Tag: HollywoodReporter

Netflix has released the official trailer for its take on John Steinbeck‘s classic East of Eden.

In Zoe Kazan’s adaptation of Steinbeck’s literary masterpiece, Florence Pugh stars as Cathy Ames, whose life is intertwined with with the Trask family, Adam (Christopher Abbott) and Charles (Mike Faist), as they settle in California’s Salinas Valley. 

Over the years, their paths intersect with the Hamilton family including “Samuel Hamilton (Ciarán Hinds), an Irishman who made his way to California where he raised a family and got to know the land, and Lee (Hoon Lee), a Chinese American whose intellect is surpassed only by his ability to give care to those who need it most, and Faye (Martha Plimpton), a brothel owner whose open heart might lead to her downfall.“

In the trailer, tensions are notable with Faist‘s Charles warning Abbott‘s Adam, “A girl like that doesn‘t just fall out of the sky.“

“You need to get rid of her and throw her out. She‘s going to tear you to pieces and I don‘t want to watch it,” Faist‘s Adam later warns.

“Evil is not always apparent at first glance. It can come cloaked in goodness or beauty or love. The heart of our oldest stories,“ Pugh is overheard saying in the trailer.

The seven-episode limited series, written and executive produced by Kazan, “offers a compelling perspective on the ways in which a family’s history impacts an individual’s present reality.“

Jeb Stuart is also a co-showrunner. Fifth Season and Anonymous Content are producing.

The novel was originally adapted for the 1955 film based starring James Dean, Raymond Massey, Richard Davalo, Jo Van Fleet and Julie Harris. Kazan‘s grandfather, Academy Award-winning filmmaker Elia Kazan, directed the film adaptation.

“In the process of bringing this family saga to life, the resonance of my own familial connection to the material has not been lost on me,” Kazan said in a statement when the series was announced. “But it is Steinbeck’s writing — personal, shocking, profound and free — that has kept me enthralled to East of Eden since I first read the book as a young teen. Working on this has been the greatest joy, and I am thrilled by the cast and crew we are assembling — and deeply grateful to Netflix, Fifth Season and Anonymous Content for their support.”

East of Eden premieres on Netflix on Oct. 1. Watch the trailer below.

Naturally, the Venice Film Festival was swiftly fawning over George Clooney on Wednesday, as the Oscar-winning star arrived (via boat, of course) to pick up his Golden Lion Lifetime Achievement Award.

Ahead of the glitzy, Jay Kelly-esque honorary ceremony, Clooney sat for a press conference with journalists on the Lido who immediately quizzed him on the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger, the allegations of antisemitism faced by Hollywood peer Mark Ruffalo, and his love of Venice, having gotten married in the Italian city in 2014.

Clooney was also asked about the studio no-show at this year’s film festivals, as well as his directing aspirations.

The famed U.S. actor admitted that he hasn’t noticed the studio sit-out at Cannes, Berlin and Venice, which have concentrated their lineups on the best of international cinema. “In fairness, you could make the argument — and this has been going on for 25 or 30 years, this is some of the work that [Steven] Soderbergh and I were doing when we started doing [the 1998 film] Out of Sight and films like that — that studios are doing films that need a launchpad of a film festival less and less,” said Clooney, speaking amid an industry heavily reliant on IP, reboots and franchise projects.

“That’s just the nature of the beast,” he continued. “The films that studios are making are hugely expensive, so I think [this situation is] just the fallout from the films they are making, but that’s been going on, literally probably since Jaws, when everything changed… The studios used to make Bonnie and Clyde and All the President’s Men,” said Clooney. “They don’t really make many films like that [anymore], and so they don’t really need this launchpad as much. I think that would be my only answer to that. I didn’t know that they weren’t really sending that many films over.”

Clooney, famed for roles in Ocean’s Eleven, Gravity and Michael Clayton, is also a filmmaker, and even brought his 2005 Good Night, and Good Luck to the festival in 2005. “I’ve had great experiences,” replied the star when probed on whether he’ll be returning to the director’s chair any time soon. “I’ve been nominated for an Oscar, and I’ve also had really bad experiences, and that’s okay,” he laughed. “That’s part of telling stories. I’ve done films that people hated when they came out, and now they like them, and I’ve done films that people liked that [and] now they look at and they think don’t work anymore.”

The only reason he is not directing, “is because I have two nine-year-old kids,” said Clooney, who shares twins with Amal. “In order for me to spend time with them, I can’t [direct]. If I act in a movie, it’s three months, and I can go and come and go and come back. When [you] direct a movie, it’s a year, wherever you are, and there’s no traveling back and forth. So I can’t do that anymore. The last thing I did was this play last year on Broadway [the stage adaptation of Good Night, and Good Luck] and that took us all away for a period of time. And I can’t really pull the kids out of school anymore.” It’s made him “enjoy” being an actor again. “I’m a character actor now.”

It was a wide-ranging presser — Clooney, a long-standing advocate for human rights, political activism and climate change awareness — managed to say a few words on how “most of the [world’s] powers that decided climate change is a hoax and science is not real.” He remains an optimist: “That won’t last forever,” though he lamented Europe’s summer battles with wildfires. “We were in Como this summer, and there were fires in Como. It’s been an extraordinarily dry and hot summer, and it’s dangerous.”

Clooney confessed that he laughs in response to those who argue climate change is a fad. “Let’s say that everybody who says climate change is bullshit is right,” he began. “The worst thing that could happen by cleaning up the environment is that you create millions more new green jobs, you make the air better to breathe. I mean, there’s no argument against it. That’s the stupidest part of all this. But you know, we’re going to be in it for a while, and then sooner or later we’ll get some governments in there that actually pay more attention to it.”

The Venice festival runs Sep. 2-12.

The Hollywood Reporter can debut the first clip from Our Share of Sand, the debut feature from writer-director Shalini Adnani, ahead of its world premiere in Critics’ Week at the Venice Film Festival.

The 95-minute drama, set against India’s sand mining crisis, follows 12-year-old Maya (newcomer Maya Mehta) as she returns to India with her mother to reunite with her estranged father, a sand mining businessman, and forms a bond with Kiran, a young worker.

After an accident, a police investigation turns Maya into a key witness, with her father relying on her to absolve him. As her mother unravels, Maya uncovers a pattern of silence and exploitation that leads her to confront her father’s deception and her family’s complicity.

Adnani has said the title is rooted in the sand mining crisis in India, where extraction of river sand has accelerated erosion and contributed to flooding. “Sand, in this world, is currency — and many people are unaware that we are running out of it, and that its extraction is causing land erosion worldwide,” she writes in the film’s production notes.

In the clip, Maya questions her father’s view of what holds their family together. “We are family. We are connected by blood,” he tells her. “Is that what you think connects us?” she replies, before naming what she believes actually binds them: “The house, money.”

Mehta, making her screen debut, stars alongside Mohammad Zeeshan Ayyub (Article 15, Jogi, Raanjhanaa) as Rohan and Ellora Torchia (Midsommar, Ali & Ava, House of the Dragon) as Priti, with Krish Raj More as Kiran, Ravi Patil as Dadya and Jyoti Dogra as Art.

Adnani is a Chilean-born, Indian-origin writer-director based in London. Her short film White Ant premiered at Sundance, was longlisted for a BIFA, won Best UK Short at Raindance in 2023 and was acquired by Canal+. She is a London Film School and Berlinale Talents alumna.

Our Share of Sand is produced by Sara Bonakdar for Fifth Mirror Pictures, with Alan McAlex, Balthazar de Ganay, Giorgos Karnavas and Michael Graf also producing. Developed with Film4 and the BFI, the UK-Greek co-production was shot in India, co-produced with Karnavas’ Heretic and made in association with McAlex’s Suitable Pictures (Santosh, Sister Midnight). Global Constellation is handling international sales.

Check out the clip of Our Share of Sand below.

Politics and the underrepresentation of women at the world’s major film festivals became the breakout topic of conversation at this year’s Venice jury press conference, with Maggie Gyllenhaal stating that she believes “there’s a systemic problem” behind the fact that the world’s oldest cinema showcase has just two titles directed by women in its main competition this year. 

“It’s much harder for women to get their films financed,” said Gyllenhaal, the festival’s competition jury president this year, when asked about the dearth of women in Venice’s selection. “Also, could it be possible that the things that women, having had a different experience of being alive in the world, want to make movies about are not always deemed high art?”

“I really am walking in with a question as to why there are so few women in the main competition,” she later added.

This year’s competition has drawn scrutiny for its stark gender imbalance. Just one of the original list of 20 Golden Lion contenders — May el-Toukhy’s Woman Unknown — is directed by a woman, down from six female-directed competition titles last year. The festival later added to the competition with the Gaza documentary NAZA, co-directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, bringing the total to two. Venice artistic director Alberto Barbera acknowledged the disparity when announcing the lineup, calling it a recent low for the festival.

But Gyllenhaal also tipped her hat to Venice for selecting her as the event’s jury chief this year. “Alberto and Julia asking me to be the head of the main jury competition — after the two films in particular that I have made — is a very important thing to consider, too,” she said.

Gyllenhaal’s jury includes Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania, whose acclaimed Palestinian drama The Voice of Hind Rajab won last year’s Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize; Oscar-winning composer Daniel Blumberg; film scholar Francesco Casetti; French director Xavier Giannoli; Afghan filmmaker Shahrbanoo Sadat; and Hong Kong filmmaking legend Johnnie To. 

Together they will select the Golden Lion winner and Venice’s other main competition prizes from a field that includes Danny Boyle’s Rupert Murdoch drama Ink, Robert Pattinson thriller Primetime, Martin McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine, Korean auteur Lee Chang-dong’s much-anticipated return Possible Love and NAZA, among others.

Gyllenhaal has a significant history with Venice. Her 2021 feature directing debut, The Lost Daughter, premiered in competition on the Lido and earned her the festival’s best screenplay prize before going on to receive three Oscar nominations. She also has a project in Venice this year. Her Marilyn Monroe-inspired advertorial short Flesh Impact, starring Dakota Johnson, Ellen Burstyn and Peter Sarsgaard, will screen out of competition later in the event.

The press conference proceeded after some confusion during the weekend over whether the jury’s meeting with the media — a staple of all major film festivals — would take place at all. Venice organizers stated on Saturday that the jury presser might be scrapped due to a “scheduling conflict” involving a jury member; but by Sunday, the festival said a solution had been found, and the briefing would be held as usual. 

The brief interregnum stirred industry speculation about the role politics might play at the 83rd edition, as various global conflicts — the war in Gaza, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the U.S.-Iran war — loom in the background of the world’s oldest film festival. Festival chief Barbera has described this year’s lineup as the “most political” of recent years. 

Venice’s blue-chip festival peers, meanwhile, showed earlier this year the two directions a major cultural event might take amid this globally fraught moment. In February, the Berlin festival became engulfed by political discord and social media point-scoring after jury president Wim Wenders told reporters during the opening press conference that filmmakers “have to stay out of politics.” But the Cannes Film Festival later went ahead in May with plenty of carefully calibrated political statements from filmmakers but notably less acrimony. 

Gyllenhaal was asked near the outset of the Venice press conference whether she feels filmmakers have a responsibility to be political amid the world’s current challenges. 

“We could say, ‘How are we possibly here talking about movies right now, when the world is in a state of emergency?’” she replied. “To me, the answer has something to do with empathy. I think that film allows an opening into an opportunity to find empathy inside of ourselves. Personally, I don’t believe that there is any subject or any filmmaker that shouldn’t be heard. I think we can challenge ourselves to hear stories about the most corrupt, the most perverse people, because it opens up the opportunity to find empathy for those people — and even to look at the ways in which we might have a little bad guy inside us, a little perversity inside us, a little corruption inside us, fight it as we might.”

She added: “I think that if movies really are an honest look into other people’s experience, then they are fundamentally, unavoidably political, as well as a lot of other things.”

The 83rd edition of the Venice Film Festival officially opens Wednesday evening on the Lido with a ceremony that will fete George Clooney with a Golden Lion for lifetime achievement and conclude with the world premiere of Boyle’s Ink, starring Jack O’Connell, Guy Pearce, and Claire Foy. The festival concludes with an awards ceremony on Sept. 12.  

Some of the biggest stars at this year’s Venice Film Festival won’t be the famous faces walking the red carpet, but the wildly high-profile subjects of documentaries that range from intoxicating to grippingly urgent.

From Oscar winner Alex Gibney‘s 4-hour dissection of Elon Musk and Disney’s intimate Oasis reunion movie to NAZA, the politically charged documentary about “Israel’s calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza,” and the ICE documentary They’re Here from Laura Poitras (another Oscar winner) — many of this year’s must-see movies on the Lido are clearly nonfiction. And, arguably, the biggest star who may or may not walk Venice’s red carpet — aside from Noel and Liam Gallagher — will likely do so on behalf of a documentary. Noted architecture superfan Brad Pitt recently became an executive producer of Wim Wenders’ 14-year-in-the-making documentary portrait of Peter Zumthor, the Swiss visionary behind the sprawling new Los Angeles County Museum of Art — another gem among Venice’s stacked 2026 documentary lineup.

“It’s a phenomenal year for docs at Venice, and I think this will be one of the big stories of this edition,” says Emilie Spiegel, who co-heads Cinetic Marketing, a prestige publicity agency that represents an outsized swath of every fall’s awards favorites. “To have the oldest festival in the world so clearly state that documentary is cinema, and that some of the most exciting work is happening there, is really significant. Amid budget contractions and studio consolidation, I also think it’s optimistic and savvy of Venice to be championing nonfiction right now.”

For breadth, depth, diversity and pedigree, Venice has clearly emerged as the preeminent platform for high-end nonfiction filmmaking among the world’s top festivals. While Cannes has been far more sporadic in its support of the form, and Berlin tends to offer quantity at the expense of quality, Venice has consistently brought the bangers — and the 2026 selection looks to be among its best yet.
Two-time Oscar winner Barbara Kopple is back with Union Town, a cinéma vérité portrait of New York delivery workers taking on some of the world’s most powerful corporations; Free Solo Oscar winners Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi return to extreme sporting terrain with Everest: The Other Side, about a pair of mountaineers’ audacious attempt to climb and ski the north face of the world’s tallest mountain; The Truffle Hunters duo Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw decamp to French wine country for an infectiously romantic and richly informative romp in Burgundy; and Takashi Miike, after more than 100 films and three decades spent gleefully jumping around genres, makes his first documentary with Shumei: The Living Legacy of Kabuki, filmed over more than three years with rare access to the inner sanctum of Japan’s traditional Kabuki theater world.

Elsewhere, Julia Loktev follows her epic portrait of independent Russian journalists with My Undesirable Friends: Part II – Exile, another nearly six-hour immersion; Russell Crowe turns the camera on himself and his globe-trotting rock band for what Venice chief Alberto Barbera has called the star’s “most personal” film. And that’s before factoring in Erik Shirai’s Sumo: Spirit Weighs Nothing, which promises rare access inside another of Japan’s most famously guarded traditions; Robert Greene’s Too Much Sugar, a strikingly original doc about fatherhood and masculinity; or Mariano Llinás’ three-part, more-than-five-hour biography of Jorge Luis Borges.

The festival has even built its embrace of docs more firmly into its structure this year, with a new dedicated “Film on Films” strand, where Luca Guadagnino’s gargantuan, seven-hour-plus meditation on the great Bernardo Bertolucci sits alongside Sophie Fiennes and Slavoj Zizek’s The Pervert’s Guide to Utopias, a tribute to the cult of Seijun Suzuki, and more.

Documentary filmmaking’s presence at Venice stretches back to the festival’s very first edition in 1932, when Joris Ivens and Mannus Franken’s 12-minute Dutch avant-garde documentary Rain (or Regen) screened on the closing night of the inaugural edition. But it wasn’t until the Barbera era that nonfiction filmmaking would vie for — and swiftly win — the festival’s signature honor. Shortly after taking the reins as artistic director of the festival for the second time in 2012, Barbera put two documentaries in the festival’s main competition for the first time in 2013 — Errol Morris’ The Unknown Known and Gianfranco Rosi’s Sacro GRA — and the latter promptly won the Golden Lion. The space and prominence Barbera has accorded to nonfiction has only grown in the years since.

“Perhaps this is not the result of a deliberate strategic choice, but rather the consequence of the fact that, year after year, we receive a growing number of submissions in the documentary genre, whose significance — both from an aesthetic standpoint and in terms of its ability to offer a representation of and contribute to our understanding of the major issues of our time — is perhaps unprecedented,” Barbera explains. “My impression is that the financial resources available for making documentaries have increased, as a result of growing demand from streaming platforms but also increased interest from the public, which is now much more willing to watch nonfiction films of good quality.”

In docs as well as fictional filmmaking, Venice has also staked out a commendably independent-minded stance over recent years when it comes to films that tackle conflict and fraught social issues.

“I believe Venice is one of the very few international cultural platforms that has the ability to invite filmmakers with very different — or even opposite — political positions and cultural points of view, and put their work in conversation,” says Ukrainian director and producer Alexander Rodnyansky, who is known for his work with Russian auteur Andrey Zvyagintsev and last year directed and premiered the searingly personal documentary Notes from a True Criminal in Venice. Rodnyansky notes the sober-mindedness Venice has shown in screening bold Ukrainian and Palestinian films — such as The Voice of Hind Rajab in 2025 and the Gaza docs NAZA and Ahmed Hassouna’s Citizen Osama this year — as well as works by freethinking Russian and Israeli filmmakers, without succumbing to the blanket bans that some have called for on films and filmmakers from those countries. “Of course, state propaganda should have no place, but real independent-minded filmmaking should be welcomed wherever it comes from,” he says.

Rodnyansky is producer of Israeli documentarian Amos Gitai’s The Road to Jericho, a journey from Jerusalem to Jericho that visits the country’s threatened Bedouin community while reflecting on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The film will premiere in Venice’s out-of-competition nonfiction section. “As you understand, it’s not an easy time for Israeli filmmakers right now. They’re having a very hard time getting their movies accepted by the major festivals, regardless of what they might believe,” Rodnyansky says.

“These are turbulent times, and a festival should try to reflect the polarization of the societies we observe and continue the conversation using artistic means,” he adds. “It’s a very simple mission, and I think Barbera inherited that legacy and has continued to enrich it in a brilliant way.”

Podcast host and head of talk at Spotify Bill Simmons acknowledged that he used his daughter’s boyfriend to place some proxy sports bets on Fanduel while he was in California, where online sports betting is not legal.

On his podcast Tuesday, Simmons addressed the issue, which came up in an unrelated conversation on his podcast over the weekend.

“I talked about how I got my daughter’s boyfriend to place some some bets for me in Massachusetts because I was in L.A. I did not know about the proxy rules,” Simmons said Tuesday. “Yeah, there’s some real rules with this stuff, and they’ve ruled that they not only are the bets going to be voided — and I learned my lesson, apparently proxy betting, not allowed. I actually thought it was, but that’s fine — and now my daughter has to break up with a boyfriend. That was the other thing. No, I’m kidding. They’re gonna stay together. But yeah, I did learn [that you’re] not allowed to do that. So all those bets went out the window.”

The issue blew up earlier this week after listeners flagged the comments by Simmons, pointing out that Fanduel is a major sponsor of his Ringer podcast network. The sports betting company tells The Hollywood Reporter that when it learned of the comments it took action.

“We became aware of the issue and handled it consistent with our Terms and Conditions and Massachusetts Gaming Commission regulations, including reporting the matter to the MGC, voiding the bets, and actioning the account,” a Fanduel spokesperson says.

Likewise, the Massachusetts Gaming Commission is looking into the matter, given that the proxy bets were made in that state.

“The Commission is aware of the comments made on the Bill Simmons Podcast and staff are currently reviewing the matter,” says MGC spokesperson Thomas Mills.

It isn’t clear what could come of that investigation, but the comments by Simmons Tuesday evening suggest that he is apologetic and looking to move on.

Simmons is not only one of the most influential podcast hosts in America, but one of the most powerful podcast executives, thanks to his perch at Spotify.

Julianne Moore is set to be honored with the Golden Icon Award at the 22nd Zurich Film Festival.

The U.S. actress will accept the accolade alongside Jesse Eisenberg, who directs her in his latest feature The Debut, a musical-comedy co-starring Paul Giamatti.

Over a career now spanning more than three decades, Moore has worked with some of the most distinguished directors in contemporary cinema including Robert Altman (Short Cuts), Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights, Magnolia), brothers Joel and Ethan Coen (The Big Lebowski) and Todd Haynes (Safe, Far From Heaven, May December).

At this year’s Zurich Film Fest, Moore will be given the lifetime achievement award in recognition for her career and recent starring role in The Debut, which is screening at the festival. The movie follows Mona Friedman (Moore), who is cast in a bit part at a small community theater and transforms from a shy, unassuming housewife into a zealous method actor willing to do anything to protect the artistic integrity of her marginal role — even if it means waging war against the show’s domineering director (Giamatti).

“Julianne Moore is one of the outstanding character actresses of American cinema,” said Christian Jungen, CEO of the Zurich Film Festival. “She possesses remarkable versatility and, time and again, manages to captivate us with her intense portrayals of the characters she plays. No matter which film we see her in, we find ourselves rooting for her characters.”

“In the wonderful film The Debut, she delivers a brilliant performance as a woman who realizes it’s not too late to fulfill her deeply personal dream: becoming an actress,” he continued. “It is Julianne Moore’s love letter to her own profession — and thus the perfect film with which to thank her, with our Golden Icon Award, for so many wonderful cinematic experiences.”

Among Moore’s best-known performances are Still Alice, for which she won an Oscar, as well as The Hours and The Kids Are All Right. Recent credits include Apple TV’s Echo Valley, Pedro Almodovar’s The Room Next Door and Netflix limited series Sirens. Next year, she will return to the stage to star in the title role of the Off-Broadway play Faydra. Beyond her acting, Moore is a New York Times bestselling children’s author of the Freckleface Strawberry series and the founding chair of Everytown for Gun Safety’s Creative Council, where she advocates for ending gun violence in America.

Past recipients of Zurich’s Golden Icon Award include Kate Winslet, Sylvester Stallone, and Sharon Stone. The 22nd edition runs Sep. 24-Oct. 4.

A mordant Toni Servillo may have met his match in this exclusive early image from Scherzetto, director Mario Martone’s feature adaptation of an Italian novel of the same name by author Domenico Starnone. 

In an inspired bit of casting, Italian screen legend Servillo stars in Scherzetto as Daniele, a renowned illustrator whose life of elegant solitude is abruptly turned upside down when he’s called on to look after his wildly imaginative and unruly five-year-old grandson. Daniele reluctantly returns to his childhood home in Naples, where his daughter has asked him to care for Mario while she and her husband are away. Confined together in the apartment, grandfather and grandson enter into an escalating battle of wills that forces Daniele to reckon with the ghosts of his own childhood and family history.

Scherzetto will premiere out of competition at the Venice Film Festival on Sept 10. The project’s sales agent, Rai Cinema, shared a first-look still (above) with The Hollywood Reporter shortly before the festival’s opening. 

A Lido regular and pillar of contemporary Italian cinema and theater generally, Martone made his feature debut with Death of a Neapolitan Mathematician, which won Venice’s grand jury prize in 1992. His last feature at the festival was the 2021 competition entry Qui rido io, another collaboration with Servillo. For his part, Servillo, a lion of the Italian stage and screen, arrives back in Venice just one year after winning the festival’s Volpi Cup for best actor for his performance in Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grazia. 

“Two characters at opposite ends of life, a family situation that is often comic, a single setting, and ghosts,” Martone says of Scherzetto‘s premise. “As I worked on the film, my own ghosts also began to emerge, difficult to keep at bay, and I started chasing them with the camera.”

“For Toni Servillo, too, I don’t think this was simply a matter of playing a role,” Martone adds. “It was an immersion into unknown territory, dominated by the presence of a five-year-old who, every day, could have told us: ‘Enough, I’m bored!’” 

Five-year-old Lorenzo Perrotta co-stars as Mario, with Serena Rossi as Daniele’s daughter Betta, Leonardo Lidi as her husband Saverio and Gianluca Di Gennaro and Giovanni Ludeno also in the cast. Martone co-wrote the screenplay with longtime collaborator Ippolita di Majo. Mad Entertainment produced with Rai Cinema, in association with EDI Effetti Digitali Italiani and Picomedia.

Scherzetto premieres out of competition in Venice on Sept. 10. Rai Cinema International Distribution is handling world sales, with 01 Distribution releasing the film in Italy.

The Trial of Alec Baldwin, a powerful verité documentary feature for which the Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning filmmaker Rory Kennedy was granted exclusive access to the titular star in the aftermath of the 2021 accidental shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of the film Rust, has been acquired by Abramorama for a North American release and awards campaign, The Hollywood Reporter can exclusively report.

The film, for which Kennedy spent years filming Baldwin, and which features powerful footage from the set of Rust and from Baldwin’s police interrogation and the legal proceedings that followed, will open in New York on Oct. 1 at Village East by Angelika, then premiere in Los Angeles on Oct. 15 at the Laemmle Monica, and go on to a week-long Oscar-qualifying engagement at the Laemmle Noho 7 before expanding to theaters across the country.

“The Trial of Alec Baldwin doesn’t shy away from complexity or discomfort,” Karol Martesko-Fenster, CEO of AB2 Media Group and Abramorama, tells THR. “Rory and her [life and producing] partner Mark Bailey have crafted a film that goes beyond the headlines to ask hard questions about how we assign blame, process tragedy, and judge public figures in real time. We’re honored to partner with them in bringing this story to theaters.”

Adds Kennedy and Bailey, “We felt this was an important story for our times, a vital story about the state of our judicial system. Alec is an enduring and undeniably significant figure in Hollywood, and the trial surrounding Rust raised questions well beyond the events that transpired on set. Alongside Abramorama, we are eager to bring this documentary to theater audiences so that the broader public can grapple with the complex questions at the heart of the film.”

Hutchins was a 42-year-old up-and-coming cinematographer who was lensing the low-budget indie Rust, which Baldwin was starring in and a producer of, when she was killed by a prop gun that Baldwin was handed and instructed to point towards the camera. In the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, which was deeply traumatizing for everyone involved, virtually no one doubted that it was a terrible accident. But soon thereafter, questions of responsibility, guilt, blame, punishment and justice began to ripple through the media, fueled by the polarizing public persona of Baldwin, a talented actor and troubled celebrity adored by some and hated by others — attitudes which come into play even at his trial.

The family of Celeste Rivas Hernandez, the teenager whom singer D4vd is accused of sexually abusing and murdering before mutilating her body last year, is calling for justice as their attorney disputes the artist’s claim of indigence in a Los Angeles courtroom this week — a claim used to justify swapping his high-powered legal team for a public defender.

“We, as a family, only want justice for Celeste and for whoever is responsible to face the full force of the law. And we thank everyone for supporting our daughter in every way,” the Rivas Hernandez family said in a statement Monday afternoon, following the latest hearing in the case against the singer, whose real name is David Anthony Burke.

Earlier Monday, Burke stunned the courtroom during a pretrial hearing when it was announced he was firing his legal team and switching to a public defender. The move, attorneys said, was because the rising star — who once opened for SZA — qualifies as indigent, a claim now being heavily contested.

Burke has swapped attorneys Blair Berk, Marilyn Bednarski and Regina Pete for incoming public defender Walid Fouad Kandeel.

Prosecutors allege D4vd was in an illegal sexual relationship with Rivas Hernandez, whom he met when she was 11 years old, and killed her after she threatened to expose the relationship and end his career — with the alleged murder occurring on April 23, 2025, just two days before the release of his debut album, Withered. A CBS Los Angeles report on his arraignment detailed the timeline further: Rivas Hernandez left her family’s Lake Elsinore home via rideshare and arrived at Burke’s Hollywood Hills residence at 10:10 p.m., with his phone and car departing north toward Santa Barbara County roughly an hour and 20 minutes later.

Dismembered remains were discovered in the trunk of a Tesla registered to the singer in Hollywood and were later identified through dental records and a matching “shhh…” finger tattoo the victim shared with D4vd. Burke is facing trial on murder, continuous sexual abuse and body-mutilation charges in connection with the April 2025 death.

The Los Angeles Police Department served a warrant at his home and found evidence in the garage consistent with dismemberment, and a worker later found the victim’s passport off a Santa Barbara County highway. His label, Darkroom/Interscope, dropped him, and he canceled the remainder of his tour. Burke was arrested in April 2026 and formally charged with first-degree murder among other counts.

Attorney Patrick Steinfeld, who is representing the Rivas Hernandez family, told The Hollywood Reporter on Tuesday that the singer has millions in three separate companies that he owns. Steinfeld sent documents from the state of Texas as evidence of his stake in the businesses

“David Anthony Burke is the owner and director of three LLCs, including entertainment, merchandising and publishing companies,” the attorney said in a statement sent to THR. “As owner, he controls the distribution of funds for these companies, so he should ‘direct’ one of his LLCs to distribute funds to him rather than claiming he’s broke and forcing taxpayers to reach into their pockets to pay for his defense.”

A five-day preliminary hearing in July produced some of the case’s most graphic disclosures — testimony about blood stains found on items in his garage, chainsaw purchases and explicit text messages with the victim, who was 13 at the time of their alleged relationship — and a judge ultimately ruled there was enough evidence to send the case to trial. L.A. County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said after the hearing that his office is undecided whether it will seek the death penalty in Burke’s case, and that two of his previous attorneys had been invited to submit a mitigation packet but had not done so as of the hearing.

Burke has pleaded not guilty to all charges. His next court date is in October.