This year’s Palm Beach Jewish Film Festival opens today, Wednesday with Anita, an Argentine drama about an adult with Down syndrome lost in Buenos Aires after a terrorist attack; and ends December 12 with the Israeli film Jaffa, a film about how a family tragedy forces a young Jewish woman to reassess her interfaith romance with a Palestinian man.
The BigPond Adelaide Film Festival (BAFF) announced its 2011 slate of new screen works which have received funding through the Adelaide Film Festival Investment Fund (AFFIF) and will world premiere at the 2011 festival. The list includes three fiction and four factual features, three cross platform works and four short films.
The Palm Beach International Film Festival returns for 16th year, but it’s returning to its nine-day schedule after reducing to a budget-cutting five days in 2010, reports the Palm Beach Daily News.
The Bahamas International Film Festival (BIFF) announced that Academy Award® winner Alan Arkin ( Little Miss Sunshine, ) will be honored with the prestigious Career Achievement Award at this year’s Film Festival, taking place December 1-5 in Nassau. Arkin will be on hand for the tribute, with the special award presentation coming from actress Abigail Breslin, who received an Oscar® nomination for Best Supporting Actress starring alongside Arkin in Little Miss Sunshine.
The Santa Barbara International Film Festival, January 27 – February 6, will open the 2011 Festival with the film SARAH’S KEY. Already receiving critical acclaim across the world, the French film will make its U.S. premiere at the Santa Barbara Festival’s opening night event. The film stars Kristin Scott Thomas and is directed by Gilles Paquet-Brenner, both of whom are scheduled to be in attendance. Opening night will take place at the Arlington Theatre on Thursday, January 27, 2011.
French director Bertrand Tavernier’s ‘The Princess of Montpensier’ will be the closing film at the 41st International Film festival of India (IFFI) on December 2nd. The film which competed at the 63rd Cannes Film Festival is a French period romance drama and focuses on a young woman who is forced into marriage while in love with another man.
The 51st Thessaloniki International Film Festival will open on December 3rd with Danny Boyle’s “127 hours”. Boyle’s follow-up to his Oscar winning film “Slumdog Millionaire” is based on the book by Aron Ralston and tells the heroic adventures of the young climber Aron Ralston played in the film by James Franco.
Leonard Retel Helmrich’s Position Among the Stars, the film that opened the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, won both the VPRO IDFA Award for Best Feature-Length Documentary and the Dioraphte IDFA Award for Dutch Documentary. This is the first time ever at IDFA that a director has won the award for feature-length documentary twice: Retel Helmrich also won in 2004 with The Shape of the Moon.
The Dubai International Film Festival named American film icon and international social and political activist Sean Penn as its Western honoree for 2010. Penn, whose career spans nearly three decades, more than 45 films and notable successes as producer, director, actor and screenwriter, will accept the DIFF Lifetime Achievement Award at the Festival’s opening ceremony on December 12, 2010.
Winter’s Bone by Debra Granik was the big winner at the Stockholm International Film Festival Award taking the prizes for Best Film, Fipresci – The International Film Critics Prize for Best Film, and lead actress, Jennifer Lawrence, taking the best prize for Best Actress.
The 2nd Cheyenne International Film Festival (CIFF2) is scheduled for May 20 – 22, 2011 at the historic Atlas Theater in Downtown Cheyenne, Wyoming.
The Artivist Collective will announce the Artivist Award winners at the 7th Annual Artivist Film Festival. These awards honor those artists whose exemplary work in their community stands out as a shining example of one’s ability to change the world for the better. Actor Peter Fonda will accept the Artivist Award for Lifetime Achievement in Arts and Advocacy, Barbara Pyle will receive the award for Environmental Humanitarianism, and Avis Richards will receive the award for Community Advocate.