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Ji.hlava’s Emerging Producers 2026 Reveal Pitches for Upcoming Projects (EXCLUSIVE)
The Ji.hlava Documentary Film Festival has shared with Variety the projects being developed by participants in its 2026 Emerging Producers programme, each of whom delivered an “elevator pitch” for their work. Running since 2010, the scheme selects 18 rising documentary producers annually — 17 from Europe and one from a guest country outside the continent,…
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Liev Schreiber and ‘Ukrainians in Exile’ Director Janek Ambros Set for Lakes Noir Film Festival Tribute
Actor and activist Liev Schreiber will receive the Global Noir Icon Award at the Lakes Noir International Film Festival’s closing ceremony, which will also honour BlueCheck Ukraine, the humanitarian organisation he co-founded, and present the Global Noir Visionary Award to Janek Ambros, director of the documentary “Ukrainians in Exile”. The festival will also pay tribute…
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Baptisms of fire: the fixture list has not been kind to Coventry, Hull and Ipswich
This season’s fixture list has dealt a tough hand to the Premier League’s three promoted clubs, Coventry, Hull and Ipswich, each facing a run of daunting early opponents. Coventry begin away to champions Arsenal before a trip to Manchester City, while Hull host Manchester United and Aston Villa before facing Chelsea and Newcastle in their…
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Kane plays down returning to Premier League in future
Harry Kane has played down suggestions he could one day return to the Premier League to chase Alan Shearer’s all-time scoring record, saying he no longer feels the “itch” to come back to England. The England captain left Tottenham for Bayern Munich in 2023 while 47 goals short of Shearer’s record of 260, but has…
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US Air Force plane turns back from Antarctica after Russian missile threat
A U.S. Air Force plane heading from New Zealand to Antarctica was forced to turn around Tuesday due to a “potentially hazardous” space activity warning. The American C-17 Globemaster aircraft, using call sign ICE28, initially took off from Christchurch, New Zealand, around 9:00 a.m. local time but returned back to Christchurch less than three hours…
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Coders Say They Already Found Workarounds to Claude’s Invisible Watermarks
Within hours of Anthropic confirming it would embed invisible, machine-readable watermarks into all Claude-generated content, developer Guillaume Meyer had already published code to strip them out, which has since gone viral on GitHub and drawn over 100 contributors. The watermarking was introduced to comply with the EU AI Act, which requires providers to label synthetic…
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Reform UK and Tories step up calls to quit European Convention on Human Rights after foreign migrant who raped sleeping woman won right to remain in UK
Reform UK and the Conservative Party have intensified calls for the UK to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), after a foreign national convicted of raping a sleeping woman won the right to remain in Britain. The case has reignited a long-running political row over whether human rights laws are being used…
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Venice Chief Alberto Barbera Defends Selection of Russian Director Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s ‘DAU’ After Backlash: It’s ‘Not Pro-Putin Propaganda’
Venice Film Festival artistic director Alberto Barbera has publicly defended the decision to include Russian filmmaker Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s “DAU” in this year’s competition lineup, following criticism from Ukrainian officials. In an Instagram post, Barbera rejected accusations that the film amounted to pro-Putin propaganda, calling it instead a work that “denounces totalitarian regimes and their intrusion…
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Europe’s Citric-Acid China Test
The Week of August 9, 2026: The EU’s China trap, defense, tax, inflation and much more.