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Exclusive: Following six seasons as Howard Hamlin on AMC’s megahit Better Call Saul, Patrick Fabian has signed on to lead the indie The Way We Speak from writer-director Ian Ebright (From the Sky).

Billed as an allegory about America’s fractured politics and culture, the film follows Simon (Fabian), an up-and-coming commentator whose world is turned upside down when his best friend and debate opponent suffers a fatal heart attack. Simon refuses to leave the spotlight at an annual thought-leader summit, leading to an obsession with his new opponent and a growing rift with his ailing wife, Claire (Law & Order: Special Victims Unit’s Diana Coconubo).

Ebright’s Broken Telegraph is producing the pic, also to star Kailey Rhodes (Black Pool), Ayanna Berkshire (Twilight) and Lowell Deo (Z Nation). Fabian is repped by The Kohner Agency and Essential Talent Management.

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Exclusive: Cinedigm has acquired North American rights to...

The American Film Institute unveiled their lineup for AFI Fest’s World Cinema and the inaugural Documentary section. The fest will take place November 14-21 in Los Angeles.

The world cinema section will include five international feature film Oscar submissions and 16 titles from 19 countries. This includes the Los Angeles premiere of Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life as well as Levan Akin’s And We Danced from Sweden, Sophie Deraspe’s Antigone from Canada, Jan Komasa’s Corpus Christi from Poland, Marco Bellocchio’s The Traitor from Italy and Cornlieu’s The Whistlers from Romania.

On the documentary side, the fest will include Alex Gibney’s Citizen K as well as Desert One from two-time Academy Award winner Barbara Kopple. Other films in the doc lineup include Bikram: Yoga, Guru, Predator from Eva Orner, Jolie Coiffure from Rosine Mbakam and The Human Factor from Dror Moreh.

Read AFI Fest’s...

The very idea of a modern reworking of a classical text itself gets a modern reworking in Sophie Deraspe’s supple and impassioned “Antigone,” Further electrified by a performance of immense self-possession and dignity from revelatory new star Nahéma Ricci, the clever screenplay (the film is also written and crisply shot by Deraspe) injects these ancient archetypes directly into the bloodstream of the modern-day immigration debate. So while the up-to-the-minute Quebecois setting ought to guarantee significant Francophone interest, its selection as Canada’s Oscar entry should by rights ensure it finds an audience in other territories divided by the immigration issue: namely, almost every developed nation on the planet.

But justifiable rage at the callous institutional mistreatment of foreign-born citizens and residents is only one of “Antigone’s” topical concerns. Deraspe’s last film was the documentary “The Amina Profile,” which investigated the global catfishing incident that was the...

International premiere of Greek tragedy retelling set for Busan next month.

Sophie Deraspe’s Antigone will represent Canada in the best international feature film Oscar race this season, Acpav, Maison 4:3 and WaZabi Films announced on Friday (20).

The refugee drama received its world premiere at Toronto International Film Festival earlier this month where it won the Canada Goose Award for best Canadian feature film and Anick Poirier and her team at WaZabi Films launched sales.

Nahéma Ricci stars in the retelling of Sophocles’ Greek tragedy as a brilliant student with a promising future who moves with her siblings and grandmother...

Antigone, the drama from Québécois writer-director Sophie Deraspe that just won the Best Canadian Feature Film prize for its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, has been selected to represent Canada in the 2020 Oscar International Feature Film race.

The pic is hoping to become the ninth Canadian film to be nominated for an Oscar in the category formerly known as the Best Foreign Language Film. The country’s latest nominee was Kim Nguyen’s Rebelle in 2013; the only Canadian film to win the Oscar in the category is Denys Arcand’s Les Invasions barbares in 2004.

This year’s shortlist in the category is due out in mid-December, with nominations for the 92nd Oscars being announced January 13.

Deraspe’s fifth feature film. which she wrote, directed and served as cinematographer, is a timely retelling of the Greek tragedy. It centers on Antigone (Nahéma Ricci), who in helping her brother escape...

International premiere of Greek tragedy retelling set for Busan next month.

Sophie Deraspe’s Antigone will represent Canada in the best international feature film Oscar race this season, Acpav, Maison 4:3 and WaZabi Films announced on Friday (20).

The film received its world premiere at Toronto International Film Festival earlier this month where it won the Canada Goose Award for best Canadian feature film and Anick Poirier and her team at WaZabi Films launched sales.

Nahéma Ricci stars in the retelling of Sophocles’ Greek tragedy as a brilliant student with a promising future who moves with her siblings and grandmother into...

Canada has selected writer-director Sophie Deraspe's refugee family drama Antigone as its official submission for the best international feature category to the 92nd Academy Awards.

The French language indie adapts Sophocles' classical Greek tragedy of the same name to tell the story of a young woman’s search for justice as Deraspe questions the treatment of immigrants in modern-day Montreal.

The ensemble cast for Antigone includes Nahema Ricci, Nour Belkhiria, Rawad El-Zein, Rachida Oussaada, Antoine Desrochers, Paul Doucet and Nathalie Tanous.

The film, which earned the best Canadian feature film at the recently concluded Toronto Film Festival, portrays a young woman,...

Canada has selected writer-director Sophie Deraspe's refugee family drama Antigone as its official submission for the best international feature category to the 92nd Academy Awards.

The French language indie adapts Sophocles' classical Greek tragedy of the same name to tell the story of a young woman’s search for justice as Deraspe questions the treatment of immigrants in modern-day Montreal.

The ensemble cast for Antigone includes Nahema Ricci, Nour Belkhiria, Rawad El-Zein, Rachida Oussaada, Antoine Desrochers, Paul Doucet and Nathalie Tanous.

The film, which earned the best Canadian feature film at the recently concluded Toronto Film Festival, portrays a young woman,...

A lot of people die during Sophocles’ Antigone. The death of Oedipus puts his sons Eteocles and Polynices on the throne, their deaths spark their titular sister to fight for the latter’s right to be buried, and her eventual suicide leads to more dead bodies as only a Greek tragedy could allow. While Canadian director Sophie Deraspe loosely adapts his play to tell her tale of North America’s immigration ills, she leaves the killing behind. There’s good reason behind the decision, though, considering her film speaks about race, poverty, police brutality, and heartless judicial systems to reveal how there are often worse fates than death. Because what’s our reason for living if we’re no longer able to remember who we are?

That’s the point, though, right? That’s why people within the United States and Canada speak about “assimilation” as if those in power...