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The South East European Film Festival founder Vera Mijojlic is a passionate cinephile. After witnessing the disintegration of Yugoslavia, followed by a brutal war of the 1990s, she devoted her energy to building bridges.

Cannes is – maybe more than any other festival – where art and commerce meet. Nothing proves this more than this year’s lineup of in and out of competition films, unveiled this morning by the festival’s director Thierry Fremaux and incoming president Iris Knobloch.

In the new series Beef, what starts off as a small case of road rage spirals into a full-blown cyclone of revenge. This isn’t just an ordinary beef about two characters – played by Steven Yeun and Ali Wong – taking out their frustrations and anger on each other.

Italian-born Susanna della Sala is a director, author and visual artist. Last Stop Before Chocolate Mountain is her latest project – a documentary born from personal life experience that both tells the story and captures the spirit of Bombay Beach, a once abandoned town in the harsh California desert, situated on the shores of a toxic lake, that is now home to a small eclectic community where art heals people in the most unexpected ways.

Oscar-winning, Golden Globe-nominated actor Adrien Brody celebrates his 50th birthday on April 14. The New York City-born actor and producer started his career at age 13 when he appeared in an off-Broadway play, the same year that he landed his first theatrical role in Woody Allen’s New York Stories.

More than ten years ago, UCLA’s Entertainment and Media Research Initiative (EMRI) began producing the Hollywood Diversity Report, at first annually then biannually, covering both the film and television sectors. The report – partially funded by Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) – is unique in that it aims at providing comprehensive data analyses that relate to racial, ethnic, gender, and other forms of diversity in the entertainment industry and audiences.

If, as psychiatrist Viktor Frankl opined, the meaning of life is to give life meaning, then what of the objects, both big and small, that power our lives but leave behind no small amount of waste? What meaning can be derived in how we treat this material? And what separate meaning, if any, exists in these items themselves? Those are among the questions pondered by Stacey Tenenbaum’s Scrap, an utterly singular and highly ruminative documentary, from First Run Features, now available on DVD and streaming on Amazon and Apple TV. In imaginative fashion, Scrap runs an end-around on more typical environmental nonfiction film posturing.

At 94, James Hong is still unstoppable. With more than 650 film and television credits going as far back as the early 1950s, Hong is one of the most prolific actors ever.

The Easter long weekend in Italy (Monday April 10th was also a national holiday) yielded a rich trove of eggs, if not a bonanza, at the Italian box-office, thanks to the animated nuttiness of the Super Mario Bros adaptation into film. Attendance and grosses increased compared to those of last week and doubled compared to those of the same period a year ago: with over 167,000 ticket payers, the USA-Japan co-production Super Mario confirmed its blockbuster status around the world, ripping up its competitors, topping N.

  You might have seen actress Didi Conn in film credits including You Light Up My Life (1977), Frida (2002) and the TV series, Benson (1981-85). But it’s more likely you know her as Frenchie, one of the infamous Pink Ladies in the hit film, Grease (1978), which features a memorable scene in which Frankie Avalon sings ‘Beauty School Dropout’ to her.