A24 has released the poster and trailer for the critically-acclaimed, Yiddish-language hit Menashe. The film is directed by Joshua Z. Weinstein and stars Menashe Lustig and Ruben Nyborg. Menashe opens in theaters on July 28.
Set within the New York Hasidic community in Borough Park, Brooklyn, Menashe follows a kind but hapless grocery store clerk trying to maintain custody of his son Rieven after his wife, Lea, passes away. Since they live in a tradition-bound culture that requires a mother present in every home, Rieven is supposed to be adopted by the boy’s strict, married uncle, but Menashe’s Rabbi decides to grant him one week to spend with Rieven prior to Lea’s memorial. Their time together creates an emotional moment of father/son bonding as well as offers Menashe a final chance to prove to his skeptical community that he can be a capable parent. Shot in secret entirely within the Hasidic community depicted in the film, and one of the only movies to be performed in Yiddish in nearly 70 years, Menashe is a warm, life affirming look at the universal bonds between father and son that also sheds unusual light on a notoriously private community. Based largely on the real life of its Hasidic star Menashe Lustig, the film is a strikingly authentic and deeply moving portrait of family, love, connection, and community.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83UoZcdX__Y-
Poster + Watch the Trailer to Yiddish-Language Hit MENASHE
A24 has released the poster and trailer for the critically-acclaimed, Yiddish-language hit Menashe. The film is directed by Joshua Z. Weinstein and stars Menashe Lustig and Ruben Nyborg. Menashe opens in theaters on July 28.
Set within the New York Hasidic community in Borough Park, Brooklyn, Menashe follows a kind but hapless grocery store clerk trying to maintain custody of his son Rieven after his wife, Lea, passes away. Since they live in a tradition-bound culture that requires a mother present in every home, Rieven is supposed to be adopted by the boy’s strict, married uncle, but Menashe’s Rabbi decides to grant him one week to spend with Rieven prior to Lea’s memorial. Their time together creates an emotional moment of father/son bonding as well as offers Menashe a final chance to prove to his skeptical community that he can be a capable parent. Shot in secret entirely within the Hasidic community depicted in the film, and one of the only movies to be performed in Yiddish in nearly 70 years, Menashe is a warm, life affirming look at the universal bonds between father and son that also sheds unusual light on a notoriously private community. Based largely on the real life of its Hasidic star Menashe Lustig, the film is a strikingly authentic and deeply moving portrait of family, love, connection, and community.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83UoZcdX__Y
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Nuns Gone Wild in Red Band Trailer for Sundance Hit THE LITTLE HOURS
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Alison Brie, Kate Micucci and Aubrey Plaza appear in The Little Hours by Jeff Baena, an official selection of the Midnight program at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. © 2016 Sundance Institute.[/caption]
The Little Hours directed by Jeff Baena has released the red band trailer, and immediately you will see why Bill Donohue, of the Catholic League proclaimed “It is trash. Pure trash.” Good funny trash, that is. The film which premiered earlier this year at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival will be release in select cities on June 30th, followed by a national rollout.
In The Little Hours, medieval nuns Alessandra (Alison Brie), Fernanda (Aubrey Plaza), and Ginevra (Kate Micucci) lead a simple life in their convent. Their days are spent chafing at monastic routine, spying on one another, and berating the estate’s day laborer. After a particularly vicious insult session drives the peasant away, Father Tommasso (John C. Reilly) brings on new hired hand Massetto (Dave Franco), a virile young servant forced into hiding by his angry lord. Introduced to the sisters as a deaf-mute to discourage temptation, Massetto struggles to maintain his cover as the repressed nunnery erupts in a whirlwind of pansexual horniness, substance abuse, and wicked revelry.
The film also stars Molly Shannon, Fred Armisen, Jemima Kirke, Adam Pally and Nick Offerman.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYycHr4RsJw
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Watch Official Trailer for Sundance Award-Winning Syrian Documentary LAST MEN IN ALEPPO
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Last Men in Aleppo[/caption]
The official trailer is released for the Syrian documentary Last Men In Aleppo, winner of the 2017 Sundance Film Festival – World Documentary Grand Jury Prize. Last Men In Aleppo will open theatrically on May 3rd in New York at the Metrograph, and May 18th in Los Angeles at Laemmle’s Music Hall, followed by a nationwide rollout.
Nowhere is the human toll of Syria’s ongoing civil war more brutally manifest than in the lives of Aleppo’s “White Helmets”—first responders to the devastating bombing and terrorist attacks that have pushed this city to the brink of collapse. Volunteers Khaled, Mahmoud, and Subhi rush toward bomb sites while others run away. They search through collapsed buildings for the living and dead. Contending with fatigue, dwindling ranks, and concerns for their families’ safety, they must decide whether to stay or to flee a city in ruins.
An unforgettable portrait of reluctant heroes, Last Men in Aleppo employs a strict vérité approach but unfolds like a classical tragedy. Directed by Syrian filmmaker Feras Fayyad in collaboration with the Aleppo Media Center, it’s a patchwork of resonant moments—some horrifying (pulling lifeless infants from the rubble), others improbably hopeful (playing a makeshift soccer game, building a fishpond, driving kids to a playground during a ceasefire). Together they are a testament to mankind’s capacity for unspeakable atrocity and an ode to courage and compassion.
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Inaugural Overlook Film Festival Unveils Lineup, to Open with World Premiere of STEPHANIE
STEPHANIE – Akiva Goldsman The inaugural Overlook Film Festival will take place April 24 to 30, 2017, at the historic Timberline Lodge located in Mt. Hood, Oregon, featured in Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” as the location of the infamous Overlook Hotel.
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North American Premiere of Laura Poitras’s RISK to Close Art of the Real Festival | Trailer
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Risk, Laura Poitras[/caption]
Laura Poitras’s Risk will have its North American premiere as the Closing Night selection of Art of the Real, Film Society of Lincoln Center’s essential showcase for boundary-pushing nonfiction film, on May 2. The festival opens this Thursday, April 20, with Theo Anthony’s Rat Film.
After laying bare Edward Snowden the man and the myth in her Oscar-winning Citizenfour, Laura Poitras returns to the knotty territory of political truth-telling and international espionage with this years-in-the-making portrait of controversial WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. A hero to some, a pariah to others, Assange comes across in this compelling documentary as guarded and inscrutable despite his crusade for complete transparency. Not interested in painting a simple portrait of one man fighting the system, Poitras traces his journey from 2011 all the way through this year’s election, finally admitting in voiceover: “This is not the film I thought I was making.” Significantly updated since its Cannes premiere last May, Risk is a film about principles, power, and human contradiction, and is not to be missed. Poitras will also appear in person for a post-screening discussion.
NEON will release the film theatrically nationwide on May 5th.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx6l4gPVeNE
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Tribeca 2017: 17-Year-Old Daje Shelton Navigates Inner City America in FOR AHKEEM | Trailer
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For Ahkeem[/caption]
For Ahkeem is described as the moving portrait of 17-year-old Daje Shelton, a Black girl in North St. Louis, as she navigates the many challenges of growing up in inner city America with one goal: to graduate high school.
The documentary film from award-winning directors Jeremy S. Levine and Landon Van Soest, had its World Premiere earlier this year at the 2017 Berlin International Film Festival, and will have its North American Premiere at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival.
Filmed over a three year period, we watch as Daje struggles against countless obstacles to obtain her high school diploma, her only hope of a better future, while navigating life as a teenager in America. The camera quietly follows her as she experiences her first love and explores a challenging new role as a teen mother. Despite the daily struggle to maintain focus in school and graduate, Daje and her family show the strength, resilience, and determination it takes to survive.
People been labeling me a bad kid all my life. You don’t have to really do nothing, people just expect it. So you start to expect it of yourself.” – Daje Shelton
For Ahkeem follows Black teenager Daje Shelton as she comes of age in a rough part of St. Louis. Daje has a fiery and charismatic personality, loves to sing, and hopes to become a comedian or a journalist one day. All this despite never quite believing she’d live to see eighteen.
After a school fight gets Daje expelled and sent to a court-supervised high school, her hopes of being accepted to a good college are dashed. Her mother Tammy, who was also expelled from high school, reminds Daje of how important it is for her to stay the course and graduate..
“I don’t want you to get comfortable thinking this neighborhood and the things around here is the way of life, cus it’s not,” says Tammy.
“There are so many bigger and better things out there, you wouldn’t even believe it.”
We’re with Daje for over two years as she strives to turn things around and maintain focus on school, which becomes even more challenging after suddenly losing a friend to gun violence. She falls in love with Antonio, a charismatic classmate who can identify with the trauma Daje is feeling. Struggling with schoolwork though, Antonio drops out and starts getting into trouble on the streets. Later, Daje learns she is pregnant with a son and wrestles with the heartbreaking reality of raising a Black boy in America today.
At the start of Daje’s senior year, an unarmed Black teen is killed by a police officer in nearby Ferguson, seizing the national spotlight. The incident further awakens Daje to her vulnerable position in the world, reinvigorating her mission to graduate from high school and make a better life for herself and her newborn son, baby Ahkeem.
Through Daje’s intimate coming of age story, For Ahkeem illuminates challenges that many Black teenagers face in America today, and witnesses the strength, resilience, and determination it takes to survive.
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A24 Sets Release Date for Yorgos Lanthimos’ THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER Starrring Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman
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The Killing Of A Second Deer[/caption]
A24 will release Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest film THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER starring Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, and Alicia Silverstone, on November 3, 2017 in limited release.
This is writer/director Lanthimos’ second collaboration with Colin Farrell (THE LOBSTER). The Killing Of A Second Deer will have it’s world premiere in Competition at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival.
Farrell stars as Steven, a charismatic surgeon forced to make an unthinkable sacrifice after his life starts to fall apart when the behaviour of a teenage boy he has taken under his wing takes a sinister turn. Nicole Kidman also stars as the wife of Farrell’s character, along with young, Irish actor Barry Keoghan (’71 and DUNKIRK), Raffey Cassidy (TOMORROWLAND), Sunny Suljic (THE UNSPOKEN), Bill Camp (12 YEARS A SLAVE) and Alicia Silverstone (CLUELESS).
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European Premiere of BEATRIZ AT DINNER Starring Salma Hayek to Open the 2017 Sundance Film Festival: London | Trailer
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Salma Hayek appears in Beatriz at Dinner by Miguel Arteta[/caption]
The European premiere of Beatriz at Dinner starring Salma Hayek will open the 2017 Sundance Film Festival: London at Picturehouse Central.
Hayek gives a blistering performance alongside Chloë Sevigny and John Lithgow in the comedy which reunites director Miguel Arteta and screenwriter Mike White, who worked together on earlier Sundance Film Festival hits The Good Girl and Chuck & Buck.
Beatriz, an immigrant from a poor town in Mexico, has drawn on her innate kindness to build a career as a health practitioner in Southern California. Don Strutt is a real estate developer whose cutthroat tactics have made him a self-made, self-satisfied billionaire. When these two polar opposites meet at a dinner party, their worlds collide and neither will ever be the same.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCLNTmNj5bI
John Cooper, Director of the Sundance Film Festival, comments, “We look forward to launching our fifth festival in London with Beatriz at Dinner, a masterful dramedy of errors from director Miguel Arteta and screenwriter Mike White and starring Salma Hayek. This was a standout at our Utah Festival in January and is a wonderful example of the continued innovation and creativity of our independent filmmakers that we’ll showcase in London again this year.”
Miguel Arteta, Director of Beatriz at Dinner, adds, “I’m thrilled that Beatriz At Dinner will open the Sundance Film Festival: London. Amidst the comedy, drama and brilliant performances in the film, Mike White’s script weaves some timely and potent political commentary and we’re especially excited to premiere the film to UK audiences at such a politically polarized time in world history. I cannot wait to see how audiences outside the United States will react.”
The 2017 Sundance Film Festival: London will take place at Picturehouse Central from June 1 to 4.
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Tribeca 2017: Poster + Watch Exclusive Clip from Elina Psykou’s Dark Coming-of-Age Drama SON OF SOFIA
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The family (Thanasis Papageorgiou, Valery Tscheplanow, Victor Khomut) watches TV in SON OF SOFIA. Photo credit: Dionysis Eftimiopoulos.[/caption]
Here is the poster and an exclusive video clip from Elina Psykou’s Son of Sofia, a dark, yet tender coming-of-age fairytale, that will world premiere at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival.
Although the clip doesn’t reveal too much of the storyline, it does provide a glimpse into the mother-son dynamic that is explored in the film
After her celebrated debut, The Eternal Return of Antonis Paraskevas, Elina Psykou returns with Son of Sofia, a dark, yet tender coming-of-age fairytale that strikes a masterful balance between realism and dreams, much like its young lead.
The story revolves around 11-year-old Misha, who flies from Russia to Athens in the summer of 2004, to join his mother, Sofia, after having spent a long time apart. What he doesn’t know is that there is a father waiting for him there. While Greece is living the Olympic dream, Misha will get violently catapulted into the adult world, riding on the dark side of his favorite fairy tales.
Exclusive Clip
Trailer
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Tribeca 2017: National Geographic to Release Coal Mining Documentary FROM THE ASHES | Trailer
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Deborah Graham at her home in Salisbury, North Carolina. Film still from FROM THE ASHES. Credit: Jonathan Furmanski.[/caption]
From the Ashes, a feature documentary that explores one of the country’s most contentious topics — coal and the mining industry, has been acquired by the National Geographic for release in the US.
Distributed under the National Geographic Documentary Films banner, From the Ashes will have its world premiere at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival on April 26, followed by a limited theatrical release this summer and will air globally on National Geographic in 171 countries and 45 languages later in 2017.
Produced by the Academy Award- and Emmy-winning production company RadicalMedia, directed by Emmy-nominated filmmaker Michael Bonfiglio, produced by Sidney Beaumont, and executive produced by Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Joe Berlinger — as well as Jon Kamen, Katherine Oliver and Justin Wilkes, in partnership with Bloomberg Philanthropies — From the Ashes captures Americans in communities across the country as they wrestle with the legacy of the coal industry, and what its future should be under the Trump administration.
From Appalachia to the West’s Powder River Basin, the film goes beyond the rhetoric of the “war on coal” to present compelling and often-heartbreaking stories about what is at stake for our economy, health and climate. The film invites audiences to learn more about an industry on the edge and what it means for their lives.
“For over a century, mining and energy companies have been privatizing coal’s profits while socializing its costs. Coal plant pollution kills 7,500 Americans a year and causes many more serious illnesses,” said Michael R. Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg Philanthropies and co-author of the new book “Climate of Hope.” “From the Ashes shows the risks we face as a nation if we continue to rely on coal and examines how Americans in local communities, including in coal country, are helping to lead the transition toward cleaner air and stronger economies.”
From the Ashes builds on Bloomberg’s environmental philanthropic work. Bloomberg Philanthropies has committed over $100 million to move the U.S. away from coal and toward clean energy through its Clean Energy Initiative and Beyond Coal efforts. As a UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on Cities and Climate Change, and in partnership with Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, Bloomberg convened more than 500 global cities at the first-ever Climate Summit for Local Leaders at Paris City Hall during COP21. Beyond Coal, which aims to secure the retirement of half the nation’s coal fleet, has already led to the closure or phasing out of 250 coal-fired power plants and helped to prevent more than 5,550 premature deaths per year. Additionally, Bloomberg Philanthropies supports sustainability in cities around the globe through C40, a network of more than 90 global megacities, and other grants.
“Using media and technology to inform, connect and prompt action is in the DNA of Bloomberg and we’re excited to harness the power of storytelling to reach new audiences and inspire change at such a critical time in our history,” shared Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Katherine Oliver, who also serves as executive producer.
The world premiere of From the Ashes will take place at the Festival Hub at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 26, 2017, at 6 p.m. ET. Before the film festival screening there will be a special introduction by Bloomberg, a former three-term mayor of New York City. Immediately following the premiere, there will be a conversation with the director of the film, Bonfiglio, and other special guests to discuss the state of the American coal industry.
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Tribeca 2017: Watch Josephine Decker and Zefrey Throwell Document Their Relationship in Trailers for FLAMES
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Actors Josephine Decker and Zefrey Throwell make love in the bathroom. Film still from FLAMES. Photo by Ashley Connor.[/caption]
Here are the new trailers – red band and green band – for FLAMES directed by and featuring real-life couple Josephine Decker and Zefrey Throwell. Filmed over five years, FLAMES follows the couple from the white-hot passion of first love to the heartbreak of the bitter end.
Flames will World Premiere at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival on Thursday, April 20.
High on their intense connection, the pair of artists document their relationship’s every beat, from their adventurous sex life, to their performance art collaborations, to a spur-of-the-moment getaway to the Maldives. But when the romantic vacation doesn’t exactly go as planned, the now-former couple are left to decide what to do with their film-in-progress, and for these two filmmakers, the end of the relationship isn’t the end of the story.
As they continue filming, reconstructing what happened and where it all went wrong, lines begin to blur between what was real and what was “the film”—if there’s even a difference anymore. Equal parts performance piece and penetrating rumination on the way some relationships are never finished even after they end, FLAMES is an extraordinary docu-art hybrid- a raw nerve of a film that finds within its unique idiosyncrasies and eccentricities a universally affecting manifesto of heartbreak.
The Couple: Josephine Decker and Zefrey Throwell
Said to be ushering in a “new grammar of narrative” by The New Yorker, Josephine Decker aims to spark curiosity and wonder in audiences while delving into the ways we classify ourselves and others. Part of Time Warner’s 150 incubator, a recent Sundance Institute’s New Frontier Lab Fellow and one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film, Josephine Decker premiered her first two narrative features, BUTTER ON THE LATCH and THOU WAST MILD AND LOVELY, at the Berlinale Forum 2014. The films were listed #2 and #10 on The New Yorker’s Top Ten List of 2014, played about a hundred festivals around the world (including Torino, London BFI, BAM Cinemafest), won Sarasota Film Festival’s Independent Visions Award, Tangerine Entertainment’s prize for a rising female director and many other awards. Her third narrative feature, starring Molly Parker and Miranda July, is currently in post-production, and this fall, she incubated a dance-theater-film hybrid at Princeton University with butoh choreographer Vangeline. Interested in melding unconventional movement and dance into narrative film, Josephine spent a year in Pig Iron Theater’s Advanced Performance Training to learn theater-based techniques of collaborative writing. She is using that training to create Virtual Reality narratives, including one currently with Wolf Cinema in Berlin and another developed by Kaleidoscope VR, DevLab and The Sundance Institute. Zefrey Throwell is a NYC based artist who uses the mediums of film, performance, photography and painting to orchestrate his inquisitive perspective. 1000 car horn symphonies, a weeklong strip poker critique of modern economics, a massive food fight- Throwell’s projects have been featured in The New York Times, CNN, NPR, NBC, Artforum, Art in America, Artinfo and Modern Painters. Throwell has work in The Museum of Modern Art and other major collections. His films have shown at the Cannes Film Festival and other festivals around the world. He is currently directing three feature films and organizing the longest choir in history- a 10,000 opera singer project that stretches over the alps from Italy to Germany, as well as a 10 cruise ship symphony surrounding Miami Beach. Throwell’s latest feature film “Flames” will premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in April 2017.Red Band Trailer
Green Band Trailer
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Alex Gibney’s NO STONE UNTURNED Pulled from Tribeca Film Festival
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NO STONE UNTURNED – Alex Gibney[/caption]
The producers of Academy Award-winningAlex Gibney’s No Stone Unturned has withdrawn the film from the upcoming 2017 Tribeca Film Festival citing outstanding legal issues. The film was to have its World Premiere on Sunday April 23.
The documentary takes a look back to 1994, in Loughinisland, Northern Ireland where six men were gunned down and five wounded in a pub while watching a World Cup soccer match. With a police investigation that was perfunctory at best, the case remained unsolved. In this film, Gibney reopens the original case to investigate why no culprit was ever brought to justice.
In a statement, the festival said, “We were notified today from the producers of Alex Gibney’s No Stone Unturned that there are outstanding legal issues surrounding the film and they will need to withdraw the documentary from the Festival. We are very disappointed that audiences will not be able to see the film at Tribeca and we know Alex is equally disappointed that his film will not have its world premiere at the Festival.”
The festival has removed the film from the website and refunded the customers who have purchased tickets.
The producer Trevor Birney, Fine Point Films said in a statement, “We are bitterly disappointed that as a result of ongoing legal issues relating to the subject matter of the film, No Stone Unturned (Director: Alex Gibney) is not yet ready to be screened at Tribeca 2017. No one will feel this disappointment more than the families at the centre of the film, whose quest for justice has been both inspiring and unstinting these last 23 years. It is our deepest hope that these sensitive issues can be resolved as soon as possible so that we can share this important film with the world.”