Rushes | Trump’s Film Tariffs Return, Israel Defunds Awards, Remembering Cardinale

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NEWS

The Toxic Avenger (Macon Blair, 2025).

• In May, President Donald Trump announced that he would impose a 100 percent tariff on foreign film productions, declaring them a “national security threat” and expressing concern about “messaging and propaganda.” He has now revived this threat, though it remains unclear what constitutes a “foreign film production.” “Our movie making business has been stolen from the United States of America, by other Countries, just like stealing ‘candy from a baby,’” he posted on Truth Social.
• After Shai Carmeli-Pollak’s The Sea (2025) won Best Film at this year’s Ophir Awards, Israeli culture minister Miki Zohar announced that he would cancel state funding for the ceremony. “Under my watch, Israeli citizens will not pay from their pockets for a ceremony that spits in the faces of our heroic soldiers,” Zohar wrote in a statement on X. The film follows a twelve-year-old Palestinian boy who embarks on a school trip to Tel Aviv only to be denied entry at a checkpoint.
• Though some in the film industry believe that AI will simplify the process of subtitle creation, professional translators and subtitlers say that the poor quality of AI-generated subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing indicate that more work is required to bring them up to standard. The low rates offered for “quality control” has already ensured that many human subtitlers are unable to earn a living wage.
• In lieu of a traditional marketing push for Macon Blair’s new horror film, The Toxic Avenger (2023), distributor Cineverse partnered with the nonprofit Undue Medical Debt to buy out $5 million in medical debt and a plan to relieve a million dollars more in medical bills for every additional million the film makes in theaters. The strategy has largely paid off with Cineverse erasing at least seven million in medical debt after three weeks.

DEVELOPING

• Isabelle Huppert is set to star in Asghar Farhadi’s new Paris-set feature, Parallel Tales. Costars include Virginie Efira and Vincent Cassel, and the film will reportedly feature “an appearance” by Catherine Deneuve. The film marks Farhadi’s second French-language production following The Past (2013).
• Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Reckoning is set to be released on October 9, 2026. A companion piece to David Fincher’s The Social Network (2010), the film stars Jeremy Strong as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and will be based on a series of articles written by Jeff Horwitz known as “The Facebook Files.”
• Tilda Swinton will costar in Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s new film, Jenjira’s Magnificent Dream. The film follows a Thai widow who “becomes a living portal connecting past, future, and spirit” during a mission to scatter her husband’s ashes.
• Kristen Stewart and Woody Harrelson will star in Quentin Dupieux’s new English-language film, Full Phil. Other actors attached to the project include Emma Mackey, Tim Heidecker, and Eric Wareheim.

REMEMBERING

Fitzcarraldo (Werner Herzog, 1982).

• Claudia Cardinale has died at 87. At nineteen, the Italian actress won a competition for the “Most Beautiful Italian Girl in Tunisia” in 1957, which afforded her a trip to the Venice Film Festival, where she was soon approached by multiple film producers. Cardinale eventually signed a seven-year contract with Vides, the production company of Franco Cristaldi, who was her partner from 1966 through 1975. She made her debut opposite Omar Sharif in Goha (1958) and became one of Italy’s most popular actresses in the early 1960s with crucial roles in Rocco and His Brothers (1960), The Leopard (1963), and 8 ½ (1963). Cardinale became popular in the United States with her performance as Princess Dala in Blake Edwards’s The Pink Panther (1963), which led to her costarring in a string of Hollywood roles, including Richard Brooks’s The Professionals (1966) and Alexander Mackendrick’s Don't Make Waves (1967). She also appeared in Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), played opposite Klaus Kinski in Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo (1982), and starred in Gebo and the Shadow (2012), the final feature film directed by Manoel de Oliveira. In 2000, she became a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for the Defence of Women's Rights, after years of being a staunch feminist advocate. “We say goodbye to a great muse of Italian cinema and one of Europe’s greatest actresses,” writes actor Antonio Banderas in his Instagram tribute.

RECOMMENDED READING

The Toll of the Sea (Chester M. Franklin, 1922).

• “I always thought that moviemaking was the perfect materialization of that double, contradictory movement because the screen is the perfect metaphorical object: hiding, showing, hiding, showing. It’s interesting because we all know that on screen or on stage what you express, what you give, no matter what it is—joy, pain, tears—it comes from something so personal. But it’s impossible to say what, exactly.” For Family Style, filmmaker Durga Chew-Bose interviews actresses Isabelle Huppert and Hari Nef about their artistic processes, mining their personal lives for onscreen revelations, and the power of having faith in oneself.
• “At a time when performers of color in Hollywood, especially African-Americans, struggled to secure sizable roles with billing and even character names, the longevity of Wong’s career and status as a star and celebrity make her an exception and pioneer.” For A Rabbit’s Foot, Kulraj Phullar pays tribute to Chinese American Hollywood actress Anna May Wong timed to the BFI Southbank’s ongoing retrospective, Anna May Wong: The Art of Reinvention.
• “To follow the workflow at L’Immagine Ritrovata is to be reminded afresh of the tangibility of film, not to mention its fallibility. Nitrate film stock, which was used in the industry from the eighteen-nineties to the mid-twentieth century, and which was responsible for many of the most beautiful movies on record, is also insanely flammable. Beauty comes at a cost.” For The New Yorker, Anthony Lane profiles the film archive Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna and their restoration efforts, many of which are featured in the annual Il Cinema Ritrovato festival.
• “There’s nothing too damning in the film, despite its hearty showcase of pummeled flesh and painkiller abuse—which makes it a weirdly conventional drama, neither too critical of the sport’s obvious dangers nor too idolatrous of its brotherhood of big lads simply trying to make a living.” For 4Columns, Beatrice Loayza reviews Benny Safdie’s new film, The Smashing Machine (2025), a biopic of UFC fighter Mark Kerr. 

RECOMMENDED EVENTS 

Black Celebration (A Rebellion against the Commodity) (Tony Cokes, 1988).

• Liechtenstein, September 26 through March 1: Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein presents  Tony Cokes: Let Yourself Be Free, an exhibition presenting a number of the American video artist’s light boxes, writings, and video installations. The exhibition will also feature “a new commission and a selection of works by various artists from the collection” and will be accompanied by an extensive publication.
• Amsterdam, October 3 through 5: The Hartwig Art Foundation presents Minor Music at the End of the World, a collaboratively developed stage performance based on Saidiya Hartman’s essays “The End of White Supremacy: An American Romance” and “Litany for Grieving Sisters.” Directed by Sarah Benson, the performance features “cinematic elements by Arthur Jafa, lead performances by actor André Holland and actor/sonic movement artist Okwui Okpokwasili.”
• New York, October 9 through 18: The Japan Society presents Shiguéhiko Hasumi: Another History of the Movie in America and Japan, a program curated by the Japanese critic and theorist that “suggests the line drawn between the two world cinemas is much less realized than one could imagine.” Hasumi’s landmark 1983 publication, Directed by Yasujiro Ozu, was recently translated into English by Ryan Cook for the University of California Press. (K. F. Watanabe interviewed Hasumi in these pages on the occasion of its release.)
• Milan, October 11 through February 15, 2026: Pirelli HangarBicocca presents Nan Goldin: This Will Not End Well, the first exhibition dedicated to the artist’s films. The retrospective will feature six films—including her magnum opus, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (1981–2022)—as well as a number of slideshows and a new sound installation by Soundwalk Collective.

RECOMMENDED VIEWING

• Crispin Hellion Glover presents a trailer for his new film, No! You're Wrong. or: Spooky Action at a Distance (2025), a surrealist film-within-a-film that stars the director alongside his late father, Bruce Glover, in his final film role. Glover will premiere the film at the Museum of Modern Art on October 2, accompanied by a live show, a Q&A session, and a meet-and-greet book signing.
• New Europe Film Sales presents a trailer for Hlynur Pálmason’s Joan of Arc (2025) following its world premiere at the San Sebastián Film Festival. The film stars Pálmason’s three children as siblings who construct and demolish a knight-like figure. It serves as a companion piece to The Love That Remains (2025), which just had its US premiere at the New York Film Festival.
• MEMORY presents a trailer for Julian Castronovo’s feature film Debut, or, Objects of the Field of Debris as Currently Catalogued (2025), an experimental mystery starring the filmmaker as a version of himself who becomes entangled in a conspiracy involving an art forger. The film will premiere at Los Angeles’s Now Instant Image Hall on October 17 followed by a New York run at the Roxy Cinema on October 23.
• Netflix presents a trailer for Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly (2025), which stars George Clooney as a famous actor who ponders his life choices during an impromptu trip across Europe. The film will be released in select theaters on November 14 before streaming on Netflix starting December 5.

RECENTLY ON NOTEBOOK

Never Sleep Again (Pia Frankenberg, 1992).

• “Frankenberg saw that the absurdity of the genre rested in the devil’s bargain it offered women: your freedom for security.” Rafaela Bassili considers the anti-rom-coms of German filmmaker Pia Frankenberg.
• We kick off a series of fall festival-season filmmaker interviews with Alejo Moguillansky on Pin de Fartie, Pietro Marcello on Duse, and Ulrich Köhler on Gavagai (all 2025).
• Our series of contributions from the Locarno Critics Academy concludes with José Emilio González Calvillo on I Know Where I’m Going! (1945), Charlyne Genoud on language and translation, and Jason Tan Liwag on disability and accessibility at the festival.
• “1975 was a banner year for movies.” Adrian Curry revisits the posters for films that premiered at the thirteenth New York Film Festival, on the occasion of the festival’s latest edition.

WISH LIST

Morning Circle (Basma al-Sharif, 2025).

• Marguerite Duras’s Six Films, a cycle of experimental texts based on her own cinematic works, has been translated into English by Olivia Baes and Emma Ramadan for the first time. It has been published by Inpatient Press and is available to preorder from MIT Press.
• Semi-Nomadic Debt-Ridden Bedouins, an in-depth survey of two decades of artistic output by Palestinian artist Basma al-Sharif, is available to purchase from Lenz Press.