Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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UFO Short Film Lab Announces 2026 Fellows
UFO announces the fellows that will join the latest cycle of the UFO Short Film Lab. The 18-month program supports early-career filmmakers to develop and direct two original shorts, awarding $20,000 ($10,000 per project) to each participant. Additional resources include complimentary rentals of ZEISS’s newest lenses, seminar-style workshop sessions hosted at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) and one-on-one creative mentorship from the UFO team and invited guests. UFO received a record 287 applications for three available fellowship slots. The filmmakers selected for Cycle IV, which kicks off next month, are Hana Elias, Katherine Clary, and Edward Nguyen. The latter […]
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From Fables to Forensics: Five Documentaries from CPH:DOX 2026
CPH:DOX’s 2025 edition opened with Facing War, a documentary presenting the Russo-Ukrainian war through the final year of NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s tenure. Though some critics found the film overly cautious in its presentation of political lobbying, its premiere proved unexpectedly well-timed amid Trump’s return to power and anxieties surrounding European alliances. For CPH:DOX today, as one of the world’s leading documentary festivals, the familiar impulse to pair aesthetic ambition with political mediation feels ever more crucial as wars expand and multiply. Continuing the festival’s Ukraine-focused opening-film tradition, Pieter-Jan De Pue’s Mariinka is exactly the kind of work that […]
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“You Have to Adjust the Sails to the Winds”: Graham Parkes on Wishful Thinking
Love is one of the most powerful forces in the universe. It’s been the subject of some of the best films ever made for good reason, as it’s something that can grab hold of not just your desires, but your very soul as you search for meaning in a life where it can otherwise be lacking. In American filmmaker Graham Parkes’ feature debut, Wishful Thinking, this is made literal as it paints a portrait of a couple, Lewis Pullman’s Charlie and Maya Hawke’s Julie, whose life in the beautifully-shot Portland, Oregon is about to be upended by the discovery that […]
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“Questions of the Soul”: Director Brian Tetsuro Ivie and Star Sydney Chandler on Anima
A lo-fi sci-fi road trip film that reaffirms the magic of discordant personalities finding harmony, director Brian Tetsuro Ivie’s Anima is at once earthy and spiritual. It focuses on Beck (Sydney Chandler), who, on the first day of a new job, is assigned to accompany Paul (Takehiro Hira) to a facility for an end-of-life procedure. Paul has decided to upload his consciousness into a cloud system, which means that anyone who wishes can visit a digitized version of himself. What is thought to be a straightforward journey becomes an existential winding road, as Paul frequently diverts Beck from their course […]
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“We’re Becoming More and More Disconnected as a Society”: Alex Prager on DreamQuil
These are overwhelming times, and disappointment is everywhere. Wouldn’t it be nice to just get away from it all with a nifty procedure and an automated assistant to take care of things? Tempting as the fantasy sounds, Alex Prager’s sci-fi drama DreamQuil offers a counterpoint: how much humanity will we stand to lose in the pursuit of happiness? The more we give up our responsibilities and human messiness to A.I., the more we risk losing the very connections that mean the most to us. In Alex Prager’s feature debut, Carol (Elizabeth Banks) is stuck indoors with her doting husband (John […]
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One Battle After Another Wins Big, Sinners Makes History at the 2026 Oscars
It only took 10 movies, but Paul Thomas Anderson is now, finally, an Oscar winner—a three-time winner in one night no less, with One Battle After Another picking up a total of six Academy Awards including best picture, director, supporting actor, adapted screenplay, editing, and casting. Anderson accepted the top prize with producer Sara Murphy. In his speech, Anderson invoked the five best picture nominees from 50 years ago: Barry Lyndon, Dog Day Afternoon, Jaws, Nashville, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. “There is no best among them,” said Anderson. “There is just what that mood might be that […]
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“Fungi Dictated the Structure of the Movie”: Otilia Portillo Padua on Daughters of the Forest
For generations, Indigenous women in Mexico have understood the vast power of mushrooms—medicinal, culinary, spiritual, toxic. Their knowledge has been calibrated and passed down matrilineal channels, not unlike the mycelial network that connects individual mushrooms to one another underneath rich soil. In Daughters of the Forest, Mexican filmmaker Otilia Portillo Padua documents two specific women, Lis and Juli, who reside with their families in these verdant enclaves. While they both possess a wealth of ancestral knowledge about mushrooms, Lis and Juli hope to distinguish themselves within academia. But there is no tension between homeopathy and science here. Instead, the women […]
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“Billy Could Have Been My Own Brother”: Rachel Mason on Her SXSW Doc My Brother’s Killer
Rachel Mason’s gripping true crime doc My Brother’s Killer is, first and foremost, a love letter. My Brother’s Killer emerged, in part, from Rachel Mason’s previous documentary Circus of Books, named after her parents’ West Hollywood gay porn bookstore, where she grew up enamored by the men who frequented it. Her latest film is also an ode to West Hollywood’s famed yet notorious stretch of Santa Monica Boulevard of the 1990s. Moreover, it is a love letter to a VHS era; a magazine era; a video awards era (ushered in by the likes of Chi Chi LaRue); a cyberpunk era […]
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A Guide to SXSW 2026, From Penis Enlargements to Pagan Mall Employees
Filmmaker is heading to the 40th edition of SXSW, where myself and several talented contributors will be on the ground filing interviews and dispatches from various corners of Austin’s city limits. This year’s lineup is massive—with 119 feature films alone—and we happily assume the daunting role of covering buzzy world premieres and hidden gems alike. Speaking of world premieres, there’s an expected emphasis on genre fare among this year’s crop. Irish low-budget maverick Damian McCarthy scales up with Hokum, a folk-tinged rental house horror that provokes chills through its trailer alone. This releases via Neon just two and a half […]
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ESG, Ross McElwee, and Other Exciting Artists Take Over True/False 2026
The Columbia, Missouri-based True/False Film Festival kicks off its 23rd edition, one that boasts a particularly exciting lineup of non-fiction films, musical performances, and coinciding art installations. Running from March 5–8, the theme for the 2026 program is “You Are Here,” chosen by visiting artistic director Yance Ford. The director of acclaimed docs Strong Island (2017) and Power (2024) is intimately familiar with the politics of place: Nominated for an Academy Award, Strong Island documents the racially-motivated killing of Ford’s brother in Long Island; more broadly, Power charts the creation of modern American policing. Both films have screened at previous […]
