Latest news with #Fathers&Sons
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
One To Watch: Why Davika Hoorne Left Her 'Comfort Zone' To Play A Haunted Hoover In ‘A Useful Ghost'
'I've never been a vacuum cleaner before… it's very out of my comfort zone,' says Thai model and actress Davika Hoorne on her role in Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke's Cannes Critics' Week title A Useful Ghost. She plays a woman who dies of dust pollution and then returns as a ghost in the form of a vacuum cleaner, determined to save her family from a similar fate. 'I had to get to know the vacuum cleaner, my partner,' says Hoorne, adding she put herself in the hands of the director to pull off the performance. 'His picture was very clear. There was a bit of improv but mostly it was what he wanted.' More from Deadline Scarlett Johansson On Why The Script For Her Directorial Debut 'Eleanor The Great' Made Her Cry: 'It's About Forgiveness' – Cannes Cover Story 'Bono: Stories Of Surrender': On Irish Fathers & Sons, Processing Family Tragedy & How A Need To Be Heard Propelled A Dublin Kid To Become One Of The World's Biggest Rock Stars Kering & Cannes Film Festival To Honor Brazilian Filmmaker Marianna Brennand With Prestigious Women In Motion Prize Alongside Nicole Kidman At Glitzy Sunday Night Soiree RELATED: It is not the first time Hoorne—who is one of Thailand's best-known actresses and influencers with strong followings on Instagram and TikTok—has played a ghost. Having forged a successful career as a model, she broke through as an actress in 2013 Thai folklore-inspired horror comedy Pee Mak, playing a woman called Nak, who dies while her husband is away at war but remains in their village to welcome him back. Pee Mak remains Thailand's all-time second highest grossing feature. RELATED: Hoorne's performance won her the epithet of 'Thailand's most beautiful ghost' and she has since starred in a string of mainstream shows and movies, including My Ambulance, Heart Attack, Astrophile and The Empress of Ayodhaya. Lead produced by Cattleya Paosrijareon and Soros Sukhum at Bangkok-based 185 Films, the credits of which also include Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Memoria and Kristen Tan's Pop Aye, A Useful Ghost marks quite a departure for Hoorne. 'I'm incredibly thankful for this opportunity, but I admit it's crazy that I accepted it. It's not something you usually see in Thailand,' she says. 'I normally do stories that are predictable, that make money, but this one is fulfilling my actress energy. The team working on it is incredible and so many people were rooting for it to get made. The first time I read the script, I said yes right away. I felt the movie had the potential to go far, and even if it doesn't, I'm still very proud of this project.' As well as introducing Hoorne to audiences outside of Asia, traveling to Cannes with A Useful Ghost also fulfils a long-held ambition for the actress, who says she has turned down offers to walk the festival's red carpet as a model in the past. 'A lot of people go there for the fame, for the fashion, but I told myself that I'm not going to walk the red carpet without a movie. I've been waiting for 10 years, and now this is like a dream come true.' Best of Deadline Sean 'Diddy' Combs Sex-Trafficking Trial Updates: Cassie Ventura's Testimony, $10M Hotel Settlement, Drugs, Violence, & The Feds 'Nine Perfect Strangers' Season 2 Release Schedule: When Do New Episodes Come Out? Everything We Know About Ari Aster's 'Eddington' So Far
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Simply Black' Filmmaker Jean-Pascal Zadi Aims To Break Down More Barriers: 'Being Black And Living In France Has Marked Me Deeply'
When Julia Roberts attended the French Césars this March, Jean-Pascal Zadi was given the task of introducing the Erin Brockovich Oscar-winning actress. The comic actor and director had Roberts in fits as he drew comparisons between their big toothy smiles and explained she could apply for political asylum if she were feeling the heat back home, suggesting she could get tips from actor Abou Sangaré, who was sitting a few seats behind. More from Deadline Scarlett Johansson On Why The Script For Her Directorial Debut 'Eleanor The Great' Made Her Cry: 'It's About Forgiveness' – Cannes Cover Story 'Bono: Stories Of Surrender': On Irish Fathers & Sons, Processing Family Tragedy & How A Need To Be Heard Propelled A Dublin Kid To Become One Of The World's Biggest Rock Stars Cannes Film Festival 2025: Read All Of Deadline's Movie Reviews Guinea-born Sangaré, who won Cannes' Un Certain Regard Best Actor prize in 2024 for his performance as an undocumented migrant in Souleymane's Story and would be feted with Best Male Revelation that evening, had just escaped deportation from France after securing a work permit in January. The tone of the humor was typical of Zadi, who four years previously also won Best Male Revelation for Simply Black, his riotously, impolitically correct comedy tackling the experiences of Black people in France. Zadi's spot at the César Awards as well as his starring role in a skit-based trailer promoting the 50th edition, suggest he is now part of mainstream French culture. 'I like the fact that you say that because I still feel a bit on the margins,' says Zadi. RELATED: This comes as a surprise given his recent achievements which include the Netflix series Represent, which he created with Lupin writer François Uzan, and stars in as a youth leader who runs to become France's first Black president, as well as roles in films such as Final Cut, Smoking Causes Coughing, Beating Hearts, Dog on Trial and most recently Prosper. One of 10 siblings, Zadi was born in the Paris suburb of Bondy in 1980 to parents hailing from the Ivory Coast. He grew up in the Normandy port city of Caen. 'We were the only Black family. There wasn't segregation but we lived some difficult things,' says Zadi. 'My mother anchored in us from very early on the fact that we were Black and that that was going to turn our destinies upside-down.' 'She would make us watch films like Cry Freedom and A Dry White Season. She introduced us to Black culture and the fact that we were going to have to fight in life. When I was small, with my brothers, we found her a bit crazy,' he continues. As a student, Zadi came to realize his mother had prepared him well, after a shop-owner, advertising a vacancy in the window for which he was qualified, denied they were looking for someone when he walked in off the street to enquire. 'That day, the penny dropped,' recalls Zadi. 'I understood that rather than asking for things, I was going to have to act.' He bought a camera on credit and made his first documentary Des halls aux bacs, about the French rap scene. 'It came out on DVD in 2005, and I haven't stopped since,' he says. 'I understood what I was capable of.' He followed the documentary with ultra-low budget features Cramé, African Gangster and Sans pudeur ni morale, at the same time as breaking into television as a contributor on the Canal+ show Le before du grand journal. Zadi reveals he bluffed his way through the pitch for Simply Black, suggesting he had secured the participation of stars such as Omar Sy, Eric Judor and Fabrice Eboué when he had not even approached them at that point. 'I signed the contract, and I was in a panic… I hadn't even written a scene for Omar Sy. He was working in the U.S., while I was an unknown. I wrote a scene anyway and sent it to his agent. One night he calls me, it was about midnight, I was in bed, and he says, 'Your film, we're going to make it. We're going to show them we're united.'' Zadi suggests that the project struck a chord with the roster of French Black actors who signed up for the film. 'Black French identity hasn't been tackled that much. We talk a lot about Black American identity, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, segregation, while French Black identity is tied up with colonization, which brings us together, but also separates us at the same time,' he says. Producing under the banner of Douze Doigts Productions, the Paris-based company he founded with his partner Camille Moulonguet, in 2010, Zadi has a raft of project in the works. He is now gearing up for the June release of Abidjan-shot feature Le grand déplacement, about a space mission with an all-African crew, and developing an adaptation of Boris Vian's novel I Spit On Your Graves, about a Black man in the U.S., whose white complexion allows him to cross racial barriers, to be set in the French Antilles. Zadi says questions of French Black identity are likely to remain at the heart of his work. 'Unfortunately, or fortunately, the fact of being Black and living in France has marked me deeply and for now, this is what is easiest for me to recount, these visceral things I have lived,' he says. Best of Deadline 2025 TV Cancellations: Photo Gallery Where To Watch All The 'Mission: Impossible' Movies: Streamers With Multiple Films In The Franchise Everything We Know About 'My Life With The Walter Boys' Season 2 So Far
