On Saturday, Noomi Rapace took the stage in Lucerne to present the Eurimages International Co-Production Award to Labina Mitevska at the 37th European Film Awards. Mitevska is one of the founders of the family-run production company Sisters and Brother Mitevski Production based in Skopje, North Macedonia, with her sister Teona and brother Vuk. Their most recent joint is “Mother”, directed by sister Teona and starring Noomi Rapace. Labina herself is a highly acclaimed actress from the Balkan region, starting her career in Milčo Mančevski’s “Before the Rain” (1994), awarded with the Golden Lion in Venice and nominated for an Academy Award. Pictures and screencaptures from the ceremony have been added to the photo gallery.

Noomi Rapace has been a frequent visitor to The Fashion Awards in 2019 and 2021. Yesterday, she was a guest again on the red carpet, sporting a new haircut. Pictures from the event have been added to the photo gallery.

We’ve been reporting on “Hearts of Stone” for a while now. The short film, shot in 2021, made the festival rounds earlier this year and is qualified for Oscar consideration by winning Best International at the L.A. Shorts International Film Festival and the Grand Prize for Best Live Action Short at the Rhode Island International Film Festival. The film’s director Tom Van Avermaet has now released a first trailer for the film. Screencaptures have been added to the photo gallery. The official synopsis is below.

In a sculpture park in the heart of a bustling metropolis, Paula, a lonely street artist, entertains people as a living statue. She longs with an impossible love for Agatha, a stone sculpture next to her regular spot. When a festival for living statues arrives in the park, Paula is dismayed to find that Agatha has been replaced by a new, modern sculpture. After a frantic search, she finds Agatha in a group of discarded statues, ready to be taken away. Almost as a farewell, she kisses the object of her affection. Later, at the festival’s closing party, Paula meets Agatha in the flesh.

Focus Features has picked up the sci-fi thriller Hot Spot from director Agnieszka Smoczyńska. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film, which stars Noomi Rapace, Andrzej Konopka and Reika Kirishima, wrapped production last week in Greece. Focus is reuniting with Smoczyńska after releasing her first English-language feature Silent Twins, which starred Black Panther breakout Letitia Wright and Tamara Lawrance. “Agnieszka is a singular visionary whose work — be it about vampire mermaids, silent twins or a tech-ruled society — is both visually astounding and thematically prophetic, and we can’t wait to share her latest with the world,” Kiska Higgs, president of production and acquisitions at Focus, said in a statement. The U.S. studio picked up all territories worldwide, except for Poland, Greece and France, for Hot Spot, which is based on script by Robert Bolesto. The indie is set in a near future society ruled by sentient artificial intelligence and has a private eye investigate a murder case only to discover a rebel group capable of undermining the digital overlord. “I’m honored to work with Focus Features. Their remarkable achievements in film are matched only by their unwavering respect and support for directors. With Hot Spot, my goal is to create an immersive cinematic experience that captures the essence of today’s world, where advanced technology feels like magic, and love is intricately tied to fear,” Smoczyńska added in her own statement.

Last week, both director Teona Mitevska and Noomi Rapace shared a group shot from the filming of “Mother”, announcing the film has wrapped. Rapace wrote: “We just wrapped the shoot of “Mother Teresa” in Kolkata, India. Thank you all in the team for all the hard work and dedication! It’s been a brutal and beautiful. I’m deeply grateful to have been part of this. Thank you to my director Teona Mitevska, @mitevskateona . I love you”. According to an article by Variety, “Mother” – which chronicles a week in the life of 38-year-old Mother Teresa – started filming in September this year. Here’s the Hollywood Reporter’s press release from Cannes earlier this year:

Rapace will play the legendary Catholic saint in the biopic Mother, which will follow seven consecutive days at a pivotal moment in Mother Teresa’s life, the period where she decides to leave the Loreto Entally convent in Calcutta and launch her own order. Mother will be Mitevska’s English-language debut. She called Rapace, the star of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and Ridley Scott’s Prometheus, ‘” a perfect fit” for her depiction of Mother Teresa, which will be imagined as a rebellious, almost punk figure fighting against the structures of the Catholic church. Mother is structured as a five-country co-production between Macedonia’s Sisters and Brother Mitevski, Belgium’s Entre Chien et Loup, Denmark’s Frau Film, the Netherlands’ Baldar Film, Sweden’s Spark Film & TV and Film i Väst. Kinology is handling global sales.

Noomi Rapace is on board to narrate and executive produce Embankment Films’ feature documentary Garbo: Where Did You Go?, about the life of Hollywood actress Greta Garbo. Rapace will narrate the film in Garbo’s own words, taken from archive sources about her life. Garbo: Where Did You Go? is being made by Embankment Films in partnership with Sky in the U.K. and NonStop Entertainment and is co-produced by Mylla Films. Fremantle is handling worldwide sales. The feature documentary will air on Sky Arts in the U.K. in 2025, following a winter 2024 theatrical release. Jack Oliver, head of co-productions at Sky, commented: “Sky is excited by the opportunity of working again with Embankment Films; we share the same ethos and ambition in cinematic feature documentaries of iconic figures and getting the story behind the story.” Nick Taussig of Embankment, who is producing, commented: “We’re honored to have Noomi on board, who really captures Garbo’s spirit in her narration, and are excited both to partner with Sky Arts once more, who are supporting some of the highest caliber documentary and to work with Lorna Tucker, who’s become a strong, distinctive voice in documentary filmmaking, telling the stories of important, progressive women who have risen up and challenged the status quo.”

Noomi is featured in a, let’s say… unique editorial in the October issue of the Brisith Re-Edtion Magazine: Noomi Rapace is something of an instigator. Together with Juergen Teller and Dovile Drizyte, who had been waiting for the right project to shoot in Drizyte’s hometown in Lithuania, the town’s time-frozen post-Soviet bars, industrial grit, and surrounding bucolic greenery serve as an instinctual backdrop for the photographer’s candid lens, spotlighting the debut collection of another close friend of theirs: Séan McGirr for McQueen. “The Swedish actress has proven herself unparalleled in digging into and channeling the most raw, complex nuances of the human condition. From her international career-launching turn as Lisbeth Salander, the whipsmart yet emotionally wounded hacker, in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo to her lead as God-fearing galactic archaeologist Elizabeth Shaw in Ridley Scott’s Prometheus; her eight-part lead as a set of identical octuplets in What Happened To Monday to her heartrending performance grappling with loss, isolation and motherly joy in the deliciously weird Lamb, the characters she plays are defined by a sense of contradiction and irrationality that makes them all the more relatably human”. Previews from their Instagram have been added to the photo gallery. You can order your copy of the issue here.

There are a couple of updates on the short film “Hearts of Stone”, directed by Tom Van Avermaet, which Noomi filmed back in 2020/2021. It been making the festival rounds since earlier this year, having had its world-premiere at the Belgian Film Festival Oostende. It was also shown at the Rhode Island International Film Festival and HollyShorts Film Festival and won the prize for Best International Film at the LA Shorts. Later this year, it will be shown at the Sapporo International Short Film Festival. A couple of new production stills and an on-set picture have been added to the photo gallery.

In a sculpture park in the heart of a bustling metropolis, Paula, a lonely street artist, entertains people as a living statue. She longs with an impossible love for Agatha, a stone sculpture next to her regular spot. When a festival for living statues arrives in the park, Paula is dismayed to find that Agatha has been replaced by a new, modern sculpture. After a frantic search, she finds Agatha in a group of discarded statues, ready to be taken away. Almost as a farewell, she kisses the object of her affection. Later, at the festival’s closing party, Paula meets Agatha in the flesh.

With not much happening right now, some cool additions from the past have been added to the archives. There’s screencaptures and videos from two interviews at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival to promote the premiere of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”, two press junket interviews from 2014 alongside director Michaël R. Roskam to promote “The Drop” and one additional 2021 interview in which Noomi and director Valdimar Jóhannsson talk about “Lamb”. The full list of albums and videos can be found below. Enjoy.

Romanian film Three Kilometers to the End of the World, from director Emanuel Pârvu, won the Heart of Sarajevo prize on Friday for Best Feature Film at the 30th Sarajevo Film Festival. The competition jury included Paul Schrader as president (director, USA), Sebastian Cavazza (actor, Slovenia), Una Gunjak (director, Bosina and Herzegovina), Juho Kuosmanen (director, screenwriter, Finland), and Noomi Rapace. The gallery has been updated with pictures from the awards ceremony alongside add-ons from the previous events at the Sarajevo Film Festival. The Heart of Sarajevo prize for Best Documentary went to A Picture to Remember from director Olga Chernykh, and Absent, from Cem Demirer, was the top Short Film. Next up, as reported by Deadline earlier this week, is the filming of “Mother”, which will begin shooting next month in Belgium before moving to Calcutta.