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Some of the biggest names in nonfiction film are heading to Poland for the 22nd edition of Millennium Docs Against Gravity, one of the largest documentary festivals in the world.

The event running from this Friday until May 18 (and online from May 20-June 2) will welcome Oscar winners Asif Kapadia and Alex Gibney, Oscar nominees David France, Rémi Grellety, and Guy Davidi, and fellow award-winning filmmakers Lauren Greenfield, Mark Cousins, Andres Veiel, Alexis Bloom, Chester Algernal Gordon, Mads Brügger, Zackary Drucker, Brandon Kramer, Rachel Elizabeth Seed, among many others.

The festival, which runs simultaneously in seven cities including Warsaw, Łódź, and Gdynia, will showcase almost 180 films from around the world, a number of which are very likely to wind up in the next Oscar race.

“I think it’s going to be amazing,” says artistic director Karol Piekarczyk. “These films are absolutely incredible, and I can’t wait for people to see them.

Dogwoof has acquired international sales rights to “André Is an Idiot,” directed by debut filmmaker Tony Benna. The film premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, where it won both the Audience Award and the Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award in the U.S. Documentary Competition.

Dogwoof will present the film to buyers at Cannes, with a market screening planned for May 15. Submarine Entertainment is handling North American rights.

When André, a brilliant idiot, learns he is dying from a disease that could have been detected with a colonoscopy, he decides to document his final journey. An iconoclastic ad man, he defied convention throughout his life. True to form, André approaches mortality with his trademark humor and curiosity, determined to learn how to die both happily and ridiculously.

In a unique collaboration with Benna, André’s stories and musings are brought to life through imaginative stop-motion animation, capturing his distinctive...

Set amidst spring in wine country, every year the 28th Sonoma International Film Festival offers a festive fusion of food, film, and community. Opening March 19, the festival wrapped things up on March 23 after five days of specialty screenings and culinary pleasures with its Grand Jury and Audience awards (see below). This celebration of cinema showcased 93 films from 21 countries, accompanied by an array of film talent and culinary stars. The festival’s diverse lineup included 39 narrative features, 16 documentary features, and 38 short films.

The festival opened with the World Premiere of documentary “Sweet Störy” (Utopia), directed by Sarah Justine Kerruish and Matt Maude, about saving a colorful café in a remote area of Sweden. The Centerpiece Film was “On Swift Horses” (Sony Pictures Classics), a period relationship drama starring Daisy Edgar-Jones, Jacob Elordi, and Will Poulter, and the festival closed with Andrew Ahn’s “The Wedding Banquet” (Bleecker), starring Bowen Yang, Lily Gladstone,...

Lebanese-Canadian director Amber Fares’ Coexistence, My Ass!, about how Israeli comedian Noam Shuster Eliassi uses humour to illuminate the shared humanity of both Israelis and Palestinians, won the top prize at the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival (Tidf), which closed on March 16.

Coexistence, My Ass! was awarded the €12,000 Golden Alexander-Dimitri Eipides prize hot on the heels of picking up the special jury award in the World Cinema Documentary section of the Sundance Film Festival in January.

At Tidf, it also won the Council of Europe €5,000 Human Rights in Motion award and secured a place in the pre-selection shortlist for the best documentary Oscar.

Israeli comedian Noam Shuster-Eliassi and director Amber Fares took home the Golden Alexander at the 27th Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival for “Coexistence, My Ass!,” a film that follows Shuster-Eliassi’s sharp, satirical approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The win secures the film’s eligibility for Academy Award consideration in the Best Documentary Feature category.

The Thessaloniki jury praised the documentary’s construction, calling it a “fearless challenge to every taboo in the region,” noting how Shuster-Eliassi’s humor allows audiences to confront deep-seated biases. The comedian, whose one-woman show serves as the foundation for the film, uses her multilingual fluency in Arabic and Hebrew to highlight the contradictions of the conflict and the limits of coexistence in Israel. During her acceptance speech, she reflected on her family’s activist background, acknowledging her father, who was imprisoned for refusing military service in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Shuster-Eliassi also referenced the recent...

Updated to add more details on Noam Shuster-Eliassi’s background and work. Coexistence, My Ass!, a film about Israeli comedian Noam Shuster-Eliassi who dares to insist on complete equality between Israelis and Palestinians, won the Golden Alexander Sunday at the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival, TiDF’s top award.

Shuster-Eliassi grew up north of Jerusalem in Neve Shalom/Wāħat as-Salām — Oasis of Peace — a cooperative community where Jews and Palestinians choose to live together. She attended the festival awards ceremony in the Greek port city of Thessaloniki along with director Amber Fares, who is Lebanese Canadian, and fellow members of the production. The comedian, whose one-woman show that she developed at Harvard is woven throughout the documentary, acknowledged her parents who were on hand for the event.

“My first political teacher, my father, is up there [in the balcony]. The first memory I have of my...

Amber Fares’ “Coexistence, My Ass!,” which centers on Israeli comedian Noam Shuster-Eliassi, won the Golden Alexander in the International Competition section of the 27th Thessaloniki Intl. Documentary Festival Sunday.

The International Competition jury, which is composed of director and photographer Dimitris Athiridis, filmmaker Lauren Greenfield and producer Signe Byrge Sørensen, said: “With a compellingly constructed narrative and a fearless challenge to every taboo in the [Middle East] region, Noam’s disarming voice and humor invite the audience to a deeper understanding as we laugh and cry with her, and reconsider our biases with open minds and hearts.”

The film, which was described by Variety‘s reviewer as “urgent, eye-opening and enormously compassionate,” won the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Freedom of Expression at the Sundance Film Festival.

The Thessaloniki win makes the film eligible for the documentary category of the next Academy Awards.

The Silver Alexander in the International Competition went to “Free Leonard Peltier,...

It’s an elusive dream for so many docmakers: to impact legislation, to find justice, to make a difference. To change the world. With Free Leonard Peltier, filmmakers Jesse Short Bull (Lakota Nation vs. United States) and David France (How To Survive a Plague) achieved their eponymous goal: Seven days before the world premiere of their film at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival in January, President Joe Biden, in his last act before leaving office, issued a clemency order, commuting Peltier’s sentence to home confinement.

The Native American activist had served nearly 50 years in a federal prison, having been convicted of murder of two FBI agents in a shootout at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in 1975. Peltier’s attorneys and supporters would wage a decades-long battle through appeals, writs and petitions to circuit courts, federal courts, the U.S. Supreme Court and three U.S. presidents, alleging numerous...

You would have been hard-pressed to find a timelier film at this year’s Sundance Film Festival than “Free Leonard Peltier,” directors Jesse Short Bull and David France’s documentary about the Native American activist who spent nearly 50 years in prison for the murder of two federal agents, a crime he insists he didn’t commit.

Just days ahead of the film’s Park City premiere, Peltier received clemency from President Joe Biden in one of his last acts before leaving office, sending the filmmakers back to the cutting room to hurriedly incorporate new material into their documentary.

“The announcement came from the White House with 14 minutes left to Biden’s presidency,” says France. “We were watching on our cell phones. The [Trump] inauguration had already begun. Biden was already in the room. The speeches and songs were taking place. And then the word came.”

“Free Leonard Peltier,” which plays this...

As the Thessaloniki Intl. Documentary Festival prepares to host its 27th edition, which runs March 6 – 16, festival director Orestis Andreadakis sees no shortage of threats to truth, freedom and the values on which the democratic order is based. “Four months have passed since the [Thessaloniki Intl. Film Festival], but it seems like we’re already living in a completely different world — unfortunately, not a better one,” Andreadakis tells Variety.

Likening the times to “a historical documentary about the 1930s, screened backwards,” he describes world events as “an educational documentary that taught us nothing. It is a testimony for the horror of fascism and totalitarianism that it seems we have forgotten,” he continues. “It is a film record of a horrific historical reality that some are trying to repeat in the worst possible way.”

This year’s festival begins hardly a fortnight after Russia’s war in Ukraine marked its three-year anniversary, and as a tenuous...

Updated with details on Lauren Greenfield tribute and filmmaker’s master class. The Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival has announced its competition lineups for the March event, a slate of world, international and European premieres hailing from Greece, Paraguay, Kyrgyzstan, Israel, Kenya, the U.S. and other parts of the globe.

The 10 films chosen for International Competition will compete for the Golden Alexander and the Silver Alexander – the festival’s top prizes. The winner of the Golden Alexander will receive a €12,000 award and automatically qualify for Oscar consideration in the Best Documentary Feature category. The Silver Alexander comes with a €5,000 prize.

Scroll for the full list of films selected for International Competition, Newcomers Competition (composed of feature documentaries by young filmmakers), and >>Film Forward Competition (“hosting movies that challenge conventions and utter a bold and daring cinematic language”).

International Competition boasts the world premieres of three Greek documentaries: Bull’s Heart,...

Thessaloniki Intl. Documentary Festival has unveiled the International Competition lineup for its 27th edition, which runs March 6-16. The selection includes three films that had their world premieres at Sundance, “Coexistence, My Ass!,” “Free Leonard Peltier” and “GEN_,” and one that debuts at Berlin, “Under the Flags, the Sun.” The rest are world premieres.

The top prize, the Golden Alexander, is accompanied by a cash prize of 12,000 euros, and the Silver Alexander is accompanied by a cash prize of 5,000 euros. The festival is an Oscar qualifying festival and the film that wins the Golden Alexander will automatically be eligible to submit for Academy Awards consideration in the Documentary Feature category.

Here’s the lineup of the International Competition:

“Bull’s Heart,” Eva Stefani, Greece (world premiere)

Why do we do what we do? This documentary offers an intimate portrait of renowned choreographer and visual artist Dimitris Papaioannou, exploring his creative process.

At its heart, Sundance is about discovery. Some of our brightest, biggest filmmaking stars — we’re talking Steven Soderbergh, Richard Linklater, Ava DuVernay, Paul Thomas Anderson, Lulu Wang, Ryan Coogler, Aubrey Plaza, Catherine Hardwicke, Todd Haynes, Tessa Thompson, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert Eggers, the Duplass brothers, Michael B. Jordan, Amy Adams, Elizabeth Olsen, Brie Larson, Lakeith Stanfield, Miles Teller, Anya Taylor-Joy, and many, many more — first rose to acclaim by bringing their work to Sundance.

In 2025, a year that was long-heralded as one all about new discoveries, that tradition only continued. While this year’s lineup included a number of returning names, like Ira Sachs, Amy Berg, Andrew Ahn, Justin Lin, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, Cooper Raiff, Kahlil Joseph, Heidi Ewing & Rachel Grady, David France, Jesse Short Bull, Ryan White, Sophie Hyde, Jesse Moss & Amanda McBaine, Meera Menon, and Clint Bentley, there were also a hefty number of newbies joining those filmmaking ranks.

Sundance’s Free Leonard Peltier outlines the decades-long efforts to free the Indigenous activist from prison – up to the commutation of his sentence one week before the premiere

Of all the documentaries at the Sundance film festival this year, perhaps none is as timely as Free Leonard Peltier, Jesse Short Bull and David France’s film on the Indigenous activist imprisoned for nearly half a century.

Peltier, now 80 years old, is serving consecutive life sentences for the killing of two FBI agents during a shootout at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in 1975, though he has maintained his innocence. Activists, celebrities and liberation advocates such as Nelson Mandela have called for his release for decades, citing railroaded justice and evidence of prosecutorial misconduct; the FBI and law enforcement, meanwhile, have campaigned vociferously against any commutation of his sentence.

The tech companies behind AI continue to promise filmmakers the ability to do more with less. Historically, that’s a pitch that has been a draw to indie filmmakers. Dating back to the advent of sync sound 16mm film cameras in the 1960s, digital video in the late 1990s, and the inexpensive Dslr cameras in the 2000s, independent and non-fiction filmmakers were at the forefront of experimenting with new technologies to find ways to tell stories, many of which premiered at Sundance. But when it comes to AI, many of those at the 2025 edition of the festival are highly skeptical it can be a tool used to make personal films, while the ethical issues surrounding it make it a virtual non-starter for many.

This question of “How Filmmakers Can Ethically and Artistically Use AI” was the topic of a panel at the IndieWire Sundance studio, presented by Dropbox. Filmmaker and Asteria founder Bryn Mooser,...

It’s the sort of twist no screenwriter would dare invent: “Free Leonard Peltier,” a persuasively well-researched and often infuriating documentary about the American Indian Movement activist convicted nearly a half-century ago of killing two FBI agents, had its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on Jan. 27, 2025 — precisely one week after Joe Biden, as one of his very last official acts as U.S. president, issued a commutation of Peltier’s life sentences.

The relatively brief final sequence in the film is obviously a last-minute addition to a completed feature, but never mind: Dramatically and emotionally satisfying, the scene is a welcome and fitting capper for a story that inarguably earns its happy ending.

It’s a story that has been brought to the screen twice before: Once as the factual inspiration for the fictions of “Thunderheart,” the 1992 drama directed by Michael Apted, starring Val Kilmer and Graham Greene; and again as “Incident at Oglala,...

There are happy endings. There are Hollywood endings. And then there is the ending to the new film Free Leonard Peltier.

Peltier had been imprisoned for well over 45 years when David France and Jesse Short Bull decided to make a documentary about him. The Native American activist is serving two life sentences in federal prison for killing a pair of FBI agents in a shootout at South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in 1975, even as he maintains he didn’t do it. The FBI and other law enforcement groups have campaigned hard against any change in Peltier’s sentencing.

All of that formed the arc of Free Leonard Peltier, which premieres Monday at the Sundance Film Festival. It seemed fated to end like so many stories of Peltier, who is an almost folkloric symbol of Native American independence and resistance — with those hoping in vain for his release. After all,...

Late in Jesse Short Bull and David France’s new documentary Free Leonard Peltier, Native activist Nick Tilsen sings the praises of Leonard Peltier’s sense of humor but expresses a note of concern. Peltier has an edgy sensibility, and Tilsen jokes that it would be bad if, after spending nearly 50 years in prison, Peltier was released and promptly canceled.

It’s an amusing aside that quickly makes two points: Whatever sense of humor Peltier possesses, Free Leonard Peltier hasn’t successfully been able to illustrate it; nor has the documentary actually been able to convey any version of Leonard Peltier’s personality at all. Peltier, here, is an idea and a cause, not a person. To me, that suggests either a flaw in approach or a flaw in focus, since a documentary about the multi-decade struggle to get Leonard Peltier released from prison — rather than a documentary reciting the...

“Free Leonard Peltier,” the new documentary about the imprisoned Indigenous activist, whose life sentence was just commuted to house imprisonment by President Joe Biden days before this film’s Sundance premiere, is a useful primer for viewers new to his case. But it’s not much of a film, and it’s even unclear what kind of film its directors Jesse Short Bull and David France wish it to be.

This is a documentary as a textbook — we’d say it’s like a Wikipedia summary, except checking actual Wikipedia is almost essential for making sense of certain events presented in “Free Leonard Peltier” — providing a broad overview without delving deeper into the humanity of Peltier or why his story matters. It opens in the near-present with Native American activists coming to Washington to plead Peltier’s case, one even saying that overturning Peltier’s conviction has not just been...

Mubi has unveiled their lineup for next month’s streaming offerings, featuring a selection of notable new releases, including Kazik Radwanski’s Matt & Mara, Lisandro Alonso’s Eureka, Monica Sorelle’s Mountains, Marija Kavtardzé’s Slow, Monia Chokri’s The Nature of Love, and more. Additional highlights include films by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Brady Corbet, Peter Weir, and more.

Recently naming Matt and Mara one of the best films of 2024, Blake Simons said, “Kazik Radwanski’s misty-eyed, mostly improvised tale of friends-not-quite-lovers excels at capturing intricacies of the unspoken. There’s a warming tenderness and quiet sadness to Deragh Campbell and Matt Johnson’s restrained interactions. In the final moments, Mara places a crumpled receipt inside a book and returns it to its shelf. Sometimes that’s what a good film is: a leaf through our feelings. Matt and Mara is there on the shelf now, for when we feel like opening that book again.

The documentary selection at this year’s Sundance celebrates the work of multiple Bipoc filmmakers shedding light on untold narratives of both celebrated and unduly neglected figures from their communities.

“For a long time, people from the global South, those who are historically underrepresented, have been telling stories about themselves in their own circles. But they haven’t had the opportunity to share it with the world” says Vietnamese-American director Bao Nguyen, whose revelatory documentary “The Stringer,” a last-minute selection, is having its world premiere at this year’s festival.

Nguyen’s documentary follows the investigation into finding a man only known as “the stringer,” who was responsible for the indelible photograph of a Vietnamese girl on fire running down a road taken during the Vietnam War. In the film, as the journalists relentlessly work to track down the man, a decades’ worth of secrets and injustice carried out in...

The annual IndieWire Studio at Sundance returns for the 2025 edition of the Park City festival. It will feature interviews with the talent behind 25 of the most anticipated films of the festival with discussions taking place in-person on Main Street.

Presented by Dropbox, the IndieWire Studio at Sundance will welcome actors, directors, producers, screenwriters, and documentary subjects for exclusive video interviews with IndieWire’s senior staff starting Friday January 24.

Among the talent we’ll be welcoming to the studio are Jennifer Lopez and Diego Luna (“Kiss of the Spiderwoman”), Josh O’Connor (“Rebuilding”), Sarah Jessica Parker (“The Librarians”), Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson (“Sly Lives!”), Marlee Matlin (“Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore”), Olivia Colman and John Lithgow (“Jimpa”), Alia Shawkat and Callum Turner (“Atropia”), Juliette Lewis (“By Design”), Rachel Sennott (“Bunnylovr”), Joel Edgerton and Kerry Condon (“Train Dreams”), Molly Gordon and Geraldine Viswanathan, Dave Franco and Alison Brie (“Together” plus Franco for “Bubble & Squeak...

Yesterday, amidst the onslaught of news stemming from the second inauguration of President Donald Trump, there is one story you might have missed: Before leaving office, President Joe Biden commuted the life sentence of Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier, who will now serve the remainder of his sentence in home confinement.

This is major news in the world of indigenous resistance. Peltier is one of the surviving members of the American Indian Movement of the 1960s and ’70s, and his 50-year imprisonment spurred a new generation of activists. It’s also a topic that is at the heart of co-directors David France and Jesse Short Bull’s new film “Free Leonard Peltier,” which is slated to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on Monday, January 27. The film’s Sundance blurb advertises that, in looking at the contentious conviction of Peltier for two counts of first degree murder, “a new generation of...

Sundance, as ever, is coming, and fast. Today, the nonprofit Sundance Institute announced the 87 feature films and six episodic projects selected for the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, with more announcements expected in the coming weeks. While the festival may be moving in 2027, for 2025, it will be out in full force in its traditional home of Park City, Utah.

This year’s lineup includes a number of returning names, including Ira Sachs, Amy Berg, Andrew Ahn, Justin Lin, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, Cooper Raiff, Kahlil Joseph, Heidi Ewing & Rachel Grady, David France, Jesse Short Bull, Ryan White, Sophie Hyde, Jesse Moss & Amanda McBaine, Meera Menon, and Clint Bentley. But there are also a hefty number of newbies joining these ranks, as the 2025 program is composed of 36 of 87 (41 percent) feature film directors who are first-time feature filmmakers. Mostly, new work will be on offer, as the film and episodic slate includes 89 (or 96 percent) world premieres.

Fifteen-year-old Doc NYC, America’s largest documentary festival, has revealed its influential 15-film Short List. The festival will run its main lineup of 111 features, 32 world premieres, 24 U.S. premieres, and 129 short films in-person November 13-21 in New York City’s IFC Center, Sva Theatre, and Village East by Angelika and continue online until December 1 with films available to viewers across the U.S. All the films will have theatrical screenings at the festival, often with the directors in person.

Historically, most of the Doc NYC shortlist titles overlap with the Academy’s official 15-film Oscar shortlist. With the notable exception of Netflix’s Oscar-winning “My Octopus Teacher,” for 12 years, the festival has screened the documentary that went on to win the Academy Award, including “20 Days in Mariupol,” “Navalny,” “Summer of Soul,” “American Factory,” “Free Solo,” “Icarus,” “O.J.: Made in America,” “Amy,” “Citizenfour,” “20 Feet From Stardom,” “Searching for Sugar Man,...

Exclusive: The Gotham on Wednesday unveiled the programming you can expect from this year’s edition of Gotham Week, taking place in Brooklyn and Manhattan from September 30 – October 4.

Gotham Week will feature the third-annual Gotham Week Expo and a reimagined Project Market, which will showcase narrative and documentary features, as well as additional projects through the Global Producers Hub. Additionally, previously announced Series Creators to Watch and Branded Storytellers to Watch will be highlighted, with assorted filmmaker conversations and screenings to be presented.

The Gotham’s Project Market is described as a meetings-driven forum connecting new fiction and documentary projects in development with key industry executives interested in identifying projects for development, financing, or distribution. The market will feature sections including Features in Development, Shorts to Features, Spotlight on Documentaries, and Global Producers Hub, each highlighting a wide range of established and rising voices in film and media.

This year,...

Mubi has unveiled next month’s streaming lineup, featuring recent releases such as Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Monster, Tynan DeLong’s Dad & Step-Dad, and Rachel Lambert’s Sometimes I Think About Dying. Additional highlights include Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Passion, Abbas Kiarostami’s Certified Copy, Alex Thompson’s Saint Frances (ahead of the release of Ghostlight), as well as a spotlight on the Ross Brothers following Mubi’s streaming release of Gasoline Rainbow at the end of this month.

“Everybody’s raising this Rashomon thing, but I feel that it’s fundamentally different from Rashomon, because in Rashomon, each character, when they go back through the story again, they actually end up being a different character within the film, within the story, whatever specific story it is,” Hirokazu Kore-eda told us last fall regarding Monster. “Whereas with this, the people don’t change, but the monster who appears, appears in different places.

Exclusive: The Ford Foundation is coming through for documentary filmmakers in a big way.

Today, the nonprofit philanthropic institution announced its latest round of grants under the foundation’s JustFilms division — $4.2 million that will go to support “59 innovative film projects centered on social justice globally and in the United States.”

Among the recipients are Union, the film directed by Stephen Maing and Brett Story that just held its world premiere at Sundance, and fellow Sundance premiere The Battle for Laikipia, directed by Daphne Matziaraki and Peter Murimi. Union, about the battle to unionize an Amazon facility on Staten Island, New York, is in U.S. Documentary Competition at Sundance. The Battle for Laikipia, in World Cinema Documentary Competition at the festival, examines “a generations-old conflict between Indigenous pastoralists and white landowners in Laikipia, Kenya, a wildlife conservation haven.” Roger Ross Williams and Toni Kamau are among the producers of Laikipia.

Exclusive: The Gotham Film and Media Institute and HBO Documentary Films have set the cohort and mentors for the second edition of their Documentary Development Initiative. Launched in 2022, the initiative was designed for storytellers who identify as Bipoc, LGBTQ+, and/or storytellers with disabilities, the goal being to provide resources to develop thought-provoking, character-driven, contemporary ideas for documentary films and limited series.

This year’s participants are Rolake Bamgbose, Dan Chen, Elizabeth Lo, Andy Sarjahani, Krystal Tingle, and Monica Villamizar. Distinguished creatives serving as mentors will include Anthony Caronna, Zackary Drucker, David France, Dawn Porter, Fernando Villena, and Nanfu Wang.

Taking place throughout the fall of 2024, the second annual program will see selected filmmakers receive grants of $50,000 for research and creative development at an early stage. HBO and The Gotham will provide resources and mentorship to support the development of documentary projects and select grantees will have the opportunity to receive additional funding.

Distribution platform Gathr and documentary distribution agency Roco Films have teamed to create Roco Voices, a new speakers bureau.

Roco Voices, launching Nov. 14, will offer live speaking engagements with filmmakers and subject matter experts from Roco Film’s docu film catalog. The initial cohort of filmmakers to debut with Roco Voices include Academy Award winners and nominees Oliver Stone (“Nuclear Now”), Ross Kauffman (“Born Into Brothels”), Justine Shapiro (“Promises”), Sam Green (“The Weather Underground”), David France (“How to Survive a Plague”), Geralyn Dreyfous (“The Square”), and Roger Weisberg (“Sound and Fury”). (All Roco clients have the opportunity to opt-in.)

Powering Roco Voices is Gathr’s talent booking technology. (The company started beta-testing earlier this year.) The collaboration is a one-stop shop for Roco Films’ customers to search, discover, negotiate, and book filmmakers, doc talent and subject matter experts while also licensing impact-driven and educational film screenings.

“The shared experience of...

While Hollywood still has a long way to go in supporting queer stories and storytellers, we’re living in a relative golden age of LGBTQ cinema compared to what has come before. Netflix has not always chosen to support the LGBTQ community in their business decisions, but the streamer has played a major role in increasing the visibility of queer characters and storylines in both film and TV, and in supporting queer creators in telling stories.

As we celebrate Pride month and beyond, let’s take a look at some of the best LGBTQ movies Netflix currently has on offer. If you’re looking for a queer film to watch—satirically funny or devastatingly earnest, heart-stoppingly romantic or casually queer—try one of the many excellent and diverse options below.

Brokeback Mountain

“Brokeback Mountain,” a neo-Western film about two male cowboys who love one another in a deeply homophobic society,...

Jewish Story Partners (Jsp), a Los Angeles-based nonprofit film funding organization, has announced its new slate of grants to 19 documentary film projects.

The org, which was launched in April 2021 with support from Kate Capshaw and Steven Spielberg’s Righteous Persons Foundation, will distribute $490,000 among these independent films, all of which explore the vast and vibrant terrain of the Jewish storytelling space. The announcement coincides with Jewish American Heritage Month and a commitment from President Joe Biden’s White House administration to develop a national strategy to counter antisemitism and “address increasing awareness and understanding of both antisemitism and Jewish American heritage.”

Since its inception, Jsp has disbursed $2 million in funding to 72 documentaries telling diverse Jewish stories.

On the heels of previous Jsp-funded films that have premiered at Sundance — including Paula Eiselt’s “Under G-d,” Luke Lorentzen’s “A Still Small Voice” and Ondi Timoner’s Oscar-shortlisted and Emmy contender “Last Flight Home...

“Seven Winters in Tehran,” about a 19-year-old Iranian woman sentenced to death for killing the man who tried to rape her, will open the 34th annual Human Rights Watch Film Festival on May 31 in New York City.

The festival, co-presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the IFC Center, will feature 10 documentaries about humanitarian challenges around the world. This year’s edition spotlights themes and topics including the Ukraine conflict (“When Spring Came to Bucha”), climate gentrification and justice (“Razing Liberty Square”), women’s rights (“Draw Me Egypt”) transgender rights (“Into My Name”) freedom of the press (“The Etilaat Roz”) and access to health care in the United States (“Pay or Die”).

“From the war in Ukraine to women’s rights and bodily autonomy, to environmental gentrification and freedom of the press, these films span some of the most pressing human rights issues of our time,” says John Biaggi,...

Arianna Bocco, IFC Films President, is out at the distributor, Deadline has confirmed.

The shocking news to the NYC indie world comes within days after the 17-year IFC vet was feted at the New York Women in Film & Television (Nywift)’s flagship fundraising event, the annual Muse Awards gala.

Bocco will be replaced in the interim by IFC Head of Acquisitions Scott Shooman. The Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions Group and CBS Films vet joined last year. The search for a new long-term replacement is underway. Talk about a revolving door at IFC.

We’re still sorting through what went down here. In the meantime, Bocco posted the following statement on social media, “I have big news to share! After much thought, I have stepped down from my post as President of IFC Films to pursue other opportunities. I’m so proud of the IFC Films team I’ve worked...

The legal principle of “another body” is cited by local and state law enforcement to not pursue charges against the creators of deepfake pornography, content easily generated by online communities that mostly focuses on celebrities and political leaders. The issue is just starting to gain traction as the technology becomes cheaper and easier, and as troubled, vindictive men (both young and old) experiment and take requests on message boards.

While targets of deepfake porn include every actress in Hollywood along with frequent targets of misogyny (e.g. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Greta Thunberg), they do enjoy one advantage that an anonymous college student does not: it would never be assumed to be real nor disqualifying for future prospects.

Another Body is a real story told, like David France’s Welcome to Chechnya, with the assistance of digital facial replacement allowing its subjects to speak anonymously rather than mask faces and voices...

After 40 years in Hollywood, veteran lens and optical systems designer Iain Neil received a standing ovation as he accepted the Gordon E. Sawyer Award, an Oscar statuette, Friday evening at The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Scientific and Technical Awards presentation.

This capped a celebratory gathering of the close-knit entertainment technology community, where 20 innovators were honored during a ceremony in the Geffen Theater at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. At her first SciTech Awards ceremony and the first in-person SciTech presentation since 2019, Academy president Janet Yang opened the show, noting that the Museum was “a fitting venue for our triumphant return.” She told the SciTech community, “I’m in awe of the work you do.”

Due to the stormy L.A. weather, the buffet dinner and after-party were moved from the Dolby Family Terrace to the 5th-floor tea room — and appropriately, the first honorees of the evening...

The Ipcress File

Ipcress File, BBC2, 2.05pm, Sunday, October 2

Michael Caine was busy cementing himself as a household name on the big screen when he took on the role of Harry Palmer in Sidney J Furie's spy thriller, which came out the year after his breakout turn in 1964's Zulu and the year before Alfie. He brings a dash of East End grit to Len Deighton's secret-agent-with-attitude, who is embroiled in a kidnapping and brainwashing plot. Shot with off-kilter angles by cinematographer Otto Heller, we are invited to step into Palmer's disorientation, but Furie always ensures the movie stays grounded in a reality that's a world away from the glitz of James Bond.

Welcome To Chechnya: The Gay Purge, 10.30pm BBC4, Tuesday, September 27

David France's deep dive into the underground network trying to help LGBT+ people whose lives are threatened by the extreme Chechen government is a bleak but urgent watch.

Click here to read the full article.

Oscar-nominated filmmaker David France has signed with CAA.

The New York Times bestselling author and investigative journalist most recently directed the HBO documentary How to Survive a Pandemic, which he also wrote. The film charts the development and distribution of the Covid-19 vaccine, in the U.S. and abroad.

France’s directorial debut, How to Survive a Plague, about AIDS activist group Act Up, was nominated for an Oscar, two Emmys, and a Directors Guild Award. The former Newsweek senior editor went from print journalist to award-winning filmmaker with a documentary that was eventually followed by the book How to Survive a Plague.

France’s credits include The Death & Life of Marsha P. Johnson and Welcome to Chechnya, which earned a Peabody Award for best documentary as the film portrayed a courageous effort to save Chechnya’s queer community from state-sanctioned persecution.

His...

Not that we needed a reminder, but Russia’s recent human rights violations — while flagrant — are sadly not a new phenomenon. David France’s “Welcome to Chechnya” documented the horrific genocide being waged against LGBTQ people in what is now a Russian Republic, a terrifying sign of what could lay in store for LGBTQ Ukrainians. Taking an altogether different tack, the stately period drama “Firebird” tells the true story of an ill-fated military romance between two men in Soviet-occupied Estonia during the late 1970s and early ’80s.

Based on a memoir by Sergey Fetisov, the steamy Cold War drama The film’s tragic throughline won’t break any molds, but with smoldering performances by its two strapping young leads, the target audience is unlikely to care.

Despite the heat of its title, “Firebird” begins in the water as three lithe bodies splash playfully in a dark sea. The horseplay is...

By Glenn Dunks

Documentaries about the Covid-19 pandemic aren’t rare. Just over two years into it, and already a long list of titles exist claiming to offer us insight into some area of the response. Some have worked while others haven’t delivered where you would expect. They have been sometimes rushed, likely out of sheer determination to be completed in time for relevance, little knowing just how deep we would be without a clear exit. Because of this reason, many are dated by the time we get to see them.

How to Survive a Pandemic is unfortunately more of the latter. The film is something of a curiosity for its director David France. Curious because despite having the weight of timeliness on its side, Pandemic lacks the propulsive immediacy of his earlier films How to Survive a Plague and Welcome to Chechnya.

Film Independent today announced that the seventh triennial Sloan Film Summit will take place from April 8-10 at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles.

Returning after a pandemic-imposed break, the 2022 Summit will celebrate the nationwide Sloan Film Program, bringing together over 150 writers, directors and producers, as well as working scientists and representatives from leading film schools and organizations, who work to bridge the gap between science, technology and popular culture.

The Summit will kick off at 5:30 p.m. on the 8th with an opening reception, followed by a screening of Kogonada’s A24 film After Yang, which was awarded the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival and is the recipient of a $50,000 distribution grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The screening will be followed by conversation moderated by producer Jennifer 8. Lee with the film’s creative team, including Kogonada, and...

Non-profit arts organization Film Independent, in partnership with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, has announced that the Sloan Film Summit is officially returning this year after a pandemic-imposed delay. IndieWire exclusively shares the news here.

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation supports films and filmmakers with a science focus. Kogonada’s “After Yang” was awarded the Sloan prize 50,000 distribution grant at Sundance 2022. Past supported filmmakers include Damien Chazelle and Aneesh Chaganty.

This year’s Summit will take place April 8–10 at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, and will feature screenings, workshops, and panels for artists, featuring filmmakers and scientists as they discuss the way art and science interact and can benefit each other. A special keynote address will be delivered by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Andrea Ghez.

The seventh triennial Summit will celebrate the thriving nationwide Sloan Film Program, bringing together over 150 screenwriters, directors, and producers, as well as working...

Two years on from Welcome to Chechnya, David France returns with another rip-roaring take on urgent real-world events with How To Survive A Pandemic, an on-the-ground, in-the-rooms account of the first two years of Covid-19 and the race to produce a vaccine; or what France refers to as our “route out.” With dedicated coverage (he began shooting as soon as two weeks into lockdown) and remarkable insider sources, France has constructed a film he hopes will prove definitive of its time in years to come.

It’s as rigorous as it is selective. France sets a clear plan of action: to examine the greatest global, communal, medical achievement ever. And he sticks to it. It’s not on the same level as Chechnya and all that film’s radical effects and gripping, heart-wrenching urgency, but France (who spent years in long-form reporting) has a knack for bringing real propulsion and emotion to his stories.

It’s another giant week of television, with many movies and TV sharing an overlapping space theme – Marvel Studios’ “Moon Knight” is about a superhero (Oscar Isaac) who transforms under the cover of darkness; Richard Linklater returns to his youth (and the initial United States space program) in “Apollo 10 ½: A Space Age Childhood;” and “Moonshot” features a YA romance that plays out via a voyage to the red planet.

On with the television! To infinity and beyond!

Marvel Studios

“Moon Knight”

Wednesday, March 30, Disney+

Marvel Studios’ latest Disney+ original series (its sixth) is a relatively deep cut character – Marc Spector (played by Oscar Isaac), a man who, depending on the comic book run, is truly inhabited by a deity from ancient Egypt or just deeply unhinged mentally. We are introduced to Spector via one of his alter egos, sheepish British museum employee Steven Grant (Isaac goes full Dick-Van-Dyke-in-“Mary...

A decade ago, when his documentary “How to Survive a Plague” rode a wave of festival acclaim to an Oscar nomination, journalist-turned-filmmaker David France probably didn’t imagine that a similarly titled quasi-sequel was in the cards. A superb overview of the early years of HIV-aids activism in the face of political indifference and ineptitude — ultimately leading to game-changing medication and pharmaceutical policy change — that film has given France a solid grounding for another feature-length study of very different if somewhat comparable global health crisis, centered on the Covid-19 pandemic and the extraordinarily accelerated scientific race for a solution.

Researched and assembled with his characteristic intelligence and thoroughness, “How to Survive a Pandemic” serves as both a valuable potted history of the last two years of medical tumult and relief, and a critical progress report marking work yet to be done. Hardly the first high-profile documentary on the pandemic, but...

‘River’ is in the Highlights strand, with ‘How To Survive A Pandemic’ in Cph:Science.

UK-based sales company Dogwoof has closed deals on two documentaries playing at Denmark’s Cph:dox film festival, which begins today (March 23) in Copenhagen.

David France’s How To Survive A Pandemic has sold to Belgium (Vrt), Spain (Movistar), Denmark (Dr), Netherlands (Nl) and Israel (Yesdocu/Channel 8).

The HBO title will launch on the pay-tv network and streaming platform HBO Max in North America on March 29 and in Latin America the following day. Previously announced deals include to the UK, Germany and Italy (Sky), Norway (Nrk...

Since the beginning of the Covid pandemic, we’ve already seen quite a large number of documentaries tackle the subject. But the upcoming HBO documentary, “How to Survive a Pandemic,” takes a fairly unique angle on the situation.

Read More: ‘Rising Phoenix’ Trailer: HBO’s Two-Part Abuse Doc Featuring Evan Rachel Wood Debuts March 15

As seen in the new trailer for “How to Survive a Pandemic,” the film focuses on the rapid response to the pandemic from the medical community, particularly the scientists who instantly began working on a vaccine.

Continue reading ‘How To Survive A Pandemic’ Trailer: David France’s HBO Doc Puts A Spotlight On Covid Vaccine Development at The Playlist.

From the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker David France (“How to Survive a Plague”) could sense the scale of the threat looming on the horizon. A long-time health reporter who has spent decades documenting the battle against HIV and AIDS, he also knew that it would be up to science to lead the world from the brink of an unprecedented human catastrophe.

The race to develop and rollout a Covid-19 vaccine has been the defining story of recent memory, and it was the director’s need to document “the great unseen work” performed in laboratories across the world that led to his latest feature, “How to Survive a Pandemic.” “This is the largest scientific undertaking of our lifetimes,” France tells Variety, “and it deserved to be chronicled.”

“How to Survive a Pandemic,” which world premieres this week at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, is a kaleidoscopic portrait...

Under different circumstances, the 24th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival might have been a more celebratory affair, with coronavirus restrictions gradually loosening across Greece and the country’s second city hosting an in-person edition of a festival that was among the world’s first to go virtual at the start of the pandemic in 2020.

But with the humanitarian toll rising in Ukraine, as Russia continues its relentless assault of its Eastern European neighbor, festival director Orestis Andreadakis offered a sobering reflection on the eve of opening night on war, cinema and the need for solidarity.

“It’s shocking what is happening,” Andreadakis told Variety, likening the threat to the one faced by Europe during World War II. “After the war, we had this slogan: Never again. Never again to war. Never again to Holocaust. Never again to horror. Every time we repeated this phrase, every time we wrote it on the walls,...

True/False, the preeminent non-fiction festival, returned as an in-person event Thursday, drawing documentary notables and fans of their work to a Missouri college town for the first lineup under the artistic direction of Chloe Trayner.

There were 31 features and 19 short non-fiction films at the fest, which had more of an international tilt than usual and concludes March 6. Eight features, including “Fire of Love,” “I Didn’t See You There” and “The Territory,” had previously debuted virtually at Sundance in January, but screened for the first time for public audiences at True/False.

Their respective directors — Sara Dosa (“Fire of Love”), Reid Davenport (“I Didn’t See You There”) Alex Pritz (“The Territory”) – were among the filmmakers making the trek to Columbia for the 19th edition of True/False. Fellow Sundance 2022 doc directors including Isabel Castro (“Mija”) and Joe Hunting (“We Met in Virtual Reality”) also attended.

“Sundance was amazing, but True...