News

Now in its third year the Sundance London film and music festival has just unveiled its lineup for the 2014 event and it is the strongest year so far.

Building on the great work done by the festival’s filmmakers and directors over the last few years the London based offshoot of the famous Park City happening has carved out its own identity to become on the most interesting and eclectic events in the calendar.

We have an Exclusive Presale link so click here now to get your tickets for Sundance London.

Michael Fassbender leads the way as Jon Ronson’s affectionate tribute to the world of Frank Sidebottom gets a UK premiere at the festival. Likewise Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon’s second Trip (this time to Italy) gets its first showing (and is highly recommended) and Ryan Reynolds and Gemma Arterton talk to the animals in Marjane Satrapi’s The Voices.

It’s that time again. The biggest American film festival is upon us, and this year the Ioncinema crew will be descending on Park City with eight feet on the ground and eight eyes on Park City’s various and plentiful screens. Eric Lavallee, Nicholas Bell, Caitlin Coder and I will be covering just about every inch of this year’s festival here at Ioncinema.com, as well as on that ever increasingly vibrant instanews network – Twitter. Be sure to follow @ioncinema and, as stated above, my personal handle @Rectangular_Eye, as we’ll be tweeting throughout the festival with breaking news, reviews, and sightings, all the while trying to keep up with the massive amount of content sure to be coming from this year’s Sundance filmmakers themselves, most of which have their own Twitter accounts and are listed at length below (minus the world & short programs). Whether you...

The last of our Twitterverse series, these are the films pushing the boundaries of independent cinema while keeping a pulse on cyber happenings. It seems most of Drunktown’s (@drunktown_movie) population is, if nothing else, keeping up with the times. Follow away! Full Twitterverse run-down to follow.

Next

Appropriate Behavior – @AppropriateFilm

Writer/Director/Actress Desiree Akhavan – @DesiMakesMovies

Composer Josephine Wiggs – @josephinewiggs

Actress Halley Feiffer – @HalleyFeiffer

Drunktown’s Finest – @drunktown_movie

Writer/Director Sydney Freeland – @sydneyfreeland

Producer Mateo Frazier – @nuevosoul

Actress Carmen Moore – @Carmen_Moore

Actress Morningstar Wilson – @starshinegypsy

Actor Kiowa Gordon – @CircaKiGordon

Actress Shauna Baker – @ShaunaBaker

Actress Elizabeth Francis – @efrances03

The Foxy Merkins – @FoxyMerkins

Writer/Actress Jackie Monahan – @jackiemonahan

Writer/Actress Lisa Haas – @lisahaas

Actor Alex Karpovsky – @alexkarpovsky

A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night – @AGirlWalksHome

Writer/Director Ana Lily Amirpour – @Lilyinapad

Producer Sina Sayyah – @sinasayyah

Co-producer Sheri Davani – @Sheri_The_AD

Cinematographer Lyle Vincent – @lylevincent

Actor Arash Marandi...

The 2014 Sundance Film Festival is right around the corner, and the Sundance Institute has released the full line-up for the competition films that will be premiering!

This year there were 12,218 total submissions, and 117 films were accepted from 37 countries around the world. It looks like there's a lot of good selection of films this year.

The Sundance Film Festival 2014 runs from January 16th to the 26th, and the GeekTyrant team will be there to cover as many movies as we possibly can.

U.S. Dramatic Competition

The 16 films in this section are world premieres and, unless otherwise noted, are from the U.S.

“Camp X-Ray” — Directed and written by Peter Sattler. A young female guard at Guantanamo Bay forms an unlikely friendship with one of the detainees. Cast: Kristen Stewart, Payman Maadi, Lane Garrison, J.J. Soria, John Carroll Lynch.

“Cold in July” — Directed by Jim Mickle, written by Nick Damici.

Sundance Film Festival continues to be one of the most popular, and arguably one of the most important, events on the industry calendar, launching as it does some of the most prominent independent films at the start of each year.

This year will be no different, with Sundance announcing last night the initial line-up of films screening in competition, led by Song One, starring Anne Hathaway; Camp X-Ray, starring Kristen Stewart; Infinitely Polar Bear, with Mark Ruffalo and Zoe Saldana; Joe Swanberg’s Happy Christmas, starring Anna Kendrick, Melanie Lynskey, Mark Webber, Lena Dunham, and Swanberg himself; The Skeleton Twins, with Bill Hader, Kristen Wiig, Luke Wilson, and Ty Burrell; Life After Beth, with Aubrey Plaza, Dane DeHaan, and John C. Reilly; Listen Up Philip, with Jason Schwartzman and Elisabeth Moss; Whiplash, starring Miles Teller and J.K. Simmons; and many, many more.

U.S. Dramatic Competition

Presenting the world premieres of 16 narrative feature films,...

God’S Pocket

Sundance Institute announced today the films selected for the U.S. and World Cinema Dramatic and Documentary Competitions and the out-of-competition section of the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, January 16-26 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah.

Robert Redford, President & Founder of Sundance Institute said, “That the Festival has evolved and grown as it has over the past 30 years is a credit to both our audiences and our artists, who continue to find ways to take risks and open our minds to the power of story. This year’s films and artists promise to do the same.”

For the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, 118 feature-length films were selected, representing 37 countries and 54 first-time filmmakers, including 34 in competition. These films were selected from 12,218 submissions (72 more than for 2013), including 4,057 feature-length films and 8,161 short films. Of the feature film submissions, 2,014 were from the U.S. and 2,043 were international. 97 feature films at...

Rolling out it’s fifth edition and growing beyond just Park City (Los Angeles hosted a summer event this year) the Next section has grown in size, has found plenty of distrib buyer interest and has a strong voice of its own. Becoming a home for low budget indie we like: smaller budgets sometimes bring out impressive creative outputs, in 2011 we had Sound of My Voice, Restless City and Bellflower. 2012 saw Compliance, I’m Not a Hipster and Sleepwalk With Me, while last year we were impressed by the likes of It Felt Like Love and Blue Caprice. This year we have eleven, instead of ten selections – the plus one bump might have to do with Madeleine Olnek’s The Foxy Merkins – she got to show off her film this summer in the Next Weekend L.A event (we mentioned above). In the coming-of-agers working with a different vibe and...

The U.S. and World Cinema Dramatic and Documentary Competition lineups for the 2014 Sundance Film Festival were announced today and just below I have featured pictures from the 16 films that will be competing in the U.S. Dramatic competition and they feature a lot of names you're going to recognize. The titles begin with Camp X-Ray, which stars Kristen Stewart as a guard in Guantanamo Bay, where she forms an unlikely friendship with one of the detainees. Jim Mickle made an impact earlier this year with We Are What We Are and he returns with Michael C. Hall with Cold in July. Fishing Without Nets looks to tell a story similar to that of Captain Phillips, only this time from the Somali side of things; God's Pocket is "Mad Men" star John Slattery's writing and directorial debut and he's lined up an impressive cast including Philip Seymour Hoffman, Richard Jenkins,...

Festival top brass announced on December 4 the Us and world cinema dramatic and documentary competition entries as well as 11 Next titles for the upcoming 30th edition of the Sundance Film Festival, set to run in Utah from January 16-26 2014.

The Us dramatic strand features work from independent auteurs Joe Swanberg and Jim Mickle as well as the feature directorial debut of Mad Men star John Slattery, Anne Hathaway in Song One and Rinko Kikuchi in Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter.

Several titles including Kat Cander’s Hellion and Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash – a Day One Film – previously screened at Sundance as shorts.

Festival director John Cooper and director of programming Trevor Groth said genre was no longer the sole preserve of the Park City At Midnight section and had percolated into the broader selection. Cooper added that genre was often a good device for film-makers to hook audiences on a story.

World cinema...

11 American films offer bold new approaches to storytelling and foreshadow the future of American cinema.Appropriate Behavior / U.S.A., United Kingdom (Director and screenwriter: Desiree Akhavan) — Shirin is struggling to become an ideal Persian daughter, a politically correct bisexual, and a hip, young Brooklynite, but fails miserably in her attempt at all identities. Being without a cliché to hold on to can be a lonely experience. Cast: Desiree Akhavan, Rebecca Henderson, Halley Feiffer, Scott Adsit, Anh Duong, Arian Moayed. World Premiere Drunktown's Finest / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Sydney Freeland) — Three young Native Americans—a rebellious father-to-be, a devout Christian woman, and a promiscuous transsexual—come of age on an Indian reservation. Cast: Jeremiah Bitsui, Carmen Moore, Morningstar Angeline, Kiowa Gordon, Shauna Baker, Elizabeth Francis. World Premiere The Foxy Merkins / U.S.A. (Director: Madeleine Olnek, Screenwriters: Lisa Haas,...

We have added a new set of pictures from the event "Kiss Monster Book Launch at the Viper Room".Lexi Morgan, Shauna Baker, Shannon Baker and Kara Harper during the Kiss "Monster" Book Launch at the Viper Room in West Hollywood.Photo copyright by Billy Bennight / PR Photos. Lexi Morgan, Shauna Baker, Shannon Baker and Kara Harper during the Kiss "Monster" Book Launch at the Viper Room in West Hollywood.Photo copyright by Billy Bennight / PR Photos. Gene Simmons during the Kiss "Monster" Book Launch at the Viper Room in West Hollywood.Photo copyright by Billy Bennight / PR Photos. Kara Harper during the Kiss "Monster" Book Launch at the Viper Room in West Hollywood.Photo copyright by Billy Bennight / PR Photos.