Alexander Skarsgård and Benny Safdie will be honored at this year’s Stockholm Film Festival, with the Swedish actor receiving Stockholm’s Achievement Award, and the New York director getting the festival’s Visionary Award.
Skarsgård’s latest Pillion, in which he stars as a domineering biker who begins a turbulent relationship with the submissive Colin, played by Harry Melling, will screen at Stockholm, as will Safdie’s The Smashing Machine, his first solo feature as a director. The film, which premiered in Venice, winning best director honors for Safdie, stars Dwayne Johnson as real-life MMA fighter Mark Kerr, with Emily Blunt as his partner Dawn Staples. The Smashing Machine recently opened to a disappointing $6 million in its North America bow, the lowest box office debut in Johnson’s career.
Stockholm unveiled the program for its 36th edition, running November 5–16, which will include a best-of-the-2025 festival season, including such Oscar contenders as Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent, Mascha Schillinski’s The Sound of Falling, and Shih-Ching Tsou’s Left-Handed Girl.
The festival opens with Tarik Saleh’s Eagles of the Republic, the final installment in his Cairo trilogy starring Fares Fares, and closes with Lynne Ramsay’s Die, My Love, another hot awards contender, starring Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson. Other highlights include Ronan Day-Lewis’s directorial debut Anemone, featuring dad Daniel Day-Lewis in his first screen role in years, and Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon, about Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart, starring Ethan Hawke, which premiered in Berlin.
This year’s Spotlight section, “Be Kind Rewind,” explores nostalgia and the persistence of memory through films such as Videoheaven, Ross McElwee’s Remake, and Ira Sachs’s Peter Hujars Day, set in 1970s New York. The festival also honors the late David Lynch, who inaugurated Stockholm’s first edition in 1990, with screenings of Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive and a conversation with Blue Velvet star Isabella Rossellini.
Music figures prominently throughout the program, with new documentaries like It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley and the Swedish feature Egghead Republic, as well as Jennifer Lopez’s reinterpretation of Kiss of the Spider Woman and the Catalan drama Forastera, featuring a score by Anna von Hausswolff and Filip Leyman.
Germany is this year’s Focus Country in Stockholm, represented by Schillinski’s Sound of Falling and Christian Petzold’s Miroirs No.3 alongside new works by Lauro Cress and Joscha Bongard.
The documentary lineup features new films from Werner Herzog, Laura Poitras, and Raoul Peck, while the Stockholm Series program will showcase new television projects, including Isabella Eklöf’s The Death of Bunny Munroe and Justin Kurzel’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North.
Kerr hadn’t seen the finished film about his life until watching with the audience at this summer’s Venice Film Festival, where it received a rapturous response. Emily Blunt co-stars as Kerr’s then-girlfriend Dawn Staples in writer-director Benny Safdie‘s feature that hits theaters Friday and details Kerr’s fighting career and opioid addiction. The project is based on the 2002 documentary The Smashing Machine: The Life and Times of Extreme Fighter Mark Kerr.
“The last scene was gut-wrenching, just the intensity of what was going on,” Kerr tells The Hollywood Reporter about The Smashing Machine. “DJ [Johnson] is sitting on my left and patting my leg. Benny’s on my right and patting my leg, and I ended up holding his hand for the last half-hour of the movie. I have so many emotions running through me, and the way that I’m releasing them is tapping my legs and my arm back and forth. Benny’s like, ‘Hey, it’s going to be OK,’ and I just hold onto him. It’s just really amazing what they were able to capture and put on screen.”
A key point of discussion surrounding the film has been the extensive facial prosthetics that Johnson wore to portray Kerr. As it turns out, Kerr was initially unaware that Johnson’s look would so closely mirror his own.
Dwayne Johnson as Mark Kerr in The Smashing Machine.
A24
“Nobody told me,” Kerr admits. “I had this idea and image that, ‘He’s just going to be DJ. He’s going to put a wig on,’ or something like that. The first time I saw him at prosthetics, I cussed at him for a minute. I’m looking at him, [and] he’s a doppelganger. He’s a mirror image of me. I’m looking at myself in front of me.”
One of Kerr’s agents, Mark Fenlon, tells THR that he sees the former fighter as a good fit for brand endorsements, speaking engagements, live sports broadcasting and potentially some acting gigs. “We expanded into the sports space somewhat recently, and we have had an eye on him for a while,” Fenlon says. “We’re really excited for this film to bring his personal journey to the masses. The film is an incredible tribute to Mark, his career and the struggles he’s overcome in life.”
Kerr agrees that the partnership with the agency feels like a timely fit. “They want to have a bigger footprint in taking retired athletes and making opportunities for them,” he explains. “I have a book that I’m working on right now [about my life], and that just fills in a lot of the spaces that are missing in this.”
He also feels continued support from Johnson as his onscreen counterpart: “Every single text or voice message that he’s ever left me, he’s left it with, ‘If you need anything, please call me.’ He’s a good person to have at your back.”
Kerr hopes that viewers of The Smashing Machine will appreciate that his addiction was exacerbated by “the shame and my inability to ask for help.” He adds, “Where I am now, [with] my ability to connect with another human being and ask for that help — it’s not a weakness, it’s a strength. So hopefully, [audiences] can watch it and understand what was going on with me at the time, [that I could] absolutely face-plant, dust myself off and move forward in my life. That’s the hope that anybody could have.”
She’s returning to theaters this weekend with a special event pic promoting her new album, The Life of a Showgirl, which comes out Friday. The big screen album release party, which will also feature the world premiere of the music video for Showgirl single “The Fate of Ophelia,” music videos and behind-the-scenes footage, is expected to tower over the competition and win the relatively quiet Oct. 3-Oct. 5 box office race with anywhere from $25 million to $35 million, if not more. Tracking suggests $35 million, while distributor AMC Theatres — which also partnered with the superstar musical artist on her record-breaking concert pic Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour — is being more conservative in suggesting $25 million to $30 million.
Either way, that’s well ahead of opening weekend projections for its closest competitor, the Dwayne Johnson-led wrestling drama The Smashing Machine. That’s not exactly a surprise, considering Johnson’s latest outing is a specialty pic from A24, versus the sort of wide-appeal action movie The Rock is best known for. Smashing Machine, which made its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival as this year’s awards season kicked off, is tracking to open in the $12 million to $14 million range.
Directed by Benny Safdie, Smashing Machine reunitues Johnson with his Jungle Cruise co-star and good friend Emily Blunt, who played a key role in bringing Johnson and Safdie together. The film is based on the real-life story of Mark Kerr, a former college wrestler who battled trauma and an addiction to painkillers during the early years of the UFC.
Another player to watch this weekend is James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water, which is being rereleased exclusively in 3D. Like Swift’s team, Cameron and partner 20th Century/Disney are using the box office for promotional purposes: this Christmas, Avatar: Ash and Fire opens.
Cameron’s Avatar movies have generally done well when rereleased, and this time out, the focus on Imax is an added bonus. The movie will be playing in 90 percent of all Imax auditoriums domestically but will have to share Dolby Cinema screens and other premium large-format auditoriums with the Showgirl release party. Way of Water is projected to earn $3 million to $4 million domestically from 2,100 theaters; rivals think it could approach $5 million.
Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl is only playing in cinemas for three days, and Swift’s team went to great lengths to keep the project top secret until the 11th hour (they almost succeeded, but not quite), much to the chagrin of other distributors, such as A24 or even Disney, who don’t like last-minute surprises even if the idea of a live audience watching a viewing party on the big screen is a far cry from the sort of frenzy surrounding her Eras Tour. She announced the Oct. 3-Oct. 5 special event on Sept. 19 in a well-orchestrated social media post informing fans that advance tickets would go sale that day at 12:12 local time for $12, in keeping with Swift’s longtime relationship with numbers (Showgirl is her 12th album). Consumers can expect to pay more for Imax and other premium large format screenings.
“I hereby invite you to a *dazzling* soirée, The Official Release Party of a Showgirl: Oct 3 – Oct 5 only in cinemas,” Swift wrote across social media on Sept. 19. “You’ll get to see the exclusive world premiere of the music video for my new single ‘The Fate of Ophelia,’ along with never before seen behind-the-scenes footage of how we made it, cut by cut explanations of what inspired this music and the brand new lyric videos from my new album The Life of a Showgirl. Looks like it’s time to brush off that Eras Tour outfit or orange cardigan… Tickets are on sale now. Dancing is optional but very much encouraged.”
Like her tour itself, The Eras Tour film was a phenomenon when opening in 2023 to a huge $93.2 million domestically on its way becoming the top grossing concert film of all time with $261.6 million in global ticket sales. Swift and her team financed the $15 million project herself, bypassing the Hollywood studio system and partnering with AMC Theatres, the country and world’s largest cinema circuit, AMC Theatres Distribution is releasing Showgirl in partnership with Variance Films in the U.S. and Canada, and with Piece of Magic Entertainment in other international markets.
This weekend, the one-hour-and-30-minute film also opens in its first 18 international markets. It will continue its international rollout throughout October.
Showtimes begin Oct. 3 — the day of the album’s release — at 3 p.m. local time.
Both Avatar and Smashing Machine will host Thursday previews.
With The Smashing Machine drawing closer and closer, a big topic of discussion has been how slim Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has looked on the festival circuit. There’s no question that the leading man is carrying himself a bit differently on this tour for The Smashing Machine. But, it turns out there’s a very surprising reason that he’s trying to slim down.
Straight from The People’s Champion himself, he’s losing weight because he’s about to play a character named the Chicken Man. Yes, it’s almost as bizarre as it sounds! (And even more surprising, it has nothing to do with Hei Hei?)
Benny Safdie is the director of The Smashing Machine, and his next movie is going to star The Rock too! He’s going to be playing Chicken Man in the upcoming Lizard Music. The story of this movie coming together is nothing short of bizarre and Johnson’s involvement just adds a little bit more chaos to the festivities. Still, if the actor was charmed enough by this pitch, who are we to judge?
Lizard Music is a novel written by Daniel Pinkwater. When a lonely boy discovers a secret late night broadcast of lizards playing strange grooves, the door to another world unlocks. Through the looking glass, he finds the “Chicken Man,” and his 70-year-old avian friend Claudia. The odd pair try and find a secret society, but end up forging a bond through their whimsical adventures.
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is ready to be “Chicken Man”
(A24)
As you might be aware, The Smashing Machine sees The Rock stepping into the role of MMA legend Mark Kerr. The actor is supremely physically imposing in the new Safdie movie alongside Emily Blunt. He was already a big man, but the trailer for The Smashing Machine really draws how big he is into sharp focus.
But, as soon as they got done filming the awards season contender, Safdie had a very different request from his leading man. During a talk at TIFF Johnson told the assembled press that the children’s movie project was the first thing on his director’s mind after they wrapped. “Benny pitched me this after,” The Rock told the crowd. “And after about 45 minutes, this pitch ended and I said, ‘I am your Chicken Man.’”
It’s all charming, in that way Johnson can still be after all this time. The charisma that made him can’t miss inside of the squared circle is one of the most powerful muscles he’s got. There’s no doubt that this current run with The Smashing Machine is going to restore a little bit of The Rock’s cache as a big-name in Hollywood. But, we’ll all be waiting to see what the Chicken Man is up to in the meantime.
Has anyone approached Hei Hei for comment? I think we should! After all, we’ll see him as the premiere chicken next to The Rock in next year’s live-action Moana.
(featured image: A24/Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)
When you’re winning an honor like a Silver Lion for Best Director at the Venice Film Festival, it’s easy to feel frazzled and forget a name or two in your acceptance speech. But it is hard not to notice when Benny Safdie doesn’t thank his brother, Josh Safdie, with whom he co-directed some of his biggest films, during the Venice Closing Ceremony. While on stage, The Smashing Machine director thanked A24 and the film’s producers, Mark Kerr (who the film is based on), and stars Emily Blunt and Dwayne Johnson, whom Benny refers to as “my friend, my brother, and partner.” After he thanked the crew on the film, Benny moved on to thank his family members, including his mother, stepfather, wife Ava, and his two sons. He then describes how important collaboration is to him when making a film. He cites a quote from The Band’s Rick Danko. “He said, ‘It’s kind of an honor to play together and to share those moments,” and it kind of sums up how I feel when making a movie. We’re playing, we’re listening, and we’re learning. We’re listening to each other and trying to become better on the other side,” Benny concludes.
In 2024, Benny confirmed that he and Josh are parting ways creatively and will no longer co-direct movies together. “It’s a natural progression of what we each want to explore,” he told Variety. “I will direct on my own, and I will explore things that I want to explore. I want that freedom right now in my life.” Both brothers have stayed true to that promise by premiering their solo directorial debuts this year, with similar sports themes; Benny with the now award-winning The Smashing Machine and Josh’s upcoming Christmas release, Marty Supreme. For those holding out on a Safdie brothers reunion, stay strong! Plenty of creative siblings have broken up and reunited, give it a solo project or two.
The undeniably robust 82nd edition of the VeniceInternational Film Festival has come to a triumphant finish.
Heading into Saturday night’s awards ceremony, Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania’s The Voice of Hind Rajab was widely viewed as the movie to beat for this year’s Golden Lion. The powerful Gaza-set drama, which tells the story of a 6-year-old Palestinian girl’s desperate pleas for rescue after Israeli forces killed her relatives, received a thunderous 21-minute standing ovation at its world premiere, one of the longest in the Venice Film Festival‘s history.
But the film ended up going home with the festival’s Silver Lion for the Grand Jury prize, aka second place.
“I dedicate this award to the Palestinian Red Crescent and to all those who have risked everything to save lives in Gaza. They are real heroes,” Ben Hania said in her powerful acceptance speech. “The voice of Hind is the voice of Gaza itself, a cry for rescue the entire world could hear, yet no one answered. Her voice will continue. Her voice will continue to echo until accountability is real, until justice is served.”
Hollywood heavyweights Brad Pitt, Joaquin Phoenix, Alfonso Cuarón boosted the movie’s profile ahead of the festival by joining its team as executive producers, while critics on the Lido hailed it as an “intensely involving and resounding” indictment of Israel’s genocidal campaigns against the Palestinian population.
Jim Jarmusch‘s delicate triptych Father Mother Sister Brother, celebrated for its effortless poignancy, was the night’s dark horse champ, handing the American indie film icon his first Venice Golden Lion.
“Oh shit,” Jarmusch said as he accepted his trophy, before quickly adding, “All of us here who make films, we’re not motivated by competition, but I truly appreciate this unexpected honor.”
“Art does not have to address politics directly to be political,” Jarmusch went on. “It can engender empathy and a connection between us, which is really the first step for solving things and problems that we have. So I thank you for appreciating our quiet film.”
Father Mother Sister Brother is composed of three separate but thematically linked stories, each exploring adult siblings and their strained relationships with their parents. The film’s outstanding ensemble cast includes Tom Waits, Adam Driver, Mayim Bialik, Charlotte Rampling, Cate Blanchett, Vicky Krieps and Indya Moore, among others. The Hollywood Reporter‘s lead critic summed the film up as “a funny, tender, astutely observed jewel.”
Jim Jarmusch receives the Golden Lion for Best Film for “Father Mother Sister Brother” at the closing ceremony during the 82nd Venice International Film Festival.
Benny Safdie brought home the festival’s best director prize for his offbeat MMA biopic The Smashing Machine, his first feature as a solo director without his brother Josh Safdie, and Dwayne Johnson’s first movie as a serious dramatic actor.
Safdie gave an emotional shoutout to his star as he accepted his trophy, saying, “Oh my God, Dwayne, my friend, my brother, my partner — ‘shoulder and shoulder,’ that’s what we called it. I just want to thank you for diving in headfirst with a blindfold and X-ray vision. You truly performed with no net, and we jumped off the cliff together. We grew together, learned together.”
Chinese actress Xin Zhilei took home the festival’s first major awards category earlier in the evening, winning the best actress prize for her heart-wrenching performance in Chinese director Cai Shangjun’s drama The Sun Rises on Us All. The trophy was handed to Xin by jury member and fellow Chinese arthouse star Zhao Tao (Ash Is the Purest White).
And as many on the Lido predicted over the past week, best actor honors landed in the hands of the great Italian theater actor turned film icon Toni Servillo for his humane and hilarious performance as the president of Italy in Paolo Sorrentino’s meditative drama La Grazia. Critics have praised the film as a return to form for the Italian director and his muse, sparking talk of a potential repeat of their awards season magic in 2013, when their breakthrough collaboration, The Great Beauty, won the Oscar in the best international film category.
French filmmaker Valérie Donzelli and her co-writer Gilles Marchand won the best screenplay prize for At Work, an adaptation of a novel of the same name by author Franck Courtès. The film is a drama about a successful photographer who gives up everything to pursue a dream of becoming a writer.
Speculation was especially heated heading into the awards ceremony thanks to the absurd number of must-see movies that festival boss Alberto Barbera had secured for the 2025 program. Netflix brought its strongest slate in years to Italy, including Noah Baumbach’s George Clooney star vehicle Jay Kelly, Kathryn Bigelow’s gripping geopolitical thriller A House of Dynamite and Guillermo del Toro’s dark reimagining of Frankenstein, starring Jacob Elordi as the creature. And scores of the world’s top auteurs came to compete with strong new titles — many of them instant Oscar contenders the moment the customary standing ovations wound down each night inside Venice’s Sala Grande cinema.
Venice’s takeaway after nearly two weeks of peerless moviegoing was resounding: The business model of theatrical film may be under relentless assault, but the art form remains as vital as ever.
Korean maestro Park Chan-wook’s wildly inventive black comedy No Other Choice was possibly the festival favorite with critics, while Yorgos Lanthimos’ bonkers Bugonia and Sorrentino’s aching La Grazia were also celebrated as exquisite returns to form. Show-stopping performances that went home empty-handed came in the form of Julia Roberts in Luca Guadagnino’s provocative #MeToo-themed thriller After the Hunt and Amanda Seyfried as the riveting lead of Mona Fastvold’s visionary period drama Ann Lee.
And there was much more: Jude Law as Vladimir Putin in Olivier Assayas’ The Wizard of the Kremlin, France’s François Ozon back in fine form with Albert Camus adaptation The Stranger, Willem Dafoe pulling double-duty with characteristic excellence in Late Fame and The Souffleur, Julian Schnabel’s must-see, Megalopolis-like misfire In the Hand of Dante (with a cast including Oscar Isaac, Gal Gadot, Gerard Butler, Al Pacino, John Malkovich, Martin Scorsese and Jason Momoa), and the one and only Werner Herzog receiving a Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at the start of the fest from none less than fellow uber-auteur Francis Ford Coppola.
Two-time Oscar-winning director Alexander Payne (The Holdovers, Sideways) chaired the panel of global film figures tasked with the difficult duty of selecting this year’s winners. Payne’s jury included Brazilian actress Fernanda Torres, Iranian auteur Mohammad Rasoulof, French director Stéphane Brizé, Italian filmmaker Maura Delpero (Vermiglio), Chinese actress Zhao and Palme d’Or winning Romanian director Cristian Mungiu.
Saturday’s ceremony included a tribute and prolonged standing ovation for the late, great Italian fashion designer Giorgio Armani, who died Thursday at the age of 91.
“Thank you, Giorgio Armani, for teaching us that creativity thrives in spaces where disciplines meet —fashion, cinema, art, new materials, architecture — just like they do every day here at the Venice Biennale,” said Carlo Ratti, curator of the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale, which is currently underway alongside the film festival.
The 2025 Horizons section (Orizzonti) — which highlights the latest aesthetic trends in cinema with special attention to debut films — honored Mexican director David Pablos’ hauntingly original road movie En El Camino (On the Road) with its best film prize. The film follows a young drifter and a taciturn trucker who link up and forge a precarious bond on Mexico’s dangerous highways.
“This film comes from a very personal place — from the guts — and it’s beautiful to see that it connects with other people,” said Pablos in his brief acceptance speech.
This year’s Horizons jury was chaired by French director and Palme d’Or winner Julia Ducournau of Titane fame.
Italy’s Benedetta Porcaroli took Horizons’ best actress prize for the drama The Kidnapping of Arabellaand Giacomo Covi nabbed best actor for his turn in the Italian-French coming-of-age film A Year of School. Indian filmmaker Anuparna Roy won best director for Songs of the Forgotten Trees, a moving drama set in Mumbai about an unlikely bond that forms between a part-time sex worker and a corporate employee. And the Orizzonti jury prize was handed to Japanese director Akio Fujimoto for his drama Lost Land, the story of two Rohingya child refugees on a perilous journey to reach Malaysia.
The 2025 Venice Film Festival ran Aug. 27-Sept. 6. A complete list of this year’s winners follows.
Main Competition
Golden Lion — Best Film Father Mother Sister Brother
The cast of A24‘s upcoming film The Smashing Machine has grown, with Heavyweight Boxing Champion Oleksandr Usyk officially signing onto the film.
Usyk will join an already star-studded cast that includes Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt, in the biopic that is written and directed by Benny Safdie. The project tells the story of the life of legendary MMA fighter Mark Kerr. No other casting information is available as of now.
Usyk is coming off of the biggest week of his boxing career. This past weekend, he defeated Tyson Fury to become the newly crowned Undisputed Heavyweight Boxing Champion. As a professional boxer, Usyk holds a record of 22-0.
What do we know about The Smashing Machine?
In December 2023, A24 announced that Johnson and Safdie were collaborating on The Smashing Machine. Along with directing the movie, Safdie — known for co-directing 2017’s Good Time and 2019’s Uncut Gems alongside his brother, Josh Safdie — also wrote the screenplay.
“The Smashing Machine is a drama based on the story of Mark Kerr, the legendary MMA fighter from the no-holds-barred era of the UFC at the peak of his career,” reads the film’s description. “He struggles with addiction, winning, love, and friendship in the year 2000.”
Kerr is a former wrestler and mixed martial artist. He was previously the subject of the 2003 HBO documentary that was also called The Smashing Machine.
A release date for The Smashing Machine has not yet been announced by A24.
Johnson is set to star in The Smashing Machine as real-life mixed martial arts fighter Mark Kerr, a two-time UFC Heavyweight Tournament Champion. Blunt would star as Dawn Staples, the new wife to Kerr. Safdie has been developing the project with Johnson, who notably started his career as a professional wrestler, since 2019.
A 2002 HBO doc also titled The Smashing Machine detailed Kerr’s professional career and his rise through the fighting world, as well as his battle with an addiction to pain killers that led to an overdose. Kerr earned the nickname “The Smashing Machine” due to no-holds-barred fighting style.
A24 will finance the film, as well as produce alongside Johnson and Dany Garcia’s Seven Bucks Productions, Safdie’s Out for the Count banner, Eli Bush and David Koplan.
Blunt is currently Oscar-nominated for her performance as Kitty Oppenheimer in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, also nominated for best picture, among others. Blunt and Johnson costarred in 2021’s Jungle Cruise, for which a sequel is in development with Blunt and Johnson set to reprise their roles. Her other credits include A Quiet Place, A Quiet Place Part II, The Devil Wears Prada, The Girl on The Train, Into the Woods, and The English, among many others.
Emily is represented by CAA, The Artists Partnership and David Weber of Sloane, Offer.
