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Well folks, after a rather long and brutal winter (at least for me here in Buffalo), we are finally heading into the wonderful warmth of summer, but with that blast of sunshine and steamy humidity comes the mid-year drought of major film fests. After the Sheffield Doc/Fest concludes on June 10th and AFI Docs wraps on June 21st, we likely won’t see any major influx in our charts until Locarno, Venice, Telluride and Tiff announce their line-ups in rapid succession. In the meantime, we can look forward to the intriguing onslaught of films making their debut in Sheffield, including Brian Hill’s intriguing examination of Sweden’s most notorious serial killer, The Confessions of Thomas Quick, and Sean McAllister’s film for which he himself was jailed in the process of making, A Syrian Love Story, the only two films world premiering in the festival’s main competition.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies! David Crook’s play, The Truth Teller, attempts to examine just this: the lies we tell ourselves and each other. Is it possible to be completely honest all the time? Is it possible to turn a compulsive liar into an honest man or woman? Is it sometimes better to tell white lies so as to keep our relationships in tact? Our main character, Jonathan (Tom Radford) is the compulsive liar in question and is sent to a very expensive shrink, Shane (Gary Cady) , by his girlfriend Mary (Martha Barnett ) who has decided that he Must be cured of his shoddy ways.

Jonathan then finds himself in the hands of his new therapist who proudly quotes his favourite German philosopher Immanuel Kant proclaiming that “a lie always harms another”. In fact, Jonathan ends up harming Mary one more time...

I can't remember a time I went to the Seattle International Film Festival (Siff) press launch and looked over the list of films and saw so many I was interested in seeing. The claim to fame for over the years is to call it the largest and most-highly attended festival in the United States. This is a fact I've often taken issue with as I don't equate quantity with quality. Granted, there has been a large number of quality features to play the fest over the years, including Golden Space Needle (Best Film) winners such as Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985), My Life as a Dog (1987), Trainspotting (1996), Run Lola Run (1999), Whale Rider (2003) and even recent Best Director winner, Michel Hazanavicius's Oss 117: Nest of Spies in 2006. That said, looking over this year's crop of films I see a lot of films I will be doing my absolute best to see.

The 17th edition of the three-day Forum, the annual co-financing market component of the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam was held earlier this week with a series of pitches by filmmakers seeking input and potential co-production support from some of the biggest names in international broadcasting. Subjects on day one were varied - from the devastating environmental impact of tar sand oil development in Canada in Tom Radford & Niobe Thompson’s “Tipping …...