News

Recognizing the brilliance of British director Lucy Walker, both as a filmmaker and as an advocate for the documentary format, Shekhar Kapur hurriedly arranged an additional masterclass on Saturday at the International Film Festival of India, where he is festival director. And hosted the session himself.

Their conversation ranged from technology and technique through to the filmmaker’s responsibility towards the subject. In particular, it dug deep into how and where to find a story.

After an era of editing with film stock, Walker said that around the time she went to film school computer editing came in and changed the game. “You could start to be able to build stories in the editing room. And do some of the writing later. You [still] have to choose good enough ingredients for your recipe. But I felt like the tools [offered] different options, allowing you to create a proper movie that audiences would find really satisfying,...

Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker Lucy Walker began a Saturday panel discussion on stories that travel by describing her own wanderlust backstory.

“As a girl growing up in London, I didn’t have enough money to travel. And I didn’t think being on vacation was the most interesting way to see the world. And yet I really wanted to travel and work and understand people, so I’ve designed myself a job making documentary films where I get to travel the world,” said Walker, who arrived at the International Film Festival of India in Goa having earlier this week won another award, in New York, for her Nepal-set tale “Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lakhpa Sherpa.”

“When I make a film, I always have a question, one that I’ll drop everything to find out about: what’s going to happen? Will they be able to climb the mountain? Will they be okay?...

For three years, Netflix has gone without a Best Documentary Feature Oscar nomination for one its originals, a surprising dry spell for a streamer used to dominating the category. But it looks like the drought is about to end.

The platform has fielded an exceptional slate of contenders in 2024, many with a strong shot at making the Oscar Documentary Feature shortlist — the first step toward an Academy Award nomination. The Remarkable Life of Ibelin, Daughters, Will & Harper, Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa, Power, The Greatest Night in Pop, Martha, Skywalkers: A Love Story, Yintah — they all present a solid opportunity for Netflix to compete for the top documentary prize.

“I feel very honored to be a part of this incredible slate of movies,” says Josh Greenbaum, director of Will & Harper, a kind of buddy comedy about the friendship between actor Will Ferrell and his pal Harper Steele,...

National Geographic’s “Sugarcane,” a film about abuse and missing children at an Indigenous boarding school in Canada, leads this year’s nominations for the Cinema Eye Honors awards with six. Cinema Eye recognizes excellence in the artistry and craft of nonfiction filmmaking. “Sugarcane” will face off against “Black Box Diaries,” “Dahomey,” “Daughters,” “Look Into My Eyes,” “No Other Land,” and “Soundtrack to Coup d’Etat” for Best Feature. See the full list of nominees below.

In 2023, four of the five eventual Academy Award nominated Documentary Feature films were nominated by Ceh earlier in the season, including the Oscar winner “20 Days in Mariupol.” Last year’s Ceh winner “32 Sounds” failed to earn a nomination from the Academy. The last two films to win the Oscar without first being recognized with a nomination by Ceh were “My Octopus Teacher” in 2020 and “Free Solo” in 2018.

Cinema Eye will return to...

The Cinema Eye Honors, an Oscar bellwether that often predicts the Best Documentary Feature race, has unveiled its 2025 nominations.

Leading the pack is “Sugarcane,” Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie’s documentary about abuse in an Indian residential school in Canada. The film earned rave reviews out of Sundance, and here earned six nominations. It’s followed by two hits from the 2024 Berlin Film Festival: “Dahomey,” Mati Diop’s exploration of the artifacts of colonial Africa, and Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal and Rachel Szor’s Israel-Palestine conflict documentary “No Other Land,” which each received five nominations. Two portraits of major 20th-century artists, Carla Gutiérrez’s “Frida” and Gary Hustwit’s “Eno,” also received five nominations a piece.

The 18th annual Cinema Eye Honors will take place on Thursday, January 9 at the New York Academy of Medicine in East Harlem. Keep reading for a complete list of nominees.

Nonfiction...

At Wednesday’s annual Doc NYC Visionaries Tribute Luncheon, over 500 of the documentary community’s best and brightest attempted to remain positive about the future of not only docus, but also America under Donald Trump’s leadership.

The Gotham Hall gala, which marked the opening day of the 15th annual Doc NYC film festival, attracted filmmakers with documentaries vying for a spot on the Oscar shortlist, including R.J. Cutler (“Martha”), Alexis Bloom (“The Bibi Files”), Hasan Oswald (“Mediha”), Carla Gutiérrez (“Frida”) and Shiori Ito (“Black Box Diaries”). The luncheon also drew hundreds of docu cinematographers, producers, editors, publicists, distributors, and perhaps most importantly, an abundance of Academy doc branch members.

During her speech, Lifetime Achievement honoree Marcia Smith, Firelight Media president/co-founder, relayed her concerns for the doc community at large.

“Friends have been laid off, whole doc divisions eliminated or consolidated, budgets have shrunk, and juicy festival sales have been few and far between,...

The Stimming Pool is like nothing else you may have seen on the film festival circuit this year. Described as “a hybrid film that presents the possibilities of a world informed by autistic perspectives and perception,” the experimental movie from a group of British filmmakers features a “drifting form built around the concept of an autistic camera.”

As a synopsis explains: “The curiosity of this camera discovers a relay of subjects who stray through the world, revealing environments often hostile to autistic experience, such as a hectic workplace and a crowded pub, and quiet spaces that offer respite from them.”

The characters we meet on the way include a B-movie film club host, a young woman who fills out questionnaires and watches sequences in an eye-tracking test, an office worker who goes about life while masking their autistic nature, and an enigmatic dog-human spirit watching over people with disabilities whose...

Apple TV+’s Girls State and HBO’s Ren Faire scored three nominations apiece to lead all broadcast nominees announced Thursday for the 18th Cinema Eye Honors. The group, which recognizes the year’s outstanding nonfiction and documentary films and TV series, also revealed the 16-film longlist for its annual Audience Choice Prize, won last year by National Geographic’s Bobi Wine: The People’s President, which went on to get nominated for the Documentary Feature Oscar.

The past six winners of the Best Documentary Feature Oscar — this year’s winner 20 Days in Mariupol, Navalny, Summer of Soul, My Octopus Teacher, American Factory and Free Solo — were all Audience Choice Prize nominees. Fans voting will whittle the list to 10 beginning next week, with winners in that and all categories to be announced at an awards ceremony January 9 at the New York Academy of Medicine in East Harlem.

The full list...

Cinema Eye Honors today shared a string of announcements, including the 16 films on its Audience Choice Prize Longlist, the unveiling of this year’s Unforgettables Honorees, nominees in its five Broadcast categories, and its annual Shorts List — spotlighting 11 of the year’s top documentary short films — at its 7th annual Cinema Eye Fall Lunch in Downtown Los Angeles on October 24, 2024.

Spotlighted on the film side are several major Best Documentary Feature contenders including “Will & Harper,” “Black Box Diaries,” and “No Other Land,” which all also factored into the organization’s list of Unforgettables — standout on-camera collaborators from eight feature documentaries. This next ceremony will be the first time those honorees, like Harper Steele, Shiori Ito, and Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham for those respective films, receive a special medallion honoring their contribution to their Cinema Eye-winning films.

Highlights among the Broadcast nominees include filmmaker Lance Oppenheim, nominated for both...

Maverick Minds

London’s Raindance Film Festival has unveiled its 13-title longlist for the BIFA (British Independent Film Awards) Raindance Maverick Award, recognizing independent films made with budgets under £1 million ($1.3 million).

The lineup includes “Grand Theft Hamlet,” shot entirely within “Grand Theft Auto,” following two unemployed actors staging Shakespeare in the game’s virtual world, and “Strike: An Uncivil War,” which won Sheffield DocFest’s best documentary audience award for its examination of the 1984/85 miners’ strike.

Raindance founder Elliot Grove said: “The Raindance Maverick Award longlist captures the essence of independent cinema at its purest, rebellious and unapologetic best.”

Full longlist:

“The Ceremony”

“The Flight of Bryan”

“Grand Theft Hamlet”

“King Baby”

“Reawakening”

“Restless”

“Satu – Year of the Rabbit” (Joshua Trigg)

“Silent Men” (Duncan Cowles)

“The Stimming Pool”

“Strike: An Uncivil War”

“Tops”

“Treading Water”

“Witches”

The nominations will be announced Nov. 5, with winners revealed at the BIFA ceremony on Dec.

The British Independent Film Awards (Bifa) longlist for the Raindance Maverick award includes documentaries Witches by Elizabeth Sankey and Strike: An Uncivil War by Daniel Gordon.

The 13-strong longlist also includes Pinny Grylls and Sam Crane’s non-fiction title Grand Theft Hamlet, about a staging of Shakespeare’s Hamlet inside the Grand Theft Auto videogame.

Scroll down for the full longlist

Witches examines the relationship between cinematic portrayals of witches and postpartum depression, utilising archival film footage alongside personal testimony. Having been the sole non-fiction title in the UK’s Great 8 showcase at Cannes this year, the film premiered at Tribeca in June,...

Pinny Grylls and Sam Crane’s documentary Grand Theft Hamlet, about out-of-work theater actors who try to stage a production of Hamlet within the video game Grand Theft Auto during the Covid lockdown, and Witches, Elizabeth Sankey’s doc that posits a connection between historical witchery and post-partum psychological suffering, are among 13 feature films on the longlist for this year’s Raindance Maverick Award at the British Independent Film Awards, or BIFAs.

Also on the longlist are the likes of Strike: An Uncivil War, the best documentary audience award winner at this year’s Sheffield DocFest that uses personal testimony, formerly hidden government documents, and unseen archive footage to tell the story of the Battle of Orgreave during the British miners’ strike of 1984/85; Treading Water, which tells the story of a man who is newly released from prison and struggling with addiction and mental health issues; and King Baby, “a...

Subversive Irish breakout pic Kneecap and Sasha Nathwani’s gentle yet ambitious debut Last Swim are among the titles that have nabbed mentions on the new talent longlists at this year’s British Independent Film Awards.

Both Kneecap and Last Swim pop up on the Douglas Hickox Best Debut Director Award longlist. Other nominees include Hoard, directed by Luna Carmoon, and Karan Kandhari’s Sister Midnight, which debuted at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

All four films also feature on the best screenplay longlist alongside Christopher Andrews’s Bring Them Down starring Barry Keoghan and Christopher Abbott. Other pics on the screenplay longlist include The Ceremony by Jack King and Jed Hart’s Restless.

Overall, the longlists include 31 British features, with 20 fiction and 11 documentary features across four debut filmmaking categories. Within that, there are 13 first-time fiction feature directors, 16 first-time feature documentary directors, 11 first-time writers, and 19 breakthrough producers.

The final...

Rich Peppiatt’s “Kneecap” and Luna Carmoon’s “Hoard” are among the titles in the British Independent Film Awards’ (BIFA) 2024 filmmaker new talent longlists, unveiled Friday. The selections spotlight 31 British features across four debut filmmaking categories, encompassing both fiction and documentary works.

Peppiatt and Carmoon join a group of first-time directors vying for the Douglas Hickox Award, including Amrou Al-Kadhi for “Layla,” Christopher Andrews for “Bring Them Down,” and Daina O Pusić for “Tuesday.” Other contenders in this category are Lucy Cohen with “Edge of Summer,” James Krishna Floyd for “Unicorns,” Stuart Gatt’s “Catching Dust,” Karan Kandhari’s “Sister Midnight,” Jack King’s “The Ceremony,” Rob Morgan’s “Stopmotion,” Sasha Nathwani’s “Last Swim,” and Joshua Trigg’s “Satu – Year of the Rabbit.” The category is sponsored by BBC Film.

The best debut screenwriter category, sponsored by Film4, sees Andrews and Carmoon competing alongside Floyd, Jed Hart for “Restless,...

Filmmakers from Bring Them Down, The Ceremony and Tuesday feature prominently on the filmmaker new talent longlists for the 2024 British Independent Film Awards (Bifas).

Bring Them Down’s Christopher Andrews is longlisted for the Douglas Hickox Award for best debut director and the best debut screenwriter award, while the film’s debut producer Jacob Swan Hyam is longlisted for breakthrough producer.

Scroll down for the filmmaker New Talent longlists

The Ceremony repeats that trio for writer-director Jack King and producers Hollie Bryan and Lucy Meer; as does Tuesday for writer-director Daina O Pusic and producer Helen Gladders.

Four filmmaker new...

No Other Land, the powerful documentary set in a Palestinian community of the occupied West Bank, may lack U.S. distribution, but it’s got awards momentum behind it.

The film directed by a collective of Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers earned a place on Doc NYC’s coveted Short List — the festival’s nod to what it considers to be among the year’s best feature documentaries. The list – a harbinger of potential traction with Oscar voters — also gave recognition to Will & Harper, a Netflix film built around a road trip taken by Will Ferrell and his longtime friend Harper Steele after Harper came out as trans.

Both No Other Land and Will & Harper earned nominations for Best Documentary Feature at the Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards announced earlier this week. Also pulling off the Doc NYC-Critics’ Choice double is Sugarcane, the National Geographic documentary investigating the disappearance of Indigenous children...

The 15th annual Doc NYC festival unveiled the titles in its Short List sections, an early precursor lineup in advance of the Oscar nominations next January in the categories of Best Documentary Feature and Documentary Short.

America’s largest documentary festival, based in the Chelsea and Greenwich Village neighborhoods of New York City, launches on Nov. 13 with the opening night premiere of “Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien Story.”

The titles in the Short Lists include Benjamin Ree’s “The Remarkable Life of Ibelin,” Raoul Peck’s “Ernest Cole: Lost and Found,” Carla Gutiérrez’s “Frida,” Mati Diop’s “Dahomey” and “No Other Land,” directed by a four-person collective of Israeli and Palestinian artists.

Additional films, nearly all screening with filmmakers in person for Q&As, include “Will and Harper,” about the friendship between Will Ferrell and Harper Steele, “The Last of the Sea Women,” produced by Nobel Peace Prize winner...

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,...

Alexis Bloom’s “The Bibi Files,” Raoul Peck’s “Ernest Cole: Lost and Found” and Johan Grimonprez’s “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat” are among the 15 documentary films that have received a coveted spot on Doc NYC’s feature shortlist.

Launched in 2012, the Doc NYC feature shortlist, which this year includes several streamer-backed docs as well as films with minimal or no distribution, has become known for being an award season bellwether. The last three feature docus that garnered an Oscar — “20 Days in Mariupol”, “Navalny” and “Summer of Soul” — made the Doc NYC shortlist.

In all the Doc NYC film festival has screened 53 of the last 60 Oscar-nominated documentary features. The feature shortlist election process is overseen by fest’s artistic director Jaie Laplante and director of special projects Thom Powers, who also serves as the lead documentary programmer at the Toronto Intl. Film Festival.

“We start thinking about the...

This year’s slate of 21 documentaries from 24 countries at the Toronto International Film Festival (September 5 – 15) is a melange of newsy subjects, rising directors, and potential Oscar contenders. Sixteen are sales titles, up from last year’s eight. Two high-profile celebrity docs are playing in the gala section of the fest, R. J. Cutler’s “Elton John: Never Too Late” and Thom Zimmy’s “Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.”

The TIFF Documentary Selection will open with “Vice Is Broke,” in which “Huang’s World” journalist Eddie Huang investigates his former employer’s rise and fall into bankruptcy. “It’s an insider’s look at a media company that gave many people opportunities and did things in sloppy ways,” TIFF documentary programmer Thom Powers told IndieWire via Zoom. “It soared up to a value of $5.7 billion and won the attention of moguls like David Zaslav and Rupert Murdoch.

We’ll be arguing about whether “Challengers” is an Academy Awards contender up until the nominations are announced in January. Is Zendaya a lock for a Best Actress nomination? If Josh O’Connor and/or Mike Faist get nominated, will they be in lead or supporting? Is this even an Oscars movie? The most likely nominee is Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross for Best Original Score. They’ve won two times before (for “The Social Network” and “Soul”), and their pounding, attention-grabbing electronic score is one of the film’s most distinctive elements.

Luca Guadagnino’s sexy, memeworthy tennis drama was one of the most talked-about movies of the spring. It’s about the romantic complications of tennis pros Tashi (Zendaya), Art (Faist), and Patrick (O’Connor), who are all in love with each other and all kind of hate each other. It’s the most fun adult drama of the year.

Two-time Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Lucy Walker shares a name with a 19th century alpinist, the first woman to summit the Matterhorn, in 1871, and the Eiger, in 1864 (feats she accomplished in a full-length dress — traditional women’s attire in the Victorian era).

In her new documentary, Walker tells the story of a present-day climber, Lhakpa Sherpa, a native of Nepal who has written her name into the mountaineering record books: Lhakpa has summited Mount Everest an astounding 10 times, more than any other woman.

On the heels (or crampons) of a theatrical run that qualifies it for Oscar consideration, Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa debuts on Netflix today.

Lhakpa Sherpa in ‘Mountain Queen’

“Anyone who sees the movie can imagine how much I wanted to do justice to Lhakpa’s story and her whole family,” Walker explained at a recent Q&a at the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences in Los Angeles.

The only woman to have scaled Mount Everest 10 times is making easy work of a steep hill in Los Angeles’ Griffith Park. On a blistering July day, Lhakpa Sherpa — whose remarkable story is told in the documentary “Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa” — is leading a hike that has most of the group huffing and mopping their brows. But the 50-year-old Sherpa, clad in sandals and wrapped in a sweater, isn’t even breaking a sweat.

“Mountain Queen” details Sherpa’s journey to becoming the first Nepali woman to summit Everest in 2000, a particularly impressive feat as she was illiterate and had no formal education. But the movie, which arrives on Netflix July 31, isn’t just an account of physical triumph.

It begins in 2022, with Sherpa working at a Whole Foods in Connecticut and living in a small apartment with her two daughters. From there, the film relates how...

Nearly twenty years ago, Lucy Walker was making a film on the slopes of Everest following a group of blind teenage Tibetan climbers. While on the mountain, she heard of an incident that had taken place when a male guide attacked his wife and climbing partner, a Nepalese woman named Lhakpa Sherpa. Lhakpa’s cursed expedition was the focus of a damning book published a couple of years later, as well as a feature in Outside Magazine. At that point Lhakpa had summited Everest seven times but was living in a cramped apartment in Connecticut as an illiterate single mother, still […]

The post “We’ve All Gone a Bit Broke Making It”: Lucy Walker on Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Nearly twenty years ago, Lucy Walker was making a film on the slopes of Everest following a group of blind teenage Tibetan climbers. While on the mountain, she heard of an incident that had taken place when a male guide attacked his wife and climbing partner, a Nepalese woman named Lhakpa Sherpa. Lhakpa’s cursed expedition was the focus of a damning book published a couple of years later, as well as a feature in Outside Magazine. At that point Lhakpa had summited Everest seven times but was living in a cramped apartment in Connecticut as an illiterate single mother, still […]

The post “We’ve All Gone a Bit Broke Making It”: Lucy Walker on Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Lhakpa Sherpa holds the world’s record for most climbs of Mount Everest by a woman, having summited 10 times, but she has conquered more than mountains. Lucy Walker’s Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa includes dazzling footage of Lhakpa on Everest, sometimes in snow and ferocious wind. But this engaging, modest and fiercely determined woman’s life is the real point here. Her story captures the doggedness that made all those climbs possible, as she goes from childhood in a village in Nepal, where she was uneducated and illiterate, to success on the mountain while enduring years as a physically abused wife and mother before she managed to leave that marriage.

Walker takes an unintrusive approach to her subject, as she has done in previous films, including the Oscar-nominated Waste Land (2010), about making art out of a trash heap, and Blindsight (2006), about blind mountain climbers in Tibet. She...

Documentary expertly follows the only woman to have climbed the mountain 10 times through spectacular scenery and a traumatic personal life

This portrait of title subject Lhakpa Sherpa, the only woman to have summited Mount Everest 10 times, is so densely packed with uplifting moments that at times it feels like emotional mountaineering – but the climb has terrific views. British director Lucy Walker toggles back and forth between on-the-snow-face footage of Lhakpa’s latest ascent and interview material where she recounts her life, a story full of extraordinary achievement but also the most tragically quotidian misfortune when she gets married to an abusive alcoholic. Interestingly, like a climb, the getting-to-the-top part is only half the story and as Lhakpa heads back down, footage shot at other times hints at a complex parallel story about an immigrant woman and her daughters’ struggles to process trauma and multicultural life. In some ways, that second...

Behind the counter at a Whole Foods Market in Connecticut, a woman from Nepal goes unnoticed. A single mother, Lhakpa Sherpa takes public transportation to work. No one around her suspects she has summited Mount Everest in her homeland several times. That jaw-dropping feat of physical and mental discipline is an even greater accomplishment considering her upbringing as an illiterate woman in an utterly patriarchal environment. Now, her story of perseverance, not only as a climber but as an immigrant and survivor, is the subject of the poignant and heart-pounding documentary “Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa” from “Waste Land” director Lucy Walker.

Walker first presents segments of an interview where the bubbly Sherpa, speaking in her hard-earned English, wears colorful traditional attire that contrasts with how we’ll later see her: in mountain climbing gear. She shares her belief in a spiritual connection with Everest — for her a...

To summit Mount Everest requires incredible tenacity, fitness and a willingness to negotiate the risk of death.

For Lhakpa Sherpa, who has climbed the world’s tallest peak more than any other woman, it has required even more: overcoming poverty, defying her family and Nepali culture that did not support her ambition and surviving an abusive marriage to a fellow mountaineer who nearly killed her.

Sherpa’s extraordinary story, and her attempt to break her own record for summiting Everest, is told in the Oscar-contending documentary Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa, which debuts in theaters this week before its July 31 premiere on Netflix. Director Lucy Walker, a two-time Academy Award nominee, joins the latest edition of Deadline’s Doc Talk podcast to discuss her film and the remarkable woman at its heart.

Walker explains why it was “terrifying” to...

Andrea Arnold’s Bird, Sandhya Suri’s Santosh and Karan Kandhari’s Sister Midnight are among the films to receive backing from the latest round of UK Global Screen Fund (Ukgsf) awards.

The BFI has made 19 additional awards totalling £527,563 through the £7m Ukgsf, which is financed by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Dcms).

Cannes premieres Bird, Santosh and Sister Midnight all received international distribution awards via the festival launch track, which supports festival runs for UK films to reach global audiences.

The only film to receive an international distribution award via the prints and advertising support track in...

Andrea Arnold’s Bird, Sandhya Suri’s Santosh and Karan Kandhari’s Sister Midnight are among the films to receive backing from the latest round of UK Global Screen Fund (Ukgsf) awards.

The BFI has made 19 additional awards totalling £527,563 through the £7m Ukgsf, which is financed by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Dcms).

Cannes premieres Bird, Santosh and Sister Midnight all received international distribution awards via the festival launch track, which supports festival runs for UK films to reach global audiences.

The only film to receive an international distribution award via the prints and advertising support track in...

As Netflix prepares to release Lucy Walker’s latest documentary “Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa” — which follows a mountain climber attempting her record tenth ascent up Mt. Everest — on July 31 the Paris Theater is set to celebrate the director’s unique career with a new retrospective.

The historic New York theater, which was acquired by Netflix in 2019, will screen 11 of Walker’s films from July 24-August 7 in a retrospective titled “Mountain Queen and the Cinematic Summits of Lucy Walker.” In addition to Walker’s new film, the series will include “Devil’s Playground,” her 2002 documentary about Amish teenagers engaging in the tradition of rumspringa; her 2006 mountain climbing documentary “Blindsight;” her Oscar-nominated 2010 documentary about Brazilian landfill workers “Waste Land;” the 2013 snowboarding documentary “The Crash Reel;” and her 2021 wildfire documentary “Bring Your Own Brigade.” Five of Walker’s short films will also be screened throughout the retrospective.

“The moment when one...

Girls Will Be Girls has won the Grand Jury Prize for best feature at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles (Iffla).

Shuchi Talati’s coming of age drama previously won the World Cinema Dramatic audience award at this year’s Sundance and has been acquired for North America by Juno Films.

Iffla’s Jury Honorable Mention went to Tarsem Singh’s Dear Jassi, which previously won the Platform Prize at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Iffla’s Audience Choice awards went to Lucy Walker’s feature documentary Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa and Ritvik Dhavale’s short Hema.

Lhakpa Sherpa has been climbing seemingly impossible mountains all her life. Growing up the daughter of yak farmers in rural Nepal, she was denied an education and work because of her gender. Eventually, she immigrated to the United States, where she survived intimate partner violence and had to scrape by to provide for her two daughters, Sunny and Shiny. Despite her circumstances, Sherpa persisted in her goal in doing yet another impossible climb: In 2000, she became the first Nepali woman to summit and survive Mount Everest, and today she holds the record for most Everest summits by a woman at 10 climbs. Sherpa’s exceptional life is chronicled in Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa, director Lucy Walker’s new documentary.

“One guiding principle of this film was to take a wider view of what it means to climb,” Walker, whose previous films include The Crash Reel and Waste Land,...

Lucy Walker’s critically acclaimed documentary, Mountain Queen, follows the remarkable woman who had to pretend to be a boy to secure her first job in the Himalayas – and hasn’t stopped fighting since

When Lhakpa Sherpa was a small child growing up in a tiny village in the Himalayas, her mother warned her that if she didn’t behave herself, the yetis would come and snatch her away.

It was a hollow threat – or so she thought. Then, one day as she played outside with her friends, she saw them: very tall, with blond hair and blue eyes, climbing up the hill in her direction. The children screamed in panic and scattered. When Sherpa’s mother heard the commotion and saw the figures reaching the village, she too screamed and ran from the yetis. It was her community’s first encounter with western tourists.

Warner Bros. Discovery joins as a major sponsor, with additional support from SAGindie, Disney, Joy of Sharing, and Tarsadia Foundation

Moira Shourie, Executive Director of Zócalo Public Square, to deliver keynote address

Industry Day to conclude with the LA Special Screening of award-winning director Lucy Walker's new Netflix Documentary Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa

Los Angeles, CA – The Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles (Iffla) announced today its inaugural annual Iffla Industry Day lineup and partners. This full day of curated events will take place during the festival on Friday, June 28, 2024, from 10:00 am – 11:30 pm at the Landmark Theatres Sunset, 8000 Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90046. Industry Day Passes are now available at indianfilmfestival.org.

The Iffla Industry Day is a first-of-its-kind forum designed to bring together revered and aspiring filmmakers from South Asia and its diasporas with experts and decision-makers from companies such as Warner Bros. Discovery,...

This is not the documentary renaissance we hoped for. Despite its 2023 Oscar win for “Navalny,” CNN pulled back on non-fiction production. Non-fiction programming at Showtime Networks, which produced Oscar-nominated “Attica” in 2022, is no more.

“The New York Times Presents” series, which produced titles like “The Killing of Breonna Taylor” and “Framing Britney Spears,” is being phased out in favor of integrating non-fiction video into the media brand. Hot Docs is on the ropes; Participant, which produced documentaries like “An Inconvenient Truth,” “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,” and “American Factory,” closed last month.

And then there’s Netflix, which is still very much in the documentary game under Adam Del Deo, Netflix VP of original documentary films and limited series — and can afford to be with nearly 270 million global subscribers. However, it’s a specific sort of gameplay: For tight, high-quality nonfiction work that’s heartwarming, or thrilling, or stars a celebrity,...

Netflix has acquired Azazel Jacobs’ sisterhood drama His Three Daughters, which stars Carrie Coon, Elizabeth Olsen and Natasha Lyonne and bowed at the Toronto Film Festival.

The trio play estranged sisters forced to reunite when their father becomes seriously ill. The family drama sees the sisters converge as their father’s health steadily declines.

The deal, with a price tag north of $6 million, according to sources, represents Netflix’s third acquisition out of Toronto after the streaming giant picked up Anna Kendrick’s directorial debut, Woman of the Hour, for around $11 million after a world premiere at the festival. Netflix also nabbed the worldwide rights to Lucy Walker’s documentary Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa after it was presented as a work-in-progress screening at TIFF.

After Toronto Netflix also paid around $20 million for the Richard Linklater-directed Hit Man, which bowed in Venice and stars Glen Powell and Adria Arjona.

Film will release globally later this year.

Netflix has made another fall festival acquisition, swooping with Barack Obama and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground on worldwide rights to Matthew Heineman’s Telluride documentary American Symphony.

The film follows a year in the life of musician and Late Show bandleader Jon Batiste as he navigates the stresses and struggles of his meteoric rise winnings six Grammys and preparing the American Symphony for Carnegie Hall, while his wife and bestelling author Suleika Jaouad is diagnosed with the return of Leukemia.

Heineman, Lauren Domino, and Joedan Okun produced American Symphony, and executive producers are Alice Webb,...

Netflix spent big at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, picking up Anna Kendrick’s directorial debut “Woman of the Hour” for $11 million and Richard Linklater’s well-reviewed “Hit Man” for $20 million. But other than that and despite an unusually numerous 50 titles for sale, the TIFF market at large was muted.

The lack of activity was in sync with the festival season for 2023 so far, as Sundance and Cannes went off with a smattering of deals compared to years past.

“In this marketplace, the studios and streamers, aside from Netflix, would rather spend big bucks on one or two movies that they are passionate about versus spending a boatload of money to fill a slate or clog up the pipeline with regular content,” a high-level distribution executive told TheWrap who declined to be named.

According to multiple executives who spoke to TheWrap, shifting priorities for the streamers, ongoing challenges...

’Mr. Dressup: The Magic Of Make Believe’ wins doc award, ’Dicks: The Musical’ wins Midnight Madness.

The satire American Fiction starring Jeffrey Wright has won the Toronto International Film Festival’s (TIFF) 2023 People’s Choice Award, boosting the crowd-pleaser’s Oscar credentials heading into awards season.

‘American Fiction’: Toronto Review

Cord Jefferson’s directorial debut for Amazon/MGM stars Wright as a frustrated Black author whose deliberately dumbed-down novel about cliched Black characters becomes a hit. There are multiple screenings at TIFF Bell Lightbox today (September 17) from 2:30pm-9:30pm Et.

American Fiction follows last year’s recipient...

’Mr. Dressup: The Magic Of Make Believe’ wins doc award, ’Dicks: The Musical’ wins Midnight Madness.

The satire American Fiction starring Jeffrey Wright has won the Toronto International Film Festival’s (TIFF) 2023 People’s Choice Award, boosting the crowd-pleaser’s Oscar credentials heading into awards season.

‘American Fiction’: Toronto Review

Cord Jefferson’s directorial debut from Orion and MRC stars Wright as a frustrated Black author whose deliberately dumbed-down novel about cliched Black characters becomes a hit. There are multiple screenings at TIFF Bell Lightbox today (September 17) from 2:30pm-9:30pm Et.

MGM distributes American Fiction in the...

’Mr. Dressup: The Magic Of Make Believe’ wins doc award, ’Dicks: The Musical’ wins Midnight Madness.

The satire American Fiction starring Jeffrey Wright has won the Toronto International Film Festival’s (TIFF) 2023 People’s Choice Award, boosting the crowd-pleaser’s Oscar credentials heading into awards season.

‘American Fiction’: Toronto Review

Cord Jefferson’s directorial debut from Orion and MRC stars Wright as a frustrated Black author whose deliberately dumbed-down novel about cliched Black characters becomes a hit. There are multiple screenings at TIFF Bell Lightbox today (September 17) from 2:30pm-9:30pm Et.

MGM distributes American Fiction in the...

“American Fiction,” Cord Jefferson’s blistering satire of race and media, captured the Toronto International Film Festival’s people’s choice award, bolstering its Oscars chances.

TIFF’s people’s choice award is considered to be among the best predictors of eventual awards success, though the 2023 festival hosted a weaker lineup than most years due to the writers and actors strikes that saw some prominent contenders skip a Canadian premiere. In the past, winners of the prize such as “Green Book,” “12 Years a Slave” and “Nomadland” went on to be named best picture at the Academy Awards. Other recipients, including “Belfast,” “La La Land,” “Jojo Rabbit,” and 2022’s winner, “The Fabelmans,” were all best picture nominees.

The people’s choice category was created in 1978. Seven recipients won best picture at the Oscars, with five of those victories coming in the past two decades.

Alexander Payne’s boarding school dramedy...

Cord Jefferson’s American Fiction picked up the top People’s Choice honor Sunday at the Toronto Film Festival, which wrapped up a 48th edition with little Hollywood star wattage amid the uncertainty of dual Hollywood strikes.

Jefferson’s feature directorial debut, an adaptation for Orion of Percival Everett’s 2001 novel Erasure, had its world premiere in Toronto at the Princess Alexandra Theatre on Sept. 8. MRC is the film’s studio and financier.

The American drama about U.S. racial dynamics portrays a Black academic, played by Jeffrey Wright, who grows frustrated that the only “Black books” that seem to find a wide (and white) audience are those that tread on stereotypes.

“My gratitude towards everyone who watched American Fiction [and] discussed it afterwards among friends and colleagues is endless. The film is now in your hands, and I’m so grateful that it was embraced in this way,” Jefferson said in a statement Sunday morning.

“American Fiction” has won the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival, TIFF organizers announced at an awards brunch on Sunday.

The Orion/MGM film by first-time director Cord Jefferson is a barbed satire that stars Jeffrey Wright as a writer who, to his dismay, achieves enormous success after as a joke writing a book filled with what he feels are the worst and most pandering cliches of Black representation. In its review, TheWrap called the film “an outlandishly assured directorial debut, a beautifully modulated film that takes a great actor, Jeffrey Wright, and gives him a spectacular showcase.”

While the film did not come into the festival as one of its highest profile selections, it was an immediate sensation after its Friday night premiere at the Princess of Wales Theatre, drawing some of TIFF’s most positive reviews. It currently stands at 86% positive on Rotten Tomatoes...

The People’s Choice Award from the just-wrapped 2023 Toronto Film Festival has gone to Cord Jefferson’s American Fiction. First Runner-Up is Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers. Second Runner-Up is Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron. The Documentary Award goes to Mr. Dressup: The Magic of Make-Believe, and the Midnight Madness winner is Dicks: The Musical.

Orion and MRC’s American Fiction stars Jeffrey Wright and comes from writer-director Jefferson. It is a scathing satire on the publishing industry and its treatment of serious works by Black writers, one whose name is Thelonious “Monk” Ellison. He travels back to his hometown of Boston to attend a book festival, but the turnout is low in favor of another book seminar with author Sintara Golden’s (Issa Rae) bestseller We Lives in Da Ghetto. It is scheduled to be released in theaters in November.

Voted by audience members since 1978 and...

Wicked Little Letters, Hit Man, Knox Goes Away also generating interest.

Netflix has picked up worldwide rights to Lucy Walker’s TIFF documentary Mountain Queen: The Summits Of Lhakpa Sherpa in its second buy of the festival.

The streamer plans a 2024 launch for the story of the first Nepali woman to scale Mount Everest. Sk Global Entertainment, Obb Pictures, Avocados and Coconuts produced and CAA Media Finance represented the filmmakers in the deal.

On Monday night Netflix snapped up US and select territories on Woman Of The Hour in a deal understood to be valued at $10m.

At time of...

Netflix has nabbed the worldwide rights to Lucy Walker’s documentary Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa after a world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival.

“It’s actually a fairy tale. You work for decades, and sometimes you have decades you’re doing everything wrong or nearly right, and then you have moments where you say I’m so glad I kept going,” Walker said of premiering the doc at TIFF during a Visionaries session sponsored by The Hollywood Reporter.

“Netflix is particularly good as it’s so global,” Walked added. A 2024 streaming release is planned for the documentary about Lhakpa Sherpa, the first Nepali woman to completely summit and survive Mount Everest. She climbed Mount Everest while bringing up two teenage daughters and recovering from an abusive marriage.

The film was shown as a work-in-progress at Toronto a year ago, before Walker returned for the world premiere.

Netflix has picked up worldwide rights to the documentary “Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa” out of the Toronto International Film Festival, TheWrap has learned. The sale comes on the heels of another high-profile pickup from Netflix, Anna Kendrick’s serial killer directorial debut “Woman of the Hour.”

The streamer will release the film in 2024.

Directed by Lucy Walker (“Of Night & Light”), the film tells the story of Lhakpa Sherpa, the first Nepali woman to summit and descend Mount Everest who is now a single mom working at a Connecticut Whole Foods.

“Lhakpa grew up in Nepal, illiterate and rejected by her family, and emigrated to the US without speaking English,” the official synopsis from TIFF reads. “When we meet her, she’s working as a dishwasher at Whole Foods in Connecticut, raising her teenage daughters, Sunny and Shiny, in a small apartment. She’s a single mom and spousal-abuse survivor.