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Ethiopian legend has it that khat, a stimulant leaf, was found by Sufi Imams in search of eternity. Inspired by this myth, Jessica Beshir’s “Faya Dayi” is a spiritual journey into the highlands of the walled city of Harar, a place immersed in the rituals surrounding this plant, Ethiopia’s most lucrative cash crop today. Through the prism of the khat trade, the film weaves a tapestry of intimate stories of people caught between government repression, khat-induced reverie, and treacherous journeys across the Red Sea, and offers a window into the dreams of the youth who long for better lives elsewhere....

Workers at the nonprofit cinema Film Forum in New York City voted unanimously for unionizing in an election held Friday. The union, affiliated with Technical, Office, and Professional Union Local 2110 UAW, will include full- and part-time theater, facilities, administrative, programming, and publicity staff. The results are expected to be certified by the National Labor Relations Board within a week, at which point the union will begin negotiations with Film Forum management....

Every so often, a publication (this week, it was The Los Angeles Times) sics reporters on the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. People are “shocked, shocked!” to find out how much this coterie of 87 Hollywood correspondents from around the world are wined and feted and coddled and bribed with swag. And: how white they are. This Sunday will reveal whether this group (which has no Black members) voted for any people of color....

And yet, even Gerwig was scared of Barbie. “It was terrifying,” Gerwig recalled during an episode of Dua Lipa’s “At Your Service” podcast on Friday. “I think there’s something about starting from that place where it’s like, ‘Well, anything is possible!’ It felt like vertigo starting to write it. Like, where do you even begin? What would be the story?” That fear, the filmmaker said, was precisely why she decided to commit to taking on the project....

“I would love to direct ‘Catwoman,’” Berry recently told “Jake’s Takes” (via Total Film). “If I can get ahold of that now, knowing what I know, having had this experience [on ‘Bruised’], and reimagine that world the way I reimagined this story. ‘Bruised’ was written for a white Irish Catholic 25-year-old girl, and I got to reimagine it. I wish I could go back and reimagine Catwoman and redo that. Have a redo on that, now knowing what I know [about directing]....

Speaking to /Film ahead of the HBO Max streaming release of “Earwig and the Witch,” Hayao Miyazaki’s son and fellow filmmaker Goro Miyazkai said his father’s retirement got so aimless that Hayao “needed to create something in order to live, basically.” Studio Ghibli reopened its animation facility for production on “Earwig” and Hayao’s upcoming feature film “How Do You Live?,” the experience of which Goro touched upon. “I did ‘Ronja, the Robber’s Daughter,’ a TV series, with an outside studio....

“The Green Council,” written by Sara Hess and directed by Claire Kilner, picks up right after the death of Viserys Targaryen (Paddy Considine), with his wife and council planning how to pass the crown to son Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) instead of his named heir Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy). All of this roughly follows George R.R. Martin’s “Fire & Blood,” which tells the history of House Targaryen, but at least two major scenes are unique to the show....