This year’s 54th Karlovy Vary IFF East of the West competition is showing eight world, three international, and one European premiere, with eight of the competing films being debuts. The opening film is Aga’s House, the feature-length debut by Kosovo director Lendita Zeqiraj, who authentically re-creates the vibrant world of the energetic female protagonists.
This year, Munich Film Festival will recognize the work of Danish documentary filmmaker Mads Brügger and world-renowned Cannes 2019 Palme d’Or winner South Korean writer-director Bong Joon-ho with two separate retrospectives. The two filmmakers will be bringing along their latest work: both Brügger’s true crime documentary “Cold Case Hammarskjöld” and Bong’s celebrated Cannes winner “Parasite” will have their German premiere in the CineMasters competition.
New York filmmaker Diana Peralta’s vibrant feature film debut, DE LO MIO, will World Premiere as the Closing Night film of BAMcinemaFest which runs June 12 to 23. A bittersweet family drama set in the Dominican Republic, DE LO MIO will screen at BAMcinematek on Saturday, June 22 at 7:30 pm.
The documentary competition at the 54th Karlovy Vary IFF will feature eight world and three European premieres. The selection includes Marc Schmidt’s In the Arms of Morpheus and Todd Douglas Miller’s Apollo 11, compiled using unique archival footage from the first mission to the Moon’s surface. The renewed festival interest in Chinese cinema is illustrated by two films about the transformation of Chinese society: While The Fading Village shows the decline of the countryside, Confucian Dream focuses on the urban population’s exaggerated return to traditional ways of life.
The 25th annual Palm Springs International ShortFest will showcase 369 films including 60 World Premieres, 25 International Premieres, 46 North American Premieres, 17 U.S. Premieres and 98 California Premieres. There are 60 curated programs, which will screen June 18-24, at the Camelot Theatres (Palm Springs Cultural Center) in Palm Springs.
Films from Chinese director Zhai Yixiang, Germany’s Jan-Ole Gerster and American director Martha Stephens are among the geographically diverse selections in the 54th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival main competition section.
Ondřej Provazník and Martin Dušek make their feature-film debut out of competition at the 54th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival with the world premiere of Old-Timers, the dramatic story of two aging former political prisoners who set out in a camper van with the goal of finding and killing the communist prosecutor who sent the nation’s elite to its death. Jiří Schmitzer and Ladislav Mrkvička excel in this unusual road-movie.
The 5th Annual Mammoth Lakes Film Festival (MLFF) announced this year’s juried and audience award winners with the top jury awards going to A Great Lamp for Best North American Narrative Feature, and to Best 17 Blocks for North American Documentary Feature. The Jury Award for Best International Narrative Feature went to Cat Sticks, and to Clean Hands for Best International Documentary Feature.
The feminist noir thriller #LIKE, written and directed by Sarah Pirozek, and starring Marc Menchaca along with Sarah Rich will premiere at the Brooklyn Film Festival on Saturday, June 1st.
As John Walker Lindh is released from prison, Showtime Documentary Films announced the production of DETAINEE 001, from Emmy(R) winning director Greg Barker (The Final Year, Sergio, Manhunt, Legion of Brothers). The film, which has been in production since 2017, gives the definitive account of Lindh’s story with never-before-revealed details from his legal case and unpacks challenging truths and shifting allegiances behind one of the most compelling and unresolved mysteries of the post-9/11 age. Lindh’s case set a precedent for how Americans caught up in the War on Terror were prosecuted, and the film examines how American military and justice systems have grappled with the two decades since his detention.
Netflix has acquired worldwide rights to Mati Diop’s award winning film Atlantics that premiered at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Grand Prix. Atlantics is Diop’s feature directorial debut and she is the first black woman ever to compete for the Palme d’Or.
25 nonfiction films from 12 countries are the latest Sundance Institute Documentary Fund and Stories of Change Grantees which includes unrestricted grants to films in the development, production, post-production and audience engagement stages, and is made possible by founding support from Open Society Foundations.