Variety

‘My Undesirable Friends: Part II – Exile’ Review: An Enormous, Riveting Documentary Sequel Following Reporters on the Run

Following her mammoth five-hour odyssey “My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow,” Julia Loktev’s sequel remains just as riveting, if not more so, in its continued depiction of journalists escaping the Russian government. Its predecessor’s endpoint (one Loktev could not have foreseen when she began shooting on her iPhone X) was the […]

entertainment  Sep 4, 2026

Hollywood Reporter

‘My Undesirable Friends: Part II — Exile’ Review: War Rages On, as Does the Journalistic Resistance, in an Essential Chronicle of Reporters Under Fire

Director Julia Loktev follows a handful of independent Russian journalists forced to flee their country after the invasion of Ukraine in this follow-up to last year's 'Part I.'

entertainment  Sep 4, 2026

Variety

Manisha Koirala Attached to Star in ‘Cowgirls & Indians,’ Set for November Texas Shoot (EXCLUSIVE)

Manisha Koirala is attached to star in “Cowgirls & Indians,” an indie feature that will start shooting in November around Austin, Texas, and nearby locations. The film was formerly titled “Cowboys & Indians.” Tejal Desai, a Nicholl Fellow, wrote and is directing the film, expanding on her award-winning short “Cowboys and Hindus.” The story follows […]

entertainment  Sep 4, 2026

The Guardian Culture

Founding editor of Ms magazine on Gloria Steinem: ‘The least egomaniacal person’

Letty Cottin Pogrebin says Steinem taught the younger feminist how to change a ‘man’s world’ not adjust to itGloria Steinem, groundbreaking feminist campaigner, dies aged 92‘We badly need to raise our boys more like our girls’: Gloria Steinem – a life in quotesWhen an up and coming feminist author and journalist bumped into Gloria Steinem at a women’s conference in Washington DC in 1971 she was awed but also realized she had been on the wrong track by “asking women to adjust” to “a man’s world”

entertainment  Sep 4, 2026

The Guardian Culture

Kevin Powers: ‘I was ready to abandon Infinite Jest a thousand times’

The American author on falling in love with The Great Gatsby, being inspired by Dylan Thomas – and the memoir of a canoe trip in Texas he comes back toMy earliest reading memoryThe deaths of Old Dan and Little Ann in Wilson Rawls’s Where the Red Fern Grows were etched into my being as a first grader in Chesterfield County, Virginia.My favourite book growing upStephen King’s The Stand. I completely lost myself in the story. I don’t think I realised at the time what a rare gift it is to have that

entertainment  Sep 4, 2026

Variety

Busan Market Unveils Doc Square, Launches Impact Asia as Yim Siwan Named Festival Closing Ceremony Host

The Asian Contents & Film Market (ACFM), the market of the Busan International Film Festival (BIFF), will present Doc Square 2026 from Oct. 10-13, bringing together eight partner organizations from five countries to connect Asian documentary creators with industry professionals. Launched last year, the program introduces documentary projects still in production across Asia and offers […]

entertainment  Sep 4, 2026

Variety

Magdalena Koleśnik and Kay Greidanus to Lead Finn Szumlas’ Debut Feature ‘Stairway to Earth’ as Production Starts (EXCLUSIVE)

Dutch filmmaker Finn Szumlas has started principal photography on his debut feature “Stairway to Earth,” kicking off a 5-week shoot in the Netherlands. Leading the film is Polish star Magdalena Koleśnik (“Sweat”) and Dutch actor Kay Greidanus (“Dit Zijn Wij”), playing two strangers who meet up after a one night stand at at a summer […]

entertainment  Sep 4, 2026

Variety

Tamar AI’s TapNow Brings AI-Native Filmmaking to Venice Production Bridge With HappyHorse-Backed 10,000 Parallel Universes Films, Unveils Streamer Glanze

Liu Haonan and Qiao Yuhang have been finishing each other’s stories since high school, where they drew together, talked about animation and film, and traded ideas for comics and stories of their own. More than a decade later, they’re doing something a two-person team couldn’t have pulled off a few years ago: building a science-fiction […]

entertainment  Sep 4, 2026

The Guardian Culture

Sairie: Beneath the Spreading Tree review – exquisite 70s-inflected folk heralds a move into autumn’s chill

(Self-released)Singer Emma Morton brings an indie-girl chorister’s brightness to this captivating debut album, on songs with hints of darkness that sound ages-oldSairie’s debut album begins at this transitional time of year, its glistening psych-folk easing us out of the summer heat towards the coming darkness. In its Pentangle-like opener Song for the Winter, birds’ voices “climb higher”, hills “glow brighter” and waves “call out louder”, and the songs that follow are similarly saturated with c

entertainment  Sep 4, 2026

Hollywood Reporter

‘Oasis’ Director on Asking Uncomfortable Questions About Exclusion and Why Violence Is “Like a Virus”

A viral video of a pupil threatening his classmates leads him and two fellow adolescent outcasts to seek refuge in a forest in German writer-director Jannis Lenz's feature debut, premiering at Venice.

entertainment  Sep 4, 2026

Variety

FCC Asks Court to Throw Out ABC’s Lawsuit Alleging TV License Renewals Violate First Amendment, as Agency Repeats Claim the Action Is Unrelated to Jimmy Kimmel or ‘The View’

The FCC asked a federal court Thursday to dismiss the First Amendment lawsuit ABC filed against the agency, arguing that the Disney-owned broadcaster failed to establish that the FCC’s early license renewal review for ABC’s TV stations represents “retaliation” for disfavored speech. ABC sued the FCC last month, alleging the commission was waging an “extraordinary […]

entertainment  Sep 4, 2026

Variety

Anna Foglietta on Working With Alba Rohrwacher on Venice Drama ‘A Common Story’ ‘You Have to Have the Guts to Show Yourself Exactly as You Are’ — Trailer (EXCLUSIVE)

Actor-turned director Anna Foglietta is back in Venice in a different guise this year, after serving as the event’s official emcee in 2020. Foglietta — who is best-known to international audiences for her role in Italy’s smash hit “Perfect Strangers” — is on the Lido with her directorial debut, “A Common Story.” It’s a marriage […]

entertainment  Sep 4, 2026

Variety

Indonesia’s ‘2nd Miracle in Cell No. 7’ Gets Philippine Remake From Viva Communications (EXCLUSIVE)

Philippine studio Viva Communications has acquired the rights to remake Indonesian film “2nd Miracle in Cell No. 7,” marking the first time an Indonesian film will be officially remade for the Philippine market. The adaptation is set to premiere Dec. 25 as part of the Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF). The original “Miracle in Cell […]

entertainment  Sep 4, 2026

The Guardian Culture

Chat Pile: Who Loves the Sun review – sludge metallers resurface with a slightly limiting alt-rock rebrand

(The Flenser)The Oklahoma band use hooky vocals to help their lyrics on desensitisation slip down easy, though their third album lacks the distinction of earlier releasesChat Pile’s 2022 debut album God’s Country was monstrously, miraculously fully formed. The Oklahoma sludge-metal quartet’s oily guitars and grunting mid-tempo percussion conjured their namesake, mining toxic waste mounds, while Raygun Busch’s throat-shredding vocals drew from the city’s real-world violence. But their releases si

entertainment  Sep 4, 2026

Variety

Alix Earle’s Inane Netflix Reality Show ‘Earle Meets World’ Is Like Watching Paint Dry: TV Review

At the start of her eponymous reality show “Earle Meets World,” the influencer Alix Earle promises that while “there’s a whole other side” of the creator economy “people don’t get to see,” her viewers are “gonna see everything in this show.” I hope for Earle’s sake she isn’t telling the truth, because if “Earle Meets […]

entertainment  Sep 4, 2026

Hollywood Reporter

‘The Horsemen of the Apocalypse’ Director Shares Insight Into Her Hybrid Movie That Revisits Her Filmmaker Father’s Arrest and Death

Norway's Lene Berg is attending the Venice Gap-Financing Market as she looks to finish her very personal film that explores such themes as the narratives that we create.

entertainment  Sep 4, 2026

The Guardian Culture

The Grand Tour review – a deeply strange rejection of Jeremy Clarkson and the gang

The petrol hijinks show is getting a total reset – with a relatively unknown new set of presenters. Still, there are signs this trio might turn out to be revolutionarily provocativeHave you heard the news? It’s all change at The Grand Tour. New hosts! New production team! New horizons! Think of everything they could accomplish with a fresh start like this.Actually, don’t think too hard, because the very first thing the new hosts do is visit Diddly Squat Farm to genuflect before Jeremy Clarkson.

entertainment  Sep 4, 2026

Variety

Netflix Probes Trump’s Catering Truck Escape in ‘Instadocs: The Decoy Plane’

“In my more than 40-year career, I’ve never been put in the position of being a decoy,” says Alex Brandon, chief White House photographer for The Associated Press. “Wild. Just wild.” Brandon is one of several subjects who’ve lent their testimony to “Instadocs: The Decoy Plane,” a 28-minute mini-doc about Trump’s (and his curiously close […]

entertainment  Sep 4, 2026

Hollywood Reporter

‘The End of Times’ Is an AI-Assisted Film Essay on Trauma That Wants to “Politicize Mental Illness” (Exclusive Venice Trailer)

Salomé searches through decades of family footage for the reasons for her mother’s sadness in Bibiana Rojas Gómez and Juan David Cárdenas Maldonado's film, premiering in the Venice Critics' Week.

entertainment  Sep 4, 2026

Variety

Miike Takashi Shines an Intimate Spotlight on a Kabuki Legend in Debut Documentary ‘Shumei: The Living Legacy of Kabuki’

The most remarkable thing about Miike Takashi — whose filmography spans well over a hundred features in a smorgasbord of different genres and styles — is that he has never made a documentary. But now he’s at Venice with doc “Shumei: The Living Legacy of Kabuki.” The films screen out of competition. “I take on […]

entertainment  Sep 4, 2026