International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) announced the first confirmed titles for its 51st edition which takes place in Rotterdam from January 26 to February 6, 2022. The festival is planned as a physical event that celebrates the reunion of audiences, filmmakers, industry and press with a full festival program. As IFFR veterans including Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Tan Chui Mui return, there are world premieres for feature debuts by Alberto De Michele and David Easteal.
Netflix released the official trailer for 14 Peaks: Nothing Is Impossible set to world premiere at the upcoming 2021 DOC NYC film festival. In the documentary, Nepalese mountain climber Nirmal “Nimsdai” Purja in 2019, sets out to do the unthinkable by climbing the world’s fourteen highest summits in less than seven months. Following the premiere, the documentary, directed by Torquil Jones, will then debut on Netflix starting November 29th, 2021.
Whistler Film Festival (WFF) announced the full film lineup of 81 epic, bold and inspiring films, for its 21st edition with a hybrid offering of online and in-theatre screenings. 20 of 40 features and 25 of 41 shorts directed or co-directed by women or non-binary individuals.
Coinciding with the 25th anniversary of the recording of the landmark Cuban album “Buena Vista Social Club,” Cuban-American director Hugo Perez is set to premiere his latest feature documentary Omara on the life of Afro-Cuban singer and cultural icon Omara Portuondo in the Sonic Cinema section at the 12th edition of DOC NYC, taking place in-person and online from November 11-18, 2021. Notably, Perez will also have a second title in its world premiere at this year’s festival, the documentary Once Upon a Time in Uganda, co-directed with Cathryne Czubek.
The Calgary Underground Film Festival revealed the first look at the CUFF.Docs 2021 film lineup, as CUFF gets ready to celebrate its first in-person festival in two years. The 9th CUFF.Docs will take place from November 24-28 at Globe Cinema and Online.
The First Call by Angela Onuora won the prize for Best Feature Film and Subjects of Desire by Jennifer Holness won for Best Feature Documentary at the 2021 CineFAM Film Festival.
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.
