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The Adam Kinzinger-focused The Last Republican was one of the hottest documentaries at the Toronto International Film Festival. Directed by Steve Pink (Hot Tub Time Machine), the movie chronicles the then-Illinois Congressman as he breaks ranks with his Republican colleagues to criticize Donald Trump and join the Jan. 6 committee. The movie has seen its relevance skyrocket in the wake of Trump’s election last month.

In this exclusive trailer drop, Kinzinger can be seen outlining his motivations. “It’s not about a political view. It’s about what it is to turn against everything you ever belonged to because of some red line you can’t cross,” he says, in a trailer that highlights both the serious and lighter aspects of Kinzinger’s story.

At TIFF, he told THR that politics was not the sole focus of the film, which is also produced by the doc filmmaker Jason Kohn...

Initially, “Hot Tub Time Machine” director Steve Pink wasn’t sure about making “The Last Republican,” a documentary about former U.S. Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger. As a self-professed far-left progressive, Pink didn’t know if Kinzinger, a conservative whose efforts to hold Donald Trump accountable for the Jan. 6 insurrection, was a worthy doc subject.

“The thought was that we are both from Illinois, so that was cool and we both have a Midwestern orientation, but I just couldn’t imagine a single thing I would agree with him on, except for this one thing, which was clearly that something new was happening here in American life where the nature of our democracy was and is being questioned,” says Pink.

When the U.S. capitol was besieged on Jan. 6, 2021 Kinzinger was among 10 Republicans who voted to impeach the former president for instigating an insurrection. He then served on the Congressional...

Adam Kinzinger had turned down more than a dozen requests to make a documentary. Then the director of Hot Tub Time Machine walked in.

The Illinois Republican congressman who famously — and largely solitarily — turned on Donald Trump after Jan. 6 was reluctant to participate in a movie that focused on his fading hopes to retain his seat. But Steve Pink, the aforesaid auteur of the jacuzzi, wanted to get more personal than that.

“Everyone else was interested in re-election,” Kinzinger said in an interview with THR as the Toronto International Film Festival was set to start Thursday. “But when I talked to Steve and the team their interest was in the human element — what’s the cost to you and your future kid?”

That conversation was more than two years ago. Now the resulting film, The Last Republican, could make an impact on more than just Kinzinger when it premieres at TIFF 2024 on Saturday.

Exclusive: To the delight of Democrats, and outrage of many Republicans, former GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger addressed the Democratic National Convention on its final night last month, sharing his observations about the party he served for 12 years in Congress.

“The Republican Party is no longer conservative,” he said. “It has switched its allegiance from the principles that gave it purpose to a man whose only purpose is himself.”

Any guesses who he was referring to? If there’s any doubt, it will be dispelled in the documentary The Last Republican, set to make its world premiere on Saturday at the Toronto International Film Festival. Steve Pink (Hot Tub Time Machine) directed the film, an acquisition title at TIFF. We have your first look at the film in the exclusive clip below.

Adam Kinzinger in his Congressional office.

In the documentary, Kinzinger describes how he thought his fellow Republicans would finally...

As we wrap up our year-end coverage, IndieWire looks back at the people, projects, and ideas that defined 2023 — and what’s coming next.

As golden ages go, this one was more of a blip.

Five years ago, the box office celebrated nonfiction films: $22 million for “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?,” $14 million for “Rbg,” $17.5 million for “Free Solo.” Critical favorites and Oscar nominees included films from exciting American first-time directors, including RaMell Ross’s lyrical breakthrough about life in rural Alabama, “Hale County This Morning, This Evening” and Bing Liu’s moving personal exposé of domestic abuse in northern Illinois, “Minding the Gap.”

2023 lacked documentary touchstones. A few faith-based documentaries succeeded by preaching to the choir, but the most successful (non-concert) documentary released in theaters this year was the Yogi Berra baseball portrait “It Ain’t Over”. You also could include Magnolia Pictures’ “Joan Baez: I Am A Noise” or — if you...

The 2023 Cinema Eye Honors have unveiled the 20 titles for its Audience Choice Prize Long List, with voting now open.

The 17th annual awards ceremony also recognized the best nonfiction and documentary films and series across five Broadcast categories and a Shorts List with 10 of the year’s top documentary short films, as well as the 20 films in the running for the Audience Choice Prize Long List.

This year’s list includes films from Cinema Eye Honors alumni including “The Eternal Memory,” “American Symphony,” “Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie,” “Stamped from the Beginning,” “32 Sounds,” “A Compassionate Spy,” “Confessions of a Good Samaritan,” “The Mission,” “The Pigeon Tunnel,” and “Stephen Curry: Underrated.”

Hulu series “The 1619 Project” and Showtime’s “Nothing Lasts Forever” lead the Broadcast Film and Series nominations with three nods each. The “1619 Project,” adapted from Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones’s work with The New...

The Hulu series The 1619 Project and the Showtime feature Nothing Lasts Forever scored a leading three nominations apiece today as the Cinema Eye Honors announced its first round of contenders for the prestigious documentary-focused awards.

The 1619 Project, based on Nikole Hannah-Jones’s Pulitzer Prize-winning examination of slavery in North America and its impact up until the present day, earned nominations for Best Anthology Series, broadcast editing and broadcast cinematography. Oprah Winfrey, Oscar winner Roger Ross Williams and Hannah-Jones are among the producers of the six-part series.

‘Nothing Lasts Forever’

Nothing Lasts Forever, director Jason Kohn’s glittering examination of the world of diamonds – the real kind and the emergence of undetectable “synthetic” diamonds – earned nominations for Best Broadcast Film, broadcast editing and broadcast cinematography. Scroll for the full list of nominations announced today.

Other films and series that scored multiple nominations include Hulu’s Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields...

Hulu’s “The 1619 Project” and Showtime’s “Nothing Lasts Forever” lead all broadcast documentaries in nominations for the 17th annual Cinema Eye Honors, which were announced on Thursday during the Cinema Eye Fall Lunch at Redbird in downtown Los Angeles.

Each of the programs received three nominations in the five broadcast categories, with “The 1619 Project” nominated in the Anthology Series, cinematography and editing categories and “Nothing Lasts Forever” singled out in Broadcast film, cinematography and editing categories.

Other programs with multiple nominations include the broadcast movie “Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields,” the nonfiction series “Dear Mama” and “Paul T. Goldman” and the anthology series “Edge of the Unknown With Jimmy Chin” and “Our Planet II.”

Hulu led all networks and platforms with eight nominations, followed by Netflix with five and Showtime with four.

Cinema Eye Honors, a New York-based organization devoted to honoring all facets of nonfiction filmmaking, also...

Exclusive: Following six seasons as Howard Hamlin on AMC’s megahit Better Call Saul, Patrick Fabian has signed on to lead the indie The Way We Speak from writer-director Ian Ebright (From the Sky).

Billed as an allegory about America’s fractured politics and culture, the film follows Simon (Fabian), an up-and-coming commentator whose world is turned upside down when his best friend and debate opponent suffers a fatal heart attack. Simon refuses to leave the spotlight at an annual thought-leader summit, leading to an obsession with his new opponent and a growing rift with his ailing wife, Claire (Law & Order: Special Victims Unit’s Diana Coconubo).

Ebright’s Broken Telegraph is producing the pic, also to star Kailey Rhodes (Black Pool), Ayanna Berkshire (Twilight) and Lowell Deo (Z Nation). Fabian is repped by The Kohner Agency and Essential Talent Management.

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Exclusive: Cinedigm has acquired North American rights to...

The best way to encapsulate the experience of watching Nothing Lasts Forever, the fascinating Showtime documentary about the diamond industry from director Jason Kohn, is to discuss a different film that would initially seem to be about as far away from this one as possible. Specifically, it is the 1980 horror film Cannibal Holocaust that Kohn makes an explicit reference to about midway through his dissection of this subject. How in the world could one create a connection between a grimy exploitation picture and a more grounded documentary about a real industry? Well, when interviewing the now former executive vice president of the De Beers diamond company Stephen Lussier, the film makes use of the mesmerizing main theme from Cannibal Holocaust by the late composer Riz Ortolani. For those who haven’t heard it, said score starts out simply enough with an acoustic guitar shifting into more soaring and ethereal tones...

Now that lab-grown diamonds are comparable to the mined version, Jason Kohn’s film examines tensions in the jewellery industry

Jason Kohn’s muckraking documentary examines tensions in the diamond and jewellery trade that are currently heating to magma-hot levels over lab-grown diamonds, now being manufactured to such a high standard they’re indistinguishable from “natural” mined diamonds. That is a big problem for those with an interest in keeping the two types of gem siloed off from one another so that the prices for mined diamonds remains high. Many industry players, who control the majority of the supply chains, want them to remain so.

But with so much money at stake and an industry swathed in secrecy, of course there is likely to be mischief and malfeasance afoot, with lab-grown diamonds potentially being passed off as mined ones. One interviewee reckons as much as 20 of the diamonds sold as...

For several years, Oscar-winning director Roger Ross Williams hosted an intimate IDFA paella party at his apartment in Amsterdam for attending directors, producers and editors. But in 2018, Williams and his co-host, documentary producer, and the founder of Motto Pictures, Julie Goldman (“The Velvet Underground”), realized that the annual event had transformed into an award season stop.

“At one point, we looked around, and the whole party was filled with the international AMPAS (Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences) members,” says Goldman. “Then, the last year we had the party, someone rang the buzzer an hour before it was supposed to start. We buzzed him up, and it was this guy named Alex, and he said, ‘I was told that I have to come to this party.’”

It turned out that Alex was Alex Honnold, the subject of “Free Solo” – a film that would later win the Oscar for best feature documentary.

Exclusive: London-based Dogwoof has locked a series of international deals for Jason Kohn’s diamond industry documentary Nothing Lasts Forever and Snow Hnin Ei Hlaing’s debut feature Midwives on the first day of the 2022 IDFA Forum.

Produced by Kilo Films for Showtime and directed by Kohn (Love Means Zero), Nothing Lasts Forever was sold to Vpro (Netherlands), Svt (Sweden), Nrk (Norway), Dr (Denmark), Movistar/Telefonica (Spain and Andorra), Vrt (Belgium), and Madman (Australia and New Zealand).

Further deals include Nos Lusomundo (Portugal and Palop), HOT8 and Yesdocu (Israel), Rtbf (Belgium – French speaking), Pts (Taiwan), Pccw (Hong Kong and Macau), and Ruv (Iceland). Showtime holds North American rights.

Producers on the doc include Amanda Branson Gill, Jared Ian Goldman, and Jason Kohn. Executive producers are Vinnie Malhotra for Showtime, and co-producers are Kimberley Hassett, Jonathan Gribetz, and Heloisa Passos.

Snow Hnin Ei Hlaing’s Midwives has sold to Nhk (Japan...

It’s become burrowed in our psyche: the necessity of a diamond ring when it comes to marriage proposals. Not to mention the most prized gift a significant other could desire no matter the situation. When did this idea begin? And in an industry where synthetic, man-made diamonds are on the rise, what is the future for value of the product? All these questions (and many more) are answered in Jason Kohn’s new documentary Nothing Lasts Forever.

A perfect double-feature with Uncut Gems, the entertaining, occasionally shocking documentary explores all facets of the modern-day diamond industry. From the fabrication of socially accepted ideas of romantic love, pushing the scarcity myth, and above all the importance of crafting a good story, Nothing Lasts Forever gives impressive weight to all sides of the twisty tale without painting anyone into a definitively villainous corner.

With the film arriving in theaters this Friday courtesy of Showtime,...

Nothing Lasts Forever Reviewed for Shockya.com & BigAppleReviews.net, linked from Rotten Tomatoes by Harvey Karten Director: Jason Kohn Cast: Dusan Simic, Martin Rapaport, Aja Raden, Tehmasp Printer, Stephen Lussier, John Janik, Melvyn Thomas, Chandu Sheta Screened at: Critics’ link, NYC, 11/10/22 “Diamond are Forever” may be the and subject of a 1971 James Bond movie, […]

The post Nothing Lasts Forever Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

“The synthetic diamond was a news story, and what was going was a war of narrative,” declares director Jason Kohn in our recent webchat. The filmmaker chronicles that ongoing war in the new documentary “Nothing Last Forever,” an examination of a little-known battle within the diamond industry. The film premiered at the 2022 SXSW Film Festival before premiering on Showtime. Check out our exclusive video interview with Kohn above.

The director was initially surprised that so little of the diamond industry’s inner workings were known to the public. “Man-made diamonds and natural diamonds are being mixed in the market and not onenon-diamond press have ever written a single thing about it, which is crazy,” he says.

SEEdozens of interviews with 2023 Oscar contenders

“Nothing Lasts Forever” is really two films in one. On one hand it documents the diamond industry’s battle against the incursion of synthetic or “man-made” diamonds into the diamond market.

If you spent much of October delving into a horror-movie marathon, November presents the perfect opportunity to catch up on new releases from last month you may have missed and are now expanding or in wider circulation—including Decision to Leave, Aftersun, TÁR, All That Breathes, Armageddon Time, The Banshees of Inisherin, and The Novelist’s Film. This month has its own formidable slate, from late-period auteur offerings to ambitious gambles to striking first-time features. Check out our picks to see below.

15. Causeway (Lila Neugebauer; Nov. 4)

Jennifer Lawrence’s sole outing this year is Causeway, which comes from first-time director Lila Neugebauer. As C.J. Prince said in his review, “It comes as a bit of a surprise to see how jarring Jennifer Lawrence’s presence is in Causeway, her new film directed by first-time filmmaker Lila Neugebauer. A subdued character drama about a soldier recovering back home after suffering a brain injury in Afghanistan,...

The 18th edition of the Camden Intl. Film Festival, kicking off Sept. 15, will feature a handful of award-contending documentaries fresh off showings at Telluride and the Toronto film festivals. The Maine-based festival will unfold in a hybrid format, with both in-person events over a three-day period concluding Sept. 18, and online screenings available from Sept. 15 to Sept. 25 to audiences across North America.

This year’s Ciff highlights include the U.S. premiere of Tamana Ayazi and Marcel Mettelsiefen’s Netflix release “In Her Hands,” which follows one of Afghanistan’s first female mayors during the months leading up to the Taliban takeover the country in 2021; Chris Smith’s “Sr.,” centered on the life and career of Robert Downey Sr. and his relationship to his son, Robert Downey Jr.; and Steve James’ “A Compassionate Spy,” about Manhattan Project physicist, Soviet spy and University of Chicago alum Theodore Hall. Each of the three...

Kicking off this Thursday is one of the finest annual showcases in indie filmmaking, BAMcinemaFest, taking place at Bam Rose Cinemas. Among both well-curated highlights from recent festivals and world premieres, we’ve rounded up six essential features not to miss.

The festival also includes a number of notable new shorts, including Lynne Sachs’ Swerve (see our trailer premiere), Robert Machoian and Rodrigo Ojeda-Beck’s The Last Days of August, Rodney Evans’ Portal, and more. Check out our feature picks below and learn more here.

2nd Chance (Ramin Bahrani)

It’s an eerie image. Richard Davis stands out in a field, wearing a kevlar vest, and points a pistol into his belly. Then he pulls the trigger, skips back a bit, and checks his red-burned skin. Over the course of his life, he would do this—shoot himself—192 times, proving the efficacy of his life-saving device in the most visceral and operatic way possible.

HamptonsFilm has unveiled the lineup for its 14th annual SummerDocs series and it includes Sara Dosa’s “Fire of Love,” Daniel Roher’s “Navalny” and Jason Kohn’s “Nothing Lasts Forever.” Presented by Alec Baldwin with co-curation from David Nugent, artistic director of the affiliated Hamptons Intl. Film Festival, each screening will be followed by a conversation with that documentary’s director.

The series will kick-off on June 25 with “Fire of Love.” Following a successful Sundance debut, National Geographic Documentary Films acquired the worldwide rights to the docu. Neon subsequently partnered with Nat Geo to release the film about married volcanologists on July 6.

Roher’s “Navalny” will screen on July 23 followed by a Q&a led by Baldwin. About Alexei Navalny, the leader of the Russian opposition who survived an assassination attempt by poisoning with a lethal nerve agent in August 2020, “Navalny” premiered at Sundance to rave reviews and received...

Chicago – Doc10, the yearly Chicago documentary film festival, is on Day Two on May 20th, 2022, with the films (click links) Descendant (7pm), and the recommendation of the day Nothing Lasts Forever (9pm).

Rating: 5.0/5.0

”Nothing Lasts Forever” has the possibility to bring an entire industry, based on a lie, to its final irrelevance. The documentary explores the diamond industry, which has been shook up in the last ten years by the viability of so-called “synthetic” diamonds, which in truth are just … diamonds. The story is about this fact, and the ability of the DeBeers Company (the chief hoarder and price arbiters of diamonds) to create “an illusion so spectacular it turned into the truth,” according to the film’s primary debunker Aja Raden. She is countered by both DeBeers and diamond middle man Martin Rappaport, who keep insisting that it contains more importance, again based on the marketing they made up.

Much like a diamond, a good documentary has a lot more than meets the eye. Even the world’s most fascinating subject matter can become tedious in the wrong hands, and director Jason Kohn clearly understands the need for a good story and compelling interview subjects, delivering on both in his gripping documentary “Nothing Lasts Forever.” By turns engaging and flashy, the film probes the narratives propping up the multi-billion dollar diamond industry and posits that it’s all a house of cards. With a peppy original score, a flurry of colorful characters, and a disruptive subject matter, “Nothing Lasts Forever” is

Rather than expose the inhumane practices of the mining industry, which is well-traveled terrain, “Diamonds Last Forever” sets its sights on the power players up the chain who are inflating the value of the naturally occurring stones. The film opens with staticky archival footage of diamond commercials, stilted...

"Society is changing! The role of the diamond is under threat." Showtime has revealed an official trailer for their compelling diamond documentary Nothing Lasts Forever, from award-winning filmmaker Jason Kohn. This premiered at the 2022 Berlin Film Festival last month, and is playing at SXSW and Cph:dox this month before hitting Showtime. The DeBeers diamond cartel cornered the market on eternal love with their marketing phrase "A diamond is forever", but now a wave of undetectable synthetic diamonds has flooded global gem markets, threatening to expose the artifice that props up a multi-billion dollar industry. "This is a perfect crime." Berlinale adds to the intrigue: "This is a labyrinth where illusions and reality merge, where authenticity and imagination overlap, and questions arise about the value we place on the goods around us. In this sense, diamonds turn out to be exemplary: their exclusivity being the illusory effect of decades of marketing,...

Jason Kohn’s documentary was produced for US cable network Showtime.

Dogwoof is to handle international sales on Jason Kohn’s documentary Nothing Lasts Forever, which received its world premiere at the Berlinale last week.

The London-based documentary specialist will present the feature to buyers at MipTV in April, after securing a deal with premium US cable network Showtime, which holds worldwide rights and will broadcast the film in the US and Canada. A North America premiere is set to take place at SXSW in March.

Filmed over a decade, Kohn infiltrated the secretive diamond industry to uncover a black market in synthetic diamonds,...

Dogwoof will handle international sales for Jason Kohn’s “Nothing Lasts Forever” following its world premiere in Berlin.

Kohn spent ten years on the project, traversing across the world and speaking to industry insiders including Dusan Simic, Aja Raden, Martin Rappaport, Stephen Lussier and Chandu Sheta.

“Infiltrating the highly secretive diamond industry, Kohn uncovers a threat to the lucrative trade that could devalue every diamond ever mined, effectively destroying the universal symbol of love and commitment,” reads the logline.

Variety‘s Peter Debruge described “Nothing Lasts Forever” as “a solid, investigative documentary, shot and scored like a tight art-house thriller” in his review. “Kohn has created the rare documentary that transforms the way we understand the world, questioning so many of our core beliefs, including the very notion of what is ‘real.'”

Dogwoof will present “Nothing Lasts Forever” at MipTV in April.

Showtime has the worldwide rights to the doc,...

It takes perhaps a billion years to make a diamond, and just 87 minutes to shatter so many of the misconceptions audiences have about them in “Nothing Lasts Forever.” Make that eight minutes. That’s roughly the point at which jewelry designer (and “Stone” author) Aja Raden — the only woman interviewed in Jason Kohn’s wild, decade-long delve into the secretive world of the diamond industry — offers up this gem: “The truth about diamonds is: They’re all exactly the same, and none of them are really worth anything.”

For some, that revelation could hit with the force of being told there’s no Santa Claus, even though it’s been an open secret for ages. Most audiences probably already have some inkling of how the De Beers diamond cartel took a not-particularly-rare stone and infused it with value by cornering the market, stockpiling most of the world’s supply and...

Demystifying and questioning the very notion of authenticity, Jason Kohn’s informative and oddly riveting, diamond-documentary “Nothing Lasts Forever” is ostensibly about the oft-antagonistic relationship between natural and synthetic diamonds. Yet, diamonds are an in-road as Kohn explores the commodification of such abstractions as love and desire, questioning how exactly a shiny rock — one that isn’t even that rare — became a physical manifestation of commitment. What does it matter if a diamond is naturally mined or grown in a lab if the experts cannot even tell the difference?

Continue reading ‘Nothing Lasts Forever’ Review: Brisk Introduction To Synthetic Diamonds Questions The Nature of Authenticity [Berlin] at The Playlist.

In-person festival to run in Austin, Texas, from March 11-20.

A starry SXSW 2022 film line-up announced on Wednesday (2) includes world premieres of new work from Antonia Campbell-Hughes, Richard Linklater and Nicolas Cage, among many others.

The Austin, Texas, festival ran online editions over the past two years and is planned to take place from March 11-20 as an in-person event against a backdrop of declining Omicron infection levels across the United States.

The roster includes Irish filmmaker and actor Campbell-Hughes’s It Is In Us All (pictured) in Narrative Feature Competition starring Cosmo Jarvis, Claes Bang and Campbell-Hughes about a...

Films by auteurs Claire Denis, Hong Sangsoo and Rithy Panh are part of the lineup in competition at the 72nd Berlin Film Festival.

Berlin’s 2022 selection spans 18 movies, seven directed by women, which will compete for the Golden and Silver Bears. The films originate from 15 countries, with 17 serving as world premieres. Two of the films are first features, both from women.

Artistic director Carlo Chatrian discussed the thematic throughline of “human and emotional bonds” across the selection, with the family unit serving as a key focal point in a number of movies. More than half are set in the present time, and two are within the pandemic era.

The festival hosts 12 returning filmmakers, eight of whom are in competition and five of whom already hold a Bear from Berlin.

The festival will go ahead as an in-person event, albeit with seating capacity in movie theaters reduced to 50% and without any parties or receptions.

PoetBerlinale have announced the first 62 titles selected for the 72nd edition of their festival, set to take place physically from February 10 — 20.FORUMAfterwater (Dane Komljen)Poet (Darezhan Omirbayev)The Middle AgesEurope (Philip Scheffner)A Flower in the Mouth (Éric Baudelaire)Memoryland (Kim Quy Bui)My Two Voices (Lina Rodriguez)Nuclear Family (Erin Wilkerson, Travis Wilkerson)Super Natural (Jorge Jácome)The United States of America (James Benning)Forum EXPANDEDDragon Tooth (Rafael Castanheira Parrode)Home When You Return (Carl Elsaesser)Jail Bird in a Peacock Chair (James Gregory Atkinson)Sol in the Dark (Mawena Yehouessi)vs (Lydia Nsiah)PANORAMATalking About the Weather (Annika Pinske)The Apartment with Two Women (Kim Se-in)Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power (Nina Menkes)Swing Ride (Chiara Bellosi)Dreaming WallsKlondike (Maryna Er Gorbach)A Love Song (Max Walker-Silverman)Myanmar Diaries (The Myanmar Film Collective)Into My Name (Nicolò Bassetti)Nelly & Nadine (Magnus Gertten)We, Students! (Rafiki Fariala)Until Tomorrow (Ali Asgari...

The 2022 Berlin International Film Festival has revealed its first titles, including seven films that have been invited to the Berlinale Special program. You can see the full list of confirmed films below.

Those seven include Peter Flinth’s Against The Ice, starring Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Joe Cole, Heida Reed and Charles Dance, and Laurent Larivière’s About Joan, starring Isabelle Huppert, which both play as Berlinale Special Galas.

The Panorama program has unveiled 13 titles, with Generation confirming eight features, and further films set for Forum and Forum Expanded.

The Panorama strand includes Myanmar Diaries, a doc/feature hybrid from the Myanmar Film Collective that highlights violence suffered by Burmese citizens.

“The pandemic has created distances – not only between people but also the way we see the world. Amongst the 2022 selection are films shot during the pandemic, reflecting on how it feels to be disconnected from others. It is with this first...

Anonymous Content has enlisted Nicholas Shumaker, a longtime producer and former talent agent at UTA, and Kimberly Carver, a veteran manager and TV producer, to join the company’s literary department. Both will work as managers and producers.

Anonymous Content CEO, Dawn Olmstead, said: “Kimberly and Nick have such an incredible passion and commitment to finding creators and artists that not only have authentic voices but that also are the meaningful voices of the future.”

Olmstead said both executives have “tremendous reputations in the entertainment industry, on a global scale,” and that “their fierce dedication to elevating their clients through authentic opportunities is both admirable and unshakeable.”

Shumaker spent the last six years at the UTA Independent Film Group working out of their New York office. During his tenure, Shumaker worked on packaging, financing, and the sales for a variety of international director-driven titles, including the Oscar-winning film “Call Me By Your Name,...

Film premiered in Toronto last year.

With less than a week before the start of Wimbledon, Cinetic has announced a raft of international deals on tennis documentary Love Means Zero.

The film, which screened recently on the Showtime premium cable network in the Us and on Sky Atlantic in the UK, has gone to Yes-Docu for Israel, Vpro for the Netherlands, NonStop for Scandinavia and Movistar for Spain, with deals in France and Germany pending, according to Cinetic. Airline rights have gone to Terry Steiner International.

Directed by Jason Kohn, Love Means Zero profiles 85-year-old Nick Bollettieri, who coached tennis champions including Jim Courier,...

Remember Anwar Congo, the aging mass-murderer profiled in Joshua Oppenheimer’s “The Act of Killing?” Well, imagine if that guy had been born in the United States instead of Indonesia, and had become a children’s tennis coach instead of the genocidal leader of a North Sumatran death squad, and you’ll have a pretty good idea of who Nick Bollettieri is and what he’s all about.

Of course, that’s not at all to suggest that these men are equally evil — one slaughtered untold numbers of innocent people, the other just ruined Andre Agassi’s chances of winning the 1989 French Open — but rather to say that both of them personify the same type of narcissistic madness. It’s not a rare condition; we all know people like them: people who dehumanize the rest of us as a defense mechanism. People who pretend that the past can’t hurt them.

Jason Kohn’s documentary “Love Means Zero” is a film about tennis, but at it is also a kind of match in itself, in which the filmmaker serves and volleys and probes for weaknesses in the implacable foe on the other side of the net. That foe, in a way, is also the subject of “Love Means Zero”: Nick Bollettieri, the controversial tennis instructor whose Florida academy taught such luminaries as Jim Courier, Maria Sharapova, Monica Seles, Mary Pierce and most of all Andre Agassi, whose relationship with Bollettieri began when he was barely in his teens, reached heights of glory.

By Thom Powers

“Resistance is a key theme in this year’s documentaries,” said Tiff Docs Programmer Thom Powers. “We pay witness to rebels challenging the status quo in art, politics, sexuality, religion, fashion, sports and entertainment. They speak powerfully to our times as audiences seek inspirations for battling powerful and corrupt systems.”

Tiff’s 2017 documentary lineup goes deep into the lives of boundary-pushing characters — Grace Jones, Jim Carrey, Jane Goodall, and Eric Clapton, to name only a few of the most famous. But the celebrity factor isn’t enough to make a great film. What sets these docs apart is their directors’ ability to a bring fresh perspective.

Azmaish: A Journey through the SubcontinentBoom For Real The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat

Then there are figures whose names you may not recognize, but they become unforgettable after you see them on screen. They include Scotty Bowers, who was...

ThelmaA selection of films from the 2017 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival has been unveiled, with new films by Sebastián Lelio, Deniz Gamze Ergüven, Darren Aronofsky, Greta Gerwig, Guillermo Del Toro, Joachim Trier, Wim Wenders, and many more.Special PRESENTATIONSOpening Night: Ladybird (Greta Gerwig)Closing Night: Sheikh Jackson (Amr Salama)Battle of the Sexes (Valerie Faris & Jonathan Dayton)Bpm (Beats Per Minute) (Robin Campillo)The Brawler (Anurag Kashyap)The Breadwinner (Nora Twomey)Call Me By Your Name (Luca Guadagnino)Catch the Wind (Gaël Morel)The Children Act (Richard Eyre)The Current War (Alfonso Gomez-Rejon)Disobedience (Sebastián Lelio)Downsizing (Alexander Payne)A Fantastic Woman (Sebastián Lelio)First They Killed My Father (Angelina Jolie)The Guardians (Xavier Beauvois)Hostiles (Scott Cooper)The Hungry (Bornila Chatterjee)I, Tonya (Craig Gillespie)Mother! (Darren Aronofsky)Novitiate (Maggie Betts)Omerta (Hansal Mehta)Plonger (Mélanie Laurent)The Price of Success (Teddy Lussi-Modeste)Professor Marston & the Wonder Women...

Following an initial round of premieres and the announcement that Borg vs. McEnroe will open Toronto International Film Festival 2017, they’ve now announced their lineup for Midnight Madness and Documentaries. Leading the pack of our most-anticipated among midnight tiles is Brawl in Cell Block 99, which is S. Craig Zahler’s follow-up to Bone Tomahawk and will premiere at Venice beforehand. There’s also the latest film from Joseph Kahn, Bodied, which will open the sidebar, and the first trailer has landed.

On the documentary side, there is Frederick Wiseman’s Ex Libris – The New York Public Library, as well as new films from Morgan Spurlock, Heidi Ewing (Jesus Camp), Brett Morgen (Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck), and more. Check out the new additions below, along with images and trailers where available.

Midnight Madness

Midnight Madness Opening Film

Bodied Joseph Kahn, USA

World Premiere

Our #TIFF17 Midnight Madness Opening Night Film is @JosephKahn’s Bodied,...

The race always begins at Sundance, but the Toronto International Film Festival documentary lineup will impact the list of Oscar contenders — and this year, without clear frontrunners, Tiff’s influence will be greater than ever.

Every year, Thom Powers leads the Tiff documentary programmers through an enormous number of submissions to cull 22 selections. “It never gets any easier to make those decisions,” said Powers, who also programs influential November festival Doc NYC. “This year we’re going to see a greater range of different documentaries spread across the fall festivals, instead of a cluster of films that moves from festival to festival. More films will get more opportunities at the festivals this fall.”

Here’s a list of 10 must-sees for Tiff 2017 with potential to shake up the awards race.

1. “Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!”: Morgan Spurlock’s under-the-radar sequel to his 2005 Oscar nominee focuses on the new craze...

The race always begins at Sundance, but the Toronto International Film Festival documentary lineup will impact the list of Oscar contenders — and this year, without clear frontrunners, Tiff’s influence will be greater than ever.

Every year, Thom Powers leads the Tiff documentary programmers through an enormous number of submissions to cull 22 selections. “It never gets any easier to make those decisions,” said Powers, who also programs influential November festival Doc NYC. “This year we’re going to see a greater range of different documentaries spread across the fall festivals, instead of a cluster of films that moves from festival to festival. More films will get more opportunities at the festivals this fall.”

Here’s a list of 10 must-sees for Tiff 2017 with potential to shake up the awards race.

1. “Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!”: Morgan Spurlock’s under-the-radar sequel to his 2005 Oscar nominee focuses on the new craze...

Morgan Spurlock re-engages with the food industry, James Franco digs into the ‘worst film ever made’.

Top brass at the Toronto International Film Festival (Tiff) unveiled on Tuesday selections in the Tiff Docs, Midnight Madness, and Short Cuts programmes.

The Canadian titles that are part of this year’s programme will be announced on August 9. The 42nd Toronto International Film Festival is scheduled to run from September 7-17 and will open with Borg/McEnroe.

Tiff Docs

The world premiere of Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken! joins a marquee Tiff Docs roster from renowned filmmakers that opens with Sophie Fiennes’ Grace Jones: Bloodlight And Bami.

Selections include Brett Morgen’s profile of primatologist Jane Goodall in Jane; the story of three Hasidic Jews who attempt to join the secular world in One Of Us by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady; Violeta Ayala’s Bolivian drug trade film Cocaine Prison; and Emmanuel Gras’ closing film Makala...

They are two of the Toronto International Film Festival’s wildest sections — for very different reasons — and this year’s slate of both Midnight Madness and Documentary offerings appear to signal another strong lineup for the festival. Thrills, chills, terror, and scares await movie-goers, all care of unbelievable real-life stories and slightly less true tales for genre fans of all stripes.

This year’s Midnight Madness section will open with Joseph Kahn’s provocative World Premiere of “Bodied,” and also offers up the World Premiere of “The Disaster Artist,” directed by James Franco and based on the making of Tommy Wiseau’s 2003 cult film, “The Room.” (The film previously screened as a work-in-progress at SXSW.)

Read MoreTIFF Reveals First Slate of 2017 Titles, Including ‘The Shape of Water,’ ‘Downsizing,’ and ‘Call Me By Your Name’

In his first year as programmer, Peter Kuplowsky is also welcoming back several fest alumni, including David Bruckner,...

The Oscars can have its annual celebrity luncheon. This week, several documentarians celebrated the Cinema Eye Honors with an after-hours field trip to the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Conceived in 2008 as a bid to broaden awareness for documentary achievements, the Cinema Eyes highlight a dozen categories that range from best director to best cinematography to graphic design. However, while it began as a tonic to the five-nominee limitations that circumscribe the Oscars, the Cinema Eyes have evolved into an idiosyncratic celebration all its own. Although the awards are Wednesday night at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York, the ceremony is now only the culmination of a full week of programming that includes three days of activities.

“It’s kind of like senior skip week,” said co-founder and filmmaker Aj Schnack, catching his breath on Monday night before delivering a speech to the filmmakers in attendance. “Yes,...

Cinema Eye, the organization that recognizes outstanding craft and artistry in nonfiction filmmaking, has announced their annual list of The Unforgettables, designed to highlight “this year’s most notable and significant nonfiction film subjects.” This is Cinema Eye’s tenth anniversary year, and the fourth straight year that they have unveiled their list of Unforgettables, which IndieWire is very happy to exclusively reveal below.

The Unforgettables list aims to celebrate the year’s most exciting collaborations between filmmakers and their subjects, and it’s hard to imagine a list more representative of that ideal than this one. Standouts include director Kirsten Johnson of “Cameraperson,” actress Kate Sheil of “Kate Plays Christine,” subject Sharon Jones of “Miss Sharon Jones!” and both Huma Abedin and Anthony Weiner from the revealing feature “Weiner.” And that’s just the start of a list that’s wonderfully representative of some of this year’s most indelible doc subjects.

Cinema Eye has named 10 filmmakers and 20 films that have been voted as the top achievements in documentary filmmaking during the past 10 years. Founded in 2007 to “recognize and honor exemplary craft and innovation in nonfiction film,” Cinema Eye polled 110 members of the documentary community to determine the winning films and filmmakers just as the organization kicks off its tenth year.

Read More: Behind the Scenes of Cinema Eye’s Secret Field Trip for Nominees

Among the films chosen are Joshua Oppenheimer’s “The Act of Killing,” Laura Poitras’ Oscar-winning “Citizenfour” and Banksy’s “Exit Through the Gift Shop.” Poitras and Oppenheimer were both also named to the list of the top documentary filmmakers, joining Alex Gibney, Werner Herzog and Frederick Wiseman, who recently won an honorary Oscar and will be saluted at the annual Governors Awards on November 12.

“It’s fantastic that he is being recognized by the Academy for a...

The new installment in Espn Films and FiveThirtyEight's "Signals" series is the latest documentary from award-winning filmmaker Jason Kohn. "Hidden Idols" uncovers the story behind the largest bust of stolen and smuggled antiques in U.S. history. Read More: Indiewire's Ultimate Guide to Documentary Filmmaking Jason Kohn's previous documentary, "Manda Bala," won at Sundance for its outstanding work in nonfiction, and "Hidden Idols" is a followup in the same fascinating vein of its predecessor. The short doc chronicles the fascinating mind of Brent Easter, a man whose lifelong fascination with Indiana Jones has extended to his professional life in exciting and important ways.   Watch the engrossing short documentary above, courtesy of Espn Films and FiveThirtyEight.  Read More: 2016 Oscar Predictions: Best Documentary Feature...

It’s been a couple months since the last edition of What’s Up Doc? placed Michael Moore’s surprise world premiere of Where To Invade Next at the top of this list and in the meantime much shuffling has taken place and much time has been spent on various new endeavors (namely my Buffalo-based film series, Cultivate Cinema Circle). Finally taking its rightful place at the top, D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hagedus’ Unlocking the Cage is in the midst of being scored by composer James Lavino, according to Lavino’s own personal site. Though the project has been taking shape at its own leisurely pace, I’d expect to see the film making its festival debut in early 2016.

Right behind, the American direct cinema masters is a Texan soon to make his non-fiction debut with Voyage of Time. Just two weeks ago indieWIRE reported that Ennio Morricone, who scored...

The fall festival rush is upon us. Locarno is currently ramping up. Venice has released their line-up and Thom Powers and the Toronto International Film Festival team have dropped a bomb with a previously unannounced new feature from powerhouse docu-provocateur Michael Moore. It is truly a miracle that the production of a film such as Moore’s upcoming Where To Invade Next (see still above) managed to go completely undetected by the filmmaking community until it was literally announced to world premiere at one of the largest film festivals in the world. Programmed as a one of the key films in the Special Presentations section at Tiff, the film sees Moore telling “the Pentagon to ‘stand down’ — he will do the invading for America from now on.” Also announced to premiere at Tiff was Avi Lewis’ This Changes Everything, which has slowly been rising up this list, as well as...

It’s been a surprisingly interesting month of moving and shaking in terms of doc development. Just a month after making his first public funding pitch at Toronto’s Hot Docs Forum, legendary doc filmmaker Frederick Wiseman took to Kickstarter to help cover the remaining expenses for his 40th feature film In Jackson Heights (see the film’s first trailer below). Unrelentingly rigorous in his determination to capture the American institutional landscape on film, his latest continues down this thematic rabbit hole, taking on the immensely diverse New York City neighborhood of Jackson Heights as his latest subject. According to the Kickstarter page, Wiseman is currently editing the 120 hours of rushes he shot with hopes of having the film ready for a fall festival premiere (my guess would be Tiff, where both National Gallery and At Berkeley made their North American debut), though he’s currently quite a ways away from his $75,000 goal.

Well folks, after a rather long and brutal winter (at least for me here in Buffalo), we are finally heading into the wonderful warmth of summer, but with that blast of sunshine and steamy humidity comes the mid-year drought of major film fests. After the Sheffield Doc/Fest concludes on June 10th and AFI Docs wraps on June 21st, we likely won’t see any major influx in our charts until Locarno, Venice, Telluride and Tiff announce their line-ups in rapid succession. In the meantime, we can look forward to the intriguing onslaught of films making their debut in Sheffield, including Brian Hill’s intriguing examination of Sweden’s most notorious serial killer, The Confessions of Thomas Quick, and Sean McAllister’s film for which he himself was jailed in the process of making, A Syrian Love Story, the only two films world premiering in the festival’s main competition.