The 10th Anniversary edition of the San Pedro International Film Festival (SPIFF) taking place November 4-14 in San Pedro, Los Angeles, California, will once again celebrate the work of emerging filmmakers from around the world, both in-person and virtually.
Lissette Feliciano’s Women Is Losers won the jury prize for Best Narrative Feature (and a cash prize of $2,500) and Justin Monroe’s Holy Frit won the jury prize for Best Documentary Feature (and $2,500) at the 2021 Naples International Film Festival. Audience Awards went to Jonathan Keijser’s Peace by Chocolate (Best Narrative Feature), Christopher Chambers’ A Fire Within (Best Documentary Feature) and Maria Brendle’s Ala Kachuu – Take and Run (Best Short Film). Both feature films received cash prizes of $1,000 and the short film winner received a cash prize of $500.
The Worst Person in the World directed by Joachim Trier was awarded the Fiction Feature Prize and Flee, directed by Jonas Poher Rasmussen, took home the festival’s top Non-Fiction Competition prize at the 2021 Montclair Film Festival (MFF).
Kenneth Branagh’s critically acclaimed drama Belfast took home the Best Feature Film prize at the 2021 Twin Cities Film Fest. A semi-autobiographical portrait of childhood and working class family life in Northern Ireland during the tumultuous period of the late 1960s, the film stars Jamie Dornan and Caitriona Balfe.
Four Journeys, the lyrical and intensely personal debut feature by Louis Hothothot (Louis Yi Liu) will open the 34th edition of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA). A first-person narrative of a filmmaker born in China in 1986 as an “illegal” second child, Louis and his family suffered devastating consequences at the hands of the authorities, with painful reverberations still felt to this day. After relocating to Amsterdam in his twenties, the filmmaker returns home to reunite with his parents and sister after a five-year hiatus, where he attempts to disentangle his densely knotted family history. Unfolding as a soft and sorrowful stream of memories, absences, and lingering shadows, Four Journeys premieres at IDFA bearing the mark of a new documentary poetics to come—one laden with wonder, nuance, and spirit.
The 2021 Asian World Film Festival (AWFF) unveiled its Competition, Centerpiece, and Special Screenings slate. The closing night film will be South Korea’s official submission to the 2022 Academy Awards, Escape from Mogadishu. The AWFF, now in its seventh year, will take place November 1 – 11, 2021 at the Landmark Theater, West Pico Blvd., Los Angeles.
Napa Valley Film Festival (NVFF) revealed the recipients of the the “Napa Valley Filmmaker Awards” honoring some of this year’s leading talent at this year’s event taking place virtually November 10-14. Also, a new series of “Culinary Cinema Awards” will make its debut at this year’s festival paying tribute to remarkable achievements in storytelling devoted to food, wine, and spirits.
The Savannah College of Art and Design announced the award winners for the 24th annual SCAD Savannah Film Festival. In the professional competition, Best Documentary Feature went to Medicine Man: The Stan Brock Story, directed by Paul Michael Angell; and Best Narrative Feature went to The Falconer, directed by Adam Sjöberg and Seanne Winslow in addition to the Best Director honors.
Film at Lincoln Center announced the eighth edition of Art of the Real, the essential showcase for vital and innovative voices in nonfiction and hybrid filmmaking, from November 19-21, 2021. Aptly subtitled “Counter Encounters,” this year’s Art of the Real presents one feature and 41 shorts, and encompasses works by historical and contemporary filmmakers, artists, collectives, and communities. Their practices not only disturb classical ethnographic paradigms, but also reinvent an art of the real in itself.
At the 57th Chicago International Film Festival, the Gold Hugo in the International Competition went to Memoria, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s beguiling, beautiful film following a Scotswoman (Tilda Swinton) living in Bogotá haunted by a noise that only she seems to hear. Along with a young sound engineer, her search for the origin of the mysterious sound takes her to the interior of the lush Colombian jungle where past, present, and future blur.
Indie Memphis Film Festival 2021 announce the award-winners with top Jury Award prizes – Best Narrative Feature for Nana Mensah’s Queen of Glory (winner of $1K cash prize), Best Documentary Feature for Nadia Szold’s Larry Flynt for President (winner of $1K cash prize) and Best Hometowner Feature for Zachary Barr and Peter Mortimer’s Reel Rock: Black Ice (winner of $1K cash prize).
