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Trying to figure out what the watch on Max and can’t seem to find something that catches your eye? Well, don’t worry, as Max will be adding over 100 new titles across the month of September including dozens of movies and new original programming to enjoy!

The biggest new original series coming in September on Max is without a doubt The Penguin, which will see Colin Farrell reprising his role as Oz Cobb aka The Penguin from Matt Reeves’ The Batman. The new 8-episode limited series kicks off on Thursday, Sept. 19 at 9/8c with the series premiere with new episodes then released weekly on Sunday nights beginning on Sept. 29 (a rerun of the season premiere will stream on Sept. 22).

The Penguin will pick up following the events of The Batman, as Oz makes a play to seize the reins of the crime world in Gotham which will be no...

It’s probably an overstatement to call writer-director Ryan Martin Brown’s feature debut, Free Time, a “generation-defining movie.” Shot in 10 days with a cast of relative unknowns, the micro-budget comedy has more or less passed under the radar, premiering at a bunch of midlevel festivals and receiving a limited release in select U.S. cities. (It’s currently playing the Quad in N.Y. and the Landmark Westwood in L.A.)

And yet there’s something very much of the now in this cleverly concocted and occasionally hilarious tale of Generation Z malaise, which follows a disgruntled 20-something office worker who quits his job to join the post-pandemic great resignation, only to realize he has no idea what to do with himself once he’s out of work. Clocking in at a breezy 78 minutes, it’s the kind of down-and-dirty NYC indie we see less and less of nowadays,...

South by Southwest is a festival like none other. Spread across the bustling streets of Downtown Austin, the convergence event truly has something for everyone.

South by Southwest, better known as SxSw, is a tech conference meets music festival meets film festival. With hundreds of films, bands, startups, and established brands all over the city, the energy is unrivaled.

This year is no different as thousands prepare to arrive at the Texas capitol this week.

I will be lucky enough to attend this year’s festival for a whole week and the film lineup is one of the strongest in years. SxSw is a great combination of established, anticipated films mixed with independent films with massive potential to be the next big thing.

In the past some of the competition films that have premiered at the festival have been Short Term 12, Peanut Butter Falcon, Tiny Furniture. Krisha, and more.

While cinematic half-hour series that may or may not be comedies abound on streaming services today, HBO paved the way for shows like Ramy, The Bear, and Master of None during the mid ’10s by bringing several independent film directors to the small screen. Lena Dunham’s Girls has cast the longest shadow, its six-season run giving it more opportunity to endure in the cultural consciousness through clips and memes. The Tiny Furniture helmer and star’s show was also first out of the gate, premiering in 2012 and becoming an immediate sensation for both the messy millennial antics onscreen and Dunham’s inflammatory persona offscreen.

Actual People.Because when I fall into the abyss, I go straight into it, head down and heels up, and I'm even pleased that I'm falling in just such a humiliating position, and for me I find it beautiful.—Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers KaramazovHumiliation is one of humanity’s cruelest jokes, one of its most repugnant punishments. The Latin root of the word, “humus,” translates to “earth,” or “dirt,” the idea that a person loses dignity and returns to something inhuman, crude and trampled on. The fear of being humiliated is a specter persuasive enough to shrink whole personalities, curtail ambitions, end life as someone knew it. Many mainstream filmmakers avoid its narrative possibilities because, maybe, to degrade a character would mean to degrade the film itself. I don’t think that’s the case. To see humiliation depicted onscreen can be like witnessing a corpse flower blooming: compelling, strange,...

Davy Chou’s lovely drama about a young woman searching for her past follows in the footsteps of The Deer Hunter, Get Carter, Tiny Furniture and more

Earlier this year I visited my home city of Johannesburg after seven years away, to find – as I do every time I return – everything at once the same and entirely different: old houses and haunts nestled just as I left them, but surrounded by unfamiliar spikes of development and decay. “You can’t go home again” goes the old phrase, but we can and we do, the warmth of nostalgia constantly battling the shock of the new.

That tension is why homecoming is a such a recurrent, irresistible theme in the movies, though Davy Chou’s lovely, glimmering Return to Seoul (Mubi) offers a less common angle on that bittersweet pang. Its Gen-z protagonist, Freddie (a wonderful Park Ji-min), is searching for any...

The South by Southwest film festival, launched in Austin, Texas in 1994, is one of the buzziest film festivals on the calendar for independent filmmakers from around the world to showcase their movies.

SXSW was born as a music festival in March 1987 and has grown from 700 registrants to more than 161,000 attendees in 2018 making it one of the most successful festivals in the United States.

The fest handed out its first award for the Narrative Feature Competition in 1999 to director David Riker’s film La Cuidad (The City) featuring Anthony Rivera, Joseph Rigano and Miguel Maldonado. Since then it has showcased quirky films that have gone on to win the coveted award. Winners include The Fallout (2021); Shithouse (2020); Thunder Road (2018); Krisha (2015) and Tiny Furniture (2010).

Scroll through the photo gallery for all the SXSW Narrative Feature Competition Grand Jury Award winners.

Andrew Scott and Bella Ramsey star in Lena Dunham’s Catherine Called Birdy Photo: Prime Video For those of you who have given up on Lena Dunham, no one can say you don’t have your reasons. Whether it’s because her groundbreaking HBO series, Girls, ended in 2017, or she...

Toronto film festival: The Girls creator handles an adaptation of Karen Cushman’s much-loved novel with wit and creativity

Catherine Called Birdy, Lena Dunham’s thoroughly enjoyable adaptation of the millennial YA classic by Karen Cushman, opens in the mud. Fourteen-year-old Catherine, played with gusto by Game of Thrones’s Bella Ramsey, rolls in the dirt with her village friends, relishing the filth that coats her clothes, her cherubic face, her curtain of dark hair. The year is 1290, in the English shire of Lincoln, and Catherine is about the enter the muck that is adolescence – an indignity and a romp that Dunham, who captured both in the unfairly dismissed HBO series Girls, turns into a delicious treat.

It’s a welcome return for Dunham, whose previous feature as a writer-director this year, Sharp Stick, her first since 2011’s Tiny Furniture, was a strange disappointment. Whereas Sharp Stick’s coming-of-age plot,...

In all the hubbub around Warner Bros. Discovery’s streaming updates this week, nobody bothered to note that we’ve been here before. This isn’t first time a version of the company — or at least a version of it — killed off a finished project for the sake of a write-off with no regard for its creators.

Of course, it’s hard to look at the past when much there is to ponder in the present: “Batgirl” won’t come out but the scandal-ridden “Flash” somehow will; older HBO Max titles have been quietly booted from the service; executives on the earnings call proclaimed confidence in plans to jam together two vastly different streaming services into an amorphous new entity that still has no name.

But let’s step back for a moment and recall some recent history: Remember HBO Go?

Launched in the primordial streaming-war era of 2010, HBO Go...

Lena Dunham is back. Sharp Stick — the writer/director/actor’s follow to HBO series Girls and her first film since Tiny Furniture (2010) – opens in LA at Landmark’s renovated single-screen NuArt Theatre and at the Quad Cinema in NYC. It expands to 40 to 50 screens next weekend, heading to about 100 thereafter – a mix of AMC, Alamo, Laemmle and Harkins circuits and top U.S. arthouses.

Presales have been strong, said Utopia’s marketing and distribution VP Kyle Greenberg. A handful of showings with Dunham Q&As are sold out, natch. The film, which Utopia acquired out of Sundance, releases on PVOD August 16. Deadline review here.

Dunham writes directs, produces and stars with Kristine Froseth, Jon Bernthal, Luka Sabbat, Scott Speedman, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Taylour Paige and Jennifer Jason Leigh.

Sarah Jo (Froseth) is a sensitive and naive 26-year-old living on the fringes of Hollywood with her disillusioned mother (Leigh) and influencer...

It’s been 13 years since Lena Dunham emerged: first with 2009’s web series, Delusional Downtown Divas and the feature Creative Nonfiction, then, a year later, with breakthrough Tiny Furniture, an intensely personal, incredibly low-budget film that follows a recent college grad named Aura (Dunham) struggling to find her place in her hometown of New York City post-Oberlin. Supported by a cast of Dunham’s real-life friends and family, Tiny Furniture was a critical success that directly sprouted the quintessential Girls, the HBO series that depicts millennial mania, malaise and, at times, loathsome mediocrity. Five years after Girls’s final season, Dunham’s work is less focused on self-reflection […]

The post “It Came Out of Me Almost Fully Born”: Writer/Director Lena Dunham on Her New Feature, Sharp Stick first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

It’s been 13 years since Lena Dunham emerged: first with 2009’s web series, Delusional Downtown Divas and the feature Creative Nonfiction, then, a year later, with breakthrough Tiny Furniture, an intensely personal, incredibly low-budget film that follows a recent college grad named Aura (Dunham) struggling to find her place in her hometown of New York City post-Oberlin. Supported by a cast of Dunham’s real-life friends and family, Tiny Furniture was a critical success that directly sprouted the quintessential Girls, the HBO series that depicts millennial mania, malaise and, at times, loathsome mediocrity. Five years after Girls’s final season, Dunham’s work is less focused on self-reflection […]

The post “It Came Out of Me Almost Fully Born”: Writer/Director Lena Dunham on Her New Feature, Sharp Stick first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

This review originally ran following the film’s world premiere at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival.

Lena Dunham’s sophomore feature, “Sharp Stick,” opens with Taylour Paige doing a TikTok dance over a trap beat. In an ordinary era, this sequence might promptly set the entire auditorium abuzz at the film’s premiere: Dunham rubbing it in the faces of critics who have pestered her over lack of diversity throughout six seasons of her acclaimed HBO series, “Girls.” But this isn’t an ordinary era, as Covid-19 has for more than two years moved so much online.

After that opener, Dunham immediately retreats to the familiar territory of a nuclear family with two sisters and a single mother, a dynamic not foreign to those who saw her 2010 debut “Tiny Furniture.” As Paige’s Treina rehearses her moves, her sister, Sarah Jo, meekly holds the camera phone as their libertine, five-time-divorced mother,...

[Editor’s note: The following story contains light spoilers for “Sharp Stick.”]

There’s been a lot of panic lately about whether or not Gen Z is having enough sex. Based on a few studies that first appeared in 2016, the handwringing headlines include BuzzFeed declaring Gen Z Is Having Less Sex Than Previous Generations, Newsweek asking What’s Driving Gen Z’s Aversion to Sex?, and The Guardian dubbing it Gen Z’s Sex Recession.

Gen Z encompasses those born between 1996 and 2012, making the youngest Zoomers 10 and the oldest 26 years old, which also means that the evolving reasons for this supposed downturn are mostly still conjecture. The Guardian suggests it’s a good thing, with a growing awareness around consent leading to a “quality over quantity” attitude. One study found a correlation between reduced alcohol consumption and reduced casual sex. Others have blamed helicopter parents.

As the unofficial documentarian of Millennial sexuality, especially as it pertained to young women with her hit HBO show “Girls,...

Exclusive: Utopia has finalized its North American deal for Cannes Competition pic Holy Spider, the noir thriller from Danish-Iranian filmmaker Ali Abbasi. We told you the deal was all but there a couple of days ago.

Based on a horrific true story, the film follows female journalist Rahimi (Zar Amir Ebrahimi) who travels to the Iranian holy city of Mashhad to investigate a serial killer (Mehdi Bajestani) who believes he is doing the work of God, cleansing the streets of sinners by murdering sex workers. As the body count mounts, and Rahimi draws closer to exposing his crimes, the opportunity for justice grows harder to attain as the ‘Spider Killer’ is embraced by many as a hero.

The Persian-language movie has been one of the surprises of Cannes. Not just for its shock value, but also due to its North American buyer: New York indie sales and distribution firm Utopia.

Amazon today unveiled the first clip from its Lena Dunham film, Catherine Called Birdy, also announcing that it will hit theaters on September 23, in advance of its Prime Video debut on October 7.

The film written and directed by Dunham is based on Karen Cushman’s children’s novel of the same name. It’s set in the year 1290, in the Medieval English village of Stonebridge, and follows Lady Catherine aka Birdy (Bella Ramsey), the youngest child of Lord Rollo (Andrew Scott) and the Lady Aislinn. Her playground is Stonebridge Manor, a house that, like the family, has seen better days. Financially destitute and utterly greedy, Rollo sees his daughter as his path out of financial ruin by marrying her off to a wealthy man for money and land. But Birdy, like all the great teen heroines, is spirited, clever and adventurous, and ready to put off any suitor that comes calling in increasingly ingenious ways.

Lena Dunham’s next film “Catherine Called Birdy” will play in theaters before landing on Amazon Prime.

The movie has been scheduled to open Sept. 23 in select cinemas and Oct. 7 on Amazon’s streaming service Prime Video.

Dunham wrote and directed the medieval coming-of-age story, which is based on Karen Cushman’s children’s book. Bella Ramsey, best known for playing the fierce Lyanna Mormont in “Game of Thrones,” stars as the title character alongside a cast that includes Billie Piper and Andrew Scott.

Here’s the official logline: “The year? 1290. In the Medieval English village of Stonebridge, Lady Catherine (known as Birdy) is the youngest child of Lord Rollo and the Lady Aislinn. Her playground is Stonebridge Manor, a house that, like the family, has seen better days. Financially destitute and utterly greedy, Rollo sees his daughter as his path out of financial ruin by marrying her off to...

“Taylor Swift: Miss Americana” director Lana Wilson is developing a documentary feature about psychics that she’ll be presenting this week at Cph:forum, the international financing and co-production event held during the Copenhagen Intl. Documentary Film Festival (Cph:dox), which runs March 23-April 3.

“Look Into My Eyes” is a poetic exploration of what Wilson describes as “the oldest and most popular form of therapy,” told through a series of intimate sessions with psychics and their clients. Pulling the curtain back on a centuries-old practice, the film will present a kaleidoscopic portrait of anxiety, hope and human resilience at a time of widespread turmoil and uncertainty.

It is a documentary, the director believes, that is arriving at just the right moment. “We’re certainly less certain about the future than we ever have been right now,” says Wilson. “People are more isolated and alone than they ever have been. I thought this...

Lena Dunham’s Sundance entry “Sharp Stick” has been acquired by small indie distributor Utopia for U.S. rights. Utopia plans a theatrical release later this year.

The film, which follows a young woman’s unexpected quest of sexual exploration and self-discovery, marks Dunham’s first feature in 12 years since her breakout “Tiny Furniture.”

“Sharp Stick” stars Kristine Froseth, Jon Bernthal, Taylour Paige, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Dunham, Luka Sabbat, Tommy Dorfman and Scott Speedman.

“I’ve been so impressed with how quickly Utopia has established itself as a brave and committed voice in independent and experimental film,” Dunham said in a statement. “They don’t cower from unusual or divisive work, and they have utter respect for the filmmakers’ voice, and I couldn’t feel luckier to be releasing ‘Sharp Stick’ under their auspices.”

After its Sundance premiere, some critics hailed its humor and sex-positive approach, but it ended up...

Distributors plan theatrical, hybrid launches later this year.

Focus Features, Peacock and Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions have acquired worldwide rights to Honk For Jesus. Save Your Soul and Utopia has picked up US rights to Lena Dunham’s Sharp Stick in the latest deals to emerge from Sundance 2022.

The satirical Honk For Jesus directed by Adamma Ebo and produced by her twin sister Adanne Ebo will get a day-and-date launch in theatres and on Peacock later this year. Regina Hall and Sterling K. Brown star in the Premieres selection about the first lady of a prominent Southern Baptist megachurch...

Utopia has taken U.S. rights to writer-director-producer Lena Dunham’s latest directorial Sharp Stick which made its world premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. A theatrical release is planned for later this year.

The pic marks the Girls creator’s return to feature filmmaking a decade after the start of that award-winning HBO series, and 12 years since her breakout picture Tiny Furniture won SXSW Film Festival’s Grand Jury Prize.

Sharp Stick tells follows Sarah Jo (Kristine Froseth), a sensitive and naive 26-year-old living on the fringes of Hollywood with her disillusioned mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and influencer sister (Taylour Paige). Working as a caregiver and just longing to be seen, she begins an exploratory affair with her older, married employer (Jon Bernthal), and is thrust into a startling education on sexuality, loss and power. Dunham, Luka Sabbat, Tommy Dorfman and Scott Speedman also star.

“I’ve...

Utopia has acquired the U.S. rights to writer-director-producer Lena Dunham’s Sundance comedy “Sharp Stick,” which follows a young woman’s unexpected quest of sexual exploration and self-discovery, Utopia announced on Monday.

Utopia will release the film theatrically in the U.S. later this year.

“I’ve been so impressed with how quickly Utopia has established itself as a brave and committed voice in independent and experimental film,” Dunham said in a statement. “They don’t cower from unusual or divisive work, and they have utter respect for the filmmakers’ voice, and I couldn’t feel luckier to be releasing Sharp Stick under their auspices.”

In her first feature since her 2010 debut, “Tiny Furniture,” Dunham drew from her own medical experiences for ”Sharp Stick,” which premiered at last month’s Sundance film festival.

“The film is about a young woman who is dealing with the trauma of a hysterectomy...

The SXSW Film Festival has officially announced its full 2022 feature film lineup, in addition to a variety of TV premieres and special events. The year, SXSW will occur in-person with select films available online. Every film will have an in-person SXSW 2022 premiere as the festival readies for its first in-person edition since the pandemic forced its cancellation in 2020. Most films will also be available online to badgeholders for 48 hours after their physical premieres.

“Our focus is very much on being in person,” SXSW Film head Janet Pierson told IndieWire. “People really do miss gathering together.”

The festival, in its 29th edition, will run from March 11 – 20. As previously announced, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s film, “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” will open the festival. The series three premiere for FX’s “Atlanta,” starring Donald Glover, Lakeith Stanfield, and Brian Tyree Henry, will screen on Closing Night.

Pierson said that the...

Lena Dunham’s Sharp Stick, her first feature since 2010’s Tiny Furniture, finds the writer-director again taking big swings with mixed results. Set in Los Angeles, as Dunham herself moved to the West Coast in 2020, the sex-filled comedy / drama follows Sarah Jo (Kristine Froseth), a 26-year-old virgin who begins an affair with Josh (Jon Bernthal), hunky father of the child she cares for. Once she starts having sex she cannot stop, determined to cross every carnal act and scenario off her construction-paper bucket list.

Like Dunham, Sarah Jo had an early hysterectomy, closing the door on future pregnancies. She’s naive, though her mother and sister are forthcoming about their own exploits. Dunham herself plays Josh’s very pregnant wife, another wrinkle to an already-personal project. Sharp Stick hopes to bring an immense amount of sex positivity to its protagonist and her odd existence. The daughter of a five-time divorcee...

Ever since she burst onto the scene more than a decade ago, audiences have struggled to separate Lena Dunham the writer-director-actress from the female leads she creates. First, there was Aura, the floundering film-school student at the center of her semi-autobiographical indie Tiny Furniture, which lit up the festival circuit in 2010 and co-starred real-life family members including her mom, the artist Laurie Simmons, and sibling, Cyrus Grace Dunham. Then, of course, there was Girls’ Hannah Horvath, the Brooklyn-dwelling Oberlin grad (ditto you-know-who) and aspiring writer whose Gen Y ennui and...

In her first feature since her 2010 debut, “Tiny Furniture,” Lena Dunham drew from her own medical experiences for her new film,”Sharp Stick,” which premiered at this month’s Sundance film festival.

“The film is about a young woman who is dealing with the trauma of a hysterectomy and illness that she suffered in her teens,” Dunham told TheWrap’s editor-in-chief Sharon Waxman at the virtual Sundance studio, where she was joined by actors Kristine Froseth, Taylour Paige and Jon Bernthal.

Dunham tapped into her experience with endometriosis and her decision to undergo a hysterectomy at 31 for “Sharp Stick,” which she wrote, directed and produced. Making the film was both “an incredibly healing experience” and an “incredibly challenging experience,” she said. In addition to the heady material, she shot the movie during lockdown in just 14 and a half days, harkening back to the “scrappy spirit” of “Tiny Furniture,” which Dunham...

Lena Dunham hasn’t made a feature film since Tiny Furniture 12 years ago, but she has some plausible excuses—running Girls for six seasons, conceiving another series, writing two books, acting here and there. It took the pandemic to get her behind the camera again and, low and behold, the resulting film is about people living in very close quarters, not going out much and, at least for some, having a lot of sex. Sharp Stick brims over with the energy of young people who wanted to make something, quickly and down and dirty. The result is an invigorating film about a beautiful woman who, in her mid-20s, sheds her lifelong avoidance of sex to dive into the deep end. The FilmNation production is making its world premiere in the Premieres section of this year’s festival.

It’s fairly safe to say that no film has ever centered...

For a decade, Lena Dunham has kept more than busy, executive producing TV series like “Camping” and “Generation” and putting out her memoir. Yet she’s been notably selective about her main slate of projects, and “Sharp Stick,” which premiered tonight at the Sundance Film Festival, is her third major act. The first was “Tiny Furniture,” the 2010 movie that launched her, and it was a gem: the portrait of a wayward young New York striver, played by Dunham, told on an unusual level of lacerating honesty. When I saw it I thought: There’s something about how this filmmaker views her lead character — with open eyes, showing us her dreams but also, in close-up, all her flaws — that cuts against the grain not just of Hollywood but of so much indie-film piety.

Dunham’s second act was “Girls,” and that was a one-series revolution: not the first HBO show to feel “like a movie,...

Catherine, Called Birdy

While Tiny Furniture dates back to 2010, Lena Dunham was hardly inactive working in television, acting, writing books and typing out essays. In 2022 we expect not one, but two feature films to drop – the first being Sharp Stick (which is set to premiere at Sundance in a couple of weeks) and this project, she shot across the pond. Backed by Amazon Studios, if you’re going to see one PG-13 film in 2022 – perhaps Catherine, Called Birdy is it. The British backed production is a comer-of-ager that sees Bella Ramsey in the lead role of Birdy, surrounded by Dunham, Billie Piper, Andrew Scott and Joe Alwyn, production took place in March of 2021.…...

Exclusive: Two-time Emmy winner Merritt Wever is boarding Midday Black Midnight Blue, the upcoming feature debut from Samantha Soule and Daniel Talbott.

Actors Dale Soules (Orange Is the New Black) and Shane McRae (Sneaky Pete) also have signed on to the previously announced cast that includes Chris Stack, Will Pullen and McCaleb Burnett.

Isolated in an empty house on the edge of Puget Sound, Ian (Stack) remains mired in long-held grief and shame over the loss of Liv (Soule), a woman he loved dearly who died nearly two decades ago. Liv’s sister Beth (played by Wever), a woman with ghosts of her own, is the first to see how far Ian has slipped away from reality. With the memory of Liv clamoring to be released, and his daily existence turning ever darker,...

IndieWire parent company Penske Media’s P-mrc Holdings has invested in SXSW, the robust set of conferences and festivals that have rocked Austin for 34 years. The partnership aligns P-mrc as a long-term partner and SXSW shareholder, with the company utilizing SXSW as an opportunity for all of its media brands.

The essence of the events, and its management, are expected to remain intact while expanding SXSW’s potential for new events and business models. SXSW and P-mrc are now developing the March 2022 event in Austin. P-mrc is a joint venture between Penske Media Corporation and MRC, whose holdings include Billboard, The Hollywood Reporter, Rolling Stone, Variety, and Vibe.

P-mrc will reportedly take a 50% stake in the business, which last hosted its physical edition in 2019. The Wall Street Journal was the first to report the news.

“It has been an incredibly tough period for small businesses, SXSW included,” said SXSW CEO...

Billie Piper has joined the cast of Lena Dunham’s feature adaptation of “Catherine, Called Birdy” for Working Title and Amazon.

Piper stars in the medieval coming-of-age comedy opposite “Fleabag’s” Andrew Scott and “Game of Thrones” breakout Bella Ramsey. The film, written and directed by Dunham, is in the early stages of production.

“Catherine, Called Birdy” has been a longtime passion project for Dunham, who first announced plans to adapt the award-winning 1994 children’s novel by Karen Cushman into a film in 2014. The coming of age story, set in 13th century England, follows a 14-year-old girl named Catherine (Ramsey) who “bucks against convention,” namely the arranged marriages her father (Scott) has planned out for her. Piper will play Catherine’s mother.

Working Title, in association with Dunham’s Good Thing Going banner, is producing the project.

Earlier this month, Variety exclusively reported that Dunham recently wrapped a secret feature titled,...

It was over a decade ago since Lena Dunham broke out with her SXSW-winning, Criterion-approved directorial debut Tiny Furniture, leading to six seasons of her acclaimed HBO drama Girls. Understandably, there wasn’t much time during the run to return to feature filmmaking, but now Dunham has completed her second film, shot secretly during the pandemic.

Variety reports the project, titled Sharp Stick, shot in Los Angeles with a cast led by Kristine Froseth, Taylour Paige, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jon Bernthal, Scott Speedman, and Dunham herself. While plot details aren’t being disclosed at this time, FilmNation will be selling the film out of the European Film Market, so we should get updates soon.

“I made my last feature film 11 years ago in my family home with just a few close friends. It’s a testament to FilmNation and my incredible producers, cast, crew and — especially — my Covid-19 compliance team...

Remember a few weeks ago, when we reported that Lena Dunham was returning to the director’s chair of a feature film for the first time in 11 years for the upcoming project, “Catherine, Called Birdy?” Yeah, apparently, that’s not the truth. Yes, the film is still happening, but it’s not Dunham’s first film since “Tiny Furniture.” You see, she went ahead and filmed a secret feature over the past several months, titled “Sharp Stick.”

According to Variety, Dunham has finished production on her new film, “Sharp Stick,” and is bringing the film to the European Film Market to find distribution.

Continue reading ‘Sharp Stick’: Lena Dunham Secretly Directed Her First Film In A Decade at The Playlist.

“Girls” creator Lena Dunham has wrapped production on “Sharp Stick,” her first feature film since 2010’s “Tiny Furniture.”

Dunham wrote and directed the film, in which she stars alongside Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jon Bernthal, Kristine Froseth, Taylour Paige and Scott Speedman. Plot details are being kept under wraps, but Dunham described it as a personal story about the complexities of female sexuality.

“Sharp Stick” will be presented to buyers in screenings as part of the Berlin International Film Festival. CAA Media Finance is co-representing domestic rights with FilmNation, which is also handling financing and worldwide distribution rights.

Dunham filmed the project in Los Angeles under Covid-19 compliance protocols over the last few months. “Sharp Stick” was produced by Dunham’s Good Thing Going production banner, with Kevin Turen, Katia Washington, Michael Cohen and Dunham all serving as producers.

The film was executive produced by Kenneth Yu and Will Greenfield, and...

Lena Dunham directed a secret movie titled “Sharp Stick” in Los Angeles over the past couple months. After recently wrapping production, the movie will screen for buyers this week out of the Berlin International Film Festival. Variety first reported the news. “Sharp Stick,” financed by FilmNation, is notable as Dunham has not directed a feature film in the 11 years since her breakthrough directorial feature debut “Tiny Furniture” world premiered at the SXSW Film Festival and won the Best Narrative Feature prize. Dunham went on to create and star in HBO’s “Girls.”

“I made my last feature film 11 years ago in my family home with just a few close friends,” Dunham said in a statement to Variety. “It’s a testament to FilmNation and my incredible producers, cast, crew and — especially — my Covid-19 compliance team that this experience felt just as intimate and creatively free.”

Dunham continued, “This story is...

Lena Dunham just wrapped her first feature film as a writer-director in over a decade.

“Sharp Stick,” an indie financed by FilmNation that will screen footage for potential buyers on Tuesday out of the European Film Market during the Berlin Festival, was shot successfully in secret and in compliance with Covid-19 protocols in Los Angeles over the past months.

While plot details are under wraps, the film stars Kristine Froseth, Taylour Paige, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jon Bernthal (“Ford v Ferrari)”, Scott Speedman and Dunham. The production, which boasted almost exclusively female department heads, was made through Dunham’s company Good Thing Going.

“I made my last feature film 11 years ago in my family home with just a few close friends. It’s a testament to FilmNation and my incredible producers, cast, crew and — especially — my Covid-19 compliance team that this experience felt just as intimate and creatively free,” Dunham told Variety.

There is a long list of films that were turned down by one major film festival only to have a breakout moment at another. For example, Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood” ended up going to Sundance after Cannes passed and Lena Dunham’s “Tiny Furniture” went to SXSW after Sundance passed. Fast forward to 2021 and Mexico’s submission for the International Film Oscar, Fernando Frias de la Parra‘s “I’m No Longer Here” (“Ya no Estoy aquí”), has overcome an even less prestigious rollout.

Continue reading Fernando Frias Is Too Classy To Reveal The Film Festivals That Passed On ‘I’m No Longer Here’ [Interview] at The Playlist.

Lena Dunham has just wrapped production in Los Angeles on Sharp Stick for FilmNation Entertainment.

Her first movie since Tiny Furniture 11 years ago, Dunham will star alongside Kristine Froseth, Taylour Paige, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jon Bernthal and Scott Speedman. Plot details for Sharp Stick are being kept under wraps, but the project returns Dunham to the familiar creative turf of female sexuality and portrayals.

“This story is incredibly personal to me and a continuation of my career long mission to create a free dialogue around the complexities of female sexuality and to turn the idea of the ‘likable’ female protagonist on ...

Lena Dunham has just wrapped production in Los Angeles on Sharp Stick for FilmNation Entertainment.

Her first movie since Tiny Furniture 11 years ago, Dunham will star alongside Kristine Froseth, Taylour Paige, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jon Bernthal and Scott Speedman. Plot details for Sharp Stick are being kept under wraps, but the project returns Dunham to the familiar creative turf of female sexuality and portrayals.

“This story is incredibly personal to me and a continuation of my career long mission to create a free dialogue around the complexities of female sexuality and to turn the idea of the ‘likable’ female protagonist on ...

Believe it or not, it’s been more than a decade since Lena Dunham broke out with her feature film, “Tiny Furniture.” And since then, she has yet to follow up with another feature film. However, that appears to be changing, as she begins casting the upcoming project, “Catherine, Called Birdy.”

Read More: ‘Industry’: Young People Are Capital, But HBO’s Newest Gen-z Wall Street Show Isn’t Indispensible [Review]

According to dependable U.K.

Continue reading Lena Dunham To Direct ‘Catherine, Called Birdy’; Casts Billie Piper, Andrew Scott, & Filming Begins In March at The Playlist.

A new television drama series about a group of young, privileged trader wannabes in the current climate might seem totally unrelatable and unimportant in the current global pandemic mood. Surprisingly, Industry that follows a group of young bankers and traders trying to find their footing in the financial world in the aftermath of the 2008 collapse is highly relevant today, as it deals with a whole host of current topics, including racial equality, mental well-being and substance abuse.

Set in the world of a fictitious investment bank, compelling California-born New Yorker Myha’la Herrold plays Harper who is smart, risk-taking and determined to make her mark, having entered the graduate training scheme through dishonest ways that are not yet disclosed in the first three episodes reviewed. This is her secret that will obviously come to light at some point.

Marisa Abela plays Yasmin from a fortunate background who is very much in...

It’s been eight years since Amy Seimetz directed her first feature, “Sun Don’t Shine,” and her second film, “She Dies Tomorrow,” carries her imprint. Both films pull you into an off kilter, menacing dreamscape where unreliable characters are capable of doing just about anything. Appropriately enough, her film was my last press screening before lockdown.

Recovering alcoholic Amy (Seimetz alter ego Kate Lyn Sheil) rattles around her empty new Los Angeles house, hugging the floor, dropping the needle over and over on a Mozart requiem, and slugging back wine. When she gets a friend (Jane Adams) to come over, she tells her, “I’m going to die tomorrow.” Her friend starts to feel the same foreboding, and passes the contagion to her brother (Chris Messina) and his wife (Katie Aselton) at a birthday party. It shares the same absurdist and morbid humor as Luis Bunuel.

At the Soho House...

It’s been eight years since Amy Seimetz directed her first feature, “Sun Don’t Shine,” and her second film, “She Dies Tomorrow,” carries her imprint. Both films pull you into an off kilter, menacing dreamscape where unreliable characters are capable of doing just about anything. Appropriately enough, her film was my last press screening before lockdown.

Recovering alcoholic Amy (Seimetz alter ego Kate Lyn Sheil) rattles around her empty new Los Angeles house, hugging the floor, dropping the needle over and over on a Mozart requiem, and slugging back wine. When she gets a friend (Jane Adams) to come over, she tells her, “I’m going to die tomorrow.” Her friend starts to feel the same foreboding, and passes the contagion to her brother (Chris Messina) and his wife (Katie Aselton) at a birthday party. It shares the same absurdist and morbid humor as Luis Bunuel.

At the Soho House...

If you read Heather Wixson's 4-star review or you listened to our Sundance episode of Corpse Club featuring director Natalie Erika James, then you know that we can't wait for Daily Dead readers to see her new horror film Relic. Before it comes to theaters and Digital/VOD on July 10th, IFC will release Relic in drive-in theaters early beginning July 3rd, just in time for the Fourth of July weekend:

Press Release: New York, NY: Ahead of its July 10th theatrical and Digital/VOD date, IFC Films is bringing Relic to drive-in theaters only as an advance week-run beginning July 3rd as studios delay new releases to later in the summer. With a current score of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, Relic is one of the year’s most highly anticipated genre films of the Summer.

Recently heralded as one of Indiewire’s ‘20 Rising Women Directors You Need to Know...

IFC Films has scooped up the North American rights to Cooper Raiff’s “S—house,” the film that won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Narrative Feature at the virtual 2020 SXSW Film Festival, the indie distributor announced Wednesday.

Raiff wrote, directed and starred in his feature debut about a tender college romance that has been compared to the early work of Richard Linklater or Lena Dunham.

IFC Films will release “S—house” in the fall of 2020.

Also Read: How IFC Films' Bet on Drive-In Theaters Paid Off During the Pandemic

Raiff stars in “S—house” alongside Dylan Gelula, Amy Landecker, Logan Miller and Olivia Welch and is the story of Alex, a friendless college freshman who is seriously contemplating transferring to a college closer to his mom (Landecker) and sister (Welch), to whom he is still extremely tethered. Everything changes one night when Alex takes a leap and attends a...

Without question, Jody Lee Lipes is one of the most underrated cinematographers in the business. Just looking at his resume, which consists of A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Bluebird, Manchester by the Sea, Martha Marcy May Marlene, Tiny Furniture, and Trainwreck on the big screen, as well as episodes of episodes of Girls and The Sinner (also directing) on the small screen. Lipes is a uniquely diverse talent, seen even more so this weekend when his work shooting the new Derek Cianfrance project I Know This Much Is True hits HBO. All this made a chance to jump on the phone with him for an interview an easy choice. For those not aware, I Know This Much Is True is a high profile miniseries, based on the novel of the same name by Wally Lamb. The IMDb synopsis, which does not do it justice, at all, is as follows:...

The cancellation of the SXSW conference by Austin city officials in the wake of the global coronavirus outbreak shocked multiple industries on Friday, but the biggest casualties are the smaller movies that still don’t have homes. A handful of studio titles were aiming to premiere at the festival to generate marketing and publicity around their upcoming release dates, including Judd Apatow’s Universal-produced “The King of Staten Island” and Paramount’s “The Lovebirds,” starring Kumail Nanjiani and Issa Rae. However, the bulk of the program is comprised of movies searching for distribution.

That includes the 20 movies in the narrative and documentary competition as well as potential discoveries in various sidebars, all of which were selected from a submission pool of 2,316 films. The cancellation leaves a sudden gap in the festival calendar and veterans of the industry reeling from an unprecedented situation.

At the same time, it leaves newcomers...

With “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” cinematographer Jody Lee Lipes wanted to capture the “feeling” of the classic children’s series “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.” “Getting it as accurate and honest” as they could was “the starting point” for every other decision he and director Marielle Heller made. Watch our exclusive video interview with Lipes above.

See Noah Harpster and Micah Fitzerman-Blue Interview: ‘A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood’ screenwriters

The TriStar release tells the true story of the friendship that developed between Fred Rogers (Tom Hanks) and journalist Tom Junod (here fictionalized as Lloyd Vogel and played by Matthew Rhys), who in 1998 wrote a profile on the children’s TV star for Esquire.

The quest for authenticity started with “spending as much time as possible watching how they made the show.” So Lipes watched the entire 1998 season, when the movie takes place. While watching individual installments, “I would be...