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The Gotham Film & Media Institute on Monday has selected the films and series for its Project Market, a slate which IndieWire can exclusively reveal. Taking place during September’s Gotham Week at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, the annual sales and development forum connects creators to distributors, financiers, and other industry decision-makers. It offers a look ahead at what could become the next buzzy films; “Moonlight” and “American Factory” are recent Oscar winners that were launched at past Project Market events.

This year’s lineup includes 65 fiction features and series, 60 nonfiction features and series, and 17 audio projects in various stages of development or production, including new projects from the producers of “Dopesick,” “Pose,” and “Sorry to Bother You.” For the first time since the pandemic, the annual event will include both in-person and virtual participation. In-person meetings run September 17-23, while virtual meetings will be held September 22-23.

“Being able...

After a 2018 mass shooting at a South Florida high school left 17 people dead and 17 more injured, Parkland students Emma Gonzalez, David Hogg and Jackie Corin found themselves at the forefront of a national conversation about gun control reform before they were even old enough to vote.

Two years after the tragedy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the survivors are again grappling with the legacy of that terrible day, this time in “Us Kids,” a documentary by Kim A. Snyder (“Newtown”) that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Through the eyes of the young activists, “Us Kids” chronicles the global impact of their efforts over the 18 months that followed, including the March for Our Lives movement and the Road to Change tour to mobilize the youth vote during midterm elections.

“We’re looking forward to using this film as a tool to facilitate more conversations about gun violence prevention around...

The nonstop drama of the Trump White House has succeeded, among other things, in largely pushing gun control from the forefront of the news cycle — no doubt to the relief of the NRA and its allies, despite the continued frequency of U.S. mass shootings. As a result, and perhaps unfairly, Kim A. Snyder’s “Us Kids” feels a bit like old news, as it focuses on a school massacre and the subsequent activist tide that occurred less than two years ago, yet somehow already feel distant. Nonetheless, who themselves just survived a school shooting.

Where Snyder’s 2016 “Newtown” held to the perspective of parents grieving after a gunman killed 26 people (including 20 first-graders) at Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary in late 2012, “Kids” charts the very different reaction of students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Fla., a little over five years later. When another gunman (this time an alumnus...

Documentarian Kim A. Snyder had been down this road before, talking to grieving parents and families about children felled by gun violence, three years ago with 2016’s shocking “Newtown.” “I thought, ‘That was it, I was done,'” she told me on the phone. “Since that time, there have been many hundreds of thousands of mass shootings; people are numb. That’s a movie I couldn’t or wouldn’t make today, it was a different moment and motivation.”

But in February 2018, Snyder found herself in Tallahassee, Florida, watching a fiery protest on the steps of the Capitol in the wake of the deadliest high-school shooting spree in U.S. history: At Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, a 19-year-old gunman with an Ar-15 automatic rifle killed 17 people and injured 17 more. “The kids arrived demanding change in the state of Florida,” she said. “They were enraged, pissed, and traumatized.

At this year’s Sundance Film Festival four documentaries spotlight adolescents who inspire change while also holding a mirror up to a society that provoked their pain and path to resistance.

In Kim Snyder’s “Us Kids” the director focuses her lens on a handful of teenagers who survived the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School mass shooting in Parkland, Fla. which claimed 17 lives. The docu examines the lasting trauma of gun violence while also chronicling determined young survivors who speak out against the national gun-violence epidemic and develop the March For Our Lives movement.

Snyder, who directed the 2016 doc “Newtown” about Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, as well as the 2018 nonfiction short “Notes from Dunblane: Lesson from a School Shooting,” had no intention of making another film about gun violence.

“I was very weirdly and karmically in Florida the week of the (Parkland) shooting,” recalls Snyder. “Within days...

Family members of victims of the 2012 mass shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, have sent a letter to Warner Bros. ahead of the release of next month’s R-rated “Joker” movie asking for a donation to gun-victim charities and advocacy for gun reform.

The letter was signed by five family members and sent Tuesday to Warner Bros. CEO Ann Sarnoff, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

“When we learned that Warner Bros. was releasing a movie called ‘Joker’ that presents the character as a protagonist with a sympathetic origin story, it gave us pause,” the letter says, noting the “absolute hell” that they had endured since a gunman shot and killed 12 people during a screening of Warner Bros.’ “Dark Knight Rises.”

Also Read: 'Newtown' Filmmakers Boycott Cinemark in Support of Aurora Shooting Victims

“We are calling on you to be a part of the growing chorus of...

The Peabody Awards board of jurors announced Monday the nine documentary winners selected for the annual Peabody 30.

The documentaries being honored include stories that tackle current global issues such as the effects of climate change on the world’s coral reefs in “Chasing Coral” and how young Dreamers navigate immigration policy in “Indivisible.” Other topics addressed in the documentaries are gun violence, the crisis in Syria, and the life of Maya Angelou.

Past Peabody Award winners, including Carol Burnett who is the first recipient of the Peabody Career Achievement Award, will be honored at the 77th Annual Peabody Awards Ceremony on May 19 at Cipriani Wall Street in New York. The event will be hosted by comedian Hasan Minhaj, writer and senior correspondent on “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.” Variety is the exclusive media partner for the event.

The Peabody Awards recognize 30 stories each year in television, radio, and digital...

The Peabody Awards Board of Jurors have selected 60 nominees for the organization’s 77th annual awards, including “Legion,” “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” “Last Men in Aleppo,” and “S-Town.” They were selected from a field of more than 1,200 entries television, radio/podcasts, and the internet.

“True to tradition, we are proud to present a rich mix of excellence in the craft of storytelling,” said Jeffrey P. Jones, executive director of Peabody. “These stories reflect important social issues and exemplify the power of diverse voices and platforms in media today.” This year’s ceremony will be hosted by Hasan Minhaj of “The Daily Show” on May 19 in New York City. Full list of nominees below.

Children’s & Youth Programming

“Andi Mack” Horizon Productions (Disney Channel)

“A Series of Unfortunate Events” Netflix (Netflix)

Documentary

“Abacus: Small Enough to Jail”

“America ReFramed: Deej”

“Chasing Coral”

“City of Ghosts”

“Heroin(e)”

“I Have A Message...

It’s a “lousy club,” Joe Biden said Tuesday in New York as he joined some of the 26 shattered Sandy Hook Elementary families to mark the five years that have passed since the mass shooting at that Newtown, Connecticut, school claimed 20 first-graders and six educators.

Biden, who was President Barack Obama’s vice president on Dec. 14, 2012, recalled how the two of them agree it was “the saddest day either of us had witnessed in the White House… and we relive it, too.”

Biden was honored Tuesday by Sandy Hook Promise, a nonprofit group co-founded by Mark Barden, whose son Daniel was killed in the tragedy.

They should be tweens now, discovering algebra, middle school dances and the truth about Santa Claus.

But the 20 first graders of Sandy Hook Elementary School who — along with six of their school’s faculty — were lost in a mass shooting on Dec. 14, 2012, will be forever 6- and 7-year-olds, wiggling their first loose baby tooth and tracing smiley faces on frosty car windows.

“Not a day goes by, not even a minute, when I don’t think about Jesse and miss him,” says Scarlett Lewis of the 6-year-old son she lost that day. “The silence when we came back to the...

Sheryl Crow thought something was going to change after 26 children and staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School lost their lives nearly five years ago in Newtown, Connecticut.

Two months ago, on Oct. 1, Crow watched the news along with the rest of the country as the details surrounding the deaths of 58 people at the Route 91 Harvest Music festival in Las Vegas began to unfold.

“I have the same experience everyone does — complete and total devastation and disillusionment,” Crow tells People in an exclusive interview about the release of her new song, “The Dreaming Kind.”

Crow, a nine-time Grammy winner, is...

A new public service announcement about preventing school shootings highlights the importance of recognizing and speaking out about warning signs.

The PSA is the work of Sandy Hook Promise — an organization devoted to protecting children from gun violence that was launched after the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

The ad is a fictional newscast from the scene of “tomorrow’s school shooting,” featuring an anchor interviewing students and adults before a 15-year-old killed four children and two adults before committing suicide in the hypothetical scenario.

“He told some of us that his dad kept a gun in his closet,...

The mother of a victim from the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School has asked NBC to pull Megyn Kelly‘s controversial interview with Alex Jones because he denies that the massacre – which claimed the lives of 26 people – ever happened.

After the Sandy Hook Promise Champion Gala asked the Kelly to step down from hosting their annual event, Nicole Hockley – the co-founder and managing director of Sandy Hook Promise and the mother of 6-year-old victim Dylan – sent a letter to NBC News chairman Andrew Lack.

“That Jones could posit that what happened in Newtown was a hoax is beyond reprehensible; it is indefensible.

Megyn Kelly has responded to the backlash of her controversial interview with Alex Jones — and the news that she will no longer be hosting the Sandy Hook Promise Champions Gala on Wednesday.

“I understand and respect the decision of the event organizers but I’m of course disappointed that I won’t be there to support them on Wednesday night,” Kelly says in a statement obtained by People. “I find Alex Jones’s suggestion that Sandy Hook was ‘a hoax’ as personally revolting as every other rational person does. It left me, and many other Americans, asking the very question...

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.

The Handmaiden (Park Chan-wook)

The Handmaiden is pure cinema — a tender, moving, utterly believable love story. It’s also a tense, unsettling, erotic masterpiece. There’s a palpable exhilaration that comes from watching this latest film from Park Chan-wook. From its four central performances and twisty script to the cinematography of Chung Chung-hoon and feverish, haunting score by Cho Young-wuk, The Handmaiden is crafted to take your breath away.

Ronny Ahmed will never forget the moment in 2014 when a gunman emerged suddenly and shot him while he was studying for finals at Florida State University.

“First bullet went through, hit my spine at my T-10, bounced off my spine, hit my liver — and then that one instantly paralyzed me,” he says in the third installment of We Are All Newtown, a three-part web series that People is exclusively debuting this week.

In the same webisode, an NRA gun safety instructor says he thinks a trained shooter like himself might have helped prevent the tragedy on Nov. 20, 2014, when a gunman...

The bullet that is still lodged in Javier Nava’s body is a constant reminder of the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting, in Orlando, Florida, that stole the lives of four of his friends and killed 45 others.

The long scar on Nava’s abdomen is another remnant of that day.

“For me, it’s just hard to see my body with a big scar,” he says in the second installment of We Are All Newtown, a three-part web series that People is exclusively debuting this week.

“At the same time,” Nava says in the episode, “I’m pretty sure that any one...

Six weeks after the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012 killed 26 people, including 20 first-graders, in Newtown, Connecticut, filmmaker Kim A. Snyder traveled to the shattered town.

She spent the next three and a half years in a community still reeling from the carnage.

The result? The documentary Newtown, premiering on PBS on April 3, which weaves together intimate and emotionally raw interviews of parents, teachers, first responders and others with never-before-seen footage.

“After the cameras leave, the community is left to carry on with the trauma and the heartache of the worst devastation imaginable,” producer Maria Cuomo Cole tells People.

She says their...

Newtown screens Friday February 24th through Sunday February 26th at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium (470 East Lockwood). The movie starts at 7:30 all three evenings.

Twenty months after the horrific mass shooting in Newtown, Ct that took the lives of twenty elementary school children and six educators on December 14, 2012, the small New England town is a complex psychological

web of tragic aftermath in the wake of yet another act of mass killing at the hands of a disturbed young gunman. Kim A. Snyder’s searing Newtown documents a traumatized community fractured by grief and driven toward a

sense of purpose.

The critics love Newtown:

The Atlantic said:

“It feels like the closest thing to a tribute audiences can pay to the children and adults who died, and the town that continues to grieve them.”

The L.A. Times says:

“Snyder has chosen to make a documentary about collective grief.

The 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre still lingers in the hearts and minds of the nation five years later. In the aftermath of the tragedy, a group of artists from New York traveled to Newtown, Connecticut to work with kids from the local school system to mount an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Director Lloyd Kramer decided to film the production for a documentary entitled “Midsummer in Newtown.” Watch an exclusive clip from the film below.

Read More: Students on Stage Bring Joy in the Wake of Loss in Exclusive Trailer For ‘Midsummer in Newtown’ — Watch

The film follows the young kids as they explore Shakespeare’s language for the first time and work together to connect with art and potentially emerge from the trauma. Meanwhile, Kramer also follows the lives of Jimmy Greene, an acclaimed jazz saxophonist, and Nelba Márquez-Greene, a therapist who decidates herself to crisis intervention,...

Released last fall and now available on VOD, one of the most gut-wrenching, vital documentaries of the last year is Newtown. The film finds director Kim A. Snyder taking a humanistic approach in exploring this recovery in the aftermath of the deadliest mass shooting of schoolchildren in United States history, which left 26 people, including 20 children, dead. With the film now more widely available, we’re pleased to debut an exclusive clip from the documentary, which features Dr. William Begg speaking at a Senate Judiciary Committee on assault weapons and discussing his experience being in the emergency room the day of the shooting.

We said in our review from Sundance, “Newtown is not much interested in going down the rabbit hole of proposed motivations of the never-audibly-named killer, or even the horrific specifics of the timeline of what occurred on that dreadful day in December 2012. Rather, the documentary’s foundation is...

Editor’s Note: Click here for more information about the indie films available from Movies on Demand.

On December 14, 2012, tragedy stuck Newtown, Connecticut, after 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot and killed 20 children and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The massacre made national headlines and forever changed the lives of the families living in the quiet Connecticut suburb. Kim A. Snyder’s acclaimed documentary “Newtown” gathers parents of the victims and teachers to provide tense and heartbreaking memories from the fateful day and all that followed. It’s a harrowing watch, but one Snyder crafts in a necessary and urgent way.

Read More: Oscars: ‘Newtown’ Returns Gun Debate to Documentary Race, 14 Years After ‘Bowling for Columbine’

The director spends a majority of the film following the families of three young victims—Daniel Barden, Ben Wheeler, and Dylan Hockley—through the unimaginable aftermath of that horrific day. It’s from...

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.

Boogie Nights (Paul Thomas Anderson)

As we await Paul Thomas Anderson‘s next film later this year, one now has the chance to see his sprawling second feature about the world of pornography in a 70s and 80s Los Angeles on Netflix. Boogie Nights, which features much of the ensemble — including Mark Wahlberg, Julianne Moore, Burt Reynolds, Don Cheadle, John C. Reilly, William H. Macy, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Heather Graham — at their best,...

The iconic filmmaker will receive the Writers Guild Of America, West’s 2017 Laurel Award for screenwriting achievement in recognition of his body of work.

Stone, whose latest film Snowden has earned plaudits, will be honoured at the Guild’s awards show in Beverly Hills on February 19.

“Oliver Stone may be our most committed screenwriter, using an unparalleled sense of conflict and drama to define the past half century,” said Wgaw president Howard A. Rodman. “Stone’s Vietnam trilogy – Platoon, Born On The Fourth Of July, Heaven & Earth– not only illuminated the war, but made us face its consequences.

“His unofficial and extraordinary history of the 1960s and 1970s – from JFK and The Doors through Nixon and Wall Street – wove a coherent narrative from incoherent facts. His dialogue is always memorable: think of Gordon Gekko’s ‘greed is good,’ or Tony Manero’s 182 ‘fucks’ in Scarface.

“But even Stone’s most amoral characters are, in the end...

Documentary directors tried to pull film over cinema chain’s treatment of victims of Aurora shooting, but were bound by their contract

Newtown, a documentary about the Sandy Hook school shooting in Connecticut, hsa been shown at Cinemark movie theatres despite its makers attempting to withdraw it.

Kim Snyder and Maria Cuomo Cole had attempted to block the chain from showing the film in solidarity with the victims of the Aurora cinema shooting in 2012, where James Holmes killed 12 people during a screening of The Dark Knight Rises.

Continue reading...

Exclusive: Newtown, the documentary that chronicles the Connecticut community in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre, will continue to play at 100-plus Cinemark Theaters tonight despite the filmmakers’ initiative last week to pull the movie from the exhibition chain. Newtown filmmakers Kim Snyder and Maria Cuomo Cole’s actions came about in an effort to show solidarity with the families who were victimized by the 2012 Cinemark Century 16 Dark Knight Rises shooting in…...

Filmed over three years, Newtown is a new documentary exploring the aftermath of the deadliest mass shooting of schoolchildren in American history, focusing on the journey of the fractured families and community affected by the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary. Filmmakers Kim A. Snyder and Maria Cuomo Cole recently sat down with uInterview to talk […]

The post Kim A. Snyder And Maria Cuomo Cole On Doc ‘Newtown’ appeared first on uInterview.

Directors of Newtown withdraw film from chain after it emerged it was seeking legal fees from victims’ families for failed lawsuit

The makers of the Sandy Hook shooting documentary Newtown have joined a boycott of the cinema chain Cinemark over the latter’s treatment of the victims of the 2012 Aurora shootings.

According to Deadline, Newtown was due to screen in over 100 Cinemark theatres – including sites in Los Angeles, Detroit and Ann Arbor – as part of a one-night multi-cinema event on 2 November. (About 400 other cinemas were also booked.) However, Newtown’s directors, Kim Snyder and Maria Cuomo Cole, have withdrawn the film from Cinemark, saying in a statement: “Out of respect for the families of the Aurora victims and with solidarity for the community as a whole, our decision to remove the film from playing in all Cinemark theaters is unequivocal.”

Continue reading...

Filmmakers Kim Snyder and Maria Cuomo Cole, who made the documentary “Newtown,” have decided to pull their film from more than 100 Cinemark theaters, TheWrap has learned. Their film covers the tragic 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that left 20 children and 6 adults dead in Newtown, Connecticut. As a sign of solidarity with shooting victims of the Aurora, Colorado, movie theater massacre that happened that same year, Snyder and Cole have pulled their film from the chain that owns the theater where the shooting happened during a midnight screening of “The Dark Knight.” “Cinemark has proven their insensitivity to victims...

Exclusive: Newtown filmmakers Kim Snyder and Maria Cuomo Cole, whose documentary chronicles the pain and suffering of the parents of murdered children Daniel Barden, Benjamin Wheeler and Dylan Hockley in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary school massacre, have pulled their feature documentary from Cinemark Theaters to stand in unison with the Aurora theater shooting families. The film was to be released in about 500 theaters across the country. The well-reviewed…...

As we as a country make our way through the ugliest election season in recent memory, one issue is still on the tip of everyone’s tongue; gun control. Mass shootings are ravaging towns both big and small at an alarming rate, and they all shatter families, communities and the nation as a whole.

And then there’s what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut where 20 children and six teachers were murdered in cold blood. Thrusting this small town into the center of this nation’s most controversial debate, these horrendous events left the community searching for answers and retribution of a political sort.

This community’s journey has also become the topic of a new documentary from director Kim A. Snyder, entitled Newtown. Shot over the span of roughly three years, Snyder gives us unfathomable insight into those lives impacted directly and indirectly by this horrific tragedy,...

The weekend turned out almost exactly as expected with Universal and DreamWorks's The Girl on the Train finishing at #1 and the weekend top twelve coming in ~8.7% behind the same weekend last year, grossing a combined $96.4 million. The weekend's two other new wide releases*The Birth of a Nation and Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life*are in a fight for sixth place as holdovers mostly ruled the top five. This weekend also saw Disney's Finding Dory become the 27th film to ever cross $1 billion worldwide, making it the third Disney release of 2016 to cross that mark. Finishing at #1, the adaptation of Paula Hawkins' bestselling novel, The Girl on the Train, came up just a bit shy of expectations with an estimated $24.7 million from 3,144 theaters. It's no stretch to assume the film experienced diminishing buzz as the weekend wore on, due mostly to the largely negative reviews (44% on RottenTomatoes) and lackluster,...

“Newtown” explores the aftermath of the tragic 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and touches on the salient issue of gun access in the U.S. The documentary had a special opening-night screening on Friday at the Landmark Sunshine Cinema in New York, where Governor Andrew M. Cuomo attended and delivered remarks about the film and gun-control issues.

The documentary is directed by Kim A. Snyder and produced by the governor’s sister, Maria Cuomo Cole. Taking the stage, Governor Cuomo congratulated his sister and the “Newtown” team for their hard work, then delved into the changes that need to be made in this country regarding gun violence.

“Just a couple of words, because this film is so powerful and the film is going to say better than any message I could convey to you,” he said. “The gun issue is still one that truly confounds me and the insanity of it,...

October is upon us. The leaves are changing. Sweaters are becoming more abundant. Awards contenders are popping up in theaters nationwide. But those are far from the only films opening throughout the coming weeks. Below, you’ll find every planned theatrical release for the month of October, separated out into films with wide runs and limited ones. (Synopses are provided by festivals and distributors.)

Each week, we’ll give you an update with more specific information on where these films are playing. In the meantime, be sure to check our calendar page, where we’ll update releases for the rest of the year. Stay warm and happy watching!

Week of October 7 Wide

The Birth of a Nation

Director: Nate Parker

Cast: Aja Naomi King, Armie Hammer, Gabrielle Union, Jackie Earle Haley, Mark Boone Junior, Nate Parker

Synopsis: Set against the antebellum South and based on a true story, “The Birth...

No parent should have to bury a child. That’s the quote that will repeatedly run through your mind as you watch “Newtown,” Kim A. Snyder’s documentary about the Dec. 14, 2012, mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. Twenty children and six adults died in the massacre, which was carried out by 20-year-old gunman Adam Lanza, who then killed himself. Prior to arriving at the school that December morning, Lanza shot and killed his mother, whom some blame for having taken her once-bullied, socially awkward son to shooting ranges and for keeping various weapons in their house.

In his Oscar-winning documentary “Bowling for Columbine” (2002), Michael Moore confronts Charlton Heston and Kmart executives, Michigan militiamen and the producer of “Cops,” but his quixotic search is for the structure itself, the undercarriage of American violence. Though his starting point is the 1999 massacre at Colorado’s Columbine High School, in which two students murdered one teacher, 12 classmates, and injured 21 others, Moore spins a dense web of historical connections and geopolitical comparisons: A montage of American imperialism from the overthrow of Mohammed Mossedegh to the rise of Osama bin Laden, set to “What a Wonderful World”; interviews with ordinary Canadians baffled by the American obsession with crime. “Bowling for Columbine” is, in short, the filmmaker’s most chilling and prescient polemic, framing the United States’ gun epidemic as the logical consequence of our “culture of fear,” and its concomitant economy of terror.

Nearly 14 years on from Moore’s Oscar acceptance speech,...

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.

This Past Weekend:

Another bad weekend where nothing really popped, which is bad news for a month at the box office where only Clint Eastwood’s Sully exceeded any expectations. Tim Burton’s new film Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children came out just below my predictions with $29 million, but the Mark Wahlberg-Peter Berg disaster flick Deepwater Horizon was right around where I predicted with $20.2 million. The comedy Masterminds tanked with just $6.5 million for the weekend to end up in sixth place while Disney’s The Queen of Katwe did slightly better than predicted with $2.5 million.

The first full weekend in October has a good deal of competition from the release of the video game Mafia III to the...

Kim A. Snyder’s documentary “Newtown” examines the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, the deadliest mass shooting of school children, with citizens of the Newtown community. The film premiered at Sundance Film Festival to critical acclaim and later screened at SXSW and the Cleveland International Film Festival. It also screened the White House the week of the 2016 Orlando shootings. Now, New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo will attend the opening night screening of “Newtown”on Friday, October 7th and will provide post-screening remarks with Snyder, producer Maria Cuomo Cole, and Newtown parents Mark and Jackie Barden, Nicole Hockley, and David and Francine Wheeler. It will be a public screening at 7:45pm at the Landmark Sunshine Cinema.

Read More: Sundance Review: Kim A. Snyder’s Emotionally Devastating Documentary ‘Newtown’

Snyder has previously directed the documentaries “I Remember Me,” a biographical film about chronic fatigue syndrome that explores...

With only a few months left to go in the year, if you’re around our home base, you can experience some of the best films of 2016 (and 2017) at New York Film Festival. However, if you happen not to be anywhere close, there’s still a handful of must-see films spooling out over the next four weeks, and we’ve collected our top 15 picks. Aside from some of our favorites this year, we should note that a restoration of the landmark drama The Battle of Algiers will begin a nationwide roll-out starting on October 7, so seek that out if it’s playing near you.

Check out our recommendations below and let us know what you are most looking forward to seeing.

15. Fire at Sea (Gianfranco Rosi; Oct. 21)

Synopsis: Capturing life on the Italian island of Lampedusa, a frontline in the European migrant crisis.

Trailer

Why You Should See It: After...

Newtown     Abramorama Reviewed by: Harvey Karten, Shockya Grade: B Director:  Kim A. Snyder Cast: Nicole Hockley, Mark Barden, David Wheeler, Francine Wheeler, Ian Hockley, Bill Cario, Sally Cox, Robert Weiss, Rick Thorne, Laurie Veillette, William Berg, Hugo Rojas Screened at: Review 2, NYC, 9/19/16 Opens: October 7, 2016 A sensationalized documentary could be made about the killer of six educators and twenty kids aged six and seven in Newtown, Connecticut on Dec. 14, 2012.  A filmmaker could assemble panels of psychologists and criminal investigators to analyze why a young man, Adam Lanza, who would have had all the money he would ever need, committed the most abhorrent mass murder  [ Read More ]

The post Newtown Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

"I still keep expecting Dylan to be there. Am I just dreaming all of this?" Abramorama has debuted a trailer for the documentary Newtown, about the town in Connecticut that was devastated by a horrific mass shooting in 2012. The film examines how the town is coping with the tragedy, how they're coming together to heal and move forward, and how hard it has been yet life must go on. It's an impressive doc because of how much open access filmmaker Kim A. Snyder got with the victims, with the families that were affected. She spends time with them learning about how their lives are now, and how much they're still struggling but doing their best to remain hopeful. You will see just how remarkably moving and powerful this doc is below. Here's the first official trailer (+ poster) for Kim A. Snyder's documentary Newtown, direct from YouTube: Filmed over the course of nearly three years,...

When the worst horror imaginable happens to your community, how do you emotionally rebuild? How do you embrace your neighbor, knowing the pain that’s seared into their soul? How does one come to a place of resolution, if ever? With Newtown, director Kim A. Snyder takes a humanistic approach in exploring this recovery in the aftermath of the deadliest mass shooting of schoolchildren in United States history, which left 26 people, including 20 children, dead.

I said in my review from Sundance, “Newtown is not much interested in going down the rabbit hole of proposed motivations of the never-audibly-named killer, or even the horrific specifics of the timeline of what occurred on that dreadful day in December 2012. Rather, the documentary’s foundation is formed by the acute emotional response to the event and its ripple effects that will be felt for a lifetime throughout (and beyond) this community of around 25,000 people.

“Oj: Made In America” and “Amanda Knox” are two of the titles leading this year’s International Documentary Association Screening Series, the organization announced Wednesday. The series will open with Otto Bell’s “The Eagle Huntress.” The lineup features a wide variety of documentaries, from Kim A. Snyder’s “Newtown,” which examines how the Connecticut community came together following the tragic Sandy Hook shooting, to Rita Coburn Whack and Bob Hercules’ “Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise,” which follows the legacy of one of the most prominent poets of our time. Also Read: Seen 'Oj: Made in America'?...

Now that the summer is cooling down, we’re entering perhaps the best time of year for cinephiles, with a variety of festivals — some of which will hold premieres of our most-anticipated 2016 features — gearing up. As we do each year, after highlighting the best films offered thus far, we’ve set out to provide a comprehensive preview of the fall titles that should be on your radar, and we’ll first take a look at selections whose quality we can attest to. Ranging from acclaimed debuts at Sundance, Cannes, and more, we’ve rounded up 25 titles that will arrive from September to December (in the U.S.) and are all well worth seeking out.

As a note, these didn’t make the cut, but you can see our reviews at the links: White Girl (9/2), Other People (9/9), London Road (9/9), Goat (9/23), Sand Storm (9/28), Do Not Resist (9/30), The Birth of a Nation (10/7), Desierto...

Keep up with the wild and wooly world of indie film acquisitions with our weekly Rundown of everything that’s been picked up around the globe. Check out last week’s Rundown here.

– Oscilloscope Laboratories has announced that it has acquired North American rights to Bill Ross and Turner Ross’s latest documentary featuring and produced by David Byrne, “Contemporary Color.” The film premiered at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival, where it won awards for Best Documentary Cinematography and Best Documentary Editing.

The film’s camera operators included many well-known documentary directors and cinematographers, including Jarred Alterman, Sean Price Williams, Robert Greene, Amanda Rose Wilder, Jessica Oreck, Wyatt Garfield and Michael Palmieri. Oscilloscope will release the film in theaters in 2017 followed by a release across all ancillary platforms.

– Abramorama has acquired U.S. theatrical rights to Kim A. Snyder’s powerful documentary “Newtown,” which was produced by Itvs, while The Orchard will handle TV,...

Parents of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting bared their grief during an emotional panel discussion at BAMcinemaFest last week, following a screening of the Sundance documentary “Newtown.” The film looks at the lives of those who lost loved ones in the shooting in Connecticut that killed 20 children and six educators, and confronts the inability of policymakers to address the U.S. gun violence epidemic.

Read More: Sundance Review: Kim A. Snyder’s Emotionally Devastating Documentary ‘Newtown’

During the panel discussion, Mark Barden, whose seven-year-old son Daniel was killed in the Newtown shooting, urged members of the audience to treat the documentary as an instrument in the effort to pass gun control legislation. “We need action, and this is a great tool toward that action,” Barden said, adding that he and the other members of the panel were very appreciative of the everyone who showed up to listen to the emotional conversation.

The U.S. theatrical rights to Kim A. Snyder’s documentary “Newtown” have been acquired by Abramorama, the company announced Monday. Produced by Ivts, The Orchard will handle TV (excluding PBS) and all home entertainment in North America. “Newtown” chronicles how the lives of those living in the small Connecticut town were altered forever after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School that took the lives of 20 elementary and six educators in 2012. Also Read: 'Newtown' Director Kim A. Snyder Explores Resilience in Wake of Mass Slaughter (Video) The documentary played in Greenwich, Connecticut after the mass shooting in Orlando,...

Abramorama just acquired the U.S. theatrical rights to Kim A. Snyder’s documentary Newtown which was produced by Maria Cuomo Cole and features testimonies about the aftermath of the Dec. 14, 2012 school shooting which took the lives of 20 children and six educators. The project was produced by Itvs. The Orchard will handle TV, excluding PBS, and all home entertainment in North America. The deal comes after they were invited to show the film before Congress on July…...

Simply put, the SXSW Film, Music and Interactive Festival is one of the biggest, most prestigious events in the media calendar. Taking place annually in Austin, Texas, it is beloved by film fans and filmmakers from all over the world, and has reached such heights by building a reputation for showcasing excellent content. This results in a high level of competition, with the Narrative Feature category alone having received 1442 submissions this year, and the documentary feature category having received 1,013.

The 2016 event looks to be particularly exciting, with many world premieres and feature debuts already announced. The Narrative Feature category will include Julia Hart’s Miss Stevens, Debra Eisenstadt’s Before The Sun Explodes, Joey Klein’s The Other Half, and Musa Syeed’s A Stray, among others, while the Headliner category will feature Richard Linklater’s Everybody Wants Some.

The Narrative Spotlight category includes 9 Rides by Matthew A. Cherry; The Waiting...

Kim A. Snyder’s Newtown examines the current spate of gun violence by presenting the families who have been most affected by it. Three years removed from the horrific school shooting at Newtown Elementary School that took twenty-six casualties in Connecticut, Snyder’s film gives a much-needed face to the community. As discussions revolving around the accessibility of firearms seem to get obscured and buried by politicians with a not-so-secret agenda, Newtown seeks to make the political personal. Filmmaker: Your previous film, Welcome to Shelbyville, was also about the residents of a small town reacting to a major event in their community. What brings you to a location? Are you first […]...