News

Italian producer Massimo Cristaldi, who as a production manager worked with masters such as Federico Fellini and Francesco Rosi before setting up his own company and shepherding films including prizewinning drama “Sicilian Ghost Story,” has died. He was 66.

Cristaldi’s death was announced over the weekend by his Rome-based company Cristaldi Pictures in a statement that did not specify the cause.

Born in 1956, Massimo Cristaldi was the only son of prominent producer Franco Cristaldi, the triple Oscar-winner who made Pietro Germi’s “Divorce Italian Style,” Federico Fellini’s “Amarcord” and Giuseppe Tornatore’s “Cinema Paradiso.”

In 1974 Massimo Cristaldi started cutting his teeth in the film business first as a production assistant and eventually, starting in the 1980s, becoming a line producer on many of his father’s productions, working with Fellini, Rosi, Tornatore, and many other Italian cinema greats.

After Franco Cristaldi’s death in 1992, he took over management of...

Belgian banner De Mensen and Keshet International (Ki) have kicked off the shoot of “Diamonds, ” a family crime thriller series penned by Yuval Yefet and Rotem Shamir, the pair behind “Fauda” and “Line in the Sand.”

Ordered by Netflix and Belgian public broadcaster Eén, the series follows a Jewish Ultra-Orthodox family in Belgium’s Antwerp Diamond Square Mile.

The eight-part series stars Belgian actor Kevin Janssens as Noah Wolfson, who returns to Antwerp where he reconnects with his family and the ultra-orthodox Jewish way of life which he had rebelled against. Noah discovers that his brother has ruined the once powerful family business by trading diamonds with sketchy people. Despite tense relations with his parents, brother and sister, Noah attempts to save the business but gets embroiled in a criminal world.

Janssens stars opposite Dudu Fisher, Yona Elian, Mendy Cahan, Ini Massez, Robbie Cleiren, Jeroen Vander Ven, Marie Vinck and Els Dottermans,...