Tag: Entertainment – Variety

The 17th Durban FilmMart kicks off Oct. 9 with a stacked, four-day program of talks, panels, think tanks and conversations that will spotlight some of the challenges and opportunities for the African film and TV industries and set the agenda for the continent’s filmmakers for the year ahead.

A highlight of every edition is the influential DFM Pitch and Finance Forum, the continent’s top launching pad for films searching for financing and distribution. Since its inception 16 years ago, the co-production forum (alongside DFM platforms Talents Durban and Jumpstart) has been the catalyst for more than 100 films.

To celebrate that track record, this year’s DFM will open with a screening of Rwandan debutante Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo’s post-genocide drama “Ben’Imana,” which won the Caméra d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Durban FilmMart Institute director Magdalene Reddy says the film — a co-production forum alumnus — was selected to highlight the event’s outsized impact on the African filmmaking community.

“This was a DFM project. It was pitched at DFM two years ago, and they were able to win two awards at Cannes [including the FIPRESCI prize],” says Reddy. “For us, the celebration of hosting a screening at the market — which we’ve not done previously — is based on the fact that we want to show our local content in our local context.”

Other DFM alumni that have made a splash on the festival circuit include “Aisha Can’t Fly Away Anymore,” from Egyptian filmmaker Morad Mustafa, which premiered at Cannes’ Critics Week; “Goodbye Julia,” from Sudanese director Mohamed Kordofani, which premiered in Un Certain Regard; “Mami Wata,” a Sundance prizewinner from Nigerian filmmaker C.J. Obasi; and “Carissa,” from South African directing duo Devon Delmar and Jason Jacobs, which premiered in Venice’s Horizons strand.

This year’s forum features 35 projects that will be pitched to producers, financiers, sales agents, broadcasters, distributors and film funds from across Africa and the rest of the globe. The final tally includes eight animation projects, 10 fiction features, 10 documentary features and seven series, all in varying stages of development. Fourteen African nations are represented, while 28 of the 35 projects have women in key creative roles.

“Creating the right balance is important,” Reddy says. “For us, creating a balance means creating a balance between the regions of the continent, so that we are well-represented. Creating a balance between established and emerging filmmakers. Gender balance is also very important.”

She adds: “The other balance is to make sure that there’s arthouse and commercial projects.”

To that end, in addition to the Pitch and Finance Forum, this year’s DFM will include a showcase of five projects from the African Producers Accelerator, an initiative launched this year to help connect commercially viable African projects with potential investors. Highlights include “Borsel,” the latest from “Carissa” filmmakers Jacobs and Delmar, whose last feature, “Variations on a Theme,” won at Rotterdam in 2025; “Galatians,” from director Michael Omonua (“Juju Stories”) and producer Abba Makama (“The Lost Okoroshi”), of Nigeria’s Surreal16 Collective; “A Fantastic Tale,” from Kenya’s Vincho Nchogu, which follows on the heels of her Venice premiere “One Woman One Bra”; and “The Return,” a Ghana-U.S. co-production from Zoey Martinson, whose debut “The Fisherman” also bowed in Venice.

Partnerships with the Palestine Film Institute, Climate Story Labs and Habesha Creative will also give a boost to additional projects looking for partners.

As this year’s event gets set to begin, here are 10 DFM Pitch and Finance Forum projects we’ve got our eyes on:

Bitter Wine
Director: Pablo Pinedo Bóveda
Producers: Protagonist Studios, Everywhere Films

Basque filmmaker Bóveda (“Noma”) partners with South African producer David Franciscus — best known for Ryan Kruger’s reboot of the 1987 cult horror-comedy “Street Trash” — on this story of a firebrand trade unionist whose life in Spain is upended after a strike goes horribly wrong. Regrouping on her friends’ vineyard in South Africa, she soon feels a call to action as she realizes that their workers are being bitterly exploited.

Bóveda/Franciscus: “Bitter Wine” is the story of neo-slavery experienced by South African wine farm workers, revealed through Pablo’s work with disenfranchised communities for over 16 years. The perspective and agency of the protagonists shift, motivated by their desire for justice and reparations. Our film explores racism, labor exploitation, contemporary post-apartheid society, white savior complex, love and, of course, wine.

Fafi
Director: Dominique Jossie
Producer: Blended Films

An alumna of the Realness Netflix Episodic Lab and co-writer of the Showmax series “Breekpunt,” Jossie’s latest is a multi-generational crime mystery drama series that traces the parallel lives of two women navigating
the mysterious, illegal gambling world
of Fafi. Spanning four decades and set between Cape Town and Johannesburg, it charts the hopes, dreams and betrayals of Coloured and Chinese families in South Africa.

Jossie: “Fafi” was inspired by stories shared by my grandfather, who worked as a Fafi runner in the 1950s. I became fascinated by this hidden cross-cultural economy that sustained families excluded from formal systems of power. The show “Fafi” explores our untold histories that shape identity, belonging and the legacies we inherit.

Four Months and Ten Days
Director: Alyaa Musa
Producers: Tooma Production, My Way Studio, Black Balance

From the Sudanese producer of Cannes Directors’ Fortnight selection “The Dam” and Un Certain Regard prizewinner “Goodbye Julia” comes Musa’s feature directorial debut about a widow who refuses to mourn her late husband, leaving his restless ghost trapped with her at home. What unfolds is a tragicomic story of reconciliation, infused with magical realism and set against the backdrop of the Sudanese revolution.

Musa: When my father died, I witnessed my mother’s Idda: four months and 10 days that turned from a “prison” into a temple, honoring a sacred ritual. The story merges two realities: a nation seeking freedom after 30 years of oppression, and Azza seeking reconciliation after 30 years of an unhappy marriage, whilst sheltered to practice the radical act of rest and healing.

Hyena
Director: Mkamzee Mwatela
Producer: 8278A Film Studio

Nairobi-based writer-director Mwatela, whose credits include Netflix’s “Country Queen” and MTV’s “Shuga Mashariki,” brings her extensive TV experience to this 8 x 45’ series about a down-on-her-luck producer whose only shot at a second chance comes in the form of a trashy reality show. Determined to make something respectable and meaningful out of it, she instead realizes that she has to betray everything she believes in to succeed.

Mwatela: Invasive, restless, uncomfortable. The camera hovers, intrudes, and eavesdrops. It is aggressive and unstable. Surveillance is not just aesthetic; it is the psychological condition of the series. The camera has a pulse. Shots feel grabbed. Frames are imperfect, sometimes late, sometimes too close. The audience is complicit. There is no neutral gaze in [“Hyena”].

Juju Soccer
Director: C.J. Obasi
Producers: Fiery Film, Vortex Animation

Best known for his Sundance prizewinner “Mami Wata,” Obasi charts a new course with this animated series about a downtrodden youth soccer team that finds hope with the arrival of a sorcerer’s apprentice whose magic turns the squad into an unstoppable force. Fusing sport, African magic, mythology and underworld intrigue, “Juju Soccer” tells a story where every goal is a stake, not just for pride, but for survival.

Obasi: There is literally no show like “Juju Soccer.” It’s an ultra-cool, colorful, badass African animated series, and we are going to have a blast making it. We have something entirely new and fresh, while also being familiar, and using a genre spin that is richly authentic and inventive all at the same time. This is a show that elevates the culture of a people, a perspective we don’t get to see, without alienating those who are not from that culture.

Mieta
Director: Carla Fonseca Mokgata
Producers: Storyscope, Peripheria, Black Mic Mac

Set in 1980s South Africa, Mokgata’s third feature is told from the perspective of a 10-year-old girl, an orphaned laborer trapped in the unforgiving world of farm life who uses her imagination to escape. Backed by a powerhouse production trio, it’s a modern fairy tale about memory, land and the inheritance of violence.

Mokgata: The stories that shaped me were often carried rather than written; passed between generations, altered by memory, silence and survival. “Mieta” grew from those fragments, from a desire to give them a life of their own. Rooted in African ancestral spirituality, where the living and the dead share the same breath, “Mieta” is a fairy tale about the quiet, radical power of imagination when everything else has been taken away. It is for every child who imagined freedom before they knew its name.

Nerve
Creators: Renee van Reenen, Raffaella Delle Donne, Tshepo Moche

Written and created by a trio of independent co-creators whose credits include the Netflix animated series “Supa Team 4” and Disney+’s “Kizazi Moto” anthology series, “Nerve” is a genre-bending Afrofuturist anthology blending horror, folklore, science fiction, speculative fiction and the supernatural. The ten 8-10’ stand-alone episodes use cerebral, high-concept horror to tell stories about African women who triumph, overcome and subvert in surprising ways.

Van Reenen/Donne/Moche: As South African women who have lived through our own varied experiences of “horror,” we wanted to explore authentic stories and interpretations of what horror means to different women by featuring African and Diasporan voices across diverse socio-economic and cultural backgrounds. The anthology presents a unique opportunity to showcase talent still vastly underrepresented on screen and within the horror genre.

Smoke and Mirrors
Writer: Zoë Laband
Director: Jozua Malherbe
Producer: Luke Rous Productions

Veteran South African producer Luke Rous teams up with award-winning screenwriter Zoë Laband and director Jozua Malherbe on this pulsing, 6 x 50’ crime drama series that gets set into motion when the grave of a South African crypto-king is discovered empty in Brazil. Spanning two continents, the show — based on an incredible true story — delves into what happens when what begins as a simple con turns into one of the largest cryptocurrency Ponzi schemes in history.

Malherbe/Rous/Laband: We’ve all been scammed. The feeling of broken trust is something that binds us. But when you lose as much money as [AI-powered Bitcoin trading platform] MTI stole, you almost have to admire the audacity. “Smoke & Mirrors”is our ode to the East Rand boytjies who aimed for the Moon, hit the stars and burnt out across the financial firmament.

Sunday Morning
Director: Minasie Terefe
Producer: Behagerlij Studio

Scooping both the Disney Television Animation Prize and the AGrAF Prize at Annecy’s MIFA Pitches this year, this animated series aimed at preschoolers follows four irrepressible kids whose determination to sing and play their way through the day is thwarted by a sleepy parent who just wants a few more hours of peace. A colorful cast of animal playmates adds to the fun and mayhem in their lively Ethiopian household.

Terefe: We believe the most local stories often travel the furthest. “Sunday Morning” comes from our childhood Sundays, a familiar rhythm in many Ethiopian families where children chase moments of play while parents hope for moments of peace. Through visual storytelling, humor and music, we want to share a story rooted in Ethiopia yet shaped by emotions that families everywhere can relate to.

Where Do I Belong?
Director: Ibrahim “Snoopy” Ahmad
Producer: Sudan Film Factory, In Deep Visions

From prolific Sudanese producer Talal Afifi and the filmmaking team behind the urgent, Sundance-premiering documentary “Khartoum” comes a companion piece that picks up the thread in Nairobi’s Sudanese diaspora community. There, director “Snoopy” Ahmad decides to return to his family in Khartoum, combining documentary footage and hand-drawn pencil animation to tell an intimate and unconventional road movie.

Afifi/Ahmad: This film begins inside Ibrahim’s own family: the parents who crossed borders to protect him are now separated from him by Sudan’s war. We are making it as an act of care and responsibility, connecting one family’s unfinished journey to wider African histories of migration and conditional belonging, without surrendering their intimacy or agency.

Glen Powell is the latest Hollywood heavyweight to express a disinterest in talking about politics in press interviews. The “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Chad Powers” is on the last cover of Esquire magazine and remembered growing up with parents who never brought up current events at the dinner table, to which Powell said “thank God” for that. “Politics interests him even less now,” the magazine writes.

“Over time, I realized that politics divide people,” Powell said. “People trying to prove their point — for me, it’s the worst version of a conversation. I genuinely do not like the discourse. It’s not as healthy as it once was. [Engaging in politics] is not presently possible. I applaud people for jumping into those things and fighting for what they believe in. If I were a political person, I would be talking about it. For me, my calling is elsewhere.”

Powell’s comments are similar to that of Dwayne Johnson, who in his own Esquire magazine cover story earlier this year said he will no longer speak publicly about politics. Johnson had already told Fox News in 2024 that he regretted endorsing Joe Biden for president in 2020 because it caused division amongst his fans. He then told Esquire that he wants to keep the focus solely on his art.

“Politics is omnipresent and it’s forever. I don’t like it. I hate it at times. I hate the slinging. I hate all the bullshit that comes with it,” Johnson added at the time.

A few months before Johnson’s quotes, Jennifer Lawrence spoke to The New York Times about her own newfound resistance to talking to the press about politics. This was a dramatic change of pace for Lawrence, who notably spoke out against Donald Trump during his first administration as U.S. president and wrote an op-ed after Election Day in which she declared that Trump’s victory meant “the only people that feel safe [in America] are white men.”

When asked by The Times about her thoughts on speaking out now regarding Trump and politics, Lawrence answered: “I don’t really know if I should. The first Trump administration was so wild and just how can we let this stand? I felt like I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off. But as we’ve learned, election after election, celebrities do not make a difference whatsoever on who people vote for. So then what am I doing? I’m just sharing my opinion on something that’s going to add fuel to a fire that’s ripping the country apart. We are so divided.”

Lawrence added that she does not “want to start turning people off to films and to art that could change consciousness or change the world because they don’t like my political opinions.” She maintained that she can still get across her political beliefs via her work, such as the movies she’s making at her production company like “Bread and Roses,” which follows three women in Afghanistan amid the effects of the 2021 Taliban offensive, and the abortion documentary “Zurawski v Texas.”

While Powell steered clear of political talk in his Esquire cover story, he did briefly open up about experiencing some of his first box office flops after a string of hits that included “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Anyone But You” and “Twisters.” His fall 2025 tentpole “The Running Man” bombed with under $70 million worldwide on a production budget in the $110 million range. According to Powell, drama at Paramount Pictures did not set the Edgar Wright-directed movie up for financial success.

“They let go of an entire marketing department a month before our movie came out in the middle of a merger,” said Powell, referring to mass Paramount layoffs that hit in late October 2025 just weeks before “The Running Man” opened in theaters.

After “The Running Man” came this winter’s “How to Make a Killing,” an A24-backed dark crime comedy that tapped out with $21 million worldwide.

“There were a lot of issues with that,” Powell told the magazine. “There just was not enough time to do it properly. I look back on that one as an example of going, You know what, there’s no rush.”

Head over to Esquire’s website to read Powell’s cover story in its entirety.

“In Starland,” the directorial debut of British star Ray Panthaki and led by “Sing Sing” breakout Clarence Maclin, has been backed by some of the indie film world’s leading lights.

Killer Films has boarded the feature, with Christine Vachon and Mason Plotts having joined the producing team.

The news comes just as “In Starland” has been announced as world premiering at the 30th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, where it has been selected to close the festival’s first feature competition.

Written by Panthaki and Jason Kavan, “In Starland” is described as a coming-of-middle-age drama which Maclin plays Ernie, a 50-year-old loner whose quiet life is upended when a group of young influencers arrive in his small town and draw him into their chaotic, hyper-connected world, forcing him to confront questions of belonging, identity and the life he has allowed himself to live.

The ensemble cast also includes Miss Benny (“Club Kid”), Bella Maclean (“Rivals”), Colin Buckingham, Leesie Pinto, Tai’mua, Kang Frvr, Mollee Gray, Gallant, Maxwell Cunningham, Marcus Scribner and Ben Dickey.

“In Starland” is produced by Panthaki and Daniel Khalili for Le Bateau Lavoir, Daisy Allsop for Archface Films and Victor Paul Wajnberg, and executive produced by Vachon and Plotts for Killer Films.

The production was shot independently in Mississippi over 20 days, with Panthaki and his producing partners building the film outside the traditional studio system. Earlier this year, “In Starland” was selected as one of the BFI and British Council’s GREAT 8 at Cannes, the annual showcase spotlighting eight new UK feature films from first-time and early-career filmmakers to international buyers and festival programmers.

“This film has been independent in the truest sense of the word. We took something already considered independent and stripped even that infrastructure away. There was no safety net, just a group of people who believed the film should exist and kept finding a way to make that happen,” said Panthaki.

“That belief has carried us all the way through — in Clarence, in Daniel, in me, and ultimately in the film itself. So to be invited to world premiere at a festival like Tallinn, and close the first feature competition, is a huge honour.”

“Line of Duty” creator Jed Mercurio has thrown his fedora in the ring to reboot the “Doctor Who” franchise.

Mercurio, a prolific TV writer responsible for shows including Vicky McClure-starrer “Trigger Point” and “Bodyguard,” led by Richard Madden, has submitted his interest via Hat Trick Mercurio, the production company he co-founded with Jimmy Mulville.

Last month the BBC launched a competitive tender inviting pitches from producers to reboot the series. The deadline for submitting interest was Friday, Oct. 2 with the BBC set to whittle down a shortlist of four to five prospective producers by Oct. 9, who will be asked to submit a “short editorial outline” for their vision for the new series.

In its invitation to tender document setting out the process, the BBC said they are looking to award a contract to produce a “multi-episodic series” of the 63-year-old show including specials which they aim to broadcast in 2028/2029. The contract will include an option for a second season.

Described as a “new flagship series of ‘Doctor Who,’” the broadcaster wants the reboot to feel “contemporary, and creatively ambitious, whilst remaining true to the values and characteristics that have made Doctor Who a beloved series across generations.”

However, producers, who will also be required to develop a new “distinctive” companion for the show, will effectively be working for hire and will not own any rights to the series, which is almost entirely owned by the BBC. (The rights to the iconic Dalek cyborgs are split between the BBC and creator Terry Nation due to his agent crossing out the merchandising clause in his contract with the BBC in 1963). The BBC’s drama boss Lindsay Salt will be among those selecting the winning bidder, alongside commissioning editor Nick Lambon, business head for scripted Geraldine Atlee and business affairs manager James Dundas.

Mercurio has long been known as a sci-fi fan and even co-authored a comic book, “Sleeper,” with Prasanna Puwanarajah which is set in the 24th century and centers around a biologically enhanced space marshall called DS-5. He also has a long and storied history with the BBC, with the series finale of “Line of Duty” becoming the most-watched U.K. drama of the century, racking up over 15 million views for the broadcaster in 2021.

According to the BBC’s tender document, it is aiming to select a producing partner by March 2027.

The BBC declined to comment. Hat Trick Mercurio did not respond to Variety’s queries.

The producers of upcoming British boxing biopic “In the Shadow” have successfully staged a last-minute rescue mission to save their film after its U.K. distributor True Brit Entertainment filed for administration in late September.

The film — based on the true story of trailblazing British-Somali boxer, model and UNICEF Ambassador Ramla Ali and due to have its world premiere at the London Film Festival on Oct. 9 — will now be self-released theatrically in the U.K. thanks to additional support from its financiers.

“We had to mobilize very quickly — it really was the 11th hour,” says Lee Magiday (a BAFTA winner and Oscar nominee for “The Favourite”), who produces alongside Madeleine Sanderson (“Being AP,” “Fighting for a City”). Magiday said they only found out in mid-September that there would be no money for the P&A spend. “So we had to ask our backers — our exec producers — whether they could put even more money into the film, which, thank God, they did.”

Following it’s London Film Festival premiere, “In the Shadows” will now screen across the U.K. in more than 30 screens starting with a special screening and Q&A on Oct. 30 with Ali at London’s Genesis Cinema, near where the film was shot. With near perfect timing, Ali then has a world title fight on Nov. 8 in the U.S. and will return to help support the film with further special event screenings and Q&As.

Magiday and Sanderson praise their exec producers Richard Fern, Anushka Shah and Natasha Mudhar for their additional financial support to enable the release, but also say they’re deeply thankful for the assistance of Will Clarke at Altitude Films, which is selling the “In the Shadows” globally. Clarke would introduce the producers to Ben Metcalf at Metis Films, which is now physically handling the distribution, with former True Brit exec Kate Neville-Towle overseeing marketing.

“It’s really nice because a lot of people really love the film, love Ramla and love what we’re doing — so it’s a bit like a community,” says Sanderson. “We’ve got our team.”

Led by “Top Boy” star Jasmine Jobson and directed by Anthony Wonke, “In the Shadow,” tells the story of refugee Ali, who, without the knowledge of her strictly Muslim parents in London, secretly pursued boxing to become the first Somali-British professional boxing champion. It was at the boxing club where she trained that she met her future husband, Richard Moore, who converted to Islam — a testament to his profound love for her. The film explores both Ali’s drive to succeed despite the numerous obstacles in and out of the ring — a drive that helped her become the first boxer ever to represent Somalia at the the 2020 Olympic Games and the first-ever professional female boxing match in Saudi Arabia — and the love story between her and Moore as they navigate racial and cultural barriers.

For Magiday, there are parallels between the story behind “In the Shadows” and the making of it, culminating in the last-minute rescue.

“This film has been a battle from day one and and Ramla’s story has been a battle from day one, so it’s kind of in keeping,” she said. “We’ve had to kind of fight the odds the whole time because we didn’t get industry support for production. This was made by sheer will and determination, and some amazing backers who believed in the story. For us, it’s such an important film because it is about hope. It’s not just the normal boxing story — it’s about being accepted by your your culture, by your family, by your community, and also finding love.”

See the “In the Shadows” trailer below

Michelle Yeoh turned her attention to “Blade Runner 2099” at a Busan International Film Festival press conference on Wednesday, before she flies to New York Comic Con to promote the Prime Video series.

“To be given an opportunity to take it to 2099 is indeed an amazing journey, and to work with such a great talent like Hunter Schafer is a great joy,” Yeoh said. “Silka Luisa, who is our showrunner, Alcon, Ridley Scott as well, has welcomed us into this world of replicants and humans, and I can’t wait for all of you to watch it.”

Yeoh will join Schafer, Luisa and other members of the team for a panel at the New York event. All eight episodes of the limited series will be released on Nov. 25. Yeoh plays Olwen, a replicant Blade Runner nearing the end of her life, who partners with Schafer’s Cora, a mysterious new recruit.

“I love being an actor; I actually love being a producer, but I think being an amazing, great director, you have no life,” Yeoh said when asked whether directing might be next for her. “There is so much of your vision of that person, that writer, and I think I am not able to rise to that. So I will stick to what I know a little bit better, and hope to support directors who have that vision.”

Yeoh, who received the festival’s Asian Filmmaker of the Year award at the opening ceremony, said she was most looking forward to Lee Chang-dong’s “Possible Love” and would love to work with Park Chan-wook and Bong Joon Ho.

“I hope I have the privilege of working more in Korea as well, because I’m a big fan of K-pop, K-drama, Korean food, and especially Korean movies,” she said.

Yeoh is in Busan with “It’s My Time,” a film based on a true story that marks her return to Chinese-language cinema. She also produced the picture, which is directed by Bai Xue and produced by Wen-Hui Yeh. Peter Lam of Media Asia brought her together with the filmmakers.

“I think I spent quite a few years trying to build a bridge from the East to the West, and then now from the West to the East,” Yeoh said. “And hopefully, the bridge will just stay there and I’m able to cross over whenever I want.”

Yeoh plays Zhao Yanhong, a nursing-home resident in her 70s who discovers a gift for the Rubik’s Cube. The role is inspired by Zhao Wenying, a retired math teacher who became the quickest over-60 competitor to solve the puzzle blindfolded. Yeoh said her mother hates the look because she thinks it makes her daughter seem 80.

The actor said she enjoys working with new, young directors. The Daniels were only on their second film with “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” and Roshan Sethi, who directed her latest film “The Surgeon,” which premiered at Toronto, is also a second-time director.

“If you read their script, you’d wonder if they were actually a little bit insane. The fact is they are, that’s why they’re such geniuses,” Yeoh said of the Daniels.

Yeoh has a long history with Busan. She took part in the festival’s Pusan Promotion Plan as a producer in 2002 and attended in 2011 with “The Lady.” This year’s visit is her first in 15 years. Earlier in 2026, she received an honorary Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival.

Recalling her early Hollywood years, Yeoh said she was shocked to be told she was a minority, and that even after the James Bond film “Tomorrow Never Dies,” the parts on offer remained stereotypical. She waited roughly two years before taking on “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.”

That film brought one of the harder moments of her career, as she had knee surgery partway through the shoot. Yeoh said she now laughs about the scene where Chow Yun-fat dies in her arms. “If you pull back the camera, because I had knee surgery, I couldn’t cross legs and cradle Chow. I had my leg literally on a box,” she said. “So it’s kind of funny looking, with one leg up there and then Chow up here.”

Zhang Yimou is still reworking the script for his film adaptation of “The Three-Body Problem,” years into the process, the Chinese director said during the opening ceremony of the Busan International Film Festival, where he is president of this year’s competition jury.

Questioned by festival director Jung Hanseok, Zhang said he is currently preparing a new film, and that he had just been discussing with several directors backstage how hard it is to make a good one these days.

“‘The Three-Body Problem’ is a great science fiction novel, and I like it very much. But it is very difficult to adapt into a film, which is why we have spent several years polishing the script,” Zhang said. “We are still polishing it now. I hope this film will not disappoint everyone’s expectations, that it will satisfy the audience, and I hope we can make it well.”

Liu Cixin’s novel, the first book in his “Remembrance of Earth’s Past” trilogy, won the Hugo Award for best novel in 2015 in Ken Liu’s English translation, and has been adapted as Bilibili’s animated series “The Three-Body Problem” (2022), Tencent’s live-action series “Three-Body” (2023) and Netflix’s “3 Body Problem” (2024).

Jung raised the audience reaction that followed the announcement of the project, which he said had stirred as much worry as anticipation. Zhang said that once word got out that he would direct the film, he asked his company to collect online audience commentary, and it came back with around 400,000 comments in one week.

“I felt that people had a great many concerns. Audiences today have high expectations of us,” Zhang said. “In the age of AI, where visual media has become democratized, the audience’s discernment has risen considerably compared to the past. Because of that, we all feel tremendous pressure, and we hope not to disappoint their expectations.”

He added that he would look closely at what viewers want from the film in the hope of getting it right.

Zhang widened the point to the filmmakers at the festival, saying they all want to make a film that satisfies themselves. “Many people spend an entire lifetime wanting to make a truly great film, yet no one knows where that great film comes from. From a Chinese perspective, it might be luck – your effort combined with luck,” he said. “But regardless of luck, the love and passion for cinema in our hearts will always keep burning.”

Jung introduced the project as an adaptation of a sci-fi novel with an enormous global readership, and noted that Zhang, more than 40 years into his career, still puts out new work almost every year.

Zhang leads a seven-member jury for Busan’s competition. The 31st edition of the festival runs through Oct. 15.

Maggie Gyllenhaal told a Busan International Film Festival press conference on Wednesday that the best directors she worked with as an actress, who were usually also the most successful, understood the value of drawing on the minds of the people around them.

“It was the people who were very scared… or just not very smart, who tried to squash other people’s voices,” Gyllenhaal said.

Gyllenhaal is in Busan with “Flesh Impact,” a short film she wrote and directed in which Ellen Burstyn plays Marilyn Monroe at 100 and Dakota Johnson plays the star in her youth. When she made her feature directing debut, “The Lost Daughter,” her main concern was that everyone on set, from the actors to the cinematographer, production designer and gaffer, felt free to contribute.

“The truth is… it is ultimately up to me as the director. I have the power, so there’s no reason to squash anyone else’s voice,” she said. “I mean, it’s just so obvious that the movie that I will make that includes all the minds of the people on my crew, at least as things I can draw from, is going to be exponentially better than the movie I can make trying to recreate something I imagined all alone by myself in my room.”

“Flesh Impact” began as a commission from Genesis, the luxury car brand and a longtime Busan sponsor, to mark what would have been Monroe’s 100th birthday in June. Gyllenhaal said she knew the star mostly through her image as a screen icon, and took a week to decide whether she had anything to say about her. She spent it reading about Monroe and watching her films.

“I don’t think that when Genesis came to me and asked for a film about Marilyn Monroe to celebrate what would have been her 100th birthday that they imagined she would actually be 100 years old in the movie,” Gyllenhaal said. “I thought, ‘Okay, I have this idea. They’re never going to go for it.’”

Genesis approved the pitch, and Gyllenhaal finished the script within a weekend. The film, which also features Peter Sarsgaard and Sepideh Moafi, world premiered out of competition at the Venice Film Festival. Gyllenhaal said that as much as the film celebrates Monroe, “it is also 100% a celebration and an honoring of Ellen Burstyn and her incredible career, and Dakota Johnson and her incredible career.”

Gyllenhaal said the move from acting to producing and then to writing and directing felt natural. When she was young, so few women were directing that acting seemed the obvious outlet for a woman who loved movies and wanted to tell stories.

“It felt satisfying and exciting for a long time, and then I think I hit the edge of what I was able to do as an actress,” she said.

Her move into writing and directing began eight years ago with “The Lost Daughter,” and she said she has felt more at ease and more inspired behind the camera ever since.

Film runs in the family. Gyllenhaal’s father, Stephen Gyllenhaal, is a director and her mother, Naomi Foner, a screenwriter. Growing up, the family went to the movies almost every Friday night, Gyllenhaal said.

“My mom directed her first film as a grandmother. I think she might be the only person to have directed her first film as a grandmother,” Gyllenhaal said, calling her mother “probably the best note-giver that I have.” Her brother Jake Gyllenhaal, who appeared in “The Bride,” is a close friend whose different taste she called a gift.

Gyllenhaal said she has begun writing two “kind of budding ideas” and is “in that very exciting place where I’m kind of like, ‘What is this going to ultimately be about, you know?’” Variety reported in June that she will direct and produce an adaptation of Rachel Kushner’s novel “Creation Lake” for Warner Bros., which also backed “The Bride.”

On the subject of women filmmakers, Gyllenhaal pointed back to her remarks at Venice, where she served as jury president and only one woman had a film in competition.

Eddie Redmayne‘s upcoming collaboration with Kore-eda Hirokazu is still at the screenplay stage, the Japanese filmmaker said Wednesday at a Busan International Film Festival press conference for his manga adaptation “Look Back.”

“Right now, I am writing the script,” Kore-eda said about the Searchlight Pictures film. “I cannot share specific plot details at this stage, but preparations are progressing smoothly. Please look forward to it.”

The director did not disclose a title. He expects to go public formally next year at the earliest and hopes to bring that film to Busan as well.

The festival has kept inviting Kore-eda back since his debut, and the opening ceremony even featured a piece of music named after him. “It is a city and a film festival for which I have exceptionally strong feelings,” he said.

He was joined by “Look Back” cast members Deguchi Natsuki, Makita Aju, Mori Nana and Ishikawa Ruka.

Kore-eda stumbled on the manga in a bookshop rather than through its serial run. “When I read it, I felt a shock like an impact,” he said. “It explored why people write stories, or in my case, why one makes films – that sort of creative impulse, or the heavy burden or karma that artists carry.”

On set, he avoided detailed scene-by-scene instruction and concentrated instead on the hours the four actors spent together and on how the town looked as the light and seasons shifted. “The cast understood that very well, and they appeared in front of the camera as individuals truly living inside that town,” he said.

As soon as the adaptation was confirmed, Kore-eda pushed for 35mm across all four seasons, in line with his longstanding conviction that anything that can be shot on celluloid ought to be. “Because there is no mindset of ‘we can fix it later,’ it creates a healthy tension for the cast and crew,” he said. “When that collective tension gathers, I believe it generates a magnetic field in that shooting location.”

The rotoscoped animation sequence late in the film stems from a single line. After a competition win, Fujino remarks that her dream was to see her manga animated, a comment that temporarily splits the two central characters. Kore-eda said the animation Fujino later makes stands in for a future the pair never got to share.

“Rather than conventional cel animation, rotoscoping sits halfway between live-action and drawn animation,” he said. “Having the characters move within the background art drawn by Kyoko felt like the most suitable form of expression.”

The film opens and closes on shots of Deguchi seen from behind. For the last of these, she said, Kore-eda instructed her, “Show Kyoko through your back.” After a long stretch shooting in Akita with her co-star, Deguchi found herself filming alone. “It felt like she was there, but not there… so with my heart feeling completely empty, I did that shot,” she said.

Makita, who plays Kyoko, is at Busan for the first time. Mori said she had done the Venice red carpet too, though the mood in Korea struck her as different. “There was a huge crowd, so I was nervous, but seeing everyone wave their hands made it so much fun,” she said.