Category: Entertainment

South by Southwest on Tuesday announced the first wave of its world film program and keynote speakers for SXSW London, taking place June 1-6.

The event’s Screen Festival, which features notable talent and executives from film and TV discussing their work and the future of screen storytelling, will include multi-BAFTA and award-winning actress, writer, producer and director Sharon Horgan; award-winning screenwriter and producer Russell T Davies; and Tom Quinn, founder of Oscar-winning U.S. independent film company Neon.

Horgan is best known as the creator, co-writer, executive producer and star of the series Bad Sisters, which has earned multiple BAFTAs, Emmy nominations, and international awards. She also co-created the hit comedy Motherland and executive produces its spinoff, Amandaland. Horgan also recently signed a two-year first-look with HBO, launching with original comedy series Youth, written and executive produced by Horgan, who will also star as a 50-year-old divorcee in a search for sex and love while juggling caring for her ailing parents and parenting her should-be grown-up son.

Davies was awarded the 2006 Dennis Potter Award at BAFTA for his writing services to television and an OBE in the Queen’s 2008 Birthday Honours list for services to drama. His credits include creating Queer as Folk and reviving Doctor Who. He also adapted A Very English Scandal and wrote the BBC One/HBO drama Years and Years, among other credits. He has an upcoming original five-part drama Tip Toe for Channel 4.

Quinn is the CEO and founder of Neon, which was established in 2017. Over the past nine years, Neon has nabbed 57 Oscar nominations, with 11 total wins, including two for best picture (Parasite and Anora). Neon has won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival six consecutive times, including this most recent year’s winner, It Was Just an Accident. In 2024, Neon was named The Hollywood Reporter’s Independent Studio of the Year. Upcoming films include Steven Soderbergh’s The Christophers; Hokum,  starring Adam Scott; and Sundance hit Leviticus.

Also on Tuesday, organizers announced the first wave of films that will be included in the Screen Festival. The event aims to spotlight films from across the world, with more than 43 countries represented in 2025 and films from 22 countries already confirmed for this year’s edition. Organizers said that the international focus of the fest’s program “reflects the multiculturality of London and brings together up-and-coming global talent to connect with the U.K. industry.”

Said Anna Bogutskaya, head of Screen at SXSW London: “SXSW London Screen Festival is not designed to be just another film festival. What we’re building here is a bridge between international talent and the U.K., between film and the wider creative industries, and points of connection between film, music, art and technology. The program we have curated is celebrating those filmmakers and artists who are exploring and exploding the possibilities of filmmaking. London is a global city, and cinema is an international language. What we’re looking for — and what we are excited to bring to London audiences this summer — is that electricity of discovering something truly groundbreaking from places they weren’t looking in.”

The films, with the official loglines, include:

Feast or Famine 
(Dir: Adrian Choa & Michael Boccalini) (U.K.) – World Premiere
Narrated by Marco Pierre White, this feature documentary follows London restaurant ‘Angelina’ as it vies for a Michelin Star under the shadow of the colossal French tire company responsible for categorically shaping chefs’ destinies.

The Remedy 
(Dir: Alex Kahuam) (U.S.) – World Premiere
A troubled young man is the caregiver for both his terminally-ill mother and his mentally-ill sister. When he makes a desperate attempt to save his mom, he unleashes a supernatural entity that feeds on human flesh.

All Night Wrong 
(Dir: Jason James) (Canada) – World Premiere
Gary and Ell meet on a blind date only to wind up stealing a killer’s car along with a dead body and $40,000.

Amoeba 
(Dir: Siyou Tan) (Singapore, The Netherlands, France, Spain, South Korea) – U.K. Premiere
Four teenage girls form a gang as an act of resistance in a country where chewing gum and feeding pigeons are illegal.

Becoming 
(Dir: Zhannat Alshanova) (Kazakhstan, France, The Netherlands, Lithuania, Sweden) – U.K. Premiere
In Kazakhstan, 17-year-old Mila escapes her chaotic home by joining an open-water swimming team — but when her place is threatened, she risks everything to keep the fragile balance she’s found.

On the Road 
(Dir: David Pablos) (Mexico) – U.K. Premiere
A drifter who sleeps with truckers meets a reserved driver and joins him hauling freight across northern Mexico. As they grow closer on the road, the drifter’s past threatens them both.

Father 
(Dir: Tereza Nvotová) (Slovakia) – U.K. Premiere
A tragic mistake destroys a man’s life, isolating him in guilt and shaking his marriage. Now facing prison, can he find a path to forgiveness? Can love survive what no heart was built to endure?

Hijra 
(Dir: Shahad Ameen) (Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt, U.K.) – U.K. Premiere
Twelve-year-old Janna sets off for Mecca with her strict grandmother, Sitti, and rebellious sister, Sarah, to perform Hajj. But before they reach their destination, Sarah vanishes — forcing Janna and Sitti into a tense, urgent search. Fearing Sarah’s father will find out, Sitti and Janna push themselves to the limit, desperate to uncover why Sarah disappeared. Their journey spans from southern Saudi Arabia to its northern borders, crossing old pilgrimage routes and confronting strangers, harsh landscapes, and long-buried family secrets. As they grow closer, Janna begins to unravel stories from Sitti’s rich and complex past. The search reveals deep intergenerational rifts among the women in their family. And as their difficult journey begins to echo the spiritual trials of Hajj, Janna and Sitti may find something greater than reconciliation — redemption.

It Would Be Night in Caracas
(Dir: Mariana Rondón, Marité Ugás) (Mexico) – U.K. Premiere
In crumbling Caracas, after burying her mother, Adelaida finds her home taken by armed militia. With society falling apart, she must risk all, including her identity, to survive.

Maddie’s Secret
(Dir: John Early) (U.S.) – U.K. Premiere
A food influencer secretly struggles with bulimia as she navigates online fame, close friendships and a painful past.

Remake 
(Dir: Vladlena Sandu) (U.S.) – U.K. Premiere
How can the cycle of violence that shapes children and is passed through generations be broken?

Sicko 
(Dir: Aitore Zholdaskali) (Kazakhstan) – U.K. Premiere
Overwhelmed by debt, young couple Azamat and Tanshoplan hatch a desperate plan: fake a terminal illness to raise money through a viral charity campaign. But as the donations pour in and public sympathy grows, their lie spirals out of control.

Whistle 
(Dir: Christopher Nelius) (Australia) – U.K. Premiere
At the Masters of Musical Whistling competition, where virtuoso whistlers compete for global supremacy and bragging rights, we follow an array of quirky personalities and dazzling talents in a film sure to be a crowd-pleaser.

The Whisper 
(Dir: Gustavo Hernández Ibáñez) (Uruguay, Argentina) – U.K. Premiere
Fleeing their violent father, siblings Lucía and Adrián hide in a remote mansion. Using a cat’s hidden micro-camera, Lucía discovers their neighbors run a criminal ring kidnapping teens for snuff films—and plan to eliminate the siblings. As she protects Adrián, a dark family curse invades their sanctuary.

La Carn 
(Dir: Joan Porcel) (Spain) – U.K. Premiere
Lluís Garau, a young dancer, creates a performance inspired by a platform that randomly connects strangers through video calls. But when his online life and his real life begin to intertwine, the boundaries between the virtual and the tangible blur — leaving an irreversible mark on his final work: La Carn.

Barrio Triste
(Dir: Stillz) (Columbia, U.S.) – U.K. Premiere
Four teens as they document their own rowdiness in a hauntingly poetic portrait of violence and loneliness.

Intelligence Rising
(Dir: Elena Andreicheva) (U.K.) – U.K. Premiere
Global heavyweights – from military strategists to philosophers – join AI leader Marc Warner for a bold wargame exploring how artificial intelligence might reshape power itself. Intelligence Rising reveals what happens when the brightest minds face the future they helped create.

International television festival Canneseries, will honor K-Pop superstar and actress Jisoo, Severance star Adam Scott and Baby Reindeer creator Richard Gadd at this year’s event.

Jisoo will receive the Madame Figaro Rising Star Award, Gadd the Prix Konbini de L’Engagement honor, and Scott this year’s Canal+ Icon award.

Gadd’s Baby Reindeer follow-up, Half-Man, premiering on HBO on April 23, will screen out of competition at Canneseries. The high-profile out of comp line-up also includes AppleTV+’s Soviet-era sci-fi series Star City; AMC’s horror anthology The Terror; BBC drama California Avenue with Bill Nighy and Helena Bonham Carter; Canal+ period procedural Paris Police 1910; and Sky’s Prisoner starring Tahar Rahim.

Canneseries 2026 competition lineup includes British relationship dramedy Alice and Steve, staring Jemaine Clement and Nicola Walker as unlikely friends; the Finnish/Slovenian psychological drama Guts (Finland/Slovenia); Danish series Harvest — described as a Succession-style drama set on a family farm; the Spanish coming-of-age dramedy I Always Sometimes; Danish real-life crime drama Snake Killer; Swedish period series Summer of 1985; the Spanish comedy thriller Many People Need to Die; and The Red and the Black, an Iranian drama from Ida Panahandeh and Arsalan Amiri (At the End of Night).

Spanish director Isabel Coixet (My Life Without Me) will head up this year’s competition jury, together with director Lesli Linka Glatter (Homeland, Mad Men); actors Simon Astier (Hero Cop), Vincent Elbaz (The Hundred-Foot Journey), and Mamadou Sidibé (A Prophet: The Series); and composer Ruth Barrett (The Terminal List).

The Canneseries industry section, which runs April 23-25, will feature discussions and keynotes from The White Lotus producer David Bernad and Our Boys creators Hagai Levi and Tawfik Abu Wael as well as panels on K-Drama, artificial intelligence, and vertical, mobile-phone-first series, among others.

The 2026 Canneseries festival runs April 23-28.

Shinya Tsukamoto, the iconoclastic Japanese filmmaker best known for the body-horror landmark Tetsuo: The Iron Man, has set a Japan release for his latest feature, Mr. Nelson, Did You Kill People?, an English-language drama based on the true story of an African American Vietnam War veteran who became a peace activist with deep ties to Japan. The film is scheduled to open in Japanese theaters in September, setting up a potential Venice Film Festival launch.

The project marks a significant departure for Tsukamoto, who wrote, directed, shot and edited the film — his first primarily English-language feature — across locations in the United States, Thailand, Vietnam and Japan. Broadway veteran Rodney Hicks, an original and closing cast member of Rent, takes his first major screen lead as Allen Nelson, while Oscar-, Emmy- and Tony-winner Geoffrey Rush plays Dr. Daniels, a Veterans Affairs physician who intervenes in Nelson’s downward spiral. Tatyana Ali (The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air) plays Nelson’s wife Linda, and newcomer Mark Merphy appears in flashbacks as the young Nelson.

The film is rooted in the nonfiction account of Nelson, who grew up in New York and enlisted in the Marine Corps at 18, seeking an escape from poverty and discrimination. After training at Camp Hansen in Okinawa, he was deployed to Vietnam in 1966, where he participated in village raids that targeted men, women and children as suspected Viet Cong. He returned home severely traumatized, and spent years homeless before finding treatment through the VA. Nelson went on to devote his life to anti-war advocacy, returning to Okinawa in 1996 and ultimately delivering more than 1,200 lectures at schools and community halls across Japan. He died in 2009 and is buried in the country.

Mr. Nelson, Did You Kill People? completes what Tsukamoto has described as an informal trilogy of 20th-century war films. Fires on the Plain (2014), his adaptation of Shohei Ooka’s classic novel about a Japanese soldier’s harrowing experience in the Philippines, competed in the main competition at the Venice Film Festival. Shadow of Fire (2023), set in Japan’s devastated black markets in the immediate aftermath of World War II, premiered in Venice’s Orizzonti section, where it won the NETPAC Award. Where those films examined the Japanese experience of wartime atrocity and its aftermath, Mr. Nelson shifts the lens to the American side — and specifically to what the filmmaker calls “the wounds of those who perpetrated war.”

Tsukamoto says the project gestated for seven years, tracing its roots to his research for Fires on the Plain. 

“The most terrifying work of nonfiction I encountered was Mr. Nelson, Did You Kill People?” he says. “This book, in which he poured out his crimes and the life that followed without holding anything back, has stayed with me ever since and is deeply etched in my heart.” 

He adds that Nelson’s story — “having spent his entire life sharing his wartime experiences” — is more essential now than ever, “in today’s world, where conflicts are raging in various places.”

The film is produced and distributed in Japan by Kinoshita Group and its distribution arm Kino Films. The announcement was timed to coincide with National Vietnam War Veterans Day on March 29.

In his review for The New York Times, the critic Vincent Canby wrote of Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon, “If you can let yourself laugh at desperation that has turned seriously lunatic, the film is funny, but mostly it’s reportorially efficient and vivid, in the understated way of news writing that avoids speculation.” He is right, of course: Lumet’s 1975 masterpiece is, on occasion, ruefully amusing, the tics and foibles of regular life incongruously interrupting a situation most dire and extraordinary. 

For the most part, though, Dog Day Afternoon is a sober thriller (Canby called it a melodrama) about a small-time Brooklyn bank heist blown up into a hostage crisis and city-wide fascination, about a man hard done by the system, who, for a few glorious and dangerous hours, almost breaks free by bending that very system to his will. There is a lot of serious stuff whirring through the film’s mind, a consideration of the fraught tempers of its fraught times. It crackles with immediacy, murmurs with furious sorrow. 

But the creators behind the new Broadway production of Dog Day Afternoon seem to have gotten stuck on the funny part. Adapted by Pulitzer-winning playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis, this Dog Day is an antic comedy of bumblers and busybodies and freaks, of nasty jokes and weak attempts at rabble-rousing. It’s a frustrating image, Guirgis and everybody else involved in this folly watching the intimate neorealism of Lumet’s film and saying, “Let’s turn this into a big Broadway farce.”

There were reportedly some clashes over tone during production; the Times reports that Guirgis was, for a time, banned from the rehearsal room. Which might indicate that sometime in the lead-up to previews pointed out that maybe not everything in this true-ish story should be a joke. But the production barreled ahead anyway, and what’s resulted is a garish disaster of tone and tempo, dull and grating at once. 

Perhaps the first sign that something is wrong comes right at the very beginning, when a minor character, timid would-be third perpetrator Ray Ray, declares that he doesn’t have the fortitude to continue with the robbery. In the film, ringleader Sonny (Al Pacino then, Jon Bernthal now) simply sighs and lets him go. Which does eventually happen on stage, too, but not before Ray Ray loudly complains of stomach issues and then promptly soils himself. We are, I guess, meant to laugh at this pathetic display — look at these bozos, already almost literally shitting the bed — instead of seeing, as we do on film, the fragile humanity of those about to be framed by the media and police as animal degenerates. 

Such cheap comedy abounds as the play unfolds. The chief police negotiator’s last name has been changed to Fucco, perhaps only so a swaggering FBI agent can repeatedly call him “Fucko.” The bank teller characters — women of varying ages all fearing for their lives while warily bonding with their captors — are turned into floozies or sardonic sitcom moms. Sal, the edgier and less predictable robber softly played by John Cazale in the film, is 2026-ified into a dumb, loose-cannon maybe-closet-case by The Bear’s Ebon Moss-Bachrach, doing a tired riff on his character from that show. Sitting through the play, I kept thinking to myself, “Wait, is this what the movie is like?” I then rewatched the film afterward and can confidently state that, no, of course it is very much not. 

Guirgis would seem a natural choice to adapt the film. His best plays — Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train, Between Riverside and Crazy — are vivid depictions of hardscrabble New Yorkers, many of them caught in the undertow of crime and consequence. He can swing between kitchen-sink drama and poetic-comedic fugue with stunning ease. Surely he, so rooted in the argot of the city at the center of Dog Day, could find a way to massage Lumet’s minimalist approach into something that might proportionately fill a Broadway house. But his instincts fail him badly here. Worse, he seems quite sour on the people of this story, often mocking them when compassion would be far more effective. 

The way Guirgis handles Sonny’s second wife, Leon — a trans woman who has just attempted suicide — is particularly galling. It’s quite something that a film from 50 years ago is far more sensitive to Sonny and Leon’s complicated relationship than is a play made in the present day. Guirgis paints Leon (played by Esteban Andres Cruz) as a flighty, feisty, man-crazy sex worker. It’s all a big gag, another bit of crassness to join the rest — like, say, the wheezy jokes about how one bank teller is supposed to see Deep Throat with her husband, or how another slept with their uptight boss. (I probably need not remind you, but none of that is in the movie.) Guirgis is practically begging us not to take anyone seriously, for what reason I can’t fathom. 

Director Rupert Goold is ill-suited to mitigate that sneering impulse. Goold has done good things on stage (King Charles III, among others) and decent things on film (Judy, for which Renée Zellweger won her second Oscar), but this particular milieu favors none of his fortes. The action sequences, if we can call him that, are clunky, shouty jumbles. There is nary an ounce of tension to be found during the entirety of this supposedly heated stand-off. Goold doesn’t do much with David Korins’ impressively realistic set but rotate it back and forth depending on whether we’re inside the bank or outside of it. And he has steered most of his actors to the broadest of performances, favoring high pitch and volume over anything that might resemble the measured authenticity of Lumet’s ensemble. 

Bernthal does, on occasion, register as a real human being caught in a moment of desperation. He maintains a springy energy even when the play around him sags. Jessica Hecht, as head teller Colleen, fights her miscasting with noble grace; she finds ways to turn canned one-liners into something resembling the everyday. Jon Ortiz gives Fucco (sigh) a certain air of decency that vaguely evokes Charles Durning’s brilliant shagginess in the film. Honestly, though, I was most taken with Spencer Garrett of Mad Men fame, who nails the smarmy, officious tone of the FBI guy brought on to fix the NYPD’s mess. He feels truly of the story’s time and place, whereas most others are playing to a studio audience. 

That audience is made complicit in perhaps the gravest of this production’s crimes. Goold has chosen to turn the “Attica! Attica!” moment from the film — in which Sonny revels in a frenzy of anti-authority sentiment — into a bit of crowd participation. Bernthal takes center stage, waving his arms and asking those in attendance to repeat “Attica!” and to applaud (or perhaps echo) him when he says “Fuck you, NYPD!” I don’t know that Broadway audiences (especially at the matinee I attended) are exactly the right cohort to try to sway toward such public displays of anarchy, and thus the moment is rendered achingly limp and awkward. 

More crucially, though, this hammy call-and-response completely upends what makes the moment in the film so electric. Yes, Sonny does initiate the Attica chant — evoking the brutal suppression of a prison uprising that happened the year prior — but he is reacting to the already extant fervor of those who have gathered around the bank to spur Sonny on, to lend their proletarian support. Lumet captures an ailing city bristling with tension, its citizens enraged at corrupt police and politicians, clamoring to assert their humanity in the face of, well, the Man. It is a thrilling, spontaneous and tragically fleeting burst of revolutionary outcry. 

On Broadway, though, Dog Day Afternoon attempts to force that out of its onlookers rather than earn it, turning Sonny’s shouts of reckless heroism into a hollow marketing slogan utterly stripped of context. Maybe some theatergoers will put down their $30 themed cocktails to clap and cheer along, deciding right then and there to buy an “Attica! Attica! Attica!” tote bag in the lobby on their way out, happy to have had the Dog Day experience. But the Sonny of the film would certainly be appalled to see such a thing. I think the hostages would be, too.

Venue: August Wilson Theater, New York
Cast: Jon Bernthal, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Jessica Hecht, Jon Ortiz
Director: Rupert Goold
Writer: Stephen Adly Guirgis
Set design: David Korins
Costume design: Brenda Abbandandolo
Lighting design: Isabella Byrd
Sound design: Cody Spencer

Japanese director Nanako Hirose, who trained under Palme d’Or winner Hirokazu Kore-eda at his Tokyo-based film collective Bunbuku Inc., has unveiled her second feature, Between Two Lovers, a romantic drama centered on a married woman who pursues a simultaneous relationship with a female lover — and proposes that all three live together. The film is set for release in Japan on Nov. 27.

The film stars Masami Nagasawa (Our Little Sister) as Uta, a picture book creator described by the filmmakers as “selfish, cunning — yet utterly lovable.” Tasuku Emoto (Kobikicho no Adauchi) plays her husband Morio, an attentive and domestic man torn between his wife’s wishes and traditional family values, while Shizuka Ishibashi — who is set to headline the NHK Morning Drama Series Blossom this fall — takes on the role of Junna, Uta’s lover and editor.

Hirose says the film “was born from the idea that there should be more diverse forms of family in the world.” She says the premise first came to her during the pandemic and she has spent the years since developing and writing the screenplay. 

Nagasawa, who recently won the best actress prize at the 49th Japan Academy Awards for Dollhouse, says of her character: “Within Uta-chan’s seemingly conflicted actions lie a mix of ideals, reality, and a sense of justice. Even so, her honesty and authenticity continue to draw people in.” Emoto described the project as “a story about love, brought to life by characters who are clumsy, yet full of longing.” Ishibashi called her character “clumsy and prickly like a hedgehog,” yet carrying a “childlike softness inside.”

Hirose built her career as an assistant director within Bunbuku, the creators’ collective that Kore-eda (Shoplifters, Monster) founded in 2014 alongside filmmaker Miwa Nishikawa (Under the Open Sky). The company has served as a launchpad and incubator for emerging Japanese directors, with Kore-eda mentoring younger filmmakers from script development through production. Hirose’s directorial debut, His Lost Name, starring Yuya Yagira, premiered in the New Currents competition at the Busan International Film Festival in 2018 and played at festivals internationally.

Between Two Lovers first attracted industry attention at the script stage, winning both the CJ ENM Award and the ARRI Award at the Asian Project Market (APM) within Busan’s Asian Contents & Film Market in 2023.

The film is a Japan-Taiwan co-production, with Taiwanese cinematographer Yao Hung-I — who shot several of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s later works as well as Huang Xi’s Missing Johnny — handling the photography, alongside Taiwanese lighting director Hsiao Hung-Yi. Filming took place in September and October of last year, and the film is already complete. Popular Japanese singer-songwriter HIMI composed the score, marking his first time scoring a full feature.

The project was developed by Bunbuku and is being produced and distributed by K2 Pictures, the Tokyo-based company launched in 2023 by former Toei producer Muneyuki Kii. K2 has positioned itself as a disruptor in the Japanese film industry, eschewing the country’s traditional production committee model in favor of a fund-based financing structure aimed at returning more profits to creators and attracting both domestic and international investment. The company’s directorial roster includes Kore-eda, Nishikawa, Takashi Miike and Shunji Iwai, and its K2P Film Fund I has drawn investment from some of Japan’s biggest financial institutions, including MUFG Bank and the Development Bank of Japan. Kii serves as executive producer on Between Two Lovers, with Daiju Koide producing.