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Beloved filmmaker and cineaste directed nine features, a TV movie, four TV series, two documentaries, and four shorts.

Agustí Villaronga, one of the foremost Spanish auteurs of recent decades whose credits include Black Bread and The Sea, died in Barcelona on Sunday (January 22). He was 69 and had cancer.

Born in 1953 in Mallorca, Villaronga directed nine features, a TV movie, four TV series, two documentaries, and four shorts.

From a radical auteur approach demonstrating a keen insight into human pain and cruelty, Villaronga threaded his artistic commitment with a progressive exploration of different genres and broader audiences.

Villaronga’s horror debut...

Creative Media Solutions, which has its headquarters in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, and a base in Jordan, is prepping two new feature films – “Montreal” and “Sink.”

Jordanian feature film “Montreal” will be directed by Jordanian-Palestinian helmer Ameen Nayfeh, whose debut feature “200 Meters,” starring Ali Suliman, about a Palestinian family separated by the Israeli wall, won the Audience Award at the 2020 Venice Film Festival.

The pic is a coming-of-age tale about a 12-year-old boy who moves to Jordan from abroad and discovers a crusader castle, called Montreal.

Nayfeh explains to Variety: “The film is about a young boy who visits a small village in Jordan with his father and is left behind there. Like all kids he’s into video games, social media, gadgets and technology, and suddenly finds himself stuck in this quiet village where nothing happens. But the village has a crusader castle, which is a big tourism attraction,...

In what is expected to be a surefire hit, Buendia Estudios revealed an upcoming TV series adaptation of Antonio Gala’s erotic novel, “La Pasion Turca.” The popular novel was last adapted into a hit feature film in 1994 with the late Vicente Aranda directing and Andres Vicente Gomez of Lolafilms producing. It starred singer-actress Ana Belen in what is considered her most successful film.

Buendia Estudios’ director general Ignacio Corrales and editorial director Sonia Martínez jointly announced the new project at the 2nd edition of the Iberseries & Platino Industria television event in Madrid.

The new six-episode series set to air on Spanish free-to-air channel Antena 3 and streamer AtresPlayer Premium will start shooting by the end of October in Turkey for seven weeks before moving to Madrid. The cast will be made up of Spanish, Turkish and Italian talent.

Story revolves around Olivia, a Spanish Fine Arts teacher who wakes...

Lola Arabia and Dubai’s Charisma Group are readying Agustí Villaronga’s “Arabian Aroma” and Pau Miró’s “Lost Symphony,” the first two titles in a 12-pic production alliance unveiled during the Berlin. Festival

Both movies are in pre-production, budgeted around 6 million and feature women “who passionately set themselves on a mission,” the partners announced. The films will be in English and Arabic, and are scheduled to roll around fall 2022. They target both international audiences and, as their local market, the Gulf states.

Reteaming Lola Arabia head Andrés Vicente Gómez and the two main creatives behind “Born a King,” a big period drama which scored heavily at Saudi Arabian cinema theaters, “Arabian Aroma” is penned by British scriptwriter Henry Fitzherbert.

It turns on Virginia, a British perfumer in her 70s who has lost her sense of smell. She sets out with her assistant, Basmah, a twentysomething Saudi, on a quest...

Lola Arabia, the United Arab Emirates label of Oscar-winning Spanish producer Andrés Vicente Gómez (“Belle Epoque”), has struck a 12-movie co-production deal with Dubai-based Charisma Group.

The alliance will take in a range of titles, from $2 million-budgeted contemporary comedies to banner productions budgeted at $40 million, revolving around contemporary and historic stories of West Asia.

The partners aim to produce an average of four films a year, said Charisma Group co-president Ayham Al Ziyoud.

Development has begun on the whole slate. “Although in principle we plan projects with modest budgets, these will be increased in the following year once we find the rights partners outside the Gulf States,” Gómez said.

The movies are created, developed and produced with the Saudi and broader regional audience in mind. “The language is Arabic and the stories, topics and treatments are rooted in our region. When the story requires it, we will also feature international...

Key members of the team that shepherded hit biopic “Born a King,” about Prince Faisal of Saudi Arabia, talked about the experience of “witnessing the birth of a film industry” in Saudi, as Spanish director Agustí Villaronga put it, during a Cannes Virtual Market panel. They also announced that they will be making a sequel.

“Born a King” is a Spain-u.K. co-production between Andrés Vicente Gómez’ Latido Films and London-based Celtic Films run by producer Stuart Sutherland (“Killing Eve”) who described the experience of shooting the roughly $21 million feature – which went into production prior to December 2017 when Saudi Arabia lifted its 35-year ban on cinemas – as “really the beginning of an evolution.”

“We are getting in there on the ground level, and we are helping formulate how films are done,” Sutherland said “And learning a lot from them as well,” he added.

Since then, Sutherland recently went back to...

Saudi company Al Maha Al Arab on board as financier.

Andrés Vicente Gómez, the veteran Spanish Oscar-winning producer of Belle Epoque whose historical epic Born A King is screening in the Marche du Film online, is busy working on upcoming projects.

Lolafilms head Gómez is looking to finish production on Champions, a Saudi remake of the 2018 Spanish hit Campeones, after it was shut down in Jeddah on March 17 due to the pandemic with several days of shooting left to go.

Saudi company Al Maha Al Arab, which is run by Prince Turki Al Faisal Al Saud, son to the late King Faisal,...

Buenos Aires — Bringing onto the market what looks like by far the biggest new movie at Ventana Sur, Latido Films has acquired international sales rights to Agustí Villaronga’s “Born a King,” starring Ed Skrein, fresh off his star-turn in “Midway.”

Latido Films’ director Antonio Saura and Juan Torres, intl. sales head, will introduce “Born a King” – also starring Hermione Cornfield (“Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation”) and marking a return to production after an eight-year hiatus of Andrés Vicente Gómez – to select buyers at Ventana Sur, the Cannes-Incaa Latin American market which kicks off Monday in Buenos Aires.

A U.K.-Spanish co-production between London’s Celtic Films, and Spain’s Arena Audiovisual that yokes the craft of both countries’ top tech pool, “Born a King” is budgeted at a declared €19 million ($21 million).

That shows in the heavy VFX work recreating a bustling yet gray 1919 London and a spectacular battle scene at the film’s get-go,...

Madrid — Four years in the making, Agustí Villaronga’s “Born a King,” starring Ed Skrein (“Deadpool”) and Hermione Cornfield (“Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation”) and produced by Andrés Vicente Gómez, has caught box office fire in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

Released wide on Sept. 26, the true events-based historical drama – framing the coming of age of Prince Faisal of Saudi Arabia, against the background of a diplomatic mission he led to London in 1919 at the tender age of 13 – has earned an exceptional first-four-day $972, 962 in UAE, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, according to figures from its distributor, Dubai’s-based Vox Film Distribution.

The lion’s share of that was made in UAE, where it grossed $547,725.

However execrating for an independent film, the results are not totally surprising. “Born a King” is a Spain-u.K. production, whose producers, director and crew pack huge experience: Gómez, producer of Fernando Trueba’s...

Antonio Méndez Esparza’s “Que nadie duerma,” Fernando Franco’s “La consagración de la primavera” and Agustí Villaronga’s “3.000 obstáculos” figure among the seven projects to be pitched at Paris’ Small Is Biutiful forum.

The closing event for the alternative Spanish film festival Dífferent 12!, Small Is Biutiful takes place June 26, bringing together French distributors and sales executives around a selection of Spanish feature projects seeking partners.

Backed by the Cannes Film Market, Different! is organised by Espagnolas en Paris and the Ile-de-France Film Commission.

Past projects presented at Small Is Biutiful take in Oliver Laxe’s “Mimosas,” which won Cannes 2016 Critics’ Week; Carlos Vermut’s “Magical Girl,” San Sebastián’s top Golden Shell Award in 2014, and Arantxa Echevarría’s “Carmen & Lola,” winner of breakout director and supporting actress nods at February’s Goya Awards, as well as a Cannes Directors’ Fortnight contender.

“Que nadie duerma” is produced by Pedro Hernández...

Barcelona – Agustina Macri’s feature debut “Soledad” (Solitude) won Best Feature award at the 3rd Barcelona Film Festival, which ran April 22-30.

Produced by Italy’s 39Films and Argentina’s Cinema 7 Films, and inspired by true events, the film follows titular Soledad Rosas who moved to Italy in 1997 to a squatters community. There she met a militant anarchist with whom she had a brief and intense love affair. A year later the couple was arrested and accused of terroristic acts meant to halt the construction of a railway.

The screenplay was penned by Paolo Logli and Macri –the daughter of Argentine president Mauricio Macri. “Soledad” world-premiered at the Warsaw Film Festival and will be released in Argentina and Italy through Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures and Walt Disney Company Italia respectively.

The Acec Critic’s Award went to another debut, this time from actress-turned-director Laura Jou. Produced by longtime...

No, but Netflix can. Our streaming overlords buy themselves some Orson Welles.

Movies need money. They can win hearts, minds and lay the ground for thousands of little websites like this one to talk about them, but ultimately they need someone with bags of cash behind the scenes. Netflix, proud owner of one thousand hours of original content among other things, just dumped some of their cash bags on a movie called The Other Side of the Wind. It was filmed by Orson Welles in the early ’70s, stared Susan Strasberg, John Huston and Peter Bogdanovich, and was never fully edited or released to a general audience.

Welles’ movie had been initially funded by a mysterious Spanish producer (rumored to be Andrés Vicente Gómez) who, in turn, embezzled the money. It was then funded by Mehdi Bushehri, brother of the Iranian Shah, whose assets were seized after the Shah was overthrown in the Iranian Revolution. Then...

Dash Boutique is blind to the needs of the visually impaired — at least, that’s the claim made by a lawsuit filed against the boutique chain founded by the “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” family. In the suit filed last week in federal court in Florida, Andres Gomez claims that the website for the chain, which offers merchandise for sale, discriminates against the visually impaired. “This case arises out of the fact that Defendant Dash Boutique, Inc., has operated its business in a manner and way that completely excludes individuals with disabilities who are visually impaired from enjoying and accessing the.

The Kardashian's Dash store refuses to do business with the blind ... treating them as second-class citizens ... so claims a blind man who's suing the joint. Andres Gomez says he's legally blind and uses screen reader software to access the Internet. But the software continually came up empty when he tried browsing Dash store's website. He says the site contains barriers and Dash is well aware but refuses to fix it. Kim, Khloe and Kourtney are...

Beijing – Canadian director Richie Mehta’s Siddarth won the best feature film category in the Tiantan awards at the close of the Beijing International Film Festival, while Wong Kar Wai’s The Grandmaster won in three other categories. Mehta's India-set drama, about a poor Delhi street merchant who travels across India in search of his missing son, bowed in Venice and had its North American premiere in Toronto. Photos: Beijing Film Fest Brings Out Chinese, Hollywood Stars The jury that decided the awards was headed by Hong Kong movie legend John Woo and included Spanish producer Andres Vicente Gomez, Chinese directors Ning

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Richie Mehta’s Siddharth was awarded best film at the close of the Beijing International Film Festival (Bjiff), while Wong Kar Wai’s The Grandmaster picked up three prizes including best director.

The Grandmaster also scooped best actress for Zhang Ziyi and best cinematography for Philippe Le Sourd at the festival’s Tiantan Awards on Wednesday night. Wong Kar Wai and Zhang both won prizes for the film in the same categories at the recent Asian Film Awards in Macau.

Best actor at Beijing’s Tiantan Awards went to Guillaume Gouix for French director Sylvain Chomet’s Attila Marcel, which also won best music. Korean director Lee Joon-ik’s Hope won best supporting actress for the performance of child actor Lee Re. Alan Rickman won best supporting actor for his role in Patrice Leconte’s A Promise.

Peter Ho-sun Chan’s American Dreams In China won best screenplay (Zhou Zhiyong, Zhang Ji and...

Rajkumar Hirani has been invited by the Beijing International Film Festival 2014 to be part of the jury. The director had gained huge fame in China with his film 3 Idiots. I was the first film to do huge business and become a household name. Mr. Hirani is the first Bollywood personality who has been invited by the Bjiff.

The director will be sharing the jury table with some of the big names from the film industry including China’s Lu Chuan, Ireland’s Jim Sheridan, France’s Philippe Muyl, Spanish producer Andrés Vicente Gómez and Italian actress Maria Grazia Cucinotta.

The 4th Bjiff will be held between, April 16th to 23th 2014.

Rajkumar Hirani has been invited by the Beijing International Film Festival is a post from: BollySpice

The post Rajkumar Hirani has been invited by the Beijing International Film Festival appeared first on BollySpice.

Known for his commercial yet out of the box films, Rajkumar Hirani is one of the most respected filmmaker amidst the Bollywood fraternity and now the director has been presented with an invite to attend the Beijing International Film Festival-2014. Moreover, he has also been asked to be a part of the jury. Rajkumar Hirani is first Bollywood personality who has been invited by the Bjiff. The director gained fame in China with his film 3 Idiots since it was the first Indian film to do huge business and went to become a household name. The director will be sharing the jury table with some of the big names from the film industry including China's Lu Chuan, Ireland's Jim Sheridan, France's Philippe Muyl, Spanish producer Andres Vicente Gomez and Italian actress Maria Grazia Cucinotta. The 4th Bjiff will be held between, April 16 to 23 2014.

Rajkumar Hirani

Rajkumar Hirani will be part of the 7-member Tiantan Award International Jury at the 4th edition of Beijing International Film Festival. Richie Mehta’s Siddharth is one among the fifteen films in competition for the Tiantan Award.

The Beijing International Film Festival will be held from April 16-23, 2014.

Director of three critically acclaimed features- Munna Bhai Mbbs, Lage Raho Munna Bhai and 3 Idiots- Rajkumar Hirani is the only Indian on the jury. His film 3 Idiots, featuring Aamir Khan, was a major commercial success at the Chinese box-office. Besides, it was screened at the inaugural edition of the Beijing International Film Festival in 2011.

Headed by Hong Kong filmmaker John Woo, the international jury at the festival comprises of Spanish producer Andrés Vicente Gómez; Irish director, scriptwriter and producer Jim Sheridan; Chinese director, scriptwriter and executive producer Lu Chuan; Italian actress Maria Grazia Cucinotta; and French director, scriptwriter and producer Philippe Muyl.

Fxx star W. Kamau Bell, Tanner Colby, Lizz Winstead, and Carlos Andres Gomez discussed the social divide between black and white Americans with Melissa Harris-Perry on MSNBC, after a new Reuters poll indicated that 40% of white Americans don't have a friend of another race. Harris-Perry said, "In his first month as attorney general, Eric Holder famously declared that America is a nation of cowards on matter of race because we avoid candid discussions about racial issues. Holder suggested this cowardice was rooted in our lack of sustained meaningful friendships across the racial divide. Holder said, "As a nation we've done a pretty good job in melding the races in the workplace. we work with one another, we lunch...

To call abortion a hot-button issue is a bit of an understatement. No matter which side of the fence you fall on pertaining to the topic, it's bound to be mired in controversy. Much like this latest flick will be.

According to Screen Daily Chilean director Francesc Morales (Humanimal) is currently shooting his second feature, Apio Verde, a psychological thriller which "starts as a social drama and ends as a horror film."

The movie is about consequences of Chile being one of the ten countries in the world where therapeutic abortion is illegal. Catherine Mazoyer stars in "the story of a young woman waiting to give birth to a son with a terminal disease." The cast also features Cristian Gajardo, Catalina Aguayo, Andres Gomez, Teresita Reyes, Carolina Paulsen, Sonia Mena, Ramon Llao, Jenny Cavallo, Pamela Leiva, Inigo Urrutia, and Gregory Cohen.

Morales, the film’s director and screenwriter, said: "This...

Chilean director Francesc Morales (Humanimal) is currently shooting his second feature Apio Verde, a psychological thriller that's destined to be controversial. Screen Daily reports that the movie is about consequences of Chile being one of the ten countries in the world where therapeutic abortion is illegal the director says the story "starts as a social drama and ends as a horror film." Catherine Mazoyer stars in "the story of a young woman waiting to give birth to a son with a terminal disease." The cast also features Cristian Gajardo, Catalina Aguayo, Andres Gomez, Teresita Reyes, Carolina Paulsen, Sonia Mena, Ramon Llao, Jenny Cavallo, Pamela Leiva, Inigo Urrutia and Gregory Cohen. The shoot, on location in Santiago and Valparaiso, will wrap in mid-December. The team aims to have the film showing at festivals in 2012 and a rough cut is being introduced at Ventana Sur this week.

It’s not actually an update, but it’s always good time to talk about Orson Welles, so let’s get started!

You probably already know that there’s an unfinished Welles’ movie, or a masterpiece, that will finally see a theatrical release nearly four decades later.

Titled The Other Side of the Wind, the movie portrays ‘the last hours of an ageing film director attempting to revive his career by making a trippy movie filled with sex and violence…’

Welles started shooting the film in 1972 with John Huston as the star. Apparently, he has told Huston that the movie is: “…about a bastard director… full of himself, who catches people and creates and destroys them. It’s about us, John.”

The film also starred Peter Bogdanovich, Susan Strasberg and had appearances by Dennis Hopper, Paul Mazursky, Henry Jaglom and Claude Chabrol. But then, the unedited film has been hidden away,...

The travails of the actor, writer and director Orson Welles are so well known that they are emblazoned on the psyche of movie makers world-wide as a cautionary tale about the penury that industry can inflict upon the conceits of uncompromised auteurism. Welles’ many, ultimately fruitless, battles with various actors, studios, producers and distributors have been retold with such frequency- particularly in their parallels with modern renegades of cinema – that they have almost become cliché; the legends surrounding his battles with money men and legal team are now the stuff of legend.

The number of projects seemingly unfinished or abandon is impressive in a way, seemingly paralleled the peaks and troughs of a manic depressive personality, though more often, the failure of much of his work to reach fruition was a combination of financial mismanagement and arbitrary personal misfortune.

Among the distinguished list of projects unfinished in ells lifetime were:...

The final movie shot by the legendary Orson Welles will finally be completed after nearly 40 years, according to a report in Bleeding Cool, by way of The Observer.

The Other Side Of The Wind, a chronicle of the last hours of an aging film director played by the great John Huston, has been languishing unedited in various states of legal limbo since filming was completed in 1972. Now, according to Los Angeles lawyer Kenneth Sidle:

“We are in negotiations for the picture, which would lead to the finishing and public exhibition. Hopefully within the next few weeks we will know.”

According to Huston’s actor son Danny (Marie Antoinette, Children of Men), the footage is “absolutely fascinating.” Huston has stated that Welles gave “extensive editing notes” to actor and director (and Welles confidant) Peter Bogdanovich, who appeared in the film and is involved with its restoration and eventual exhibition.

More on...

The Other Side of the Wind, shot in 1972, could now see the light of day

An unfinished "masterpiece" filmed by Orson Welles nearly four decades ago is finally to reach the screen.

The Other Side of the Wind portrays the last hours of an ageing film director. Welles is said to have told John Huston, who plays the lead role: "It's about a bastard director… full of himself, who catches people and creates and destroys them. It's about us, John."

The unedited film has been hidden away in a vault until now amid doubts that it could ever be shown.

Rumours of its release have surfaced repeatedly since it was shot in 1972, but an ownership dispute has always scuppered any plans. However, a Los Angeles lawyer told the Observer last week that the film will finally be seen.

Kenneth Sidle, a lawyer involved in the dispute over rights to the film,...

Madrid -- When the 13th Malaga Spanish Film Festival kicks off Saturday it signals the beginning of a new film season for Spain -- as the festival packs a powerful punch of premieres from edgy first-time directors and seasoned veterans in its lineup.

Spain's main showcase for homegrown talent, Malaga has firmly established itself as the debut of most of the local industry's solid product.

A parade of Spanish industry faces accompanies such a lineup every year and this year is no different. Aside from Culture Minister Angeles Gonzalez-Sinde and Film Institute director Ignasi Guardans, director Carlos Saura, Nacho Velillo and Juana Macias, producer Andres Vicente Gomez, actors Lorenzo Balducci and Javier Camara, among others, are expected.

And that's just the first weekend.

This year's official section is bookended by two of Spain's most international auteurs: Carlos Saura with his Mozart-driven "I, Don Giovanni" and Julio Medem with the sexy "Room in Rome.

Madrid -- Carlos Saura's "I, Don Giovanni" will open the official section at the 13th Malaga Spanish Film Festival, organizers announced Tuesday.

Produced by Andres Vicente Gomez, the film stars Lorenzo Balducci, Lino Guanciale and Tobias Moretti in an historic drama set in Vienna and focused on Mozart and librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte, a priest exiled from Venice for lascivious behavior, as they work together on the "Don Giovanni" opera.

Saura's film, which ran in Toronto last year, will run out of competition at the festival, which runs April 17-24 on Spain's Mediterranean Costa del Sol.

Torrente, an unapologetic dark comedy from Spain about a corrupt cop, is getting the remake treatment from New Line Cinema. Mike Bender and Doug Chernack have been brought on board to write the American version, which is being produced by Benderspink. Torrente follows the exploits of Jose Lius Torrente, a Bad Santa of the police force, a poster child for police corruption who is a lazy, rude, despicable drunkard, caring only about protecting and serving himself. Despite that, he still managed to get the job done. The movies were written by, directed by and starred Santiago Segura, and produced by Andres Vicente Gomez, who exec produced the Academy Award-winning Belle Epoque.