Emily Atef: Last News

EXCLUSIVE: British-Iranian screenwriter Juliette Towhidi (Calendar Girls, Testament of Youth) is attached to pen the untitled feature film project about Farah Pahlavi, Empress of Iran, wife of the late Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

EXCLUSIVE: French-Iranian filmmaker Emily Atef (More Than Ever, The Stranger In Me) is attached to direct the untitled feature film project centered on the life of Farah Pahlavi, the last Empress of Iran, who was married to the late Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi for 20 years before he died in exile in Egypt in 1980.

Marta Balaga International filmmakers are calling for solidarity with Mohammad Rasoulof and persecuted filmmakers in Iran in an open letter, shared with Variety. Rasoulof – about to screen his latest film “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” in Cannes’ main competition – was sentenced to imprisonment and torture by the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Catherine Bray Hélène Mouchet (Vicky Krieps) is probably dying. She has been diagnosed with an idiopathic fibrosis of the lungs, meaning none of her doctors really has much idea of how to treat her condition. They do know that it will eventually result in suffocation, unless she is able to undergo a lung transplant — which is far from certain to work.

EXCLUSIVE: Anonymous Content has hired longtime literary agent and former UTA partner Bec Smith as a partner and manager in their LA-based lit team.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Strand Releasing has bought all North American rights to Emily Atef’s last two movies, “Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything” which competed at the Berlin Film Festival, as well as her Cannes entry “More Than Ever.” Both films are represented in international markets by The Match Factory. Based on Daniela Krien’s novel, the film is set in the summer of 1990, shortly after the fall of the Berlin wall, in the countryside of former East Germany. Marlene Burow plays Maria, who is about to turn 19, lives with her boyfriend at his parents’ farm. She engages into a passionate and lustful affair with Henner (Felix Kramer), a reclusive neighbor who is twice her age.“More Than Ever,” meanwhile, premiered at last year’s Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard. It stars Vicky Krieps (“Corsage,” “Phantom Thread”) and late French actor Gaspard Ulliel as a couple whose bond is tested when one of them is diagnosed with a terminal disease.

Ed Meza @edmezavar German cinema looks set for a major boom this year with a strong lineup of diverse works that span historical dramas, coming-of-age tales, high-octane nostalgia, animation and sci-fi fun. The Berlin Film Festival is bowing a muscular selection of local titles, among them “Afire,” by Berlinale mainstay Christian Petzold (“Undine”), screening in competition. The films centers on a group of young people staying at a holiday house near the Baltic Sea during a hot, dry summer, exploring volatile emotions that start to sizzle when a wildfire spreads through the surrounding forest. Likewise vying for the Golden Bear is Margarethe von Trotta’s biopic “Ingeborg Bachmann: Journey Into the Desert,” starring Vicky Krieps (“Corsage”) as the radical Austrian author. The film examines her relationship with Swiss writer Max Frisch and her 1964 journey of self-discovery through the Egyptian desert.

Guy Lodge Film Critic Anyone who has spent much time on Film Twitter recently might know that there are two recurring subjects sure to instigate discourse wars between certain moralistic Zoomers and their befuddled elders: on-screen relationships marked by significant age gaps, and on-screen sex scenes between partners of any age, largely condemned by youthful detractors as gratuitous narrative roadblocks. That demographic won’t be seeking out Emily Atef’s film “Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything,” a brazenly sensual May-December romance between a teenage ingenue and a middle-aged social outcast, though beyond the festival circuit, this pretty but somewhat dreary mood piece is unlikely to end up on many people’s radars at all.

Emily Atef’s latest feature is something of a curate’s egg, a well-made foray into high-end romantic lit that’s saddled with some off-putting baggage about the reunification of Germany post-1989. The Berlin Film Festival competition entry is clearly personal to the novel’s writer, Daniela Krien, who was born, mid-’70s into the former GDR, and it does offer a layer of quirky detail, such as an unnerving car crash involving what looks to be Trabant. But for a film that shows a lot of naked flesh and spends a lot of time documenting a young woman’s complicated sexual awakening, the political table-talk can be distracting and even wearying, notably on the occasion when a whole (recently reunited) family bursts into “The Song of The Peat Bog Soldiers.“

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Emily Atef, who is presenting her latest film, “Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything,” in competition at the Berlin Film Festival, just moved to Paris to direct “La Maison,” a series depicting a fictional family-owned French luxury fashion empire. While discussing “Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything” ahead of its world premiere, Atef told Variety that “La Maison” will be filled with a lot of drama and tragicomedy. “It’s very Shakespearean. There’s so much beauty and luxury with old mansions in Brittany, Parisian ‘hotel particuliers,’ and then behind all that there’s so much human poverty, and you see them ripping each other appart for power,” said Atef, who will direct the pilot and three more episodes.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Emily Atef, the outspoken French-German filmmaker, may have stepped into a minefield with her latest movie, “Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything,” which looks to be one of the Berlinale’s most divisive movies in competition. With such a cute title, one might expect a flowery romance drama, but the movie goes far to break deep-entrenched taboos about female sexuality. Based on Danielle Krein’s novel, the film is set in the summer of 1990, shortly after the fall of the Berlin wall, in the countryside of former East Germany. Marlene Burow plays Maria, who is about to turn 19, lives with her boyfriend at his parents’ farm. She engages into a passionate and lustful affair with Henner (Felix Kramer), a reclusive neighbor who is twice her age.

EXCLUSIVE: UTA partner Bec Smith, a company vet of 16 years, is leaving the agency, we can reveal.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Cologne-based sales company The Match Factory has expanded and restructured its acquisition and development team. Former head of sales, Thania Dimitrakopoulou, has been promoted to vice president of acquisitions and sales. Claudia Solano comes on board as senior manager of acquisitions, and Cécile Tollu-Polonowski, a long-time partner with the company, has been appointed as head of development. Dimitrakopoulou, who joined The Match Factory in 2007, will now be heading up all acquisitions activities and manage the sales team, reporting to Michael Weber, managing director.

Director Emily Atef and producer Xénia Maingot paid tribute to late French actor Gaspard Ulliel on the first of anniversary of his death at a screening in London of his last feature More Than Ever on Thursday evening.

Hainan Island International Film Festival (HIIFF) in China’s Sanya has returned as an in-person event, following a relatively short Covid-related postponement, with separate competition sections for features, documentaries and shorts. 

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorThe 39th edition of the Munich Film Festival, which runs June 23-July 2, will screen 120 films from 52 countries, including 35 world premieres, such as “Paloma” by Marcelo Gomes, one of several films in the festival that tackles the subject of trans identities.The three international competition sections will feature numerous highlights from the Cannes Film Festival, including “Corsage,” which opens the event. Vicky Krieps was honored in Cannes with the best actress award in the Un Certain Regard section for her performance as Empress Elisabeth of Austria, also known as “Sissi.” Four films come to Munich fresh from Cannes’ main competition: “Leila’s Brothers” by Iranian director Saeed Roustayi, about a family’s struggle for survival in an Iran economically weakened by Western sanctions and consumed by corruption; “Pacifiction” by Albert Serra, in which Benoît Magimel excels as a conflicted police commissioner; “The Eight Mountains,” directed by Charlotte Vandermeersch and Felix van Groeningen, a touching adaptation of Paolo Cognetti’s novel about a friendship forged in the spectacular natural environment of the Western Alps; and Hirokazu Kore-eda returns with “Broker,” which received the award for best acting performance in Cannes for Song Kang-ho.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorOn Saturday, film and TV funder Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg celebrated the six films that it funded running in the official program of the Cannes Film Festival.These were Ruben Östlund’s “Triangle of Sadness,” in Competition, Ali Abbasi’s “Holy Spider,” in Competition, Emily Atef’s “More Than Ever,” in Un Certain Regard, Mia Hansen-Løve’s “Un beau matin,” in Directors’ Fortnight, Sergei Loznitsa’s “The Natural History of Destruction,” in Special Screening, and Mantas Kvedaravicius’ “Mariupolis 2,” in Special Screening.Commenting on the role Medienboard played in funding the films in Cannes, the organization’s chief Kirsten Niehuus said: “Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg and other film funds play an important role in sustaining high quality cinema in Europe and in international co-productions around the world.” Speaking about the type of films Medienboard likes to fund, she said: “Not very original but true – we prefer films that bring something original to an audience. That goes for mainstream as well as young talent and arthouse.

Director Emily Atef’s Cannes Un Certain Regard drama More Than Ever is a careful, fastidious, Tradition of Quality film about impending death that’s easy to admire but won’t exactly pack ‘em in.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentThe Cannes Film Festival has added a string of new titles to its Official Selection, including three movies in competition: Léonor Serraille’s “Un Petit Frere,” Albert Serra’s “Tourment sur les iles” and “The Eight Mountains” by Charlotte Vandermeersch and Felix Van Groeningen (“The Broken Circle Breakdown”).“The Eight Mountains” is an Italian film based on Paolo Cognetti’s 2016 novel. It revolves around a young man who returns to a young man who finds refuge in the Italian village where he spent a summer as a child with his parents.