News

Netflix has acquired the rights to Petra Costa’s latest documentary on Brazilian politics, “Apocalypse in the Tropics,” and will stream the film in 2025.

The film is a reunion between Netflix and Costa, who was nominated for an Oscar for the Netflix doc “The Edge of Democracy” from 2019. Netflix acquired “Apocalypse in the Tropics” after it first premiered at Venice and then played Telluride, the New York Film Festival, Camden International, IDFA, Chicago International, and the Montclair Festival. Check out IndieWire’s review out of Venice here.

“Apocalypse in the Tropics” examines how the evangelical movement in Brazil helped pave the way for the rule of Jair Bolsonaro. The film argues that allowing evangelical leaders to wield such power threatens to make Brazil a national theocracy.

Here’s the official logline via Netflix: When does a democracy end, and a theocracy begin? Apocalypse in the Tropics investigates the increasingly powerful...

Filmmaker Petra Costa is re-teaming with Netflix on her latest documentary, the award-winning Apocalypse in the Tropics.

The streamer today announced it will release Costa’s Oscar-contending film in 2025, continuing a fruitful relationship with the director. Her previous documentary, 2019’s The Edge of Democracy, was a Netflix Original and went on to earn an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature.

The Edge of Democracy explored how Costa’s native Brazil emerged from military dictatorship in the mid-1980s, but then more recently saw fundamental tenets of democracy threatened by right wing elements who refused to honor the peaceful transition of power (a phenomenon that would be replayed in the U.S. after the 2020 presidential election). Apocalypse in the Tropics examines another threat to Brazilian democracy – the rise of Christian nationalism (a growing issue in the United States as well).

“The genesis of this investigation on the rise of religious...

Deadline’s For the Love of Docs virtual event series concludes its 10-week run tomorrow with a screening of the Oscar-contending documentary Blink, directed by Edmund Stinson and Oscar winner Daniel Roher (Navalny).

No film invited to participate in Ftlod pays a fee to take part; the series was conceived as a way for Deadline to support the documentary field, which faces increasing distribution challenges even as the quality and quantity of nonfiction films has risen significantly. Deadline partners with National Geographic Documentary Films to present the series.

Films featured in For the Love of Docs in recent years include eventual Oscar nominees A House Made of Splinters, directed by Simon Lereng Wilmont; Beyond Utopia, directed by Madeleine Gavin; Bobi Wine: The People’s President, directed by Christopher Sharp and Moses Bwayo; To Kill a Tiger, directed by Nisha Pahuja; Fire of Love, directed by Sara Dosa, and many other notable films including Richland,...

UK-based MetFilm Sales has acquired world sales rights to Homegrown, the documentary about supporters of former US president Donald Trump, ahead of its world premiere in competition in Venice Critics’ Week.

The film follows three right-wing activists campaigning for Trump in the run-up to the 2020 US presidential election, who take their fight to the streets when they become convinced the election is stolen.

It is directed by journalist and filmmaker Michael Premo, who produces the film with Rachel Falcone for Storyline. Executive producers are James Costa, Alysa Nahmias, Jenny Raskin, Kelsey Koenig, Trevor Burgess and Gary Hess.

The film was...

Exclusive: Zdf Studios’ Off the Fence, the company behind Netflix’s BAFTA and Oscar-winning doc My Octopus Teacher, has taken worldwide rights outside of Canada to Resident Orca, a documentary from first-time feature directors Sarah Sharkey Pearce and Simon Schneider.

Ahead of Resident Orca‘s release, the plans for which have not yet been disclosed, the team from Otf will be hitting French documentary marketplace Sunny Side of the Doc with the film later this month.

Nominated for the Documentary Achievement Award upon its April world premiere at the Miami Film Festival, Resident Orca tells the shocking story of a captive whale and the fight for her survival and freedom. After decades of failed attempts to bring her home, an unlikely partnership forms between Indigenous matriarchs, a billionaire philanthropist, killer whale experts, and the aquarium’s new owner who take on the herculean task of freeing Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut (Lolita...

Exclusive: Texas Monthly, the magazine that has been chronicling life in the Lone Star State since 1973, has continued its expansion into film and TV by setting its first-ever feature documentary, to be made in partnership with Peabody and Critics’ Choice Award-winning filmmaker Deborah Esquenazi (Southwest of Salem: The Story of the San Antonio Four).

The currently untitled film centers on James Reyos, a gay Apache man who for 40 years has sought to clear his name of the brutal murder of a Catholic priest in oil-rich West Texas. Embedding with the Innocence Project of Texas that has taken up Reyos’ case, Esquenazi with her doc sheds new light on a story that has eluded detectives, crime researchers and amateur sleuths for four decades, exposing a web of media lore and homophobia, as well as whispers of a possible serial killing team targeting clergy in the 1980s. The project extends coverage of...

Exclusive: Kino Lorber and Zeitgeist Films have picked up North American rights to Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy — a new documentary on the making of the iconic John Schlesinger film, from acclaimed documentarian Nancy Buirski (The Loving Story).

Related Story 1091 Pictures Acquires Domestic Distribution Rights To Romantic Drama ‘Under My Skin’ Related Story Locarno Film Festival War Drama 'Tommy Guns' Gets North American Deal Related Story Ralph Fiennes' 'Four Quartets' Gets North American Distribution Deal Ahead Of Stateside Bow At Santa Barbara

Zeitgeist will open the film in North American theaters beginning at New York’s Film Forum in late June and take it nationwide from there, with a digital, educational and home video release on all major platforms via Kino Lorber to follow.

Inspired by Glen Frankel’s 2021 book Shooting Midnight Cowboy: Art, Sex, Loneliness, Liberation and the Making of a Dark Classic, Desperate...

“Trapped” underwater in a tiny tank excruciatingly close to the wide-open ocean, singer and actor Noah Cyrus stars in a powerful new PETA campaign that proclaims, “Life’s No Beach in Captivity. Boycott SeaWorld.”

Noah Cyrus PETA Ad

The ad — which aims to put pressure on the abusement park to retire the long-suffering orcas it hold captive to seaside sanctuaries — was shot by top celebrity photographer Brian Bowen Smith and was made possible by James Costa and The Archibald Family Foundation, both proud PETA supporters.

“I love animals so much. To think that any animal would be trapped — it makes me so sad,” says Cyrus in an exclusive interview with PETA. “It’s like living in your bedroom for your entire life and never being able to go outside.”

PETA — whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment” — notes that in the wild, orcas form complex relationships,...

Bob Barker has some new competition in Los Angeles, at least when it comes to advocating for animal welfare. Ken Howard, SAG-AFTRA co-president, and wife Linda are organizing a fundraiser for the Onyx & Breezy Foundation April 13 at James Costa’s estate in the Hollywood Hills. The Foundation, named in memoriam of founders Mark and Wanda Shefts’ two late black Labrador Retrievers, provides direct grants to applicants with animals in need of food or veterinary care and funds spay and neuter programs. The fundraising event, which is sponsored by Relativity Media CEO Ryan Kavanaugh’s newly acquired FreeHand Dog food company and will feature performances from “American Idol” winner Lee DeWyze and Leslie Odom Jr. of NBC’s “Smash,” is the first held by the Foundation on the West Coast. It was five years in the making. Back in 2008, the Howards and Shefts met at a Humane Society Fundraiser. “They...

On Saturday, April 23, Moby, NBA Champion John Salley, “The Biggest Loser’s” Bob Harper and Jennifer Coolidge will host a very special evening to launch the 25th Anniversary Gala Celebrations of Farm Sanctuary, the nation’s leading farm animal protection organization, at the home of James Costa in the Hollywood Hills.

This special milestone, and all that has been achieved to promote compassion for farm animals in the past 25 years, will be commemorated at two star-studded, black-tie Galas in New York City on May 14, and in Los Angeles on September 24.

More information below, and RSVP here.

Read more...

Opens

Friday, March 19

The cities of Quebec and Montreal actually playing themselves for once is just about the best thing in the otherwise pedestrian psychological thriller "Taking Lives". Shooting largely in the old towns of both French-Canadian cities, director D.J. Caruso establishes a film-noir atmosphere that has an intriguing blend of Old and New World. Angelina Jolie plays a role that definitely feels like something she has already done, but she does add an unmistakable dash of excitement and glamour. Otherwise, it's a struggle to differentiate this cop vs. serial killer tale from many others that now crowd video shelves. Young males will give "Taking Lives" a solid opening weekend, but Jolie's Special Agent Illeana Scott is no Lara Croft.

Illeana, an FBI profiler, has a knack for tracking down serial killers

she's Sherlock Holmes with curves. Illeana can merely look at a suspect and determine he's a left-hander from Vancouver with a bad childhood -- or lie in a grave, which is where we first see her, and determine the exact method by which a victim was murdered and buried.

Illeana gets called into a case that has the Montreal police baffled. (How and why Canadian authorities would bring an American agent in on a Canadian case is never made clear.) A body has turned up at a construction site, and on almost no evidence whatsoever, Surete du Quebec director Leclair (Tcheky Karyo) decides a serial killer is at work.

The film actually opens in 1983, when a drifter (Paul Dano) impulsively kills a guy he is traveling with and assumes his identity. In present day, a distraught mother (Gena Rowlands) pleads to bored Quebec City police that she just saw her son, whom she believed dead for two decades. She cautions them that he is very dangerous.

The viewer's only quandary at this moment is whether Ethan Hawke, who claims to be Montreal art dealer James Costa, looks enough like that kid in 1983 to be him, or is he simply what he says he is -- a good Samaritan who happened along just as a prolific serial killer was finishing off another victim?

Initially, Illeana treats him as a suspect. But signs point to him being the next target of the killer, since he got a good look at the man, thus requiring police protection and Illeana's continual presence in his life. A strange attraction grows between them that may, in her words, "cloud my judgment."

Meanwhile, Illeana becomes convinced that the killer has been on the rampage for years, each time assuming the life of his victim. But her methods clash with those of her Montreal police colleagues, hotheaded Paquette (Olivier Martinez) and the more even-keel Duval (Jean-Hugues Anglade). Then Kiefer Sutherland turns up rather late in the story, playing yet another of his furtive and menacing characters.

Jon Bokenkamp's script, based on Michael Pye's novel, delivers the requisite thriller sequences -- the chase through a large crowd, a detective prowling in a dark house only to discover that she is not alone, a body that falls out of nowhere, a car that roars down the wrong way of a bridge. The movie loses considerable punch, though, with a drawn-out ending, when the culprit is revealed but doesn't receive his comeuppance until much later.

The filmmaking here -- Amir M. Mokri's moody cinematography, Tom Southwell's stylish mix of locations, Anne V. Coates' meticulous editing and Philip Glass' unusually low-key but evocative music -- is surprisingly graceful for a conventional thriller. Clearly, much care and intelligence have been lavished on discouraging, routine material.

TAKING LIVES

Warner Bros. Pictures

Warner Bros. in association with Village Roadshow Pictures presents a Mark Canton production

Credits:

Director: D.J. Caruso

Screenwriter: Jon Bokenkamp

Based on a novel by: Michael Pye

Producers: Mark Canton, Bernie Goldman

Executive producers: Bruce Berman

David Heyman

Director of photography: Amir M. Mokri

Production designer: Tom Southwell

Music: Philip Glass

Costume designer: Marie-Sylvie Deveau

Editor: Anne V. Coates

Cast:

Illeana: Angelina Jolie

Costa: Ethan Hawke

Hart: Kiefer Sutherland

Mrs. Asher: Gena Rowlands

Paquette: Olivier Martinez

Duval: Jean-Hugues Anglade

Leclair: Tcheky Karyo

Running time -- 103 minutes

MPAA rating: R...

Opens

Friday, March 19

The cities of Quebec and Montreal actually playing themselves for once is just about the best thing in the otherwise pedestrian psychological thriller "Taking Lives". Shooting largely in the old towns of both French-Canadian cities, director D.J. Caruso establishes a film-noir atmosphere that has an intriguing blend of Old and New World. Angelina Jolie plays a role that definitely feels like something she has already done, but she does add an unmistakable dash of excitement and glamour. Otherwise, it's a struggle to differentiate this cop vs. serial killer tale from many others that now crowd video shelves. Young males will give "Taking Lives" a solid opening weekend, but Jolie's Special Agent Illeana Scott is no Lara Croft.

Illeana, an FBI profiler, has a knack for tracking down serial killers

she's Sherlock Holmes with curves. Illeana can merely look at a suspect and determine he's a left-hander from Vancouver with a bad childhood -- or lie in a grave, which is where we first see her, and determine the exact method by which a victim was murdered and buried.

Illeana gets called into a case that has the Montreal police baffled. (How and why Canadian authorities would bring an American agent in on a Canadian case is never made clear.) A body has turned up at a construction site, and on almost no evidence whatsoever, Surete du Quebec director Leclair (Tcheky Karyo) decides a serial killer is at work.

The film actually opens in 1983, when a drifter (Paul Dano) impulsively kills a guy he is traveling with and assumes his identity. In present day, a distraught mother (Gena Rowlands) pleads to bored Quebec City police that she just saw her son, whom she believed dead for two decades. She cautions them that he is very dangerous.

The viewer's only quandary at this moment is whether Ethan Hawke, who claims to be Montreal art dealer James Costa, looks enough like that kid in 1983 to be him, or is he simply what he says he is -- a good Samaritan who happened along just as a prolific serial killer was finishing off another victim?

Initially, Illeana treats him as a suspect. But signs point to him being the next target of the killer, since he got a good look at the man, thus requiring police protection and Illeana's continual presence in his life. A strange attraction grows between them that may, in her words, "cloud my judgment."

Meanwhile, Illeana becomes convinced that the killer has been on the rampage for years, each time assuming the life of his victim. But her methods clash with those of her Montreal police colleagues, hotheaded Paquette (Olivier Martinez) and the more even-keel Duval (Jean-Hugues Anglade). Then Kiefer Sutherland turns up rather late in the story, playing yet another of his furtive and menacing characters.

Jon Bokenkamp's script, based on Michael Pye's novel, delivers the requisite thriller sequences -- the chase through a large crowd, a detective prowling in a dark house only to discover that she is not alone, a body that falls out of nowhere, a car that roars down the wrong way of a bridge. The movie loses considerable punch, though, with a drawn-out ending, when the culprit is revealed but doesn't receive his comeuppance until much later.

The filmmaking here -- Amir M. Mokri's moody cinematography, Tom Southwell's stylish mix of locations, Anne V. Coates' meticulous editing and Philip Glass' unusually low-key but evocative music -- is surprisingly graceful for a conventional thriller. Clearly, much care and intelligence have been lavished on discouraging, routine material.

TAKING LIVES

Warner Bros. Pictures

Warner Bros. in association with Village Roadshow Pictures presents a Mark Canton production

Credits:

Director: D.J. Caruso

Screenwriter: Jon Bokenkamp

Based on a novel by: Michael Pye

Producers: Mark Canton, Bernie Goldman

Executive producers: Bruce Berman

David Heyman

Director of photography: Amir M. Mokri

Production designer: Tom Southwell

Music: Philip Glass

Costume designer: Marie-Sylvie Deveau

Editor: Anne V. Coates

Cast:

Illeana: Angelina Jolie

Costa: Ethan Hawke

Hart: Kiefer Sutherland

Mrs. Asher: Gena Rowlands

Paquette: Olivier Martinez

Duval: Jean-Hugues Anglade

Leclair: Tcheky Karyo

Running time -- 103 minutes

MPAA rating: R...