Award-winning filmmaker Athina Rachel Tsangari, along with newly appointed Berlinale Artistic Director Carlo Chatrian, and Variety International Film Critic Jessica Kiang will serve as the jury for the 2019 Toronto Platform Prize at the Toronto International Film Festival. An award of $20,000 CAD will be presented to the best film in the Festival’s Platform program.
Alfonso Cuarón’s ROMA added another two Awards to its growing list of accolades, winning the top prizes for Best Film and Best Direction at the 8th AACTA International Awards. Cuarón, who won the same two awards in 2014 for GRAVITY, now holds the record for the most AACTA International Award wins by an individual (a record previously held by Alejandro G. Iñárritu with three).
AARP The Magazine today announced the nominees for the 18th Movies for Grownups Awards, with A Star Is Born, BlacKkKlansman, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Green Book and Roma competing in the Best Picture/Best Movie for Grownups category.
The Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association voted the musical drama A STAR IS BORN as the best film of 2018. Rounding out the composite list of the top 10 films of the year were ROMA (2), THE FAVOURITE (3), VICE (4), BLACKkKLANSMAN (5), BLACK PANTHER (6), GREEN BOOK (7), IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK (8), EIGHTH GRADE (9), and CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME? (10).
The 30th annual Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF) will open with All is True directed by Kenneth Branagh on Friday, January 4, and close with Ladies in Black, directed by Bruce Beresford on Sunday, January 13. The Festival will screen 223 films from 78 countries, with a focus on cinema from France, India and Mexico, Premieres, Talking Pictures, Book to Screen, Special Presentations, FLOS: Foreign Language Oscar Submissions, Gay!La, Local Spotlight, Modern Masters, True Stories, World Cinema Now, a 30-film retrospective of selections from past festivals and more.
In All is True, Kenneth Branagh, Judi Dench and Ian McKellen star in Branagh’s intimate, revelatory portrait of William Shakespeare in the last act of his life. His career over, he returns to his home in Stratford-upon-Avon to encounter old ghosts, old loves, and his resentful family. Branagh is expected to attend.
Ladies in Black, set in Sydney in 1959, Oscar®-nominated writer/director Bruce Beresford takes us back to the heyday of glamorous upscale department stores, when a concierge met you at the door and clerks wore gloves. The film from Lumila Films stars Julia Ormond, Angourie Rice, Rachael Taylor, Ryan Corr, Shane Jacobson and Alison McGirr. Beresford, Ormond, Taylor and McGirr are expected to attend.
If Beale Street Could Talk[/caption]
The nominations were announced this morning for the 76th Golden Globe Awards, and films nominated for the top prize – Best Motion Picture Drama include BlacKkKlansman, If Beale Street Could Talk along with Black Panther, Bohemian Rhapsody and A Star Is Born. In the Best Foreign Language Film category, Capernaum (Lebanon), Girl (Belgium), Never Look Away (Germany), Roma (Mexico) and Shoplifters (Japan) will compete for the Golden Glob
The 76th Golden Globes will take place at International Ballroom of the Beverly Hilton on January 6th, 2019.
BlacKkKlansman[/caption]
The Favourite and Black Panther top the 2018 Los Angeles Online Film Critics Society (LAOFCS) nominations list with ten nominations each, followed by A Star is Born with nine and BlacKkKlansman with eight. Indie films were well represented with Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade scoring six nominations. and Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk scoring a total of five nominations including Best Supporting Actress.
The members of the Los Angeles Online Film Critics Society have also voted on some of the more underrepresented films this award season including Fox’s The Hate U Give, Focus Features’ Tully, Sony Pictures’ Searching, and Roadside’s Ben is Back, among several others.
“In a year where diversity and representation have been at the forefront of so many conversations, I believe that the LAOFCS nominations this year proves how much representation truly matters. There have been a lot of great films this year that have tackled important issues, so I am thrilled to see that reflected in our nominations,” added LAOFCS’ Scott Menzel.
In addition to the film nominations, the LAOFCS will also announce a few other awards including the recipient of this Trailblazer Award which was previously awarded to Jessica Chastain.
The Los Angeles Online Film Critics Society (LAOFCS) 2nd Annual Awards Ceremony will be held on January 9th, 2019, at the Taglyan Complex in Los Angeles.
DESTROYER Starring Nicole Kidman[/caption]
The 27th Whitaker St. Louis International Film Festival (SLIFF) will run November 1 to 11, and screen 413 films: 88 narrative features, 77 documentary features, and 248 shorts. The fest also will feature 14 special-event programs, including the closing-night awards presentation.
The festival will kick off on Thursday, November 1, with the local premiere of “Destroyer,” directed by former St. Louisan Karyn Kusama, who will attend the screening.
SLIFF will present the usual array of fest buzz films and Oscar contenders, including “3 Faces,” “Ash Is Purest White,” “Ben Is Back,” “Boy Erased,” “Capernaum,” “The Captain,” “The Chaperone,” “Cold War,” “Destroyer,” “Diane,” “Dogman,” “Everybody Knows,” “The Front Runner,” “Green Book,” “If Beale Street Could Talk,” “The Image Book,” “Little Woods,” “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” “Mapplethorpe,” “Non-Fiction,” “Shoplifters,” “Support the Girls,” “Transit,” “Vox Lux,” “Widows,” “Wildlife,” and “Zama.”
The festival will honor seven significant film figures with the annual awards: Joe Edwards and John Goodman with Lifetime Achievement Awards; Jason Reitman with a Contemporary Cinema Award
Jim Finn, Jane Gillooly, and Karyn Kusama with Charles Guggenheim Cinema St. Louis Awards; and Melanie Mayron with a Women in Film Award.
As part of the fest’s ongoing response to the Ferguson uprising, SLIFF again will feature a major stream of programming entitled Race in America: The Black Experience and offer a third edition of Mean Streets: Viewing the Divided City Through the Lens of Film and Television, which addresses the persistent issue of segregation.
Annapurna Pictures released the official trailer and poster for Destroyer starring an unrecognizable Nicole Kidman as an LAPD detective. Destroyer which is receiving rave reviews and considerable awards buzz, opens in theaters in New York and Los Angeles on December 25 before expanding in January.
Destroyer follows the moral and existential odyssey of LAPD detective Erin Bell who, as a young cop, was placed undercover with a gang in the California desert with tragic results. When the leader of that gang re-emerges many years later, she must work her way back through the remaining members and into her own history with them to finally reckon with the demons that destroyed her past.
The film is directed by Karyn Kusama, and also stars Sebastian Stan, Toby Kebbell, Tatiana Maslany, Bradley Whitford, Jade Pettyjohn, and Scoot McNairy.
ROMA[/caption]
The 21st SCAD Savannah Film Festival organized by Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) will screen a record total of 164 films; and will kick off on Saturday, October 27, with the Opening Night Gala Screening of Roma, directed by Alfonso Cuarón. The Centerpiece Gala will be If Beale Street Could Talk, written and directed by Barry Jenkins and starring festival honorees Stephan James and KiKi Layne. The festival will close on Saturday, November 3 with the Closing Gala Screening of Green Book, directed by Peter Farrelly and starring Viggo Mortensen and 2016 festival honoree Mahershala Ali.
The 2018 schedule includes Gala, Docs to Watch, Signature and Professional Competition screenings, along with Global Shorts Forum and “Wonder Women” forum highlighting female directors, producers, and below the line talent at SCAD’s historic theaters and industry-leading studios. New programming this year includes an Animation Corner, a TV Sidebar and a Shorts Spotlight. SCAD’s annual tribute to excellence in film has screened over 110 Oscar-nominated films; and has honored over 80 legendary actors, directors, producers, writers, and filmmakers.
Green Book[/caption]
The Mill Valley Film Festival (MVFF) will showcase a diverse lineup of 204 films with 45% of all film directed by women, for the 41st edition of the festival, from October 4 to 14, 2018. The Festival will open with a double header – the U.S. Premiere of A Private War, starring Rosamund Pike, and Green Book starring Mahershala Ali.
DESTROYER Starring Nicole Kidman[/caption]
Encompassing a mixture of oddball comedies, genre-bending kaleidoscopic dramas, entertaining crime capers, haunting ghost stories and nail-biting thrillers, the 62nd BFI London Film Festival revealed the ten contenders for the Official Competition, with 50% of the films from a female director or co-director.
The Festival will welcome as Jury President Academy Award-nominated director of ROOM (LFF Official Competition 2015), Lenny Abrahamson, whose long-awaited film adaptation of Sarah Waters’ horror novel THE LITTLE STRANGER will be released this September. For the first time, the winner of the Best Film will receive their Award in front of a public audience at a special screening on Saturday October 20th at Vue Leicester Square.
The 10 films in Official Competition are:
BIRDS OF PASSAGE sees co-directors Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra (Embrace of the Serpent, LFF 2015) return to the Festival with their latest offering – a sprawling, spiritual exploration of family conflict and tribal warfare, laced with heady symbolism and surrealist flashes. Set during the marijuana bonanza, a violent decade that saw the origins of drug trafficking in Colombia bear witness to the thrilling rise and fall of the indigenous Wayuu clan in remote Colombia. A mystical meditation on colonialism, tribalism and modernism.
Nicole Kidman is astonishing, and almost unrecognizable, in Karyn Kusama’s (The Invitation, LFF 2015) brooding thriller DESTROYER. Kidman plays Erin, a jaded police detective haunted by her past and still reeling from the trauma of her experience years later, who is forced to confront her demons in order to close the case that almost destroyed her. The film also stars Sebastian Stan, Tatiana Maslany and Toby Kebbell.
Alice Rohrwacher (The Wonders, LFF 2014) returns to the Festival with HAPPY AS LAZZARO. A delightfully singular time and genre-bending rumination on the fate of innocence when faced with corruption and greed. Set in rural Italy, this is the tale of Lazzaro, a beautiful peasant so sweet natured he is often mistaken for simple-minded. A magnificent blend of Italian class struggle, folk tales, biblical allegory and pop culture reference, Rohrwacher deservedly shared the Best Screenplay award at Cannes for this kaleidoscopic work.
The World Premiere of HAPPY NEW YEAR, COLIN BURSTEAD. is Ben Wheatley’s triumphant return to the Festival after Free Fire (LFF 2016). A poignantly funny and razor-sharp observation of English family dysfunction. Colin has rented a stately country home for his extended family’s New Year celebrations. He’s the centre of attention until his estranged brother David unexpectedly arrives, throwing the family dynamic far off orbit. Starring Joe Cole, Charles Dance, Mark Monero, Hayley Squires, Asim Chaudhry, Doon Mackichan, Bill Paterson, Neil Maskell and Sam Riley.
Peter Strickland (The Duke of Burgundy, LFF 2014) returns to the Festival with IN FABRIC, starring Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Gwendoline Christie. A haunting ghost story, laced with lashings of oddball humour and set against the backdrop of a busy winter sales period in a strange department store, it follows the life of a cursed dress as it passes from person to person, with devastating consequences.
JOY, directed by Sudabeh Mortezai (whose debut feature Macondo competed for the LFF’s Sutherland Award in 2014), presents a vital and hugely affecting drama that tackles the vicious cycle of sex trafficking in modern Europe. It follows the life of Joy, a young Nigerian woman, who works the streets to pay off debts to her exploiter Madame, while supporting her family in Nigeria and hoping for a better life for her young daughter in Vienna.
Iconic director Zhang Yimou presents SHADOW, set during China’s Three Kingdom’s era (AD 220-280). Blood spills in this visually stunning feature, as a great king and his people will be expelled from their homeland, with jaw-dropping combat scenes. Director Zhang presents mind-blowing visual design that revolutionises the colour palette, using water, calligraphy and graphic interpretations of yin and yang.
Academy Award© winner László Nemes follows up his critically acclaimed debut Son of Saul (Official Competition nominee LFF 2015) with his feverishly ambitious second feature, SUNSET. Set in 1913, nearing the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and on the eve of the First World War. Írisz Leiter is a hat maker who returns to Budapest years after her parents, respected milliners, sent her to be fostered under mysterious circumstances. A fugue-like meditation on the end of an empire; the brilliantly willful Írisz is our witness to the flickering innocence of a Europe about to be plunged into hell.
THE OLD MAN & THE GUN, directed by David Lowery, stars Robert Redford, in what will be his final big screen performance after recently announcing retirement. A brilliantly entertaining crime caper, based on the true story of Forrest Tucker, the self-styled ‘Houdini’ whose many audacious prison breaks included an Alcatraz flight in a homemade kayak, and whose last robbery was committed when he was 79. Offering bittersweet reflections on time and age, THE OLD MAN & THE GUN is a testament to a free-spirit who steadfastly refused to go quietly. The film also stars Sissy Spacek and Casey Affleck
TOO LATE TO DIE YOUNG is a woozily gorgeous evocation of life on the fringe of society. Set during the summer of 1990, after Pinochet’s fall, democracy has returned to Chile. Three youngsters drive up to a woodland commune below the Andes, where they idle the summer away while their parents debate the future. In their isolated community, Sofia, Lucas and Clara face their first loves and fears while building up for New Year’s Eve. Youthful desire, ennui and mischief have rarely felt so tangible. The film is directed by Dominga Sotomayor.