BY SILVIA WONG Erke Dzhumakmatova and Emil Atageldiev’s gritty drama Kurak is set to be the first official France-Kyrgyzstan co-production, following an agreement signed between CNC and Kyrgyzstan’s Cinema Department in Cannes. Through Oymo Studio, director Dzhumakmatova is also the main producer of Kurak, an international collaboration co-produced with France’s Johann Chapelan of Girelle Production, along with Kairat Birimkulov from Switzerland’s KBP and Katerina Tarbo-Ignatenko from Serbia’s Spirito Libero. Based on true events, the film touches on the disempowerment of women against the background of the patriarchal society of modern-day Kyrgyzstan. It is set in the capital Bishkek, using locations where the real events took place. The story revolves around a ...

BY JEREMY KAY AGC International has closed major territory sales here in Cannes on Eden, Ron Howard’s all-star survival thriller and potential awards season contender which is tipped to land a Venice world premiere slot. A multi-territory deal with Amazon Prime Video includes the UK & Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, France, Scandinavia, Spain, Latin America, Japan, South Korea, South Africa, India, Turkey, West Indies, and Asia pay-TV. Jude Law, Ana de Armas, Sydney Sweeney, Vanessa Kirby, and Daniel Brühl star in the story based on an unsolved mystery in the Galapagos which explores the lengths people go in pursuit of happiness. Rights have also gone in: Germany (Leonine); Italy (Italian International Film); Middle East (Selim Ramia); former Yugoslavia, Polan...

BY MATT WEBB MITOVICH The following contains spoilers from the May 19 episode of CBS‘ CSI: Vegas aka the Season 3 finale aka unplanned series finale. In its unplanned series finale, CBS’ cancelled CSI: Vegas featured a final, brilliant bit of bravado for lab boss Maxine Roby. Abducted at gunpoint last week by, it turns out, the true mastermind of the AI robot-manned operation — a Saudi spy (played by Faran Tahir) whose people had infiltrated Truman Thomas’ operation, and recently offed the tech titan — Maxine bought herself some time by pointing out that the DNA hacking method was “sloppy.” After all, the text encoded within the DNA revealed itself to Maxine and her team, after which they were able to locate the hidden lab. Before be...

Meredith Jacobs  [Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the CSI: Vegas series finale “Tunnel Vision.”] CSI: Vegas wraps its three-season run by closing out one case and introducing a new one. The robotics case is closed after Max (Paula Newsome) is abducted—to make synthetic DNA for foreign intelligence—and Chris (Jay Lee) ends up in the hospital due to his exposure to a nerve agent. The good news: Max is rescued (her own doing, and with help from the others). But then the final moments tease a new serial killer in Las Vegas, one who has been killing in the shadows. Below, Newsometakes us inside the finale Talk about your reaction to the cancellation and how it’s been looking back at playing Max sincePaula Newsome: First of all, it was a sur...

By Anne McCarthy The 49th season finale of “Saturday Night Live” opened with James Austin Johnson as Donald Trump speaking at the barricades of a Manhattan courthouse, in a nod to Trump’s ongoing legal woes amid his presidential campaign.  During the sketch, Johnson as Trump spoke about his “weird and depressing” state at the courthouse, saying, “I don’t like being in court because they say very mean things about me as I’m trying to sleep.” (It was reported that Trump fell asleep in court during proceedings.) He goes on to say, “Now that my defense is supposed to begin on Monday, I would love to testify; I’m not afraid to testify at all, I’m just not going to out of fear.”  He continues to say how he doesn’t want to go back to the White House, “But it appears people...