

The film tells the story of the titular Captain Volkonogov, a well-respected and obedient law enforcer in the former Soviet Union, who witnesses his colleagues being suspiciously questioned. Sensing that his turn will soon come, he plans to escape, only to find his former colleagues hot on his tail. When the vulnerable and hopeless Volkonogov gets a message from hell that he’ll be sentenced to eternal torments, he must find a way to repent. But time is running out and the manhunt is closing in on him.

“Captain Volkonogov Escaped” features an all-star cast that includes Yuriy Borisov, who appeared in the Cannes competition titles “Compartment No. 6” and “Petrov’s Flu,” Timofey Tribuntsev...

I spent last week in New York having face-to-face business meetings with entertainment executives after not being able to make direct contact over the past 15 months. Last time I was in Manhattan was February 2020, right before Covid-19 began wreaking havoc on my favorite city away from home, and of course on the entire country.

There were residual signs of pandemic fallout: A number of restaurants long favored by industry folks had shuttered for good. But New Yorkers were nonetheless out in force, and it was heartening to hear those whom I and New York bureau chief Brent Lang met with talk about just how resilient their companies were during the height of the health crisis.

“At the start of the pandemic, we knew we needed to do everything possible to accelerate, rather than halt, production,” FilmNation founder Glen Basner told us.

“We collaborated with an amazing group of filmmakers to...

The 2021 Cannes Film Festival was a celebration. Buyers and sellers were genuinely delighted to see each other in the sunshine on the Croisette after a two-year absence, and to watch great films with their vaccinated peers in the Palais. Everyone returned with a fresh perspective; many spent time in lockdown focusing on new strategies. There’s no shortage of titles in the pipeline, thanks to increased investment in early productions — the better to compete with streamers, of course.

“Being here in this moment feels like our emergence as a community, to come together in this place to celebrate what it means for cinema,” said Focus Features chairman Peter Kujawski, who brought “Stillwater” and “Blue Bayou” to Cannes. “You feel the resurgence, a new energy around it.”

“There’s a lot to cheer about,” said Sony Pictures Classics co-president Michael Barker, who brought British costume romance “Mothering Sunday” to the festival...