‘The Painted Bird' Director Made a Secret Film Produced by Ben Shapiro — Starring James Franco, Nick Nolte, Emile Hirsch, and Rob Lowe

I don’t think anybody saw this one coming. Václav Marhoul — the Czech director who spent eleven years making “The Painted Bird,” the 169-minute WWII shocker, which premiered in competition at Venice in 2019 — has quietly finished another film. It's called “Confession” (Wyznanie), and it is world premiering next month at the 42nd Warsaw Film Festival.

No press release. No sales agent announcement. No festival-season chatter. It just appeared on WFF’s official website.

The logline, per the festival: “Moscow, 1938. A disillusioned professor named Aleksei is subjected to a brutal interrogation by his former student, Vladimir, inside Lubyanka prison. That's a two-hander in a room — the oldest and most unforgiving setup there is, and one that lives or dies on the faces in it.”

And here's where it gets more interesting. The cast. Rob Lowe, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Nick Nolte, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Emile Hirsch, Dean Norris, and ..James Franco? Not just that, but conservative commentator Ben Shapiro is the main producer? What? I can’t say I’m not intrigued.

Back in 2021, Marhoul announced “McCarthy,” a Joseph McCarthy biopic with Michael Shannon, Emilia Clarke, Dane DeHaan and Scoot McNairy set up at HanWay. That film, as far as anyone can tell, never happened. Five years of silence, and then this instead.

The Warsaw premiere is another peculiar twist. “The Painted Bird” went to Venice competition and became the most-walked-out-of film of the year — a shocking black-and-white war movie — Marhoul spent that whole fall doing damage-control interviews about the reports of mass exits. Warsaw is a terrific festival, but it is not Venice, and a director coming off a Golden Lion nominee does not land at a festival he served on the jury of last year by accident.

This is such a puzzle of a film, but it'll be interesting what kind of journey "Confession" gets after it premieres — will it even get released in the US? I’m still stumped at how this film came out of nowhere. Nobody stays this quiet by accident. Next month we find out why.

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I don’t think anybody saw this one coming. Václav Marhoul — the Czech director of “The Painted Bird” — has quietly finished “Confession” (Wyznanie), and it’s world premiering next month at the Warsaw Film Festival.

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