Sonia (center, first row) with teammates in ‘The Gymnasts of Fisherman Colony.’
Courtesy of Akelo Media
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Watch Trailer For ‘The Gymnasts Of Fisherman Colony’ From EP Mariska Hargitay
EXCLUSIVE: Cargo Film & Releasing has set an October 23 theatrical opening for The Gymnasts of Fisherman Colony, Habiba Nosheen’s documentary about girls in Pakistan who defy their conservative community by pursuing competitive gymnastics.
The film from executive producers Mariska Hargitay, Trish Adlesic, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai will debut at DCTV’s Firehouse Cinema in New York City before expanding to more than 20 cities including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Houston, Cleveland, Santa Fe, Toronto. Canadian Distributor Blue Ice Docs will open the film in Toronto.
Watch the exclusive trailer below.
“The Gymnasts of Fisherman Colony is an intimate coming-of-age story of three inspiring teenage girls in Pakistan whose discovery of gymnastics opens an unexpected new world of friendship, competition and possibility,” notes a release. “As Kiran, Anwara and Sonia train toward their dream of competing at Pakistan’s national championships, their growing passion begins to collide with expectations about what girls can and cannot do. Moving between the exhilaration of the gym and the pressures of everyday life, the film captures three teenagers beginning to imagine their futures on their own terms.”
In a statement, Nosheen said, “This film has always been about allowing audiences to experience the world through the girls’ eyes. We watch Kiran, Anwara and Sonia discover something they love, become fiercely ambitious about it and begin making space for themselves through gymnastics. The result is a deeply human portrait of girlhood from a part of Pakistan we rarely get to see this way on screen. I am thrilled that audiences across North America will now have the opportunity to meet these girls on the big screen.”
Anwara on beam in ‘The Gymnasts of Fisherman Colony.’
Courtesy of Akelo Media/photo by Habiba Nosheen
Yousafzai, a native of Northwest Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, commented, “I could not be prouder to support this beautiful film and the incredible young athletes at the heart of it. The Gymnasts of Fisherman Colony perfectly illustrates the power of sports to change how girls see themselves and how the world sees young women.”
Hargitay and Adlesic are coming off their recent Primetime Emmy wins for My Mom Jayne, the documentary Hargitay directed and Hargitay and Adlesic produced. The Law & Order: SVU star is president and founder of production company Mighty Entertainment.
“When we first learned about these young girls and their lives from director Habiba Nosheen, my producing partner, Trish Adlesic, and I knew we wanted to help ensure that their story would reach audiences around the world,” Hargitay said. “This film is a perfect example of the kind of stories we want to champion and support at Mighty. We are honored to partner with Habiba and inspired by her talent as a filmmaker.”
Sonia on beam in ‘The Gymnasts of Fisherman Colony.’
Courtesy of Akelo Media
The Gymnasts of Fisherman Colony is an Akelo Media Production produced with the participation of Canada Media Fund and Telefilm Canada, in association with CBC, Chicken and Egg Films and Mighty Entertainment. The film is directed by Habiba Nosheen and produced by Amar Lohana and Nosheen. Executive producers include Malala Yousafzai, Mariska Hargitay, Trish Adlesic, Shizuka Asakawa, Lauran Bromley, Michelle McCree, Ashley McDermott, Robin Smith, Shelley Saywell, Elaisha Stokes, Anna Maria Tremonti, and Jenni Wolfson. Co-executive producers are Ricardo Acosta and Bina Shukla.
Lawence Jackman edited the film; cinematography is by Tess Girard, Nadir Siddiqui, and Muhammad Asif Faraz. Kalaisan Kalaichelvan composed the original score.
The Gymnasts of Fisherman Colony held its world premiere in Documentary Competition at the 2026 Tribeca Festival, finishing among the top three documentaries for the festival’s Audience Award. It has also screened at DMZ International Documentary Film Festival in South Korea, the Calgary International Film Festival in Alberta, and Chicago South Asian Film Festival, among others. It screens this weekend at the Zurich Film Festival.
Director Habiba Nosheen
Courtesy of Akelo Media
“I am so proud that the film offers a unique portrait of Pakistani girlhood rarely seen on screen, along with a universal story about friendship, ambition and the freedom to play,” said director-producer Nosheen. “It is lyrical, playful and deeply intimate. I am forever grateful to these girls for allowing us to be in their lives and tell their stories.”
Watch the exclusive trailer here:
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EXCLUSIVE: The new Warner Bros’ Christian Parkes-led contemporary film label, Clockwork, which we first told you about last December, will be making the segue to the new Paramount Warner Bros merger aka Skydance.
Clockwork was on an internal list of Warner Bros labels shown in-house at Paramount. In addition, we’ve heard from reliable sources that all Warner Bros’ label heads (i.e. James Gunn and Peter Safran at DC, Richard Brener at New Line, etc) will stay in charge of their domains at the new conglomerate. As previously reported, all film label heads roll up and report to Paramount Pictures Co-Chairs, Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein.
Clockwork’s first theatrical release is on Oct. 16, the unearthed spicy Catholic taboo 1971 Ken Russell directed The Devils which will be screened in a 4K restoration. The whole idea why former Warner Bros Motion Picture Bosses Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy launched the label with former NEON Chief Marketing Officer Parkes was to give the studio some A24-like mojo a shot in the arm. Clockwork is an entry point for edgy filmmakers with moderate sized budgeted pics. The label’s original output was for two-to-three films annually.
Clockwork, we understand, will co-exist with Paramount’s current global acquisition division and Republic Pictures, led by Wicker producer Lia Buman. That Melrose lot department made a big purchase out of Cannes with Canal’s Midnight Library for $36M (which includes domestic and a bulk of foreign). In addition, Republic Pictures is the label responsible for the 2024 Oscar nominated Munich Olympics thriller, September 5.
Projects coming into Paramount from Clockwork include the next movie from Anora Oscar winner Sean Bailey, Ti Amo! (financed by FilmNation). There’s also Clockwork’s mid-teen millions North American pick-up out of the Cannes market, Park Chan-Wook’s western The Brigands of Rattlecreek starring Matthew McConaughey, Austin Butler, Pedro Pascal and Chinese star Tang Wei (Decision to Leave). Also in the Clockwork portfolio is the Sean Penn directed feature about the January 6th Capitol riots.
Paramount didn’t return request for comment.
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Jeffrey Archer, the prolific British author and former politician, has died at the age of 86.
Archer’s publisher HarperCollins confirmed his death in a statement, revealing that the Kane & Abel writer died “suddenly and peacefully at home” on Monday. A cause of death was not disclosed.
Archer, a former Conservative member of parliament, sold more than 300 million books during a writing career that spanned five decades.
HarperCollins claims that Lord Archer is the only author ever to have been a #1 bestseller in fiction, short stories, and non-fiction
Archer’s work was adapted for the screen on many occasions, including the 1985 CBS miniseries based on Kane & Abel, which starred Peter Strauss as Abel Rosnovski and Sam Neill as William Lowell Kane.
ITV adapted First Among Equals in 1986, starring Jeremy Child, James Faulkner, David Robb, Tom Wilkinson, while Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less was adapted by the BBC in 1990.
His political career, which included a spell as the Conservative Party’s deputy chairman, was interrupted by a four-year spell in prison in 2001 after he was found guilty of lying and cheating in a 1987 libel case against The Daily Star newspaper.
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As Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Digger entered a box-office death spiral, two familiar defenders appeared.
Guillermo del Toro blasted as “entirely petty” an IGN post suggesting moviegoers save their money and wait to stream the Tom Cruise vehicle, whose budget has been estimated as high as $180 million, praising Digger instead for its ambition and theatrical scale.
Alfonso Cuarón, meabnwhile, posted a series of old critical pans of a number of films whose regard grew exponentially, Blade Runner, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Metropolis and The Shining among them.
It looked like two members of the Mexican filmmaking triumvirate long ago christened “the Three Amigos” circling the wagons around the third. In fact, they have been doing some version of this for nearly three decades.
Long before the Oscars and nine-figure budgets, Cuarón, del Toro and Iñárritu became each other’s private critics, advisers and occasional unofficial editors, quietly shaping films from Amores Perros and Y Tu Mamá También to Gravity, Birdman and Crimson Peak.
Cuarón and del Toro met in Mexico’s film and television world in the late 1980s, most famously around Televisa’s Twilight Zone-like anthology La Hora Marcada, whose orbit also included future three-time Oscar-winning cinematographer Emmanuel “Chivo” Lubezki.
Iñárritu came from a different world. He made his name in Mexico City radio before moving into advertising and directing. He met Cuarón in the mid-1990s, when Cuarón was already working in Hollywood, and has described him as an early mentor.
The trio really took shape around Amores Perros. Cuarón encouraged Iñárritu to show his 2000 debut to del Toro, who according to a 2006 Los Angeles Times profile watched it, called Iñárritu early in the morning and told him two things: He had made a masterpiece, and it was too long. Soon del Toro was in Mexico City arguing with Iñárritu over the edit.
It established a pattern. Over the years, the three became trusted sounding boards on one another’s films. For a time they even formalized the relationship, creating Cha Cha Cha Films in 2007 and striking a production deal with Universal.
By then, the friends were becoming Hollywood powers, producing a series of films both intensely personal and enormously profitable. Birdman, made for roughly $18 million, grossed more than $100 million worldwide. Del Toro’s roughly $20 million The Shape of Water approached $200 million.
Their budgets rose, and the bets paid off. Cuarón’s $100 million-plus Gravity grossed roughly $700 million, while Iñárritu’s notoriously difficult $135 million The Revenant made more than $530 million.
Hollywood rewarded them accordingly. Beginning with Cuarón’s win for Gravity in 2014, the Three Amigos won the directing Oscar an astounding five times in six years: Cuarón twice, Iñárritu twice and del Toro once.
Three friends from Mexico had come close to monopolizing Hollywood’s highest directing honor.
Now there is Digger.
It is Iñárritu’s first Hollywood studio film since The Revenant. He returned to Mexico in between for 2022’s intensely personal, Spanish-language Bardo — a Netflix release that was similarly divisive — but has said the idea for Digger came in the aftermath of The Revenant and took a full ten years to bring to the screen.
He began writing it with Mexican playwright and screenwriter Sabina Berman in 2017 and approached Cruise years before cameras finally rolled. With Cruise, the decade-in-the-making project finally got its green light, along with its massive budget. It was Iñárritu’s biggest Hollywood swing since The Revenant. This time, the gamble didn’t pay off.
What Digger means for Iñárritu, or for the extraordinary run of Hollywood success enjoyed by the Three Amigos, remains to be seen. But its failure comes just a year after Bong Joon Ho’s similarly ambitious Mickey 17, another $100 million-plus Warner Bros. bet on an Oscar-winning international auteur, struggled at the box office.
Arriving as the far safer Paramount subsumes Warner Bros., it may be a very long time before Hollywood places another nine-figure wager of this kind.
For nearly 30 years, Cuarón and del Toro have been among the few people willing to tell Iñárritu when they think he’s gotten something wrong. With Digger, they became two of the loudest voices insisting everyone else had.
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