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For a cool million-dollars-plus, a pair of the famed and rare Ruby Slippers from The Wizard of Oz can take a hallowed place on your very own shoe rack.

The slippers, worn on-screen by Judy Garland in the 1939 classic MGM musical, are up for auction at Heritage Auctions, with the current bid at $812,500. Add in the buyer’s premium — a fee paid by the winning bidder to the auction house — and the price is currently at $1,015,625.

The auction continues through December 7.

With four pairs of Ruby Slippers known to exist — including a pair in the Smithsonian — the shoes up for auction are visible in the most iconic scenes of the film, including the “We’re Off to See the Wizard” dances, the Poppy Field scene, the Tap Your Heels scene and the shot in which the Wicked Witch nearly electrocutes herself by trying to remove the slippers from Dorothy’s feet prematurely.

With stellar recent work by Radu Jude, Cristi Puiu, Radu Muntean, and Radu Ciorniciuc, among others, the fertile Romanian New Wave shows no signs of slowing down. The latest to arrive in the United States comes from Eugen Jebleanu, who has made his debut feature with Poppy Field. A selection at Tallinn Black Nights, Taipei, Torino, Glasgow, Hamburg, Thessaloniki, Montclair, and more, it’s now getting a release on April 8 via Film Movement and we’re pleased to exclusively debut the trailer.

Planning to spend a romantic weekend with his long-distance boyfriend, Christi’s tender reunion is cut short when he is called in to handle a crisis at work. Christi is a member of the Bucharest police force, and his unit is sent to quell a protest at a local movie theater, where a far-right group has interrupted the screening of a queer film. As tensions between the homophobic protesters and the audience mount,...

NewFest, New York City’s premier LGBTQ film festival, swings into its 33rd edition on Friday, delivering over 130 features, shorts, and documentaries across theaters in Manhattan and Brooklyn, and for those viewers outside of NYC, at home virtually.

The festival this year runs October 15 through 26, kicking off on Friday with the east coast premiere of the documentary “Mayor Pete,” about Secretary of Transportation and former South Bend, Indiana, mayor Pete Buttigieg. The film brings viewers inside his campaign to be the youngest U.S. President, and looking at his marriage to his husband Chasten, and their ambitious team — from the earliest days of the campaign to his unlikely victory in Iowa and beyond. This film reveals what goes on inside a campaign for the highest office in the land — and the myriad ways it changes the lives of those at its center. Buttigieg serves as the first openly LGBTQ Cabinet member in U.

Titles include ‘It Is Not The Homosexual Who Is Perverse, But The Society In Which He Lives’.

Berlin-based Missing Films has secured international sales rights and German distribution rights to a brace of seminal LGBTQ features by award-winning German filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim.

They include the landmark drama-documentary It Is Not The Homosexual Who Is Perverse, But The Society In Which He Lives, which debuted at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1971 and triggered the modern gay liberation movement in Germany. The second title is the romantic drama The Bed Sausage, which has never been distributed outside of Germany.

The...

The German festival opens today and will host in-person guests including Kenneth Branagh and Andrea Arnold

The German film industry is poised to come together at the 29th edition of Filmfest Hamburg which opens today, Thursday September 30, with Sebastian Meise’s Un Certain Regard winner Great Freedom. It will close on October 9 with Jacques Audiard’s Paris, 13th District.

The accompanying industry programme will be addressing issues as diverse as German cinema’s international standing and measures to foster greater inclusion and diversity before rounding off with the second edition of the Explorer Conference which will focus on producing for cinema,...

The German festival opens today and will host ini-person guests including Kenneth Branagh and Andrea Arnold

The German film industry is poised to come together at the 29th edition of Filmfest Hamburg which opens today, Thursday September 30, with Sebastian Meise’s Un Certain Regard winner Great Freedom,. It will close on October 9 with Jacques Audiard’s Paris, 13th District.

The accompanying industry programme will be addressing issues as diverse as German cinema’s international standing and measures to foster greater inclusion and diversity before rounding off with the second edition of the Explorer Conference which will focus on producing for cinema,...

German sales outfit Patra Spanou Film has acquired the international sales rights to “Blue Moon,” the feature debut of Romanian director Alina Grigore, which will world premiere in main competition at September’s San Sebastian Film Festival.

“Blue Moon” follows the psychological journey of a young woman, played by Ioana Chitu, who struggles to receive a higher education and escape her dysfunctional family. An ambiguous sexual experience with an artist will spur her intention to fight the family’s violence.

Pic stars Chitu alongside Mircea Postelnicu, Mircea Silaghi, and Vlad Ivanov, and is produced by Gabi Suciu for InLight Center (“Illegitimate”), in co-production with Atelier de Film, Forest Film, Smart Sound Studios (“Monsters”) and Avanpost. It’s Grigore’s second feature as a writer, after she wrote and starred in Adrian Sitaru’s Berlinale prize winner “Illegitimate.”

“Romanian cinema has been in the focus of the international arthouse film scene for a while,...

Other winners included P.S. Vinothraj’s ‘Pebbles’ and Martín de los Santos’s ’That Was Life’.

Russian director Philipp Yuryev was the big winner at this year’s Transilvania International Film Festival in Romania’s Cluj-Napoca, clinching the €10,000 Transilvania Trophy for his debut feature The Whaler Boy.

Distributed internationally by Laurent Danielou’s Paris-based Loco Films, the Russian-Polish-Belgian co-production also won the Director’s Award on its premiere at last year’s Venice Days.

It is the second Russian film in TIFF’s 20-year history to be presented with the top award: Ilya Krzhanovsky’s 4 shared the trophy with Juan Pablo Rebella...

Philipp Yuryev’s “The Whaler Boy,” which took home the Venice Days award at last year’s Venice Film Festival, won the top prize at the Transilvania Film Festival on Saturday.

The jury praised the Russian director’s feature debut, an offbeat story of a teenage whale hunter on the Bering Strait who sets out to meet a webcam model, for being “beautiful and meticulous in its sense of time and place” while also being “really resonant and contemporary at the same time as being classic.”

Yuryev, who had not attended the festival, was hastily flown to Cluj from Moscow on Saturday morning, telling the audience: “It is really something surprising to be here, and to have a chance to visit this place and to see you all.” He dedicated the award to the remote whale-hunting community in Chukotka where the movie was filmed, as well as to its young...

Of all the international film festivals to roll out the red carpet this summer in what feels like a global industry reboot, few can fall back on past experience when it comes to the logistics of an in-person pandemic edition. But amid the wave of cancellations that all but wiped out the calendar year in 2020, the Transilvania Intl. Film Festival managed to pull off what few others could, relying on a host of open-air venues to successfully welcome moviegoers to the medieval city of Cluj.

One year later, for what in a different era might have been a splashy 20th anniversary edition, TIFF founder Tudor Giurgiu admits, “I thought this year would be easier.” Just days after confusion over Pcr tests and vaccine certificates reigned on the Croisette, however, Giurgiu and the TIFF organizing team have realized that as the coronavirus’ deadly Delta variant sweeps across the globe, a return...

A young gay police officer who’s worked hard to keep his sexuality hidden must face his inner demons when he’s forced to intervene during an anti-gay protest at a Bucharest movie theater. Trapped in the macho, rigidly hierarchical world of the Romanian police force and confronted by a young protester who threatens to expose him, he suddenly finds himself spiraling out of control.

In “Poppy Field,” veteran theater director Eugen Jebeleanu makes his feature-film debut with a story inspired by real-life events in Romania. Produced by Velvet Moraru of Bucharest-based Icon Production, the film stars Conrad Mericoffer as the conflicted policeman, with acclaimed Romanian New Wave cinematographer Marius Panduru (“Aferim!”) handling the camera.

“Poppy Field” had its world premiere last fall in the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival. Ahead of its Romanian premiere at the Transilvania Intl. Film Festival, Jebeleanu spoke to Variety about the experience of switching...

Jury includes ‘Amores Perros’ screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga.

Transilvania International Film Festival has revealed the 12 films that will screen in its official competition and its international jury.

Each title competing for the Transilvania Trophy will receive its Romanian premiere at the 20th edition of the festival, which is set to take place in-person in the city of Cluj-Napoca.

They include What Do We See When We Look At The Sky?, by Georgian filmmaker Alexandre Koberidze, which played in competition at the Berlinale, and Lili Horvát’s Preparations To Be Together For An Unknown Period Of Time, which was Hungary’s Oscar submission.

Film Movement has acquired North American rights to “They Say Nothing Stays The Same,” the feature film debut of Joe Odagiri, a popular Japanese actor and musician.

The lushly lensed Japanese drama premiered at Venice and went on to play at Busan. Among its many accolades, the pic won best feature film at Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival in Turkey and was nominated for the Golden Star at El Gouana. It also played at the New York Asian Film Festival.

“They Say Nothing Stays The Same” will have a theatrical release in 2021, followed by a roll-out on digital and home entertainment platforms. The announcement was made by Michael Rosenberg, the president of Film Movement and Maki Shimizu of the Kinoshita Group.

Headlined by Akira Emoto, the film boasts a strong crew including Christopher Doyle, the cinematographer of “Paranoid Park”; Emi Wada, the costume designer of “Ran”; as well as Armenian jazz pianist Tigran Hamasyan.

Black and white Bulgarian drama to receive North American premiere at Santa Barbara Film Festival

Film Movement has snapped up North American rights from Films2C to Ivaylo Hristov’s 2020 Tallinn Black Nights grand prize winner Fear.

Svetlana Yancheva stars as a strong-willed widow in Bulgaria who enrages her village when she takes in an African refugee (Michael Fleming) who she finds in the woods while hunting.

The black and white Bulgarian drama will receive its North American premiere at Santa Barbara Film Festival in early April.

Film Movement president Michael Rosenberg negotiated the deal with Chantal Chauzy of Films2C.

The San Francisco International Film Festival (Sffilm) has today announced the full lineup of this year’s festival, which includes both online and in-person events taking place at the Fort Mason Flix drive-in theater. The opening night selection will be the world premiere of Chase Palmer’s “Naked Singularity,” which stars John Boyega as a public defender wrapped up in a drug heist. The full lineup includes buzzy festival titles like “Cryptozoo,” “The Dry,” “Strawberry Mansion,” “Son of Monarchs,” “Homeroom,” “Lily Topples the World,” and “Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go For It.”

This year’s complete program includes 42 feature films, 56 short films, and, new to the festival this year, five mid-length films. 13 films will be making their world premiere with an additional 15 making their North American premiere. The lineup includes films from 41 countries around the world. Among the full festival lineup, 57% of the films were helmed...

LGBTQ drama played Miami after Tallinn world premiere.

Film Movement has acquired North American rights to LGBTQ drama Poppy Field, Romanian theatre director Eugen Jebelenu’s feature debut that screened recently at Miami International Film Festival.

‘Poppy Field’: Tallinn Review

The film stars Conrad Mericoffer as a closeted Romanian policeman struggling with his role as a policeman in a macho environment.

Challenges ensue when his long-distance French boyfriend visits as the officer faces being outed when he intervenes at a cinema where a homophobic ultra-nationalist group has interrupted the screening of a queer film.

Poppy Field received its North...

LGBTQ drama played Miami after Tallinn world premiere.

Film Movement has acquired North American rights to LGBTQ drama Poppy Field, Romanian theatre director Eugen Jebelenu’s feature debut that screened recently at Miami International Film Festival.

The film stars Conrad Mericoffer as a closeted Romanian policeman struggling with his role as a policeman in a macho environment.

Challenges ensue when his long-distance French boyfriend visits as the officer faces being outed when he intervenes at a cinema where a homophobic ultra-nationalist group has interrupted the screening of a queer film.

Poppy Field received its North American premiere in Miami earlier...

Conrad Mericoffer in Poppy Field Photo: courtesy of Glasgow Film Festival

A powerful, resonant film about the stresses of keeping secrets, Eugen Jebeleanu’s Poppy Field is one of the highlights of this year’s Glasgow Film Festival. It follows Cristi (Conrad Mericoffer), a young gendarme who has a passionate relationship with his French boyfriend but is terrified of any of his colleagues finding out that he’s gay. When his unit is called out to deal with a situation in a cinema, where religiously inspired campaigners are protesting against the screening of a film by an LGBT group, he is afraid of being outed, and when one of the men there recognises him from his secret life, it becomes apparent that he’s willing to go to extremes to avoid it.

Eugen Jebeleanu Photo: courtesy of Glasgow Film Festival

When Eugen and I met to discuss the film, I...

Eugen Jebeleanu’s debut feature “Poppy Field” has been sold to Missing Films for distribution in German-speaking territories ahead of its world premiere at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.

The film follows the struggles of a young Romanian policeman Cristi over 24 hours as he tries to find the balance between two parts of his identity: that of a policeman working in a macho environment and that of a closeted gay person.

During a visit by his boyfriend, Hadi, with whom he is involved in a long-distance relationship, Cristi is called to a cinema where an ultra-nationalist, homophobic group has sabotaged the screening of a queer film. When one of the protesters recognizes him and threatens to disclose the secret about his sexuality, Cristi is faced with the danger of losing everything he has.

Although this is Jebeleanu’s first feature film he is an experienced theater director and writer,...