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The cast of “Godzilla Minus Zero” brought the glow of a Hollywood standing ovation to the 39th Tokyo International Film Festival on Sunday, two days before Yamazaki Takashi’s follow-up to his Oscar-winning “Godzilla Minus One” opens in Japan. Kamiki Ryunosuke, who returns as lead character Shikishima Koichi, and Hamabe Minami, who reprises the role of […]
Chinese painter and filmmaker Qiu Jiongjiong began shaping his new film during the pandemic. With the world suddenly forced to pause, he tells Variety, people felt an urgent desire to return to everyday life and to gather around a table. That idea became the starting point for “Fuxi: Four Tales of Feasting,” which is competing […]
Milcho Manchevski, the North Macedonian director whose 1994 debut “Before the Rain” won Venice’s Golden Lion and earned an Oscar nomination, is back in competition at the Tokyo International Film Festival with “Sister Brother Manhole Cover,” a project stalled for years after he accused his country’s film agency of corruption. The dark comedy centers on […]
Comic book writer and screenwriter Frank Miller – whose work includes “300,” “Sin City” and “Batman: The Dark Knight Returns” – returned this week to Lucca Comics and Games, an event that spans the gamut of geek culture and pop entertainment. As well as speaking at the event, to coincide with the 40th anniversary of […]
Indonesian filmmaker Ariani Darmawan stepped away from directing for years to raise a family. Her first feature, “Jani Be Good,” which is playing in the Tokyo International Film Festival’s Asian Future competition, turns that experience into a portrait of four women across three generations. “I stopped making films for over 10 years because I was […]
SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for the finale of “Celebrity Traitors” Season 2, now streaming on BBC iPlayer. There’s no question Maya Jama carried this season of “The Celebrity Traitors.” As the only original Traitor to make it to the final episode, the “Love Island” host successfully went undetected for five weeks and recruited […]
James Longley’s “Mohabat” won the Opus Bonum section at Ji.hlava Documentary Film Festival on Saturday. Produced by Mohammad Sharif Hotak, Longley and Oscar-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney, it follows a 12-year-old boy Mohabat, whose father dies in a drone strike. Left without parental care, he’s taken to a city orphanage. “By patiently observing the boy’s interactions […]
Being a teenager is hard enough but when you’re a demigod, things get genuinely complicated. These complications along with titanic battles are at the heart of Season 3 of “Percy Jackson and the Olympians,” due to drop on Disney+ in November. The cast and showrunners spoke to Variety at Lucca Comics. Walker Scobell, who plays […]
Singaporean filmmaker Ang Geck Geck Priscilla’s debut feature “Ah Girl” won best film in the Asian Feature Film Competition at the Singapore International Film Festival’s Silver Screen Awards on Saturday. The film follows a seven-year-old girl in 1990s Singapore whose parents have separated. Ang workshopped the project at the festival’s Southeast Asian Film Lab back […]
Japan’s production committee system, in which a group of companies jointly finance a film and share its rights, has helped spread risk across the industry. But it can also cap budgets at what the industry itself can raise, make it harder for overseas investors to take part and slow decisions when every rights holder must […]
The Tokyo International Film Festival’s Tokyo Talk program presented a masterclass with Zeze Takahisa, director of the festival’s opening film, “Sukiyaki.” Held before a full-house crowd at Tokyo Midtown Hibiya, the talk focused on Zeze’s early “pink” (softcore porn) and indie films, followed by questions about his more recent work. Born in 1960 in Oita […]
Indian filmmaker Sanjay Gupta, whose credits include the crime thriller “Kaante,” the gangster saga “Shootout at Wadala” and the Hrithik Roshan-starring “Kaabil,” has died following a fall at his Mumbai residence on Oct. 30. He was 59, according to the Press Trust of India. Director Milap Zaveri, a longtime friend of Gupta who worked on […]
JioStar, the Indian media giant backed by Reliance Industries, grew revenue from operations 10.1% year-on-year to INR68.1 billion ($710 million) in the July–September quarter despite a weak advertising market. Profit after tax fell 13.2% to INR11.5 billion ($120 million). Former India cricket captain Sourav Ganguly hosted the first-ever “Bigg Boss Bangla,” which launched this quarter […]
Known for her dark relationship dramas, including the 2017 multiple-award-winner “Dear Etranger,” Mishima Yukiko has taken a different approach with her latest film, “Two Cigarettes, Three Nights,” which is in competition at the 39th Tokyo International Film Festival. Based on a 2014 novel by Chihaya Akane, it stars Matsuoka Mayu as Kanna, a picture book […]
A new Japanese anime award planned for 2027 should put the people who make anime in the spotlight, industry leaders said at TIFFCOM, the market of the Tokyo International Film Festival. The session was moderated by Fujitsu Ryota, programming advisor for the festival’s animation section. Shimizu Akira, a director of the Association of Japanese Animations […]
Ranbir Kapoor and Yash, stars of the epic adaptation “Ramayana: Rise of a Legend,” opened Gold House’s largest Gold Diwali to date at The Majestic Downtown in Los Angeles, alongside filmmakers Nitesh Tiwari and Namit Malhotra, a week before the film’s release. Gold House, which works to back and celebrate the Asian Pacific community, staged […]
Georgian filmmaker Levan Koguashvili’s “Guria” was named best film at the 19th Asia Pacific Screen Awards, handed out Oct. 30 at The Star Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia. Koguashvili shared the prize with fellow producers Olena Yershova and Boris Frumin. The film was made across seven countries: Georgia, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Bulgaria, Türkiye, Norway and Saudi […]
Keanu Reeves joined Japanese stop-motion feature “Hidari” after watching the project’s pilot film, with his team getting back to the filmmakers about a week after the screening was arranged to set up a Zoom call, director Kawamura Masashi said at the Tokyo International Film Festival, where he also updated the film’s fundraising push. Kawamura, who […]
Countries have been trying to get a global agreement to halt nature decline back on track.
Vietnamese-American filmmaker, writer, feminist and post-colonial theorist Trinh T. Minh-ha is readying her upcoming film “The Undying Desert.” “I’ve just finished editing it,” she told Variety at Ji.hlava Documentary Film Festival, where she’s celebrating a retrospective. “I’ve made films in Africa, China, Vietnam and Japan, and people would ask: ‘When are you going to make […]
![Maya Jama on That Shocking ‘Celebrity Traitors’ Finale, [SPOILER]’s Betrayal and ‘Heated’ Last Roundtable: ‘My Heart Was Jumping Out of My Chest’](https://variety.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/TITLEThe-Celebrity-Traitors-S2EP-NUMBERGeneric-1000.jpg)
