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Louis Garrel is set to play John Elkann — heir to Italy’s Agnelli family, behind car giant Fiat — in Italian auteur Marco Bellocchio‘s “Falcon.” The biopic centers on charismatic auto industry executive Sergio Marchionne, played by Pierfrancesco Favino, who saved Fiat from the brink of bankruptcy.

The high-end production is currently shooting in Toronto. Additional “Falcon” cast members include Benedetta Cimatti, Barbara Ronchi and a cameo by Valeria Bruni Tedeschi.

Marchionne, who was Italian and Canadian, died in 2018 at 66. He was hired by Italy’s Agnelli family to run Fiat in 2004 when, due to previous mismanagement and the recession, few in the auto industry believed it could be saved.

“Ruthless and visionary, he axes the top management, teaches John Elkann (Garrel), the young heir suddenly burdened with the family’s legacy, the art of command, and conquers the American market by fighting General Motors and Chrysler, saving FIAT from bankruptcy,” the film’s synopsis says.

Then, in 2009, when Chrysler was guided into a U.S. government-led bankruptcy, Marchionne offered to take control of the company essentially for free. With no other option, the U.S. Treasury Department accepted his offer. By merging the two failing car companies, Marchionne created the seventh-largest vehicle manufacturer in the world, increasing Fiat’s value more than tenfold.

“Marchionne became very important and famous overseas,” promotional materials note. “But the miracle exacted a devastating price. Blending the razor-sharp tension of a financial thriller with deep psychological insight, ‘Falcon’ explores the heights of capitalism and the fatal, profound isolation of a tragic victor swallowed by the very machine he saved.”

The project is written by Bellocchio with Ludovica Rampoldi, Andrea di Stefano, Stefano Rulli and the collaboration of Oliviero Del Papa. “Falcon” is being produced by Simone Gattoni for Kavac Film, Mattia Mor for Emotion Network and RAI Cinema and in collaboration with Stla Europe.

The prolific – and still very active – Bellocchio, who is 86, is considered the greatest living Italian director of the country’s old guard that came of age during the 1960s. His recent works comprise “The Traitor” — starring Favino — about the first high-ranking member of Cosa Nostra to break the Sicilian Mafia’s oath of silence, which was released in the U.S. by Sony Pictures Classics in 2020. In 2023, he shot “Kidnapped,” which reconstructs the true tale of Edgardo Mortara, a young Jewish boy who was kidnapped and forcibly raised as a Christian in 19th-century Italy. His six-episode “Portobello” TV series, which reconstructs one of Italy’s most clamorous travesties of justice, was the first HBO Original Italian production to launch on the HBO Max streaming platform where it dropped to positive response in 2026.

“Falcon” reunites Bellocchio with longtime creative collaborators, including production designer Andrea Castorina, costume designer Daria Calvelli and editor Francesca Calvelli. The director is joined for the first time by Berlin-based Italian cinematographer Matteo Cocco, winner of Italy’s David di Donatello prize for lensing Giorgio Diritti’s “Hidden Away.”

Charlotte Gainsbourg had one artist to recommend to the crowd at her Busan International Film Festival masterclass, and it was not a safe pick.

“I’m not good for recommendation. I have one artist that I listen to, very controversial artist, but I listen to everything he does, and it’s Kanye West,” Gainsbourg said, to laughter from the audience. “I know, it’s very easy.”

She followed up with a tamer pick. If it has to tie back to cinema, she said, film scores are what she listens to most.

Gainsbourg, who is on her first visit to Korea, is in Busan with “Melancholia,” one of four films she made with Lars von Trier. The choice, she explained, came down partly to elimination. “Antichrist,” their first collaboration, won her best actress at Cannes, but “Nymphomaniac” would have meant showing two films.

“I guess it was the easiest choice, ‘Melancholia,’ and also because selfishly, I want to see it again,” Gainsbourg said, laughing. “I haven’t seen it in 15 years.”

The screening followed straight after the session, and the moderator warned the audience they would lose about five minutes so Gainsbourg could catch it.

Then the conversation turned to von Trier himself. “Well, I can’t say he’s a friend, but he’s a dear friend,” she said. “I don’t know him that well, but we exchange text messages.”

The moderator pointed out that film fans and the wider public hold plenty of preconceptions about the director. “As a human being, he’s very tortured. And that touches me. And in his films, he gives a lot of himself. He’s extremely vulnerable,” Gainsbourg said. “I’ve never learned as much as with him about myself, about the film, about being an actress.”

An audience member wanted to know how she plays von Trier’s women, who are at once powerful and powerless. “People exactly think that I am only one side. They think I’m fragile and soft and kind and respectful. I like to show the other side of me, and with Lars’s films, I’m able to,” Gainsbourg said.

When the interpreter described her as having a filmography of more than 80 titles and began to call her prolific, Gainsbourg cut in. “Prolific? No, not prolific,” she said, laughing.

She was more expansive about her few days in Seoul. The Leeum museum opened its doors to her and her friends on a day it was closed, giving her the run of the place. She also ate what she called “a very special barbecue, Korean barbecue, that was incredible.”

“Yesterday was fun, because I got to go to a bar, a restaurant bar with a lot of actors and directors, and it was just so friendly to see people from the industry here just gathering, drinking a lot of alcohol,” she said, drawing more laughs. “It was fun.”

Gainsbourg’s mother, the late Jane Birkin, appeared in Hong Sang-soo’s “Nobody’s Daughter Haewon” during a visit to Korea, so the moderator asked whether her daughter had any Korean directors in mind. Gainsbourg said she would be very open to working here, and that she is fond of Korean cinema and talent, having already met a few members of the local industry. “I’m superstitious,” she said. “So I won’t say any names or anything, but I hope so.”

When an audience member asked about her two most recent releases, Gainsbourg laughed. “What has been released? Nothing!” she said. The film in question turned out to be “L’Affaire Marie-Claire,” Lauriane Escaffre and Yvo Muller’s drama in which she plays real-life lawyer and women’s rights campaigner Gisèle Halimi. The film, which centers on the fight for abortion rights, played in Cannes’ Special Screenings section and opens in France on Nov. 4.

She is also finishing an album she has been working on for years and hopes to make a few music videos for it. She directed her own on her last record. A feature of her own is on her mind, but she said she would need a story so personal “that only me can do it” before she felt she had the legitimacy.

Gainsbourg also looked back on how her acting career began. Her first audition, for “Paroles et Musique,” came via a note her mother left her: “They’re looking for a girl your age. If you want to try, here is the address.” She got the part after a long casting process that came down to two girls, and “The Impudent Girl” followed. For years afterward, she said, she felt she had “stolen the right to be there” because she never trained as an actor.

Her parents have been a big part of her recent work. Gainsbourg spent 35 years trying to turn her father Serge Gainsbourg’s house into a museum, and it finally came together over the past three years. Before it opened, she photographed the house for herself while it was still private, and those pictures ended up as an exhibition in Arles last summer. “It was very emotional for me,” she said.

The 2021 documentary she made about her mother, “Jane by Charlotte,” took about four years to shoot, including a two-year break. “I think she was happy about it,” Gainsbourg said.

Birkin died in 2023. “She was happy knowing how much I loved her, I think,” Gainsbourg added.

Wim Wenders has boarded “Truth:Beauty,” a feature documentary about legendary German fashion photographer Peter Lindbergh, as executive producer.

The project, produced by Maja Hoffmann and Human Humans, will mark the feature directorial debut of French novelist Alexandra Matine, whose books include “Scopophilia” and “La Pire Amie du monde.”

Matine is also writing the film, which is being developed in partnership with the Peter Lindbergh Foundation, giving the filmmakers full access to the photographer’s archives.

The announcement comes on the heels of the world premiere of Wenders’ latest documentary, “From Inside Out,” at the Venice Film Festival.

Principal photography on “Truth:Beauty” is expected to kick off before the end of the year.

One of the most influential fashion photographers of his generation, Lindbergh, who died in 2019 at the age of 74, helped usher in the era of the supermodel with his striking black-and-white portraits. Over a career spanning four decades, he became known for bringing a more natural and realistic approach to fashion photography, moving away from the heavily stylized images that had dominated the industry.

Wenders and Lindbergh, who belonged to the same generation of German artists, shared a friendship spanning several decades. Their work also influenced one another. Lindbergh’s 1993 Harper’s Bazaar editorial “City of Angels” was directly inspired by Wenders’ “Wings of Desire.”

One of Germany’s most celebrated filmmakers, Wenders won the Palme d’Or at Cannes for “Paris, Texas,” the Golden Lion at Venice for “The State of Things,” and the best director prize at Cannes for “Wings of Desire.” He has also earned four Oscar nominations, including three in the documentary feature category for “Buena Vista Social Club,” “Pina” and “The Salt of the Earth.”

Hoffmann, who serves as president of the Locarno Film Festival, has a track record of backing documentaries about major figures in the art world, notably “Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present,” “Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict” and “Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child.”

“Truth:Beauty” is produced by Human Humans in association with Composite Films.