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.
DocLands Documentary Film Festival hosted its annual DocPitch forum this past weekend and awarded director Chris Temple and editor Alejandro Valdés-Rochin with a $25,000 cash prize, provided by Project No. 9, for their documentary film currently in development, Five Years North.
Rooftop Films announced the feature films selected for 23rd Summer Series to run from May 17th to August 23rd. Films include Brittany Runs a Marathon, celebrated playwright Paul Downs Colaizzo’s Sundance smash that took home the fest’s U.S. Dramatic Audience Award; Tali Shalom-Ezer’s My Days of Mercy, starring Ellen Page, Kate Mara and Amy Seimetz; Mickey and the Bear, Annabelle Attanasio’s Montana-set drama starring Camila Morrone; Alex Thompson’s SXSW Audience Award winner, Saint Frances; Michael Tyburski’s strikingly unique Rooftop Filmmakers Fund grantee, The Sound of Silence, starring Peter Sarsgaard and Rashida Jones; Tom Cullen’s devastating directorial debut, Pink Wall, starring Tatiana Maslany and Jay Duplass; Premature, Rashaad Ernesto Green’s fresh portrait of New York love; Samantha Buck & Marie Schlingmann’s playfully irreverent Sister Aimee; and Jocelyn DeBoer and Dawn Luebbe’s suburban black comedy, Greener Grass.
Penélope Cruz will be all over the 67th San Sebastian Festival. The Spanish actress will receive the Festival’s important accolade, the Donostia Award – recognizing the career and contribution of great figures to the world of cinema since 1986, and her image is featured on the Festival poster.
Cine Las Americas International Film Festival (CLAIFF22) concluded on Sunday with announcements of the winners of the 22nd edition of the Festival. The evening’s ceremony was followed by a screening of the closing night film, the Peruvian box-office hit Don’t Call Me a Spinster (No me digas solterona) with writer and director Ani Alva Helfer in attendance.