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Emily Robinson has completed production on her directorial debut Ugly Cry in Los Angeles.

The body horror film, which is also written by and stars Robinson, features Ryan Simpkins, Aaron Dominguez and Robin Tunney.

Although plot details remain under wraps, the film is described as a visceral exploration of beauty standards in the modern era, filtered through the lens of a young actress who has been told she has an “ugly cry.”

The cast is rounded out with Andrew Leeds, Heather Morris, Chalia La Tour, Ray Abruzzo, Sophie Von Haselberg, Josh Ruben and Melinda McGraw.

Producers include Jolene Mendes, Sophia Sabella and Pablo Feldman from More Avenue; Rhianon Jones and Tristan Scott-Behrends from Neon Heart Productions; and Robinson. Bella Appel, Kyle Campbell of Campbell Capital Management, Troy Press, Debbie von Ahrens,...

When I spoke to Alan Rudolph a couple months ago, he confirmed that Criterion had sought to release his Remember My Name but were held up by music rights––a situation so complicated that a lawyer hired by the director himself simply gave up. I like to think something’s changed in less than 60 days: the Criterion Channel will stream Remember My Name as part of a quartet featuring Afterglow, Trouble In Mind, and Breakfast of Champions, the latter recently given a 4K restoration. It’s part of a retrospective-heavy month that also includes a 12-title Johnnie To series, numerous films by René Clair, highlights of Amy Holden Jones and Ougie Pak, and Michael Winterbottom’s The Trip saga in both television and theatrical editions. Meanwhile, Gene Hackman is celebrated with six titles.

One of those, Night Moves, gets a Criterion Edition; so do Les Blank’s A Poem Is...

Cartuna and Dweck Productions are joining forces for a new distribution venture labeled Cartuna x Dweck, and they’ve together acquired North American rights to Grace Glowicki’s Dead Lover following its Texas premiere at SXSW. While no date has been set, the press release details this morning, the film’s release will definitely include a theatrical rollout.

In Dead Lover, Glowicki stars as a lonely gravedigger who stinks of corpses. When she finally meets her dream man (Ben Petrie), their whirlwind affair is cut short when he tragically drowns at sea. Grief-stricken, she goes to morbid lengths to resurrect him through madcap scientific experiments, resulting in grave consequences and unlikely love.

The screenplay was co-written with Petrie and also stars Leah Doz and Lowen Morrow, and is produced by Glowicki, Petrie, and Yona Strauss. Matthew Miller, Olivia Nieuwland, Lexi Tannenholtz, and Rhianon Jones and Tristan Scott Behrends of Neon Heart Productions...

New York indies Cartuna and Dweck Productions have acquired North American rights for Grace Glowicki’s thriller Dead Lover as the first acquisition of their newly announced joint distribution venture Cartuna x Dweck.

The partners acquired the film out of SXSW where the Canadian thriller made its Texas debut after world premiering at Sundance in the Midnight Section.

In between times, the film has also played the International Film Festival Rotterdam and Göteborg Film Festival, with forthcoming stops at the Overlook Film Festival in New Orleans and the Los Angeles Festival of Movies.

Glowicki also stars in Dead Lover as a lonely gravedigger who stinks of corpses. When she finally meets her dream man (Ben Petrie), their whirlwind affair is cut short when he tragically drowns at sea. Grief-stricken, she goes to morbid lengths to resurrect him through madcap scientific experiments, resulting in grave consequences and unlikely love.

Dead Lover...

Cartuna x Dweck, the new distribution venture formed by Cartuna and Dweck Productions, has acquired North American rights to Grace Glowicki’s Dead Lover following screenings at SXSW.

This is the first all-rights buy from the new company, which plans a theatrical release and aims to champion bold visions and emerging voices. The deal comes less than two weeks after Oscar-winningAnora director Sean Baker issued a clarion call urging support of independent filmmaking and the theatre-going experience.

Cartuna launched a distribution arm last year and found success with the Sitges and Morbido slapstick fantasy comedy Hundreds Of Beavers, which grossed...

In the first sale of the SXSW Film Festival, Grace Glowicki’s Midnight movie “Dead Lover” has found theatrical distribution from a new boutique distribution venture, Cartuna x Dweck, which is a partnership between physical media company Cartuna and Dweck Productions, the company behind films such as “Christmas Eve at Miller’s Point” and “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair.”

Cartuna x Dweck acquired North American rights to “Dead Lover” following its Texas premiere at SXSW, and this will be the first release from the new venture, as the two companies have quietly been building an initial slate of films to be announced later this year. No release date for “Dead Lover” was announced.

“Dead Lover” is Glowicki’s sophomore feature, which she wrote, directed, and starred in, and it made its premiere in the Midnight section of this year’s Sundance film Festival. The film is a campy,...

Writer, director and star Katarina Zhu’s feature debut is a personal portrait of fulfillment, bringing a nuanced perspective to universal themes of daddy issues, privilege and self-love.

In Bunnylovr, Zhu plays Becca, a twentysomething Chinese American who struggles through life in New York City while moonlighting as a cam girl. Her life takes a turn when a persistent client sends her a live bunny, whom she names Milk. Meanwhile, she runs into her estranged, dying father on the street.

Being fetishized and objectified by everyone in her life quickly takes a toll on Becca. She’s her father William’s (Perry Yung) lucky charm, helping him count cards in the park; she’s her best friend Bella’s (Rachel Sennott) muse, even though the artist ultimately makes her feel violated with her “feminist” creative license; her ex Carter (Jack Kilmer) strings her along as she struggles to move on...

In what seems to be an exploration of duality, Katarina Zhu steps both in front of and behind the camera to craft a portrait of connections and examines the wafer-thin boundary between online identity and real-life presence. Multi-hyphenated artist, actor, filmmaker and producer Tristan Scott-Behrends has been part of the American indie echo system for some time now Bunnylovr follows in the footsteps of last year’s Tendaberry – promoting new female filmmakers. The film would claim a quartet of prizes at the U.S in Progress and not that much time after – it was selected for U.S. Dramatic competition at Sundance next month.…...

Our first glimpse at 2025 independent cinema has arrived with the unveiling of next month’s Sundance Film Festival, taking place January 23–February 2, 2025, in person in Park City and Salt Lake City, Utah, with all of the competition films and more available online from January 30–February 2, 2025 across the country.

Curated from 15,775 submissions from 156 countries or territories, including 4,138 feature-length films, the 87 selected feature-length films include Andrew Ahn’s The Wedding Banquet; Ira Sachs’ Peter Hujar’s Day starring Ben Whishaw and Rebecca Hall; Amalia Ulman’s El Planeta follow-up Magic Farm starring Chloë Sevigny and Alex Wolff; the Josh O’Connor-led Rebuilding, from A Love Song director Max Walker-Silverman; Mary Bronstein’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You with Rose Byrne, A$AP Rocky, and Conan O’Brien; the Isabelle Huppert-led Luz; Love, Brooklyn starring André Holland; Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius); Elegance Bratton...

The 2025 line-up for the Sundance Film Festival has been announced.

This year’s fest features the latest projects from Oscar winners, studio filmmakers, and indie stalwarts like Justin Lin, Ira Sachs, Barry Levinson, and Questlove while the U.S. Dramatic Competition section is made of selections from directors new to the Park City fest.

“The combination of these new voices and some of these filmmakers who might be more household names, speaks to the the power of independent cinema and how, no matter where you are in your career, you are drawn to this community that Sundance has helped build over the years,” Sundance director of programming Kim Yutani told The Hollywood Reporter. Of the 87 feature films announced thus far, 36 titles (41 percent) are directed by first-time feature film directors.

Across the line-up, talents like Jennifer Lopez, Dev Patel, Bowen Yang, Chloë Sevigny, Olivia Colman, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Ayo Edebiri star in fest films,...

The Sundance Film Festival is still deliberating about where to move in 2027, but in the meantime, the 2025 festival will go on in Park City and Salt Lake City, Utah. On Wednesday, the festival announced its Features and Episodic lineup, with a rich selection of independent projects that feature a lot of big names.

Katarina Zhu‘s feature debut Bunnylovr has according to Deadline wrapped up production (they were shotting in NYC) – we learn that the drama heading to next month’s American Film Festival’s 2024 edition of the US in Progress stars Austin Amelio, Perry Yung, Rachel Sennott, Jack Kilmer and Zhu herself. Bunnylovr was produced by Zhu alongside Fair Oaks Entertainment producers Rachel Sennott and Roger Mancusi with Ani Schroeter. Rhianon Jones and Tristan Scott-Behrends also produced for Neon Heart Productions, which financed the film alongside Radish, Phiphen Pictures, and Rna Pictures.

This tells the story of Rebecca (Zhu), a Chinese-American cam girl who struggles to navigate an increasingly toxic relationship with one of her clients while rekindling her relationship with her estranged, dying father.…...

Exclusive: Newcomer Katarina Zhu has wrapped filming in New York on Bunnylovr, an indie drama that she wrote, directed, and stars in.

Supporting cast includes Austin Amelio, Perry Yung (John Wick: Chapter 2), Rachel Sennott (Bodies Bodies Bodies), Jack Kilmer (Lords Of Chaos) and Clara Wong (Billions).

The film was recently selected to take part in Poland’s upcoming American Film Festival industry sidebar, U.S. in Progress. It’ll be hoping to follow in the footsteps of titles such as India Donaldson’s Good One, which won the top prize at the event last year before making its way to premieres at Sundance and Cannes Directors’ Fortnight.

Bunnylovr tells the story of Rebecca (Zhu), a Chinese-American cam girl who struggles to navigate an increasingly toxic relationship with one of her clients while rekindling her relationship with her estranged, dying father.

The film was developed...

Kit Zauhar’s sophomore feature “This Closeness” follows the promise of her 2021 debut “Actual People,” which demonstrated she could tell an immersive story with few resources. Her microbudget feature “This Closeness,” a Narrative Spotlight premiere of SXSW 2023, is now about to open from Factory 25 on June 7, followed by a Mubi streaming premiere on July 3. Watch the trailer, an IndieWire exclusive, below.

Per IndieWire’s 2023 SXSW preview, “This Closeness” “wields its lo-fi constraints with tremendous sophistication and insight. The entire story takes place within the constraints of a Philadelphia apartment, booked by a young couple (Zauhar and Zane Pais) for a high school reunion weekend; once there, they find themselves dealing with the awkward loner (Ian Edlund) who lives there. As tensions mount, the movie dances an elegant line between cringe-comedy and erotic thriller, with Zauhar’s character, an Asmr YouTuber, developing an enigmatic bond with their temporary roommate while...

Exclusive: Brooklyn-based indie film distribution and production company Factory 25 has acquired North American theatrical rights on writer-director Kit Zauhar’s sophomore feature This Closeness, which debuted at SXSW 2023.

The film will begin its theatrical run at the IFC Center in New York City on June 7, with further engagements and a worldwide digital release on Mubi on July 3.

The film stars Zane Pais (Margot At The Wedding) and Ian Edlund with Zauhar also starring as she did on her first feature Actual People, which debuted at Locarno in 2021. Factory 25 also released that film. Actress and singer Jessie Pinnick (Princess Cyd) and multimedia artist Kate Williams round out the cast.

Following SXSW, This Closeness screened at the Philadelphia Film Festival, the Champs-Élysées Film Festival, and the Seattle International Film Festival, where it received a special jury mention for best ensemble cast in the New American Cinema Competition.

This Closeness is produced...

Exclusive: Megan Stalter, one of the breakout stars of HBO Max’s Emmy-winning series Hacks, has found her first leading film role in the dark comedy Cora Bora, from director Hannah Pearl Utt (Disengaged). She’ll star alongside Jojo T. Gibbs (Fresh) and Manny Jacinto (Top Gun: Maverick).

The indie centers on Cora (Stalter), who senses her open relationship is on the rocks. When the struggling musician and messy millennial goes home to Portland to win her girlfriend back, she realizes it’s much more than her love life that needs salvaging.

Ayden Mayeri (I Love That for You), Thomas Mann (Me and Earl and the Dying Girl), Chrissie Fit (Pitch Perfect franchise), Andre Hyland (Big Time Adolescence) and Heather Morris (Glee) will also star in the pic, which is a co-production between the Los Angeles Media Fund and Neon Heart Productions, in collaboration with Almanor Films.

The film written...