Category: Entertainment

Debuting Italian director Margherita Ferrari is at the Busan International Film Festival with “Föa – Once Upon a Future,” an innovative coming-of-age drama that also marks Paolo Sorrentino‘s debut as a producer.

Set in Genoa during the tragic days in July 2001 when the G8 summit led to deathly clashes between protesters and police, “Once Upon a Future” tells the story of Nicole, an 18-year-old girl who is eight months pregnant and takes three protesters into her home. Using a fable-like tone, the film provides a fresh perspective on the G8 violence that became a watershed moment in the anti-globalization movement.

“’Föa’ begins with a wound that history never quite managed to close,” Sorrentino said in a statement to Variety. “Margherita Ferrari turns the memory of Genoa into something intimate and dreamlike, where the past quietly returns to question the future.”

“Föa – Once Upon a Future,” which stars emerging talents Gaia Ravina, Clara Tramontano, Iker Urgoiti and Gabriele Falsetta, was co-produced by Sorrentino′s production company Numero 10, with The Apartment and PiperFilm. PiperPlay is handling international sales.

“At a time when imagination needs to be protected, supporting new authors and their singular visions feels more important than ever,” Sorrentino continued. “I am particularly proud that Numero 10 begins this journey with a film told through such a powerful female gaze — a story that reminds us that even after the future seems to have disappeared, it may still be waiting for us.”

The film started as Ferrari’s graduation short at Rome’s Centro Sperimentale film school, after which she had the opportunity to pitch the expanded project to Sorrentino. Below, Ferrari speaks to Variety about what sparked “Once Upon a Future” creatively and its fortuitous production journey.

How did the “Föa – Once Upon a Future” story germinate?

On July 20, 2001, I was only 4. I remember the windows and the typical green shutters of our living room in Genoa had to be closed because outside there was smoke and noise. So, even though it was summer and sweltering inside, we had to barricade ourselves in, staying in the dark. Shut away. That image came back to me during the pandemic. I had sought out that same feeling — of solitude, isolation and even powerlessness — while something much bigger than me and all of us, something powerfully collective, was happening outside. On a more personal level, I’ve always felt a certain disillusionment regarding the limits of my own power; how little impact I can actually have on the world or on contemporary reality. It’s a feeling that hits me every time I speak about this subject.

Tell me more.

I know I’m not just talking about me. I see this reflected in so many of my peers, and perhaps in people in general, who are experiencing the world as it is today. So there is that, combined with the lingering wound of those days and all the traces they left behind. Speaking as someone from Genoa, I felt a desire to tell a story that, even though it’s set in 2001, is really about the future and about today. How do you do that? Usually, fairy tales are set in the distant past. Yet they’re actually meant to speak to the present. So, that’s more or less how it all came about.

Starting with the title, “Föa – Once Upon a Future,” this film is a fable of sorts. Talk to me about this narrative choice, which is unusual in dealing with historical fact.

The Genoese term “Föa” actually means “story,” in the sense of a made-up story, a little tale or a fable. That aspect interested us [myself and my co-writers] partly because we wanted to blend history with a capital H, the kind you study in books, with a fictional tale about a character who doesn’t exist. It also suggests that to tell the truth about reality, you somehow need invention and metaphors, and therefore cinema and fables too. We also wanted to approach this historical event from a more emotional, dreamlike perspective, focusing on the almost unconscious traces that were left within us by those days. This applies even to those, like us, who experienced the aftermath of the Genoa G8 events. In a way, we always felt like we were inside Nicole’s womb, so to speak. The child Nicole is carrying in the film would be 25 or 26 years old today. In a sense, he has been carrying the same question we have, which is: “What will the future awaiting us actually be like?”

I’d like to add that I hope this film offers more than just the questions that are raised by those events. I hope it allows the audience to imagine that things might turn out a bit better. It’s like in fairy tales, I always envisioned a moment of relief at the end, a breath of fresh air that leaves room for that possibility.

What was it like to have Paolo Sorrentino as your producer?

Paolo was very involved during both the initial writing phase and the editing process. But not on set. He treaded lightly in that phase. He just stopped by once to say hello. I tried to get him involved, but he didn’t want to. Basically, he was very keen on not being intrusive and to respect the boundaries of the set. I view that gesture as an act of great tenderness on his part. Even though I’ve always loved getting his advice, it never scared me, I find Paolo to be very patient. I think he had often already thought out certain solutions before we did. But he waited for me, or for me and the editor, to get there on our own, to reach the direction in which the film needed to go. He helped me pursue and protect my vision all the way to the end, while supporting my work as a director through every single phase. It was a beautiful creative process from the start. It also helped me grow, helped me bring the film to the screen and become the person I am today. That’s more or less how it went.

He’s been one half of one of the most cherished on-screen duos in history, yet has famously never spoken a word. That is, up until now.

Gromit, the whip-smart and eye-rolling four-legged friend to cheese-loving inventor Wallace across numerous stop-motion classics from Aardman Animation and “Wallace & Gromit” creator Nick Park, is getting his first autobiography and, with it, an audiobook.

In step Martin Freeman, who will narrate “Grand: The Autobiography of Gromit, as Told to Nick Park,” a book in which, according to the description, Gromit “finally breaks his silence.”

“When you create a character who has no voice, and whose facial expressions are everything, what do you do when your publisher reminds you there’ll be an audiobook? Who could possibly be the voice of a character everyone feels they know, but nobody’s actually heard?” said Park, winner of four Oscars, including three for Wallace & Gromit films “The Wrong Trousers,” “A Close Shave” and “The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.”

“The more I thought about it, the more I realised Martin Freeman was the obvious choice really. I was genuinely thrilled and honoured when he said yes.”

Recording took place earlier this month at Penguin Studios, with both “Grand: The Autobiography of Gromit” and the audiobook now due for release Oct. 22.

But Park, having previously stated that Freeman was “the voice” of Gromit, in almost the same breath attempted to (doggy) walk back the de-muting of his plasticine hound.

“Martin is not doing a Gromit ‘voice’ as such,” he said. “He’s reading Gromit’s story as Gromit put it; his inner thoughts, his candid insights and endless witticisms, bringing to them his usual colour, thoughtfulness and wry humour.” now from all major audiobook retailers.

Brad Bird, Roger Deakins and the teams behind “Toy Story 5,” “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” and “Project Hail Mary” head to Turin next week for the 27th View Conference, where AI and the economics of animation and VFX are set to dominate the agenda.

Four of the films being unpacked at the Oct. 12-16 event — “Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” “The Odyssey,” “Toy Story 5” and “Project Hail Mary” — have collectively generated more than $6 billion worldwide this year. Those sessions sit within a lineup spanning Pixar, DreamWorks, Sony Pictures Animation, Disney Animation and Aardman, alongside senior executives from Industrial Light & Magic, Sony Pictures Imageworks and Skydance Animation.

The gathering comes as animation and visual effects companies navigate pressure on production economics, global competition and investment in artificial intelligence. Across five days, View’s filmmaking presentations and executive discussions offer different perspectives on how those pressures are reshaping production.

Five developments to watch:

Animation’s Franchises and Original Ambitions

Brad Bird returns to Turin with “Ray Gunn,” his long-gestating animated sci-fi noir, on a program that brings original projects into the same conversation as some of Hollywood’s most established franchises.

Pixar presents “Toy Story 5” and “Hoppers,” while DreamWorks directors Joel Crawford and Januel P. Mercado discuss “Forgotten Island.” Sony Pictures Animation brings “GOAT,” and Disney Animation producer Yvett Merino presents “Hexed.” Aardman’s Merlin Crossingham addresses stop-motion filmmaking.

Bird’s project offers a different timescale from the industry’s emphasis on faster production. Developed across decades of changes in financing, studio ownership and technology, “Ray Gunn” provides an opportunity to examine how an original animated feature retains its creative identity over a prolonged development process.

Studio Leaders Confront the Business

The executive program may offer the clearest view of the decisions shaping where and how films are made.

Michelle Grady, president of Sony Pictures Imageworks; Holly Edwards, president of Skydance Animation; and Janet Lewin, senior VP, general manager and head of ILM, join Cinesite Group VFX COO Shawn Walsh and other senior figures for Industry Executives Shaping the Future of Cinema.

At last year’s View, Tippett Studio CEO Gary Mundell described AI as a tool to accelerate production, saying the challenge was to make it serve the studio’s purposes rather than the other way around. The question for this year’s executive panel may be how such ambitions translate into investment, staffing and sustainable business decisions.

Their companies operate across different parts of the production business, but face overlapping questions: how to manage capacity, retain experienced artists, compete internationally and assess investment in new tools while protecting margins.

Those decisions have consequences beyond individual productions. They influence where work is commissioned, which skills companies recruit and how much scope filmmakers have to develop increasingly complex vfx and animation within a fixed budget.

Inside the Year’s Major Productions

Presentations on “Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” “The Odyssey,” “Project Hail Mary,” “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” Steven Spielberg’s “Disclosure Day” and “The Mandalorian & Grogu” move the discussion from corporate strategy to production practice at the peak.

The sessions go deep each with an hour on stage; with their peers in attendance. Quality is high, often taking in how shots developed, which elements were achieved practically, what moved into postproduction and how teams coordinated the work.

These sessions also provide a useful counterpoint to claims that filmmaking is moving toward a single production model. Large-scale features continue to draw on combinations of physical construction, photography, animation and simulation, with the balance determined by the requirements of each sequence.

AI Moves Into the Production Debate

“AI will be the most hotly debated topic at VIEW Conference 2026,” VIEW CEO and executive director Dr. Maria Elena Gutierrez told Variety.

Runway co-founder and co-CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela and Nvidia global media and entertainment VP Richard Kerris headline panel Every Pixel Will Be Generated. Other sessions examine AI-native production and changing entry points into animation and VFX.

For studios and suppliers, the commercial question extends beyond what generative systems can produce. It is whether those outputs can be controlled, and integrated into a production pipeline reliably enough to deliver savings, and how companies grapple with the ethical questions those savings raise.

That brings the technology debate back to familiar concerns about creative authority, staffing, schedules and accountability.

Cinematography Closes the Conversation

Friday’s program brings several of the week’s themes together. “Toy Story 5” shares the day with Every Pixel Will Be Generated, presentations on “Avatar: Fire and Ash” and “Project Hail Mary,” and Aardman’s stop-motion filmmaking.

Two-time Oscar winner Roger Deakins and James Ellis Deakins then close the conference with a session on cinematography.

After so much discussion of what machines might make, and what companies could afford, the conference will end with two people considering how an image comes to mean something. It is a fitting conclusion. For the industry’s questions are not merely those of invention or economy; they concern the relation between the tools at its disposal and the stories us humans want to tell.

UTA and Gold House are joining forces at the Busan International Film Festival and in Seoul this month, marking the Asian Pacific advocacy organization’s first official foray into Korea as the two look to connect Asian creatives and investors with Hollywood.

The partnership kicks off with the UTA x Gold House x Variety Industry Night at the Park Hyatt on Friday (Oct. 9). The two companies will then stage a panel, “Hollywood & the Asian Diaspora,” at the Asian Contents & Film Market on Oct. 10, before moving to Seoul on Oct. 13 for a speakeasy party for cross-cultural creatives, funders and founders.

David Park, a senior partner and agent at UTA, notes that the agency has worked in Asia, particularly Korea and Japan, for several years. “Adding Gold House has allowed us to level up, quite frankly,” he says.

Until now, Gold House’s formal footprint in Asia had been limited to Singapore and Taiwan. Christine Yi, executive VP and president, Gold House Studios., is of Korean heritage, as is Daniel Suh, who runs the organization’s venture capital fund. The pair made an exploratory trip to Korea around this time last year to meet people in the local industry and ask what role Gold House could play.

“What we had heard the most about was, do the Gold House thing here. You don’t really have to reinvent the wheel,” Yi says. “Especially as it relates to bringing major Hollywood executives, Dave included, to the table in order to really help facilitate more cross-border partnership, that’s something that they would really want from us.”

“I don’t know if 2026 is the right moment, honestly. The right moment would have been sometime in the past, so I would say that we’re actually overdue,” Yi adds, pointing to Gold House’s investments in Korean startups and the number of its investors based in the country.

Neither side has a formal, ongoing program in place yet. Gold House launched Gold House Studios, its in-house production arm, this year, and Yi plans to use the Korea trip to meet creatives the company wants to work with. “The partnership to us is really all about network and ecosystem building,” she says.

On what they look for in Asian talent and IP, both point to authenticity. “Specificity is what leads to success,” Yi says. “Audiences can tell when something has been watered down for a global palate, and that’s not what they’re asking for.”

Projects needn’t be in English, she adds, but they must connect with English-speaking audiences, where Gold House’s audience base sits. The company’s track record also leans heavily on first features, a stage where filmmakers “need someone to really take a bet on them.”

Yi is also eyeing Korean talent-led projects. She won’t name names, but says a singer from a group that would come up “within your first couple” if one listed the top K-pop acts in the world has approached Gold House about making a film.

“She can call anybody at all. But I think the way that her team wanted to approach us is like, ‘You guys might not be exactly the people, for whatever reason. However, we trust that you know who the right people are if it is not you, and to help us really navigate the U.S.,’” Yi says. “That’s a super-intimidating ask, especially when you’re coming in in a new medium that audiences might not necessarily associate with you.”

Gold House hopes to guide the strategy and possibly work on the production, and Yi sees overseas talent looking for “a safe place to land” as a pipeline worth exploring while in Korea.

Park’s touchstones for authenticity include “Parasite,” whose upstairs-downstairs class story landed in France, and “KPop Demon Hunters,” from his client Maggie Kang. “The only regret she has is that she didn’t add more Korean into the lyrics of some of the songs, or more actual specific locations that she wanted to bring into it,” he says, describing it as a balance Kang had to strike with Sony Pictures and Netflix.

He would also like to see Korea tackle horror comedy. “Comedy is so culturally subjective, it’s harder to travel. But when embedded so intricately and so deeply with horror, for example, that could work, and it could be a huge hit,” Park says.

One of the biggest gaps in the Asia-Hollywood pipeline, in Park’s view, is a shortage of crossover producers with a base in Asia and relationships with L.A. buyers. Outside Netflix and Disney, which run local teams, most buyers rely on U.S. headquarters to judge premium local-language content. “I probably can, if I had to, list those people on one hand,” he says.

For Yi, one gap is capital. She is keen to see whether Asia-based private investors would back U.S. independent films, an asset class she says many individuals in U.S. indie film treat “like philanthropy.” She is also scouting Korean unscripted producing partners.

Looking further ahead, Yi wants to build a cross-border talent development program, whether an exchange, a shadowing scheme or an accelerator.

Park is on board, noting that Bong Joon Ho and “Squid Game” creator Hwang Dong-hyuk can now stay in Seoul and still win Oscars and Emmys. He points to his client Na Hong-Jin, whose “Hope” he calls the biggest movie out of Korea. “Identifying him before he did ‘The Wailing’ would be incredible,” Park says.

Gold House has an executive producer role on Stephanie Ahn’s “Bedford Park,” which is screening at the festival.

After turning Spain’s tax agency into the unlikely engine of a noir-tinged comedy, “Celeste” creator Diego San José and director Elena Trapé are taking aim at something far more sacred in Spain: soccer.

The six-part second season of the Movistar Plus original brings Carmen Machi (“La Mesías”) back as Sara Santano, the tax inspector who spent Season 1 trying to prove that a globe-trotting Latin music star owed €20 million ($22.4 million) in Spain. This time round, the series rewinds to an earlier point in Sara’s career and revisits Figueroa, the Argentine soccer star whose earlier tax case marked the only professional failure of Sara’s otherwise distinguished career.

The social equation flips with him. Sara embodies one of Spain’s least-loved public figures; Figueroa is a soccer idol whose failings can be forgiven as long as he delivers on the pitch.

Imagina Sales (The Mediapro Studio Distribution) is handling international sales on Season 2 and will bring the series to Mipcom ahead of its Oct. 26 world premiere at Barcelona’s Serielizados Fest.

Season 1 won Spain’s Ondas and Feroz awards for best comedy, while Series Mania’s International Panorama awarded it best series and best actress for Machi last year. It also launched on Arte in France and Flow in Argentina.

Produced by Movistar Plus and 100 Balas, and The Mediapro Studio company, the new season is again directed by Trapé, with San José writing alongside Oriol Puig and Fernando Delgado-Hierro.

San José and Trapé spoke to Variety ahead of Mipcom about the new season.

Why make Season 2 a prequel and return to the Figueroa case?

San José: It really has nothing to do with the person she is pursuing. The decision to go back in time had to do with Sara Santano herself. The Sara we leave at the end of the first season is a woman whose wounds have healed. For a writer, that’s not the most interesting version of her. We wanted a character with wounds and cracks.

So we went back to Figueroa as an excuse to go back to Sara. The case is really a pretext. The advantage of Figueroa isn’t Figueroa. It’s that her husband is alive. That allows us to tell a completely different personal story.

If the first season is about solitude, the second is about the end of love — what happens when two people sleep separately, still care for one another, but are no longer in love.

When you were making Season 1, had you already planted the Figueroa case with a second season in mind?

San José: No. Everything to do with making a second season came after the first was already finished. So at the writing stage we had to approach it almost as an exercise in architecture, or juggling. The first challenge was to make a good season even for somebody who hasn’t seen the first one, so the story works simply as a story.

Then we set ourselves another challenge: making sure everything fits and resonates. If somebody watches both seasons and takes out a magnifying glass looking for something that doesn’t fit, they shouldn’t find it. We also wanted Season 2 to help explain things from the first that were already there.

Sara is exemplary, but she also breaks her own rules. What interests you about pushing her across those lines?

San José: Stories become interesting when characters do things they don’t normally do. Sara is an exemplary inspector, but we put her in circumstances where she breaks her own rules.

She is as obsessive and methodical as an FBI agent looking for a serial killer in Manhattan. We’ve taken the classic codes of film noir and moved them somewhere gray and everyday like the tax office. It’s about giving a tax office the adrenaline and muscle of the Pentagon. That collision between the ordinary and something as explosive as Dirty Harry is part of the DNA of the series.

Even when the characters make questionable choices, the series seems more interested in understanding than judging them. Was that important to you?

San José: Above all, we’ve tried to understand them. I don’t think any of the characters in either season is bad.

Even the alleged tax evaders have understandable interests. The ways they defend them may be wrong, but we’ve tried not to make anyone stupid.

All the characters in “Celeste,” on both sides of the investigation, are emotionally broken. I don’t think you can hate somebody who isn’t happy when they go to bed. If things aren’t going well for you, I think an embrace comes more naturally than an elbow.

Elena, how do you convey that emotional vulnerability without tipping into melodrama?

Trapé: If by sentimental you mean melodramatic, the tone and the way the characters’ feelings emerge are so subtle, delicate and restrained that it’s very difficult for that to happen. That is already very clearly established in Diego’s writing.

It’s also fundamental that Diego is with me on set every day. Any doubt, any ambiguity, any moment when you ask, “Do we push this further or are we already there?” becomes part of our creative dialogue.

The series has a particular affinity for losers. What draws you to them?

San José: We all have a losing side, and not everybody has a winning side. What equalizes all of us is that we all know what it is to lose. Defeat is what makes us connect.

Both seasons have a special sympathy for losers. We made a heroine out of someone who is clearly looked down on in real life. Tax inspectors are badly regarded in our society.

The fact that a 62-year-old woman who is a tax inspector can at the same time be Dirty Harry is already a bet on turning the loser into somebody who gets a spotlight in fiction that she doesn’t get in real life. The series is made to weave a nice suit for losers who don’t usually get one.

The singer Celeste is no longer central to the story. Why keep the title?

San José: We never attached much importance to the title containing the name of the most important character. “Celeste” for us has become almost more of a color than a figure from music.

People even sometimes refer to Carmen Machi as Celeste: “Have you seen that series about the inspector, ‘Celeste’?”

The first season connected with more people than even we expected, so we wanted to keep the same brand.

Elena, after the response to Season 1, what did you want to achieve with the second season?

Trapé: There’s a solidity to this season that I really like. As the characters gain more volume and nuance, and the plot develops, you enter a universe that keeps expanding. It becomes something more mature.

One challenge of the first season was establishing its very particular tone. This time we, the crew and Carmen already knew it. That gave us much more room to play.

Watching it now, I feel we’ve grown. It feels like a very solid season.

You’ve now made “Celeste” and “Yakarta” together, with Javier Cámara earning an International Emmy nomination last month for the latter. Could there be a “Yakarta 2”?

San José: My plan, as a viewer, is for Elena to make something without me, because I’d like to see it. The downside of working with Elena for three or four years is that I don’t get to watch things by Elena.

We’ve made two series together, three seasons in total, and I’m extremely happy with them. But now it’s Elena’s turn to do her own thing.

If Elena wants to make “Yakarta 2,” it will happen. That depends on Elena.

Trapé: What I hope neither of us rules out is working together again. Whether it will be “Yakarta 2” or something else, I don’t know.

San José: I think if Javier Cámara wins the International Emmy, it’s going to be difficult to sit down to dinner without somebody saying, “Why don’t you make a ‘Yakarta 2’?” So let’s make Javier responsible for that.

This interview has been edited and condensed