Category: 5. Entertainment

Pamela Anderson’s sex tape with Tommy Lee cost her a lot—and put her under a lot of scrutiny.

But neither she nor the Mötley Crüe drummer ever saw a major payday from it. The upcoming docuseries Secrets of Celebrity Sex Tapes, premiering Sept. 8 at 10 p.m., revisits the 1997 scandal, featuring insight from Nicole Eggert, Traci Bingham and more. One hot topic stemming from the controversy? Whether the pair themselves profited from sales of the footage.

“I know firsthand that Pam and Tommy made not one dime off that video,” Cort St. George says in the series. “They didn’t demand any money. I know that they turned down money.”

Anderson and Lee had filmed themselves having sex during their 1995 honeymoon, months before it was stolen from their Los Angeles home. However, it wasn’t until 1997 that now-defunct Internet Entertainment Group, who had obtained the video, began selling copies online.

The former couple—who divorced in 1998—filed a copyright lawsuit and won their case on appeal in 2002, with the judge granting the Baywatch alum and the musician $740,000 apiece in a default judgment against IEG, whose reps never showed up in court to defend the company, per Entertainment Weekly.

Some of the biggest names in music assembled in New York Sunday night for the time-honored tradition of the MTV Video Music Awards, only this time on an even bigger stage.

In addition to the cable channel that created it, the VMAs also aired live on CBS (and its streaming service Paramount+) for the first time in its 41-year history.

The move seeks to expand the award show’s reach after last year’s milestone 40th anniversary broadcast, which CBS says “delivered its biggest multi-network audience in four years … and ranked as the most social VMAs in show history.”

Notably, this year brings the VMAs — sometimes called “the Super Bowl for youth” — to the broadcast network with the oldest primetime audience.

The show made some changes this time around, like adding two new award categories — best pop artist and best country — to spotlight rising talent while also honoring a slew of veteran stars, like Mariah Carey and Ricky Martin.

And while the numbers aren’t in yet, this year’s VMAs certainly had their share of viral red carpet moments (see: Doja Cat taking a bite out of her lipstick), onstage performances (including Tate McRae’s impassioned dance break) and acceptance speech sound bites (like Rosé and Ariana Grande each thanking their therapists (“and gay people,” in Grande’s case).

Here’s a look at some of the highlights.

Mariah Carey and Busta Rhymes get their long-awaited honors

Carey graced the stage in a glimmering gold bodysuit to perform a medley of her hits before Ariana Grande literally bowed down and presented her with the most prestigious award of the night: the Video Vanguard Award.

It was Carey’s first VMA appearance in 20 years, and the first time she’s won a “Moon Person” trophy — a snub she had joked about years earlier. Despite her soon-to-be-16 studio albums and six Grammy awards, it wasn’t until Sunday that Carey won her first Moon Person trophy, when “Type Dangerous” was crowned the best R&B video during the pre-show.

“I can’t believe I’m getting my first VMA tonight,” Carey later said while accepting the lifetime achievement award. “I just have one question: What in the Sam Hill were you waiting for?”

As the crowd cheered, Carey clarified that she was kidding before reminiscing on some of her favorite memories from past VMAs and her vast catalogue of music videos, from playing her own stalker in Obsessed to making a romantic, James Bond-esque escape in Honey.

“After all this time, I’ve learned that music evolves, videos evolve, but the fun — that is eternal,” she said.

Hip-hop legend Busta Rhymes also finally got his flowers, after performing an impassioned mashup of his hit songs — including “Break Ya Neck,” “Touch It” and “Scenario” — joined by rappers Joyner Lucas, Papoose and GloRilla, all dressed in red leather ensembles.

LL Cool J presented him with the inaugural Rock the Bells Visionary Award. It’s Rhymes’ first win, despite being nominated for 16 VMAs throughout his career.

“Y’all know I usually do these long speeches, I’m not gonna do one today,” the rapper and record producer said in his speech. “But next time y’all take 35 years to give me one of these, y’all gonna let me talk as long as I want!”

Rhymes went on to pay tribute to the “late, great, incredible royal empress” Ananda Lewis, the former MTV VJ who died of breast cancer earlier this year.

“I think we all need to acknowledge the incredible woman [who] loved us when we came to MTV during the ’90s,” he said. “She loved us, she loved the culture [and] she lifted us up.”

Sabrina Carpenter spotlights drag queens 

Carpenter performed the song “Tears” from her recently released album Man’s Best Friend for the first time, standing up — and dancing — for transgender rights in the process.

She turned the stage into a slice of 1980s-era New York City: entering through a pothole, getting fake-flashed by a man in a trench coat, singing from a phone booth and pulling off a rain-drenched dance break, flanked by bare-chested police officers.

Carpenter was joined onstage by backup dancers and a number of high-profile RuPaul’s Drag Race queens posing as well-choreographed protesters. They held up signs with slogans like “Support local drag,” “Protect trans rights” and “If you hate you’ll never get laid.”

Later, after winning best album for 2024’s Short n’ Sweet, Carpenter thanked “my queens onstage with me tonight.”

“This world, as we all know, can be so full of criticism and discrimination and negativity,” she said. “So to get to be part of … something that can bring you light, make you smile, make you dance, and make you feel like the world is [yours], I’m so grateful. So grateful to do that.”

Ricky Martin makes history 

Ricky Martin also performed, descending onstage in a cage to sing “Livin’ la Vida Loca” and other hits before receiving the show’s inaugural Latin Icon Award.

It was presented by Jessica Simpson, who opened for Martin on his Livin’ la Vida Loca tour in 1999.

“This is for you all. Thank you so much for your applause. I am addicted to your applause, that’s why I keep coming back,” Martin said. “It’s been 40 years. I started when I was a baby, working, and we’re still here.”

He dedicated the award to his four kids, saying, “Everything I do, I do with you in my mind and my heart.”

A rocking tribute to Ozzy Osbourne 

Steven Tyler and Joe Perry of Aerosmith, English singer Yungblud and guitarist Nuno Bettencourt joined forces to pay tribute to Ozzy Osbourne, the Black Sabbath frontman who died in July at age 76.

The late heavy metal icon’s son Jack introduced the act with his four kids in a pre-recorded video, saying he wished he could be there in person and that he knows it would make his dad “incredibly happy to see these great musicians carry on his legacy and help inspire the next generation of rockers.”

“In the words of our papa — let’s go crazy!” the family members concluded in unison.

Onstage, Yungblud sang “Crazy Train” and “Changes,” accompanied by Bettencourt. He then joined the Aerosmith members to sing “Mama, I’m Coming Home,” ending with a group hug and a cry of “Ozzy forever, man!”

Lady Gaga’s monstrous multitasking 

Lady Gaga was the night’s most-nominated artist, with 12 nods. She won four, bringing her career total to 22 wins — the third-most behind Taylor Swift and Beyoncé.

But perhaps even more impressive was how she managed to be in two places at once. Gaga started the night by accepting the award for artist of the year.

“I cannot begin to tell you how much this award means to me,” she said in a visibly emotional speech, dedicating it to her fans and her fiancé.

She concluded: “I wish I could stay and watch all these amazing performances, but I have to go back to Madison Square Garden.”

Then she booked it out of UBS Arena in Long Island to Manhattan’s Madison Square Garden, where she was scheduled to perform at her Mayhem Ball tour in front of a sold-out crowd — despite being advertised as one of the VMAs performers.

Lady Gaga managed the balancing act like a bona fide magician, thanks to a gorgeously grotesque pre-recorded performance of “Abracadabra” and “The Dead Dance” at Madison Square Garden that played during the VMAs.

Here’s the full list of winners:

• Video of the year: Ariana Grande — “brighter days ahead”
• Artist of the year: Lady Gaga
• Song of the year: ROSÉ & Bruno Mars — “APT.”
• Best new artist: Alex Warren
• Best pop artist: Sabrina Carpenter
• Best pop: Ariana Grande, “brighter days ahead”
• Best album: Sabrina Carpenter — “Short n’ Sweet”
• Best collaboration: Lady Gaga & Bruno Mars — “Die With A Smile”
• Best hip hop: Doechii — “Anxiety”
• Best R&B: Mariah Carey — “Type Dangerous”
• Best country: Megan Moroney, “Am I Okay?”
• Best K-pop: Lisa ft. Doja Cat & Raye, “Born Again”
• Best alternative: Sombr, “Back to Friends”
• Best rock: Coldplay, “All My Love”
• Best Latin: Shakira, “Soltera”
• Best Afrobeats: Tyla, “Push 2 Start”
• MTV Push Performance of the Year: KATSEYE, “Touch”
• Best long-form video: Ariana Grande — “brighter days ahead”
• Video for good: Charli xcx — “Guess featuring Billie Eilish”
• Best direction: Lady Gaga — “Abracadabra”
• Best art direction: Lady Gaga — “Abracadabra”
• Best cinematography: Kendrick Lamar — “Not Like Us”
• Best editing: Tate McRae — “Just Keep Watching (From F1 The Movie)”
• Best choreography: Doechii — “Anxiety”
• Best visual effects: Sabrina Carpenter — “Manchild”
• Song of the summer: Tate McRae — “Just Keep Watching (From F1 The Movie)”
• Best group: BLACKPINK

RIVALTA, Italy — Family members and close friends attended a private funeral service on Monday for Giorgio Armani in a 14th century Italian church located within a medieval hamlet near the legendary fashion designer’s native city of Piacenza.

Armani, one of the most recognizable names and faces in the global fashion industry, died Thursday at the age of 91.

More than 15,000 mourners paid their respects during two days of public viewing in Milan over the weekend. But the funeral was kept strictly private, with only close friends and family attending the service in the Church of San Martino Vescovo in Rivalta, south of Milan.

Several dozen bystanders waited alongside the road to pay their final respects as the hearse carrying Armani’s coffin entered the cluster of medieval buildings. One woman threw a white rose as it passed.

Armani’s remains are expected to be interred nearby in the family chapel within the town’s small cemetery, where his parents and older brother are buried.

The designer often stopped to eat at a restaurant in the medieval cluster after visiting the chapel, Italian media has reported.

The Church of San Martino Vescovo is built on the remains of a medieval church, according to the town’s website.

Armani was born July 11, 1934, in Piacenza, on the banks of the Po River. He is survived by a younger sister, Rosanna, two nieces and one nephew.

“Leanne” has been renewed for Season 2, Netflix has announced.

The multi-cam comedy starring and co-created by Leanne Morgan originally debuted on the streamer on July 31. It spent two weeks in the Netflix global Top 10 and reached the local Top 10s in 13 countries.

“We’re coming back for a second season! I am so grateful to all the writers, producers, Netflix, WB, our amazing cast and especially for all the fans of the show,” Morgan said. “Y’all did this for us and we can’t wait to be back!”

Along with Morgan, the cast of the series includes Kristen Johnston, Celia Weston, Blake Clark, Ryan Stiles, Graham Rogers, and Hannah Pilkes. The official description states:

“Leanne’s (Morgan) world is turned upside down when her husband of 33 years (Stiles) unexpectedly leaves her for another woman. Supported by her family, including her ride-or-die sister Carol (Johnston), Leanne learns to embrace the chaos and finds strength, laughter and hope in the most unexpected places. This heartfelt comedy proves that it’s never too late to rewrite your story.”

“Much thanks and gratitude to Netflix for this amazing opportunity,” said co-creator Chuck Lorre. “Congrats to Leanne and the entire cast and crew. This has been an incredible journey that began with a visit to Knoxville, Tennessee. Leanne Morgan is the whole package. A comedic genius, a warm, loving human being, and an absolute joy to work with.”

Lorre and Morgan co-created “Leanne” with Susan McMartin. All three executive produce along with Nick Bakay and Judi Marmel. The series is produced by Chuck Lorre Productions, Inc., in association with Warner Bros. Television, where Lorre is under an overall deal.

In addition to “Leanne,” Morgan will release the stand up special “Unspeakable Things” on Netflix on Nov. 4. It marks her second special with the streamer, following 2023’s “I’m Every Woman.”

Hundreds of actors, directors and other film industry professionals have signed a new pledge vowing not to work with Israeli film institutions they say are “implicated in genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people”.

“As film-makers, actors, film industry workers, and institutions, we recognise the power of cinema to shape perceptions” the pledge reads. “In this urgent moment of crisis, where many of our governments are enabling the carnage in Gaza, we must do everything we can to address complicity in that unrelenting horror.”

Signatories include film-makers Yorgos Lanthimos, Ava DuVernay, Asif Kapadia, Boots Riley and Joshua Oppenheimer; and actors Olivia Colman, Mark Ruffalo, Tilda Swinton, Javier Bardem, Ayo Edebiri, Riz Ahmed, Josh O’Connor, Cynthia Nixon, Julie Christie, Ilana Glazer, Rebecca Hall, Aimee Lou Wood and Debra Winger. The pledge had 1,200 signers as of Sunday night.

The pledge, shared exclusively with the Guardian, claims to draw inspiration from the cultural boycott that contributed to the end of apartheid in South Africa.

It commits signatories not to screen films, appear at or otherwise work with what it considers complicit institutions – including festivals, cinemas, broadcasters and production companies. Examples of complicity include “whitewashing or justifying genocide and apartheid, and/or partnering with the government committing them”.

“We answer the call of Palestinian film-makers, who have urged the international film industry to refuse silence, racism, and dehumanisation, as well as to ‘do everything humanly possible’ to end complicity in their oppression,” the statement reads.

The pledge was published by the group Film Workers for Palestine. Screenwriter David Farr, who is among the signatories, said in a statement: “As the descendant of Holocaust survivors, I am distressed and enraged by the actions of the Israeli state, which has for decades enforced an apartheid system on the Palestinian people whose land they have taken, and which is now perpetuating genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza.

“In this context I cannot support my work being published or performed in Israel. The cultural boycott was significant in South Africa. It will be significant this time and in my view should be supported by all artists of conscience.”

An FAQ accompanying the pledge addresses how to determine which film entities are implicated, and states: “Israel’s major film festivals (including but not limited to Jerusalem film festival, Haifa international film festival, Docaviv and TLVFest) continue to partner with the Israeli government while it carries out what leading experts have defined as genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

“The vast majority of Israeli film production and distribution companies, sales agents, cinemas and other film institutions have never endorsed the full, internationally recognised rights of the Palestinian people,” it adds.

The pledge notes that there are “a few Israeli film entities that are not complicit” and advises following “guidelines set by Palestinian civil society”.

The film industry workers also clarify in the FAQ that the pledge does not prohibit them from working with Israeli individuals.

“The call is for film workers to refuse to work with Israeli institutions that are complicit in Israel’s human rights abuses against the Palestinian people,” the statement reads. “This refusal takes aim at institutional complicity, not identity. There are also 2 million Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, and Palestinian civil society has developed context sensitive guidelines for that community.”

The pledge does not explicitly mention the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, which is the most prominent civil society effort identifying what it considers complicity with Israel. But it is one of the most prominent cultural boycott efforts announced against Israel since the assault on Gaza started, coming nearly one year after more than 1,000 writers announced a similar pledge.

The effort invokes Filmmakers United Against Apartheid, an initiative founded in 1987 by Jonathan Demme, Martin Scorsese and other prominent film-makers who refused to screen their films in apartheid-era South Africa.

The campaign comes amid a growing number of entertainment industry initiatives to protest Israel’s war in Gaza. Earlier this summer, hundreds of actors and film-makers – including Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Ralph Fiennes and director Guillermo del Toro – signed an open letter condemning what they described as the film industry’s silence over Israel’s deadly military campaign in Gaza.

Many of the same figures who have signed the new pledge were also among the hundreds of Screen Actors Guild members who, last year, urged union leadership to protect members from being blacklisted over their views on Palestine. More recently, the Norwegian Actors’ Equity Association recommended its members refuse to work with certain Israeli cultural institutions.

Last summer, Variety reported that more than 65 Palestinian film-makers also signed a letter in which they accused Hollywood of “dehumanising” Palestinians on screen over decades.

In that letter, the film-makers called on their international colleagues “to stand against working with production companies that are deeply complicit in dehumanising Palestinians, or whitewashing and justifying Israel’s crimes against us”.

Last week, The Voice of Hind Rajab, a new film about a five-year-old girl killed by Israeli forces in Gaza last year, received a 23-minute standing ovation after its premiere at the Venice film festival. Brad Pitt, Jonathan Glazer, Joaquin Phoenix, Rooney Mara and Alfonso Cuarón were among the executive producers on the film.

The BBC has announced an all-female presenting team to host MasterChef after the previous judges Gregg Wallace and John Torode were sacked.

Grace Dent, the Guardian’s restaurant critic, will host the show alongside Irish chef Anna Haugh, who has already become a regular on the BBC’s cooking programmes. Both have previous experience as guest judges on the programme.

The BBC has confirmed that Haugh already stood in for Wallace in the final episodes of the current amateur edition of MasterChef, which was filmed at the end of last year. It was only at that point that Wallace stepped back from the programme, when a series of allegations were made about his behaviour.

The BBC has already announced that television host and chef Matt Tebbutt will replace Wallace as a judge on the next series of MasterChef: The Professionals.

Dent, who has been a regular guest critic on MasterChef for more than a decade, said: “I’m over the moon to be coming back to the MasterChef kitchen and unearthing what culinary skills people have been cooking up behind closed doors.

“It’s a joy to be working with Anna, who brings all her incredible experience to the table. I am in for such a treat with this series, I can’t wait to get started.”

Haugh said she had admired Dent’s “writing and wit” for years.

“MasterChef has long inspired and resonated with cooks in home kitchens and of course in my industry,” she said. “I can’t wait to get into the studio for what will be a great competition.”

It comes after Wallace was dropped after an independent report substantiated 45 allegations made against him, including claims of inappropriate sexual language and one incident of unwelcome physical contact. He has apologised “for any distress caused” but said the report cleared him of “the most serious and sensational accusations”.

Torode was also dropped as a presenter after being the subject of a substantiated complaint over the use of racist language.

A BBC spokesperson said in July: “John Torode denies the allegation. He has stated he has no recollection of the alleged incident and does not believe that it happened. He also says that any racial language is wholly unacceptable in any environment.”

skip past newsletter promotion

after newsletter promotion

Dent and Haugh’s arrival will mark a new beginning for the series, which will be filmed in new Birmingham studios.

The MasterChef executive editor, David Ambler, said: “Both are enormously respected in the hospitality industry and we can’t wait for them to uncover some more great cooking talent – from home kitchens across the country.”

The BBC chose to air the latest amateur edition of the show despite Wallace and Torode featuring heavily, stating that the decision was taken in consultation with contestants and because of the hard work carried out by the amateur chefs.

However, the Guardian revealed over the summer that a contestant from the latest series of MasterChef had been edited out of the programme. Sarah Shafi said she had told its producers she did not want the show to be broadcast after the allegations made against Wallace and Torode.

Shafi said it would send the wrong message about the treatment of women and the lack of challenge to powerful men behaving inappropriately. It later emerged a second contestant had been edited out.

Maggie O’Farrell’s lauded 2020 novel Hamnet is a dense and lyrical imagining of the lives of William Shakespeare’s family, full of interior thought and lush descriptions of the physical world. It would seem, upon reading, near impossible to adapt into a film. Or, at least, a film worthy of O’Farrell’s so finely woven sensory spell. Film-maker Chloé Zhao has attempted to do so anyway, and the result is a stately, occasionally lugubrious drama whose closing minutes are among the most poignant in recent memory.

Zhao is a good fit for the material. She, too, is a close observer of nature and of the many aching, yearning people passing through it. But she has previously not made anything as traditionally tailored and refined as this. The humbler dimensions of her films The Rider and Nomadland are missed here; Hamnet too often gives off the effortful hum of prestige awards-bait.

But Zhao’s hallmark compassion and curiosity remains, qualities necessary to Hamnet, which could easily tilt into the realm of manipulative tearjerkers. Hamnet was, records tell us, Shakespeare’s son, who died at a young age and is thought to have inspired, at the very least, the title of Hamlet, the story of a young prince who meets a tragic end. What O’Farrell and now Zhao imagine is that the writing of Hamlet was an exercise in grieving, a way for Shakespeare to honor his son and bid him adieu.

It’s a persuasive idea, even if it takes some literary contortions to really buy into it. While Zhao sometimes strains to sell the notion – a scene in which a weeping Shakespeare stands on the banks of the Thames and speaks a snippet of the “to be or not to be” soliloquy is perhaps a bit over-egged – she has mostly convinced us by the end. Or, at least, Hamnet has justified the bold speculation, using a leapt-to conclusion to illuminate a fundamental aspect of living. Ultimately, what does it really matter if it actually happened this way?

Hamnet invents many other facets of Shakespeare’s history. It dreams up the courtship of young William (Paul Mescal), then a Latin tutor, and slightly older Agnes Hathaway (Jessie Buckley), an oddball loner about whom the villagers whisper in fearful tones. William is drawn to exactly that strangeness, the individuality that will come to inform so much of the family’s domestic routine. Zhao spends a fair amount of time on these early days, maybe too much. Some of it could be better spent on the years in which Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe) occupied the house alongside his twin, Judith (Olivia Lynes), and their older sister, Susanna (Bodhi Rae Breathnach). One longs to truly know Hamnet before he is so wrenchingly lost to the world, to feel the agony of his absence that much more acutely.

Whatever Zhao doesn’t supply, though, is mostly made up for by the richly felt performances of the film’s two leads. Mescal is able to be far more expressive than he’s been allowed in quieter films such as Aftersun and The History of Sound. It is a pleasure to see the full breadth of his range, from seductive to shattered. It’s Buckley, though, who wholly envelops the film, giving staggering breath and body to Hamnet’s portrait of loss. She is nothing short of a wonder. (She also recorded a new version of the audiobook and does a terrific job at that.) It is on her shoulders that the film’s knockout climax rests. As she rises to the task, it is as if she is no longer acting but instead channeling a whole history of human lamentation.

That may all sound rather grandiose. But the final five minutes of Hamnet really are that striking. So much much so that one can totally forgive the use of composer Max Richter’s On the Nature of Daylight, already used to embody grief over a child so effectively in the film Arrival. In these final moments, Zhao finally makes clear the whole purpose of the film. It has not been merely to show us a prettily shot sad thing, as the film can too often seem. It has, it turns out, been building toward a grand meditation on art’s great capacity. We watch in awe as something so personal to Agnes and her husband becomes, in a transformative instant, universal. It is the power of creation made manifest, a private sorrow blossoming into one of the most enduring works of art the world has ever known.

This sublime finale does not completely absolve the film of all of its problems. There is still its lopsided storytelling, still the persistent feeling that this is all strong-arming us into doleful submission, still the ever so slightly cloying quality of Agnes’s woodsy mysticism. But that Zhao manages even a few minutes of such transcendent catharsis may tip Hamnet into greatness anyway. In that closing, as Agnes both reaches for and says goodbye to the son who slipped away, the tears flow naturally, they need no effortful wringing out. It proves a lovely experience, to sob in a movie theater alongside strangers, mourning for Agnes and William’s loss and for our own, amazed and relieved that a faraway, unknowable person has made something to connect us all.

Gabriel Mascaro’s “The Blue Trail” has had quite a stellar run: the winner of the Silver Bear at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, the film continued to rack up awards in its festival journey well into the fall season as it arrives in Toronto this week.

The film also has much to celebrate domestically, having just become the biggest national arthouse release of the year in Brazil with 57,000 admissions on the first weekend and having just hit a landmark 100,000 this week as it expands nationwide from 71 to 89 cities. 

Lucky Number handles sales on “The Blue Trail,” which has sold to 66 territories so far. The film arrives in Toronto having just landed Canadian distribution by Films We Like. The president of the distribution label, Ron Mann, told Variety they are “proud to bring this award-winning film to Canadian audiences,” highlighting the film as a “powerful protest against ageism.”

“The trajectory since Berlin has been incredible,” producer Rachel Daisy Ellis of Desvia told Variety. “It was the most sold film out of the festival, and we have continued to have many sales since, working with distributors committed to screening the film in cinemas.”

“The Blue Trail” takes place in a near-future Brazil where the government relocates the elderly to senior housing colonies so the younger generations can fully focus on productivity and growth. Tereza (Denise Weinberg), nearing 80, refuses to accept her fate, embarking instead on a journey through the Amazon to realize one last wish before losing her freedom. 

The producer attributed part of the film’s success to its messaging: “It’s a film that speaks to ageism and resilience. It’s a super important story at a time when our global population is getting older, and we still believe that happiness and adventure are reserved only for the young. Coming-of-age stories are always tied to the young, but in this film, we watch the coming-of-age of a 72-year-old woman. The film brings with it a much-needed hope, and it has been received with such warmth by audiences.”

“The Blue Trail” had its Brazilian premiere at the prestigious Gramado Film Festival in August, going on to sell out preview screenings, including a special screening for cast and crew in the Northern city of Manaus. Ellis highlighted the importance of having a film establish such a strong alliance between the North and Northeast of Brazil, especially considering the longstanding focus on the Southeast and cities like Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Brazil’s Northeastern cinema comes with a great tradition, and its exports such as Mascaro, Kleber Mendonça Filho, and Karim Aïnouz have become prominent staples in prestigious festivals such as Cannes and Berlin. 

“‘The Blue Trail’ builds a very strategic bridge between two regions, mixing the cinema of the North with that of the Northeast, Pernambuco and Amazonas,” Mascaro told Variety. “The beautiful thing about it is to realize we have made a Brazilian film, set in the Amazon, that also speaks to the universal in its approach of freedom, dreams, and desires, all embodied by an elderly character.” 

For Ellis, it is “super important” to see a film like “The Blue Trail” do well box-office-wise because “it proves Brazilian arthouse cinema can reach larger audiences and is not only for cinephiles. Longtime fans of Gabriel’s work are going to the cinemas, but also new audiences who are becoming acquainted with his work through the film, which we think is beautiful.” 

“We are undergoing a beautiful moment for Brazilian cinema, with films like ‘I’m Still Here’ and ‘Baby’ performing so well, and upcoming films like ‘The Secret Agent’ getting audiences interested,” adds the producer. “We were also moved to be able to show ‘The Blue Trail’ to President Lula, a highlight of the film’s trajectory as it reinforced the role of cinema as a vital element of Brazil’s cultural output.”

“I think it’s a beautiful year for Brazilian cinema,” echoed Mascaro. “We had a history-making moment with ‘I’m Still Here’ earning Brazil its first Oscar, a much-awaited event for our national cinema. Within the same year, we had ‘The Blue Trail’ winning the Silver Bear in Berlin and ‘The Secret Agent’ winning two awards in Cannes. I think it’s beautiful to know it wasn’t an isolated episode. We’re living in a moment where Brazil is reaping the fruits of public policies, realizing the strength of its talent and promoting a decentralization of public resources, allowing other regions in the country to build their very own cinematographic legacy, like Pernambuco.”

Ellis also pointed out how “The Blue Trail” still has a strong journey ahead, especially as it eyes possible selection as Brazil’s Oscar contender, though Filho’s Cannes-winner “The Secret Agent” is the favorite to land the nomination.

“We are a strong candidate to represent Brazil at the Oscars, as well as possibly landing Goya and Golden Globes nominations within the next few months,” she says. “Again, it’s a unique moment for Brazil, having two very strong films as possible Oscar contenders. It would be beautiful to see two Brazilian films represented at the Oscars in different categories.”

Chilean producer Giancarlo Nasi of Quijote Films also highlighted how Mascaro has recently become a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, calling him “one of the most influential filmmakers of our generation.” “The Blue Trail’ confirms his standing — a work as urgent as it is moving, as relevant for audiences as it is for professionals and critics, and unquestionably one of the films to watch this Awards season.”