Celia Imrie, Penelope Wilton, Catherine Hardwicke and Jake Lacy are among the star-studded jury lineup for the 21st HollyShorts Film Festival in Los Angeles.
Running Aug. 7-17, the summer festival spotlights the best of shortform cinema, with winners of HollyShorts awards in four key categories earning automatic Oscar qualification: best short film grand prize, best animated short, best live action short, and best documentary short.
Imrie (Bridget Jones’s Diary, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel) will adjudicate this year’s selection alongside Wilton (Downton Abbey), Anthony Head (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Jennifer Ehle (Pride and Prejudice), The White Lotus star Lacy, Essie Davis (The Babadook), Lewis Tan (Cobra Kai), Mena Suvari (American Beauty) and Twilight (2008) director Hardwicke.
Adam Graves, director of the Oscar-nominated short Anuja, will also sit on the jury, as will journalists Ward Bond, Matthew Carey and Ramin Zahed, among others. See the full jury lineup, exclusively given to The Hollywood Reporter, below.
Founded in 2005, HollyShorts has grown into one of the world’s leading platforms for short-story telling. This year’s edition has over 400 films set to make their mark from a record-breaking 7,000 submissions.
The hybrid celebration of short films will take place in person, with screenings at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood and virtually through the official festival streaming platform, Bitpix TV. The festival will culminate in the awards gala on Aug. 17, where winners will be announced.
“I’m honored to join the HollyShorts jury this year,” said Wilton. “This festival is a celebration of bold creativity and the power of storytelling in its most distilled and impactful form.” Ehle added: “I’m thrilled to join the jury at HollyShorts, a festival that champions emerging voices, and storytelling at its most inventive.”
Below is the full list of jurors in alphabetical order:
Andrea Bang Ward Bond Matthew Carey Catherine Curtin Essie Davis Cecilia Delgado Jennifer Ehle Adam Graves Sonia Gumuchian Catherine Hardwicke Anthony Head Celia Imrie Bradley James Aimee La Joie Jake Lacy Abi Leiff Kris Mercado Caroline Monnet Sandro Monetti Joey Moser Krushan Naik Lean N.H. Philpott Colby Schinto Weiman Seid Yeardley Smith Sarah Stunt Mena Suvari Lewis Tan Amelia Tyler Penelope Wilton Ramin Zahed
The Fantastic Four: First Steps stars Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn and Ebon Moss-Bachrach continued their world tour in promotion of the film on Monday, bringing Marvel’s First Family to Los Angeles.
The film — set against a backdrop of a 1960s-inspired, retro-futuristic world — follows Mister Fantastic, Invisible Woman, Human Torch and The Thing as they defend Earth from Galactus and Silver Surfer.
On the blue carpet, Quinn, who plays Johnny Storm/Human Torch but previously auditioned for the role of Spider-Man, spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about the possibility of working with Tom Holland within the MCU, as Spider-Man and Johnny Storm are close friends in the comics.
“That pairing makes sense to me and I think he’s brilliant and I’m up for it,” the actor said. “I think we’d have a laugh. I’ve never met Tom and I think he’s brilliant; his Peter Parker is the best one ever, I think he’s our best-ever Spider-Man, so why not? Let’s do it, get it moving.”
Kirby, starring as Sue Storm/Invisible Woman, also commented about her journey with the film, as she’s currently pregnant with her first child while her character also becomes a mother on screen.
“It’s a very surreal timing for me. I think the most moving thing for me was that in a big movie like this, Sue spends half the time pregnant, she gives birth and then she has a newborn while facing some huge intergalactic, existential threat to humanity,” Kirby explained. “She’s never sidelined and she’s absolutely part of it; the fact that she’s a mother makes her stronger I think and it taught me so much about how powerful that experience is. As she does in the comics, I really hope that translates.”
Julia Garner, who plays the much buzzed-about Silver Surfer, joked that the team “made me look a lot cooler than I actually am” with special effects. She continued, “I’ve never done this kind of acting before and I think it’s really important as an actor to try different things and see what works and what doesn’t work. I had so much fun making this so it was really exciting and I would definitely do it again.”
The Fantastic Four: First Steps hits theaters on Friday. See the first reactions here.
The Cillian Murphy-starring drama Steve, from director Tim Mielants and Netflix, will open the 2025 Platform competition at the Toronto Film Festival, organizers said Tuesday.
Adapted by Max Porter from his novella Shy, Steve has Oscar winner Murphy playing a headteacher during a pivotal day for students at a last-chance reform school and in a world that has left them behind. As Steve deals with his own trauma, he meets Shy (Jay Lycurgo), a troubled teen also caught between a dark past and an uncertain future.
Tracey Ullman, Simbi Ajikawo and Emily Watson also star in Steve, which will hit Netflix on Oct. 3. On Tuesday, Toronto unveiled in all 10 features for the festival section where international films outside of the Hollywood studio orbit compete.
There’s a rare international premiere in the section for Pauline Loquès Nino, which bowed in Cannes and has rising star Theodore Pellerin playing a young man whose life in Paris is shattered over three days by a sudden cancer diagnosis that he must come to grips with.
There’s also first looks for Yoon Ga-eun’s third feature, The World of Love, about a cheerful young woman (Seo Su-bin) on a curious quest for love thwarted by a fit of anger in class and an anonymous letter; and the animated pic Bouchra, helmed by 2 Lizards directors Orian Barki and Meriem Bennani and about a 35 year-old Moroccan coyote and filmmaker making a movie about her relationship with her mother.
As well as for The Hen, a live-action film from director Gyorgy Palfi about a chicken desperate to raise a family in the face of life’s brutal pecking order; and director Kasia Adamik’s Winter of the Crow thriller, which stars Leslie Manville as a British professor caught up in a secret police conspiracy after witnessing a student’s murder in 1981 Warsaw as martial law is declared.
Adamik is the daughter of Polish writer and director Agnieszka Holland, whose new biographical film Franz, about author Franz Kafka, will also have a world premiere in Toronto this year. Holland and Adamik jointly directed the 2017 film Spoor and 1983, Netflix’s first Polish-language series. The mother and-daughter filmmakers also had Polish cinematographer Tomasz Naumiuk behind the camera on their latest films headed to TIFF.
The Platform program has booked Milagros Mumenthaler’s debut feature The Currents, about a successful fashion designer from a wealthy Argentine family who develops a severe phobia of water on returning home after falling from a bridge and into freezing river water in Geneva; and Skite’kmujuekati’kw (At The Place of Ghosts), a supernatural indigenous thriller by Bretten Hannam and starring Blake Alec Miranda and Forrest Goodluck.
Also slotted into the Platform program is Valentyn Vasyanovych’s To The Victory!, a dystopian story set in post-war Ukraine where the director is also the lead character; and Farnoosh Samadi’s Between Dreams and Hope, a queer love story where Azad (Fereshteh Hosseini), a trans man, and Nora (Sadaf Asgari) are two young lovers toggling between tradition and modernity in their society and family.
The jury for the Platform competition this year is led by Spanish director and includes Canadian director Chloe Robichaud and Oscar-nominated actor Marianne Jean-Baptiste (Hard Truths).
The Toronto Film Festival is set to run from Sept. 4 to 14. More film lineup announcements will be made in the coming weeks.
The 2025 edition of the Locarno Film Festival’s Locarno Pro industry strand is promising a jam-packed schedule of events in the Swiss lakeside town next month.
Comedian and disability advocate Maysoon Zayid (You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, General Hospital) will kick-start the event on Aug. 7 with a session entitled “Somewhere Over the Rainbow: Making Movies That Save Lives.”
She will be followed by a panel of high-profile industry representatives, namely AGC Studios chairman and CEO Stuart Ford, Poor Things, Pillion, and My Father’s Shadow producer Ed Guiney of Element Pictures, also known as Yorgos Lanthimos’ longtime producer, and Berlin Film Festival director Tricia Tuttle.
The opening day of Locarno Pro 2025 will wrap up with a panel featuring Claudia Bluemhuber, CEO of Silver Reel, Largo AI CEO Sami Arpa, Allison Gardner, CEO of Glasgow Film, and entertainment lawyer Izzy Abidi of Freshly Ground Stories.
Another highlight of the Locarno Pro 2025 schedule is an Aug. 9 session dubbed “The Producer-Director Relationship,” a conversation between Guiney and Romanian auteur and provocateur Radu Jude. “Join us for an informal conversation between director Radu Jude (Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, Kontinental ’25, Dracula) and producer Ed Guiney (The Lobster, 11 Minutes, Poor Things, The Wonder, The Favourite), as they share their experiences and tips on how to turn this complex relationship into a ‘happily ever after’ – at least until the next film,” reads the description for the session.
Other events at this year’s Locarno Pro include such sessions as “Building Sustainable Film Ecosystems in Africa: Financing the Future,” “Public Meets Private: Rethinking Financing Strategies for Independent Film in Europe,” and “Promotional Strategies for Classic Films Today.”
Locarno Pro runs Aug. 7-12. The Locarno Pro awards ceremony will take place Aug. 10, with the awards for Open Doors, the co-production platform and talent development program for filmmakers from regions where artistic expression is at risk, to be handed out on Aug. 12.
With its 2025 line-up, announced Tuesday, the Venice Film Festival has (again) taken the award season pole position, with a program packed with a frankly absurd number of must-see movies.
Among the hot awards titles heading to the Lido are Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine, from A24, featuring Dwayne Johnson as two‑time UFC heavyweight champion Mark Kerr and Emily Blunt as his wife Dawn; Luca Guadagnino’s #MeToo–inspired thriller After the Hunt, for Amazon MGM Studios, starring Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield and Ayo Edebiri, will premiere out of competition; and Guillermo del Toro’s dark reimagining of Frankenstein, featuring Jacob Elordi, Oscar Isaac and Mia Goth, a Netflix production.
This will mark the Venice festival debut for both Roberts and Johnson.
Netflix, which sat out Vence last year, is back in force for 2025. Alongside Frankenstein, the streamer has Noah Baumbach’s comedy‑drama Jay Kelly, co-written with Emily Mortimer, and headlined by George Clooney, premiering in competition, and Kathryn Bigelow’s ticking bomb geopolitical thriller A House of Dynamite, starring Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, Greta Lee, Gabriel Basso, and Jared Harris.
The Venice line-up is an embarrassment of riches, for award-watchers and regular film fans alike, with the competition selection including the latest from A-list auteurs Park Chan-wook (No Other Choice), François Ozon (L’Etranger), and Laszlo Nemes (Orphan). A year after Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist launched in Venice, en route to three Oscar wins, the film’s co-writer (and producer) Mona Fastvold arrives in competition with The Testament of Ann Lee, a historical drama musical film starring Lewis Pullman, Amanda Seyfried, and Tim Blake Nelson, that she co-wrote with Corbet.
The Voice of Hind Rajab, the new film from Four Daughters director Kaouther Ben Hania, is certain to be one of the most talked-about films in Venice this year. The film tells the true story of Hind Rajab, a 6-year-old girl who, on January 29, 2024, was trapped in a car on fire in Gaza. She called Red Crescent emergency workers, who kept her on the line while they tried to get an ambulance to her. The Party Film Sales is handling worldwide sales on the film and co-representing North American rights with CAA Media Finance.
‘The Voice of Hind Rajab’
Mime Films / Tanit Films
Another politically-charged title in competition is Olivier Assayas’ The Wizard of the Kremlin, starring Jude Law as Vladimir Putin and Paul Dano as the fictional Kremlin insider Vadim Baranov.
Yorgos Lanthimos, a Venice Golden Lion winner for Poor Things, returns in competition with Bugonia, an adaptation of Jang Joon-Hwan’s 2003 South Korean sci-fi film Save the Green Planet!, featuring his frequent collaborator Emma Stone. Focus Features will release the film stateside, with Universal Pictures handling internationally outside of Korea, where CJ ENM will release.
And iconic indie director Jim Jarmusch, a Cannes regular, will make his Lido debut with Mubi’s Father Mother Sister Brother, a triptych with an all-star ensemble cast including Cate Blanchett, Adam Driver, Indya Moore, Vicky Krieps, Tom Waits, Luka Sabbat, and Charlotte Rampling.
The 82nd Venice competition line-up also includes the latest from A-list auteurs Park Chan-wook (No Other Choice), François Ozon (L’Etranger), and Laszlo Nemes (Orphan)
Italian Oscar-winning Paolo Sorrentino (The Great Beauty) will open this year’s festival with La Grazia (Grace), a love story starring his long-time collaborator Toni Servillo. La Grazia, co-starring Diamonds actor Anna Ferzetti, will premiere in competition on Aug. 27. Mubi picked up the film ahead of its Venice bow.
Toni Servillo in ‘La Grazia’
Venice Film Festival
Dog 51, a new action-packed French sci-fi thriller from Bac Nord director Cedric Jimenez will close the festival, out of competition.
Gus Van Sant’s return to feature films, Dead Man’s Wire, starring Bill Skarsgard, will also screen out of competition. Other out-of-competition highlights include Anders Thomas Jensen’s Danish dark comedy The Last Viking starring Mads Mikkelsen, Julian Schnabel’s long-awaited The Hand of Dante, and Scarlet, the first anime feature in four years from Japanese master Mamoru Hosoda.
Venice has selected four TV series for its small-screen sidebar: Etty, a limited series from Israeli showrunner Hagai Levi (In Treatment, The Affair), loosely based on the diary of Dutch Jewish writer Etty Hillesum, starring Julia Windischbauer and Sebastian Koch, which Studio TF1 is selling worldwide; Portobello, the first Italian original production for HBO Max in which Italian director Marco Bellocchio (The Traitor), follows the true story of the downfall of one of Italy’s most beloved TV hosts; Studiocanal’s A Prophet – The Series, a TV reboot of Jacques Audiard’s classic French prison drama from 2009, directed by Enrico Maria Artale; and Il Mostro (The Monster), a true-life serial-killer drama from Gomorrah series director, Stefano Sollima, made for Netflix.
‘Il Monstro’
Courtesy of Netflix
This year’s Golden Lion career achievement honorees are legendary German director Werner Herzog (Fitzcarraldo, Grizzly Man) and Vertigo star Kim Novak.
Venice’s Classic sidebar, which includes a selection on documentaries about cinema, this year includes Mike Figgis’ Megadoc, a behind-the-scenes look at Francis Ford Coppola’s decades-in-the-making Megalopolis.
Two-time Oscar-winner Alexander Payne heads up this year’s competition jury as president, and together with international film talents including Brazilian actress Fernanda Torres, Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof, French director Stéphane Brizé, Italian director Maura Delpero, Chinese actress Zhao Tao, and Romanian director Cristian Mungiu, will pick the 2025 Golden Lion winner.
The 2025 Venice film festival runs Aug. 27 to Sept. 9.
Opening Film
La Grazia,dir. Paolo Sorrentino (Italy) (In competition)
Closing Film
Dog 51, dir. Cedric Jimenez (France)
Competition
The Wizard of the Kremlin, dir. Olivier Assayas (France) Jay Kelly, dir. Noah Baumbach (USA, UK, Italy) The Voice of Hind Rajab, dir. Kaouther Ben Hania (Tunisia, France) A House of Dynamite, dir. Kathryn Bigelow (USA) Sun Rises on Us All, dir. Cai Shangjun (China) Frankenstein, dir. Guillermo Del Toro (USA) Elisa, dir. Leonardo Di Costanzo (Italy, Switzerland) À pied d’œuvre, dir. Valérie Donzelli (France) Silent Friend, dir. Ildikó Enyedi (Germany, France, Hungary) The Testament of Ann Lee, dir. Mona Fastvold (UK) Father Mother Sister Brother, dir. Jim Jarmusch (USA, Ireland, France) Bugonia, dir. Yorgos Lanthimos (United Kingdom) Duse, dir. Pietro Marcello (Italy) Un film fatto per Bene, dir. Franco Maresco (Italy) Orphan, dir. László Nemes (Hungary, United Kingdom, Germany, France) The Stranger, dir. François Ozon (France) No Other Choice, dir. Park Chan-wook (South Korea) Sotto le nuvole, dir. Gianfranco Rosi (Italy) The Smashing Machine, dir. Benny Safdie (Canada, USA, Japan) Girl, dir. Shu Qi (Taipei) La Grazia, dir. Paolo Sorrentino (Italy)
Out of Competition (Fiction)
Boşluğa xütbə (Sermon to the Void), dir. Hilal Baydarov (Azerbaijan, Mexico, Turkey) L’isola di Andrea, dir. Antonio Capuano (Italy) Il Maestro, dir. Andrea Di Stefano (Italy) After the Hunt, dir. Luca Guadagnino (USA) Hateshinaki Scarlet, dir. Mamoru Hosoda (Japan) The Last Viking, dir. Anders Thomas Jensen (Denmark, Sweden) Chien 51, dir. Cédric Jimenez (France) In the Hand of Dante, dir. Julian Schnabel (USA, Italy) La valle dei sorrisi, dir. Paolo Strippoli (Italy, Slovenia) Dead Man’s Wire, dir. Gus Van Sant (USA) Orfeo, dir. Virgilio Villoresi (Italy)
Out of Competition (Non-Fiction)
Kabul, Between Prayers, dir. Aboozar Amini (The Netherlands, Belgium) Ferdinando Scianna – Il fotografo dell’ombra, dir. Roberto Andò (Italy) Marc by Sofia, dir. Sofia Coppola (USA) I diari di Angela – Noi due cineasti. Capitolo terzo, dir. Yervant Gianikian, Angela Ricci Lucchi (Italy) Ghost Elephants, dir. Werner Herzog (USA) My Father and Qaddafi, dir. Jihan K (USA, Libya) The Tale of Sylian, dir. Tamara Kotevska (North Macedonia) Nuestra Tierra, dir. Lucrecia Martel (Argentina, USA, Mexico, France, The Netherlands, Denmark) Remake, dir. Ross McElwee (USA) Kim Novak’s Vertigo, dir. Alexandre Philippe (USA) Cover-up, dir. Laura Poitras, Mark Obenhaus (USA) Broken English, dir. Jane Pollard, Iain Forsyth (United Kingdom) Notes of a True Criminal, dir. Alexander Rodnyansky, Andriy Alferov (Ukraine, USA) Director’s Diary, dir. Alexandr Sokurov (Russia, Italy) Back Home, dir. Tsai Ming-liang (Taipei)
Out of Competition (Series)
Un prophète – La série, dir. Enrico Maria Artale (France) Portobello, dir. Marco Bellocchio (Italy, France) Etty, dir. Hagai Levi (France, Germany, The Netherlands) Il mostro, dir. Stefano Sollima (Italy)
Out of Competition – Film & Music
Nino. 18 giorni, dir. Toni D’Angelo (Italy) Piero Pelù. Rumore dentro, dir. Francesco Fei (Italy) Newport and The Great Folk Dream, dir. Robert Gordon (USA) Francesco De Gregori Nevergreen, dir. Stefano Pistolini (Italy)
Venice Spotlight
Hijra, dir. Shahad Ameen (Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt, United Kingdom) Un cabo suelto (A Loose End), dir. Daniel Hendler (Uruguay, Argentina, Spain) Made in EU, dir. Stephan Komandarev (Bulgaria, Germany, Czech Republic) Motor City, dir. Potsy Ponciroli (USA) It Would Be Night in Caracas, dir. Mariana Rondón, Marité Ugás (Mexico, Venezuela) Silent Rebellion, dir. Marie-Elsa Sgualdo (Switzerland, France, Belgium) Calle Malaga, dir. Maryam Touzani (Morocco, France, Spain, Germany, Belgium) Ammazzare stanca, dir. Daniele Vicari (Italy)
Horizons Competition
Divine Comedy, dir. Ali Asgari (Iran, Italy, France, Germany, Turkey) Hiedra, dir. Ana Cristina Barragan (Ecuador, Mexico, France, Spain) Il rapimento di Arabella, dir. Carolina Cavalli (Italy) Strange River, dir. Jaume Claret Muxart (Spain, Germany) Lost Land, dir. Akio Fujimoto (Japan, France, Malaysia, Germany) Grand Ciel, dir. Akihiro Hata (France, Luxembourg) Rose of Nevada, dir. Mark Jenkin (United Kingdom) Late Fame, dir. Kent Jones (USA) Milk Teeth, dir. Mihai Mincan (Romania, France, Denmark, Greece, Bulgaria) Pin de Fartie, dir. Alejo Moguillansky (Argentina) Father, dir. Tereza Nvotová (Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland) En el camino, dir. David Pablos (Mexico, France) Songs of Forgotten Trees, dir. Anuparna Roy (India) Un anno di scuola, dir. Laura Samani (Italy, France) The Souffleur, dir. Gastón Solnicki (Austria, Argentina) Barrio triste, dir. Stillz (Colombia, USA) Mother, dir. Teona Strugar Mitevska (Belgium, North Macedonia, Sweden, Denmark, Bosnia and Herzegovina) Human Resource, dir. Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit (Thailand) Funeral Casino Blues, dir. Roderick Warich (Germany)
The director of the latest I Know What You Did Last Summer movie knows about Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr.‘s chemistry in the new film.
Sony‘s feature reboot from director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson hit theaters over the weekend, landing in third place at the domestic box office with $12.7 million. Madelyn Cline, Chase Sui Wonders, Jonah Hauer-King, Tyriq Withers and Sarah Pidgeon round out the cast for the latest entry in the slasher franchise that kicked off with the original 1997 film of the same name.
A social media user’s post on Saturday asked fellow fans whether they thought Hewitt and Prinze — who reprise their roles from the original movie and its sequel — “filmed their scenes together” in the 2025 installment. “People are starting to notice the ‘cuts and separate shots,’” the post continued.
Robinson was quick to clear up any confusion surrounding the pair’s scenes. “They absolutely shot their scenes together. Hope this helps,” the Do Revenge filmmaker wrote, adding a heart emoji.
When the user who wrote the original post apologized and admitted to feeling embarrassed, Robinson replied, “No apology necessary! I totally get why people might think that cause of some of the coverage but they are absolutely acting off each other. It was electric!”
The new film centers on a group of five friends facing dangerous consequences after making a pact to stay silent about a tragic car accident.
In his review of the latest movie for The Hollywood Reporter, critic Frank Scheck wrote about Prinze and Hewitt, “Both are in excellent form, providing connective tissue to the original film and its sequel.”
