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Spoiler Alert: This story gives away details of the second season of Netflix’s Squid Game.

Paul Potts used to sell cellphones at a British store called Carphone Warehouse before he won the first season of Britain’s Got Talent.

He is not someone you expect to be soundtracking a bloody game of Russian roulette in the second season of Netflix’s Squid Game.

But it is his version of Nessun Dorma, an aria from the final act of Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot – a song popularized by Luciano Pavarotti during the 1990 FIFA World Cup – that plays over the violent subplot in the first episode of the Korean drama series.

In the opening episode of the sophomore season, Lee Jung-Jae’s Gi-Hun is searching for The Salesman, played by Train to Busan star Gong Yoo, who works as a recruiter for the Squid Games, playing Ddakji with them to get them to...

The Irish comedy “Kneecap” was the big winner at the 2024 Les Arcs Film Festival. It won the Crystal Arrow for Best Film and several other important prizes. The film tells the story of how the Irish-language hip-hop group with the same name got started. It was already well known before the festival, but now it’s been chosen for Best International Feature and Best Song at the 2025 Academy Awards.

As part of its win, “Kneecap” will receive a €20,000 digital advertising campaign with France Televisions for free. Thanks to this help, the film will be better when it comes out in France on June 18, 2025, through Wayna Pitch. The film won more than one award: the Young Jury Prize and the Cinglés du Cinéma prize. Michael “Mikey J” Asante was also praised for writing his music.

The festival took place in the beautiful French mountain resort from December 14–21 and had its best year yet,...

Rich Peppiatt’s Irish comedy Kneecap has won the Crystal Arrow for best film atFrance’s Les Arcs Film Festival, which ran from December 14-21, 2024 in the mountain resort town.

The origin story of the titular Irish-language hip-hop group earned a €20,000 digital promotional campaign in partnership with France Televisions for its release. Wayna Pitch will release the film in France on June 18, 2025 and Charades handles international sales.

Kneecap,whichhas been shortlisted in the best international feature and best song categories for the 2025 Oscars, racked up several prizes at the festival including the young jury prize voted on by high-school students,...

Rich Peppiatt’s drama Kneecap, which made it onto short list for Best International Feature Film for the 97th Academy Awards earlier this week, has scooped the top Crystal Arrow for best film at France’s Les Arcs Film Festival.

The prize, awarded in partnership with state broadcaster France Télévisions, comes with a digital promotional campaign worth €20,000 to support the theatrical release in France next summer by local distributor Wayna Pitch.

The picture also won Best Original Music, with Michael ‘Mikey J’ Asante winning the €1,000 prize donated by the French music rights management body Sacem.

The jury – announced as a collective without a president – comprised actor Pio Marmaï, writer Delphine de Vigan, director and producer Peter Kerekes, actor Céline Sallette, singer, actor and producer Sofiane Zermani and composer Herdís Stafánsdóttir.

In a third prize, decided by eight local high school students, the film also won the Young Jury Prize. The...

The 45th edition of the Cairo Film Festival concluded with the top prize, the Golden Pyramid Award, going to Bogdan Mureșanu’s “The New Year That Never Came.” The black comedy, which previously won the Horizons sidebar at the Venice Film Festival, is set in 1989 during the festive season that immediately precedes the downfall of the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu.

The Special Jury Award for best director, the Silver Pyramid, went to Russian director Natalia Nazarova for “Postmarks,” which also picked up a best actor award for Maxim Stoyanov and a special mention for the female lead, Alina Khojevanova. The other male lead award went to Lee Kang-Sheng for his performance in “Blue Sun Palace.”

The International Jury led by Danis Tanović (“No Man’s Land”) also awarded the Bronze Pyramid for best debut or second feature award to Pedro Freire’s “Malu.” The Rio-set film was inspired by his...

Bogdan Mureșanu’s The New Year That Never Came, a tragicomedy set on the brink of revolution in 1989 Romania, has won the Golden Pyramid for best film at the 45th Cairo International Film Festival (Ciff).

The international competition jury was unanimous in selecting the film, which premiered at Venice in September where it won best film in the Horizons strand as well as the Fipresci prize.

Scroll down for full list of winners

Ciff handed out an expanded set of awards at a glitzy closing cermony of this year’s edition, which marked a return for the longest-running film festival...

The tale of a woman who desperately wants to adopt a daughter, “Vittoria” is the third feature from directing partners Alessandro Cassigoli and Casey Kauffman. At the Cairo Film Festival, where the film is showing in the International Competition, Kauffman sat down with Variety.

How did you start out?

I always wanted to be a photojournalist. I worked for Al Jazeera as a one-man-band reporter. My directing partner Alessandro was a cinephile and he was in Berlin working in documentaries. We were good friends from Florence where I partly grew up. I started to get tired of TV. There were so many stories I couldn’t film because they weren’t newsworthy. We ended up both moving back to Italy because our dads were dying both at the same time. Weird coincidence.

We did a documentary “Butterfly” (2018) on Italy’s first female boxer to go to the Olympics, Irma Testa.

Happy Holidays, the latest feature from Palestinian Filmmaker Scandar Copti, has taken the top prize at the Thessaloniki Film Festival in Greece.

Copti’s film won the Best Feature Film Award, which comes with a 10,000-euro cash prize. Awarding the prize, the jury, headed by Sara Driver, praised the film for “intricately weaving different narratives and perspectives that fully expose the complexity of national, gender and class dynamics that can divide societies and for seeing the future in the face of a young woman the Golden Alexander goes to Happy Holidays by Scandar Copti.”

Happy Holidays debuted at this year’s Venice Film Festival. The story open after a minor accident sets off a chain of events, unraveling lies and unspoken truths that sow division within a multifaceted patriarchal society.

The festival’s Best Director Award, which comes with a 5,000-euro cash prize, was picked up Leonardo Van Dijl for Julie Keeps Quiet.

Palestinian filmmaker Scandar Copti’s Israel-set family drama “Happy Holidays” won the top prize Sunday at the Thessaloniki Film Festival, taking home the Golden Alexander for best feature film.

Copti’s sophomore feature, his first film since his Oscar-nominated 2009 debut “Ajami,” premiered in the Venice Film Festival’s Horizons sidebar, winning the best screenplay prize. Variety’s Siddhant Adlakha described it as “a piercing, realistic family drama, the inflection points of which reveal deep cultural and political dimensions surrounding gender and ethnicity.”

“Happy Holidays” follows four interconnected characters who share their unique realities, highlighting the complexities between genders, generations and cultures. The ensemble cast — comprised of Arab and Jewish characters alike — creates a multifaceted portrait of life in Haifa, Israel’s third-largest city.

The Thessaloniki jury, which included filmmaker and producer Sara Driver (“Boom for Real”), filmmaker Denis Côté (“Vic + Flo Saw a Bear”) and producer Konstantinos Kontovrakis (“How to Have Sex...

France’s Les Arcs Film Festival has unveiled the line-up for its 16th edition of its mountaintop movie marathon, taking place from December 14-21, 2024.

Eight European films will vie for the festival’s Crystal Arrow awards.

They include Rich Peppiatt’s Kneecap, a comedy about titular west Belfast hip-hop trio that is Ireland’s entry for the best international feature Oscar race and leads the Bifa 2024 nominations, Runar Runarsson’s Icelandic drama When the Light Breaks that opened this year’s Cannes Un Certain Regard, and Kurdwin Ayub’s Moon about a former Austrian martial arts master hired to train...

The Cairo International Film Festival (Ciff) has unveiled the line-up for its comeback 45th edition, taking place from November 13-22.

The world premiere of Palestinian filmmaker Rashid Masharawi’s Passing Dreams will open the festival, as part of a focus on Palestinian cinema.

Passing Dreams is a drama about a 12-year-old boy who embarks on a journey across Palestine, while chasing a carrier pigeon, convinced it has returned to its original owner.

The line-up includes three Palestinian feature documentaries competing for the best Arab film awards in the Horizons of Arab Cinema programme, and the best Palestinian film award.

Carol Mansour...

Welcome to the bustling port town of Torre Annunziata in southern Italy. It’s here that we find hairdresser Jasmine, the central figure in Alessandro Cassigoli and Casey Kauffman’s new film Vittoria.

Cassigoli and Kauffman have crafted another true-to-life drama in their popular trilogy set within this community. Like their previous documentaries Butterfly and Californie, Vittoria features everyday people from Torre Annunziata playing versions of themselves.

We meet Jasmine as she goes about her daily routine—cutting and styling hair at her salon while also caring for her husband, sons, and elderly clients. But Jasmine has a yearning deep inside that she’s keeping private. She’s been troubled by dreams of a little blonde girl who she feels is meant to be her daughter. As a mother of three boys, Jasmine becomes determined to adopt a daughter despite facing disapproval from her family.

By filming without a script...