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Corporate consolidation, along with shrinking publicity budgets and streaming services’ willingness to bury their own content, have made film festivals and series increasingly desirable to documentary filmmakers who are not only seeking distribution, but also to those nonfiction helmers who have found a platform for their work.

The rocky landscape has made the competition fierce for a slot at not only top-tier festivals, but also regional film events like New York’s Rooftop Films’ Summer Series.

Over the course of the last year, Rooftop Films president Dan Nuxoll received 3,500 film submissions for the nonprofit organization’s 27th annual Summer Series, which kicks off on May 25. Only 23 feature films were accepted. (Not all films have been announced.)

Fourteen of the 23 features Nuxoll chose are documentaries. include high profile docs like Chris Smith’s “Wham!” (Netflix), Kristen Lovell and Zackary Drucker’s “The Stroll” (HBO Documentary Films), Sacha Jenkins’ “Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues...

It’s almost summer in the city, and you might as well rot in the sun with some of the year’s best indie films.

Rooftop Films, one of the longest-running outdoor showcases for indie films globally, has revealed its 2023 lineup, which IndieWire shares exclusively below.

Throughout New York City parks and outdoor landmarks, the Summer Series runs May 25 through August 24 with over 45 events featuring new independent feature films, short film programs, and live performances. Highlights include screenings of Bill Pohlad’s Donnie and Joe Emerson biopic “Dreamin’ Wild,” Savanah Leaf’s A24 drama “Earth Mama,” Eva Longoria’s directing debut “Flamin’ Hot,” and Christopher Sharp and Moses Bwayo’s “Bobi Wine: The People’s President.”

But you can also catch festival favorites like Sundance Grand Jury Prize (World Cinema) winner “Scrapper” from writer-director Charlotte Regan, Laura Moss’s horror entry “birth/rebirth,” D. Smith’s Sundance Award-winning trans documentary “Kokomo City,...

Festival runs in Austin, Texas, from March 10-19.

Emma Seligman’s Shiva Baby follow-up Bottoms and Jon S. Baird’s Tetris starring Taron Egerton are among the second wave of SXSW unveiled on Wednesday.

Festival organisers announced all selections in Visions, Global presented by Mubi, 24 Beats, and Festival Favorites as well as additions to Headliners, TV Premieres, Narrative and Documentary Spotlight.

New to Headliners are world premieres of Emma Seligman’s Shiva Baby follow-up Bottoms which follows two unpopular queer high school students who start a fight club to have sex before graduation; and Jon S. Baird’s Tetris starring...

We have all (especially in recent years) witnessed the physical lengths that people will go to, to reach another country and hopefully a better life. But there are emotional ones as well: emotional norders and boundaries, lines we cross that we shouldn't, ones we try to erase, and ones that appear when our attention was somewhere else. What happens when a long physical separation leads to an emotional one, or when our attachments blur the lines between what we need and what we want? in his feature film debut, Iranian-Canadian filmmaker Kaveh Nabatian tells the story of three lives meeting each at their most vulnerable point. Each of their choices reflects their ambition, their pain, and their live, as they navigate a world which is...

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

CinemaThe film, written, directed, edited, and produced by Kiran R, who had assisted filmmaker Mani Ratnam, was shot in just 25 days before the pandemic-induced lockdown.Tnm StaffIndependent Tamil film Parallel Lines that premiered at Canada’s prestigious south Asian film festival, the Mosaic International South Asian Film Festival (Misaff) has won the Jury prize. The film, written, directed, edited, and produced by Kiran R, who had assisted filmmaker Mani Ratnam in Kaatru Veliyidai, was shot in just 25 days before the pandemic-induced lockdown. Among honorary Jury mentions for the film are Best Ensemble Performance for actors Vatsan M Natarajan and Masanth Natarajan; Best Screenplay, Best Editing and Best Sound Design for Kiran. Theatre artists Vatsan M Natarajan and Masanth Natarajan, from the Koothu-p-Pattarai theatre group are the lead actors of this film. With a very small film crew of seven members, the team went about filming Parallel Lines in and around Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu,...

Orchestrating the Suffering: Wordless Omnibus Serves up the Right Image-track for Haydn’s Sonatas

Kaveh Nabatian pours all of his experience as director of shorts, docs and music videos into an image-based homage to an orchestral work and the themes that inspired it. The Seven Last Words refers to Haydn’s composition of the same name, which revolves around the Biblical account of Christ’s suffering on the cross. Retaining control over the general concept but enlisting the help of six other Canadian filmmakers to collectively tackle a collection of themes, Nabatian ends up overseeing a fluid, eclectic visual experiment not necessarily limited to the realm of the religious.…...

Introduzione all’Oscuro lovers who can't make it to Rotterdam this year, can sample a selection of films from the comfort of their couch.

Festival Scope has teamed up with International Film Festival Rotterdam to screen 15 films online between now and February 24.

Films in the line-up includes the world premiere of Your Bones And Your Eyes by Caetano Gotardo - who also stars - and collaborative work The Seven Last Words, inspired by Franz Joseph Haydn's The Last Seven Years Of Our Saviour On The Cross, by multidisciplinary directors Kaveh Nabatian, Ariane Lorrain, Sophie Goyette, Juan Andrés Arango, Sophie Deraspe, Karl Lemieux, Caroline Monnet.

The line-up also includes films that have featured at other festivals, including Hans Hurch tribute Introduzione all'Oscuro and Sri Lankan drama House Of My Fathers, which tracks a man and woman's attempts to break an infertility curse that has struck their feuding villages.

Films cost 4€ each or 2€ if.

Around The World When You Were My AgeThe titles for the 48th International Film Festival Rotterdam are being announced in anticipation of the event running January 23 – February 3, 2018. We will update the program as new films are revealed.Tiger COMPETITIONSons of Denmark (Ulaa Salim)Take Me Somewhere Nice (Ena Sendijarević)Present.Perfect. (Shengze Zhu)Sheena667 (Grigory Dobrygin)Nona. If They Soak Me, I’ll Burn Them (Camila José Donoso)Koko-di Koko-da (Johannes Nyholm)Els dies que vindran (Carlos Marqués-Marcet)Bright Future COMPETITIONAlva (Ico Costa)Chèche lavi (Sam Ellison)De nuevo otra vez (Romina Paula)Doozy (Richard Squires)Dreissig (Simona Kostova)Ende der Saison (Elmar Imanov)Fabiana (Brunna Laboissière)The Gold-Laden Sheep & the Sacred Mountain (Ridham Janve)Heroes (Köken Ergun)Historia de mi nombre (Karin Cuyul)Last Night I Saw You Smiling (Kavich Neang)Lost Holiday (Michael Kerry Matthews/Thomas Matthews)Maggie (Yi Okseop)Mens (Isabelle Prim)No Data Plan (Miko Revereza...

The Seven Last Words

Canadian filmmaker, musician and composer Kaveh Nabatian assembles six directors beside himself for the multidisciplinary omnibus project The Seven Last Words. Besides himself are Ariane Lorrain, Still Light, Still Night’s Sophie Goyette (pictured above), Juan Andres Arango, Sophie Deraspe, Karl Lemieux, and Caroline Monnet who are joined by the British Callino String Quartet. The films were shot in Iran, Haiti, Colombia, Nunavut and Quebec in 35mm, 16mm and HD while Marc Boucrot (of Gaspar Noe’s Enter the Void and Love) was the film’s editor.

Gist: Based on The Seven Last Words of Our Saviour on the Cross (1787) by Joseph Haydn, a piece commissioned for the artist expressing the suffering of Christ on the cross, each director “provides their own very personal view of the themes in Heiden’s piece: forgiveness, redemption, abandonment and reunion.…...

Share her Journey to offer partial support for female selections.

Six women and six men have been unveiled as the 12 Canadian participants in this year’s Tiff Writers’ Studio as Tiff continues its commitment to gender parity across its talent development programmes.

The women will be supported in part by the organisation’s Share Her Journey campaign to champion women in front of and behind the camera.

The 2018–19 Tiff Writers’ Studio participants are: Danilo Baracho, Yung Chang, Martin Edralin, Sarah Goodman, Carinne Leduc, Jennifer Liao, Frieda Luk, Kaveh Nabatian, Celeste Parr, Kazik Radwanski, Lina Rodriguez, and Jorge Thielen-Armand.

Tiff Writers...

Share her Journey to offer partial support for female selections.

Six women and six men have been unveiled as the 12 Canadian participants in this year’s Tiff Writers’ Studio as Tiff continues its commitment to gender parity across its talent development programmes.

The women will be supported in part by the organisation’s Share Her Journey campaign to champion women in front of and behind the camera.

The 2018–19 Tiff Writers’ Studio participants are: Danilo Baracho, Yung Chang, Martin Edralin, Sarah Goodman, Carinne Leduc, Jennifer Liao, Frieda Luk, Kaveh Nabatian, Celeste Parr, Kazik Radwanski, Lina Rodriguez, and Jorge Thielen-Armand.

Tiff Writers...

World premieres for Patricia Rozema, Guy Édoin and Stephen Dunn are among the selection scheduled to screen at the Toronto International Film Festival (Tiff).

”The festival is excited to showcase these distinctively Canadian voices,” said Tiff senior programmer Steve Gravestock.

“From compelling documentaries on pressing social issues and complex, affecting dramas to political satires, we are proud to share the impressive range and talent of Canada’s directors.”

“This year’s filmmakers represent the depth and diversity of Canadian storytelling,” said the festival’s film programmes manager Magali Simard.

“By presenting the strong perspectives of the best and brightest in the film industry from across the country, we share with audiences the unique ways Canadians view the world.”

The films will compete for the Canada Goose Award for Best Canadian Feature Film, while the City Of Toronto Award For Best Canadian First Feature Film is also up for grabs.

This year’s Canadian awards jurors are director...

Denis Villeneuve will have two films in the festival as it emerged that Canadian Features world premiere Enemy starring Jake Gyllenhaal as a man and his doppelganger [pictured] has joined the previously announced Prisoners, also starring Gyllenhaal.

The Canadian Features selection includes Michael Dowse’s Goon follow-up The F Word, Xavier Dolan’s Tom At The Farm and Chloe Robichaud’s Sarah Prefers To Run as well as work from Jeff Barnaby, Bruce McDonald and Bruce Labruce. Also receiving its world premiere is All The Wrong Reasons featuring the final performance by the late Glee star Cory Monteith.

Festival organisers also unveiled Producers Lab Toronto participants and Telefilm Canada Pitch This! finallists, the shorts programme and participants in the tenth Tiff Talent Lab.

“The scope of this year’s feature films is as broad as Canada’s filmmaking community and demonstrates the deep versatility of our filmmakers,” said Tiff senior programmer Steve Gravestock. “From clever...

Denis Villeneuve will have two films in the festival as it emerged on Wednesday [7] that Canadian Features world premiere Enemy starring Jake Gyllenhaal as a man and his doppelganger [pictured] has joined the previously announced Prisoners, also starring Gyllenhaal.

The Canadian Features selection includes Michael Dowse’s Goon follow-up The F Word, Xavier Dolan’s Tom At The Farm and Chloe Robichaud’s Sarah Prefers To Run as well as work from Jeff Barnaby, Bruce McDonald and Bruce Labruce.

“The scope of this year’s feature films is as broad as Canada’s filmmaking community and demonstrates the deep versatility of our filmmakers,” said Tiff senior programmer Steve Gravestock. “From clever, biting satire to intimate social commentary, powerful dramas and even a truly magical comedy, the settings and themes vary, but the perspectives are always uniquely Canadian.”

The City Of Toronto and Canada Goose Award for Best Canadian Feature Film will be given to one of many outstanding...

Day seven of the 21st Annual Whitaker St. Louis International Film Festival already?!? There are still four days and hundreds of great films to go!

Sliff’s main venues are the the Hi-Pointe Theatre, Tivoli Theatre, Plaza Frontenac Cinema, Webster University’s Winifred Moore Auditorium, Washington University’s Brown Hall Auditorium and the Wildey Theatre in Edwardsville, Il

The entire schedule for the 21st Annual Whitaker St. Louis International Film Festival be found Here.

http://cinemastlouis.org/sliff-2012

Here is what will be screening at The 21st Whitaker St. Louis International Film Festival today, Wednesday, November 14th

Booker’S Place

Booker’S Place plays at 7:15pm at the Tivoli Theatre

Booker Wright was an African-American restaurant owner who also served double-duty as a waiter in a whites-only restaurant in Mississippi in the 1960s. He became an unlikely activist for the civil-rights movement when he appeared on a 1965 network TV...

The world premiere of FilmDistrict’s Red Dawn reboot will close The Austin-based genre fest today. Well, if you didn’t already hear, Lithuanian sci-fi romantic thriller Vanishing Waves was the big winner by picking up four awards including Best Feature, Best Director (Kristina Buozyte), Best Screenplay (Bruno Samper, Buozyte), and Best Actress (Jurga Jutaite).

Have you ever dreamed of being inside the head of another person – a beloved one or your rival ? Have you ever wished to experience the ideal relationship, where two minds come into total fusion? “Vanishing waves” – a sci-fi melodrama. Following solid scientific experiment, based on the neural transfer, a young inhibited man will live an astonishing journey in the comatose woman anonymous mind. This contemporary tale is exploring the nature of desire by exposing links and contradictions between the human body and the mind.

Here Comes the Devil, Adrian Garcia Bogliano‘s homage to 70s horror films,...

Photo by David Hill

Fantastic Fest is almost at its end, which means it’s of course time for the one and only Fantastic Awards!

Now I could waste your time for a few paragraphs on the apparent ridiculousness of holding an Award Ceremony at the half-way point of a festival, but instead I’m going to save my tirades for more important matters, and just assume that Festival Organizers worldwide know what they’re doing. What I Will give you though is a list of this years Award Winners!

As you look through the list of winners, you may want to take note of a few key films and add them to your “To Screen” list. One of them is Adrian Garcia Bogliano’s homage to 70’s horror film’s Here Comes The Devil, which became the first film in Fantastic Fest history to completely Sweep the Horror Features...

Fantastic Fest has announced the 2012 Fantastic Fest Award winners. With all the great films screening at the Fest, they had quite a time choosing the best and most striking films of the festival.

Look for more coverage from Travis Keune in the coming days. Check out his Fantastic Fest review of Frankenweenie here and Dredd 3D here.

Audience Award (Presented by Maxwell Locke & Ritter)

I Declare War (dir. Robert Wilson & Jason Lapeyre)

Amd “Next Wave” Spotlight Competition

Best Picture: Flicker (dir. Patrik Eklund)

Best Director: Charles de Lauzirika (Crave)

Best Screenplay: Max Porcelijn (Plan C)

Best Actor: Michael Eklund (Errors of the Human Body)

Best Actress: Alina Levshin (Combat Girls)

Fantastic Features

Best Picture: Vanishing Waves (dir. Kristina Buozyte)

Best Director: Kristina Buozyte (Vanishing Waves)

Best Screenplay: Bruno Samper, Kristina Buozyte (Vanishing Waves)

Best Actor: Rene Bitorajac (Vegetarian Cannibal)

Best Actress: Jurga Jutaite (Vanishing Waves)

Horror Features

Best Picture: Here Comes the Devil (dir.

One of the greatest film festivals on the face of the planet, Fantastic Fest in Austin Texas, has unveiled their award winners for 2012, and it's quite an impressive list to say the least. Read on to see who's taking home some fantastic memories!

From the Press Release

Fantastic Fest is thrilled to announce this year's Fantastic Fest Award winners. It's a terrible task to pick favorites and single out any of the magnificent films that played at this year's festival, but our esteemed team of jurors have done the nearly impossible and chosen the best and most striking films of the festival.

The audience awards are presented by accounting firm Maxwell Locke & Ritter, who provided the certified tabulation of ballots this year and are the exclusive accounting sponsor of Fantastic Fest. Amd is the presenter of the prestigious "Next Wave" Awards, which honors emerging filmmakers. The winner of the "Next...

Fantastic Fest recently announced their selection of more than 40 short films slated to slither and crawl into all the various orifices of this annual extravaganza of genre film. The biopsy of the best genre short films from around the globe will showcase works from several countries, including Spain, South Korea, Bangladesh, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands and more.

38-39°C (2011)

Regional Premiere

Director: Jason Hong, South Korea, 8 minutes

A father and son confront the emotional divide that separates them in the intimate setting of a Korean bathhouse.

88:88 (2012)

Regional Premiere

Director: Joey Ciccoline, USA, 14 minutes

Val has lost control of her life. Those around her deny the reality of the extraordinary experiences she feels powerless against. Realizing she must stand alone, she has only one remaining option – to find a way to fight back.

Advantageous (2012)

Regional Premiere

Director: Jennifer Phang, USA 23 minutes

Gwen is the spokesperson for a radical technology...

The official lineup of short films playing this year's Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas, has been announced, and let's just say that there are lots of reasons why you should be packing your bags and heading to the Longhorn State!

From the Press Release:

Fantastic Fest is excited to announce the short film lineup for the eighth edition of Fantastic Fest, happening September 20th-27th in Austin, Texas. Fantastic Fest loves its short films - they provide a fertile ground for new and exciting filmmaking talent to show off their genre goods in an unrestrained format. Here is the lineup for Fantastic Fest 2012:

38-39°C (2011)

Regional Premiere

Director: Jason Hong, South Korea, 8 minutes

A father and son confront the emotional divide that separates them in the intimate setting of a Korean bathhouse.

88:88 (2012)

Regional Premiere

Director: Joey Ciccoline, USA, 14 minutes

Val has lost control of her life. Those around...

If you plan to attend the next Toronto International Film Festival (Tiff), which will be held from September 8 to 18, you may think of voting for the Canadian film from an emerging director you'd like to see.

Here's the list of the five films:

* Esther and Leib - Sean Wainsteim - (Toronto, Ontario).

A raw portrait of Esther and Leib, a couple who met when escaping Europe, as they reflect on the passing years and each other.

* My First Movie - Gabriel Taraboulsy - (Montréal, Quebec)

Tasked with making a video portrait of her family, a young filmmaker plants a hidden camera, capturing a vision of her family that is far different from anything she imagined.

* Next of Kin - Kara Blake - (Montréal, Quebec)

Documenting the parallel lives of two sisters surviving a long, cold winter in Montreal.

* The Revenge Plot - Jared Raab - (Toronto, Ontario)

After Matt and...

Yesterday, the nominees for the 13th Jutra Awards ceremony were revealed. The winners of this Quebecker Oscar will be revealed next month. The following is the full list of nominees.

Best motion picture:

* 10 1/2

* Les amours imaginaires

* Curling

* Incendies

* Les signes vitaux

Best director:

* Denis Côté- Curling

* Xavier Dolan- Les amours imaginaires

* Kim Nguyen - La cité

* Podz (Daniel Grou) - 10 1/2

* Denis Villeneuve- Incendies

Best leading actress:

* Lubna Azabal - Incendies

* Suzanne Clément - Tromper le silence

* Mélissa Desormeaux-Poulin - Incendies

* Évelyne Rompré- 2 fois une femme

* Guylaine Tremblay- Trois temps après la mort d'Anna

Best leading actor:

* Jay Baruchel - The Trotsky

* Emmanuel Bilodeau - Curling

* Jacques Godin - La dernière fugue

* Claude Legault - 10 1/2

* François Papineau - Route 132

Best supporting actress:

* Dorothée Berryman - Cabotins

* Marie Brassard - Les signes vitaux

* Geneviève Chartrand - Le journal d'Aurélie Laflamme

* Isabelle Miquelon - La dernière fugue

* Danielle Proulx...

The nominees for the 31st Annual Genie Awards, Canada’s answer to the Oscars, were unveiled at simultaneous press conferences in Montreal and Toronto yeseterday. After being snubbed by the major Hollywood awards, only receiving 1 nomination and win for Paul Giamatti at the Golden Globes, Barney’s Version has been highly recognized by Canadian audiences. This is no surprise as its source material is a novel from beloved Canadian treasure Mordecai Richler and the film was partially shot in Montreal. Barney’s VersionIncendies leads the pack with 11 nominations including Best Motion Picture and populating most of the acting categories including one for Paul Giamatti for a Performace by an Actor in a Leading Role and Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role for Dustin Hoffman. Following closely is the other Canadian darling this year, Incendies , which garnered 10 nominations such as Adapted Screenplay (Denis Villeneuve) and Performance by an Actress...

Every year 'round about this time the Toronto International Film Festival Group announces their selections as Canada's Top Ten Feature Films and Short Films. Selected by a jury of industry professionals it's general a pretty good guide for what's happening here in any given year.

This year's selections were announced today and while I personally consider the absence of Jacob Tierney's Good Neighbours to be a significant omission it's pretty hard to argue with the titles that are actually in there. The films selected will all screen at the Tiff Bell Lightbox beginning in January. Here's the full announcement:

Toronto -- Tiff revealed the top 10 best features and top 10 best short films of 2010 this evening at the 10th annual Canada's Top Ten industry event, hosted by Peter Keleghan and Leah Pinsent. Established in 2001, Canada's Top Ten celebrates excellence in Canadian cinema and raises public awareness of Canadian achievements in film.

The teasing is over! This here is the real deal. The moment we wait all year for: The lineup for the powerful, the mighty Boston Underground Film Festival, which is set to run March 25 to April 1. Now in its 12th year, Buff shows no sign of slowing down or taking it easy. In fact, this might be their most demented and transgressive edition yet.

There are homages to Giallo horror, tributes to the grand grindhouse tradition of sleaze and exploitation, sex and violence galore — both separately and together — plus, a resurrected ’80s slasher classic that all combine into an epic celebration of everything that is vicious and twisted in this world. But, in a fun way, ya know.

Alas, I haven’t seen any of the feature films that are playing this year, so I can’t offer any special recommendations of those. Although, there are many (most) that I...

Diversity seems to be the key this year at the SXSW festival, which takes place in Austin, TX from March 12-20, as they’ve now announced the full lineup of Panels and short films that will be at this years event. As with the feature films schedule, this list of panels and shorts should provide an almost endless supply of diverse and interesting programming for attendees.

Following sre some highlights of panels we think are worth checking out. For a full list and descriptions, head over to the SXSW official site. Also, be sure to check back here at The Flickast as we’ll be at SXSW this year to bring you all the details on these great events and much more.

A Conversation with Michel Gondry

The stratospheric rise of Academy Award-winning visionary Michel Gondry is one of the great success stories of modern film. Working with fellow travelers like Spike Jonze,...

The South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Conference and Festival (March 12 - March 16, 2010) has announced the short film program and the list of panel participants. Michel Gondry, David Gordon Green, Jody Hill, Danny McBride, Ruben Fleischer, Matt Reeves, Eli Roth, Quentin Tarantino, and Ti West are among the people scheduled to participate. The full list can be viewed at the provided link. As to the shorts program, the list is featured at the bottom of this post. The lineup is extensive, and full of unique films waiting to be discovered.

Comprehensive Short Films Lineup

Narrative Shorts

A selection of original, well-crafted films that take advantage of the short form and exemplify distinctive and genuine storytelling. The winner of our Grand Jury Award in this category is eligible for a 2011 Academy Award nomination for Best Narrative Short.

Anatinus

Director: David Wanger

A glimpse of the dawn of a strange new era.

Bedford Park Boulevard...

Screenings for the 2008 Sxsw Film Festival (as well as our coverage here at Ifc.com) will carry on as the music contingent rolls into Austin, but last night, the winners of the jury and audience awards were announced.

Daniel Junge's "They Killed Sister Dorothy," about the murder of activist Dorothy Mae Stang, received both the jury and audience prizes for best documentary, while on the narrative side, Jake Mahaffy's "Wellness" and Mark Webber's "Explicit Ills" were given nods by the jury and by the audience. Here's a full list of the winners:

Narrative Feature

Grand Jury Award: "Wellness," dir. Jake Mahaffy

Special Jury Award for Best Ensemble Cast: "Up With Me," dir. Greg Takoudes

Special Jury Award for Cinematography: "Explicit Ills," dir. Mark Webber

Documentary Feature

Grand Jury Award: "They Killed Sister Dorothy," dir. Daniel Junge

Special Jury Award: "Full Battle Rattle," dirs. Tony Gerber and Jesse Moss...