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She's back in Stockholm after spending a few days at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, where she presented her first feature, Pleasure, in front of a live audience. Her name is Ninja Thyberg and in the eyes of Hollywood, she is the next big thing.

German director and screenwriter Christian Petzold plays with themes of mythology, love, freedom, innocence, and physical appearance in his latest movie, Undine. The protagonist (Paula Beer) works as a historian, lecturing on Berlin's urban development.

Sergey Fetisov might have been just another footnote in human history had his memoir The Story of Roman not fallen into the creative hands of writer-director Peeter Rebane and writer-star Tom Prior (The Theory of Everything). His chronicle of serving in the Russian military in Estonia during the height of the 1970s Cold War and falling into a love triangle with fighter pilot Roman Medveyev (Oleg Zagorodnii) and best friend Luisa (Diana Pozharskaya) serves as the backdrop to a provocative study of love, self-acceptance, betrayal and social mores.

The passionate subjects are the stars of director Ashley O’Shay’s Unapologetic, a thought-provoking new documentary opening on August 27 in New York City and Toronto, and September 3 in Los Angeles. If its loose structure renders this timely look at the movement for Black lives and dignity something of a sermon to the choir, the film possesses at least one attribute which marks it as a worthwhile offering of nonfiction advocacy for those interested in current events and public affairs: a hardwired connection to the unswerving, electric moral certitude of youth.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) is using its charitable arm to assist in two major crises on opposite sides of the planet – Haiti and Afghanistan. Last week, the HFPA sent $125,000 each to Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and Direct Relief to help in their emergency response efforts in Haiti.

Amid competition from not one but four new releases, Ryan Reynolds’ Free Guy remained free and secure at the top of the box office charts in both North America and overseas (more about the international market later in the story). Director Shawn Levy’s video game-inspired action-comedy took in $18.

Anjelica Huston spoke with journalists of the Hollywood Foreign Press about the TV movie Iron Jawed Angels (2004) where she played Carrie Chapman Catt, leader of the American women’s suffrage movement. “I was rather remiss on my history of suffragettism.

Jeffrey Schwarz, like most cinephiles, has a special love for the film Sunset Boulevard. While the award-winning documentarian thought he knew everything about Billy Wilder’s 1950 Hollywood masterpiece, which introduced the world to Norma Desmond, an aging actress brilliantly played by Golden Globe-winning Best Actress Gloria Swanson, he was surprised to discover a unique afterlife to the cinematic classic.

An easygoing and consistently engaging if somewhat staidly told documentary biopic, Barbara Lee: Speaking Truth to Power benefits from both the considerable charisma and ongoing relevance of its subject, and the important lessons to be drawn from her fight for positive societal change. With interviewees including Alice Walker, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Cory Booker, Van Jones, Danny Glover, and the late John Lewis, among others, director Abby Ginzberg’s movie, receiving a nationwide theatrical release alongside digital distribution on iTunes, Apple TV and Amazon Prime Video, shines a light on the 12-term Congresswoman, and how her personal experiences connect to her public service.

It was 1946, right after World War II, when Margarita Carmen Cansino attended the just created Karlovy Vary Film Festival. It took place in a spa city in what was then Czechoslovakia, that had been saved from the bombs and remained as beautiful as when rich families visited it by the thousands at the end of the 19th century to spend their vacations.