World Movie News: The Last 24 Hours
Hollywood mourns Hayden Panettiere and the LFF unveils its 70th-anniversary competition line-up.
Morning all — I’m going to do something a little different with the running order today, because yesterday’s news genuinely deserves to open things rather than close them out. Here’s what happened in the world of movies during the last 24 hours.
Hollywood mourns Hayden Panettiere: Just after I went to press yesterday, news came in that Heroes and Nashville star Hayden Panettiere had died at just 36. Her father Skip confirmed the news in a statement describing “the tragic passing of our beloved Hayden.” She was found in cardiac arrest at a property in Greenville, South Carolina on Sunday, and the county coroner’s office says an autopsy carried out on Monday found no signs of trauma; the cause of death is still to be determined, with police stressing there’s currently nothing to suggest foul play. Panettiere had spoken candidly this year in her memoir about postpartum depression and past struggles with alcohol and opioids, and had never fully stepped back into the spotlight since the sudden death of her younger brother, actor Jansen Panettiere, in 2023. A truly tragic story. Tributes have poured in from former co-stars including Melissa Barrera, alongside a statement from SAG-AFTRA mourning “the sudden passing” of a “member since childhood”. She’s survived by her daughter Kaya. A genuinely heartbreaking one to lead on, and my thoughts are with her family today.
LFF unveils a 70th-anniversary competition line-up: On a considerably brighter note, the BFI London Film Festival has announced its ten Official Competition titles for this October’s 70th edition, running the 7th to 18th. It’s a properly international spread — ten countries represented — headlined by Hirokazu Kore-eda’s latest Look Back, Sergei Loznitsa’s archival-footage Soviet history piece Imperium, and UK filmmaker Carol Morley’s 7 Miles Out, a semi-autobiographical drama about growing up in 1970s/80s Stockport in the shadow of her father’s suicide. The full list of films in official contention is as follows:
- 7 Miles Out (UK, Dir. Carol Morley)
- Act 3 (Ireland-UK, Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor)
- Glaxo (Brazil-Argentina, Dir. Benjamín Naishtat)
- Imperium (Germany-France-Italy-Lithuania, Dir. Sergei Loznitsa)
- Ketticè (Italy, Dir. Giovanni Tortorici)
- Look Back (Japan, Dir. Hirokazu Koreeda)
- My Notes on Mars (Hungary-Austria, Lili Horvát)
- The Difficult Bride (France-Bangladesh-Portugal-Norway-Germany, Rubaiyat Hossain)
- The Idiot(s) (UK-Poland, Dir. Małgorzata Szumowska, Michal Englert)
- Woman Unknown (Denmark-Latvia-Sweden, Dir. May el-Toukhy)
Festival director Kristy Matheson called it “an astounding array of filmmaking styles,” and with the full programme not landing until 2nd September, this is very much the appetiser. The Best Film winner gets announced on 18th October.
That’s your lot for today — a strange one to write, moving from something so sad into festival announcements, but that’s rather the nature of this job sometimes. Until next time.
Subscribe
Don’t forget, you can subscribe to One Mann’s Movies to receive future reviews by email right here. No salesman will call!