When Liberty Burns, an incisive look at Miami’s infamous 1980 race riots in Liberty City stemming from the fatal police beating of Arthur McDuffie, directed by Dudley Alexis, won the $30,000 Knight Made in MIA Feature Film Award, the most anticipated prize of the 37th edition of Miami Film Festival.
Documentary filmmaker Gordon Quinn, executive producer of the Oscar-nominated basketball documentary “Hoop Dreams,” has been diagnosed with coronavirus, reports Chicago Sun Times.
The Fever, directed by Maya Da-Rin and This is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection, directed by Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese are the winners of the 43rd Portland International Film Festival’s Future/future competition.
Following the cancellation of the Miami Film Festival last week, feature documentary film Los Últimos Frikis, which was scheduled to screen at Miami’s Tower Theater on Friday, March 13, will have its festival screening online instead, starting Wednesday, March 18.
SFFILM has announced the complete lineup for the 2020 San Francisco International Film Festival (originally scheduled for April 8–21), though the event itself was canceled due to growing safety concerns amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Cannes Film Festival has decided to postpone this year’s festival scheduled to take place May 12 to 23. The festival announced that it is considering options to preserve its running, the main one being a simple postponement, in Cannes, until the end of June-beginning of July, 2020.
Apple dropped the trailer for the documentary Beastie Boys Story, described as a live documentary feature film about the classic band. The documentary is a live extension of 2018’s Beastie Boys Book, a memoir that paid tribute to Yauch, who died of cancer in 2012.
Atlanta’s Missing and Murdered: The Lost Children, debuting Sunday, April 5 (8:00-9:00 p.m. ET/PT) on HBO, is a five-part documentary series offering an unprecedented look at the abduction and murder of at least 30 African American children and young adults in Atlanta between 1979 and 1981. Forty years later, with the official re-opening of the case by Atlanta’s Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, the series tells the inside story of this shocking tragedy, shedding new light on the horrific killings through interviews with those closest to the children and the investigation, as well as exclusive archival material. The series tracks the story from the initial disappearance and discovery of two murdered teenage boys to the fear that progressively gripped the city, ultimately building to the indictment and prosecution of 23-year-old Wayne Williams, revealing the rush to officially shut down the case and the continuing deluge of questions that remain unanswered.
Showtime released the trailer for the Emmy-winning documentary series VICE ahead of its premiere on Sunday, March 29 at 8 p.m. ET/PT. The 13-episode season will deliver immersive reporting from the frontlines of global conflicts, civil uprisings and beyond, tackling complex geopolitical stories from all corners of the globe.
Annie Silverstein’s Cannes drama BULL has been postponed and will now be released on VOD/digital on May 1, 2020. The film starring Rob Morgan (JUST MERCY, MUDBOUND, Stranger Things), Yolonda Ross (WHITNEY, The Chi) and Amber Havard screened in the Un Certain Regard section of 2019 Cannes Film Festival, earning rave reviews.
Maggie Griffin, the mother of comedian Kathy Griffin who was featured in the documentary Kathy Griffin: A Hell of a Story, has died at age 99.
The coronavirus, (COVID-19) pandemic is having a devastating impact on film festivals with many postponing or cancelling outright. Major festivals such as San Francisco International Film Festival and RiverRun International Film Festival have canceled, while others such as Richmond International Film Festival and Florida Film Festival have been postponed until the Summer or Fall.