There’s a reason for that, says actress Embeth Davidtz, who wrote and directed the film and also plays Bobo’s mother in the movie.

“Listen, she was cleaned up for that premiere,” Davidtz says on a recent video call. “In real life, if you just let her be, she would run around and have dirty feet.

“It’s one of the reasons I cast her,” she says. “I had met a lot of children who were really refined little girls, and I just needed an authentic, little non-acting creature to play this part.”

In “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight,” the story of Rhodesia’s transformation from a British colony into the independent nation of Zimbabwe is told through Bobo’s eyes. The character is real thanks to the absence of artifice in Venter’s performance in her first acting role of any kind.

“I’d seen a few actresses, very sweet kids trying but acting,” says Davidtz, who grew up South Africa just a few years prior to the events of the film in neighboring Zimbabwe. “The Facebook post I put out was I need a kid who’s untrained, absolutely never acted before. It was an absolute requirement for me because there’s a way that children act when they’re acting, right?

“I just said I need a barefoot, wild, preferably grubby little carefree child that doesn’t know anything about movies or filming,” she says. “Who closely resembles this wild Bobo that Alexandra Fuller wrote.

“And when I first saw Lexi she wasn’t as grubby as we ended up making her to look like Bobo, but she had a wildness to her and an unselfconsciousness. That’s really what it was. Her face was glorious. The camera loved her face. I knew that I wanted a cinematic face. She’s just adorable.”

Where Fuller’s memoir spans several decades, Davidtz narrowed the focus of the story to the few months of 1980 when years of civil war ended with independence for Zimbabwe and the election of Robert Mugabe, one of the leaders of the rebel forces, as Zimbabwe’s first prime minister.

In the lead-up to the election, Bobo watches as the adults in her world fret over the future that approaches. Her mother Nicola, played by Davidtz, struggles with alcoholism and mental illness while her father Tim (Rob Van Vuuren) is sent with a militia to fight rebels at the border

Bobo’s closest friend is the family’s nanny and housekeeper Sarah (Zikhona Bali), who loves the girl even as her coworker Jacob (Fumani Shilubana) warns Sarah that she risks being seen as a collaborator with her White employers.

Davidtz, who was born in the United States to South African parents, moved back to that country in 1974 when she was 8 years old; she says she wanted to make a movie of Fuller’s memoir for years, drawn to it by how it mirrored so many moments of her own life.

In an interview edited for length and clarity, Davidtz, whose resume includes memorable roles in films such as “Schindler’s List,” “Matilda,” and “The Amazing Spider-man,” talked about the appeal of the source material, how she accidentally ended up a first-time writer-director, and how the themes of her film remain relevant 45 years after the events it depicts.

Q: How soon after Alexandra’s book was published in 2001 did you come across it?

A: I actually read it right after it came out and I was wowed. Every person that I knew in England and Southern Africa, and even people in America and Australia were like, “Gosh, you’ve got to read this woman’s book. So I read it and I was thunderstruck by how she captured the world, a world that was similar to the world that I grew up in.

But also just the brilliance of her writing. She’s very funny, she’s very exacting. She’s very sort of relentless in what she exposes about herself and her family, but she does it in a loving way.

And more than anything, that character of Bobo. It was like a Scout from “To Kill a Mockingbird” or, oh gosh, the Tatum O’Neal character in “Paper Moon.” And I thought, God, this would just make such a great film.

Cut to years later, I was thinking of what would be an interesting part, something I’d be interested in developing, and I thought of her. And the rights happened to be available.

Q: When was that, and how did you proceed once you had the rights?

A: It was about 2016, 2017. I think I spent a long time on the screenplay. I thought I’d find a writer. I couldn’t find a writer. So I did probably 25, 30 drafts myself, slowly. Because the book is very long. The book spans 20-something years and I just made it about a very short space of time at the end of the war.

Q: Why did cut it down to that moment?

A: Oh my gosh, I stumbled around and I was writing an epic, what would have ended up being a mini-series. Then slowly I realized, the reason I wanted to do it was because I wanted to play the part of Nicola, but as I went along with all my various drafts, I realized, really, the story is Bobo’s story.

The biggest moment of clarity came when I realized, oh no, I have to tell it entirely from the child’s point of view because then I can put in all the racial things I need to. All the prejudice, all of the learned behavior, all of the voice of that kid that was clear in her book.

Q: The point of view let you have Bobo ask adults in her world questions like, “Are we racist? Are we Africans?”

A: Exactly. She can talk about “Africans not having last names.” She can talk about “Don’t be friends with them.”

Q: Had you always intended to write, direct and act? Or did that just kind of happen?

A: It started out as, “I want to play this part, so I’m going to acquire the rights and I’ll find a writer, and then I’ll find a director.” Then as things went along, I couldn’t find a writer, so I wrote it. Then once I’d written it, once I’d gone through my 25 or 30 drafts, I knew it so well that I thought, “How can I hand this over to somebody else?”

I thought, gosh, I know every angle, every frame, everything I want to be in slow motions, everything. I knew what it needed to be. I just thought, I think I know how to do it. I mean, it was a very risky thing to do and very scary. There wasn’t a day I wasn’t terrified. Even while I was editing I was terrified, thinking, who do I think I am doing this?

But I kind of knew on some level instinctively I just know this story in my cells and in my bones. I know how to tell it. So I stuck with it. Then I didn’t really want to act in it anymore. I’d made the part of the mother much smaller and that wasn’t the main thing. The main thing was telling the story.

Q: It’s interesting how you started out not wanting to write or direct and ended up not wanting to act – but then did all three.

A: Yeah, not something I would recommend. [She laughs] It was hard. And in the end, I was the least expensive option, so it was great. I didn’t have to really pay for myself and I could minimize the amount that I had to be on camera.

Q: What was it like directing Lexi, who as you said didn’t know anything at all about acting or filmmaking?

A: In my meetings with her, when I taped her, she was dead keen to light up a cigarette [as the movie has her do] and enjoyed pretending to puff on a cigarette. The way I got her to [deliver her lines] was to have two cameras on her at all times, one very close, one sort of medium. She could say a line the way I told her to say it and then do it a line at a time.

She was very good at even bringing her own expression to things. Sometimes she’d change a sentence. She’d forget a word and say it the wrong way, but the wrong way was the right way. It’s just who she is and a perfect melding of what Alexandra Fuller created, what I wrote and directed, and what she brought to it as a blank canvas as herself that worked.

Q: Is she from a rural part of South Africa? Was she comfortable on location there?

A: As comfortable as a child could be. People at one point said, “Why don’t we look in England?” I said there’s no English child that can run around barefoot in the wild with her dog. That was her dog. I always had her dog in scenes with her.

I said, Don’t brush your hair in the morning and most times her hair wasn’t brushed. So I didn’t have to do anything but I could put dirt on her face. She lives in a small town but she runs around barefoot all the time. She seldom wears shoes so that was easy. It was close to casting to type as I could have found for the character of Bobo.

Q: Zikhona Bali also has a beautiful presence on screen, though she’s much, much quieter and calmer as Sarah than Lexi is as Bobo.

A: Zikhona was a gift to me because, first of all how she worked with Lexi, because Lexi is a lot. I only had three hours a day with her. It’s hard for her to focus and concentrate. And Zikhona was like a glass of cold water. She just would cool things down. She would stabilize Lexi. Again, it was like a lightning bolt, absolutely clear that this was the person to play the part. She’s just wonderful.

Q: You were born and lived in the United States until you were 8 – about the same age as Bobo. What was your experience like moving to South Africa then?

A: I moved from New Jersey, so I had only known lovely green rolling hills and yellow school buses, even though my parents had come from South Africa. So moving at the time we did was incredibly traumatic for me. We were almost immediately in a state of emergency. Soweto riots began. There were always police in this sort of military state.

So my very gentle sort of American childhood was kind of ripped apart when we came to South Africa. Now, my parents were oblivious. Differently to how the Fullers are oblivious but my parents were just back in South Africa, living with something that they knew. They didn’t necessarily agree with it but they didn’t do much to make it OK for us.

That’s why I think I’m so obsessed with telling a story from a child’s point of view. Because that moment in time, exactly the age of Bobo, really resonates for me as a difficult time and a very scary time. All of that stuck with me so that when I read Alexandra’s book I so recognized what she described as the terror of being a kid. It doesn’t leave us. It’s in there. So when I got to tell the story I feel in some way I got to exorcise the stuff that I’d always felt and kept inside.

Q: It’s 45 years since the events depicted in the film. How do you hope the film will speak to today’s times?

A: There’s a twofold thing I’d say. One is, you know, people should know when they look at African countries and form conclusions about them and the way that things are done there, that the African countries inherited what was handed to them after colonialism. It’s sort of what Sarah represents and what I was trying to show at the end of the film. That there’s this beautiful elevated character to the Indigenous people of Zimbabwe, of South Africa.

So I would want people to look at that and know that’s there, and read about it and learn about it. I think that there’s nobility in trying to fix the mess that they were handed after colonialism ended.

Then the other thing I’d say is for people to look around the world at the wars that are going on everywhere, and everywhere there are children watching. So Bobo’s experience of being in the middle of not only a family coming undone on the inside, but a world outside of violence is everything we see on the news every day.

There are the Bobos of the world watching and living through it. You know, we don’t learn, but it would be nice if we did. If it stopped somehow.

Twenty-five years after Tom Cruise received his first Oscar nomination, he’s finally getting a trophy. It’s not for his death-defying stunts, either. At least, not exclusively.

Cruise, choreographer Debbie Allen and “Do The Right Thing” production designer Wynn Thomas have all been selected to receive honorary Oscar statuettes at the annual Governors Awards, the film academy said Tuesday. Dolly Parton will also be recognized with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for her decades-long charitable work in literacy and education.

“This year’s Governors Awards will celebrate four legendary individuals whose extraordinary careers and commitment to our filmmaking community continue to leave a lasting impact,” Academy President Janet Yang said in a statement.

Most recipients of the prize historically have not yet won a competitive Oscar themselves. Cruise, 62, has been nominated four times, twice for best actor in “Born on the Fourth of July” and “Jerry Maguire,” once for supporting actor in “Magnolia” and once for best picture with “Top Gun: Maverick.” He’s also championed theatrical moviegoing and big-scale Hollywood production through the coronavirus pandemic.

Yang spotlighted Cruise’s “incredible commitment to our filmmaking community, to the theatrical experience, and to the stunts community.”

Allen, 75, has never been nominated for an Oscar. But the multi-hyphenate entertainer — she also acts and produces — has played an integral role in the Oscars show, having choreographed seven ceremonies over the years. Four of those were nominated for prime-time Emmy awards.

A nomination had also eluded Thomas, a leading production designer whose films have often gone on to best picture nominations and even one win, for Ron Howard’s “A Beautiful Mind.” Thomas is most known for his long-term collaboration with filmmaker Spike Lee, from “She’s Gotta Have It” and “Malcolm X” through “Da 5 Bloods.”

Parton has been nominated twice for best original song, for “9 to 5” and, in 2006, “Travelin’ Thru” from the film “Transamerica.” But her honor celebrates her humanitarian efforts over the years, through organizations like the Dollywood Foundation and the literary program “Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library.”

Yang said Parton “exemplifies the spirit” of the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.

The awards will be handed out during an untelevised ceremony on Nov. 16 at the Ray Dolby Ballroom in Los Angeles. Last year’s recipients included the late Quincy Jones, Bond producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, filmmaker Richard Curtis and casting director Juliet Taylor.

Recipients of the prizes, which honor lifetime achievement, contributions to the state of motion picture arts and sciences and service to the academy are selected by the film academy’s board of governors.

The live-action remake of the 2010 original tells the story of Hiccup, the son of a Viking chief, who forms a forbidden friendship with a baby dragon named Toothless.

It takes flight this week, accompanied by tie-ins and merchandise.

Burger King got a jump on the family-friendly film with a “Flame & Fight Combo” that went on sale May 27 for around $12.99.

It includes a Dragon Flame-Grilled Whopper, which according to the Burger King website has the same ingredients as a regular Whopper.

Three other items in the combo are limited-time only. They are Fiery Dragon Mozzarella Fries, which are made with peppers calabrian pepper breading and spicier than regular Mozzarella Fries; Soaring Strawberry Lemonade; and a Viking’s Chocolate Sundae, topped with Hershey’s syrup and black and green cookie crumbles.

Packaging includes a special Toothless carton for the Mozzarella Fries, according to a news release.

The combo is listed as a digital exclusive, and on a trip to a Burger King it couldn’t be ordered in the dining room, although items could be ordered separately.

“How to Train Your Dragon” officially opens on Friday, June 13, but big theater chains began “early access” screenings on Wednesday, June 11.

Chains such as AMC, Harkins and Cinemark will be selling popcorn buckets, some with Toothless plushies, at prices ranging from $15 to $40-plus, based on spot checks of Southern California theaters and merchandise posted on their websites. Merch includes T-shirts, tumblers and standees.

In addition, Cinemark is offering Viking helmets to people who attend RealD 3D screenings on Father’s Day, June 15, while supplies last, according to a Facebook post.

“This is truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I feel very blessed and very grateful and very lucky,” Slater told the crowd during a ceremony at 6201 Hollywood Blvd., in front of the Eastown apartments, near Argyle Avenue.

The star is the 2,815th since the completion of the Walk of Fame in 1961 with the initial 1,558 stars.

“I love this town, and I love this business,” Slater added. “I’ve been in show business for five decades. … I still love it, and I still have fun. I look at my job as something I get to do, not something I have to do.”

“Dexter: Original Sin” guest star Sarah Michelle Gellar and director Michael Lehmann joined Slater in speaking at the ceremony.

Gellar portrays Tanya Martin, chief of forensics of Miami Metro Police Department’s homicide division and the boss of Dexter Morgan (Patrick Gibson), a recently hired forensic intern on the Paramount+ With Showtime prequel to “Dexter.”

Slater portrays the adoptive father of Morgan, a future vigilante serial killer.

“I consider myself incredibly lucky to be on the list of people who have had the pleasure of working with Christian — and honestly just as lucky to be one of the millions who have been moved by and represented in his incredible body of work,” Gellar said during the ceremony.

Lehmann directed six of the 10 episodes in the series’ first season, which concluded Feb. 14. Paramount+ With Showtime announced in April that it had renewed “Dexter: Original Sin” for a second season.

Lehmann addressed Slater directly when it was his turn to speak, saying, “Christian, you are phenomenal. You are amazing. You are a true movie star. You have all the charisma and all the movie star abilities. And you are an amazing actor.”

Slater was born Aug. 18, 1969, in New York City. He made his television debut when he was 8 years old on the ABC daytime drama “One Life to Live” and his Broadway debut in the 1980 revival of “The Music Man.”

He made his film debut in the 1985 action drama “The Legend of Billie Jean” as the younger brother of the title character (Helen Slater, no relation), both of whom become fugitives after a confrontation with a local bully turns violent.

His breakout film role came in the 1988 satire “Heathers” as sociopathic high school student Jason “J.D.” Dean.

Slater’s other film credits include “The Name of the Rose,” “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves,” “True Romance,” “Interview with the Vampire,” “The River Murders,” “Soldiers of Fortune,” “Bullet to the Head,” “Nymphomaniac” and “The Wife.”

His first role as a series cast member was in the 2008 NBC spy thriller “My Own Worst Enemy,” which ran for nine episodes. He next starred in the 2009-10 ABC crime drama, “The Forgotten,” which ran for 17 episodes.

Slater’s longest-running series is the 2015-19 USA Network thriller, “Mr. Robot,” as the title character, an insurrectionary anarchist.

Other Slater television credits include portraying murder victim Dan Broderick in the second season of the USA Network true crime anthology “Dirty John” and vascular surgeon Dr. Randall Kirby in the first season of the Peacock true crime drama anthology “Dr. Death.”

Slater won the outstanding lead performer in a preschool, children’s or young teen program Children’s & Family Emmy for his portrayal of the ogre Mulgarath in the Roku Channel fantasy series, “The Spiderwick Chronicles” in March.

He also has had an extensive voice-acting career, with roles including Pips in “FernGully: The Last Rainforest,” Slater in “Archer,” Ushari in “The Lion Guard,” Rand Ridley in “Inside Job” and Floyd Lawton and his alter ego Deadshot in the DC animated movie universe.

“I feel like this is a wonderful ending to a chapter of my life, but with many more pages still left to write,” Slater said during Monday’s ceremony. “But this is certainly a highlight and something I will treasure for the rest of my life.”

But while “The Life of Chuck” is about loss and death, it is somehow a feel-good movie that embraces sentimentality as it celebrates living. Its centerpiece is a joyous scene (albeit one laced with poignant undertones) where Chuck (Tom Hiddleston) and a stranger named Janice (Annalise Basso) dance in the street to the drums of a busker (played by a dynamo who goes by the moniker, The Pocket Queen). 

The film also stars Chiwetel Ejiofor, Karen Gillan, Benjamin Pajak (as middle school Chuck), Mia Sara and Mark Hamill, with pitch-perfect narration from Nick Offerman. 

Flanagan, who’s developing a TV series based on King’s “Carrie,” spoke by video about how King’s story and his own personal touches set up such an expectation-defying film. 

“I was lucky enough to make it independently, so I didn’t have to worry too much about how a studio or even the audience would react,” Flanagan says, adding wryly. “I don’t envy Neon having to market the film.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Q. Why adapt this particular story?

It was certainly not the most obvious one to see on a screen. I read it in 2020 at the beginning of the lockdown, so that apocalyptic opening hit close to home when I was feeling anxious and despairing and scared. But by the end, I had tears on my face because I was feeling optimistic and grateful and joyful. The story was so wise and earnest and utterly uncynical and beautiful.

I’ve never exclusively considered Stephen King a horror writer: There’s “Shawshank Redemption,” “Stand By Me” and “The Green Mile;” even “It” isn’t about a killer clown, it’s about friends whose love for each other makes them brave while “The Stand” is about ordinary people finding courage to stand up for what’s right. 

He has always been an optimistic humanist. It’s just that he usually sets that against the contrast of incredible darkness. This story, more than anything he’d ever written, just had the love. It made me look at my life a little differently. It made me wonder if I was seizing enough joy. And if I would walk past the drummer or would have the bravery to put my briefcase down and dance like I didn’t care what people thought. 

I wanted to make this film for my kids. I know they’ll have the same feelings as they get older when the center doesn’t hold and the wheels come off and they’re scared of the world they live in. If I’m not here still to offer them any assistance or comfort, I wanted this movie to exist to provide that feeling.

Q. How did you handle the sentimentality, humor and hope in a movie about death and dying?

The tone of the movie needed to be one of gentle love and acceptance, regardless of the specific moment of the story we were in. It didn’t matter if the stars were burning out and the sky was falling. It was important that the movie never tried to manipulate the emotional experience, so the music we use while the world is ending is the same we use later while they’re having a pleasant conversation during a sunset or when Chuck is a kid in school learning how to dance.

My intention was to take the wild emotional swings and hold them in a way that communicated to viewers that it’s all OK. I wanted to try to capture the story to lift people the way it lifted me, even if it’s just for those couple of minutes while the characters dance. And I know nothing works for everyone, but if people stick with it, maybe they’ll react the way I did when I read the story. 

Q. Carl Sagan and Walt Whitman – and the unlikely connection between the two – are integral to the characters’ lives. Was that all in the story?

Whitman is in the foreground in the story, but I added Sagan. I’m a Carl Sagan fanatic. Steve’s story and this movie are a prism for your own life, and I kept bumping up on the themes that Steve was putting out about time and our place in the cosmos and how we’re simultaneously so small but so extraordinary. It seemed to echo Sagan’s writing. I’d seen The Cosmic Calendar on “Cosmos” when I was a kid, and it really resonated with me then but also felt in harmony within this story we were telling. 

Q. Let’s talk about “Back to the Future.” There’s a middle school dance with a “Back to the Future” theme. It looked like Chiwetel Ejiofor even wore the same jacket as the musicians from the “Johnny B. Goode” scene… and is carrying a guitar.

“Back to the Future”  was a defining movie from my childhood. It also points to the film’s structure. And I always loved the idea that Marty McFly went back in time with this incredible power to change things, but all he ends up trying to do is put things back where they were to begin with – it wasn’t about changing the future, it was about appreciating the present. We went a little crazy, actually – Trinity Bliss, who plays Chuck’s dance partner, wears a dress very similar to Lea Thompson’s dress, and her boyfriend wears a Marty McFly vest. So the scene felt like a cheeky Easter egg, but it also worked also thematically. 

Q. Narration is often used to paper over storytelling gaps, but it worked great here. How much of that was King’s words and how much of that was Offerman’s delivery?

So much of King’s prose is so beautiful and brought so much meaning to this story, I didn’t know how to match the impact without these words. I needed them in the movie, but I also hate improper use of voice-overs in movies, and with the wrong narrator, this would have become incredibly pretentious. 

Evan Bolter, my director of photography, had shot the “Last of Us” episode with Nick Offerman and suggested him. The second I imagined his voice reading it, I knew he’d be perfect. We didn’t have any money, but we sent him the script and he loved the writing so much that he did it. 

Q. If you opened a door and learned when you were going to die, would you run off and pursue far-flung fantasies or strive for normalcy and security?

Tom Hiddleston and I were debating whether we’d even want to open the door. I would love to say that I would not open the door, just move on and live my life to its fullest on my own. But I know me a little better than that, and I wouldn’t be able to resist opening the door. 

If I did, my hope would be I would spend as much time as humanly possible with my kids. I would travel the world with my family, creating experiences for them and for me that are distinct and unique and not based on a screen – although I would spend plenty of time toward the end trying to watch as many of my favorite movies as possible. 

Renée Victor, who voiced the no-nonsense, sandal-throwing Abuelita in Disney’s animated hit “Coco” and played the wisecracking Lupita on Showtime’s “Weeds,” has died. She was 86.

Victor’s death was confirmed on Monday by a representative, Julie Smith, who said the actor had lymphoma for several years. She died Friday at her home in Sherman Oaks, Smith said, with family by her side.

A post on the Instagram feed of Pixar, which produced “Coco,” said: “We are heartbroken to hear of the passing of Renée Victor, the voice (of) Abuelita in ‘Coco’ and an incredible part of the Pixar family. We will always remember you.”

Victor appeared in 22 episodes of “Weeds” as sassy housekeeper Lupita between 2005 and 2012, among many other TV credits including “ER,” “Matlock” and “The Addams Family.” But she was perhaps best known for what she called the chancla-throwing grandmother in “Coco,” the 2017 family-friendly movie that explored death through the journey of a young Mexican boy to the land of the dead.

“I play the part of ‘Abuelita,’ the chancla throwing grandma that preaches ‘No Music!’” she wrote on Instagram, looking back several years ago. “Enjoy ‘Coco’ with your family this Dia de los Muertos and forever more!”

She also looked back at “The Apostle,” the 1997 movie that Robert Duvall wrote, directed and starred in. “He took a chance on me with this film,” Victor wrote on Instagram. “This is where I got my nickname ‘one take Renée,’” she said, adding laughter emojis. “I had a small role but what a great one! Can somebody give me an amen?!”

Born in San Antonio, Texas, on July 25, 1938, Victor began her performing career as a singer and dancer. She moved to Los Angeles in the 1960s, according to biography material provided by her representatives, where she launched her career singing with prominent big band leaders Xavier Cugat and Pérez Prado. She also taught Latin dancing, including the salsa and tango.

She met her future husband, Ray, during that period, and from 1963 to 1973, they performed together as “Ray & Renée,” a variety show took them around the world — including Australia, where “they enjoyed particular fame,” the materials said.

In the 1970s, Victor hosted the “Pacesetters” public affairs show on KTLA, her representatives said, and by the ’80s had moved into TV and film work.

Her film credits, other than “The Apostle,” included the 2014 horror film “Paranormal Activity 5: The Marked Ones,” “The Doctor” with William Hurt (1991), and “A Night in Old Mexico” (2013), also with Duvall. In 2004, she had a recurring role as Florina Lopez on TV’s “ER,” and the following year was cast in “Weeds.” Other series credits included “Snowpiercer” (2020-2021), “Mayans M.C.” (2022), “Dead to Me” (2020-2022), and Amazon’s “With Love” (2021-2023).

Victor is survived by her daughters, Raquel and Margo Victor, Smith said.

After being introduced to each other by a journalist, they decided to team up, and after the COVID lockdown, they returned to start shooting. However, while spending a day off at the beach, they met Edivan Guajajara, co-founder of Mídia Indígena, Brazil’s leading Indigenous-led journalism collective.

“We were starstruck,” Greene says, adding that soon they agreed, “We need to be directing this film together.”

With Leonardo DiCaprio signing on as an executive producer and Oscar-winner Fisher Stevens as a producer, the resulting film, “We Are Guardians,” tells the story of the Indigenous forest protectors of the Amazon as they try to stave off the loggers and farmers who are destroying their land and damaging the environment far beyond the Amazon’s borders. The film plays at Laemmle Monica Film Center June 6-12.

The film is shot verite style, emphasizing the work of people on the ground, but it explains the science and points blame at those the film argues are complicit in the rapid and devastating deforestation, including local and national officials, then-president Jair Bolsonaro, and multinational corporations such Cargill, JBS, Walmart and more.

Greene, Grobman and Guajajara (through an interpreter) recently spoke by video about the film. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Q. Edivan, was your community open to this project and for you to work with Chelsea and Rob? Or were they wary?

Guajajara: We had a little bit of fear because where I’m from had been one of the bloodiest territories in the region because of the invaders and the loggers for the previous five years so media outlets wanted to know what was happening but whenever a team came, they would do a story, but would never return and nothing would be done about it. So some people inside the territory were indeed suspicious. 

It didn’t change overnight, but through time. They saw Chelsea and Rob were committed to showing what was really happening. And the documentary is an important tool for the visibility of our fight and for recognizing the Indigenous leadership of the area.

Greene: Other people extract stories and don’t return, but we came back four years in a row and spent quality time and returned on all our promises, and we’re still helping the communities get supplies.

Grobman: Edivan connected us with his community and helped us navigate those relationships. But he was also a real leader in the storytelling elements of how he sees this fight and how he sees what’s going on in the Amazon. He helped us understand what was going on from the Indigenous perspective because it really is a different way of looking at the forest and the world.

Q. The film notes that more than 600 Indigenous people have been murdered in the last decade over this land. But it also shows the Guardians increasing their formal training for stopping the invaders. Some tactics, like using drones, seem safe, but is there concern about increased confrontation?

Greene: There are statistics showing that Indigenous territories and protected areas that have some sort of guard, groups of people doing territorial monitoring have fewer instances of invasion and deforestation. Even if the Guardians don’t have the same power as the police, they can report it to the police and there’s a presence there. Of course, there are instances of tragedy, but the trainings will help – they’re learning techniques of violence de-escalation. They have women who go in first and try to talk to the invaders. Using the drones obviously helps them record the deforestation from afar and then report that to the police and then they can decide if they need to go there and how to approach that. 

Q. The film also spends time with some Brazilian loggers and farmers, hearing their side. Why was it important to humanize them?

Grobman: To understand what’s going on in the Amazon, you need to understand many different sides of this issue. The film is trying to make a statement about the interconnection of all of us, that we all are a part of this, but we also need to listen to one another. 

These people are in an unfortunate situation, and they need a different way of living that requires education and systemic change. It’s not necessarily their fault. So we wanted to give voice to the people that you might quickly label as the enemy or perpetrators of this destruction when, in fact, like the bigger multinational companies are the real perpetrators.

Greene: There’s no solution without the inclusion of the people who live in those communities. 

We also reached out to representatives from politicians, the bigger ranchers and companies like Cargill and JBS. We did manage to get some interviews but they didn’t feel authentic or compelling.

Q. Bolsonaro is a major villain in the film, yet it’s also clear the problems pre-date him and go far beyond him. The film shows him losing the election. Is that cause for hope or is the system too deeply poisoned?

Greene: Last year was the worst fire season since 2019, and we’re in the worst drought the Amazon has ever seen. So we’re at a climactic tipping point where the Amazon can’t produce enough rainfall to support the tree species that live there. And deforestation, which decreased a lot after the election, has continued. We’re still in a capitalistic system that’s fundamentally broken so we’re cutting down our very life source.

Q. Is there any hope? The film shows Indigenous women running for, and winning, seats in Congress?

Greene It’s a really positive and inspiring step. These international companies and banks pay the men in office to erode environmental laws, so we need women in leadership, especially Indigenous women.

Guajajara: This is positive. The president has no power to transform things. And I think this movie, which shows our people as guardians, is a very positive factor. It shows we can do things a certain way; we can show right from wrong. Just the fact that I’m speaking to you, connecting with people from outside of our region is already a big thing. Of course, we won’t change the world in one day or with one film. But this movie shows that we all need to be guardians.

LONDON (AP) — Actor and comedian Russell Brand pleaded not guilty in a London court Friday to rape and sexual assault charges involving four women dating back more than 25 years.

Brand, who turns 50 next week, denied two counts of rape, two counts of sexual assault and one count of indecent assault. He said “not guilty” after each charge was read in Southwark Crown Court.

His trial was scheduled for June 3, 2026 and is expected to last four to five weeks.

Prosecutors said that the offenses took place between 1999 and 2005 — one in the English seaside town of Bournemouth and the other three in London.

Brand didn’t speak to reporters as he arrived at court wearing dark sunglasses, a suit jacket, a black collared shirt open below his chest and black jeans. In his right hand, he clutched a copy of the “The Valley of Vision,” a collection of Puritan prayers.

The “Get Him To The Greek” actor known for risqué stand-up routines, battles with drugs and alcohol, has dropped out of the mainstream media in recent years and built a large following online with videos mixing wellness and conspiracy theories, as well as discussing religion.

On a five-minute prayer video he posted Monday on social media, Brand wrote: “Jesus, thank you for saving my life.”

When the charges were announced last month, he said that he welcomed the opportunity to prove his innocence.

“I was a fool before I lived in the light of the Lord,” he said in a social media video. “I was a drug addict, a sex addict and an imbecile. But what I never was was a rapist. I’ve never engaged in nonconsensual activity. I pray that you can see that by looking in my eyes.”

Brand is accused of raping a woman at a hotel room in Bournemouth when she attended a 1999 Labour Party conference and met him at an event where he was performing. The woman alleged that Brand stripped while she was in the bathroom and when she returned to the room he pushed her on the bed, removed her underwear and raped her.

A second woman said that Brand grabbed her forearm and attempted to drag her into a men’s toilet at a television station in London in 2001.

The third accuser was a television employee who met Brand at a birthday party in a bar in 2004, where he allegedly grabbed her breasts before pulling her into a toilet and forcing her to perform oral sex.

The final accuser worked at a radio station and met Brand while he was working on a spin-off of the “Big Brother” reality television program between 2004 and 2005. She said Brand grabbed her by the face with both hands, pushed her against a wall and kissed her before groping her breasts and buttocks.

The Associated Press doesn’t name victims of alleged sexual violence, and British law protects their identity from the media for life.

Agathe is celibate by choice. The 30-something hero of filmmaker Laura Piani’s feature debut “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life,” played by the luminous Camille Rutherford, hasn’t so much been ruined by Austen as she has been made acutely aware of her own limitations in both romance and literature.

Neither she nor anyone else is good enough to make any big moves for. So, she sticks to the routine. She works at the legendary Parisian bookstore Shakespeare and Co., and bikes home, where she lives with her sister and young nephew. Sometimes she goes out to dinner. For what it’s worth, Agathe also happens to epitomize French girl chic with her Breton stripes, red pout and effortlessly disheveled hair. There should be Instagram accounts devoted to her navy hooded parka.

Life isn’t bad, it’s just not moving forward. And whatever is going to get her out of this self-imposed rut is going to be something special — she’s read too many great books to accept anything less.

Standards are great and all, but really, of course, it’s Agathe who has to get out of her own way. And she does, one night, in a sake-induced daze in which she dreams up the first couple of chapters of a romance. Her best friend Félix (Pablo Pauly) gives her the push she needs and secretly submits the pages to a Jane Austen writers residency, where she’s accepted and invited to spend a few weeks.

Before she gets on the ferry (a hurdle in and of itself), Félix, a known serial dater and “breadcrumber,” kisses her. It’s the kind of development, a platonic friendship turned complicated, that’s enough to properly distract an already reluctant writer with an impostor complex. When she arrives, there’s another handsome distraction awaiting her: Oliver (Charlie Anson), a British literature professor and Austen’s “great great great great nephew” who thinks that the “Pride and Prejudice” author is overrated. Agathe doesn’t know he also speaks French until after she’s complained about his arrogance to her sister within his earshot.

It’s a classic kind of setup, not exactly Mr. Darcy, but not not that either. Shared lodgings, even at a rather large, idyllic English estate, only ratchet up the will-they-won’t-they tension as they see each other everywhere: walks in the woods, breakfast, after-dinner readings. And it’s not without its slightly more cliche hijinks, like Agathe stripping down to nothing and opening a door to what she believes is the bathroom. It’s not.

Piani has constructed a rare gem in “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life,” which manages to be literary without being pretentious. Its title is cheekily hyperbolic but has some truth to it as well. Modern romances for Austen disciples are bound to disappoint but, in this environment, they can justify having a costumed ball. The event is a swoony, romantic affair where we get to see the love triangle play out in all its glorious awkwardness.

But while “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life” certainly qualifies as a romantic comedy, the question of whom she ends up with is kind of beside the point. Don’t worry, choices are made, but the way it plays out is both unexpected and gratifying — a clear-eyed portrait of why Agathe’s singledom is not the problem. There’s even a Frederick Wiseman cameo involved.

Ultimately, this is a movie about a woman taking a bet on herself for perhaps the first time ever. Her actualization is not going to come through a boyfriend, a job or a makeover, but by sitting down and finally putting pen to paper. It may not be a strict adaptation, but it has Jane Austen’s soul.

“Jane Austen Wrecked My Life,” a Sony Pictures Classics release in theaters Friday, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for “some sexual content, nudity, language.” Running time: 94 minutes. Three stars out of four.

In the film, Thornton, whose friend Cate Blanchett later joined to act and produce, envisioned a Catholic orphanage for young Aboriginal boys in a remote part of Australia during the war years of the 1940s. The boys arrive from one culture with its traditions and beliefs, and leave with new teachings and tenets instilled in them.

The story begins as a new boy is delivered to the orphanage late on night. As he is taught the ways of the Catholic Church in the days that follow, he grows fascinated by a large crucifix in the chapel even as he holds tightly onto his Indigenous roots and the supernatural elements his own faith contains.

“It’s slightly personal, because the first time I’d seen Jesus on a cross was when I was 12,” says Thornton, himself an Aboriginal Australian, on a recent video call with Blanchett. “I was sent to a monastic Benedictine boarding school, and I’d sort of seen pictures of the bloke up there, but I’d never seen a life-sized personal one in a church.

“So the first time I walked into a church, I completely missed the mass because I was just staring at this bloke up there being tortured, waiting for him to blink,” he says. “It kind of scared the hell out of me.”

Thornton says he never really understood the Christianity taught by the Catholic brothers, but then his own Indigenous spirituality presented him with unknowable mysteries, too.

“That’s what’s exciting about it, in a strange way,” he says. “If you don’t understand it, it’s much more fun.”

Each new draft ended up in his sock drawer, Thornton says, until one of his late-night lockdown phone calls with Blanchett unlocked something, leading to the release of “The New Boy” in limited theaters on Friday, May 16.

“We were talking about ‘life’s too short, hey, let’s do something together,’” Thornton begins.

“We were just chatting about everything, as people had the space and inclination to do during the pandemic,” Blanchett says, taking over the story. “We had these sort of longform, no cameras on, have a bottle of wine conversations.

“And then you said – he just threw it away – ‘I’ve got something, I was going to send it to you, and you can just burn it if you don’t like it,’” Blanchett says, laughing. “I read it, and, I mean, the world was so present, the atmosphere so present. I loved it.

“But I said to Warwick, there’s nothing for me to do,” she continues. “Then Andrew (Upton), my partner, said, ‘What if the priest was a nun?’ That seemed to set something off in you, Warwick, this whole dimension.

“You’d kept saying, ‘I can see the poster,’” Blanchett says of Thornton’s fear that an image of the priest with the boy might give the wrong idea to moviegoers. “Even if we cast the most kind – even if we cast Sam Neill –  a priest with his hand on an Indigenous boy’s shoulder sends alarm bells, rightly so, into an audience’s mind.”

Finding the ‘New Boy’

With Blanchett as Sister Eileen, the nun secretly running the orphanage in the absence of any priest, Deborah Mailman as Sister Mum and Wayne Blair as George, the orphanage handyman, all the major parts were cast. Except for the most important one, that of the character only ever known as the New Boy.

“We were all quietly having conniptions,” Blanchett says of concerns about finding an Indigenous child actor who could handle the challenging part. “What if we didn’t find the New Boy?

“There wouldn’t have been a film,” she says. “He’s in every frame, and the spirit of that actor was absolutely vital.”

The New Boy is seen as a sort of wild child when he is unceremoniously deposited at the orphanage in the middle of the night. Sisters Eileen and Sister Mum treat him with love and affection, helping him grow comfortable in his new home. George teaches him how to do the farm chores that all the boys are expected to perform.

And after a few bumps and bruises, the other orphan boys, all of them also Indigenous, though now comfortable in the shirts and sandals the New Boy eschews, also take him into their fold.

Still, the New Boy and his ways remain as much a mystery as his new community is to him. At night, he sleeps beneath his cot in the communal barracks, and conjures a spark of light – real or imagined, the film leaves that to viewers –  that floats and darts around him, comforting him in his new home.

“I remember getting an email from Warwick, and he just said, ‘Shut the front gate, we found him,’” Blanchett says of her first awareness of Aswan Reid, who was 10 or 11 at the time and had never before acted. “I thought maybe that’s partly his relief and desperation. And then I met Aswan, and he is so charismatic.

“And watching him, the speed with which –  having never been on a film set, having never been off-country – the speed with which he learned the process,” she says. “What it meant to hit your mark, how you worked with the dolly grip, about being in focus and out of focus. Just watching him, within a matter of days, learn how to use a frame was astonishing.

“He has such an intense curiosity and intelligence and spirit –  and it wasn’t easy,” Blanchett says. “What was so beautiful was watching this little band of brothers [Reid and his fellow child actors] form so that when there were times where he had to get up well before dawn, there would always be one of the other boys get up with him, and make sure he had breakfast and travel with him so he was never by himself.”

Faiths collide

With Blanchett as Sister Eileen, filming began with a feminine point of view that felt much more visceral, Blanchett says.

“It’s about absent fathers, which is so alive,” she says of both the missing priest at the orphanage and missing fathers of its wards. “I think in any religion, but particularly one with an Indigenous lens on it, what happens when the male models are degraded, and what burden do the women have to bear? I found that very poignant, actually, and –

” –  it scared the hell out of me,” Thornton interjects. “The only connection I had to the priest, because I don’t know enough about Catholicism or Christianity, is that he was a male. Suddenly, we make it a female. Now it’s completely scared the hell out of me.”

But that was fine, he adds. Actually great.

“I love going into films with absolute fear or characters and discovery,” Thornton says. “That’s very special for me to go to that place, and I have no idea, and that’s exciting.”

While on its surface, “The New Boy” is about the collision of different kinds of faith, it’s actually more about the inevitable and centuries-old clash between Indigenous people and others who arrived as colonizers.

“I didn’t want to go into it with that sort of worthy kind of victimization,” Thornton says. “It’s just this natural progression of what happens as colonization travels the world.

“If you imagine a field of wheat, that it’s been planted by a colonizer, and there’s these native sort of weeds in between the wheat,” he says, laughing. “It’s a terrible, terrible notion to call us Indigenous people weeds, but we get colonized by this wheat and then the harvesters come through and you don’t even see us.

“It’s kind of putting us on the map,” Thornton continues. “Like, we are there as well, and that’s kind of the bigger picture for me. I was never really like, ‘A certain power wins.’ I really didn’t want to go there even though Christianity kind of does win.

“It was more about saying that we were here, and we are here, and we still have special magic.”

An empathetic eye

As a White Australian who grew up familiar with Christianity, if not particularly religious, Blanchett came to Sister Eileen with empathy for her decisions, if not endorsement of her actions.

“One of the things I found interesting about Sister Eileen, there’s a war going on,” she says of both World War II and the struggle between Australia’s Indigenous and non-native populations then and now. “And the inevitability of that particular machine, particularly if you’re a young Indigenous child, is that you will be eaten up by it.

“So trying to stave off that inevitability, she’s shut the outside world out, and sort of willfully created this anxious sort of innocence,” she says. “And she’s fostered this innocence that the inevitability of the world won’t happen.

“I think she’s desperate for a miracle, and that was something I found very moving,” Blanchett says of Sister Eileen’s desire to save the orphaned boys in every sense of the word. “I think she’s alive to the miracle of the new boy, but really sort of fearful of the change that he represents. Ultimately, when she’s asked to attempt to fly, she’s profoundly mortal.”

“The New Boy” premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2023, followed by its release in Australia, where it became one of the most acclaimed films of that year. Aswan Reid won best actor at the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards, where the film earned a total of 12 nominations.

Blanchett, Blair and Mailman were each nominated in acting categories, with Mailman winning for best supporting actress. Thornton received nominations for directing, screenplay and cinematography. He won the AACTA Award for the latter category, a well-deserved honor, for “The New Boy” is a gorgeously shot film, mixing painterly vistas of rural Australian wheatfields with intimate chiaroscuro scenes inside the orphanage.

“I started off with cinematography, so I still shoot my own films,” says Thornton, who also won the prestigious Gold Frog for best cinematography at the 2023 Camerimage, the prestigious international cinematography awards.

“The funniest thing about this film is that I pitched to everyone earlier and they all asked, ‘What’s it going to look like?’” he says. “I’d say it looks like ‘Days of Heaven,’” [The 1978 Terrence Malick film was beautifully set and shot amid its own endless wheatfields.]

“The irony is, I’ve never seen ‘Days of Heaven,’” Thornton says, laughing. “Everyone needs to see an image, and they need to put it in the box and tie it in a bow so they understand it. Well, the box was empty for me, but I gave them an image.

“Hey, I lied and I survived,” he says. “It’s a strange, strange way to live.”