Sony Pictures Classics will release The Duke, the dramedy film directed by Roger Michell and starring Academy Award® winners Jim Broadbent along with Helen Mirren, in theaters in New York and Los Angeles on March 25, 2022, before expanding in the following weeks. The film is currently playing at the Laemmle Royal in Los Angeles for a one-week awards qualifying run, which ends December 16th.
Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car, and Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir Part II took the top spots among films released in 2021 on Film Comment’s annual end-of-year survey. Of the films that screened at festivals worldwide but have not announced stateside distribution, Claire Simon’s I Want To Talk About Duras, Ted Fendt’s Outside Noise, and Kyoshi Sugita’s Haruhara-san’s Recorder received the top rankings.
Don’t Look Up, Adam McKay’s star-studded parody about the end of the world starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Jonah Hill, and many more, is the 2021 recipient of the SFFILM Sloan Science in Cinema Prize, an award that celebrates the compelling depiction of scientific themes or characters in a narrative feature film.
The Berlinale Retrospective “No Angels – Mae West, Rosalind Russell & Carole Lombard” postponed due to the pandemic will now be presented at the 72nd Berlin International Film Festival in February. The section’s 27 films were made during the heyday of the screwball comedy from 1932 to 1943, and each one showcases the distinctive style of its star. Ten of the movies will be shown with German subtitles.
Yellow Veil Pictures will release Sarah Adina Smith’s The Midnight Swim digitally on January 25th 2022, preceded by a special collector’s edition BluRay available for pre-order January 1st. This marks the first acquisition in an initiative for Yellow Veil to spotlight previously released independent genre films and filmmakers prime for re-discovery and impactful re-releases.
IFC Films released the official trailer for Clean, the revenge crime/thriller film starring Academy Award winning actor Adrien Brody (The French Dispatch, HBO’s “Succession,” The Pianist) that premiered at Tribeca Film Festival. Also starring in the film are Glenn Fleshler, Michelle Wilson, Richie Merritt, Chandler Ari DuPont, Mykelti Williamson, John Bianco, and RZA. Directed by Paul Solet, Clean opens in theaters and on VOD on January 28, 2022.
The Beaufort Film Society will present the Pat Conroy Lifetime Achievement Award to both John Bailey, immediate Past President of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences (AMPAS), and his wife Carol Littleton, past member of the AMPAS Board of Governors, at the 2022 Beaufort International Film Festival (BIFF). They will be the first-ever co-honorees of the award.
The Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan (MMJCCM) announced the lineup for its 3rd annual Cinematters: NY Social Justice Film Festival, which will screen in person and virtually January 13–17, 2022. Building on the festival’s success over the past two years and the ongoing global conversations around racial and social justice, the festival will present impactful films and conversations exploring inequality, injustice, advocacy, and social responsibility through the lens of issues such as racial and economic discrimination, environmental justice, immigrants’ rights, and religious intolerance.
Keke Palmer and Common star in the dramatic thriller Alice, world premiering at 2022 Sundance Film Festival. The film marks the feature debut of Krystin Ver Linden (American Roulette) who was recently named one of Variety’s “10 Directors to Watch” for 2022. Vertical Entertainment and Roadside Attractions acquired the film, and set a theatrical release date of March 18, 2022.
Berlin International Film Festival confirmed the first films for the 2022 edition of the festival, including seven films for Berlinale Special, thirteen titles for Panorama, ten feature-length films and seven short films for Generation, and ten titles for the Forum.
Whistler Film Festival (WFF) and the Alliance of Women Film Journalists (AWFJ) announced the winners of this year’s AWFJ EDA Awards at the 21st edition of the Whistler Film Festival .
Film Forum in New York City will host a special presentation of MTV Documentary Films’ acclaimed short subject documentary Lynching Postcards: “Token of a Great Day” directed and produced by Christine Turner, during the week of Martin Luther King Jr. Day running between January 14th – 20th. Each screening will be free and open to the public, and director Christine Turner will appear for Q&As at select screenings over the MLK holiday weekend at Film Forum.