Rise Films’ Teddy Leifer, Producer Behind Cannes Doc ‘All That Breathes’ & HBO’s ‘George Carlin’s American Dream’, Talks Company Growth & Why Non-Fiction Is “Years Away From Its Peak”

Kevin Spacey, facing charges of assault in the UK, has received the support of the producers of Peter Five Eight, the film intended to mark his comeback after five years off screen.

Kelly Reichardt has been making minimal Americana since the early 1990s, mostly around the state of Oregon where she lives and mostly about her favored awkward squad: quiet square pegs who don’t quite fit the round holes society provides. In this ongoing quest she has found many collaborators, but none more attuned to her recessive brand of naturalism than Michelle Williams.

James Bond star's family put the artwork up for sale to raise funds for the Sean Connery Philanthropic Fund.It will donate money to good causes in Scotland and the Bahamas, where the star lived with his wife Micheline for more than 30 years.Edinburgh-born Sir Sean bought Buste D'Homme Dans Un Cadre a few years before his death aged 90 in October 2020.The 1969 painting was sold in Hong Kong yesterday by auction house Christie's and had been expected to fetch at least £15million.Auctioneer Georgina Hilton wore a Bond-style tuxedo in tribute to 007 and described the painting as “sensational”.The bidding started at £10 million and received five offers before attracting a final price of £17.7million, including the buyer's premium.The most expensive Picasso ever sold at auction was Les Femmes d'Alger (Version 'O') which sold for $179.4 million (£142 million) in 2015.Speaking before the sale, his stepson Stephane Connery, an art adviser, said: “Sean had an extraordinary sense of aesthetics, composition and movement honed by his career in a visual medium as well as his long marriage to Micheline, a fine and internationally-exhibited painter.“He loved and owned numerous works by Picasso, and upon seeing Buste D Homme Dans Un Cadre, he was captivated by its expressive power and freedom.“It seems fitting that this work would be sold in Asia as Sean had a tremendous affinity for Asia and its culture.”He added: 'Before Sean passed away in 2020, he allocated a sizeable portion of his estate to be used for philanthropic purposes.“We - his family - are now working to create a fund that will offer support to organisations that reflect Sean's interests and passions, and serve to keep his legacy of integrity, opportunity and effectiveness

Ellise Shafer Following news that Kevin Spacey has been charged with four counts of sexual assault in the U.K., the producers of one of his new films being shopped at Cannes have issued a statement in support of the disgraced actor.“While it’s unfortunate that increased negative press is timed with Kevin returning to work, it’s also to be expected,” the producers of “Peter Five Eight” said in a statement to Variety. “There are those who wish for him not to act, but they are outnumbered by fans worldwide who await an artist they have enjoyed for decades returning to the screen.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorEuropean Film Promotion has been playing host at the Cannes Film Festival to 20 up-and-coming European producers, selected for its Producers on the Move program. Variety invited the producers to share details of their upcoming projects.Maarten Schmidt, Belgium Project: “Under the Surface” Director: Guido Verelst Anne, born premature, has Asperger’s and wants nothing more than to be able to live underwater as a mermaid.

Naman Ramachandran The late Govindan Aravindan’s 1978 masterpiece “Thamp̄” (“The Circus Tent”) is one of two Indian films at this year’s Cannes Classics selection, alongside Satyajit Ray’s “Pratidwandi” (“The Adversary”) from 1970.“Thamp̄” was painstakingly restored by India’s Film Heritage Foundation (FHF), an organization founded by filmmaker Shivendra Singh Dungarpur (“Celluloid Man,” “CzechMate: In Search of Jirí Menzel”) in 2014. Dungarpur facilitated the restoration of Uday Shankar’s landmark film “Kalpana” (1948) by Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Foundation, the restored version of which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2012.

In part deux today of the Cannes Film Festival symposium on cinema, three female filmmakers were represented in You Were Never Really Here‘s Lynne Ramsay and Grand Central‘s Rebecca Zlotowski and French actress/director/scribe Agnes Jaoui, unlike yesterday when it was all men. The festival on social media took a licking for being tone deaf in the wake of yesterday’s panel.

Lise Pedersen The top IEFTA (Intl. Film Talent Assn.) award for docs-in-progress at the Cannes Film Market’s documentary-focused industry sidebar Cannes Docs has gone to “Twice Colonized” by Lin Alluna.The film was developed by the Circle Women Doc Accelerator, a training program for female-identifying documentary filmmakers.The win marks a hat-trick for Circle since they started their partnership with Cannes Docs in 2020: previous IEFTA Docs-in-Progress Award laureates at the industry event include “Beauty of the Beast” by Anna Nemes, produced by Circle 2018 alumna Ágnes Horváth-Szabó, and “Cent’anni” by Circle 2020 alumna Maja Prelog, produced by Rok Biček.“Twice Colonized” tells the story of renowned Inuit lawyer Aaju Peter who has led a lifelong fight for the rights of her people.

FOR nearly ten years Victoria Baker-Harber has been one of the stars of Britain’s poshest reality show. But this week her life away from Made In Chelsea took a shocking twist, as her fiancé was jailed for seven years for masterminding a £68million art swindle.

No one would accuse Judd Apatow of being a concise writer or director. When he is at his best — “Knocked Up,” “Funny People” — his runtimes allow characters to develop and breathe, creating lived-in worlds.

Naman Ramachandran Indian documentary “From the Shadows,” by Miriam Chandy Menacherry (“Lyari Notes”), has been selected for the Breaking Through the Lens initiative at the Cannes Film Market.The initiative connects female and non-binary directors to finance at top-tier film markets.In the documentary, artist Leena Kejriwal relentlessly sprays silhouettes on public walls tagged #missing, activist Hasina Kharbhih accompanies girls rescued from child sex trafficking across international borders, and survivor Samina fights a long and arduous legal battle against her traffickers. Parallel narratives intersect to reveal a sliver of hope when women challenge a powerful trafficking nexus operating in a country where every eight minutes a child goes missing.

In David Cronenberg’s latest genre twister, Crimes of the Future, Viggo Mortensen and Lea Seydoux plays partners who are performance artists, engrossed in performing surgery (largely on the former) for public nightclub spectacle. They’re enthralled with the freedom they can take on each other’s bodies. All of this in a governing society that’s not too fond of it.

Just when his fans may have figured that David Cronenberg had called it a career (he’s now 79 and hadn’t made a feature since the misfired Maps to the Stars in 2014), along comes a film that only the Canadian maestro of the perverse could have created.

There’s a lot of weird fetishes in this world, which we won’t go into, but for David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future, the new sex is surgery.

Viola Davis brought guests at Kering’s annual Women in Motion dinner in Cannes to their feet on Sunday with a rousing speech acknowledging her roots and personal journey to Hollywood.“As much as I love Alexander McQueen — and I love Alexander McQueen — and the fabulous makeup,” said Davis, “I am always, always so moved when people tell me my work or my life meant something to them. But just know who I am at the end of the day is: I don’t want to leave something for people — I want to leave something in people.”Davis was speaking on stage at Kering’s annual dinner at the Cannes Film Festival, where she was the night’s honoree.

Carole Horst Nonfiction filmmaker Brett Morgen has taken on icons in his previous films including Jane Goodall (“Jane”), the Rolling Stones (“Crossfire Hurricane”) and Kurt Cobain (“Cobain: Montage of Heck”). With “Moonage Daydream,” he turns his lens on David Bowie. It may be Morgen’s biggest project yet — he combed through 5 million assets that the Bowie estate shared with him as well as “everything on YouTube,” Morgen said.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefIranian-Danish director Ali Abbasi insists that his Cannes competition film “Holy Spider” is not intended to be a controversial truth telling. Rather, he is telling the truth through a fictional interpretation of real events. The film chronicles a killing spree in the streets of the religious city of Mashhad, where 16 prostitutes were found dead between 2000 and 2001.“I am not a big fan of serial killers or serial killer movies,” Abbasi said May 23 at the Cannes Film Festival.

Lise Pedersen Scandinavia is bringing talent old and new to the Cannes Film Market’s Cannes Docs sidebar this year, with a showcase of five feature length films-in-the-making pitched as part of the Scandinavian Showcase on Saturday.“Children of the Lowest Heaven”From Denmark, internationally acclaimed writer-director Birgitte Stærmose Mortensen (“Darling,” “Room 304”), who has been working on mini-series for HBO, Starz and Netflix for the past five years (“Industry” season 2, “The Spanish Princess,” “In From the Cold” and “The English Game”), presented “Children of the Lowest Heaven” (“Ønskeliv”), a hybrid doc set in Kosovo.Inspired by her short “Out of Love” (2009), about a group of children living in poverty in post-war Pristina, it picks up where she left off with the characters, who are now young adults, still fighting to survive in one of Europe’s poorest nations. It’s about the long-term effects of war, and what it means to live a life in poverty.

A new documentary on the late comedian George Carlin debuted on Friday night. This two-night biography called "George Carlin’s American Dream" dives into the late star's multi-decade career, and features old home videos, audio recordings and previous tv show clips.  His brother, Patrick, his first wife Brenda Hosbrook and his daughter, Kelly all share first-hand accounts of Carlin.

The titular Triangle Of Sadness in previous Palme D’Or winner Ruben Ostlund’s current Cannes competition entry, we’re told, is the small space between the eyebrows and the bridge of the nose where nasty, aging lines register an accumulation of inconvenient emotions that, quite frankly, don’t sell a suit on the catwalk. “Do you think he needs Botox?,” mutters a model casting agent as Carl (Harris Dickinson) — who, being on the wrong side of 20, should worry — struts his stuff. He will soon find himself at a fashion show where a huge neon screen announces “Everyone is equal!” That’s nonsense, obviously. Carl can’t even find a seat.

Cannes Film Festival is making efforts to diversify beyond the cavalcade of many of the same male auteurs. Instead, there will be a record number of women directors in competition.Now the bad news.