News Analysis India

Tag: Penelope Cruz

  • Official trailer of ‘Ferrari’ starring Adam Driver is out

    By Express News Service

    The official trailer of Ferrari, the upcoming film based on the life of car manufacturer Enzo Ferrari, was released by the makers on social media on Wednesday.

    Ferrari stars Adam Driver, Penélope Cruz, Shailene Woodley, Sarah Gordon, Gabriel Leone, Jack O’Connell, Patrick Dempsey, among others.

    The trailer begins with a monologue by Enzo who is laying the rules of physics, as we see flashes of cars racing. The trailer also reveals how Enzo must save his company from bankruptcy, while maintaining a personal relationship with his family as well.

    “It is the summer of 1957. Behind the spectacle of Formula 1, ex-racer Enzo Ferrari is in crisis. Bankruptcy threatens the factory he and his wife, Laura built from nothing ten years earlier. Their volatile marriage has been battered by the loss of their son, Dino a year earlier. Ferrari struggles to acknowledge his son Piero with Lina Lardi. Meanwhile, his drivers’ passion to win pushes them to the edge as they launch into the treacherous 1,000-mile race across Italy, the Mille Miglia,” reads the synopsis.

    Directed by Michael Mann, the film is written by Troy Kennedy Martin. The upcoming film will be Mann’s comeback to director’s chair after eight years, since the release of Blackhat (2015). Troy has adapted Ferrari to screen from the best-selling book ‘Enzo Ferrari: The Man, The Cars, The Races, The Machine’ by Brock Yates.

    The film is set to hit the theatres for Christmas.

    (This story originally appeared on Cinema Express) Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp

    The official trailer of Ferrari, the upcoming film based on the life of car manufacturer Enzo Ferrari, was released by the makers on social media on Wednesday.

    Ferrari stars Adam Driver, Penélope Cruz, Shailene Woodley, Sarah Gordon, Gabriel Leone, Jack O’Connell, Patrick Dempsey, among others.

    The trailer begins with a monologue by Enzo who is laying the rules of physics, as we see flashes of cars racing. The trailer also reveals how Enzo must save his company from bankruptcy, while maintaining a personal relationship with his family as well.googletag.cmd.push(function() {googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-8052921-2′); });

    “It is the summer of 1957. Behind the spectacle of Formula 1, ex-racer Enzo Ferrari is in crisis. Bankruptcy threatens the factory he and his wife, Laura built from nothing ten years earlier. Their volatile marriage has been battered by the loss of their son, Dino a year earlier. Ferrari struggles to acknowledge his son Piero with Lina Lardi. Meanwhile, his drivers’ passion to win pushes them to the edge as they launch into the treacherous 1,000-mile race across Italy, the Mille Miglia,” reads the synopsis.

    Directed by Michael Mann, the film is written by Troy Kennedy Martin. The upcoming film will be Mann’s comeback to director’s chair after eight years, since the release of Blackhat (2015). Troy has adapted Ferrari to screen from the best-selling book ‘Enzo Ferrari: The Man, The Cars, The Races, The Machine’ by Brock Yates.

    The film is set to hit the theatres for Christmas.

    (This story originally appeared on Cinema Express) Follow The New Indian Express channel on WhatsApp

  • Gender identity gets starring role at Venice Film Festival

    By AFP

    Transgender issues have taken centre stage at the Venice Film Festival this year, with Italian director Emanuele Crialese even using the platform to reveal he was born a woman as he presented his new film starring Penelope Cruz. 

    The revelation by Crialese came at a press conference for his new film, “L’Immensita”, which is inspired by his difficult adolescence. 

    “I am never going to be like any other man… I was born biologically a woman,” Crialese said. 

    He added that, despite his transition, there was still a “huge part of my character that is female”. 

    In the film, Cruz’s character attempts to protect her teenage daughter, who identifies as a boy, in a bourgeois household dominated by an abusive, unfaithful husband.

    It is not alone at this year’s festival in embracing artists who reject traditional gender roles or tackle issues around sexual identity. 

    Another film in the main competition, “Monica” by Italian director Andrea Pallaoro, stars a transgender actress in the leading role — a first in 79 editions of the festival. 

    Trace Lysette, known for her role in Amazon Prime series “Transparent”, plays a transgender woman who returns to Ohio after a long absence to care for her dying mother. 

    “It’s very rare that you see a script where there’s a trans character at the centre and the movie is told through her lens,” Lysette told reporters. 

    “Usually trans characters are more a sidebar vehicle for someone else’s story.”

    Besides exploring the title character’s emotional and psychological world, the movie reflects on “the precarious nature of each of our identities when faced with the need to survive and transform”, said Pallaoro.

    – Struggling for decades –

    Themes of gender identity are also the subject of various documentaries at the festival.

    In “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed”, director Laura Poitras centres on the art and activism of US photographer Nan Goldin, whose early work focused on gay culture and volatile male-female relationships.

    One of the breakout performances has been Quintessa Swindell, a non-binary actor, who stars alongside Sigourney Weaver and Joel Edgerton in “Master Gardener”, playing out of competition. 

    Meanwhile, a documentary by French director Sebastien Lifshitz, “Casa Susanna”, recounts the story of a clandestine community of cross-dressers in conservative America of the 1950s and 1960s, relying on archival footage and surviving members of this “pre-queer” history.

    “It’s been a struggle for decades to try to break out of the archetypes,” Lifshitz told AFP.  

    Another French director, Florent Gouelou, presented “Three Nights a Week”, a film he described as “a declaration of love” to the art form of drag.

    In the film, Baptiste, a man in a relationship with a woman, discovers the Parisian world of drag queens and falls in love with one of them, Cookie.

    “Through the character of Baptiste you see my own fascination and through the character of Cookie, you see my own experience as a drag queen,” said Gouelou.

    Transgender issues have taken centre stage at the Venice Film Festival this year, with Italian director Emanuele Crialese even using the platform to reveal he was born a woman as he presented his new film starring Penelope Cruz. 

    The revelation by Crialese came at a press conference for his new film, “L’Immensita”, which is inspired by his difficult adolescence. 

    “I am never going to be like any other man… I was born biologically a woman,” Crialese said. 

    He added that, despite his transition, there was still a “huge part of my character that is female”. 

    In the film, Cruz’s character attempts to protect her teenage daughter, who identifies as a boy, in a bourgeois household dominated by an abusive, unfaithful husband.

    It is not alone at this year’s festival in embracing artists who reject traditional gender roles or tackle issues around sexual identity. 

    Another film in the main competition, “Monica” by Italian director Andrea Pallaoro, stars a transgender actress in the leading role — a first in 79 editions of the festival. 

    Trace Lysette, known for her role in Amazon Prime series “Transparent”, plays a transgender woman who returns to Ohio after a long absence to care for her dying mother. 

    “It’s very rare that you see a script where there’s a trans character at the centre and the movie is told through her lens,” Lysette told reporters. 

    “Usually trans characters are more a sidebar vehicle for someone else’s story.”

    Besides exploring the title character’s emotional and psychological world, the movie reflects on “the precarious nature of each of our identities when faced with the need to survive and transform”, said Pallaoro.

    – Struggling for decades –

    Themes of gender identity are also the subject of various documentaries at the festival.

    In “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed”, director Laura Poitras centres on the art and activism of US photographer Nan Goldin, whose early work focused on gay culture and volatile male-female relationships.

    One of the breakout performances has been Quintessa Swindell, a non-binary actor, who stars alongside Sigourney Weaver and Joel Edgerton in “Master Gardener”, playing out of competition. 

    Meanwhile, a documentary by French director Sebastien Lifshitz, “Casa Susanna”, recounts the story of a clandestine community of cross-dressers in conservative America of the 1950s and 1960s, relying on archival footage and surviving members of this “pre-queer” history.

    “It’s been a struggle for decades to try to break out of the archetypes,” Lifshitz told AFP.  

    Another French director, Florent Gouelou, presented “Three Nights a Week”, a film he described as “a declaration of love” to the art form of drag.

    In the film, Baptiste, a man in a relationship with a woman, discovers the Parisian world of drag queens and falls in love with one of them, Cookie.

    “Through the character of Baptiste you see my own fascination and through the character of Cookie, you see my own experience as a drag queen,” said Gouelou.

  • Penelope Cruz to star in Pedro Almodovar’s ‘Madres paralelas’

    By PTI
    LOS ANGELES: Actor Penelope Cruz has joined Oscar-winning filmmaker Pedro Almodovar’s upcoming directorial venture “Madres paralelas” (‘Parallel Mothers’).

    Actors Aitana Sanchez-Gijon, Israel Elejalde, Milena Smit Julieta Serrano and Rossy de Palma are also part of the film’s cast.

    According to Variety, the movie is set to start production by the end of March in Spain.

    The top Spanish Auteur is also producing the project through his El Deseo banner.

    “With ‘Parallel Mothers’ I return to the female universe, to motherhood, to family. I speak of the importance of ancestors and descendants. The inevitable presence of memory. There are many mothers in my filmography, the ones that are part of this story are very different,” Almodovar said in a statement.

    The filmmaker said as a storyteller imperfect mothers “inspire” him the most and he is looking forward to start the work on the film.

    “As a storyteller, imperfect mothers inspire me most at this time. Penelope Cruz, Aitana Sanchez Gijon and the young Milena Smit will play the three mothers in the film, accompanied by Israel Elejalde in the main male character. I also have the collaboration of my beloved Julieta Serrano and Rossy de Palma. ‘Parallel Mothers’ will be an intense drama. Or so I hope,” he said.