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A couple of years ago, Kyra Elise Gardner – who happens to be the daughter of special effects artist and puppeteer Tony Gardner, who has been bringing killer doll Chucky (and Tiffany and Glen) to life for the last twenty years – took viewers on a journey through the Child’s Play franchise with the documentary Living With Chucky. Now, Deadline reports that Gardner has made her scripted feature directorial debut with the horror dramedy Slay, which also happens to be the feature writing debut of actor Jimmi Simpson.

Zoey Luna (The Craft: Legacy) and Aya Cash (The Boys) star in the film, which recently wrapped production. The story centers on seven high school seniors whose weekend of backstabbing turns literal. The cast also includes Sean Giambrone (The Goldbergs), Malina Pauli Weissman (A Series of Unfortunate Events), Beck Nolan (Good Guy with a Gun), Reise Alexander (The Invisible Girl), River Alexander (The Way Way Back...

Director Kyra Elise Gardner — daughter of special effects legend Tony Gardner — has wrapped production on Slay, Deadline reports.

Written by actor Jimmi Simpson, the horror dramedy follows seven high school seniors whose weekend of backstabbing turns literal.

Zoey Luna (The Craft: Legacy), Aya Cash (“The Boys”), Shawnee Smith (Saw), Sean Giambrone (“The Goldbergs”), Maliina Weismann (A Series of Unfortunate Events), Beck Nolan, Reise Alexander, River Alexander (The Way Way Back), Talia Jackson (“Family Reunion”), and Ruby McCollister star.

“I wrote Slay about that moment in adolescence where you realize your friends know how to hurt you better than anyone else,” Simpson told Deadline. “Slay lives right there— but with sick music, jokes and stabbings.”

“I think horror, at its best, reveals what we can’t say out loud to each other,” Gardner added. “This movie let me explore that, not with cruelty but with character— through girls trying to be...

Exclusive: Zoey Luna (The Craft: Legacy) and Aya Cash (The Boys) have wrapped on Slay, a horror dramedy marking the scripted feature directorial debut of Kyra Elise Gardner and the feature writing debut of actor Jimmi Simpson.

Following seven high school seniors whose weekend of backstabbing turns literal, the film also stars Shawnee Smith, Sean Giambrone, Maliina Weismann, Beck Nolan, Reise Alexander, River Alexander, Talia Jackson and Ruby McCollister.

Producers include Gardner, Simpson, Harrison Rothman, Scott Foley and Bradley Sloan.

“I wrote Slay about that moment in adolescence where you realize your friends know how to hurt you better than anyone else,” Simpson told Deadline. “Slay lives right there— but with sick music, jokes and stabbings.”

Said Gardner: “I think horror, at its best, reveals what we can’t say out loud to each other. This movie let me explore that, not with cruelty but with character— through girls trying...

New York outfit The Dazey Phase has picked up Tribeca comedy and the feature debut of US filmmaker Rachel Wolther, The French Italian, for sales.

Residents of a New York City apartment complex engage in an escalating prank war that spirals out of control. Cast includes Euphoria star Chloe Cherry, Aristotle Athari, Catherine Cohen and Ruby McCollister.

The film’s US producers are Mirmade Productions and Savage Rose Films.

Wolther said the film falls within the “genre of talky New York comedies, with homages to some of my favourite play-within-a-play classics like Waiting For Guffman, The Producers and of course...

“Saturday Night Live” cast member Chloe Fineman is set to guest star in the season finale of “Bareback Acres,” Stapleview’s YouTube comedy cooking series.

Created by (and starring) Casey Thomas Brown, “Bareback Acres” is described as a “whimsical, deeply silly story about a young divorcee’s journey back to himself through cooking and connection,” and a “linen-clad hug from a woman who has just returned from Provence.”

Fineman will guest star in the final episode of the series as Francesca Romano, a “very chic woman desperately trying to convince everyone she’s authentically Italian even though she’s from New Jersey.”

The series also features Griffin Maxwell Brooks, Richard Perez, Bryce Willard Smith, Ruby McCollister and Augustus Prew as guest stars. The final episode of “Bareback Acres”, titled “Christmas on the Farm,” will premiere on YouTube

“Bareback Acres” is produced by Stapleview, a multimedia comedy studio launched in March...

Exclusive: Newcomer Katarina Zhu has wrapped filming in New York on Bunnylovr, an indie drama that she wrote, directed, and stars in.

Supporting cast includes Austin Amelio, Perry Yung (John Wick: Chapter 2), Rachel Sennott (Bodies Bodies Bodies), Jack Kilmer (Lords Of Chaos) and Clara Wong (Billions).

The film was recently selected to take part in Poland’s upcoming American Film Festival industry sidebar, U.S. in Progress. It’ll be hoping to follow in the footsteps of titles such as India Donaldson’s Good One, which won the top prize at the event last year before making its way to premieres at Sundance and Cannes Directors’ Fortnight.

Bunnylovr tells the story of Rebecca (Zhu), a Chinese-American cam girl who struggles to navigate an increasingly toxic relationship with one of her clients while rekindling her relationship with her estranged, dying father.

The film was developed...

Taking place June 5-16, the 2024 Tribeca Festival has unveiled its features lineup, featuring a selection of narrative, documentary, and animated films. World premiere highlights include Joel Potrykus’ Vulcanizadora, Michael Angarano’s Sacramento starring Michael Cera and Kristen Stewart, Jazzy, the latest collaboration between The Unknown Country director Morrisa Maltz and star Lily Gladstone.

Films that have premiered at prior festivals that are set for Tribeca include Nathan Silver’s Between the Temples, Karim Aïnouz’s Firebrand, Daddio starring Dakota Johnson and Sean Penn, Kneecap, the Sundance winner In the Summers, Treasure starring Lena Dunham, Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz’s The Devil’s Bath, Made in England: The Films of Powell & Pressburger, Skywalkers: A Love Story, and more.

Explore the lineup below.

2024 Tribeca Festival Feature Film Selection

Opening Night Gala

Diane von Furstenberg: Woman in Charge, (United States) – World Premiere. Child of a Holocaust survivor, Princess by marriage, and founder of a fashion empire,...

Tribeca Festival has revealed its feature film lineup for its 2024 festival, which includes films from actors Lily Gladstone and Michael Cera and documentaries featuring Prince, Carlos Santana and Dolly Parton.

The opening night film is documentary “Diane von Furstenberg: Woman in Charge,” directed by Tribeca alumna Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy and Trish Dalton.

This year’s festival, which runs from June 5-16 in New York City, has a program of 103 feature films from 114 filmmakers spanning 48 countries. The lineup features 86 world premieres, two international premieres, six North American premieres and eight New York premieres.

The final selections were chosen from a record-breaking pool of 13,016 submissions. Half of the films in competition are directed by women and 35% (36) of all feature films are directed by Bipoc filmmakers. There are 30 films directed by first-time filmmakers and 25 directors are making their return to the annual New York film festival.

“In a year of record high submissions, despite industry-wide challenges,...

Exclusive: Actress Alexi Wasser (Poker Face) has made her feature directorial debut with Messy, a relationship comedy she also wrote and leads, which is now in post. Others appearing alongside her include Adam Goldberg (The Equalizer), Thomas Middleditch (Silicon Valley), Mario Cantone (And Just Like That…), Ione Skye (Beef), Jack Kilmer (Palo Alto), Michael Panes (We Bought a Zoo), Ruby McCollister (Search Party), Dion Costelloe (Blue Bloods) and Merlot.

Aiming for a run on next year’s festival circuit, Messy follows the life of brutally self-aware, promiscuous, love addict Stella Fox (Wasser), who moves to New York after a devastating break up, and all her disappointing romantic dalliances over the course of a summer.

Wasser produced the film alongside the New York-based production company Simone Films, founded by Rebekah Sherman-Myntti and Kj Rothweiler. Bart Cortright served as its cinematographer.

“I call it a comedy of disappointments, very much based on my life,...

One of the only Black students on a mostly-white art school campus, Palace (Diamond Stingily) is exhausted. She just sat through her final Mfa review with four white professors, where they approached her work with a mix of hyper-seriousness and outright condescension, flinging art-world jargon and vaguely racist assessments at her with abandon while maintaining an air of performative woke-ness.

“People out here really want me to get mad,” she tells her friend Hannah (Erin Leland) afterward as they sit by a lake near their bucolic Upstate New York campus. “And it’s like, I don’t wanna fight you.”

Palace oscillates between this sense of incredulity and indifference as she encounters various shades of ignorance and insensitivity from her teachers and peers. With its everyday setting and social interactions mixed with an obtrusive, innovative soundtrack and hyperactive visual style, .

Through this frenetic approach, director Martine Syms — who co-wrote the...

"I'm a believer in art." Mubi has unveiled an official trailer for an intriguing art-house indie film titled The African Desperate, which will be opening later this month. It premiered at the Rotterdam Film Festival earlier this year, and also played at New Directors/New Films in NYC. This electrifying film tracks one very long day for Palace Bryant, a newly minted Mfa grad whose final 24 hours in art school become a real trip. She is not going to the graduation party! She needs to get home, back to Chicago from upstate NY. But that means surviving a hazy, hilarious, and hallucinatory night-long odyssey, stumbling from academic critiques to backseat hookups. With a banging soundtrack and cinematography that references street photography, giddy gonzo cinema and 1990s high-school romcoms, The African Desperate ultimately chronicles the need for release and emancipation from mental slavery. Starring Diamond Stingily, Erin Leland, and Ruby McCollister.

Stars: David Bluvband, Adam R. Brown, Ryan Conrath, Mike Lawrence, David Littleton, Ruth Lolla, Greg Maness, Ruby McCollister, Lucy McMichael, Shannon O’Neill, Jeff Riddle, Chloe Roe, Chet Siegel | Written and Directed by Matthew John Lawrence

An interesting title but a sub genre that is slowly picking up pace, as Uncle Peckerhead fits nicely in the hard to subscribe metal/punk-rock horror movies sub genre. Recent films include the brutal Green Room, the fun slasher The Ranger, real life story Lords of Chaos, the goretastic Deathgasm and now Uncle Peckerhead.

A punk band, with very little money head out on their first tour. Struggling with everything from playing live to finding somewhere to stay each night to getting a tour ‘bus’, things start to look up but a bit messy when they are joined by a man-eating demon as their roadie.

That description is simply put but it makes for a...

Stars: David Bluvband, Adam R. Brown, Ryan Conrath, Mike Lawrence, David Littleton, Ruth Lolla, Greg Maness, Ruby McCollister, Lucy McMichael, Shannon O’Neill, Jeff Riddle, Chloe Roe, Chet Siegel | Written and Directed by Matthew John Lawrence

An interesting title but a sub genre that is slowly picking up pace, as Uncle Peckerhead fits nicely in the hard to subscribe metal/punk-rock horror movies sub genre. Recent films include the brutal Green Room, the fun slasher The Ranger, real life story Lords of Chaos, the goretastic Deathgasm and now Uncle Peckerhead.

A punk band, with very little money head out on their first tour. Struggling with everything from playing live to finding somewhere to stay each night to getting a tour ‘bus’, things start to look up but a bit messy when they are joined by a man-eating demon as their roadie.

That description is simply put but it makes for a...

Uncle Peckerhead is a horror comedy from production house Subtle T-Rex. Shot partially in New Jersey, this film envisions a punk rock band, out on the road. They hitch up with Peck (David Littleton), who turns into a cannibalistic monster every night, if he does not take his meds'. Developed by director Matthew John Lawrence (Larry Gone Demon), this film stars: David Bluvband, Chet Siegel, Ruby McCollister among others. A trailer was released for the film, along with artwork. The film poster shows an anarchy sign. Meanwhile, Peck is turning into something horrifying. The band plays on as the van makes pit-stops across the U.S. A bloody graphic, this feature brings the gore, this Summer. Uncle Peckerhead will be available in the U.S. and Canada, in August. LevelFilm will handle the Canadian release, this August 25th. Canadian horror finds will find this title on Digital platforms on this date.

Punk rock concerts and other mass public gatherings have been banned across the U.S. since mid-March. Even as most states start to regain some sense of normalcy, music venues haven't reopened. That makes the new horror comedy Uncle Peckerhead seem like a bit of nostalgia for an era where teens could work out their aggressions in a mosh pit. The movie was made before quarantine was the new normal. Does that make it feel outdated? Perhaps it will have you yearning for a time when you could go to The Bootleg, have a few beers and thrash with the worst of them.

Today, we have the first trailer and poster for Uncle Peckerhead. It's a weird one. The movie follows a punk rock band whose makeshift roadie likes to eat people. It's a head banging tale of cannibalistic horrors unlike anything ever seen. It's new, it's hot, it's fresh.

"He finds you irresistible! It's a compliment." Maybe bugs aren't so bad after all? Or maybe they are. Bug Bite is a new short film made by very talented filmmaker Emily Ann Hoffman, who usually makes stop-motion animated films (highly recommend her other short film Nevada as well). This one is mixed-media - a combination of animation (and a few cleverly animated elements like the little bed bug critter) along with a live-action story. A millennial woman and a female bed bug form an unlikely bond while contending with toxic masculinity. Starring Ruby McCollister as Virgo, along with Jonathan Randell Silver and Chet Siegel as the two on the TV. This not only works well as biting commentary on toxic masculinity, but also as crafty filmmaking. The sync between her responses and the commentary on TV is hilarious and so accurate. Thanks to NoBudge for the tip on this one.

Neighborhood Food Drive’s synopsis should be a clue as to what kind of film it is: “Awful idiots fail at throwing a party over and over”. Director Jerzy Rose definitely wasn’t out to make a feel-good comedy with those emotional moments the more mainstream ones tend to tack on during the last 20 minutes. The idiots in question are Madeline (Lyra Hill) and Naomi (Bruce Bundy), the owners of an upscale yet curiously always empty restaurant. Wanting to supposedly help their community, they set about organizing food drives with the help of their dimbulb waiter Steven (Marcos Barnes), his flighty girlfriend Bianca (Ruby McCollister) and the couple’s douchey, bearded, Jason Sudeikis-type college prof David (Ted Tremper), who apparently has nothing better to do than hang...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...