Rooftop Films awarded seventeen cash and service grants to alumni filmmakers, including the Rooftop Films Water Tower Feature Film Grant, which was presented to director Anastasia Kirillova and co-directors Ru Kuwahata & Max Porter. Kirillova will receive $20,000 to help finish her film In the Shadows of Love, and Kuwahata & Porter will receive $10,000 to support their film Dandelion Seed.
Iyengar: The Man, Yoga, and the Student’s Journey, directed by award-winning filmmaker Jake Clennell, focuses on the life and teachings of B.K.S. Iyengar, widely considered to have been instrumental in popularizing yoga in the Western world. An Official Selection of the Vancouver International Film Festival, this illuminating documentary was made with the support and cooperation of B.K.S. Iyengar and the Iyengar family, the Iyengar Yoga National Association of the United States, and students and supporters worldwide.
From March 21st to 31st , the 33rd edition of BFI Flare: London LGBTQ+ Film Festival will showcase the best in contemporary global LGBTQ+ films, over 50 features, more than 80 shorts and a wide range of special events, guest appearances, club nights and much more.
Jan Haaken’s latest documentary feature, Our Bodies, Our Doctors will premiere at the 42nd Annual Portland International Film Festival on International Women’s Day – Friday March 8, 2019.
This year’s lineup for the 48th annual New Directors/New Films (ND/NF), March 27 to April 7, will introduce 24 features and 11 short films to New York audiences, with 15 films directed or co-directed by women, and 11 works by first-time feature filmmakers.
The 43rd Cleveland International Film Festival (CIFF43) will kick-off its 12-day run on Wednesday, March 27 with THE ETRUSCAN SMILE, a story of love and forgiveness. Produced by multiple Academy Award winner Arthur Cohn and co-directed by Mihal Brezis & Oded Binnun, thefilm follows the story of Rory MacNeil, an old-fashioned Scottish man who travels from his beloved and beautifully slow-paced home on Hebridean Island to seek medical treatment in fast-paced, high-tech San Francisco. Rory finds himself and his world transformed when he moves in with his estranged son and forms an unbreakable bond with his grandson. The film, based on the bestselling book, La Sonrisa Etrusca, by Jose Louis Sampedro, stars a bevy of acclaimed and talented actors including Brian Cox, Rosanna Arquette, Thora Birch, JJ Feild, Peter Coyote, and Treat Williams.
The Northwest Film Center revealed the 42nd Portland International Film Festival (PIFF 42) lineup. This year’s Festival begins on Thursday, March 7th and will run through Thursday, March 21st.
The 2019 Sun Valley Film Festival will open with the documentary David Crosby: Remember My Name with director A.J. Eaton attending, and close with the HBO documentary Running with Beto directed by David Modigliani. The festival will screen two world premieres documentaries Apollo: Missions to the Moon and Hostile Planet: Mountains.
The Writers Guild of America announced the winners of the 2019 Writers Guild Awards with the top film awards going to Bo Burnham for Eighth Grade for Original Screenplay, and Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty for Can You Ever Forgive Me?, based on the book by Lee Israel for Adapted Screenplay. Bathtubs Over Broadway, written by Ozzy Inguanzo & Dava Whisenant won the award for Documentary Screenplay.
Synonymes (Synonyms) by Nadav Lapid won the Golden Bear for Best Film at the 2019 Berlin International Film Festival. Based on his own experiences, Nadav Lapid explores the challenges of putting down roots in a new place.
When criminal court Judge Craig Mitchell starts a running club on LA’s notorious Skid Row and begins training a motley group of addicts and criminals to run marathons, lives begin to change. Directed by Mark Hayes, SKID ROW MARATHON follows Judge Mitchell and the members of the Midnight Mission Runners Club over a period of four years. The Judge, who suffers from a painful spinal condition, has been told by his doctors to stop running, but he chooses to ignore their advice. He needs the club and the balance it provides in his life, giving him the opportunity to change the world in a way that he can’t in his own courtroom. If club members stay clean, off the streets and out of jail, the Judge will take them around the world to run marathons. The runners fight the pull of addiction and homelessness at every turn. Not everyone crosses the finish line. Their story is one of hope, friendship and dignity.
On the final evening of Perspektive Deutsches Kino at 2019 Berlin International Film Festival, the Compass-Perspektive-Award 2019 for the best film was presented to the film Born in Evin by Maryam Zaree. The award is endowed with prize money, and as a trophy, the director received a real compass, which is intended to serve as symbolic orientation and show her the direction to take going into the future.