Latest news with #DrunkenNoodles'
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
BrLab Unveils New Dates, Co-Pro Forum and Regional Spread Ahead of 15th Anniversary Edition (EXCLUSIVE)
As BrLab prepares to mark its 15th anniversary in 2026, one of Latin America's most influential development labs for film projects is announcing a bold set of changes designed to expand its international reach, enhance its programming and deepen its support for emerging filmmakers. Rafael Sampaio, BrLab's founder and director, met up with Variety in Cannes to discuss four key updates that reflect the platform's evolving role as both a creative hub and a strategic launchpad for cinema from Brazil, Latin America and the wider Ibero-American region. More from Variety Guillermo Galoe Unpacks His Insider's Vision of a Family Riven by Its Shanty Town's Demolition in Critics' Week's 'Sleepless City' New York Erotic Tale 'Drunken Noodles' Sells to Taiwan, France and Germany for M-Appeal (EXCLUSIVE) Rebel Wilson Escalates Battle With 'The Deb' Producers in 'Bizarre Outburst of Jealousy' After Cannes Yacht Party Founded in 2011, BrLab has grown into a vital force in the development of independent cinema, offering workshops, labs and mentorships for projects from over 15 countries. Supported by institutions such as Programa Ibermedia, Projeto Paradiso and Spcine, and now also by Petrobras as a multi-year sponsor, the lab receives more than 400 submissions annually, carefully curated by a professional selection committee. The results speak for themselves. As of 2025, 62 feature films that participated in BrLab's various sections have been produced and released, with 17 more currently in post-production and another 10 funded for production through 2026. By next year, the number of completed projects linked to BrLab is expected to reach nearly 90. Many of these films have gone on to premiere at prestigious international festivals, including Cannes, Venice, Berlin, San Sebastián and Locarno. Among recent standouts are 'The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo,' which is part of the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes 2025; 'Levante' by Lila Halla (Brazil), which screened in the 2023's Critics' Week; 'Légua' by Filipa Reis and João Guerra (Portugal), presented at Directors' Fortnight the same year; 'Los Tiburones' by Lucía Garibaldi (Uruguay), which premiered at Sundance; 'Las Heiresses' by Marcelo Martinessi (Paraguay), which bowed at the Berlinale; and 'Los Reyes del Mundo' by Laura Mora (Colombia), winner of the Concha de Oro at San Sebastián 2022. 'The Wolf Behind the Door' by Fernando Coimbra, featured in BrLab's very first edition in 2011, was later selected for Toronto and San Sebastián. Now, as it looks ahead to the future, BrLab is implementing four major changes that promise to strengthen its impact even further. New Dates: Moving to April Starting in 2026, BrLab will shift from its traditional October slot to a new window in the first half of the year. The 15th edition is scheduled for April 7–13, 2026. The move avoids competition with the saturated fall festival calendar and provides participating projects with more time to polish their work before premiering later in the year. According to Sampaio, the timing also enhances the value of BrLab's Rough Cut Lab, allowing it to act as a more effective mid-year intervention. 'This change creates a more useful rhythm for project development,' he said. 'We want our selected teams to take full advantage of the international circuit, and April positions them well to do that.' BrLab CoPro: A New Co-Production Forum BrLab is also launching BrLab CoPro, a curated boutique co-production forum aimed at catalyzing new international partnerships. The platform will bring together producers and projects interested in forging co-productions with Brazil and other Latin American territories, in response to a regional landscape where cross-border collaboration is increasingly essential for financing and distribution. This new space marks a significant deepening of BrLab's role as a connector, not just of talent, but also of institutions and industries that can bring films to life. Audience Design Workshop Goes Regional Since 2017, BrLab's Audience Design Workshop has provided specialized training to Brazilian filmmakers on how to identify, understand and reach their target audiences. In 2025, the workshop will expand to include participants from across Latin America, Portugal and Spain, opening a new regional dialogue around the challenges of distribution and audience engagement. 'The idea is to strengthen regional circulation and create sustainable connections,' said Sampaio, who himself first encountered audience design methodology through TorinoFilmLab. 'Too often, films from one Latin American country don't even reach audiences in the next one. We hope to help change that.' Reinforcing Institutional Support and Regional Collaboration BrLab's evolution has been made possible through robust institutional backing. Longstanding supporters such as Programa Ibermedia, Projeto Paradiso and Spcine have been joined by Petrobras, which is now backing the lab through a multi-year sponsorship. This growing coalition reflects BrLab's increasing importance as a development engine not only for Brazilian cinema but for a broader Ibero-American creative ecosystem. With nearly 90 completed films supported by 2026 and a growing list of international accolades, BrLab stands as both a model and a catalyst for regional cinema. As it prepares its 15th edition, the lab is reaffirming its core mission: to empower emerging voices, facilitate meaningful collaboration and help shape the future of global cinema, one project at a time. Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Emmy Predictions: Talk/Scripted Variety Series - The Variety Categories Are Still a Mess; Netflix, Dropout, and 'Hot Ones' Stir Up Buzz Oscars Predictions 2026: 'Sinners' Becomes Early Contender Ahead of Cannes Film Festival
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Guillermo Galoe Unpacks His Insider's Vision of a Family Riven by Its Shanty Town's Demolition in Critics' Week's ‘Sleepless City'
Jaw-gaping, Rayo, a white greyhound, sprints after a hare over grassy fields, encouraged by Toni and family in a truck driven by his grandfather Chule: 'Ciudad sin sueño' ('Sleepless City) opens with a sense of celebration and freedom, enjoyed by a Roma family living in La Cañada Real, a nine-mile road housing what is described as the biggest shanty town in southern Europe, a short drive west of Madrid. Cut to the film's next scene in Cañada Real where an excavator is ripping into the roof of a house as local authorities demolish Canada Real's housing, offering to some, including Toni's parents, accommodation in sterile housing blocks on the city outskirts, but which have tap water, lighting, a bedroom for everybody and a supermarket nearby. More from Variety New York Erotic Tale 'Drunken Noodles' Sells to Taiwan, France and Germany for M-Appeal (EXCLUSIVE) Rebel Wilson Escalates Battle With 'The Deb' Producers in 'Bizarre Outburst of Jealousy' After Cannes Yacht Party Tony Gatlif's 'Ange,' Starring Singer-Songwriter Arthur H. and Mathieu Amalric, Debuts Trailer Ahead of Cannes Premiere (EXCLUSIVE) Barrel-chested family patriarch Chule, whom Toni adores, a metal scrap collector, is not for moving. 'Listen to the wind. We're as big as this field,' he says, expending his arms. 'That's happiness,' he tells Toni, having driven them out to the countryside. Though he hasn't told Toni, Chule has already borrowed money from the local drug-dealer to buy land and build a legal home, selling Rayo into part of the deal. The family of Moroccan Bilal, Toni's best friend, is moving to the French coast. Toni's own days in Cañada Real look counted. 15, written off by the girl he likes as a metal scrap dealer, he's in two minds about the move, as indeed is the film which channels the melancholy of an autumnal Western, a town overtaken by the sweep of gentrification, and the passing of an freer age. Celebrating its world premiere in Cannes Critics' Week on Monday, 'Sleepless City' marks an auspicious feature debut for Spain's Guillermo Galoe. He's already a distinguished filmmaker who in 2023 had fiction short 'Even Though It's at Night,' a dry run for 'Sleepless City,' playing main competition, at Cannes. 'Night' won a Spanish Academy Goya Award for best fiction short film. Galoe's early 'Frágil Equilibrio' (2016) scooped another Goya, for best doc feature. Put through the Cannes Festival's Residence development program and sold by Brussels' Best Friend Forever, 'Sleepless City' will be distributed in Spain by BTeam Pictures. It is produced from France by Les Valseurs and and Les Films des Tournelles. Producers in Spain take in Galoe's own Madrid-based label Sintagma Films, alongside BTeam Prods, Buenapinta Media and Encanta Film, the latter three all backing Alauda Ruíz de Azua's 'Lullaby,' described by Pedro Almódovar as 'undoubtedly the best debut in Spanish cinema for years.' If most early reviews of 'Sleepless City' are anything to go by, they could be on to another winner. talked to Galoe just before 'Sleepless City' bowed at Cannes. What made you particularly interested in telling this story? I was following the story of various family evictions and ended up in La Cañada Real. I was blown away. 15 minutes from central Madrid, 10 minutes from my own home, there's a completely different world not that distant but completely on the margins, absolutely out of the world and time. It struck me to the quick, in intuitive and aesthetic terms. My films are based on experiences that I have of a world before my senses. I strike up a relationship with that world which is this case became a total fiction in a real space. I believe you spent two years in La Cañada without shooting anything. I was only able to work there daily, for weeks, from 2019…. Does that come from your documentary past where you have to live a reality before you know the story you're going to tell? Totally. I like cinema which is close to life, and relate to he world through a camera. We began to set up workshops, shooting small films with smartphones with kids and families. The films that Toni and Bilal shoot, tinting objects, backgrounds, people's faces or whole rubbish dumps, like in psychedelic dreams, could be seen as an escape from reality. But they also relate to stories the grandmother tells of mythical places with a multicoloured sky. The [multi-colour tinted] images were great in terms of aesthetic play. And they allowed me to construct in images the legends which I heard there, combined with legends I heard from my own childhood. My grandparents are from Extremadura [in Spain's southwest] and Portugal. Many of the gitanos who live in Cañada Real are from the same region. My grandparents walked the same fields, hunted with the same dogs, listened to the same legends. The grandmother, in the film from the very first moment, reminded me a lot of my own grandmother. It went straight to my heart. Guillermo Arriaga once said that you should be able to sum up a film in just a few words. 'Sleepless City,' for me, is a telling the story of bidding goodbye to a father. My work, as I said, is exploring worlds in very different places to my own, to find in them what is also mine. As cinema is life for me and life is a journey, I was interested in talking about this, it's at the emotional heart of the film. And the father is of course a father figure, Chule. The film talks about generational transmission. Toni's parents are very young, too young to take totally care of their own children. So who looks after them? The grandparents. There always a network of care nearby. That can be tremendously positive…. I agree. The film doesn't want to romanticize La Cañada Real. But it does ask questions. This world is disappearing, but for what? A world which is terribly homogenized, anxiously capitalist and hyper-connected but very badly connected. There's no sense of community in big cities. The question is whether we have to give up everything? That's a question that Toni asks himself. He's of two minds about moving to Madrid. He marvels at water running from a tap in the flat his parents have been offered, but sees what he's leaving behind: Chule, the fields, his dog, freedom. The characters in the film feel a sense of loss. Toni loses not only his friend and community but and alos a childhood gaze, capable of wonder, astonishment. Toni is capable of seeing things in La Cañada that we adults don't see. The film offers images different from what we're used to seeing about places like La Cañada. It's a clarity when seeing the specific, unfiltered by concepts of adulthood, caught in the scenes when Toni and Bildal are down by the stream catching a lizard. There's a filter of adult life which is realizing you can't have everything you want. Likewise, the film talks about freedom. For Chule, freedom is the countryside around La Cañada, shared with Toni. Many younger characters in the film seem to want to escape La Canada and its world. Though made in many ways in a neo-realist mould, 'Sleepless City' is notably stylish, boasting a top-notch DP in Rui Poças ('Zama,' 'Grand Tour'). What were your aesthetic intentions in 'Sleepless City'? Camera use was for me is a space of freedom which I wanted to have in the film, but also extends the presence of the characters who film themselves via their cell phones. My sequence shots pick up on a cell phone style which shoots without cuts. Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Emmy Predictions: Talk/Scripted Variety Series - The Variety Categories Are Still a Mess; Netflix, Dropout, and 'Hot Ones' Stir Up Buzz Oscars Predictions 2026: 'Sinners' Becomes Early Contender Ahead of Cannes Film Festival
Yahoo
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
One of Cannes' Sexiest, Queerest Films Is Lucio Castro's Mystical Art World Odyssey ‘Drunken Noodles' — Watch Trailer
One of IndieWire's Best Queer Films of the 21st Century was Lucio Castro's 'End of the Century' from 2019, a slightly surreal will-they, did-they, won't-they gay romance set in Barcelona. His follow-up film 'After His Death,' about a woman (Mia Maestro) in freefall after an affair with an enigmatic musician (Lee Pace) who appears to quite literally have a cult following, premiered at the Berlinale and took Argentine writer/director Castro briefly out of the queer cinematic space. But he's back with another gay quasi-romance, this time in New York City, with 'Drunken Noodles,' which feels like Apichatpong Weerasethakul directing an early '80s New Queer Cinema indie. It has a lo-fi, shot-on-film aesthetic mixed with mystical elements, and it's premiering in the Cannes Film Festival ACID parallel section later this month. (Standing for Association du Cinéma Indépendant pour sa Diffusion, ACID is dedicated to elevating indie filmmakers.) Here, the mind-bending elements of 'End of the Century' take on fuller force (and in a film that is not to mention quite sexy). More from IndieWire ADVERTISEMENT 'Drunken Noodles' takes place over two summers, in both the city streets and the forest paths of upstate New York, as art student Adnan (Laith Khalifeh) has a series of unexpected, intimate, and even otherworldly, time-and-space-warping encounters. Watch the IndieWire exclusive trailer before the film's Cannes premiere below. Here's the official synopsis: 'Adnan, a young art student, arrives in New York City to flat-sit for the summer. He begins interning at a gallery where an unconventional older artist he once encountered is being exhibited. As moments from his past and present begin to intertwine, a series of encounters – both artistic and erotic – open cracks in his everyday reality.' 'In the summer of 2021, a friend introduced me to the work of Sal Salandra, an artist in his late 70s who had recently begun creating explicit sexual tableaux in needlepoint — a craft typically reserved for gentler themes, like kittens playing with balls of yarn,' Castro said as to the film's origins in a press statement. 'I was instantly captivated and went to interview Sal at his Long Island home, thinking I might make a documentary. However, I left feeling that what drew me to his work remained out of reach. I realized that what I wanted to explore couldn't be articulated in a documentary, it had to be done through fiction.' Joel Isaac, Ezriel Kornel, and Matthew Risch co-star in the film, which features cinematography by Barton Cortright, who most recently shot 'The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed,' out of the 2023 Cannes Directors' Fortnight. Watch the trailer for 'Drunken Noodles' below. The film premieres at the festival in the ACID section Sunday, May 18. ADVERTISEMENT The film is produced by Castro and Cortright under their Alsina 427 banner, with co-producers Joanne Lee and Julia Bloch, and executive producer Pierce Varous of Nice Dissolve. M-appeal is handling world sales. U.S. distribution is currently in negotiation and is expected to be announced shortly. Best of IndieWire Sign up for Indiewire's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
