Award-winning filmmaker Athina Rachel Tsangari, along with newly appointed Berlinale Artistic Director Carlo Chatrian, and Variety International Film Critic Jessica Kiang will serve as the jury for the 2019 Toronto Platform Prize at the Toronto International Film Festival. An award of $20,000 CAD will be presented to the best film in the Festival’s Platform program.
AFI DOCS has revealed its full slate of films for the 2019 festival with women dominating selections – 68% of slate features female producers, and 48% directors. The 17th edition will showcase 72 films representing 17 countries and runs June 19 to 23 in Washington, DC, and Silver Spring, MD.
This year’s fifth annual Mammoth Lakes Film Festival (MLFF) will close out with Tribeca Film Festival’s documentary darling, XY Chelsea on Sunday, May 26. The film takes a look at the life and career of Chelsea Manning, a trans woman solider in the United States Army, who was sentenced to serve 35 years at an all-male military prison for leaking information about the country’s was in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The World Premiere of Claudia Myers’ Above the Shadows starring Olivia Thirlby, Alan Ritchson, Jim Gaffigan and Megan Fox will kick off the 2019 Brooklyn Film Festival (BFF) on Friday, May 31st. Over the course of the 10-day festival, the film lineup for the 22nd edition: THE GATHERING will showcase 133 features and shorts from over 30 countries spread over all continents, except Antarctica.
British actor and director Ralph Fiennes will receive the CineMerit Award at the 2019 Munich International Film festival (Filmfest München). The festival will also screen the German premiere of his new film The White Crow, which Fiennes has both directed and starred in, playing the part of renowned Leningrad ballet master Alexander Pushkin.
Rohena Gera’s Sir which opened 19th New York Indian Film Festival won the prize of Best Film at the festival, along with the award of Best Actress for Tillotama Shome. The award for Best Documentary Feature went to Sindhustan directed by Sapna Bhavnani. Ritesh Batra won the Best Director prize for his latest film Photograph starring Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Sanya Malhotra which Amazon Studios will release in U.S. theaters starting this Friday, May 17.
Mountainfilm’s 2019 festival takes place May 24 to 27, showcasing some 150 documentaries. Films include Changing the Game, a masterfully told story of three transgender high school athletes navigating the complex world of sports and gender; Any One of Us, a heart-rending film about a professional mountain biker recovering from a devastating spinal cord injury; The Weight of Water, which chronicles blind kayaker Erik Weihenmayer’s inspiring attempt to kayak the Grand Canyon and 17 Blocks, an astonishing verité documentary that follows a Washington, D.C., family over two decades as they wrestle with addiction, loss and hope.
Montclair Film Festival announced the winners of the 2019 film competitions with MONOS, directed by Alejandro Landes awarded the festival’s Fiction Feature Prize and HONEYLAND, directed by Ljubomir Stefanov and Tamara Kotevska, took home the Bruce Sinofsky Award in the festival’s Documentary Feature Competition.
Disability activist and filmmaker Jason DaSilva will premiere When We Walk the follow-up to his 2013 documentary When I Walk, at the 2019 Human Rights Watch Film Festival in New York City on June 14, 2019. The second film in the ‘When They Walk’ trilogy confronts the U.S. Medicaid system and new personal challenges; Filmmaker Jason DaSilva explains the disparity between the different states and national healthcare crisis as he tries to be closer to his son who lives 2,000 miles away.
The 23rd American Black Film Festival (ABFF) announced the 2019 lineup of narrative features, documentaries and short films in competition. Films will screen in Miami from June 13 to 15 at the Regal Cinemas South Beach and the New World Center.
Open Roads: New Italian Cinema returns to Film at Lincoln Center for the 19th edition offering audiences a diverse and extensive lineup of contemporary Italian films, from June 6 to 12.
Ant Timpson’s directorial debut Come To Daddy, starring Elijah Wood, has been added to the lineup for The Overlook Film Festival 2019 as the weekend’s Centerpiece Film Presentation, alongside newly added film Girl On The Third Floor starring wrestling superstar CM Punk, virtual reality from Alexandre Aja. The Festival also revealed the feature and short film juries.