The Los Angeles Film Critics Association (LAFCA) named Drive My Car directed by Ryûsuke Hamaguchi as Best Picture of the Year, along with Best Screenplay. Other awards went to Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) for Best Documentary along with Best Editing; and Best Film Not in the English Language went to Petite Maman.
Portland Critics Association honored David Lowery’s The Green Knight with the award for Best Picture at their first annual awards. Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog picked up the other top honors, winning the award for Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Actor for Benedict Cumberbatch.
The Phoenix Critics Circle awarded their top honor of Best Picture of 2021 to The Power of Dog, along with Best Director for Jane Campion, Best Actor for Benedict Cumberbatch, Best Supporting Actress for Kirsten Dunst and Best Score. Other awards went to Licorice Pizza for Best Comedy Film, Titane for Best Horror Film, Drive My Car for Best Foreign Language Film and Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) for Best Documentary.
Pebbles directed by P.S. Vinothraj is India’s official Oscar submission for Best International Feature Film at the 94th Academy Awards. In the film starring Chellapandi, Karuththadaiyaan, an alcoholic father embarks on a journey, dragging his young son along to fetch back his wife who had left him after his constant abuse.
SFFILM presented its SF Honors Award for achievement in filmmaking to Award-winning Director Joe Wright’s Cyrano, the 124-year old drama reimagined as a musical by Screenwriter Erica Schmidt, starring Peter Dinklage, Haley Bennett, and Kelvin Harrison Jr. The film screened to a live audience, in partnership with UAR and MGM, at San Francisco’s famed Roxie Theater. The SF Honors Award was presented to the filmmakers and cast virtually ahead of their participation in live post-screening Q&A.
Sony Pictures Classics will release The Duke, the dramedy film directed by Roger Michell and starring Academy Award® winners Jim Broadbent along with Helen Mirren, in theaters in New York and Los Angeles on March 25, 2022, before expanding in the following weeks. The film is currently playing at the Laemmle Royal in Los Angeles for a one-week awards qualifying run, which ends December 16th.
Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car, and Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir Part II took the top spots among films released in 2021 on Film Comment’s annual end-of-year survey. Of the films that screened at festivals worldwide but have not announced stateside distribution, Claire Simon’s I Want To Talk About Duras, Ted Fendt’s Outside Noise, and Kyoshi Sugita’s Haruhara-san’s Recorder received the top rankings.
Don’t Look Up, Adam McKay’s star-studded parody about the end of the world starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Jonah Hill, and many more, is the 2021 recipient of the SFFILM Sloan Science in Cinema Prize, an award that celebrates the compelling depiction of scientific themes or characters in a narrative feature film.
The Berlinale Retrospective “No Angels – Mae West, Rosalind Russell & Carole Lombard” postponed due to the pandemic will now be presented at the 72nd Berlin International Film Festival in February. The section’s 27 films were made during the heyday of the screwball comedy from 1932 to 1943, and each one showcases the distinctive style of its star. Ten of the movies will be shown with German subtitles.
Yellow Veil Pictures will release Sarah Adina Smith’s The Midnight Swim digitally on January 25th 2022, preceded by a special collector’s edition BluRay available for pre-order January 1st. This marks the first acquisition in an initiative for Yellow Veil to spotlight previously released independent genre films and filmmakers prime for re-discovery and impactful re-releases.
IFC Films released the official trailer for Clean, the revenge crime/thriller film starring Academy Award winning actor Adrien Brody (The French Dispatch, HBO’s “Succession,” The Pianist) that premiered at Tribeca Film Festival. Also starring in the film are Glenn Fleshler, Michelle Wilson, Richie Merritt, Chandler Ari DuPont, Mykelti Williamson, John Bianco, and RZA. Directed by Paul Solet, Clean opens in theaters and on VOD on January 28, 2022.
The Beaufort Film Society will present the Pat Conroy Lifetime Achievement Award to both John Bailey, immediate Past President of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences (AMPAS), and his wife Carol Littleton, past member of the AMPAS Board of Governors, at the 2022 Beaufort International Film Festival (BIFF). They will be the first-ever co-honorees of the award.