KODE has added director Meena Ayittey to its roster for U.K. representation spanning commercials and branded content. Ayittey draws inspiration from a broad range of subject matters, including music, art, her experience as a Black woman and the issues faced by the Black community. Based in and from London, Ayittey has collaborated with Saatchi & Saatchi, Droga5, Grey, Ogilvy and Oliver, working with clients such as GSK, Puma, Olay and Panasonic. An avid screenwriter, her long form projects, such as Mama, her Black Lives Matter film, have seen her win gold at 1.4 awards, recognized as a finalist at Ciclope and shortlisted for the 2022 YDAs. Her award-winning documentary, Black Creative, looks at what it is to be Black within the U.K. advertising industry. It has been screened extensively across the globe–most notably at the Toronto Film Festival and the Independent Films awards. She also has to her credit a lauded short film, All the Little Films, which she wrote and directed….
Director and documentary filmmaker Amar Chebib has joined Toronto-based Untitled Films for Canadian representation. (Chebib continues to be repped in the U.S. ad market by Even/Odd. The Syrian-Canadian filmmaker began making videos while growing up as a skateboarder in the Middle East. Since then, his sensitive yet unsentimental documentary work has made him a rising talent in the genre. His short documentary Joe Buffalo, about an Indigenous residential school survivor turned pro skateboarder, attracted Tony Hawk as an executive producer. Chebib’s most recent short, The Runner—which was acquired and released by The New Yorker—follows an Indigenous 20-year-old who ran a sub-zero 100-mile ultramarathon to raise awareness for mental illness and depression. Chebib’s commercial work includes documentary-style spots for Beats By Dre, Casper, Bank of America, the Canadian Cancer Society, and Square…..
Review: Writer-Director Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance”
In its first two hours, "The Substance" is a well-made, entertaining movie. Writer-director Coralie Fargeat treats audiences to a heavy dose of biting social commentary on ageism and sexism in Hollywood, with a spoonful of sugar- and sparkle-doused body horror.
But the film's deliciously unhinged, blood-soaked and inevitably polarizing third act is what makes it unforgettable.
What begins as a dread-inducing but still relatively palatable sci-fi flick spirals deeper into absurdism and violence, eventually erupting — quite literally — into a full-blown monster movie. Let the viewer decide who the monster is.
Fargeat — who won best screenplay at this year's Cannes Film Festival — has been vocal about her reverence for "The Fly" director David Cronenberg, and fans of the godfather of body horror will see his unmistakable influence. But "The Substance" is also wholly unique and benefits from Fargeat's perspective, which, according to the French filmmaker, has involved extensive grappling with her own relationship to her body and society's scrutiny.
"The Substance" tells the story of Elisabeth Sparkle, a famed aerobics instructor with a televised show, played by a powerfully vulnerable Demi Moore. Sparkle is fired on her 50th birthday by a ruthless executive — a perfectly cast Dennis Quaid, who nails sleazy and gross.
Feeling rejected by a town that once loved her and despairing over her bygone star power, Sparkle learns from a handsome young nurse about a black-market drug that promises to create a "younger, more beautiful, more perfect" version of its user. Though she initially tosses the phone number in the trash, she soon fishes it out in a desperate panic and places an order.
The one rule to follow is that... Read More