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Near the end of Jennie Livingston’s Paris Is Burning, Venus Xtravaganza, an Italian Puerto Rican ballroom dancer who was one of the landmark queer doc’s subjects, describes a harrowing near-death experience. While Venus was hustling as a sex worker, a client realized she was a trans woman and reacted violently. “You’re a freak,” Venus recalls the man saying to her, “I should kill you.” Rattled by the threat, Venus grabbed her bag and jumped out of the window. The story is particularly haunting because a few scenes later, Venus’ house mother, Angie, reveals that the young ballroom performer was found strangled to death in a Manhattan hotel. “She was like my right hand,” Angie says. “I miss her.”

The depth of Venus’ loss is acutely felt in Kimberly Reed’s affecting documentary I’m Your Venus. The film, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, is one of...

Menashe Lustig and Ruben Nyborg in Menashe - Within Brooklyn’s ultra-orthodox Jewish community, a widower battles for custody of his son. A tender drama performed entirely in Yiddish, the film intimately explores the nature of faith and the price of parenthood. Photo: Federica Valabrega

Here's our selection of films to catch on the telly this week, if you're looking for more inspiration, check out our Streaming Spotlight on indigenous filmmakers.

Menashe, Film4, Tuesday, August 10, 2.20am

Joshua Z Weinstein takes a clear-eyed approach to the Hasidic community, crafting an engrossing drama about a man who faces losing custody of his son following the death of his wife if he doesn't remarry quickly. Comic Menashe Lustig plays the lead and the story carries all the more heft because it is loosely based on his own life. Weinstein captures the everyday rhythms of Menashe's daily routine without overly romanticising them or feeling...

A widower struggles to reclaim his child in this authentic and affectionate portrait of New York’s Orthodox Jewish community

This terrifically authentic look at life inside New York’s Yiddish-speaking Hasidic community is a bittersweet treat – a vibrantly engaging portrait of down-to-earth lives that is affectionate, amusing and ultimately very moving. A million miles removed from such peripherally comparable fare as Sidney Lumet’s A Stranger Among Us or Boaz Yakin’s A Price Above Rubies, Joshua Z Weinstein’s fiction-feature debut gets right under the skin of its characters, gently unpicking themes of social conformity and religious responsibility with melancholy wit and wry, tragicomic insight.

Populated by first-time performers playing close-to-home roles, it combines the poetry of John Cassavetes with the grit of Ken Loach, along with a touch of the cultural intimacy that Rama Burshtein brought to Fill the Void and Through the Wall.

Continue reading...

A Yiddish drama set in a Hasidic Jewish community unpicks patriarchal power politics with a powerful central turn from non-professional Menashe Lustig

Menashe is a deeply felt and absorbing Yiddish-language drama about New York Hasidic Jews. Director Joshua Weinstein expertly seals you in a self-enclosed world whose drama, but for a few plot points concerning an elderly mobile phone, could as well be happening 50 or 100 years ago.

Menashe (played by non-professional Menashe Lustig) is an overweight, shambling widower who works in a convenience store and who has clearly let himself go, though he may not have been all that svelte and presentable in the first place. According to religious rules enforced by the rabbi, Menashe’s young son may not live with him until Menashe remarries; the boy has to stay with his late wife’s disapproving, controlling brother who takes a dim view of Menashe’s chaotic lifestyle and...

Sean Baker’s “The Florida Project,” Joshua Z. Weinstein’s “Menashe” and Chloe Zhao’s “The Rider” are nominated for the Cinema Eye Honors Heterodox Award, which goes to films that blur the line between narrative fiction and documentary filmmaking. Guido Hendrikx’s “Stranger in Paradise” and Pawel Lozinski’s “You Have No Idea How Much I Love You” were also nominated for the award. Previous winners include “Boyhood,” “Taxi,” “Beginners,” “All These Sleepless Nights” and “Post Tenebras Lux,” among others. At the same time, the Cinema Eye Honors, which were established in 2007 to honor all facets of non-fiction filmmaking,...

A film based on the real life story of its lead, a non-actor from Brooklyn, as he fights to keep his son after his wife’s death has connected with festival audiences and critics alike

As a tiny film about a hapless Hasidic Jew, starring non-actors speaking almost entirely in Yiddish, hopes for Menashe’s reception were modest, to say the least. Yet it has connected with festival audiences and critics: note-perfect and with a huge heart, it’s a story about a closed community, but one that ripples with resonance. Whatever our culture, it obliquely suggests, we are fundamentally the same. It’s a tonic.

Menashe’s director, Joshua Z Weinstein, a practising non-Orthodox Jew, was raised in suburban New Jersey, but on weekends he would visit his grandparents in Brooklyn and Queens. There, he would catch glimpses of Hasids, stoking his curiosity. He’s primarily a cinematographer, and...

And we’re off to the races! The Independent Filmmaker Project (Ifp) officially kicked off the 2017-18 awards season with this evening’s 27th Annual Gotham Awards, which took place at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City and were hosted by John Cameron Mitchell.

Jordan Peele’s “Get Out” proved to be the night’s biggest winner, with three wins, including Best Screenplay, the Audience Award, and Breakthrough Director. Luca Guadagnino’s “Call Me by Your Name” proved victorious in the Best Feature category, winning out against a stacked list of competitors. Earlier in the night, star Timothee Chalamet won the Breakthrough Actor award for his star-making turn in the romance.

The ceremony’s nomination list was studded with some of the year’s most beloved indies, including “Get Out,” “Call Me by Your Name,” Greta Gerwig’s “Lady Bird,” Kogonada’s “Columbus,” and Sean Baker’s “The Florida Project.

Despite the insanity of announcing year-end award nominations with still well over two months to go in 2017, we have to give it to the annual Ifp Gotham Awards for being more on-point than most trophy ceremonies this season.

They’ve now unveiled the nominations for their 27th edition and leading the pack is Jordan Peele’s social thriller Get Out. Also among the stellar group of Best Feature nominations are Call Me by Your Name, The Florida Project, I, Tonya, and Good Time.

Check out the full list of nominations below, including Columbus, Ex Libris, Rat Film, Lady Bird, Marjorie Prime, and more of the best films of the year. If The Academy takes just a few notes from this group come next year, we’ll be mightily pleased.

Best Feature

Call Me by Your Name

The Florida Project

Get Out

Good Time

I, Tonya

Best Documentary

Ex Libris – The...

Consider awards season officially started. The Independent Filmmaker Project (Ifp), the nation’s premier member organization of independent storytellers, has announced the nominees for its 27th Annual Ifp Gotham Awards. For 2017, ten competitive awards will be presented to independent features and series.

This year’s nominees are lead by Jordan Peele’s “Get Out,” which pulled in four nominations (including Best Feature, Breakthrough Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Actor), but the breakout debut is trailed by four other hot contenders, each with three nominations to their name. Those include Greta Gerwig’s “Lady Bird,” Luca Guadagnino’s “Call Me by Your Name,” Kogonada’s “Columbus,” and Sean Baker’s “The Florida Project.”

The Gothams also heaped nomination glory on other films that are expected to contend this season, including Craig Gillespie’ “I, Tonya,” the Safdie brothers’ “Good Time,” and Dee Rees’ “Mudbound,” which will be receiving a special ensemble awards.

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options — not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves — we’ve taken it upon ourselves to highlight the titles that have recently hit platforms. Every week, one will be able to see the cream of the crop (or perhaps some simply interesting picks) of streaming titles (new and old) across platforms such as Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, and more (note: U.S. only). Check out our rundown for this week’s selections below.

78/52 (Alexandre Philippe)

There’s been documentaries that analyze entire cinematic movements, directors, actors, writers, specific films, and more aspects of filmmaking, but it’s rare to see a feature film devoted to a single scene. With 78/52, if the clunky title addition didn’t tell you already, it explores the infamous shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho with exacting precision and depth. Featuring interviews with Jamie Lee Curtis, Guillermo del Toro,...

Chicago – We all belong to something, be it a family, workplace, congregation or (expansively) a tribe. But within all that belonging is a sometimes nagging feeling of being an outsider. There is not a human being in existence that hasn’t felt that way, and a new film expresses that feeling in “Menashe.”

Rating: 4.0/5.0

The title is a character, a Hasidic Orthodox Jewish man whose wife had died, and due to tribal/religious tradition has lost the right to care for his son. He is the outsider in a very strict religious order, with a dogma that affects virtually every element of his difficult life. In another world, that type of individual would simply walk away, but within this closed society Menashe fights to exist and express, often taking matters destructively into his own hands. The film is unique, funny, sad and wise, plus gives audience outsiders a glimpse into...

Ifp’s signature event, Ifp Week, has this year expanded to include a slew of public screenings, talks, meet ups, and exhibitions, all centered on cutting-edge independent content for the big screen, small screen, and Internet. This year will play home to faces old and new — including a number of exciting speakers who return to Ifp Week after launching their careers at the annual event, including speakers like Barry Jenkins and Dee Rees.

Read More:Why the Safdie Brothers Decided to Put Robert Pattinson in Their Gritty World of New York Amateurs

Under the leadership of Head of Programming Amy Dotson and producer Erik Luers, the Ifp Week talks and events will run September 17 – 21 in and around Brooklyn, NY at Bric, The William Vale Hotel, and Ifp’s headquarters, Made in NY Media Center by Ifp.

Check out the newest additions to the Ifp Week schedule, including Filmmaker Magazine Talks, the Ifp Screen Forward Conference,...

You have never seen a movie quite like Joshua Weinstein‘s “Menashe.” The film was shot by Weinstein on a low-budget, in near cinema-verite style, deep in the heart of New York City’s Hasidic community, and it’s presented in Yiddish with English subtitles. Talk about a gamble even for an indie production.

The film chronicles the trials and tribulations of recently widowed Hasidic Jew Menashe (Menashe Lustig in his big-screen debut) whose community forces his son to be raised by his openly contemptuous brother in-law.

Continue reading ‘Menashe’: Director Joshua Weinstein & His Star On Hasidic Life & The Pleasures Of Quiet Drama [Interview] at The Playlist.

Joshua Weinstein delivers a rare and unique film with Menashe. He takes us inside the Hasidic Community in Brooklyn’s Borough Park and tells the story of Menashe, a grocery...

A humane and unsentimental character study of a man struggling to take care of his son after his wife’s death also offers a fascinating look inside a secretive pocket of Brooklyn

For many Brooklynites, there’s a lingering curiosity surrounding Borough Park, an area south of the many hipster-dwelling enclaves that have cropped up in recent years. Despite being within jogging distance of the many cold brew and avocado smash-serving cafes, it remains refreshingly devoid of gentrification, for it’s home to an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, one of the largest in the Us.

It’s an understandably secretive and self-contained part of the city, but in the charming new Yiddish language drama Menashe, director Joshua Z Weinstein offers us a rare glimpse inside, focusing on the life of one schlimazel (that means an “unlucky man”) and taking us with him through an alternately pedestrian and emotionally impactful week in his life.

Before making the film Menashe, documentarian Joshua Weinstein donned a yarmulke and explored Brooklyn’s Borough Park, getting to know the stories and personalities of New York’s Hasidic Jews. That was the easy part of the process. It was trickier when Weinstein returned to the neighborhood with a camera crew to work with the locals he’d hired for his cast. In this insular society—which for the most part has kept itself purposefully cut off from popular culture—the whole Menashe project seemed morally suspect. Weinstein reportedly lost locations and actors as the shoot went on, and left some people’s names out of the credits so that they wouldn’t bring shame to their families.

Throughout, the movie’s key collaborator remained steadfast. And thank goodness he did. Menashe Lustig brings warmth and a lumpen charisma to Menashe’s lead role, giving life to a film based...

Michael Haneke’s Happy End also among titles in non-competitive strand.

The Sarajevo International Film Festival (August 11-18) has unveiled the line-up for its Kinoscope programme, with 17 titles competing.

The non-competitive strand, which first launched in 2012, selects titles from around the globe and excludes territories featured in the main competition.

Among this year’s cohort are major titles to have competed at Cannes including the Palme d’Or-winner The Square, Michael Haneke’s latest feature Happy End and Andrey Zvyagintsev’s well-received Loveless.

Fellipe Gamarano Barbosa’s Gabriel And The Mountain, Léonor Serraille’s Montparnasse Bienvenüe, Chloé Zhao’s The Rider and Valeska Grisebach’s Western are also included.

The 2017 Kinoscope Line-up

Ava

France, 2017, 105 min.

Director: Léa Mysius

Gabriel And The Mountain / Gabriel E A Montanha

Brazil, France, 2017, 127 min.

Director: Fellipe Gamarano Barbosa

A Ghost Story

USA, 2017, 93 min.

Director: David Lowery

Godspeed / Yi Lu Shun Feng

Taiwan, 2016, 111 min.

Director: Mong-Hong Chung

Happy End

France, Austria, Germany...

The heat of the summer season is upon us, and with it comes the most promising tentpole line-up of the year thus far. (Along with it, there’s perhaps the best film I’ve seen in several years.) After you finish catching up on the best films of 2017 so far, kick off the second half of this year with our recommended picks below.

Matinees to See: Bronx Gothic (7/12), To the Bone (7/14), Chasing Coral (7/14), The Fencer (7/21), Killing Ground (7/21), Kékszakállú (7/21), Strange Weather (7/28), Brigsby Bear (7/28), and An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power (7/28)

15. Person To Person (Dustin Guy Defa; July 28)

Synopsis: Follows a variety of New York characters as they navigate personal relationships and unexpected problems over the course of one day.

Trailer

Why You Should Watch It: One of the more divisive films to come out of Sundance this year, the 16mm-shot Person to Person packs quite the varied ensemble — from Michael Cera...

We're only at the year's halfway mark, but July is quickly shaping up to be the best moviegoing month of 2017: There are blockbusters lighthearted (Spidey's back yet again, and Sony swears they've cracked the formula this time) and solemn (Chris Nolan goes to war with Harry Styles in tow). Do you like your sci-fi weird (monkey in a tank!) or extra-weird (sentient brains!)? Indie types can check out an urgent new doc on Syria, a groundbreaking Yiddish-language drama or a British period piece-cum-feminist revenge thriller metaphysical drama. See, there...

Opening in Beverly Hills on April 26 and continuing to May 3, the Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival will showcase contemporary and classic films highlighting the best in Jewish Cinema.Of the 27 films showing, 14 are Los Angeles premieres. One World Premiere, one North American Premiere and one U.S. Premiere make for some great discoveries.

An opportunity for film lovers to celebrate the rich tapestry of Jewish history, Jewish heritage and Jewish characters, the Opening Night Red Carpet Reception at Laemmle’s Ahrya Fine Arts Theater in Beverly Hills evening will honor one of the entertainment industry’s most beloved figures, Ed Asner, with the Los Angeles premiere of the documentary “My Friend Ed”, directed by Sharon Baker and executive produced by Liza Asner.

For his distinguished body of work as an actor, and for his relentless commitment to activism and to preserving Jewish life.

Ed Asner

You know him best as Lou Grant,...

The road to a respectable life is a demanding one for Menashe. He barely makes enough money as a grocery clerk to pay the rent of his small apartment. He is shunned by his family, neighbors, and boss for not conforming to the customary way of life. He’s in danger of losing complete custody of his son following the death of his wife. While aspects of this logline could be the basis for more than a few character studies each year, Menashe sets itself apart by its striking specificity, taking place in an ultra-orthodox Hasidic Jewish community of Brooklyn and performed completely in Yiddish.

Picked up by A24 following its Sundance premiere, the first trailer has now arrived for the summer release, including a quote from our review. I said, “Director and co-writer Joshua Z Weinstein understands that this entry point into the story must be more than just that and crafts an intimate,...

Back in January, A24 made headlines for its acquisition of “Menashe,” one of the breakout hits at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival and the first foreign-language film to be acquired by the studio. The debut narrative feature by documentary filmmaker Joshua Weinstein, “Menashe” was universally loved by critics who saw it at the festival, with The Hollywood Reporter pointing to the film’s nonprofessional cast of actors as “wonderfully natural screen presences” who deliver an “absolutely sincere” story of growing up as part of an Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn.

Continue reading Experience Brooklyn As You Never Have Before In The Gentle First Trailer For A24’s ‘Menashe’ at The Playlist.

Welcome back to the Weekend Warrior, your weekly look at the new movies hitting theaters this weekend, as well as other cool events and things to check out.

Two Very Different Movies Look to Divide Up the Weekend Box Office Business

With Disney’s Beauty and the Beast continuing to dominate at the box office with $90 million this past weekend, and Saban’s Power Rangers (Lionsgate) also doing exceedingly well with $40 million in second place, you wouldn’t think anyone would try to release a movie that might get overshadowed by those two blockbusters.

That said, what’s interesting about this weekend is the fact there are two very different movies that are competing very heavily for second place with DreamWorks Animation’s latest animated family film, The Boss Baby (20th Century Fox), taking on the live action English remake of Ghost In The Shell (Paramount), starring Scarlett Johansson. In most cases,...

Exclusive: Vertigo snaps up rights to drama set in ultra-orthodox Jewish community.

Vertigo has snapped up UK rights to Sundance and Berlin hit Menashe from Mongrel International.

Joshua Z Weinstein’s debut feature, starring Menashe Lustig, was shot covertly within the New York Hasidic community in Borough Park, Brooklyn over two years.

The film follows the life of actor Menashe Lustig, a loving but hapless single father who tries to maintain custody of his son in a tradition-bound culture that requires a mother present in every home.

The Yiddish-language feature was the first foreign language film picked up by Us distributor A24, which also secured Chinese rights to the film.

As previously revealed by Screen, the film recently sold to France, Australia and Canada.

Weinstein wrote the script with Alex Lipschultz and Musa Syeed.

Alex Lipschultz, Traci Carlson, Danny Finkelman, Weinstein and Yoni Brook produced, with Danelle Eliav, Adam Margules, Chris Columbus and [link...

One of the best festivals during the first half of the year is The Museum of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s New Directors/New Films, which kicks off its 46th year this March, running from the 15th to the 26th. With last year’s line-up including some of the year’s best films, including Cameraperson, The Fits, Kaili Blues, Neon Bull, Weiner, and more, we can expect many more discoveries this year.

Opening with Patti Cake$ and closing with Person to Person, in between will be one of our favorite films from Sundance as the centerpiece, Beach Rats. Also among the line-up is a handful of other festival favorites, including The Dreamed Path, The Giant, Menashe, and Lady Macbeth.

“Authenticity is an elusive thing these days, and without it we risk ruin. This is particularly true in cinema,” says Rajendra Roy, the Celeste Bartos Chief...

The Museum of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln Center has today announces their complete lineup for the 46th annual New Directors/New Films (Nd/Nf), running March 15 – 26. Dedicated to the discovery of new works by emerging and dynamic filmmaking talent, this year’s festival will screen 29 features and nine short films. This year’s lineup boasts nine North American premieres, seven U.S. premieres, and two world premieres, with features and shorts from 32 countries across five continents.

The opening, centerpiece, and closing night selections showcase three exciting new voices in American independent cinema that all recently debuted at Sundance: Geremy Jasper’s “Patti Cake$” is the opening night pick, while Eliza Hittman’s “Beach Rats” is the centerpiece selection and Dustin Guy Defa will close the festival with “Person to Person.” Other standouts include “Menashe,” “My Happy Family,” “Quest” and “The Wound.”

Read More: The Sundance Rebel:...

A24 has acquired the U.S. and Chinese Distribution rights to “Menashe,” which premiered on January 23 in the Sundance Film Festival’s Next section. The father-son drama was shot in secret within the New York Hasidic community in Borough Park, Brooklyn.

Read More: ‘Menashe’ Review: A Hasidic Community Sets the Stage for a Touching Father-Son Drama — Sundance 2017

Loosely based on the life of actor Menashe Lustig, the film follows a loving but hapless single father trying to maintain custody of his son in a culture that requires a mother in every household. First-time feature director Joshua Z. Weinstein wrote the script with Alex Lipschultz and Musa Syeed after working as a documentarian and cinematographer. The movie is one of the first films to be performed almost entirely in Yiddish in nearly 70 years.

“Our cast took an extraordinary risk stepping outside the confines of their community to take part in this film,...

A24 has acquired U.S. and Chinese distribution rights to the drama Menashe after its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival.

Menashe is the company's first foreign-language release, and it plans a traditional theatrical rollout later this year. 

Documentarian Joshua Z. Weinstein makes his narrative feature directorial debut with the title about an ultra-Orthodox Jewish widower at risk of losing his son due to strict religious tradition, which requires a mother present in every home. Roughly based on the life of actor Menashe Lustig, the drama is one of the first films to be performed almost entirely...

Exclusive: In its first acquisition of a foreign language film, A24 has acquired U.S. and Chinese Distribution rights to the Joshua Z. Weinstein-directed father/son drama Menashe. The film, one of the first to be performed almost entirely in Yiddish in nearly 70 years, premiered last Monday at Sundance, and it is now booked to make its international premiere at Berlin next week. Weinstein made his narrative directorial debut on Menashe, after working as a documentarian…...

Generally speaking, this year’s Sundance Film Festival was a very healthy marketplace that guaranteed many of its highlights will make it to audiences beyond the festival circuit soon. From heavy hitters like “The Big Sick” and “Mudbound” to discoveries like “Thoroughbred,” there was plenty of buyer interest spread throughout the lineup. As usual, though, plenty of worthy titles ended the festival with uncertain futures.

Read More: The 2017 IndieWire Sundance Bible: Every Review, Interview and News Item Posted During the Festival

Here are a few memorable ones that deserve distribution.

“Bitch”

There are plenty of stories about domestic housewives who grow tired of their oppressive routines, but none quite like Marianna Palka’s vicious feminist satire “Bitch,” in which the writer-director-star plays a woman who assumes the identity of a wild dog. It’s a blunt metaphor, but Palka transforms the absurd premise into a chilling look at the destruction...

Actors discovered at the Sundance Film Festival often hail from unexpected places. Take, for example, Quvanzhané Wallis, the eight-year-old New Orleans star of “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” or Gabourey Sidibe, the overnight sensation at the center of Lee Daniels’ “Precious.” Both rode the wave of buzz to Oscar nominations.

Then there’s Menashe Lustig, the 38-year-old Hasidic Jew at the center of “Menashe,” a movie inspired by his life.

Lustig, whose starring role brought him immediate acclaim when “Menashe” premiered in the Next section at the 2017 edition of the festival, has never been so close to the secular world before. A native of the Hasidic enclave New Square in Brooklyn, Lustig spent some of his adult life in the U.K., moving back after his wife passed away. However, when he returned to Brooklyn, the local rabbi declared that until Lustig remarried, he would be an unfit parent for his son.

The story of a lower-class father attempting to raise his young son doesn’t sound like groundbreaking material, but “Menashe” puts that bittersweet formula into an exciting new context. Shot exclusively in Brooklyn’s Hasidic community in Borough Park with a script almost entirely spoken in Yiddish, the narrative debut of cinematographer and documentarian Joshua Z. Weinstein has the precision of an ethnographic experiment. The movie exists within the confines of its insular setting, and features a cast of real-life Hasidim riffing on the traditions that govern their everyday lives, but manages to mine a degree of emotional accessibility that extends far beyond the neighborhood’s borders.

The title character is portrayed by Menashe Lustig, a gentle, portly figure whose circumstances inspired the melancholic plot. His performance is so heartbreaking in its authenticity that the movie often borders on documentary, and yet it maintains an engaging pace as it builds...

Contemporary screen depictions of Brooklyn's Hasidic community — for instance Boaz Yakin's A Price Above Rubies or Sidney Lumet's A Stranger Among Us — have tended to raise eyebrows with their meshuggeneh casting of Hollywood recruits like Renee Zellweger and Melanie Griffith, and their sometimes patronizing perspective on the exotic otherness of a mysterious, insular world. On a much smaller, far more satisfying scale, Joshua Z. Weinstein's charming Menashe immerses us in an authentic environment of ultra-Orthodox Judaism and makes it relatable by weaving a sweet story familiar in its general contours, of a single father struggling to hold onto...

World premieres include Barrage, starring Isabelle Huppert and her daughter Lolita Chammah.Scroll down for full list

This year’s Forum programme at the Berlin Film Festival (Feb 9-19), which highlights avant garde and experimental works, will feature 47 films, including 29 world premieres.

These include the premiere of Laura Schroeder’s Barrage, which stars Isabelle Huppert alongside her daughter Lolita Chammah in the story of a young woman who returns to Luxembourg after a 10-year absence to spend time with her estranged child. Huppert plays the grandmother, who has fostered the young girl during that absence.

Read: ‘Barrage’, starring Isabelle Huppert and daughter Lolita, finds sales home

Having its international premiere at Forum this year will be Golden Exits, the new feature from American filmmaker Alex Ross Perry. His previous credits include Queen Of Earth, which premiered at Berlin in 2015. His latest tells the story of a young Australian woman who comes to New York for a few months...

The 67th Berlin International Film Festival announced 43 additions to its 2017 roster today, including Alex Ross Perry’s “Golden Exits,” Joshua Z. Weinstein’s “Menashe,” and Amman Abbasi’s “Dayveon,” and rounding out much of the festival’s main line-up.

Read More: Berlinale 2017 Will Premiere ‘Logan,’ ‘Trainspotting: T2,’ and Hong Sangsoo’s Latest

Known for its robust variety of programming, the festival previously announced new films from Aki Kaurismaki, Oren Moverman, Sally Potter, Agnieszka Holland, and Sebastian Lelio. More commercial fare includes the international premiere of Danny Boyle’s “Trainspotting” sequel, and the world premiere of James Mangold’s addition to the Wolverine franchise, “Logan.”

Read More: 5 Exciting Films in the 2017 Berlin Film Festival Competition Lineup

The films of the 47th Forum are:

2 + 2 = 22 [The Alphabet] by Heinz Emigholz, Germany – Wp

Adiós entusiasmo (So Long Enthusiasm) of Vladimir Durán, Argentina / Colombia – Wp

At Elske Pia (Pia Loving) by Daniel Joseph Borgmann, Denmark – Wp...

Exclusive: Chris Columbus has come aboard as executive producer of Menashe, the Yiddish-language drama from Joshua Z. Weinstein that is having its world premiere in the Next section of the Sundance Film Festival which kicks off this week. Columbus and Eleanor Columbus will now Ep executive produce the film under their Maiden Voyage Pictures, which counts recent credits including The Witch, Tallulah and Mediterranea. It also has Geremy Jasper’s Patti Cake$ premiering in…...

This year’s Sundance Film Festival is mere days from unspooling in snowy Park City, Utah and, with it comes a brand new year of indie filmmaking to get excited about. As ever, the annual festival is playing home to dozens of feature films, short offerings and technologically-influenced experiences, and while there’s plenty to anticipate seeing, we’ve waded through the lineup to pick out the ones we’re most looking forward to checking out.

From returning filmmakers like Alex Ross Perry and Gillian Robesepierre to a handful of long-gestating passion projects and at least one film about a ghost, we’ve got a little something for every stripe of film fan.

Read More: Sundance 2017: Check Out the Full Lineup, Including Competition Titles, Premieres and Shorts

Ahead, check out 20 titles we’re excited to finally check out at this year’s festival.

“Landline”

The trifecta behind previous Sundance...

2016 is nearly over and most people can’t wait to reach the finish line, so the Sundance Film Festival lineup couldn’t arrive at a better moment to give us something to anticipate for the new year.

Read More: Sundance 2017 Announces Competition and Next Lineups, Including Returning Favorites and Major Contenders

With the announcement of the U.S. and World Competition sections as well as the ever-tantalizing Next category of edgier fare, the first set of Sundance announcements kick off a wave of expectations from new talent and veterans alike. There will be much to dig through, from potential sales titles to breakthrough talent, and more announcements to come (the midnight section, short films, and forward-thinking New Frontiers section are all around the corner). In the meantime, we’ve dug through the initial Sundance blast to unearth a few standouts worthy of anticipation.

David Lowery’s Secret Movie Isn’t...

On Tuesday, Americans go to the voting booth to determine what kind of country they want theirs to be. Months of the most polarized, and polarizing, presidential campaign in recent memory have left many of us with battle fatigue and gnawing pangs of cynicism and nausea. To quote Thomas McGuane, in the opening line of his 1973 novel “92 in the Shade”: “Nobody knows, from sea to shining sea, why we are having all this trouble with our republic.”

Our filmmakers might have a clue. And a little distance brings perspective. The American Film Festival just celebrated its seventh annual survey of new (and mostly) independent cinema made in the U.S.A., as assembled for and viewed by eager European audiences in Wroclaw, Poland. Though not without some escapist and experimental tangents, the selections couldn’t help but offer a provocative composite of work that serves as a kind of state of the union address.

New York City has been the inspiration for many films over the years, and now it’s the inspiration for a new anthology film about the city and the characters who call the city home. “True New York” anthologizes five award-winning short documentaries that focus on people from different corners of the city, from taxi drivers to street performers.

Read More: ‘Welcome to Hitchcock’ Anthology Series Announced by the Alfred Hitchcock Estate

The five films are as follows: 1. Jordan Roth’s “C-Rock” explores a group of Bronx kids who leap off a 100-foot tall cliff into the Harlem River, a dangerous rite of passage going back generations; 2. Joshua Z. Weinstein’s “Taxi Garage” looks inside a Queen taxi depot and follows Johnnie “Spider” Footman, a colorful octogenarian who is New York’s oldest taxi driver; 3. Jeremy Workman’s “One Track Mind” reveals the amazing story of Philip Coppola, who has...

While often demonized and misunderstood, the Hasidic community is an insular one that keeps to itself. No wonder then that the community is underrepresented cinematically. There aren’t many honest representations on film that explore the meanings of its traditions and rituals with vibrancy or humor. This is one of the reasons writer/director Joshua Z. Weinstein sought out to make Untitled Hasidic Film, in order to portray this world in the most authentic way possible. The film features actual Hasidic non-actors, a rarity to say the least, and is entirely in Yiddish. Joshua embedded himself in this world earning the trust […]...

Spoken in my Law & Order opening voiceover voice: Each day, a million New Yorkers depend on the anonymous faces behind the wheels, the men who tirelessly drive the city that doesn't sleep. These are their stories... [Dun!] Titled Drivers Wanted, and directed by Joshua Z. Weinstein, the documentary places the audience in the taxi seat to experience patience and persistence, in the face of long hours, disrespectful customers, blinding blizzards, accidents and a host of other challenges including the late night streets of New York. The drivers show up for work every morning at New York City’s most eclectic communities; no, not Queens, but the taxi garage...