The SXSW Film Festival has announced its competition selection, opening night TV premiere and other titles for its 2024 edition, which takes place March 8 – 16. From the press release, the titles announced today follow. Opening Night TV Premiere The 2024 SXSW Film & TV Festival’s Opening Night TV Premiere is the highly anticipated Netflix series 3 Body Problem created, executive produced and written by Emmy Award winners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss and Emmy Award nominee Alexander Woo. In this must-watch adaptation of the internationally celebrated bestseller, a young woman’s fateful decision in 1960s China reverberates across […]
Those of us who live in New York are treated each fall to a Whitman’s Sampler of world cinema, a curated selection of highlights from some of the year’s most prestigious international festivals. It’s hardly a large sample size, given the annual output of theatrical films worldwide, but it’s a weathervane nonetheless. Which way were the winds blowing this year? Take what I say below with a grain of salt. I saw 27 feature films at NYFF 61, out of the 44 selections programmed in the Main Slate and Spotlight sections. A modest sample within a modest sample, in other […]
Like many film events this past summer and fall, this year’s Hawai’i International Film Festival found cinema in a bit of an uneasy holding pattern, what with the Hollywood strikes, the after-effects of pandemic production delays, a rising fear of an A.I.-dominated future, and a growing dissatisfaction with commercial cinema’s superhero-centric fixations. But rather than the paranoia and uncertainty that dominated mainland festivals, Hawai’i seemed invigorated by what was rising up in its place. News that much-anticipated titles like Alika Tengan’s feature Molokai’i Bound, Mitchel Merrick’s Native Hawaiian martial-arts actioneer Kūkini, and Zoë Eisenberg’s debut Chaperone had neared completion gave […]
“Things are bad all over,” I thought to myself, as I left ceasefire protests in New York to attend a film festival in Bombay, India, whose recent news cycle included the political persecution of writer Arundhati Roy for a comment made about Kashmir in 2010 — indicating an opportunistically timed defense of occupation. India, too, agreed to send 1,000 workers to Israel as replacements for deported Gazans (before Indian trade unions refused in protest), and the country’s military remains Israel’s biggest arms client. All of this gave me a queasy feeling as I was thrust into the pomp of the […]
Filmmaker and New York’s Metrograph Theater have partnered on a screening series as well as online streaming selection, “25 New Faces: Highlights, Favorites and Deep Cuts.” As the title suggests, it spotlights filmmakers chosen for our popular annual survey of new talent. Three programs run this weekend (Friday, December 15 and Saturday, December 16): one program of short films curated from our 2023 selection and then two drawn from prior years. In addition, a number of the shorts will stream online for Metrograph members. I’ll be there this weekend hosting the screenings along with some of the filmmakers and hope […]
The Sundance Institute announced today the 2024 Sundance Film Festival short film lineup and the 40th Edition Celebration Screenings and Events — programming featuring alumni artists looking back on the festival’s four-decade history. The 40th Edition events will take place the second half of the festival (January 23 – 26) and will include brand-new 4K restorations of Napoleon Dynamite (20th anniversary) Go Fish (30th anniversary), Three Seasons (25th anniversary), and an extended version of DIG! (20th anniversary), featuring over 30 minutes of additional footage, titled DIG! XX. Also showing will be The Babadook and Pariah, and restorations of Mississippi Masala […]
Oxbelly, the Greek non-profit founded by producer and Faliro House founder Christos V. Konstantakopoulos, announced today an open call for the 2024 Oxbelly Retreat, to be held June 22-30 in Costa Navarino, Greece. Screenwriters, episodic writers, and fiction writers will be supported through in-person workshops and/or one-on-one sessions. All expenses for fellows are covered, and there is no application fee. The application deadline is January 19, 2024. From the press release: The Oxbelly Retreat is an annual gathering of international storytellers, dedicated to the exchange of ideas, deepening of craft and broadening of artistic horizons through intercultural dialogue. In 2024, […]
The Sundance Institute today announced the 91 feature films, episodic and New Frontier works that comprise the 2024 40th edition of the Sundance Film Festival. Premieres by Steven Soderbergh, Lana Wilson, Nathan Silver and the Zellner Bros. join debuting filmmakers such as Jazmin Renée Jones, Haley Elizabeth Anderson and River Gallo at the festival, which runs January 18 – 28, 2024 in Park City and Salt Lake City, Utah. A selection of the film’s programming will also be available online from January 25 – 28. Sundance received a record 17,435 submissions this year from 153 countries, with 4,410 being feature […]
Film Independent has announced the nominations for the 2024 Spirit Awards. May December, Past Lives and American Fiction lead the group with five nominations each, while on the television side The Last of Us and I’m a Virgo received four each. Among other independent films receiving nods were Showing Up, We Grown Now, birth/rebirth, Earth Mama and Passages. “This year’s exciting group of Spirit Award nominees reflect the undeniable strength and vitality of independent storytelling – this is the beating heart of film culture today,” said Josh Welsh, President of Film Independent in a press release. “It’s especially thrilling to […]
Celebrating its 30th anniversary next month, the Slamdance Film Festival has announced the full lineup for its 2024 edition, unspooling in Park City and Salt Lake Utah from January 19 – 25. The selection consists of 32 features, of which 17 are World Premieres, 75 shorts, and five episodic series. Oscar-winning filmmaker Carol Dysinger’s One Bullet is the opening night film, and the closing is Vanessa Hope’s Invisible Nation. “Our 2024 Slamdance lineup is a testament to filmmakers who dare to push their stories to the very edge of filmmaking, making it deeply personal yet globally resonant,” said Festival Director […]