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Exclusive: Breaking Glass Pictures has acquired North American rights to the mystery thriller and noir feature Naples in Veils from writer/director Ferzan Ozpetek. The film will get a theatrical release in the first half of 2019 in English with Italian subtitles, followed by a DVD/VOD release.

The film held its world premiere at the Moscow Film Festival where it took home the Best Actress Prize for star Giovanna Mezzogiorno, and then played multiple festivals after that. It was scripted by Gianni Romoli, Balia Santella, and Ozpetek and produced by Tilde Corsi and Gianni Romoli with the collaboration of the Foundation Film Commission of the Region of Campania and the support of The Region of Lazio.

The storyline: A woman is at a party and meets a confident and attractive young man, and they spend the night together. Little does she know, however,...

A sun-soaked, jewel-toned dramedy of long-buried secrets and upturned tradition set amidst a sprawling family pasta empire in southern Italy, the 2010 film Loose Cannons (getting a Stateside VOD release today thanks to Focus Features) bears more similarities to a longform Bertolli ad than it does to most American gay films.

And this is a good thing.

Kicking off with a flashback of a hysterical woman in a wedding dress running into weathered ruins to shoot herself in front of an achingly handsome young man in an impeccably-tailored suit - and then quickly jumping to the present, where young, beautiful people zoom around in sports cars while large, pasta-obsessed families sit around huge tables and talk with their hands, Loose Cannons seems right out of the gate to be the most quentessentially Italian movie since Fellini hung up his nun's habit and clown shoes.

But soon enough the story makes a...

The National Geographic channel will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic with two new specials. "Save the Titanic with Bob Ballard" and "Titanic-The Final Word with James Cameron."

At the Winter Press Tour in Pasadena, CA, we got a quick look at both specials and heard from Robert Ballard, who was the man who not only discovered the wreck of the Titanic, but who's book inspired James Cameron to film "Titanic."

Ballard talked about the first moment he saw the Titanic, comparing it to Gettysburg, where his family fought on both sides. He's in the middle of creating an underwater museum, and explained that, because of where the ship lies, it's well preserved. "The Turkish baths are amazing," he says, explaining that parts of the ship that are further back are in semi-perfect condition.

The most touching moment of the panel was when he discussed the remains that are still there.

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From Turkish versions of Tarzan and Dracula to wintry weepies, via (whisper it) Midnight Express, Fiachra Gibbons picks out the best films shot in Istanbul

• As featured in our Istanbul city guide

From Russia with Love, Terence Young, 1963

"They dance for him, they yearn for him, they die for him …" From Russia with Love is not only arguably the best of the Bond films, it set the template for all that followed, right down to the corny one-liners. This is Tatiana, the Russian double-agent love interest succumbing to Sean Connery's charms: "The mechanism is… Oh James… Will you make love to me all the time in England?" "Day and night, darling… Go on about the mechanism…" The film was shot when the city's population was less than two million (it has mushroomed to more than 13 million today), and it's a magic carpet ride back to a time when Istanbul teemed with hamals,...

Ferzan Özpetek, a Turkish director trained and living in Italy, made his impressive debut in 1997 with Hamam, in which a handsome middle-class Italian and his pretty wife inherit an old Turkish bathhouse in Istanbul that spectacularly transforms their lives. His elegant, deeply romantic films since then have mostly been set in Rome and evoked comparison with Pedro Almodóvar. But his new one, Loose Cannons, takes place in Lecce, the capital of Puglia, a southern, culturally conservative city in the heel of Italy. Tommaso, an ambitious would-be novelist long absent in Rome, returns to his wealthy family determined to break the news that he is gay. Unfortunately at the dinner party he's chosen for his bombshell, his brother Antonio, who manages the family's world-renowned pasta factory, gets in first to announce his gayness. Dad has a heart attack, Antonio is banished, and Tommaso has to take over the firm.

It's overlong...