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Based on a true story, “Lost on a Mountain in Maine” follows 12-year-old Donn (Luke David Blumm), who fights his way through a terrifying storm on a mountain away from his family. Although an adventurous tale of a young boy’s survival, it also works as an introspection of masculinity in hindsight. Since the film is based on a real story from 1939, it presents the accounts of people who witnessed this incident and are now in or past their twilight years. The script interweaves them with a few bits of family drama along with its survivalist tale.

The film begins with Donn’s father, Donald (Paul Sparks), returning home from his job as a traveling salesman. While Donn and his brother Ryan (Griffin Wallace Henkel) are in a friendly mood, Donald isn’t. He is self-serious to a fault and expects his sons to grow into strong men. He wants...

Horse-drawn carriages were back on the streets of Troy, N.Y., in August, alongside equipment trucks, honey wagons and camera cranes. HBO’s “The Gilded Age” had returned to shoot scenes for the second season of the series, which explores the lives of monied families and the people who serve them in 1880s New York. The previous year, the production had covered the streets of Troy’s Monument Square with truckloads of dirt to turn it into a period-correct downtown Manhattan shopping district, and also utilized other well-preserved 19th century structures in the town, 152 miles north of Manhattan, including the Rensselaer County Court House, the Savings Bank Music Hall and the Troy Public Library, along with its Washington Park neighborhood and the Oakwood Cemetery.

“The buildings [in Monument Park] were built between the 1820s and 1880s, and many of them are perfectly restored,” says the show’s location manager Lauri Pitkus. “You can...

The region’s golden light and natural beauty first attracted the Hudson River School — Thomas Cole, Frederic Church and Albert Bierstadt — whose luminous paintings captured the local landscape. While the region has long attracted filmmakers, Hollywood on the Hudson has never quite arrived. Until now. As Manhattanites throng the area approximately 90 miles north of the city, there’s hard data to show there’s never been more production upstate, from Beacon to Troy, and Fleischmanns to Amenia.

According to the Hudson Valley Film Commission (Hvfc), the area hosted no fewer than 15 film and television projects in the second quarter of 2021, including “The White House Plumbers,” “The Sex Lives of College Girls” and “Life & Beth.” The three-month period was the most active production in the commission’s 21-year history, with direct spending estimates amounting to $25 million.

“The good news is that those productions spend enormous amounts of money,” Hvfc director Laurent Rejto says.

The Woodstock Film Festival, New York’s self-declared “fiercely independent” weeklong cinema celebration, wrapped its 20th edition on October 6. Held within the welcoming milieu of the Hudson Valley, the forward-thinking gathering hosts films, panels, parties and award ceremonies not just in Woodstock, but also in neighboring towns Rosendale, Rhinebeck, Saugerties and Kingston.

At the heart of Wff are co-founders Laurent Rejto and Meira Blaustein, who, along with a number of devoted industry stalwarts (many have resided in the region), ensure that smart, inclusive programming of contemporary narratives, documentaries, shorts and animations are screened. It’s why the festival has developed an identity all its own.

In honor of the Woodstock Film Festival’s 20th anniversary, Variety sat down with Rejto to look back at the road taken to reach the milestone.

What was your vision for the Woodstock Film Festival two decades ago?

The vision was to create a filmmaker-friendly festival,...

On a hot Texas summer night in 1989, family man Richard Dane (Dexter's Michael C. Hall) awakens to the sound of a burglar breaking into his home. In a panic, he shoots the intruder dead-but this nightmare is only just beginning. Although he's hailed as a small-town hero, Dane soon finds himself fearing for his family's safety when the burglar's ex-con father, Ben (Sam Shepard), rolls into town; hell-bent on revenge. However, not all is as it seems. Misled by the cops and desperate for answers, Richard embarks on an increasingly berserk, bloodstained quest to discover what really happened that night. The plot twists pile up faster than the body count in this blistering mystery of vengeance and vice, directed by Jim Mickle (We Are What We Are, Stake Land) with scene-stealing performances from Sam Shepard and Don Johnson as a pair of Texan badasses. Based on the novel by...

Director Jim Mickle's We Are What We Are makes its debut on Blu-ray and DVD January 7. This thriller follows the patriarch (Bill Sage) of a reclusive family trying to survive during an intense rainstorm, which threatens to expose their secrets as the authorities look closer into this strange household. We have a contest lined up where our readers can win copies of the Blu-ray, plus a "people meat chart" apron. These prizes will go fast, so take a look at how you can win below.

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In We Are What We Are, a seemingly wholesome and benevolent family, the Parkers have always kept to themselves, and for good reason.

Factory 25 has released the first trailer for the drama Francine, the narrative directorial debut of Brian M. Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky. Oscar winner Melissa Leo stars as the title character, a woman trying to reclaim her place in society after serving time in prison. Take a look at the first footage from this Sundance sensation.

Francine - Trailer

After serving time in prison, Francine settles down in small-town North America. Through a series of temporary jobs, she tries to regain a foothold in society. However, this security proves just as elusive as the connections she tries to forge with people in the town. As her human relationships falter, Francine looks to animals for support, a development that leads her in a tragically wrong direction.

Brian M. Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky's fiction debut Francine, a near silent film, focuses on the title figure during a brief chapter in her life.

Francine, the debut feature from co-directors Brian M. Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky had it’s first Sx screening yesterday having recently garnered some great reviews coming out of this years Berlinale. The filmmakers along with their star Melissa Leo, were kind enough to sit down with us before the screening to to talk a little about the film ahead of it’s North American Premiere.

So your film is screening in a couple of hours. I look forward to seeing it with an audience. Can you tell us a little about your picture?

Melanie Shatzky: Well the film is about a woman who has been incarcerated for a chunk of her life. She’s just been released from prison and is trying to readjust to life in the free word. She has a hard time connecting with people and instead finds solace in animals.

And that’s about all...