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After celebrating its three Oscar nominations for Walter Salles’ “I’m Still Here” with the same excitement it normally reserves for the soccer World Cup, Brazil went into overdrive when it took home the best international feature statuette.

The Sambadrome at Rio de Janeiro Carnival was hosting processions when it erupted in jubilation as the Oscar win for “I’m Still Here” was announced by the Carnival commentator. The period political drama was already part of the event as best actress nominee Fernanda Torres was named one of the Carnival’s muses.

Brazilian president Lula issued a statement that “Today is a day to feel even prouder of being Brazilian, proud of our cinema, our artists and above all proud of our democracy. A recognition to this extraordinary work which showed Brazil and the world the importance of the struggle against authoritarianism.”

Globo, Brazil’s TV giant, issued a press release celebrating the win,...

Brazil will be the official country of honor at this year’s Marché du Film, the Cannes film market, an acknowledgment of the growing strength of Brazilian cinema internationally.

Brazilian cinema is riding a wave right now, helped by the global success of Walter Salles’ political drama I’m Still Here, which is up for 3 Oscars this weekend: Best International Feature, Best Actress for lead Fernanda Torres, and Best Film.

The Brazilian industry will have a strong presence throughout the Marché, which runs from May 13 to May 21 during the 78th Cannes film festival, with key industry figures featuring in events and panels devoted to strengthening international ties and expanding the global reach of Brazilian storytelling.

In a great piece of news for market attendees, Brazil will also host the Marché’s official opening night party at the Plage des Palmes on May 13.

Brazilian cinema has been a near-constant feature in Cannes over the decades,...

Berlin-based world sales company M-Appeal has secured additional international distribution agreements for three of its Berlin Film Festival titles.

Among the latest sales, “Dreams,” which premieres today in Berlinale Competition, has been acquired by Films4You for Portugal, Swallow Wings for Taiwan and Beta Films for Bulgaria.

“Dreams” is Norwegian writer director Dag Johan Haugerud’s latest title, completing his “Sex Love Dreams” trilogy, with the previous titles having premiered at Berlinale and Venice last year. The film follows a young woman named Johanne, who’s intimate writings about her first love creates friction within her family, prompting her mother and grandmother to re-examine their own realities and dreams. Swallow Wings also bought all rights to “Sex” and “Love.”

Golden Bear contender “Living the Land,” directed by Huo Meng, has also found distribution in Bulgaria with Beta Films. The distributor, which will release the film theatrically, adds it to its recent lineup,...

Gabriel Mascaro’s “The Blue Trail,” playing in competition in Berlin, marks another great milestone for Brazilian cinema in a year where the country got its first best picture Oscar nomination with Walter Salles’ “I’m Still Here.” Mascaro follows in the footsteps of Salles playing in competition in Venice and Karim Aïnouz playing in competition at Cannes with “Motel Destino,” three consecutive Brazilian films playing in the most prestigious strands of the three most important European film festivals.

“Each one of these films is so different from each other but has great strengths,” Mascaro tells Variety ahead of his Berlinale bow. “I feel very proud to be a part of it.”

“The Blue Trail” takes place in a near future Brazil where the government relocates the elderly to senior housing colonies so the younger generations can fully focus on productivity and growth. Tereza (Denise Weinberg), nearing 80, refuses to accept her fate,...

Tandem Films has pre-bought French distribution rights for Canadian filmmaker Jeremy Comte’s directorial debut, Canada and Ghana-set drama thriller Paradise.

Film Constellation represents sales on the title, which recently wrapped principal photography between Quebec and Ghana.

In the wake of his father’s disappearance at sea, a young Ghanaian is drawn into a world of street gangs and deception. Meanwhile, in Quebec, a man discovers his mother’s relationship with a sailor, who may hold the key to finding his father.

Newcomers Daniel Atsu Hukporti and Joey Boivin-Desmeules star in the leading roles.

Paradise is produced by Entract Studios...

UK-Australian outfit Brouhaha Entertainment is gearing up to shoot two romantic dramas in 2025: Dominic Cooke’s New York-set Insomniac City for Altitude Film Sales; and Bharat Nalluri’s Australian coming of older-age tale Ok Boomer for Blue Fox Entertainment.

Insomniac City, to be directed by Cooke, whose credits include The Courier, is an adaptation of writer and photographer Bill Hayes’s 2017 memoir about arriving grief-strickenin New Yorkfrom San Francisco, then falling in love with the city - and neurologist and author Oliver Sacks.

“The late great Oliver Sacks was a genius but emotionally undeveloped, especially romantically, whereas Billy was open to the world,...

Two Brazilian titles, Marcelo Gomes’ “Portrait of a Certain Orient” and Marianne Brennand’s “Manas,” swept the three biggest awards at Spain’s Huelva Ibero-American Film Festival, which wrapped Saturday night in the Southern Spanish city.

With Brazil’s Marcelo Caetano scooping a fourth trophy of a total seven on offer for competition titles, Huelva served to confirm the building renaissance of Brazilian cinema, already seen in Karim Aïnouz making Cannes main Competition cut two years running – with “Firebrand” and “Motel Destino” – and Walter Salles’ comeback and Brazilian Academy Award entry “I’m Still Here’s” reaping a rave review and reporting in Variety and other media, prompting Oscar buzz.

“Portrait of a Certain Orient,” Marcelo Gomes, Brazil, Italy: Golden Columbus, Best Picture

Shot in black-and-white and a 4:3 box format, “Portrait,” which took Huelva’s Best Picture Golden Columbus, tells a tender, lamenting parable of the tragedy of bigotry and patriarchy,...

[Editor’s note: This article was originally published in February 2022 and has been updated multiple times since.]

Sex on film is nothing new, and yet unsimulated intercourse in non-pornographic movies has raised eyebrows and drawn eyeballs for decades. From Vincent Gallo’s controversial directing for “The Brown Bunny” to Robert Pattinson’s masturbatory method acting in “Little Ashes,” genuine intimate encounters captured on film — however staged they may be — can pull audiences into the bigger stories their writers and directors are trying to tell.

Catherine Breillat’s first film in 1976, “A Real Young Girl,” adapts her own controversial novel about a 14-year-old exploring her newfound sexuality. Breillat’s later work, 1999’s “Romance,” tells the story of a woman desperately seeking human connection and featured similar scenes, including sadomasochistic sex play.

“Actors are prostitutes because they’re asked to play other feelings,” Breillat told IndieWire. “This prostitution is not profane; it’s a sacred act that we give them.”

John Cameron Mitchell set out to “honor” sex as a pastime for real people,...

The opening sequences of Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz’s films are, for the most part, composed of immaculate static shots of nature—a detailed look into the place that his characters inhabit—as if to imply some sort of geographic determinism. In the particular case of “Motel Destino” (2024), the bordering red cliffs could signify the hardened, rough edges of its protagonist; while the occasional pops of lush green vegetation found in this arid land may represent the resilience and mutability of his character; and the brightly turquoise waters that ever so gently bathe the shore may very well comment on his pathological need for affection as he was abandoned by his father, abused by his step-father and neglected by his mother.

But perhaps most prominently, the blistering sunlight suggests the hot-headed temperament of everyone in this coastal town. If bodies aren’t drenched in sweat due to the extreme heat of the region’s climate,...

How’s this for an epic cast list? Karim Aïnouz‘s “Rosebush Pruning” had enough hype surrounding it already: Elle Fanning as the star; Efthimis Filippou penning a script that adapts the 1965 classic “Fists In The Pocket“; Mubi, The Match Factory, and Fremantle‘s The Apartment footing the bill. But the ensemble Aïnouz cast around Fanning now makes his follow-up to “Motel Destino” one of next year’s most anticipated films.

Continue reading ‘Rosebush Pruning’: Karim Aïnouz’s Dark Satire With Elle Fanning Adds Callum Turner, Riley Keough, Jamie Bell & More at The Playlist.

An array of big name talent has joined Elle Fanning in “Rosebush Pruning” from “Motel Destino” and “Firebrand” director Karim Aïnouz for Mubi, The Match Factory and Fremantle company The Apartment.

Callum Turner (“Masters of the Air,” “The Boys in the Boat”), Riley Keough (“Daisy Jones & The Six,” “Zola”), Jamie Bell (“All of Us Strangers, Rocketman”), Lukas Gage (“The White Lotus,” “Euphoria”), Tracy Letts (“Lady Bird,” “Ford vs Ferrari”), Elena Anaya (“The Skin I Live In,” “MotherFatherSon”) and Pamela Anderson (“The Last Showgirl,” the forthcoming “The Naked Gun”) are set to start in the film, which was first announced last year and is now shooting in Spain. Kristen Stewart and Josh O’Connor were originally attached to the project in lead roles alongside Fanning, but have been replaced by Keough and Turner, respectively.

Aïnouz is directing from a script written by Efthimis Filippou (“Kinds of Kindness,” “The Killing of a Sacred Deer,...

Brazil has selected Walter Salles’ well-received comeback feature I’m Still Here to represent it in the Best International Feature Film at the 97th Academy Awards.

The picture stars Fernanda Torres as the real-life figure of Eunice Paiva, whose husband Rubens Paiva disappeared in the early years of the 1964-1985 Brazilian military dictatorship.

Torres’ mother Fernanda Montenegro, who is considered one of the greatest Brazilian actresses of all time, also briefly shares the Eunice Paiva role, appearing as the protagonist in her final years. They are joined in the cast by Selton Mello as Rubens Paiva.

Related: Best International Feature Film Oscar Winners Through The Years: Photo Gallery

The project also reunites Salles with his regular collaborator, the director Daniela Thomas, who takes an artistic producer credit.

The picture enjoyed a buzzy world premiere in Venice in Competition, receiving a 10-minute ovation and going on to win Best Screenplay for Heitor Lorega and Murilo Hauser.

São Paulo production shingle Gullane, which is behind upcoming Netflix series “Senna,” has moved into development on a sequel to the animated feature “Noah’s Ark.”

Produced by Gullane and Walter Salles’ Videofilmes, “Noah’s Ark” has been sold to 45 countries by Edward Noeltner’s Cmg Management. It has grossed $4.25 million in territories in which it’s been released.

Imagem Filmes will bow “Noah’s Ark” in Brazil on more than 1,000 screens, a huge spreading a country of 3,300 screens. Rodrigo Santoro, Alice Braga and Julio Andrade feature among a Brazilian star-studded voice cast. It looks like the biggest release ever of a Brazilian movie in Brazil, Fabiano Gullane told Variety from Toronto, where the company is world premiering Fernando Coimbra’s “Carnival Is Over.”

“Noah’s Ark” was inspired by classic children’s songs by Bossa Nova pioneer Vinicius de Moraes. The 3D animated feature focuses on two male mice, Vini and Tito, who steal onto Noah’s ark,...

UK film and TV outift Raw has bolstered its features and scripted department with the addition of former Brouhaha Entertainment development producer and BBC Film exec Sam Gordon as producer/executive producer.

Gordon will work with Raw’s head of scripted TV Sara Murray, filmmakers Bart Layton and Tim Wardle and its senior creative team. He will report to chief exec Joely Fether and chief creative officer Dimitry Doganis.

Raw, backed by All3Media, has series credits including The Tinder Swindler for Netflix, features docs Three Identical Strangers and The Imposter, as well as fiction features Telluride premiere Encounter, directed by Michael Pearce and Dream Horse,...

‘Tinder Swindler’ Indie Builds Features Team

All3Media’s Raw, the company behind The Tinder Swindler, Three Identical Strangers and upcoming Amazon MGM Studios doc Crime 101, has hired Sam Gordon as producer/executive producer for its features team. Gordon is an experienced film and TV producer, with spells at Baby Cow, Calamity Films and BBC Films on his CV. Most recently, he was a development producer for Brouhaha Entertainment, where he worked on Firebrand and co-produced Karim Ainouz’s Motel Destino, which launched in Official Competition at Cannes this year. He also worked on Philomena and Stan & Ollie while at Baby Cow. At Raw, he’ll report into Cco Dimitri Doganis and CEO Joely Father, working with filmmakers Bart Layton and Tim Wardle, as well as Head of Scripted TV Sara Murray and other senior creative execs. Raw’s features to date have included American Animals, Three Identical Strangers, The Imposter,...

Raw has bolstered its features and scripted department with the addition of former Brouhaha Entertainment development producer and BBC Film exec Sam Gordon as producer/executive producer.

Gordon joins the UK The Tinder Swindler production company at a time of growth in its scripted and features output, with upcoming feature film Crime 101 for Amazon MGM Studios being co-produced with Working Title. The indie was also behind feature docs Three Identical Strangers and The Imposter plus Michael Pearce’s Telluride premiere Encounter and Euros Lyn’s Sundance title Dream Horse.

He moves from his role as development producer at Brouhaha Entertainment,...

Film London Predicts $12B Film & TV Boost To UK Capital

Film London has suggested that the film, TV and animation industries could generate as much as $12B (£9.5B) in investment in the UK capital in the next five years to 2028-29, as a result of its support activities. The body released the figures as part of its 20th anniversary celebrations on Wednesday. It said this investment would in turn add another $1.2B (£1B) in Gva for London over the same five-year period. The future impact figures were modelled on 2023/24 data. Film London noted that the forecast builds on figures for the previous five years, during which it said $5B (£4B) was invested in London as a result of its activities. These include the Artists Moving Image Network, equal access schemes such as Breaking the Glass Ceiling as well as the Production Finance Market (Pfm), during the BFI London Film Festival,...

The Match Factory has closed major international deals for Karim Aïnouz’s neon-noir thriller “Motel Destino,” which premiered in the Official Selection in Competition to a 14-minute standing ovation at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

The film has secured distribution in key territories: Germany (Piffl Medien), Benelux (Cherrypickers Film Distributie), Spain (Vertigo Films), Latin America, excluding Brazil (Mubi), Scandinavia (Njutafilms), Poland (Aurora Films), Portugal (Nitrato Filmes), Romania (Bad Unicorn), the Baltics (A-One Films), Greece (Danaos Films), Former Yugoslavia (McF MegaCom Film), Bulgaria (Beta Film), and Taiwan (Catchplay). Tandem secured the French distribution rights ahead of the Cannes Film Festival, while Brouhaha and Written Rock are handling the U.K. rights. Negotiations for additional territories are underway.

It will premiere in Brazil on Aug. 22 in more than 100 cinemas.

The film is set at the neon-hued Motel Destino, a roadside sex hotel steaming under the burning blue skies of the northeastern coast of Brazil.

Karim Ainouz’s Cannes Competition title Motel Destino has sold to key territories for The Match Factory.

The erotic thriller has sold to Piffl Medien in Germany, Cherrypickers Film Distributie in Benelux, Vertigo Films in Spain, Mubi in Latin America excluding Brazil, Bad Unicorn in Romania, Njutafilms in Scandinavia, Aurora Films in Poland, Nitrato Filmes in Portugal, A-One Films in the Baltics, Danaos Films in Greece, McF MegaCom Film in Former Yugoslavia, Beta Film in Bulgaria, and Catchplay in Taiwan.

Motel Destino stars Iago Xavier in his feature film debut, alongside Nataly Rocha and Fabio Assunção, as a 21-year-old man...

Yorgos Lanthimos’ Kinds Of Kindness, Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance and Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light, are among the films that will screen in CineMasters, the main competition of this month’s Munich International Film Festival (Miff), taking place from June 28 to July in Germany.

Fourteen films are in the running for CineMasters’ €50,000 Arri Award which is presented to the producers of the best international film. Further titles include Jia Zhang-ke’s Caught By The Tides, Rúnar Rúnarsson’s When The Light Breaks, which premiered in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section last month, as well as Jaione Camborda...

The Munich International Film Festival will screen 150 films from 53 countries during its 41st edition, which runs from June 28 to July 6.

Titles set for the fest include Cannes breakouts like the Demi Moore body The Substance by French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat, Payal Kapadia’s Grand Pix-winning All We Imagine As Light, and Karim Aïnouz’s Motel Destino.

World premieres announced today include the Brazillian horror drama Continente and Noaz Deshe’s Xoftex, a joint world premiere with the Karlovy Vary Festival. Other titles on offer include Viggo Mortensen’s The Dead Don’t Hurt, Isabelle Huppert pic Sidonie in Japan, and Zar Amir and Guy Nattiv’s Tatami. The festival’s closing film is Baltasar Kormákur’s Touch.

Munich has already announced the European premiere of Kate Winslet’s Lee. Winslet will be in attendance and will be feted with the Festival’s CineMerit honor, alongside Jessica Lange, who also receives the accolade.

Programmers from Sundance, Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight, Toronto, and Rotterdam, sales agents such as Goodfellas and Coproduction Office and U.S. distributor Magnify Pictures are among 50 top international guests expected at the inaugural Ecam Forum co-production market in Madrid, which is due to unspool June 10-14.

More than 300 delegates have signed up for the co-pro event where a curated slate of 37 Spanish, Latin American and international films and series will compete for the best project, including the next Lois Patiño (“Samsara”), Pablo Hernando (“Berserker”), Belén Funes (“A Thief’s Daughter”) and Sergi Perez (“The Long Way Home”).

Other highlights include masterclasses from U.S. indie mogul Ted Hope, and France’s illustrious cinematographer Hélène Louvart, a regular Alice Rohrwacher and Karim Aïnouz collaborator, and Silver Bear winner 2023 for “Disco Boy.”

In this exclusive interview, Ecam Forum’s coordinator Alberto Valverde maps out the full program of the latest industry initiative of Madrid’s Ecam film school,...

Ioncinema.com’s Chief Film Critic Nicholas Bell reviewed the entire competition and more. Here is a comprehensive guide to all the feature films across all sections, including logged reviews and forthcoming ones. Though Cannes might be over, we still have unpublished reviews that will be released over the next month.

In Competition:

All We Imagine as Light – [Review]

Anora – [Review]

The Apprentice – [Review]

Beating Hearts – [Review]

Bird – [Review]

Caught by the Tides – [Review]

Emilia Pérez – [Review]

The Girl with the Needle – [Review]

Grand Tour – [Review]

Kinds of Kindness – [Review]

Limonov: The Ballad – [Review]

Marcello Mio – [Review]

Megalopolis – [Review]

The Most Precious of Cargoes – [Review]

Motel Destino – [Review]

Oh, Canada – [Review]

Parthenope – [Review]

The Seed of the Sacred Fig – [Review]

The Shrouds – [Review]

The Substance – [Review]

Three Kilometres to the End of the World – [Review]

Wild Diamond – [Review]

Un Certain Regard:

Armand

Black Dog

The Damned – [Review]

Dog on Trial

Flow

Holy Cow – [Review]

The Kingdom

My Sunshine

Niki

Norah

On Becoming a Guinea Fowl

Santosh

September Says

The Shameless

The Story of Souleymane...

Simply put, Brazilian motels are places for people to have sex. Everyone knows it, no one objects to it. You pay by the hour and the suite is yours––a big bed, porn on-demand, bring red or blue lighting to illuminate the bodies as they merge––to fulfill your carnal needs. As well as a haven for horny people in transit, the motel is a place to return to and consummate a bond that deepens with every sexual act. Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz zooms in on one such location in Motel Destino, his sixth Cannes entry thus far, and second in the Main Competition. The northeastern coast of Ceará is where the film takes place. The cinematic version of Aïnouz’s home province glistens under the scorching sun of the equator, the sea lapping at the sand while crime is still what a lot of people do to get by:...

Mohammad Rasoulof’s “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” has a lot going for it on the way to a potential Palme d’Or win: strong reviews, an anguished political call-out against Iranian oppression, and Rasoulof’s own status as an exile who just fled his home country and was finally able to attend Cannes after all. (Read our interview with the director here.)

On the steps of the Palais for Friday’s premiere, Rasoulof held up photos of two of the actors — Misagh Zare and Soheila Golestani – banned from leaving Iran to attend the festival. He’s already shared how the Islamic Republic has been pressuring his crew into convincing Cannes to drop the film, which charts the breakdown of a family after a Revolutionary Court judge’s gun goes missing, from its lineup. This is Rasoulof’s first time in competition. He previously won prizes in Un Certain...

Editor’s Note: This story was originally published in May 2019 and has been updated several times since.

Deserved or not, French cinema has a reputation for being a little racy. From classics like “Belle de Jour” to controversial modern films like “Blue Is the Warmest Color,” French film has consistently pushed the boundaries of sexuality and sensuality onscreen. So it’s perhaps no surprise that the country’s premier film festival Cannes is such an oasis for sexually explicit films, ones that have frequently generated controversy over its history — especially when these films feature unsimulated sexual acts.

Unsimulated sex onscreen at Cannes dates back to at least 1973, when the film “Thriller — a Cruel Picture,” featuring several acts of hardcore unsimulated porn, played at the festival. In the years afterwards, particularly provocative and avant-garde works like “Sweet Movie” and “The Idiots” caused shock at Cannes by presenting audiences with real, unvarnished sexual content.

Those look for a libido-juicing kick at this year’s Cannes Film Festival surely found it in “Motel Destino,” the sexually explicit erotic thriller from Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz.

Competing in the main competition once again after “Invisible Life” and “Firebrand,” Aïnouz returned to his native Brazil to shoot this perverse psychosexual triangle about the owners of a sex motel along the country’s northeastern Atlantic coast, and the criminal drifter who disrupts their lives. The wild-haired Dayana (Nataly Rocha) operates the Motel Destino with her abusive husband Elias (Fábio Assunção), where she takes up an unhinged affair with Heraldo (Iago Xavier), and amid nonstop sucking and fucking, plot to kill Elias in the grand tradition of the great noirs. Except it’s a noir with a post-Hays Code, liberated twist that has rocked Cannes with its strong, pervasive sexual content, to use the language of the American Motion Picture Association’s ratings board.

One of the favorited Brazilian filmmakers of the Cannes film festival with Madame Satã (2002), O Céu de Suely (2006), and winner A Vida Invisível de Eurídice Gusmão having all premiered at the fest’s Un Certain Regard section. Adding Special Screening selected Mariner Of The Mountains (2021) and last year’s Firebrand, Karim Aïnouz makes a quick Croisette return with Motel Destino. Iago Xavier, Nataly Rocha and Fábio Assunção are in the lead roles here in this film noir.

Gist: The neon-hued Motel Destino, a roadside sex hotel steaming under the burning blue skies of the northeastern coast of Brazil, is run by hot-headed Elias and his restless younger wife Dayana.…...

Destiny Indemnity: Ainouz Retrofits a Noir Classic

“Love, when you get fear in it, it’s not love any more, it’s hate,” wrote James M. Cain in his indelible, eternal noir 1934 novel The Postman Always Rings Twice. Director Karim Aïnouz returns to his native Brazil to deliver a queer take on the text in Motel Destino. Ultimately, set almost entirely within the confines of an isolated ‘love motel’ in Ceara, little does the protagonist realize it’s the kind of place he can check out any time he likes but may not ever leave. A vibrant palette of deep hues courtesy of Dp Hélène Louvart enhances the brooding elements underneath the surface of an idyllic captivity, a sweaty, web gilded with dangerous desires, where death has a better chance of knocking than the postman.…...

Miguel Gomes’ Grand Tour impressed critics on Screen International’s Cannes jury grid while Karim Aïnouz’s Motel Destino saw mixed results.

Gomes’ first Cannes Competition feature scored an average of three after The Telegraph, Justin Chang (La Times), Kong Rithdee (Bangkok Post) and Screen’s own critic gave it ’four stars’ (excellent). The black-and-white feature also received five ‘three stars’ (good), two ‘two stars’ (average), and one ’one star’ (poor) from Nt Binh at France’s Positif.

Set in 1917, Grand Tour stars Goncalo Waddington as a British Empire official in Burma who runs away on his wedding day, only...

Motel Destino, directed by Karim Aïnouz, begins with a burst of energy and intrigue, setting up a promising neo-noir thriller set against the vibrant backdrop of Northeastern Brazil. The film follows Heraldo (Iago Xavier) and his brother, whose favorite pastime of beach outings and capoeira practice belies their darker side as petty criminals indebted to a local madam. Their latest assignment — a high-stakes murder — plunges them into a realm of danger and desperation. However, despite its gripping start and lush cinematography, the film ultimately loses its way, bogged down by a sluggish middle act and narrative inconsistencies.

The brothers are tasked with assassinating a Frenchman in exchange for freedom from their debt. Before the mission, Heraldo decides to unwind at a nightclub, where he meets a mysterious woman who leads him to Motel Destino. After a night of passion, he awakens to find her gone, his money stolen and himself locked in the room.

Cannes film festival

A young man on the run from a mob boss lands an unlikely job in a brutally functional love motel and starts a passionate affair with the manager’s wife

As motel names go, it’s certainly more portentous than “Bates”. But destiny of a sort, shaped by class and money and family abuse, is waiting for the hero and heroine of this movie. This is an erotic noir thriller from Karim Aïnouz; a noir lit mostly by bright sunshine, shot with garish glee by Hélène Louvart. It takes place in a brutally functional love motel near the beach in the north-eastern Brazilian state of Ceará; this is a place from which the couple are fated to be expelled naked, like Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden.

Motel Destino is co-written by Wislan Esmeraldo and Mauricio Zacharias and directed by Aïnouz who had a film...

Nihilism and neon-popped lust collide in Brazilian filmmaker Karim Aïnouz’s Portuguese-language “Motel Destino,” set in a love motel so sordid that lay tourists should best avoid it, and only criminals and castaways are likely to check in. The “Invisible Life” director’s steamy psychosexual thriller set in the sweatiest armpit of the equator speaks melodrama and noir but with a Brazilian accent, Aïnouz returning to his home state of Ceará to shoot on his own turf for the first time in five years. The writer/director lifts from classics such as Lawrence Kasdan’s “Body Heat” and Billy Wilder’s “Double Indemnity” but also from ‘70s Brazilian sex comedies to tell a perverse yarn of extramarital betrayal turned murderous. But while the pre-“Body Heat” noirs he’s channeling could only suggest rather than spell out sex, Aïnouz goes graphic — and relentlessly — in an arthouse-only erotic genre piece that...

Sean Baker’s Anora has stormed to the top of Screen’s Cannes jury while Paolo Sorrentino’s Parthenope divided critics and Christophe Honoré’s Marcello Mio scored the lowest of this year’s festival so far.

Baker’s latest feature received a solid 3.3 - the first film this year to score an average above three stars, overtaking last year’s jury grid winner, Aki Kaurismäki’s Fallen Leaves (3.2).

The US comedy-drama about a sex worker received six scores of four stars (excellent) and four marks of three stars (good). Critics Katja Nicodemus (Germany’s Die Zeit) and Anton Dolin (Meduza) were less convinced,...

French- Algerian actor-director Salim Kechiouche has revealed his next film Wolf Dreams will start shooting in Algeria in early 2025.

The film is an adaptation of Yasmina’s Khadra’s novel of the same name about the journey of a young actor who, deprived of his dreams, ends up joining an extremist group in 1990s Algeria.

It is produced by France’s Thelma Films and La Furie de la Lune with Algeria’s 2Horloges Productions, which notably co-produced The King of Algiers that premiered in Cannes last year.

It marks Kechiouche’s follow up to 2023 debut feature L’Enfant Du Paradis in which he also starred.

Shot between his directing Alicia Vikander in “Firebrand” and Kristen Stewart in “Rosebushpruning,” “Motel Destino,” which bows in Cannes Competition on May 22, can be seen as a return by Brazil’s now most international director to his Brazilian roots.

This axis between international and local, plays out in “Motel Destino” and Aïnouz insists, in now his whole career.

An erotic thriller, “Motel Destino” turns on Dayana, the young wife of a roadside sex hotel owner who seduces on-the-run minor mobster Heraldo for great sex. But she soon conceives the idea of his helping her to kill her terrifyingly abusive older husband.

“I was really interested in a kind of Brazilian interpretation of melodrama and noir cinema, how to take genre, which begins in Hollywood, and appropriate it make it local and ours,” Aïnouz tells Variety.

“Motel Destino” is melodrama “in the sense these characters that are trying to survive, by any means.

Swedish director Ruben Östlund, who won Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or for “The Square” and “Triangle of Sadness,” was among the guests at the German Films and Medienboard Reception on May 18 in the garden of the Mondrian Hotel in Cannes.

Östlund, who is in the Riviera resort to promote his latest production, “The Entertainment System Is Down,” was accompanied by Philippe Bober of Coproduction Office, one of the film’s producers, and Erik Hemmendorf of Plattform Produktion, Östlund’s Swedish producer. (They are pictured above.)

German Films, which is celebrating its 70th anniversary this year, was represented at the event by managing director Simone Baumann, and Medienboard, which is a film fund for the Berlin-Brandenburg region, was represented by its CEO Kirsten Niehuus. Variety was the media partner for the reception.

Among the other guests attending were Karim Aïnouz, director of “Motel Destino,” which plays in this year’s Competition section at Cannes.

German Films celebrated its 70th anniversary at Cannes on Sunday, with its guests looking back but also looking forward.

“It has gotten much better,” Managing Director Simone Baumann told Variety at the event.

“We’ve had Oscar-winning ‘All Quiet on the Western Front,’ Oscar-nominated ‘The Teachers’ Lounge’ [for best international feature], films by Wim Wenders and with Sandra Hüller! Sure, Wim showed a Japanese movie and Sandra a French one [‘Perfect Days’ and ‘Anatomy of a Fall’], but it doesn’t matter: It’s more ‘mixed’ these days and I am proud of it, to be honest.”

At Cannes, 14 German productions and co-productions have been selected this year, including Match Factory’s main competition offerings “Motel Destino” by Karim Aïnouz – who also attended the bash – and Miguel Gomes’ “Grand Tour.” Run Way Pictures is behind Mohammad Rasoulof’s anticipated “The Seed of the Sacred Fig.”

As festivals get “more competitive,” underlines Baumann, international collabs are here to stay.

Brazilian production powerhouse Gullane, which is behind Netflix’s “Senna” and Karim Aïnouz’s Cannes competition title “Motel Destino,” has closed international co-production pacts on new projects from Cao Hamburger (”The Year My Parents Went on Vacation”) and Sandra Kogut (“Three Summers”).

France’s Playtime Group and Portugal’s Ukbar Filmes will co-produce Hamburger’s “School Without Walls.” A Playtime Group company will also handle international sales on the true and inspiring story of Braz Nogueira, principal of a public school in Heliopolis, one of Brazil’s biggest slums.

Kogut will direct “New Cancun,” co-created by and starring Sundance actress winner Regina Casé. The film teams Gullane with Kogut’s regular producer in France, Gloria Films. It’s slated to shoot by the first quarter of 2025.

In the film, Casé plays Madá, who has never dwelled on her family’s tragedy in an environmental disaster. When chosen for a Christmas campaign,...

Brazil’s Spcine, the city of São Paulo’s film-tv body, is launching the third edition of its cash rebate program, which prioritizes international projects looking to shoot in the vibrant city and state.

Municipal support for the program has already been renewed, now totalling US$ 3.8 million, while negotiations with the state of São Paulo are still ongoing, said Luiz Toledo, Spcine director of investments and strategic partnerships.

The incentive program, which offers 20%-30% cash rebates to international films and TV shows – whether fiction, non-fiction, Xr or animation – stipulates a minimum investment of $2 million in the territory and a cap per project of $3 million. Additional bonus percentages are provided to projects that embrace diversity.

“We are beginning to reap tangible results since we launched in 2019,” Toledo noted, estimating that São Paulo has attracted an average of 1,000 projects a year – encompassing films, series, ads and video clips – which invested a combined...

Few companies in the world have had such as impact on their local film industry than Globo Filmes, the feature co-production arm of Brazilian giant Globo, which is Latin America’s biggest communications conglomerate. Over the last 25 years, Globo Filmes has backed more than 500 movies, almost all through co-production.

Those films have collectively sold 260 million cinema theater admissions, an average of over 10 million admissions a year, accounting for more than 70% of Brazilian market share from 1998-2024.

Globo Filmes greenlights more than 20 movies a year, powering up by far the biggest production slate of any company in Brazil, thanks to article 3A of the country’s audiovisual law, which allows it to tap tax incentives for investing in feature films.

Launching in 1998, Globo Filmes helped accelerate the Brazilian film industry’s recovery after President Fernando Collor de Mello shuttered state film agency Embrafilme in 1990, paralyzing production. Twenty-five years later, after a...

With Cannes Film Festival now officially underway and reviews coming in, we’re also getting new looks at some of our most-anticipated premieres. The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão director Karim Aïnouz returns to the festival, just one year after the starry Firebrand, returning to his roots with Motel Destino. Starring Iago Xavier, Nataly Rocha, Fabio Assunção, the stylish first teaser and poster have now arrived for the Cannes competition premiere.

Here’s the synopsis: “The neon-hued Motel Destino, a roadside sex hotel steaming under the burning blue skies of the northeastern coast of Brazil, is run by hot-headed Elias and his restless younger wife Dayana. The unexpected arrival of 21-year-old Heraldo, on the run after a botched hit, disrupts the established order. As the tropical noir plays out, loyalties and desires intertwine to reveal that destiny has its own enigmatic design.”

Watch the teaser below.

The post First Teaser...

Karim Aïnouz is harnessing the sweaty desire of corruption for his latest erotic thriller “Motel Destino.”

The Brazilian filmmaker returns to his native country for the feature, which was shot entirely in Aïnouz’s homeland of Ceará. “Motel Destino” stars Iago Xavier and Nataly Rocha, who were selected from an extensive casting process, and renowned Brazilian actor Fabio Assunção.

Per the official synopsis, neon-hued Motel Destino is a roadside sex hotel under the burning blue skies of the Northeastern coast of Brazil, run by the boorish Elias and his frustrated, beautiful wife Dayana. When 21-year-old Heraldo finds himself at the motel, after messing up a hit and going on the run from both the police and the gang he let down, Dayana finds herself intrigued and lets him stay. As the two navigate a dance of power, desire and liberation, a dangerous plan for freedom emerges. In this tropical noir,...

After four Oscar wins for “All Quiet on the Western Front” last year and the Oscar nomination for “The Teachers’ Lounge” this year, Germany’s film sector seemed to be on the up, but while a government plan to revamp the country’s film funding system is broadly welcomed, its painfully slow progress is also causing some anxiety.

The fact that Cannes’ various sections contain not one feature by a German filmmaker may be seen as a cause for concern, but 13 German productions and co-productions have been selected. This underscores how Germany’s current funding structures nurture co-productions, which in turn benefits local producers. For example, both Karim Aïnouz’s “Motel Destino” and Miguel Gomes’ “Grand Tour” in the Competition section have Germany’s Match Factory Productions as a co-producer.

The Berlinale was a better showcase for German talent, with Matthias Glasner picking up the screenplay award for “Dying,” and...

Cannes isn’t Sundance. The movies on offer aren’t generally genre horror box office surprises or heartwarming indie dramedies, and sometimes they’re not even sure-fire Oscar hopefuls.

But as several sales agents and distributors told us, Cannes is slowly shifting back to being a home for discovery. With the audience now unbothered by subtitles, distributors aren’t just looking for the next “May December” but the next “Anatomy of a Fall.” And when it comes to the package titles on the Marché du Film, buyers are demanding more than the latest Nicolas Cage shark movie.

The sources IndieWire spoke to believe there’s more quality than quantity among this year’s official competition sales titles and the packages being shopped to distributors. And that’s a good thing, even though there are still plenty of hot packages trickling in by the day and buyers already scooping up competition...

Cannes Competition titles Bird by Andrea Arnold and Emila Perez by Jacques Audiard are among the films eligible for the Queer Palm at this year’s festival.

Any title playing in Cannes which deals in anyway with Lgbtqiaa+ themes is eligible for the Queer Palm, whose jury this year will be presided over by Belgian filmmaker Lukas Dhont. Competing films are drawn from all Cannes selections: Official Selection, Un Certain Regard, Critics’ Week, Directors’ Fortnight and Acid.

Bird centres on a 12-year-old who lives with her single father and brother in a squat and seeks attention and adventure elsewhere; among...

Alicia Vikander is unleashing all the fire and the fury as Queen Katherine opposite Jude Law’s King Henry VIII.

The two star in “Firebrand,” which debuted at Cannes 2023 and marked director Karim Aïnouz’s English-language debut film. During war-torn Tudor England, Katherine Parr (Vikander) reluctantly agrees to become the sixth wife of the tyrannical King Henry VIII (Law). Katherine hopes that her fate is different from her predecessors, the queens who were either vanquished, beheaded, or died of non-murder causes.

After their union, Henry appoints Katherine as Regent, the nation’s ruler during his absence when he departs to fight overseas. Yet that power makes Katherine a target as Henry’s courtiers begin suspecting that she’s sympathetic to radical Protestant beliefs. Once Henry returns to England, his courtiers convince him to convict a series of Katherine’s confidantes with treason and burn them at the stake.

Eddie Marsan,...

Meryl Streep is set to receive the highest honor at the Cannes 2024 ceremony.

The Oscar winner has been announced to be feted with the honorary Palme d’Or on the opening night of the 77th annual festival; Variety first reported the news. Streep has not been to Cannes in exactly 35 years, since winning best actress for 1989’s “Evil Angels a Cry in the Dark” directed by Fred Schepisi.

Michael Douglas received the opening ceremony honorary Palme d’Or award in 2023.

Streep’s career has ranged from Academy Award-nominated turns in dramas such as “Sophie’s Choice” to musicals like “Into the Woods.” Streep’s rom-com efforts have marked collaborations with Nancy Meyers and other iconic filmmakers. She most recently starred in Hulu series “Only Murders in the Building,” following her former “Big Little Lies” TV role. Streep was recently honored by the Academy Museum Gala in 2023 for her career achievements.

As previously announced,...

The 2024 Cannes Film Festival has announced its all-star lineup of jurors to decide this year’s Palme d’Or.

As previously announced, “Barbie” director Greta Gerwig will serve as jury president. Fellow recent Oscar nominee Lily Gladstone is part of the jury, as well as writer/director J.A. Bayona, Eva Green, Omar Sy, Pierfrancisco Favino, director Kore-eda Hirokazu, screenwriter Nadine Labaki, and screenwriter and photographer Ebru Ceylan.

The 2024 Cannes Film Festival will take place May 14-25. The jury will have the honor of awarding the Palme d’Or to one of the 22 films in competition, with contenders including Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis,” Sean Baker’s “Anora,” David Cronenberg’s “The Shrouds,” Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Kinds of Kindness,” and Paul Schrader’s “Oh, Canada.”

New films from Paolo Sorrentino (“Parthenope”), Mohammad Rasoulof (“The Seed of the Sacred Fig”), Karim Aïnouz (“Motel Destino”), and Andrea Arnold (“Bird”) are also debuting in competition.

The full Cannes Film Festival competition jury has been revealed.

Joining president Greta Gerwig to award this year’s Palme d’Or will be “Killers of the Flower Moon” Oscar nominee Lily Gladstone; “The Three Musketeers” star Eva Green; “Lupin” lead Omar Sy; Ebru Ceylan, who co-wrote the 2014 Palme d’Or winner “Winter Sleep”; director Nadine Labaki, whose “Capernaum” won the Cannes jury prize in 2018; director Juan Antonio Bayona, whose latest film “Society of the Snow” was Oscar-nominated for best international feature; Italian actor Pierfrancesco Favino, who will next appear in Pablo Larraìn’s “Maria” alongside Angelina Jolie; and director Kore-eda Hirokazu, director of the 2018 Palme d’Or winner “Shoplifters.”

The competition lineup for the upcoming festival includes “All We Imagine as Light” by Payal Kapadia; Sean Baker’s “Anora”; Donald Trump biopic “The Apprentice” from Ali Abbasi; Andrea Arnold’s “Bird,” starring Barry Keoghan and Franz Rogowski; “Caught by the Tides...