San Sebastian Festival is defending its decision this week to honor actor Johnny Depp with the Donostia Award, the festival’s highest honorary award at the upcoming festival. The festival while reiterating its “commitment to fighting inequality, the abuse of power and violence against women”also emphasized the “the presumption of innocence” noting that “Johnny Depp has not been arrested, charged nor convicted of any form of assault or violence against any woman.”
Actor Benedict Cumberbatch will receive this year’s TIFF Tribute Actor Award at the 46th Toronto International Film Festival.
Italian director and screenwriter Paolo Sorrentino will receive the prestigious A Tribute to… Award at the 17th Zurich Film Festival. Sorrentino will receive the honorary award on Wednesday, September 29, at the Gala Premiere of his new autobiographical film The Hand of God. The festival will also screen a retrospective of Sorrentino’s work.
The fourth season of the award-winning POV Shorts series debuts on September 6, 2021 on PBS and streaming online at POV.org with 13 new short nonfiction films packed into seven unique episodes. POV Shorts was named the ‘Best Short Form Series’ at the 36th annual IDA Documentary Awards.
The 20th edition of Nest, San Sebastian Festival’s international competition for shorts by film students, has selected fourteen films from Argentina, Brazil, China, Croatia, Denmark, France, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom and United States.
Horrible Imaginings Film Festival revealed the second wave of their 2021 lineup featuring five more films and five more short film blocks.
AFI FEST 2021 will open with the World Premiere of Netflix’s tick, tick…BOOM! directed by Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner Lin-Manuel Miranda in his feature directorial debut.
Toronto International Film Festival 2021 announced the full Platform competition lineup with Academy Award–nominated actor Riz Ahmed as head of the jury.
Greenwich Entertainment released the official trailer for Savior for Sale: da Vinci’s Lost Masterpiece? the documentary on the mysterious painting titled Salvator Mundi (The Savior of the World).
Kino Lorber will release the World War II thriller film Wife of a Spy directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Cure, Pulse, Tokyo Sonata). Winner of the Silver Lion (Best Director) at the Venice Film Festival, the film will open at the IFC Center in New York on September 17, and at Laemmle Royal (and other Laemmle theaters) in Los Angeles on September 24. Other cities will follow.
32 film including Cannes prizewinners Julia Ducournau’s Titane, Nadav Lapid’s Ahed’s Knee, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria, and Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World comprise the Main Slate of the 59th New York Film Festival (NYFF).
British actor Sir Michael Caine will be the special guest of the 55th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, and receive the Crystal Globe for Outstanding Artistic Contribution to World Cinema at the opening ceremony.