It shouldn’t take much to support the ongoing project of Guy Maddin, but for it, of late, we probably have to thanks Ari Aster. Just two years since Rumours (co-directed with now-regular collaborators Evan and Galen Johnson), Aster and Lars Knudsen’s Square Peg returns to work with the Canadian on The Confessions, which is being deemed “a cautionary psycho-dramedy” that will star the formidable quartet of Hunter Schafer, Maya Hawke, and Pillion‘s Alexander Skarsgård and Harry Melling. [Variety]
Praised by Aster for being “as singular and beguiling as anything they’ve ever written,” The Confessions is thus far only said to concern “a group of condemned nuns bearing witness to the accursed, globe-spanning love triangle of a missing sea captain and his poet wife.” Maddin, not one to mince words, claims that the film—”part religio-maritime rough-music psychomachy, part hallucinated saltwater shaming parade”—is “already several steps ahead of the Bible” on the strength of its cast.
While it’s been lightly discussed for months now, it seems Steven Spielberg’s western is getting closer to fruition. Speaking with THR, Janusz Kamiński indicated the project will shoot next year. That’s about the extent of it, minus the piece finding Kamiński extolling the Sudeten Mountains’ hills, snow, and fog, three elements that have never quite hurt a western. In the meantime, the New York Post suggests that Spielberg could be directing his first stage production: a musical written by Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori, with a proposed debut at the Public Theater for the 2027-2028 season. No word on what it concerns, other than an unverified rumor it’s Christmas-related—more grist for the Spielberg-is-ashamed-of-his-heritage mill should that come to pass.
Though it feels like The Secret Agent was just yesterday, Kleber Mendonça Filho and Wagner Moura are eyeing a reunion. Rather evocatively titled Foreign Correspondent, the feature is said to concern various events in the lead up to World War II as seen from Mendonça Filho’s native Recife, Brazil, such as the communist uprising of 1935 and ascendancy of President Getúlio Vargas, who oversaw the country amidst Nazi aggression. We should expect a density à la Secret Agent, with the director claiming he already has 14 books on his reading list. [Dark Horizons]
If the guy who walked / swam / whatever-else-it-takes 31,000 miles across the entire planet seemed like a Werner Herzog character, good eye: he is about to become a Werner Herzog character. The legendary German filmmaker has been following Karl Bushby on his homecoming, which (per Asharq Al-Awsat) will involve reuniting with his mother and 36-year-old son while meeting his 12-year-old granddaughter. It turns out this has been percolating for most of Bushby’s trip, with a production company behind the project “providing financial and logistical assistance” for 16 years.
