Aleem Khan’s After Love was the big winner at the 2021 British Independent Film Awards winning six awards including Best British Independent Film, Best Director, Best Debut Director and Best Screenplay for Aleem Khan along with Best Actress for Joanna Scanlan and Best Supporting Actor for Talid Ariss.
The New York Film Critics Circle named Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car, the Best Film of 2021, however, the Power of the Dog was the big winner taking the honor of Best Director for Jane Campion, Best Actor for Benedict Cumberbatch and Best Supporting Actor for Kodi Smit-McPhee.
Sight and Sound, the BFI’s international film magazine, named Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir Part II the Best Film of the Year. Hogg’s glorious follow up to The Souvenir (2019) stars Honor Swinton Byrne, alongside Richard Ayoade, Tilda Swinton, Jaygann Ayeh and Harris Dickinson in this semi-autobiographical portrait of the birth of a filmmaker. This is the second time Joanna Hogg has topped the Sight and Sound annual poll, following The Souvenir coming in first place in 2019 and the first time a woman has topped the Sight and Sound poll twice. This is the third year in a row where the poll has been topped by a British film.
HBO documentary Mr. Saturday Night, directed by John Maggio (HBO’s “A Choice of Weapons: Inspired by Gordon Parks”) and executive produced by The Ringer’s Bill Simmons (HBO’s “Andre The Giant,” “Showbiz Kids”), chronicles the meteoric career of Australian entrepreneur Robert Stigwood, who gambled on a magazine article about the Brooklyn night club scene and turned it into the 1977 cultural touchstone “Saturday Night Fever,” making a global superstar out of John Travolta and reinvigorating disco with a platinum selling soundtrack anchored by four number-one hits from the Bee Gees.
The National Board of Review announced their 2021 honorees, with top awards including Licorice Pizza for Best Film; Paul Thomas Anderson for Best Director for Licorice Pizza; Will Smith for Best Actor for King Richard; and Rachel Zegler for Best Actress for West Side Story.
Directed by Kiwi Chow, the documentary Revolution of Our Times will have its theatrical premiere in New York at Stuart Cinema in Brooklyn (December 10-16) and at Laemmle Noho (December 10-16); the film will also screen at the Roxie in San Francisco on December 18th and 19th.
Oscar-nominated South African director, Angus Gibson, takes us back to the glitz and menace of 1958 Sophiatown in his stylish new film, Back Of The Moon. The film will get a limited theatrical release in New York and Los Angeles on Friday, December 3.
Metrograph Pictures released the official trailer for Last and First Men, the feature debut and sole directorial effort of the late composer and musician Jóhann Jóhannsson and a visually arresting allegory for our times. The film will open in theaters and on digital exclusively at Metrograph on December 10.
Hulu released an official trailer for Dead Asleep, a documentary on the true story of a man convicted of a murder that he committed, while sleepwalking. Directed by award-winner Skye Borgman, who is also behind the critically acclaimed documentary Abducted In Plain Sight, Dead Asleep debuts on Hulu on December 16th.
HBO feature documentary, Reopening Night, follows the cast, crew and staff of the world-famous Public Theater as they prepare to mount an adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Merry Wives,” at the open-air Delacorte Theater in New York City. Contending with the ever-present threat of COVID-19 and one of the rainiest Julys on record, the production marks the return of live theatre following more than a year of closures in the city. Their pursuit to bring back a longstanding beloved New York City tradition is an audacious gamble for the theater which has served as the creative heartbeat of New York City for almost six decades.
The new trailer is here for the Indian film, 83 starring Ranveer Singh, Deepika Padukone, Pankaj Tripathi, Tahir Raj Bhasin, and Saqib Saleem that tells the incredible true story of the underdogs who pulled off the unthinkable.
Director Nick Lyon’s intense, gritty and suspenseful thriller The Surprise Visit starring Academy Award Nominee Eric Roberts, Dopestick’s Tricia Hawn, Rob Riordan, Jacqi Vene and Serah Henesey, opens in theaters and on demand January 14, 2022 from Vertical Entertainment.