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Exclusive: Ahead of the April 4th theatrical release of his latest film, The Luckiest Man in America, Samir Oliveros — writer, director, producer, and co-founder of filmmaking collective Plenty Good — has signed with Cinetic Media for management.

A Colombia-born, U.S.-based talent who has leveraged partnerships at home in Latin America to create film and television for global audiences, Olivero’s Luckiest Man is a starry Colombia-based production that sold to IFC Films and Sapan Studio after premiering at TIFF 2024, in one of the few deals of the festival. The stranger-than-fiction story, based on true events, follows an unemployed ice cream truck driver who, in 1984, drives from Ohio to California to become a contestant on the popular game show Press Your Luck and goes on an unprecedented winning streak, all while keeping a big secret.

The project features a stacked cast led by Paul Walter Hauser, which also includes David Strathairn,...

Update: Hamdan Ballal, co-director of the Oscar-winning Israel-Palestine documentary “No Other Land,” has been freed, according to the latest post from co-director Yuval Abraham.

“After being handcuffed all night and beaten in a military base, Hamdan Ballal is now free and is about to go home to his family,” Abraham posted on X on Tuesday.

Previously: A petition to free Hamdan Ballal, co-director of the Oscar-winning Israel-Palestine documentary “No Other Land,” has gathered more than 3,700 signatures on Change.org.

Ballal is reportedly missing after being attacked, according to a series of posts on X from co-director Yuval Abraham.

“We, members of the global film community urgently appeal for the immediate release and safety of filmmaker Hamdan Ballal, co-director of ‘No Other Land,’ the recipient of this year’s Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

Reports that Mr. Ballal was forcibly removed by the Israeli army from an ambulance following a brutal attack by settlers,...

The 27th edition of the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, launching on April 3, will feature a lineup of 34 feature documentaries and 15 short docs. The Durham, N.C.-based, four-day doc film fest will kick off with Lindsay Utz and Michelle Walshe’s “Prime Minister, “about the life of former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

“Prime Minister” debuted at Sundance 2025, where it won the World Cinema Documentary Audience Award. The film is one of 16 Sundance feature docs screening at Full Frame this year. Others include U.S. Grand Jury Prize winner “Seeds,” “The Librarians,” “Preditors, “Nat. Geo’s “Sally” and “The Perfect Neighbor,” which Netflix recently acquired.

Often referred to as “a filmmaker’s festival,” Full Frame is not a premiere or market-focused fest. Instead, it’s known within the doc industry as a well-organized, intimate gathering that gives well-received docs out of Sundance, Camden Intl. Film Festival and the...

Netflix produced its first non-documentary feature in 2015. It was called Beasts of No Nation, and it was fine. However, the film did not get nominated for an Academy Award. Lots has changed in the last decade.

Your favorite streamer often gets nominated for major awards each year. 2025 is no different. Emilia Pérez has 13 nominations alone, including one for Best Picture. So far, Netflix has yet to get a win in that category, and Emilia Pérez is not the favorite this year, either.

In fact, Netflix has also almost been entirely shut out of wins in the acting categories. Only Laura Dern won, and that was for Best Supporting Actress in 2020. But the streamer does do well in some other categories. Those might not be part of the Big 6, but when it comes to documentaries, Netflix knows what it is doing. Just see below, and you'll know.

The 2025 Oscars will be held on Sunday,...

Emilia Pérez's Karla Sofía Gascón has just made history, becoming the first openly trans nominee for an acting Academy Award. Gascón has earned a nomination in the Best Actress race for portraying the titular character in Netflix's genre-bending (and divisive) feature. The film leads the pack with 13 nods (the most of any movie): alongside Best Actress, the film has earned nominations for Best Supporting Actress (for Zoe Saldaña who earned the Golden Globe), Cinematography, Directing (for Jacques Audiard), Adapted Screenplay, International Feature Film, Editing, Sound, Makeup and Hair, Original Score and two nominations in the Original Song category for "El Mal" and "Mi Camino."

With her historic accomplishment, Gascón joins a limited number of artists: Composer Angela Morley achieved a milestone as the first transgender person to receive Academy Award recognition. She earned nominations for her scores in 1974's The Little Prince and 1978's The Slipper and the Rose: The Story of Cinderella...

Karla Sofía Gascón is making history.

The 52-year-old Spanish actress officially made Oscars history after becoming the first openly trans person ever to be nominated in an acting category, following the nominations announcement from the Academy on Thursday (January 23).

Karla is nominated in the Best Actress category for her role in Jacques Audiard’s musical Netflix film, Emilia Pérez.

She previously secured Golden Globe, SAG and BAFTA nominations for the performance as well.

Keep reading to find out more…

Karla stars in the film as a cartel leader, who turns to Mexico City lawyer Rita (Zoë Saldaña), to help her live as her authentic self.

Prior to Karla in trans history at the Oscars, Elliott Page was nominated for Juno in 2008 before coming out as trans, and the first openly trans person ever to be Oscar-nominated was composer Angela Morley, for The Little Prince in 1975 and then again for The Slipper and the Rose: The Story of Cinderella...

Karla Sofía Gascón made Oscar history Thursday as the first openly transgender actor to land an Academy Award nomination.

Gascón scored her first career nomination Thursday morning in the Best Actress category for her lead role in Jacques Audiard’s Spanish-language operatic musical, “Emilia Pérez,” cementing her place in the Oscar history books.

The landmark Oscar nomination is groundbreaking for the transgender community as it marks the first time an out trans actor has broken through in a major acting category with the Academy.

Gascón isn’t the first trans actor to be recognized by the Academy, however. Elliot Page, who was nominated for an Oscar in 2008 for their leading role in “Juno,” came out as trans through an Instagram post in December 2020, 12 years after being nominated.

The Academy has also previously nominated trans filmmakers and musicians. Composer Angela Morley was the first openly transgender Oscar nominee in 1975 for co-writing...

Critics have had mixed feelings about “Emilia Pérez.” Some praised it for its bold and unique blend of crime drama and musical elements, while others criticized it for its portrayal of Mexico and the lack of Mexican actors. Overall, it’s been a controversial film that has sparked a lot of discussions – but one thing was sure during the release – it’s going to be nominated for a lot of awards.

The Oscar nominations have dropped and the star of the movie Karla Sofía Gascón has been nominated for her role in the film. Gascón is the first openly transgender actor to get an Oscar nomination.

In the Netflix movie, Emilia (played by Gascón) is a feared drug lord who asks a lawyer, Rita (played by Zoe Saldaña), to help fake her death and get gender-affirming surgery. Variety’s main film critic, Peter Debruge, praised the film, saying Gascón “lights up” in her role.

Karla Sofía Gascón has officially made Oscar history. On Thursday morning she became the first openly trans person ever to be nominated in an acting category.

Gascón is recognized in the Best Actress category for her leading role in Jacques Audiard’s musical Netflix film, Emilia Pérez, and this Academy acknowledgement comes on the heels of recent Golden Globe, SAG and BAFTA nominations for Gascón’s performance.

In Emilia Pérez, Gascón stars as a cartel leader who turns to Mexico City lawyer Rita (Zoë Saldaña), to help her live as her authentic self. Selena Gomez stars as Emilia’s wife Jessi and Adriana Paz as Emilia’s girlfriend Epifanía. Gascón first made awards history with the role at Cannes when all four actresses shared the Best Actress award, with Gascón being the first openly trans actress ever to win the prize.

Related: Oscars Nomination Analysis: Musicals, Popes, ‘Brutalist’, Netflix, Demi And Dylan,...

Karla Sofía Gascón has become the first openly transgender actor to be nominated for an Academy Award. The Spanish star is recognized for her performance in the titular role of Jacques Audiard’s musical crime film “Emilia Pérez.”

The Netflix film follows Emilia (Gascón), a feared drug lord who seeks the help of a lawyer, Rita (Zoe Saldaña), to fake her death and undergo gender-affirming surgery. Variety‘s chief film critic Peter Debruge praised the Spanish-language film in his review, writing that Gascón “electrifies” in her role.

This isn’t Gascón’s first history-making nod this awards season: She became the first transgender woman to win the best actress award at the Cannes Film Festival and was the first trans woman nominated for film acting at the Golden Globes.

Only three openly trans people have been nominated in any categories at the Oscars before: composer Angela Morley, musician Anohni and documentarian Yance Ford.

Neo Sora, the filmmaker and artist behind “Happyend,” has signed with Cinetic Media.

The move comes after “Happyend,” which Sora wrote as well as directed, premiered at the 2024 Venice Film Festival. It went on to screen at the Toronto International Film Festival, New York Film Festival and Busan International Film Festival, earning positive reviews at each stop. The coming-of-age story is set in a near-future Japan, where a group of high schoolers fights for a better future against a techno-fascist world fueled by the fear of the next great earthquake.

Metrograph picked up the film for North America distribution after it screened in Venice and will release the film in theaters in 2025. Magnify is handling the rest of the world. The film was produced by Albert Tholen, Aiko Masubuchi, Eric Nyari, Alex C. Lo and Anthony Chen, and supported by the likes of the Sundance Institute, Gotham Project Market and Talents Tokyo.

Cinetic Media has signed Amalia Ulman, the multi-hyphenate behind “El Planeta,” a critically acclaimed absurdist comedy.

“El Planeta” was written, directed and produced by Ulman, who starred in the feature as well. It premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film festival in World Competition. The film was then given the prestigious opening night slot at Film at Lincoln Center and The Museum of Modern Art’s New Directors/New Films. “El Planeta” is set in the industrial northern Spanish city of Gijon during the 2009 economic crisis and follows mother and daughter grifters, who resort to ever more desperate schemes to maintain their lifestyle. Ulman is currently in post on her second feature film.

In addition, Ulman’s work as a visual artist has shown at the Tate Modern and had engagements at Art Basel. She was lauded as “the first great Instagram artist” for her piece “Excellences and Perfections.” Her work has been compared to Agnes Varda,...

“This is a film that I love dearly. I think we use the word urgent a little bit not with as much intention as we should. And I think a film like this really occupies that word,” said Oscar winner Laura Poitras (“Citizenfour“), introducing a special screening of the documentary “No Other Land” at Scandinavia House in New York City on October 14. The film chronicles the efforts of the Israeli military and settlers to displace the Palestinian population of the Masafer Yatta region of the West Bank, as seen from the point of view of Palestinian activist Basel Adra and Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham, who co-directed the film with Hamdan Ballal and Rachel Szor. Abraham and Adra participated in a virtual Q&a from Israel and the West Bank, respectively, moderated by Oscar nominee Yance Ford (“Strong Island“).

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“Nickel Boys”, which opens the New York Film Festival on September 27, wouldn’t exist without producers Dede Gardner (Plan B) and Joslyn Barnes (Louverture Films). Both women boast enviable track records of finding, backing, and promoting rising talent, along with Gardner’s Plan B partner Jeremy Kleiner, who produced with her the Oscar-winners “Moonlight” and “12 Years a Slave,” as well as Best Picture nominees “The Tree of Life,” “The Big Short,” “Selma,” “Vice,” and “Women Talking.”

Barnes is known in the documentary space for producing Oscar nominees “Strong Island” (Yance Ford) and “Hale County This Morning, This Evening,” her first collaboration with Brown professor and photographer RaMell Ross. Barnes was finishing “Strong Island” when Ross showed her eight minutes of his project; she resisted at first but eventually became intensely involved in the shoot, archives, and the final edit. Ross sees the world differently than most filmmakers; his rare...

Exclusive: Jayne Sullivan has been hired as a literary manager at Cinetic Media, the esteemed management and media advisory company founded and overseen by John Sloss.

New to management, Sullivan comes from a producing background, having previously worked alongside Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, Paul Giamatti while under a deal at Showtime, and Brigham Taylor while under a deal at Disney. She’ll be based out of Cinetic’s New York office and will focus on growing a roster of exceptional writer, director, and multi-hyphenate clients.

Observed Kate Hurwitz and Alec Ring, Co-Heads of Cinetic Management, “Jayne was doing all the things a great manager does well before it was her official title. She has incredible taste, a strong work ethic, and her experience across the indie and studio landscape equips her to excel with artists at all stages of their careers. We are thrilled to have her join our team.”

Added Sullivan,...

Cinetic Media has signed Oscar-winning filmmaker Kevin MacDonald for management.

Macdonald won the Academy Award for Best Documentary for “One Day in September,” a look at the 1972 murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the Summer Olympics In Munich. MacDonald’s narrative feature, “The Last King of Scotland,” earned the best actor Oscar for Forest Whitaker for his chilling performance as Idi Amin.

MacDonald will be attending the Venice Film Festival, where he will premiere a “One to One: John & Yoko,” a documentary about the music legends’ relationship from Mercury Studios. His recent documentary “Klitschko: More Than a Fight,” a look at Vitali Klitschko, a boxing champ turned the mayor of Kyiv, opened the 2024 Sheffield DocFest. Previous work in the non-fiction space include “Marley,” a portrait of reggae great Bob Marley; “Whitney,” an examination of pop sensation Whitney Houston; and “High & Low — John Galliano,” which charts the controversial fashion designer’s fall.

Challengers

Smart, seductive and bristling with sexual tension, this is Luca Guadagnino’s most purely pleasurable film to date. As dynamic as the many tennis matches it depicts, the love-triangle drama pits the rivalry on the court of two former BFFs against their competing desire for a self-possessed woman whose hunger to win is not diminished by an injury that cuts short her own career. It helps that the chemistry of stars Zendaya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist is off the charts. — David Rooney

La Chimera

Italian filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher’s invigoratingly strange and lyrical film revolves around a fascinating pocket community: the tombaroli, illegal grave-robbers who dig up Etruscan relics and make their money selling those antiquities to fences, who in turn sell them to museums and collectors for vastly larger sums. Josh O’Connor is superb in the central role of a haunted Englishman whom the tombaroli regard as a kind of mystic,...

Chicago – Patrick McDonald of HollywoodChicago.com audio film review for the new documentary “Power,” directed by Yance Ford, as a supplement informational survey of the history and militarization of the U.S. police force. Currently streaming on Netflix since May 17th.

Rating: 5.0/5.0

Power in policing began with the patrols that went after runaway slaves pre the civil war, and from those white supremacist roots escalated and evolved to today’s police, equipped with paramilitary gear and aggressive and sometimes shoot-first tactics. With police unions demanding and for the most part receiving immunity from their actions, it becomes only these policing forces that can use violent Power.

“Power” is currently streaming on Netflix. Written by Yance Ford and Ian Olds. Directed by Yance Ford. Rated “R”

Click Here for Patrick McDonald’s audio review of “Power”

Power

Photo credit: Netflix

Click Here for Patrick McDonald’s audio review of “Power”...

Power, the new documentary centered on the police in the United States, comes from the stable of Netflix, but it is certainly not your regular “true crime” entertainment. The Yance Ford-directed documentary is not based on any particular event. Instead, it takes the route of being introspective about the whole police system. Ford, who’s an Emmy winner, has already proved his mettle in documentary filmmaking with the very personal Strong Island, where he investigated the murder of his own brother. Unlike Strong Island, Ford’s latest work is based on a general topic and an exploration of it. Let’s take a closer look.

What is the documentary about?

The word “police” implies power, and Ford’s documentary goes deep into finding out the origin of it. Ford starts from the very beginning, which was the creation of the first ever police force in America in 1883 in Boston.

One of 2024’s most electric hits is our top pick among this weekend’s streaming releases, but there’s something for everyone, including a searing documentary, an oddball indie, and a couple of middling blockbusters.

The contender to watch this week: “Challengers“

Luca Guadagnino‘s box-office backspin became one of spring’s moviegoing success stories, and we’re all the luckier for it. Zendaya, Josh O’Connor, and Mike Faist‘s love-triangle tennis lark is still playing in plenty of theaters across the country, but if you want another serve, it’s available to rent for $19.99 on VOD. It’s not impossible to imagine a “Challengers” resurgence in the fall: Guadagnino is already an Oscar darling thanks to “Call Me by Your Name,” and Zendaya seems especially poised for top-tier accolades. If nothing else, maybe Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross‘ banger of a score can net the duo’s third trophy.

by Nick Taylor

There will always be room for art chronicling the systemic and individual injustices wrought on America by its own police force. Hell, you could probably apply that sentiment to police in any country, to an armed institution given virtually unchecked power on any scale. Power, the latest documentary from filmmaker Yance Ford, follows the history and development of US policing with a dry, succinct eye...

Policing in the US can serve as a sort of Rorschach test: Are the cops a corrective force necessary to combat criminals? Or a hotbed of corruption whose unchecked authority poses a threat to disadvantaged communities? Power, the new documentary by director Yance Ford, addresses these tough questions while carefully considering how policing as we know it came to be.

The subject has interested Ford for decades, a fascination he traces back to the murder of his brother in 1992. He first explored it in his Academy Award-nominated 2017 documentary Strong Island, which revisits a grand jury’s failure to indict the man who committed the crime.

“On some level, I’ve been thinking about the police for 30 years,” Ford tells Tudum, noting that the wellspring of conversation, protests, and police crackdowns during the spring and summer of 2020 led him to reconsider the overall purpose of policing. “In the aftermath...

What is the purpose of police in the U.S.? To ensure public safety, many people might answer. But that’s a thoroughly misleading definition in the view of Oscar-nominated filmmaker Yance Ford. In his new documentary Power, premiering on Netflix this Friday, the filmmaker argues policing in America is really about the maintenance and enforcement of a particular social order, one that privileges property-owning members of society while targeting and disadvantaging others.

Ford, who earned an Academy Award nomination for the 2017 film Strong Island, is our guest on the new episode of Deadline’s Doc Talk podcast, co-hosted by Oscar winner John Ridley and Matt Carey, Deadline’s documentary editor.

“This film offers an analysis of police history that I’d like you to consider,” the director says at the beginning of Power. “This film requires curiosity or at least suspicion. I leave that choice up to you.”

Power...

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

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

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

In a crucial passage from a series of lectures he gave that would be published as Society Must Be Defended, Michel Foucault expounded on the concept of the imperial boomerang. Though the term was used and advanced by many political theorists and philosophers, most notably Theodor Adorno and Hannah Arendt, it was Foucault’s conception of the term that has stuck in the public consciousness. “[W]hile colonization, with its techniques and its political and juridical weapons, obviously transported European models to other continents,” he argued, “it also had a considerable boomerang effect on the mechanisms of power in the West, and on the apparatuses, institutions, and techniques of power…the result was that the West could practice something resembling colonization, or an internal colonialism, on itself.”

Yance Ford’s documentary Power acts as a piece of supporting evidence for what’s become known as Foucault’s boomerang. The film lays out in clear,...

Divergent PR has announced that veteran publicist Ryan Langrehr, former U.S. Head of Awards at Dda, will join the independent outlet and that Christine Richardson has been promoted to Vice President.

Richardson, a veteran film publicist at Divergent, has successfully managed Oscar-winning campaigns for Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest” and Darren Aronofsky’s “The Whale.” Her previous roles included working on documentary titles on Netflix, such as Yance Ford’s Oscar-nominated “Strong Island” and Martin Scorsese’s “Rolling Thunder Revue.” Before joining Divergent, she was the VP of National Publicity at Lionsgate, contributing to the campaign for Damien Chazelle’s best directing winner “La La Land.”

Langrehr is joining Divergent as director of publicity from Dda, where he was responsible for leading the U.S. awards team and managing the launches of films from both domestic and international film festivals. He has represented filmmakers globally and overseen...

Summer doesn’t officially begin until June 20, 2024, but for the entertainment industry, the summer season starts in early May. In fact, as far as the Netflix streaming service is concerned, summer this year starts on May 3rd, so they have just unveiled their full 2024 Summer Movie slate! As they put it, “Summertime: The living is easy, school’s (almost) out, and the days are growing longer and hotter — which means there’s plenty of space for cool nights spent on the couch. Curl up with family, pals, or a really big bowl of popcorn, and queue up your next Netflix obsession.” Here’s what they’ll have to offer over the next few months:

May 3

Unfrosted

Genre: Comedy

Synopsis: Michigan, 1963. Kellogg’s and Post, sworn cereal rivals, race to create a pastry that will change the face of breakfast. A tale of ambition, betrayal, sugar, and menacing milkmen, Unfrosted stars...

The summer season is upon us and, per each year, we’ve dug beyond studio offerings to present an in-depth look at what should be on your radar. From festival winners of the past year to selections coming straight from Cannes to genre delights to, yes, a few blockbuster spectacles, there’s more than enough to anticipate.

Check out our picks below and return for monthly updates as more is sure to be added to the calendar. Release dates are for theatrical openings unless otherwise noted.

The Contestant (Clair Titley; May 2 on Hulu)

If some of today’s reality shows can feel out-of-hand for what they put their contestants through, nothing compares to one of the first to ever hit the air. In 1988, aspiring comedian Tomoaki Hamatsu (aka Nasubi) got the “opportunity” to take part in a game show without knowing any of the parameters, resulting in him being placed...

Oscar-nominated Strong Island director Yance Ford returned to Sundance Film Festival this year with Power, a lively, detailed essay film that takes a deep look at the history of policing in the United States and unceasing expansion of its scope and scale, much to the detriment of marginalized communities. Another powerful, informative inquiry from the filmmaker about the failings of systems meant to protect citizens, the first trailer has now arrived ahead of a theatrical release on May 10 and Netflix release on May 17.

Dan Mecca said in his Sundance review, “‘Police power is immediate power.’ These opening words from Redditt Hudson––former police officer and co-founder of the National Coalition of Law Enforcement Officers for Justice, Reform, and Accountability––haunt and inform the entirety of Yance Ford’s Power. Ford actually opens the film over black, informing viewers that what they are about to see is ‘an analysis of police...

Exclusive: Cinetic Media has signed New York-based documentary filmmaker Contessa Gayles for management across all media.

Most recently, Gayles took to SXSW with her film Songs from the Hole, which garnered strong reviews and won the festival’s Visions Audience Award. Described as a documentary visual album, pic follows musician James “JJ’88” Jacobs as he writes about his innermost struggles while serving a double life sentence.

Up next for Gayles is the Tribeca Festival debut of her documentary The Debutantes, made in collaboration with NBC News Studios, Westbrook Studios, and BET Studios. Through personal video diaries and dance, the doc watches as teens Amelia, Dedra, and Teylar navigate identity and gender norms while pursuing dreams of college, medicine or business.

Gayles’ documentary short, Founder Girls, exec produced by Queen Latifah, premiered at the 2023 Tribeca Festival and was broadcast on BET. Previously, she was a producer at CNN, where she created,...

Netflix has shared a new trailer for the documentary Power, which traces the history of policing in the United States, from 18th century slave patrols and publicly funded police departments in the 19th century to police protests in the Sixties and 2020s.

A speaker in the Netflix trailer raises the question: Who is more powerful, the people or the police? The trailer highlights the racially charged history of policing, particularly how slaves, indigenous people, and working class people were the target of unregulated violence, and how the past informs police brutality within American cities.

"Is your America and my America the same place? Has it ever been?" Netflix has revealed an official trailer for the documentary film titled Power, the latest from acclaimed doc filmmaker Yance Ford - who was nominated for an Academy Award in 2018. This premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, and it also played at the Cph:Dox, Full Frame, and Hot Docs Film Festivals after the premiere. Driven to contain threats to social order, American policing has exploded in scope and scale over hundreds of years. Now, it can be described by one word: power. The film offers a visceral, immersive journey to demonstrate how we’ve arrived at this moment in history, from the slave patrols of the 1700s and first publicly funded police departments of the 1800s to the uprisings of the 1960s & 2020s. Part essay, part interview, and part archival collage, Power uses historical...

Produced in collaboration with Documentary Campus, this year’s five-day Cph:conference featured a wide-ranging series of panels and conversations, diving in to everything from indigenous narratives to climate storytelling to the mind of Alex Gibney. Especially notable were the four mornings, Film:makers in Dialogue, all moderated by Wendy Mitchell (festival producer of Sundance London as well as a journalist for Screen International). In these sessions audiences were invited to listen in as the directors behind two films chose clips from each other’s work to engage with. One such pairing in particular proved both inspired and inspiring. Brett Story (The Hottest August, The […]

The post On Power and Solidarity : Brett Story and Yance Ford at Cph:dox 2024 first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Produced in collaboration with Documentary Campus, this year’s five-day Cph:conference featured a wide-ranging series of panels and conversations, diving in to everything from indigenous narratives to climate storytelling to the mind of Alex Gibney. Especially notable were the four mornings, Film:makers in Dialogue, all moderated by Wendy Mitchell (festival producer of Sundance London as well as a journalist for Screen International). In these sessions audiences were invited to listen in as the directors behind two films chose clips from each other’s work to engage with. One such pairing in particular proved both inspired and inspiring. Brett Story (The Hottest August, The […]

The post On Power and Solidarity : Brett Story and Yance Ford at Cph:dox 2024 first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Exclusive: In a competitive situation, Cinetic Media has signed Aaron Schimberg and Vanessa McDonnell, the filmmaker and producer behind the darkly comedic psychological thriller A Different Man, for management across all media.

World premiering at Sundance 2024 before going on to play Berlin, the conversation starter from A24 stars an unrecognizable Sebastian Stan as Edward, an aspiring actor who undergoes a radical medical procedure to drastically transform his appearance. Edward’s new dream face quickly turns into a nightmare, as he loses out on the role he was born to play and becomes obsessed with reclaiming what was lost.

Schimberg wrote and directed the pic, which next week opens Film at Lincoln Center and The Museum of Modern Art’s New Directors/New Films. Also starring Adam Pearson and The Worst Person in the World breakout Renate Reinsve, in her American debut, the film is produced by Christine Vachon, McDonnell, and Gabriel Mayers.

Coming straight from Sundance with their respective buzzy docs “Power” – a Netflix Original – and “Union,” U.S. director/producer Yance Ford and his Canadian counterpart Brett Story delivered March 20 an empowering talk at Copenhagen’s “Film:makers in Dialogue” session, where they bounced ideas between each other about power structure in American society, capitalism, race and class divides from historical and contemporary perspectives.

“Power,” which was competing at Cph:dox for the Human Rights Award, is a forceful documentary essay on the origin of U.S. policing spanning 300 years, turning on its dynamics and impact on American society. “I’m interested in U.S. institutions, power, control in our society,” said Ford about his sophomore feature and follow up to his Academy Award-nominated “Strong Island,” acquired by Netflix for global distribution in 2017.

“After the George Floyd murder [in 2020], I saw the way the police was acting with unfiltered violence towards people protesting, and decided to step back.

Cph: Dox, Copenhagen’s International Documentary Festival, has set the full lineup for its 2024 edition, including 84 world premieres, 32 international premieres, and 9 European premieres.

Running March 13-24, the festival will feature six competition categories: Dox: Award, F: Act Award, Nordic: Dox Award, Next: Wave Award, New: Vision Award, and the new Human: Rights Award.

Musician Pete Doherty will attend the festival for a screening of Peter Doherty: Stranger in My Own Skin. The event will take place on March 18 at Bremen Theater, when he and the film’s director Katia de Vidas – who became Doherty’s wife over the ten years she followed him with her camera – openly discuss the substance abuse that has shadowed his entire career. After the screening, Doherty will give an acoustic concert. Other high-profile titles include Lana Wilson’s Look Into My Eyes, Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw’s Gaucho Gaucho, Carla Gutierrez’s Frida, Yance Ford’s Power,...

Exclusive: Cinetic Media has signed award-winning Iranian filmmaker Babak Jalali for management across all media.

Most recently, Jalali co-wrote and directed the indie drama Fremont, released by Music Box Films last August. Securing a nomination for the John Cassavetes Award at the 2024 Independent Spirit Awards, following a Jury Prize win in Deauville and one for Directing at Karlovy Vary, the film centers on mid-20s Afghan refugee Donya (Anaita Wali Zada), whose complicated feelings about her prior work as a translator for the U.S. military have left her troubled and unable to sleep. Drifting through her uninspired routine in Fremont, California, which comprises her work at a fortune cookie factory, she struggles to connect with her unfamiliar surroundings. When Donya is promoted to writing fortunes at her job, she sends a message out to the world, unsure where it will lead.

Gregg Turkington and Jeremy Allen White also star in the pic,...

By Abe Friedtanzer

Police reform is a hot-button issue, with calls from the left to "defund the police" and responses from the right that “blue lives” matter. Complicating those concepts is the fact that every American has grown up with the police as an established reality. Considering what something else could look like requires an acknowledgment that it hasn’t always been this way and perhaps shouldn’t be. Yance Ford’s documentary Power looks at the history of the police and how that’s shaped where we as a country now.

So much of present-day policing stems from racist institutions, beginning with slave catchers as the original model for police forces, which first began in Boston and quickly spread throughout the country...

When Power begins, before we see anything onscreen, we hear the voice of director Yance Ford, preparing the audience for information about the police that may be difficult to swallow. For those of us who have been politically radicalized — either in the past during landmark events like the Rodney King riots or the recent present in the wake of the brutal murder of George Floyd — what we see in Ford’s tightly edited 85-minute documentary feature may not be surprising. But for the vast majority of people in America, the police are still considered trustworthy arbiters of law and order dedicated to keeping us safe. That is why, during the 2020 protests, “abolish the police” was quickly rebranded by liberal pundits as “defund the police.” Even with this softer message, the public outcry fell on deaf ears. And soon, the movement faltered.

Ford seems to be responding directly to that failure with Power,...

“Police power is immediate power.” These opening words from Redditt Hudson––former police officer and co-founder of the National Coalition of Law Enforcement Officers for Justice, Reform, and Accountability––haunt and inform the entirety of Yance Ford’s Power. Ford actually opens the film over black, informing viewers that what they are about to see is “an analysis of police history that I’d like you to consider.” At the very least, curiosity is required to consider the facts that will come next.

It’s a straightforward, provocative opening. And Ford’s right to put all their cards on the table. This is a fraught time in America, and directly explaining to those watching that the U.S.A. in fact is, and has been, a police state will be blasphemous for many who stumble upon Power on Netflix. But if those same people come in with consideration, with even a half-open mind,...

Sundance film festival: Yance Ford’s follow-up to Oscar-nominated documentary Strong Island is a visually elegant, if a little dry, look at a problematic institution

Power, documentarian Yance Ford’s clinical inquiry into US policing, isn’t trafficking in new information. The 86-minute project billed as an “essay-film”, which premiered at Sundance and will stream on Netflix later this year, has clear eyes on the past, synthesizing the work of several academics with a robust archival record to examine the origins, structure and impact of police power in the United States.

That doesn’t mean it’s unnecessary; the film makes cogent, sweeping sense of the record for perhaps the most illuminative, swift and damning case against the institution of policing – the real fourth estate, as one subject puts it – of the many investigations conducted in the wake of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. But there’s a dryness to its procedure.

In an election year when civil rights are being threatened, authoritarianism is spreading around the globe and minorities are a popular political target, it’s no wonder that films exploring the U.S. criminal justice system are everywhere you look in the Sundance Film Festival lineup.

“There’s so much inequality and injustice in the justice system,” says “God Save Texas: Hometown Prison” director Richard Linklater. “There’s a lot to be outraged by and examined.” Variety spoke with him and other filmmakers such as Chiwetel Ejiofor, Debra Granik and Yance Ford about their Park City projects — when taken together, they paint a devastating and sometimes hopeful picture of contemporary policing, criminal trials, incarceration and rehabilitation.

Linklater’s “Prison,” inspired by Lawrence Wright’s book “God Save Texas,” is the first feature in a doc trilogy about his home state, debuting Jan. 23 in Park City and late February on HBO...

Early in Yance Ford’s visual essay “Power,” he tells the audience that the film to come either requires “curiosity” or “at least suspicion” from the viewer. It’s the type of bold claim that might pack a punch as a rhetorical hook, especially for a documentary that dives into the cultural, social, economic, and political history of policing in the United States. But the 85 or minutes that come afterward never live up to such a sweeping statement.

Continue reading ‘Power’ Review: Yance Ford’s Visual Essay Is A Sprawling Overview Of The History Of Policing In America [Sundance] at The Playlist.

A dryly succinct but thoroughly convincing Netflix documentary about the corruptive history of American policing, Yance Ford’s “Power” articulates in the clearest possible terms how 18th century slave patrols and the frontier militias that followed paved the way for a modern police state so violent and unregulated that no democracy would consciously think to invent it.

It begins with a brief voiceover that seems like a targeted overture to the movie’s home audience; the kind of flourish that suggests Ford knew his documentary would bypass a traditional platform rollout in favor of a more geopolitically diverse streaming debut. “This film requires curiosity, or at least suspicion,” the director intones over a black screen. “I’ll leave that choice up to you.”

Tempting as it is to imagine how those words might feel like a trigger warning for any “Blue Lives Matter” types who only started watching “Power” because...

Cinetic Media has signed documentary filmmaker Carla Gutiérrez. It will represent Gutiérrez across all media. The news comes as Gutiérrez’s directorial debut”Frida” premieres this week at Sundance. Cinetic has been ramping up management additions of late having also recently signed Betsy West and Julie Cohen (“Rbg”) of Storyville Films, both of whom executive produced Gutiérrez’s directorial debut.

Carla Gutiérrez is an Emmy- and Eddie-nominated documentary editor. She edited the Oscar-nominated films “Rbg” and “La Corona.” Her latest film as an editor, “Julia,” about renowned chef, and television personality Julia Child, premiered at Telluride and was an official selection of the Toronto Film Festival. Gutiérrez also edited the Emmy-nominated “Pray Away.” Her work has received awards at Sundance, Tribeca, Berlinale, Outfest, the Critic’s Choice Awards, the National Board of Review Awards, and the DuPont Columbia Awards. She has been a creative adviser for the Sundance Edit Lab,...

After three years of virtual and hybrid event offerings, the Sundance Film Festival is set to celebrate its fortieth anniversary with its most robust in-person edition of the festival since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. While online offerings will still be available to those who wish to participate from home, with the official online viewing window opening on Thursday, January 25. That lineup will include at-home screenings of the five competition sections (including Next).

On the ground, however, seems like the place to be. As ever, this year’s festival boasts a wide variety of new films from some of our favorite filmmakers, plus an assortment of rising stars, new talents to keep an eye on, and perhaps a few surprises.

This year’s program includes new films from Steven Soderbergh, Debra Granik, David and Nathan Zellner, Richard Linklater, Lana Wilson, Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss, Dawn Porter, Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden,...

Exclusive: Netflix has set a January 29 streaming premiere date for The Greatest Night in Pop, a feature doc just announced as world premiering at the Sundance Film Festival on the 19th of this month.

Directed by award winner Bao Nguyen (Be Water), the film takes viewers back to January 25, 1985, when dozens of the biggest names in music convened at a Los Angeles studio and checked their egos at the door amidst the recording of a song to benefit African famine relief — one that would alter global pop culture history. Chronicled in the doc is the massive undertaking to assemble the world’s most impressive supergroup in a time before cell phones and email. That group of artists, led by the song’s co-writers and two of the most significant musicians of the 20th century — Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie — came from different worlds but united to record “We Are the World.

Cinetic Media has signed directors Julie Cohen, Oren Jacoby and Betsy West. The management company will represent the Oscar-nominated filmmakers and their documentary company, Storyville Films, across all types of media.

Storyville Films was founded by Jacoby to produce documentaries and series driven by “strong personal narratives of conscience, courage and innovation.” Jacoby, Cohen and West serve as Storyville’s directors. Their production and distribution partners include Amazon, CNN Films, HBO, Imagine Entertainment, Kino Lorber, Magnolia Pictures, Netflix, Participant Media, PBS, Sony Pictures Classics and Time Studios.

Films by the Storyville partners include West and Cohen’s “Rbg,” a documentary about the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg that was a box office hit and earned an Oscar nomination; as well as “Julia,” a look at Julia Childs’ legacy; and “Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down.” Jacoby’s films include “On Broadway,” “Constantine’s Sword” and “Sister Rose’s Passion,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For regular updates, sign up for our weekly email newsletter and follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSNotebook readers, rejoice—the Mubi Shop has launched anew in the US and UK, and you can finally broadcast your love for the world’s sharpest international film criticism via this stylish, crisply screen-printed Notebook tote bag, featuring a clapperboard calligram design. Also in the store is a Cannes Film Festival–themed print by Dutch artist and cartoonist Joost Swarte, which was commissioned for our limited-edition print broadsheet issue of Notebook, distributed in Cannes.Sundance announced its lineup last week, including new films from Jane Schoenbrun, Steven Soderbergh, Debra Granik, Yance Ford, Brett Story, and more. This will be the first Sundance under the directorship of Eugene Hernandez, formerly of Film at Lincoln Center.Keep that winter coat handy—the Berlinale has announced that Lupita Nyong’o will lead the jury.