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Idiosyncratic Italian film and TV producer Pietro Valsecchi has long been churning out hits on his home turf. His 2013 comedy sensation 'Sole a catinelle,' which riffed on local economic [...]

WHAT DO THE latest 'Star Wars,' 'Fast and Furious' and 'Star Trek' installments have in common? They all recently shot in the United Arab Emirates, where a combination of incentives, [...]

For the Next Generation of Young Parisians, Attacks Will Be Like 9/11 BY DANIEL ZISKIND I was at home watching the (soccer) match on TV with my 13-year-old son when [...]

Though Hollywood content plays prominently at Lucca Comics & Games, Asian pop culture is a deeply entrenched aspect of the unique immersive experience sought by the thousands of fans who [...]

WELCOME TO THE Western world's biggest geek meet. Some 254,000 ticket-buying fans descended last year upon Lucca Comics & Games, for comics fans with a European twist held within the [...]

February 15, 1967 'Monte Carlo TV: The Winners' 'I'm not a religious person; I'm an atheist. But I was struck by the adventure of (St. Francis), who 800 years ago [...]

MOB RULE Diliberto, 43, known in Italy as Pif, is a popular Italian TV host and satirist who parlayed the distinctive irony of his TV persona into his 2013 directorial [...]

At the core of Rome's new MIA market is the New Cinema Network, which launched a decade ago. Now that more than 200 projects have come through this platform for [...]

'I remember traveling with Marco Mueller in Alma-Ata (now Almaty), Kazakhstan, in the early 1990s. It was the first time Western film festival directors made their way there, and we [...]

The 72nd edition of Venice reflects a new detente among some of the heavyweights on the fall festival calendar, but it also stands as testament to artistic director Alberto Barbera's [...]

SINCE TAKING THE REINS at the Locarno Film Festival in 2013, artistic director Carlo Chatrian has discreetly but decisively put his stamp on the Swiss fest by making diversity his [...]

Same-sex acts are not socially or legally accepted, but varying degrees of tolerance exist. The only Arab public figure to have come out as gay is Omar Sharif Jr., grandson [...]

In Italy, where local movies are increasingly sagging at the box office, Arturo Paglia and Isabella Cocuzza represent something new--young producers scoring solid returns with movies that can travel. But [...]

Italian movie mogul Aurelio De Laurentiis, who owns Napoli, Italy's most profitable soccer club, has long been looking to China as a potential partner for both his movie and sports [...]

EDGY DEBUT Laura Bispuri, 38, was the only Italian director to field a film in the 2015 Berlin competition--her debut 'Sworn Virgin' centers around the archaic Albanian custom in which [...]

Think of heartthrob Riccardo Scamarcio as the Matt Damon or George Clooney of Italian actors--one who isn't averse to taking time out of his shooting schedule to take on production [...]

Is cross-border collaboration becoming more fertile? While Euro co-productions aren't getting any easier; several of the most prominent recent European pies show that transnational filmmaking is alive and well. Case [...]

ROME The Silvio Berlusconi story should be a natural for filming: It's got sex, money, legal tangles--it's even got love songs. And the plot features a central conflict: Can one [...]

ROME In marked contrast with the excesses of its outset, the Intl. Rome Film Festival is seeking glory in gravitas. Having secured its spot on the international fest circuit and [...]

The Rome Film Festival on Friday unveiled a leaner lineup graced with a high-profile competition that includes Jason Reitman's 'Up in the Air,' with star George Clooney expected on the [...]

To quote Bob Dylan, 'We live in a political world.' A slew of pics dealing with the economy, corporate greed and the trauma of modern war have dominated both the [...]

'Lebanon' a hard-hitting look at war from inside a military tank by Israeli helmer Samuel Maoz, based on his experience as a young soldier during his country's 1982 invasion of [...]

The 66th Venice Film Festival opened last week with 'Baaria,' one of the most expensive Italo films ever made ($35 million), helmed by left-winger Giuseppe Tornatore. The lush budget is [...]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Italy's movie and political worlds made for an explosive mix as the 66th Venice Film Festival kicked off Wednesday with Giuseppe Tornatore's Sicilian epic 'Baaria.' 'Baaria,' the first [...]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Change is clearly coming to the Venice Film Festival, with the 66th edition due to kick off today amid a construction zone for its new Palazzo del Cinema [...]

ROME This year, Venice Film Festival topper Marco Mueller has hit 'cruising speed,' he says, with a lineup designed to fire on all cylinders by bringing new names and diverse [...]

While Japanese animation has been gaining fans in the West since the 1970s, the universe of manga comics and the anime films they spawn, remain for most shrouded in an [...]

The 62nd Locarno Film Festival will be the swan-song edition for artistic topper Frederic Maire, who, in marked contrast with familiar moanings about the financial dark cloud choking the international [...]

The Venice Film Festival unveiled on Thursday a mix of pics by both established and lesser-known helmers. Lineup includes 71 world preems plus prominent U.S. and European contingents and even [...]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The upcoming Venice Film Festival is shaping up as a launching pad for plenty of U.S. kudos hopefuls, a strong European lineup and new works from big-name helmers [...]

Accio papal blessing! Harry Potter has always had plenty of B.O. followers. He's just never counted the Vatican among them ... until now. While fundamentalists consider the depiction of magic [...]

The Rome Fiction Fest, now approaching its third edition, serves the vital purpose of injecting innovation into Italy's growing TV production industry, which is poised on the brink of a [...]

Italian dramas have long largely replaced Hollywood movies and minis in primetime slots on Mediaset and RAI. But while local scripted content quadrupled in volume over the past 15 years, [...]

When Italian producer Domenico Procacci started his Fandango shingle in 1989, it was a commitment not just to a new business but also to personal growth. Procacci had floundered for [...]

France and Italy, Europe's bastions of national filmmaking pride, have long fought Hollywood's presence on their movie screens with dogged protectionism. Now both countries are busy breaking those barriers, looking [...]

ROME Campania, the southern Italian region that gave the world Sophia Loren, Sergio Leone and Dino De Laurentiis, is fast becoming Italy's contempo cinematic hotbed. Last year's Cannes pies 'Gomorrah' [...]

Oscar snub? Who cares? While some el, ix decried the omission of Italy's 'Gomorrah' in this season's foreign-language category, Matteo Garrone's naturalistic Mafia pic has quietly been doing boffo biz [...]

Is Federico Fellini's legacy cherished more by Hollywood than it is by Italy? An exhibition titled 'Fellini's Book of Dreams' just opened at Academy headquarters in Beverly Hills. And in [...]

BAARIA Director: Giuseppe Tornatore Producer: Medusa and Tarak Ben Ammar's Quinta Communications Stars: Monica Bellucci, Raoul Bova, Laura Chiatti The scoop: Twenty years after 'Cinema Paradiso,' Tornatore mines similar ground, [...]

ROME Five years after first beaming into Italian homes, Rupert Murdoch's Sky Italia satcaster is starting to shake up the country's TV landscape with its first batch of skeins centered [...]

Nanni Moretti has resigned as artistic director of the Turin Film Festival, prompting speculation that another big-name Italo helmer may take over as chief of the small but prominent international [...]

It's a tall order to make visual effects that can qualify as special in a land that hasn't spawned a sci-fi, fantasy, disaster or war movie in ages. But rather […]

Political upheaval rocked the Rome Film Festival over the weekend, with Italian policemen in riot gear and protesters facing off on the red carpet just as Teutonic terrorism-themed pics 'The [...]

Monica Bellucci broke in the Rome Film Festival red carpet on Thursday for tepidly received Italo meller 'The Man Who Loves.' But the attention-getter of the day was omnibus pic [...]

Al Pacino and a Brazilian bash on the Piazza Navona kicked off the third Rome Film Festival on Wednesday amid hopes the event will boost the Italian industry and consolidate [...]

When: Oct. 22-31 Where: Auditorium Parco della Musica, Rome Web: romacinefest.it ROME The road leading to the third Rome Film Festival has been rockier than the Appian Way. Everywhere in [...]

Film festivals have traditionally been an oasis, a heady escape for artists and dealmakers removed from real-world concerns. No longer. The financial crisis is hitting some U.S. film festivals--and hard. [...]

Spike Lee's 'Miracle at St. Anna' is raising historical hackles in Italy, where the WWII drama--which links an anti-fascist Italian partisan resistance group to the 1944 Nazi massacre of 560 [...]

Among the offerings at the Toronto fest were Steven Soderbergh s Spanish-language 'Che,' as well as Brit helmer Danny Boyle's Mumbai-set 'Slumdog Millionaire,' in which Hindi is spoken for a [...]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The Rome Film Festival is going local, with romancer 'L'Uomo che ama' (The Man Who Loves) opening its third edition Oct. 22. Pic was directed by Maria Sole [...]