Breaking Point: The War For Democracy in Ukraine, from three time Oscar® winning director Mark Jonathan Harris, is described as a powerful and intimate look at the war and revolution in Ukraine through the eyes of ordinary people who risked their lives to create a more democratic, equitable, and independent country. The documentary opens in theaters on March 2nd in New York and March 9th in Los Angeles, with additional cities to follow.
Breaking Point is the dramatic and inspiring portrait of people willing to give up their private, normal lives to unite in a collective effort to bring the rule of law and democracy to their country. Their battle to wrest power from the autocrats and plutocrats who control their governments is a struggle that is being waged around the world, from the Mideast to America. The outcome affects not only the future of Ukraine, but the future of democracy throughout the world.
The principal characters are a children’s theater director, a doctor, a rabbi, a TV journalist, an investigative reporter, and a lawyer turned medic and her soldier husband.
Their lives were transformed by the tumultuous, three-month revolution on the Maidan, which ended in the death of 123 protestors and the flight of corrupt President Viktor Yanukovych.
When Russia retaliated by annexing Crimea and invading eastern Ukraine, the subjects went to war to defend and remake their country. The film depicts this intense and on-going struggle, which has so far killed 10,000 Ukrainians and displaced 1.9 million refugees.
Director Mark Jonathan Harris is an Academy Award® winning documentary filmmaker and Distinguished Professor in the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California. Among the many documentaries he has written, produced and/or directed are Huelga!, the landmark film about Cesar Chavez and The Redwoods, which won an Oscar® for Best Short Documentary and helped establish a redwood national park in 1968. The Long Way Home, a film he wrote and directed about the period immediately following the Holocaust, won the Academy Award® for Best Feature Documentary in 1997; and Into The Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport, which he also wrote and directed, won the Academy Award® for Best Feature Documentary in 2000 and was selected by the U.S. Library of Congress for inclusion in its National Film Registry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15KbznNoFSI
Films
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Documentary BREAKING POINT: THE WAR FOR DEMOCRACY IN UKRAINE Opens in Theaters on March 2nd | Trailer
Breaking Point: The War For Democracy in Ukraine, from three time Oscar® winning director Mark Jonathan Harris, is described as a powerful and intimate look at the war and revolution in Ukraine through the eyes of ordinary people who risked their lives to create a more democratic, equitable, and independent country. The documentary opens in theaters on March 2nd in New York and March 9th in Los Angeles, with additional cities to follow.
Breaking Point is the dramatic and inspiring portrait of people willing to give up their private, normal lives to unite in a collective effort to bring the rule of law and democracy to their country. Their battle to wrest power from the autocrats and plutocrats who control their governments is a struggle that is being waged around the world, from the Mideast to America. The outcome affects not only the future of Ukraine, but the future of democracy throughout the world.
The principal characters are a children’s theater director, a doctor, a rabbi, a TV journalist, an investigative reporter, and a lawyer turned medic and her soldier husband.
Their lives were transformed by the tumultuous, three-month revolution on the Maidan, which ended in the death of 123 protestors and the flight of corrupt President Viktor Yanukovych.
When Russia retaliated by annexing Crimea and invading eastern Ukraine, the subjects went to war to defend and remake their country. The film depicts this intense and on-going struggle, which has so far killed 10,000 Ukrainians and displaced 1.9 million refugees.
Director Mark Jonathan Harris is an Academy Award® winning documentary filmmaker and Distinguished Professor in the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California. Among the many documentaries he has written, produced and/or directed are Huelga!, the landmark film about Cesar Chavez and The Redwoods, which won an Oscar® for Best Short Documentary and helped establish a redwood national park in 1968. The Long Way Home, a film he wrote and directed about the period immediately following the Holocaust, won the Academy Award® for Best Feature Documentary in 1997; and Into The Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport, which he also wrote and directed, won the Academy Award® for Best Feature Documentary in 2000 and was selected by the U.S. Library of Congress for inclusion in its National Film Registry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15KbznNoFSI
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“Unbanned: The Legend of AJ1” Tells True Story of the Original Air Jordan | Trailer
Including unfiltered interviews with fashion, sports, music and pop culture icons, the documentary film Unbanned: The Legend of AJ1 tells the true story and features first-hand personal experiences around the irreverent shoe that powered its way into our culture and changed the world. Unbanned: The Legend of AJ1 was written and directed by Dexton Deboree, co-founder of the award-winning creative agency, Los York and would be in limited theaters and available digitally on July 13, 2018.
“The AJ1 is more than a shoe. It’s a symbol of a much greater meaning across genders, race, geography and time. Now more than ever, what this shoe represents, its impact on society and its role in really creating, defining and redefining a lot of our modern culture makes it a story that has to be told,” said Writer-Director Dexton Deboree.
Unbanned: The Legend of AJ1 explores the dynamic journey of the Air Jordan 1 from its unlikely beginnings to its role in disrupting long-established rules of the NBA, changing the game of basketball, birthing sneaker culture and influencing a social and cultural revolution. Highlighting icons from across the cultural spectrum – including Spike Lee, Anthony Anderson, Michael B. Jordan, DJ Khaled, Lena Waithe, Kenya Barris, Jason Sudeikis, NBA stars Carmelo Anthony and Russell Westbrook, hip-hop legend Chuck D, as well as rising stars Gizzle, Christian Combs, and Kid Ink, and many more – the film takes a raw and riveting look at a movement that so heavily shaped the culture in which we live.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p79nXVeyj4s
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Guy Maddin, Evan & Galen Johnson’s New One-Take Short ACCIDENCE Premieres at 68th Berlin International Film Festival | Trailer
The new one-take short Accidence from Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson, will receive its world premiere on Tuesday 20th February, 2018 at the 68th Berlin International Film Festival.
Accidence is based on music composed by Ensign Broderick, an enigmatic experimental songwriter from Toronto, Canada. The song, officially titled “Accidence PSA,” is found on his forthcoming album Feast of Panthers, to be released on March 9, 2018. To illuminate his unique creative process, Ensign Broderick recently shared two alternate versions of the song as an accompanying Triptych.
In a deadly and maddeningly endless loop of crime and punishment, Accidence explores the narrative potential of the mundane architectural projection. In Maddin’s words, “Every balcony is a poem, a chant — a muscle! But whoever lives with that extra blueprint luxury of a balcony lives on the wrong side of a cross-section, on the busy, narrative-addled side of something like an ant-farm window, a brazen architectural arrangement selling cheap peeks into the naked sideshows of the quotidian — even the grisly. Step right up! Behold! A ten story wall of solid twitching muscle!”
Based on the metaphor that we are each our own victims, each of us the worst perpetrators of our own worst traumas, and each the most tireless prosecutors of the crimes we commit against ourselves, Accidence follows the nightmarish cycle of a man who hurls to his death a doppelganger of himself from an apartment balcony, and is then pursued by a detective who is yet another doppelganger. The perpetrator is pursued from apartment to apartment, to the homes of his parents, and of his girlfriend, flats where he seeks sanctuary from persecution. By the end of the film, the perpetrator joins his victim in death as he is hurled from the balcony by his lookalike pursuer of justice, who promptly considers himself a perp, and who is promptly dogged by yet another lookalike agent of justice. And endless loop of crime and punishment is thus established. Everyone else living in the apartment block, at least those visible out on their balconies, is also caught in their own personal loops of varying activities. We all live in loops, each of us condemned to repeat ourselves in essential ways.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xV0pK6BerHw
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Sony Pictures Classics to Release Rupert Everett’s THE HAPPY PRINCE
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Rupert Everett in The Happy Prince[/caption]
The Happy Prince, written and directed by, and starring Rupert Everett, which has its European premiere this weekend at the Berlin International Film Festival as a Special Gala, has been acquired by Sony Pictures Classics for release in the US. Sony Pictures Classics is planning a 2018 release.
The film which also stars Colin Morgan, Edwin Thomas, Colin Firth, Emily Watson and Tom Wilkinson, had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January.
The last days of Oscar Wilde—and the ghosts that haunted them—are vividly evoked in Rupert Everett’s directorial debut. Everett gives a career defining performance as Wilde, physically and emotionally embodying the literary genius as he lives out his last days in exile in Europe. His body ailing and heavy, his mind spinning, he survives by falling back on the flamboyant irony and brilliant wit that defined him. As the film travels through Wilde’s final act and journeys through England, France and Italy, desire and loyalty face off, the transience of lust is laid bare, and the true riches of love are revealed.
“I am absolutely thrilled, particularly because Michael and Tom distributed my first film Another Country,” said Everett.
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VIDEOS: Watch 2 New Clips from Raoul Peck’s THE YOUNG KARL MARX
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The Young Karl Marx (Le jeune Karl Marx)[/caption]
The Orchard has released two new clips from THE YOUNG KARL MARX, celebrated Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck’s first film since the Oscar®-nominated documentary I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO. A fervently intelligent chronicling of the blood, sweat and debate that went into the creation of a manifesto and a movement, the film premiered at the 2017 Berlin International Film Festival.
Timed to the anniversary of the original publishing date of The Communist Manifesto, The Orchard will open THE YOUNG KARL MARX theatrically on Friday, February 23rd in New York and Los Angeles, with a national rollout to follow.
At the age of 26, Karl Marx (August Diehl; INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, THE COUNTERFEITERS) embarks with his wife Jenny (Vicky Krieps; PHANTOM THREAD) on the road to exile. In 1844 Paris they meet young Friedrich Engels (Stefan Konarske), son of a factory owner and an astute student of the English proletariat class. Engels brings Marx the missing piece to the puzzle that composes his new vision of the world. Together, between censorship and police raids, riots and political upheavals, they will preside over the birth of the labor movement, which until then had been mostly makeshift and unorganized. This will grow into the most complete theoretical and political transformation of the world since the Renaissance – driven, against all expectations, by two brilliant, insolent and sharp-witted young men.
The Meeting
Critical Critique
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COMING SOON: Josh Hutcherson, Suki Waterhouse and Tilda Cobham-Hervey to Star in Mike Gan’s PLUME
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JOSH HUTCHERSON, SUKI WATERHOUSE AND TILDA COBHAM-HERVEY[/caption]
Josh Hutcherson (The Hunger Games franchise) , Suki Waterhouse (Assassination Nation, The Bad Batch) and Tilda Cobham-Hervey (Hotel Mumbai, 52 Tuesdays) will star in the upcoming film, Plume, written and directed by Mike Gan.
A contained thriller reminiscent of Compliance mixed with a female-centric Nightcrawler, PLUME follows a lonely, unstable gas station attendant Melinda (Tilda Cobham-Hervey), tired of being overshadowed by her more confident, outgoing co-worker Sheila (Suki Waterhouse). When the gas station is held at gunpoint by Billy (Josh Hutcherson), a desperate man in need of quick cash, Melinda finds an opportunity to make a connection with the robber, regardless of who gets hurt.
The film marks the feature debut for writer/director Mike Gan. Gan previously gained recognition in the genre filmmaking community for his acclaimed short No Evil, which premiered at festivals around the world including TIFF Creative Minds and Palm Springs ShortFest.
“I am beyond ecstatic for the opportunity to work with such a talented trio of actors in Josh, Suki and Tilda,” commented Mike Gan. “I’m a huge fan of their work, and feel they’re perfectly suited to bring the characters of Melinda, Billy, and Sheila to life.”
Josh Hutcherson is known for his lead roles in The Hunger Games franchise, The Disaster Artist and Hulu Original Series Future Man. Suki Waterhouse next stars in several anticipated upcoming films including Sundance hit Assassination Nation, Detective Pikachu with Ryan Reynolds, and Jonathan with Ansel Elgort, and is also known for her roles in The Bad Batch and Insurgent. Rising star Tilda Cobham-Hervey is most known for her roles in 52 Tuesdays and The Kettering Incident, and next stars in Hotel Mumbai opposite Armie Hammer and Dev Patel.
Production of Plume will commence later this month.
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Film Society of Lincoln Center Announces Lineup for 23rd Rendez-Vous with French Cinema
Barbara Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, the celebrated annual series showcasing the variety and vitality of contemporary French filmmaking, returns to the Film Society of Lincoln Center for the 23rd edition, from March 8 to 18, 2018, with 24 diverse films on display.
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See Trailer and Poster for Tunisian Film BEAUTY AND THE DOGS. Opens in Theaters on March 23rd
Oscilloscope Laboratories has dropped the trailer and poster for BEAUTY AND THE DOGS from Tunisian director and screenwriter, Kaouther Ben Hania. The film which world premiered at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival will open theatrically on March 23rd, in NYC at Landmark 57 West; in LA at the Nuart.
When Mariam, a young Tunisian woman, is raped by police officers after leaving a party, she is propelled into a harrowing night in which she must fight for her rights even though justice lies on the side of her tormentors. Employing impressive cinematic techniques and anchored by a tour-de-force performance from newcomer Mariam Al Ferjani, Kaouther Ben Hania’s BEAUTY AND THE DOGS tells an urgent, unapologetic, and important story head-on. A rare, startling film from a female Tunisian director, it’s a striking critique on a repressive society and a forcefully feminist rallying cry.
Director and screenwriter Kaouther Ben Hania was born in Sidi Bouzid (Tunisia). Following film studies at the Ecole des Arts et du Cinéma in Tunis, she studied scriptwriting at La Fémis in Paris. She has a Research Masters in Film and Audiovisual Studies from the Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdAGBnOyGyo
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See the Stunning Trailer and Poster for Tribeca-Winning Medieval Fantasy NOVEMBER
November, the black metal-inspired medieval fantasy and Estonia’s official entry to the 90th Academy Awards, has released the stunning surreal trailer and poster. The film which won the award for Best Cinematography at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival will open theatrically in New York City on February 23rd, and in Los Angeles on March 2nd.
In this tale of love and survival in 19th century Estonia, peasant girl Liina longs for village boy Hans, but Hans is inexplicably infatuated by the visiting German baroness that possesses all that he longs for. For Liina, winning Hans’ requited love proves incredibly complicated in this dark, harsh landscape where spirits, werewolves, plagues, and the devil himself converge, where thievery is rampant, and where souls are highly regarded, but come quite cheap.
With alluring black and white cinematography, director Rainer Sarnet vividly captures these motley lives as they toil to exist – but is existence worth anything if it lacks a soul?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19QZy1YHL50
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See Trailer + Poster for LA Set Neo-Noir Thriller LOS ANGELES OVERNIGHT
Here is the the trailer and poster for Los Angeles Overnight, the directorial debut of filmmaker Michael Chrisoulakis which will launch a limited national, theatrical release on March 9 driven by Arena Cinelounge to be followed by a digital release through Freestyle Digital Media on March 20, 2018.
Inspired by the L.A. Modern Noir genre and populated with distinct and dynamic characters, Arielle Brachfeld (Consumption) stars in Los Angeles Overnight as Priscilla, a struggling actress who inherits a bevy of colorful villains after desperation drives her and her gullible boyfriend, a lovelorn mechanic (Azim Rizk, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk), to steal big from the Los Angeles underworld. No amount of preparation could ever prepare this actress for a blood-soaked role filled with seedy criminals and “hot loot.” Entirely shot in Los Angeles, the cast is appropriately peppered with titans of the Hollywood scene including Peter Bogdanovich, Sally Kirkland and recent CineAsia Lifetime Achievement Award recipient Lin Shaye.
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Tsai Ming-Liang’s VR Film THE DESERTED to Hong Kong Premiere at 2018 Hong Kong International Film Festival
The Hong Kong International Film Festival (HKIFF) will introduce the future of cinema to audiences – the Hong Kong premiere of Tsai Ming-Liang’s The Deserted, HTC’s first virtual reality (VR) Chinese language film. World-renowned Taiwanese master TSAI Ming-Liang and Golden Horse Award Best Leading Actor LEE Kang-Sheng will lead the Hong Kong audience through an unparalleled eye-opening VR experience, and share their thoughts and visions of this cinematic innovation in a Master Class.
Winner of the Golden Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival with Vive L’amour (1994), TSAI Ming-Liang has established himself as one of contemporary cinema’s most accomplished auteurs. In addition to bringing films into the art world, he has been constantly exploring multi-media and new technology in filmmaking. The Deserted, his debut VR work, is an attempt to break the established dichotomy of traditional cinema, and create an interactive film experience that blurs the lines between reality and creative expression.
The work is an elliptical tale of love, death and memory, starring LEE Kang-Sheng as a man recuperating from an illness in the mountains. Unable to communicate with his late mother or the female ghost next door, his only companion is a lone fish who swims with him in the bathtub. The Deserted offers a dreamlike 3D experience which immerses viewers in the construction of the scenes, and the characters’ personal journeys.
The 55-min piece is a milestone in Chinese language cinema and selected for the first-ever Virtual Reality competition at the Venice Film Festival. It received overwhelming response at the Golden Horse Festival, selling out all 13 sessions within seconds. The Deserted is supported by HTC VIVE, ZOTAC and the Academy of Film of Hong Kong Baptist University.
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See Trailer and Poster for OUTSIDE IN Starring Edie Falco and Jay Duplass
Here is the new trailer and poster for Lynn Shelton’s Outside In, starring Edie Falco, Jay Duplass, Kaitlyn Dever and Ben Schwartz, and written by Lynn Shelton and Jay Duplass.
The Orchard will release Outside In theatrically on Friday, March 30th, and on all digital platforms on Tuesday, April 3rd. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and will screen at the 2018 South by Southwest Film Festival next month.
After serving 20 years for the crime of essentially being in the wrong place at the wrong time, 38-year-old Chris (Jay Duplass) is granted early parole thanks largely to the tireless advocacy of Carol (Edie Falco), his former high-school teacher. As he struggles with the challenges of navigating the modern world as an ex-con, and with a fraught relationship with his brother Ted (Ben Schwartz), Chris ends up confessing his romantic love for Carol — a love that, given her marital status, Carol cannot reciprocate. Or can she? Carol longs for something her husband no longer provides. Meanwhile, Carol’s daughter Hildy (Kaitlyn Dever) befriends Chris, finding a kindred spirit in this awkward, tormented older guy.