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With such a wide array of potential awards contenders in film and television, awards groups like the Cinema Eye Honors help to cull the field. This year, HBO Documentary Films leads the broadcast categories with 10 nominations, including three each for Liz Garbus’ serial killer series “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark” and David France’s Oscar contender “Welcome to Chechnya.” Cinema Eye also unveiled 10 short documentary semifinalists for the short filmmaking honors.

The Outstanding Broadcast Film nominees also include “Bully. Coward. Victim.: The Story of Roy Cohn,” directed by Ivy Meeropol, 2020 Oscar winner “Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You’re a Girl),” directed by Carol Dysinger, “Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese,” and “Sea of Shadows,” directed by Richard Ladkani.

Outstanding Series Nominees include “Atlanta’s Missing and Murdered: The Lost Children,” directed by Joshua Bennett, Maro Chermayeff, Jeff Dupre, and Sam Pollard, “Hillary,...

With such a wide array of potential awards contenders in film and television, awards groups like the Cinema Eye Honors help to cull the field. This year, HBO Documentary Films leads the broadcast categories with 10 nominations, including three each for Liz Garbus’ serial killer series “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark” and David France’s Oscar contender “Welcome to Chechnya.” Cinema Eye also unveiled 10 short documentary semifinalists for the short filmmaking honors.

The Outstanding Broadcast Film nominees also include “Bully. Coward. Victim.: The Story of Roy Cohn,” directed by Ivy Meeropol, 2020 Oscar winner “Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You’re a Girl),” directed by Carol Dysinger, “Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese,” and “Sea of Shadows,” directed by Richard Ladkani.

Outstanding Series Nominees include “Atlanta’s Missing and Murdered: The Lost Children,” directed by Joshua Bennett, Maro Chermayeff, Jeff Dupre, and Sam Pollard, “Hillary,...

David France’s “Welcome to Chechnya,” a documentary about LGBTQ activists trying to help during the Chechnya government’s brutal crackdown on gays and lesbians, leads all films in nominations in the Cinema Eye Honors’ broadcast categories, which were announced on Thursday during a virtual edition of its annual fall lunch.

Cinema Eye, a New York-based organization founded in 2007 to recognize all aspects of nonfiction filmmaking, also announced its new Stay Focused initiative. The program spotlights 12 films by up-and-coming filmmakers who lost the chance for theatrical exhibition and film-festival exposure because of the coronavirus pandemic. Cinema Eye has pledged to find “in-person opportunities” for the filmmakers once the pandemic subsides, starting with theatrical screenings at the new Vidiots Theatre in Los Angeles in late 2021.

The 12 films include Cecilia Aldorondo’s “Landfall,” which recently won a jury award at Doc NYC; David Osit’s “Mayor,” about the Christian mayor of a...

Each of the 12 finalists in TheWrap’s ShortList Film Festival 2020 faced creative, emotional and logistical challenges. Some found it difficult to separate themselves from their subject matter. Others, despite the best planning, ran into unforeseen production issues that required quick decisions.

In a Zoom conversation with TheWrap Awards Editor Steve Pond, the diverse group of filmmakers from the U.S. and abroad discussed the work that went into their shorts — which ranged from animation to scripted stories to documentaries.

Barbara Attie, who along Janet Goldwater and Mike Attie chronicled the workers at an abortion helpline in “Abortion Helpline, This Is Lisa” talked about how emotionally difficult shooting would be. “Every time we would leave a shoot we would all be like feeling devastated at what our subjects were going through,” the documentarian said. The subjects would often be young women who needed to get hundreds or thousands of dollars in...

The last time Charlie Tyrell was in TheWrap’s ShortList Film Festival, it was with the 2018 film “My Dead Dad’s Porno Tapes,” the arrestingly titled stop-motion documentary short that used the objects a person leaves behind — including, yes, some VHS porno tapes — to tell a story.

Tyrell’s imaginative and haunting new film, “Broken Orchestra,” a finalist in this year’s ShortList Film Festival, began with discarded objects, too. But in this case, it was musical instruments that fell into disrepair in the Philadelphia public school system as arts funding dried up. But a collaborative effort known as Symphony for a Broken Orchestra rallied the students to perform a concert with those battered instruments, playing a piece of music specially written for the event by Oscar-nominated and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang.

“I really like inanimate objects as a starting point,” Toronto-based filmmaker Tyrell said. “I subscribe to the...

TheWrap on Thursday announced the 12 finalists for the ninth annual ShortList Film Festival, including stories from around the world about abortion, gender-identity, gentrification, bullying, opioids and a garbage man who lives alone on an asteroid.

Online viewing and voting launches today on ShortListFilmFestival.com and runs through August 19. The jury will award the Industry Award while TheWrap’s online voters will determine the Audience Award and Student Award. The winners will be announced at a virtual awards ceremony on August 20.

This year’s selected films have won awards at festivals including SXSW, Sundance Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, Berlin International Film Festival, AFI Fest, Miami Film Festival and Brooklyn Film Festival. The films and filmmakers come from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Israel and Macedonia.

In addition to the lineup of festival winners, the ShortList Film Festival also features up-and-coming filmmakers from top film schools across the country. The...

“Pictures are for entertainment — messages should be delivered by Western Union.” The line has been variously attributed to half a dozen old-school Hollywood producers, from Samuel Goldwyn to Frank Capra, but no matter who said it, the sentiment captures how classic studio types endeavored to separate political statements from popular cinema. In recent years, however, pundits have been pressuring the Academy to do just the opposite — to become more activist through its awards — and rather than actually changing, the organization seems to have realized that the documentary shorts category is the easiest way to take a stand, typically awarding important messages over exceptional moviemaking. Sometimes the two coincide. , although it’s unlikely that anyone would mistake them for entertainment.

Certainly, the folks at Netflix don’t have any such illusions about John Haptas and Kristine Samuelson’s wrenching kids-in-peril short “Life Overtakes Me,” whereas the film’s “Oscar-worthiness” was almost...

Directors Lulu Wang (“The Farewell”) and Patricia Rozema (“I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing”) and producer Cassian Elwes will serve as mentors at the Toronto International Film Festival’s 2019 Tiff Filmmaker Lab, Tiff organizers announced on Wednesday.

The festival also unveiled its lineup of Canadian films, which will include new work directed by Atom Egoyan, Louise Archambault, Ellen Page and Amy Jo Johnson, and starring Felicity Huffman, Imogen Poots and David Cronenberg, among others. And it announced participants in industry programs and the Canadian honorees in its annual Tiff Rising Stars showcase.

The films were spread across eight different sections of the Toronto Film Festival, some of which have yet to announce their non-Canadian programming.

Also Read: Mister Rogers, the Joker and Judy Garland Are All Headed to Toronto Film Festival

The Canadian galas, all previously announced, are the opening-night documentary “Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the Band,” Semi...

RaMell Ross’ debut feature, Hale County This Morning, This Evening, an intimate and cinematic portrait of black lives in Alabama, took the top award tonight at the 12th annual Cinema Eye Honors, winning Outstanding Nonfiction Feature. It was the second Cinema Eye Feature Honor in a row for producer Joslyn Barnes, who also produced last year’s award winner, Strong Island.

The 12th Annual Cinema Eye Honors were presented at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, New York and were streamed live via the Museum of the Moving Image and Cinema Eye Honors Facebook pages. Filmmaker Steve James, a winner for Outstanding Series for America to Me, was the host.

The awards capped a week of events that brought together nonfiction filmmakers from around the globe. Cinema Eye was founded in 2007 as a protest of that year’s existing awards which it claimed failed to recognize many of...

RaMell Ross’s debut feature, “Hale County This Morning, This Evening” took the top prize at the Cinema Eye Honors Thursday night in New York, winning outstanding nonfiction feature.

Bing Liu’s much-lauded skateboarding doc “Minding the Gap,” which tied the Cinema Eye record for most noms with seven, took home three trophies, including outstanding achievement in direction, editing, and debut. “Free Solo” also won three awards, with “Shirkers” nabbing two honors.

“Hale County’s” win marks the second for producer Joslyn Barnes, who also won last year for “Strong Island.” “Free Solo’s” three wins landed Jimmy Chin the title of most awarded individual in Cinema Eye history, with five awards including his two for 2015’s “Meru.”

See the full list of winners below.

Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking

“Hale County This Morning, This Evening,” RaMell Ross

Outstanding Achievement in Direction

Bing Liu, “Minding the Gap”

Outstanding Achievement...

RaMell Ross’ “Hale County This Morning, This Evening” has been named the best nonfiction film of 2018 at the 12th annual Cinema Eye Honors, which were presented on Thursday evening in New York City.

The film, an examination of a small town in the deep South that also delves into how African Americans are depicted in the media, won in the Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking category over a slate of nominees that also included the Oscar-shortlisted documentaries “Minding the Gap,” “Of Fathers and Sons,” “Three Identical Strangers” and “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” as well as “Bisbee ’17,” which did not make the Oscar short list.

The Audience Award, the only Cinema Eye category voted on by the public, went to “Free Solo.”

The Spotlight Award, designed to single out a film that has not yet received the attention it deserves, went to Simon Lereng Wilmont’s “The Distant Barking of Dogs,...

Vimeo has announced its 2018 nominees for the Best of the Year Staff Picks Awards. Vimeo has recognized the best Staff Picks of the year by calling out the winners on its blog since 2016, but the company is elevating its end-of-the-year celebration this year by revealing nominations and bringing in a distinguished jury for each category to decide the winner. Each award recipient will receive a cash prize and a physical trophy, in addition to the Best of the Year badge, and the winning films will be screened at Nitehawk Cinema in Williamsburg, Brooklyn on January 17th.

There are three jurors for each Staff Pick category, including the 2017 winners for each respective category. Categories include: Best of Action Sports, Best of Animation, Best of Comedy, Best of Documentary, Best of Drama, Best of Eye Candy and Best of Travel. Jury members include Alan Cumming, Roger Ross Williams, Reinaldo Green, and Sarah Schneider,...

The only thing at the Oscars that is harder than predicting who will win in the short film categories is trying to predict which ones will get nominated. Even with shortlists of the potential nominees, it can be very difficult to try and single out the five films that will emerge as Oscar nominees. Well, now that the shortlists have been announced for these categories and you can make your predictions about them in our predictions center, we wanted to give you the full details about the 10 finalists for Best Documentary Short Subject. These cheat sheet summaries should help you predict which five contenders will be the nominees for the 2019 Oscars.

SEE2019 Oscar nominations: 10 Academy Awards with special rules – Original Song, Score, Documentary Feature, Foreign Language Film …

Black Sheep – Following the high-profile murder of Damilola Taylor, a 10-year-old Nigerian immigrant in London, Cornelius Walker’s family decides to move out of London.

The Cinema Eye Honors, which annually presents awards to “celebrate outstanding artistry and craft in nonfiction film,” has revealed its nominees in 10 categories, including Outstanding Nonfiction Feature and Outstanding Nonfiction Short. Multiple nominees include Robert Greene’s ​”Bisbee ‘17,” Sandi Tan’s “Shirkers,” and RaMell Ross’ ​”Hale County This Morning, This Evening,” with five nods each. While Greene is a Cinema Eye Honors vet, both Tan and Ross are first-time filmmakers.

Another first-time filmmaker on the rise: Bing Liu, whose autobiographical skateboarding doc “Minding the Gap,” leads the nominees with a total of seven nominations. That’s good enough to put the newbie filmmaker into rarefied territory, tying his film with lauded documentaries like Louie Psihoyos’ ​”The Cove​​,” Lixin Fan’s ​”Last Train Home​,”​ and Ari Folman’s “​Waltz With Bashir​​” for most Cinema Eye Honors nods ever. As Liu is a named nominee for six of those awards, he’s...

“Minding the Gap,” a documentary that mixes stories of skateboarding teens with a dark family story, led all films in nominations for the Cinema Eye Honors, one of the top awards devoted to all facets of nonfiction filmmaking.

Bing Liu’s highly personal film tied a Cinema Eye record by receiving seven nominations overall, one in a previously announced category and six in the 10 categories that Cinema Eye announced on Thursday. Those included nominations for directing, editing, cinematography and music, as well as one in the marquee category, Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking.

Other nominees in that category were Robert Greene’s “Bisbee ’17,” RaMell Ross’ “Hale County This Morning, This Evening,” Talal Derki’s “Of Fathers and Son,” Tim Wardle’s “Three Identical Strangers” and the 12th highest-grossing documentary of all time, Morgan Neville’s “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”

Also Read: 'Minding the Gap' Film Review: Powerful...

“Free Solo,” “Quincy,” “Minding the Gap,” “Rbg,” “Three identical Strangers” and “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” are among the films nominated for the Audience Choice Prize at the 2018 Cinema Eye Honors, an awards show devoted to all facts of nonfiction filmmaking.

“Bathtubs Over Broadway,” “Matangi/Maya/M.I.A.,” “On Her Shoulders” and “Shirkers” were also nominated in the Audience Choice category, which can be voted on by members of the public at the Cinema Eye website.

The bulk of the Cinema Eye Honors nominees will be announced on Thursday, Nov. 8, and the winners will be announced on Thursday, Jan. 10 at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York City.

Also Read: 'Free Solo,' 'Minding the Gap,' 'Won't You Be My Neighbor?' Land Ida Documentary Nominations

In the Broadcast Film category, the nominees were four docs from HBO – “Baltimore Rising,” “Believer,” “The Final Year” and...

Features selection includes Free Solo, Rbg, Quincy.

John Chester’s The Biggest Little Farm will open Doc NYC on November 8 following a strong reception at the recent world premiere in Telluride and the Canadian premiere in Tiff.

Neon acquired Us rights in Toronto to the film about Chester and his wife as they create a sustainable family farm in California, and will be release next spring.

The festival has also announced its 2018 Doc NYC Short List: Features and Short List: Short Films selections.

The Features selection is in its seventh year, and includes 15 entries, while the Short Films selection is...

Do you want to know what film is going to win the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature next February?

It’ll either be Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 11/9,” Betsy West and Julie Cohen’s “Rgb,” Tim Wardle’s “Three Identical Strangers,” Susan Lacy’s “Jane Fonda: A Life in Five Acts,” Morgan Neville’s “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” or one of these 10 other docs:

“Crime + Punishment,” Stephen Maing; “Free Solo,” Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin; “Hale County This Morning, This Evening,” RaMell Ross; “Minding the Gap,” Bing Liu; “On Her Shoulders,” Alexandra Bombach; “Pope Francis: A Man of His Word,” Wim Wenders; “Quincy,” Rashida Jones and Alan Hicks; “Reversing Roe,” Annie Sundberg & Ricki Stern; “The Sentence,” Rudy Valdez; “Shirkers,” Sandi Tan.

Those, at least, are the 15 films on the annual Short List compiled by the documentary festival Doc NYC. Since its inception in 2012, the list has...

Yes, Charlie Tyrell’s dad is dead. And yes, Charlie Tyrell’s dad had a stash of porno tapes.

But you should know that there’s a lot more to “My Dead Dad’s Porno Tapes” than that.

“It’s a bit of a gotcha,” Tyrell said of the name he gave his documentary short, one of the finalists in TheWrap’s ShortList Film Festival.

“Humor is very important to me, even humor toward death and the deeply personal sharing of this story. So the title’s a way to disarm a person,” he said. “If it had a weightier title, would people be inclined to watch?”

Also Read: Finalists Announced for 2018 ShortList Film Festival

“My Dead Dad’s Porno Tapes” is in certain ways a serious examination of family ties and dark histories, but humor is at the forefront, both in the playful stop-motion animation and in the film...

TheWrap is pleased to announce the 12 finalists in the seventh annual ShortList Film Festival, launching today online.

The finalists, hand-picked from the world’s top film festivals over the last year, will stream on the site starting today through August 22, 2018 — allowing visitors to vote on their favorites.

The Audience Prize and The Industry Prize winners will each receive a $5,000 cash prize during a ceremony to take place at the AMC Century City in Los Angeles on Thursday, August 23.

The films in the main competition are a mix of foreign language, drama, comedy and animation created by filmmakers from around the globe.

Also Read: Meet: The 2018 ShortList Film Festival Jurors!

In addition, eight student films from top colleges and universities included in TheWrap’s ranking of film schools have been named finalists in a sidebar competition.

The contenders come from filmmakers who studied at USC, UCLA, University of North Carolina School of the Arts,...

Festival concluded in Austin, Texas, at weekend.

March 19 Update: Wes Anderson’s Isle Of Dogs was named Headliners audience award winner on Monday, after Olivia Newman’s First Match earned the Narrative Feature Competition award on Saturday night (March 17).

Gabriel Silverman and Fiona Dawson prevailed in the Documentary Feature Competition on Saturday with TransMilitary, while John Hyams’ All Square took audience award honours in the Narrative Spotlight Section, and The Dawn Wall by Josh Lowell and Peter Mortimer triumphed in Documentary Spotlight.

Timur Bekmambetov’s Profile won in Visions, Leigh Whannell’s Upgrade was declared winner in Midnighters, and Alonso Ruizpalacios...

Audience Awards to be handed out on March 17.

March 17 Update: Olivia Newman’s First Match was named audience award winner of the 2018 SXSW Narrative Feature Competition on Saturday night (March 17).

Gabriel Silverman and Fiona Dawson prevailed in the Documentary Feature Competition with TransMilitary, while John Hyams’ All Square took audience award honours in the Narrative Spotlight Section, and The Dawn Wall by Josh Lowell and Peter Mortimer triumphed in Documentary Spotlight.

Timur Bekmambetov’s Profile won in Visions, Leigh Whannell’s Upgrade was declared winner in Midnighters, and Alonso Ruizpalacios and So Yong Kim won in Episodic for Vida.

Earlier...

Audience Awards to be handed out on March 17.

Jim Cummings’ Midwest-set drama Thunder Road was anointed winner of the 2018 SXSW Narrative Feature Competition on Tuesday night (March 13).

The corresponding Documentary Feature Competition winner was People’s Republic Of Desire by Hao Wu.

In the short film awards, Carey Williams’ Emergency won Narrative Shorts, while Charlie Tyrell’s My Dead Dad’s Porno Tapes prevailed in Documentary Shorts, Milk by Santiago Menghini won Midnight Shorts, and Alexa Lim Haas’ Agua Viva was named winner of Animated Shorts.

An Uncertain Future by Iliana Sosa and Chelsea Hernandez won the Texas Shorts category.

Juried prizes were presented tonight at the 25th annual Swsw Film Festival. Jim Gaffigan, in Austin to represent the Miranda Bailey-directed ensemble comedy “You Can Choose Your Family,” presided as host. The venue was the Paramount Theatre, a 103-year-old landmark just blocks from the Texas Capitol.

SXSW will continue screening films through Saturday, when most of the festival’s audience awards recipients will be announced. The exception is for the headlining films, such as “A Quiet Place,” “Blockers,” and “Ready Player One” — those verdicts follows on March 19.

This year’s line-up comprised 256 total features and shorts, culled from 8,183 submissions. Best narrative feature “Thunder Road” was adapted from the namesake, one-take short that won a Grand Jury award at Sundance in 2016.

Lena Dunham’s “Tiny Furniture” (2010) and Destin Daniel Cretton’s “Short Term 12” (2013) are among the best-known past jury victors at SXSW. IndieWire’s Dana Harris helped choose the Louis Black “Lone Star” honoree,...

It was just last week that we shared the trailer for Charlie Tyrell's short documentary I Thought I Told You To Shut Up!! and now the complete short film has been released online. Narrated by acclaimed director Jonathan Demme the film tells the story of underground comic book artist David Boswell and his most famous creation - Reid Fleming, the World's Toughest Milkman.In the late seventies David Boswell created Reid Fleming, the World's Toughest Milkman, a comic book anti-hero and counter culture icon. By the following decade, Warner Brothers was preparing a Hollywood feature film. Now, over 30 years later, the character is still mired in contractual limbo, or development hell. Narrated by Academy Award-Winner Jonathan Demme (Dir. The Silence of the Lambs, Stop Making...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

Though likely too cult to ever really be considered iconic, Reid Fleming is nonetheless an enormously important figure in the history of Canadian underground comics. The world's toughest milkman, Fleming is a seething ball of rage (and dairy products) poised to go off at the slightest provocation. And director Charlie Tyrell is telling the story of Fleming and his creator, David Boswell, in the Jonathan Demme narrated short documentary I Thought I Told You To Shut Up!!In the late seventies David Boswell created Reid Fleming, the World's Toughest Milkman, a comic book anti-hero and counter culture icon. By the following decade, Warner Brothers was preparing a Hollywood feature film. Now, over 30 years later, the character is still mired in contractual limbo, or development hell....

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

In our last article, we went over the history and exciting things the Brooklyn Film Festival offers its contestants. And now it’s time to meet the films and the winners.

16Mmonster: directed by Jacob Kindlon; a 12 minute short from the Us.

20 Years Of Madness: directed by Jeremy Royce; a 90 minute documentary from the Us.

Abby Singer/Songwriter: Directed by Onur Tukel , a 75 minute film from the Us.

Abigail Deville’S Harlem Stories: Directed by Nick Ravich, a 7 minute American documentary.

After A Dream: Directed by Tobias Schmuecking, a 17 minute short from Germany.

And It Was Good: Directed by Graham Waterston, a 19 minute short from the Us.

Winner of the Short Narrative Spirit Award

Big Bag: Directed by Ricardo Martin Coloma, a 13 minute animation from Spain.

Block And Piled: Directed by Marc Riba & Anna Solanas, a 5 minute animation from Spain.

Blue-eyed Me: Directed by Alexey Marfin, a 7 minute short from England.

Following the recent announcement of their full film lineup that includes Trainwreck, Get Hard, and Spy, South by Southwest has revealed their lineup of Midnight movies and short films to screen during the festival. Chief among them is the Sundance 2015 hit Turbo Kid (read our review here) and the Sundance ’15 winner of the Short Film Prize World of Tomorrow. SXSW runs from March 13-21. View the full Midnighters and Shorts lineup below via the SXSW website.

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Midnighters

The Corpse of Anna Fritz (Spain)

Director: Hèctor Hernández Vicens, Screenwriters: Hèctor Hernándes Vicens, Isaac P. Creus

Anna Fritz, a famous and beautiful actress, has died recently. Three young men sneak into the morgue to see her naked. Fascinated by her beauty, they decide to become the last people to have sex with her. Cast: Alba Ribas, Cristian Valencia, Bernat Saumell, Albert Carbó. (World Premiere)

Deathgasm (New Zealand)

Director/Screenwriter: Jason Lei Howden...