Every year, the question returns: Has Burning Man lost its edge? First tech billionaires turned the desert oasis into their playground. Then the festival’s younger crowd began to thin. Burning Man has been deemed uncool by Gen Z: In 2025, 10% of surveyed attendees were in their 20s, down from more than 30% in 2015.
Political pressure on film and television festivals emerged as a defining theme of a panel discussion Monday at the Lumière Summit in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France, with Séries Mania general director Laurence Herszberg issuing the session’s most direct call for protection of programming autonomy. “We don’t judge artists by their passport, we judge them by their works,”
Plenty of comparisons have been made in recent years between fast-developing artificial intelligence systems and HAL, the rogue computer in Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” that operated by its own sets of rules, ultimately disregarding human oversight. If that comparison ever seemed overstated, it may be worth knowing that tech mogul Bill Gates is
Paris-based sales agency Alpha Violet has acquired international sales rights to “Prince,” the darkly funny feature from Uruguayan filmmaker Federico Borgia, ahead of its world premiere at the 70th BFI London Film Festival this October. Set against the decaying seaside luxury of Punta del Este in Uruguay, “Prince” explores class divisions, grief and domestic absurdity.
The 45th edition of Canada’s Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) opens Oct. 1 with “The Debut,” Jesse Eisenberg’s offbeat comedy about community theater starring Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti. VIFF closing night film is Martin McDonagh’s “Wild Horse Nine,” a black comedy set in the run-up to the 1973 Chilean coup and following CIA operatives
“Together in Love and Anarchy.” This year’s motto for the 39th Helsinki International Film Festival – Love & Anarchy stated by Outi Rehn, program director, and Pauliina Ståhlberg, executive director, says it all. Speaking with Variety ahead of the full program’s disclosure Sept. 1, the festival’s co-honchos were happy to reiterate its key values. “Love
