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The 59th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Kviff) will feature key Cannes Film Festival winners in its Horizons section and a selection of action and horror movies, both new and older, for its revamped Midnight Screenings program under the new name “Afterhours.”

In a lineup update unveiled on Friday, Kviff said it will this year screen more than 130 feature films in the picturesque Czech spa town of Karlovy Vary.

The Horizons lineup, which traditionally features highlights from the festival circuit of the past year, includes the likes of Jay Duplass’ The Baltimorons, Tom Shoval’s A Letter to David, Michel Franco’s Dreams, My Father’s Shadow by Akinola Davies Jr., Mary Bronstein‘s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, Ira Sachs’ Peter Hujar’s Day, Sergei Loznitsa’s Two Prosecutors, Jafar Panahi‘s Cannes Palme d’Or winner It Was Just an Accident, and fellow Cannes...

This episode reflects on how Brazilian and Portuguese cinemas serve as a bridge between Latin America and Europe.Rui Poças is an acclaimed Portuguese cinematographer best known for his long-standing collaborations with two key figures of contemporary Portuguese cinema: Miguel Gomes and João Pedro Rodrigues. Since working on their respective debuts—The Face You Deserve (2004) and O Fantasma (2000)—Poças has lensed such acclaimed films as Our Beloved Month of August (2008), Tabu (2012), The Ornithologist (2016), Will-o’-the-Wisp (2022), and most recently Grand Tour (2024), which won Best Director at Cannes Film Festival.His distinctive visual style has also shaped important works by leading voices in Latin America, Europe, and the US, including Zama (2017) by Lucrecia Martel, Good Manners (2017) by Juliana Rojas and Marco Dutra, Frankie (2019) by Ira Sachs, and The Rye Horn (2023) by Jaione Camborda.Rachel Daisy Ellis is a producer originally from England who relocated to Brazil in 2004. For over a decade, she has...

Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s Hot Milk, Ira Sachs’ Peter Hujar’s Day and James Griffiths’ The Ballad Of Wallis Island are among the 28 features programmed for the third edition of Malta’s Mediterrane Film Festival (June 21-29).

The festival has programmed 10 films in its main competition strand; with 12 out of competition titles; and six films in the environmentally-focused Mare Nostrum section.

Scroll down for the full list of titles

The festival will also present an honorary Golden Bee lifetime achievement award to UK producer Jeremy Thomas.

Thomas will participate in a masterclass conversation with Film London chief executive Adrian Wootton.

Other...

Mubi’s June 2025 selections have arrived, featuring the previously announced mammoth drop of David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks: Season 1 & 2 and Twin Peaks: The Return. Additional highlights include Trương Minh Quý’s acclaimed second feature Việt and Nam, plus films by Gregg Araki, Ira Sachs, Alain Guiraudie, and Michael Almereyda.

Luke Hicks said in his review of Trương Minh Quý’s Cannes and NYFF selection, “The opening shot of Việt and Nam, writer-director Trương Minh Quý’s sophomore film, is a feat of cinematic restraint. Nearly imperceivable white specs of dust begin to appear, few and far between, drifting from the top of a pitch-black screen to the bottom, where the faintest trace of something can be made out in the swallowing darkness. The sound design is cavernous and close, heaving with breath and trickling with the noise of running water. A boy incrementally appears, walking gradually from...

More than 350 film world figures, including Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon and Javier Bardem, have published an open letter on the eve of the Cannes Film Festival condemning “silence” over the deadly impact of Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza.

The letter, published on the website of France’s Libération newspaper on Monday evening, was headed “In Cannes, the horror Gaza must not be silenced”. It was addressed “For Fatem”, in memory of 25-year-old Gaza artist and photojournalist Fatima Hassouna.

The young woman was killed in an Israeli airstrike in mid-April just 24 hours after it was announced a documentary exploring her life in the Gaza Strip would world premiere in the Cannes. Ten of her relatives, including her pregnant sister, were killed in same strike.

“She was a Palestinian freelance photojournalist. She was targeted by the Israeli army on 16 April, 2025, the day after it was announced that Sepideh Farsi’s...

Actress and producer Alysia Reiner has signed with Fusion Entertainment.

Reiner is best known for playing Natalie “Fig” Figueroa on Netflix’s “Orange is the New Black,” earning a SAG Award as part of the ensemble.

On screen, she also appeared in the Oscar-winning “Sideways” and most recently was featured in Joanna Arnow’s critically acclaimed “The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed,” which premiered at Cannes and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award.

Her television portfolio includes over 150 episodes and performances in series including five seasons of FX’s “Better Things,” two seasons of HBO’s “The Deuce,” “How to Get Away with Murder” opposite Viola Davis, two seasons of “Shining Vale” with Courteney Cox and Greg Kinnear, and Netflix’s political thriller “The Diplomat,” now filming its third season. Reiner also played Agent Sadie Deever in Marvel’s “Ms. Marvel.”

“Alysia’s body of...

Exclusive: Producer-writer-director Collin Curtis has officially launched Beverly Hills-based production company Caravanserai Pictures and revealed it is partnering with Buffalo 8.

Under the partnership, Caravanserai Pictures and distribution and production outfit Buffalo 8, a BondIt Media Capital company, will develop and package a slate of seven feature films, with in-house screenwriting and IP under Curtis’s creative direction.

“We are more than excited about our launch and partnership with Buffalo 8,” said Curtis. “We are inspired by their commitment to emerging talent, which aligns well with our culture.”

“Supporting independent filmmaking at this level is what Buffalo 8 is all about, and Caravanserai Pictures is exactly the kind of partner we want to be in business with,“ said Adam Harris Engelhard, Head of Production at Buffalo 8.

Curtis started building Caravanserai Pictures late last year with the aim of bringing together a diverse team of industry professionals. Its name reflects this desire, taking inspiration from...

Exclusive: Fusion Entertainment has signed actor and filmmaker Jack Haven (formerly known as Brigette Lundy-Paine) for management.

Haven recently garnered Gotham and Independent Spirit Award nominations for their role in Jane Schoenbrun’s feature, I Saw The TV Glow.

Best known for their breakout role as Casey Gardner in the hit Netflix series Atypical, Haven’s past credits also include Bombshell (2019), where they played Megyn Kelly’s anxious assistant, and Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020), portraying Billi Logan, Ted’s daughter, in the beloved sci-fi comedy franchise. They also appear in Gabriel Abrantes’ surrealist horror film, Amelia’s Children.

Haven recently completed their feature directorial debut, October Crow. They also serve as the creative director of art and fashion publication Waif Magazine.

“Jack Haven is an artist of remarkable depth and vision,” said Chris Evans, Co-Founder of Fusion Entertainment. “From their fearless performances to their innovative work as a filmmaker and creative director,...

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This April, Max is bringing you a lot of entertainment, from the highly anticipated return of the post-apocalyptic drama series The Last of Us to the streaming release of Nicole Kidman‘s erotic thriller film Babygirl. However, for the purposes of this article, we are only including the films that are coming to Max next month and have a 90% or higher Rotten Tomatoes score. So, check out the 5 best films coming to Max in April 2025 with a 90% or higher Rotten Tomatoes score.

Aftersun (April 1) Rotten Tomatoes Score: 95% Credit – A24

Aftersun is a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age drama film written and directed by Charlotte Wells. The 2022 film follows Sophie Patterson as she reflects on the last she took with her father at the age of 11-year-old at a fading resort. Sophie tries to come to terms with the image of her...

Fusion Entertainment has signed actor and producer Sophie von Haselberg for management. Von Haselberg is the daughter of Bette Midler and has performed in television, film, and theater. Her notable appearances on TV and streaming include roles in several Ryan Murphy productions including “Pose,” “Versace: American Crime Story,” “American Horror Story” and “Halston.”

She made her feature film debut in Woody Allen’s “Irrational Man” and went on to appear in Sony Pictures Classic’s “Equity.” She recently starred in the romcom “Love…Reconsidered” from Carol Ray Hartsell and also starred in the one-woman film “Give Me Pity!” directed by Amanda Kramer.

Von Haselberg will next appear in Amanda Kramer’s “By Design,” Matthew Shear’s “Fantasy Life” and the short film “Poreless,” directed by Harris Doran. She also recently starred in the world premiere of Nathan Englander’s “What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank” at...

Films Boutique has acquired international rights to Ira Sachs’ Peter Hujar’s Day starring Ben Whishaw and Rebecca Hall.

Peter Hujar’s Day world premiered at Sundance and had its international premiere in the Berlinale’s Panorama section.

The film marks the second collaboration between Berlin-based Films Boutique and Ira Sachs after 2012’s Keep The Lights On.

Sbs, a regular collaborator of Ira Sachs, was involved in Peter Hujar’s Day on the sales side at an early stage. Sideshow and Janus Films acquired North American rights just before Berlin.

Peter Hujar’s Day is based on a recorded conversation in 1974 between photographer Peter Hujar,...

If you have never heard about the Luxembourg City Film Festival before, it may surprise you to know that the biggest annual film event in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, which is surrounded by France, Germany and Belgium, is turning 15 this year.

Long considered a hidden gem on the global fest circuit, the event has steadily gained in stature, routinely attracting big industry names to a country with a population of only around 670,000. Just take last year as an example, when the fest set an attendance record with a 10 percent increase to 19,962. For its 2024, LuxFilmFest, it attracted the likes of Viggo Mortensen, Chinese director Wang Bing, Mauritanian director Abderrahmane Sissako, French director Gaspar Noé — who hosted a retrospective and a masterclass — and a jury that included Luxembourg star Vicky Krieps, German actor Sebastian Koch, and U.S. director Ira Sachs.

For this year’s 15th edition, which kicks off on Thursday,...

Juliette Binoche, Pedro Almodóvar and Mohammad Rasoulof have joined a campaign in support of persecuted Iranian filmmakers Maryam Moghadam and Behtash Sanaeeha.

The wife and husband directorial duo have been in the crosshairs of Iran’s authoritarian Islamic Republic regime since 2023 over their feature film My Favourite Cake, which world premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in 2024.

The heartwarming story of love and loss revolves around 70-year-old widow, played by Lily Farhadpour, who reconnects with life’s small pleasures in the face of solitude, following her husband’s death.

The Iranian authorities are unhappy with the film because it flies in the face of their sexist, draconian laws around what women should wear and how they should act, with the protagonist seen without a hijab head covering, sharing a drink with a suitor and dancing.

The Islamic Republic government slapped a travel ban on Moghadam and Sanaeeha, preventing any travel for the last two years,...

Ira Sachs has a sneaky way of building a rapport between his co-stars.

“He does this thing where he introduces the two actors, usually at a cafe or restaurant, and then he just leaves you so you’re forced to talk,” Ben Whishaw tells The Hollywood Reporter about the American filmmaker. The British star was plunged into this exact scenario with fellow Brit Rebecca Hall — the pair are starring in Sachs’ Peter Hujar’s Day, getting its international premiere in the Berlinale’s Panorama section.

“We just talked for hours at this diner in New York, and it was so nice,” recalls Whishaw, star of Black Doves, Paddington and the James Bond franchise. “It sounds like it could be a horrible thing, but it was a lovely thing. You end up going beyond the politeness of what you might just do if you met each other on a film set.

Ben Whishaw isn’t averse to juggling multiple and very different projects, but even he admits there was a point last year when things reached near farcical levels.

Around the same time he was shooting Netflix’s pulpy spy thriller series “Black Doves,” playing a contract killer with a conscience alongside Keira Knightley, he was recording the voice of Paddington Bear for the marmalade lover’s latest family adventure, “Paddington in Peru,” while also rehearsing for his lead role in a new West End adaptation of Samuel Beckett’s bleak tragicomedy “Waiting for Godot.”

“And all in one week! It was one of the strangest gear switches ever,” he says, speaking to Variety from his apartment in East London during a rare and brief period of rest for one of the U.K.’s most in-demand talents. “But it is nice to inhabit so many different worlds.”

Whishaw’s latest...

Whishaw is not tested by this verbatim retelling of Hujar’s day in hip 1970s New York, recounting encounters with Ginsburg, Burroughs and Leibowitz

Peter Hujar was a brilliant photographer and stylish gay man of the 1970s and 80s, associated with Andy Warhol and Robert Mapplethorpe and part of a hip New York coterie of artists and intellectuals. In 1974, he took part in a kind of documentary nonfiction project undertaken by author Linda Rosenkrantz, in which he simply came to her apartment and recounted into a tape machine everything that happened to him on a certain day.

The tape is lost, but the typescript survived, published three years ago as Peter Hujar’s Day and now filmed by director Ira Sachs as a verbatim-cinema chamber piece entirely within Rosenkrantz’s apartment, sometimes in different rooms or pensively up on the roof looking out at the skyline, shot to make it...

Every so often, a film needs to remind us that the rules aren’t really rules. Sure, it’s probably a bad idea to make a film that consists entirely of two characters in an apartment talking, especially if one guy does 95 percent of the talking. But if that guy is played by Ben Wishaw in a career-best performance, you might end up with a gem.

Writer/director Ira Sachs adapted Peter Hujar’s Day from a transcript of a 1974 interview with photographer Hujar by writer Linda Rosenkrantz in her New York City apartment. Rosenkrantz planned to make a book featuring a series of artists recounting what they did the day before each interview. She never finished it, and the recording of the interview was lost. (She released a standalone book on Hujar’s day in 2021.)

Watching this transcript brought to life, it’s clear that Rosenkrantz was onto something with her concept.

When she was 16, Mala Emde liked to hang out in jazz bars and talk to strange men.

“I was a weird teenager,” says the German actress, now 28. “I think I was just scared of everything people my age were doing. There was something comforting for me in going to a jazz bar and talking to older, more experienced people about this music I knew nothing about.”

These days, when it comes to jazz, Emde can hold her own. In Köln 75, which has its world premiere on Feb.16 at the Berlin Film Festival as part of the Berlinale Special lineup, she plays the real-life Vera Brandes, another weird teenager with a taste for jazz bars. At 18, Brandes organized a concert in Cologne for jazz pianist Keith Jarrett. The recording of Jarrett’s totally improvised performance became the best-selling solo jazz album of all time and the best-selling piano recording ever.

The...

The Berlin Film Festival celebrates its 75th year with new leadership and fresh new cinema from around the world. New artistic director and former BFI London Film Festival leader Tricia Tuttle joins co-directors of programming Jacqueline Lyanga and Michael Stütz to help reposition the Berlinale’s profile among the great global film festivals and lure bigger-name filmmakers in the process.

That’s begun to pay off already this year, with new films from Germany’s own Tom Tykwer (supernatural opening night family drama epic “The Light”), Ira Sachs (“Peter Hujar’s Day”), Michel Gondry, Michel Franco (“Dreams”), Radu Jude (“Kontinental ’25”), Richard Linklater (“Blue Moon”), Hong Sangsoo (“What Does That Nature Say to You”), Lucile Hadžihalilović (“The Ice Tower”), and of course Bong Joon Ho (“Mickey 17”) sprinkled throughout the sections.

Meanwhile, Todd Haynes heads up the jury, which also includes filmmaker Nabil Ayouch, costume designer Bina Daigeler, actor Fan Bingbing,...

Exclusive: Fusion Entertainment has signed actor, writer, and director Mary Neely for management, Deadline has learned.

Neely rose to prominence during the Covid lockdowns with her viral reenactments of love duets from classic musicals. Singing both the male and female parts, her lip-syncs caught the attention of Lin-Manuel Miranda and Andrew Lloyd Webber and were named by The New York Times and The Washington Post as among The Best Theater of 2020.

Neely most recently completed production on 20th Century Studios’ untitled Bumble Movie opposite Lily James, Myha’la, Jackson White, and Dan Stevens, which is slated to premiere on Hulu in the U.S. and Disney+ in all other territories in 2025. She will also appear alongside Bob Odenkirk in Acting for a Cause’s rendition of Tommy Wiseau’s cult classic The Room.

Next month, Neely will see the SXSW premiere of Stars Diner, an indie TV pilot that she co-wrote...

“Peter Hujar’s Day” has found a home.

The film, written and directed by Ira Sachs and starring Ben Whishaw and Rebecca Hall, made its debut at the Sundance Film Festival, where it quickly became one of the most buzzed-about titles. On Tuesday, Sideshow and Janus Films revealed they have since acquired the North American rights for the film.

Sideshow and Janus Films are eying a fall theatrical release for the movie. Sbs is handling international sales for the film, with a deal negotiated by Sideshow and Janus Films with WME Independent. It will next screen at the Berlinale in Panorama.

“Peter Hujar’s Day” was produced by Jordan Drake and Jonah Disend, and co-produced by Fred Burle and Aaron Craig. The film is a Complementary Colors, Blink Productions & Primo Content Presentation in association with We Are Films & Materia Cinema, and a Jordan Drake & One Two Films Production based on the book...

“Peter Hujar’s Day,” which premiered at this year’s Sundance, has sold to Sideshow and Janus Films. It’s one of the few projects to land a buyer out of the festival so far.

Written and directed by Ira Sachs, “Peter Hujar’s Day” is set over a 24-hour period in December 1974 and centers on one conversation between photographer Peter Hujar (Ben Whishaw) and his close friend, writer Linda Rosenkrantz (Rebecca Hall), who recorded their talk for an art project. Hujar, who died of AIDS in 1987, only became celebrated as an artist after his death.

The film debuted in Park City to positive reviews, with Variety’s Owen Gleiberman calling it a “magical 1974 time capsule of a movie.” In his review, he wrote that “in its tiny-scaled staged-documentary way, ‘Peter Hujar’s Day’ is exquisitely done and arresting to watch.”

“Peter Hujar’s Day” will screen at the Berlin Film Festival before Sideshow...

Timothée Chalamet and Robert Pattinson were among the latest high-profile names confirmed this afternoon as attendees for this year’s Berlin Film Festival.

The pair were included this afternoon in an updated guest list shared by the festival.

Chalamet will attend for the German premiere of his Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown while Pattinson will debut his Bong Joon-ho flick Micky 17. Both films play in the Berlinale Specials sidebar.

Other confirmed guests include Conclave filmmaker Edward Berger who will present Tilda Swinton her Honorary Golden Bear. Jessica Chastain will hit the German capital with Michel Franco’s Golden Bear Contender Dreams, and Jacob Elordi will make the trip to Berlin for the world premiere of his Justin Kurzel series The Narrow Road to the Deep South.

Other celebrity guests confirmed today by the festival include Naomi Ackie, Rose Byrne, Toni Collette, Denis Côté, Marion Cotillard, Lars Eidinger, Mala Emde,...

Ira Sachs’s Peter Hujar’s Day is crafted out of just a tiny sliver of a fragment of New York’s mid-1970s culture scene. As part of a larger project, well-connected autofiction writer Linda Rosenkrantz asked her friend, photographer Peter Hujar, to come by her Yorkville apartment on December 19, 1974 and describe everything he did over the course of one day while she recorded him. Though she meant it to be a larger project, she was never able to make the recording into anything. But the written transcript of their conversation was discovered in 2019 and turned by Sachs into an engrossingly personal two-hander.

Peter Hujar’s Day simply consists of Hujar (Ben Whishaw) talking about his day and Rosenkrantz (Rebecca Hall) gently nudging him along, less as an interviewer and more as a curious friend. The only times that Sachs deviates from his formalist framing of this conversation is...

At its heart, Sundance is about discovery. Some of our brightest, biggest filmmaking stars — we’re talking Steven Soderbergh, Richard Linklater, Ava DuVernay, Paul Thomas Anderson, Lulu Wang, Ryan Coogler, Aubrey Plaza, Catherine Hardwicke, Todd Haynes, Tessa Thompson, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert Eggers, the Duplass brothers, Michael B. Jordan, Amy Adams, Elizabeth Olsen, Brie Larson, Lakeith Stanfield, Miles Teller, Anya Taylor-Joy, and many, many more — first rose to acclaim by bringing their work to Sundance.

In 2025, a year that was long-heralded as one all about new discoveries, that tradition only continued. While this year’s lineup included a number of returning names, like Ira Sachs, Amy Berg, Andrew Ahn, Justin Lin, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, Cooper Raiff, Kahlil Joseph, Heidi Ewing & Rachel Grady, David France, Jesse Short Bull, Ryan White, Sophie Hyde, Jesse Moss & Amanda McBaine, Meera Menon, and Clint Bentley, there were also a hefty number of newbies joining those filmmaking ranks.

Hot off their Academy Award nomination for Adapted Screenplay for Sing Sing, writing duo Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar are already premiering their next film, Train Dreams, this time with Bentley in the director’s chair. Although this literary film has some astounding visuals and impressive performances, it lacks the emotional resonance that one expects from the duo.

Train Dreams Review

Train Dreams is adapted from the novella of the same name by Denis Johnson, following a logger who works for the railroad as he drifts through life, experiencing love, loss, and progress. Although the novella was published in the early 2000s, it has the feel of the “Great American Novel” — a character-driven approach to life in the rustic America of the 20th century. And while Bentley and Kwedar may seem to be the perfect pair to approach such material on paper, it doesn’t quite translate as well as one would hope.

Recent years have seen many filmmakers take a less linear approach to the biopic, inviting audiences to learn more about the subject than a superficial understanding of their life events. Ira Sachs’s latest film, Peter Hujar’s Day, takes the slice-of-life genre to its extreme, delivering an experimental work that many may dismiss as uneventful but has many fascinating layers to unpack. In taking this unorthodox approach, Sachs helps audiences know more about Hujar and the world in which he worked than any simple biopic could.

Peter Hujar’s Day Review

Peter Hujar’s Day is, as the title implies, a narration of a day in the life of Peter Hujar, a gay portrait photographer who has recently become acclaimed for being the seminal figure he was despite the lack of recognition he received at the time. And because of this, the film — like its subject — is incredibly humble and minimalistic in nature,...

Among the features premiering this year at the Sundance Film Festival, there are none — on paper — simpler than Ira Sachs’s Peter Hujar’s Day. Arriving just two years after he premiered his Passages at the festival, Sachs reunites with actor Ben Whishaw for a picture that’s one 76-minute dialogue between two friends in a New York apartment in 1974. What’s more, that dialogue is not some dramatically sculptured theatrical two-hander building to third act epiphanies but, rather, a transcription of an actual conversation between art photographer Hujar and artist Linda Rosenkrantz, who was conducting interviews for a book in […]

The post “In a Way This Film Asks, What is Lost by the Virtual?” Ira Sachs on his Sundance-Premiering Peter Hujar’s Day first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Among the features premiering this year at the Sundance Film Festival, there are none — on paper — simpler than Ira Sachs’s Peter Hujar’s Day. Arriving just two years after he premiered his Passages at the festival, Sachs reunites with actor Ben Whishaw for a picture that’s one 76-minute dialogue between two friends in a New York apartment in 1974. What’s more, that dialogue is not some dramatically sculptured theatrical two-hander building to third act epiphanies but, rather, a transcription of an actual conversation between art photographer Hujar and artist Linda Rosenkrantz, who was conducting interviews for a book in […]

The post “In a Way This Film Asks, What is Lost by the Virtual?” Ira Sachs on his Sundance-Premiering Peter Hujar’s Day first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Two years after Ben Whishaw and director Ira Sachs came to the Sundance Film Festival together for the seductive and heartbreaking romantic drama Passages, they've reunited in Park City, Utah for another team-up. Their latest, Peter Hujar's Day, is a biographical adaptation of the book of the same name by writer Linda Rosenkrantz about the titular groundbreaking photographer, played by the Skyfall star, and his intimate conversations with Rosenkrantz (Rebecca Hall) about his run-ins with various literary and cultural icons and the realities of everyday life as an artist in New York City. However, this won't be their last time collaborating in a New York setting. During an interview with Collider's Steve Weintraub at our interview studio in the Rendezvous Cinema Center, they revealed their next project and teased that work would be underway very soon.

Sundance 2025 will be remembered as what’s probably the penultimate year that film festival calls Park City home, as well as the edition that gave us a body-horror rom-com (Irl couple Alison Brie and Dave Franco’s gloriously disgusting Together), an introduction to a major new triple-threat talent (Eva Victor’s Sorry, Baby), a pastoral look at the stoic 20th century everymen who made our country (Train Dreams), and a whole lotta music docs. But for us, this Sundance will always be the one where we got to eavesdrop on...

As the LGBTQ community continues to face threats to their safety and rights as equal American citizens, the cast and creatives of “Plainclothes” were quick to admit that things feel “terrifying” right now. But that’s what makes their film so important for others to see, they shared.

Having its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival this year, “Plainclothes” tells the story of a promising undercover police officer assigned to lure and arrest gay men, who defies those orders when he falls in love with a target. Starring “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” star Tom Blyth, Russell Tovey, Maria Dizzia and others, the film is set in the 1990s.

But stopping by TheWrap’s Sundance Studio presented by World of Hyatt, Tovey said that it unfortunately doesn’t feel like a story of the past.

“The world moves in circles, and you would hope that,...

“Peter Hujar’s Day” reunites writer-director Ira Sachs with his “Passages” star Ben Whishaw, and Sachs revealed at TheWrap’s Sundance Studio presented by World of Hyatt that his latest effort began while he was still making that searing 2023 relationship drama.

“I was working in Paris with Ben on ‘Passages,’ and I saw a book in a bookstore called ‘Peter Hujar’s Day,’ and it was a publication of a transcript of a conversation that took place in 1974 between the photographer Peter Hujar and his friend Linda Rosencrantz,” Sachs recalled. “I picked it up and read it in a cafe, and by the time I finished it, I thought this would be a really interesting project or film or a piece of art to make with Ben specifically.”

While Whishaw said he “enjoyed” the original transcript that Sachs gave him, it wasn’t until he actually saw how the filmmaker wanted to...

In the ever-shifting world of the biopic, a biopic can be many different things. It can be like a novel (if it covers someone’s entire life). It can have the more concentrated quality of a short story (if it’s set during one key period). On that score, you might say that “Peter Hujar’s Day” is the biopic as sonnet. The entire film takes place in one day — but more than that, it consists entirely of Peter Hujar (Ben Whishaw), the noted New York photographer of the 1970s and ’80s, having a rambling conversation with his friend, Linda Rosenkrantz (Rebecca Hall), in which he recounts everything he did the day before.

It seems that the two were collaborating on a project. Rosenkrantz instructed Hujar to write down everything that happened to him on Dec. 18, 1974, and to show up the following day at her apartment on 94th St. in Manhattan,...

In 2008, Ira Sachs got fired by his manager. The most indie spirited of independent filmmakers had refused to play the game for too long, and the bill had finally come due.

“I understood it in a way,” Sachs, more than a decade and a half-dozen features removed from that experience, says. “Because I was not entering the business, and his job was to facilitate the business of Hollywood, which was not what I was interested in doing. They were trying to get me jobs as opposed to what I was trying to do, which was produce my own work.”

For the record, Sachs thinks that he never would have gotten the gigs that his representatives wanted him to land. But the experience helped rethink his value in an industry that usually measures those things in terms of box office grosses.

“Before that, I thought I was kind of owed a career based on certain successes,...

Another January brings another Sundance Film Festival, where 87 feature films, six episodic projects, and more shorts will enter the fray to hopefully help shape the movie year that will be. A festival of that scope, with many first-time directors, can be tricky to navigate and parse, but IndieWire is here to help with 24 films we’re most anticipating. And a few of these we are lucky to have seen in advance.

Sundance this year is, of course, still in Park City, even as the nearly 50-year-old festival eyes potentially another location beginning in 2027, with Salt Lake City, Cincinnati, and Boulder as the contenders. Back in December when the lineup was unveiled, Sundance’s director Eugene Hernandez and lead programmer Kim Yutani gave us a peek at sales titles and possible breakout features to look out for. It’s ever helpful to have a guide to some of the must-see titles heading into snowy,...

The 2025 Sundance Film Festival kicks off this week in Park City, Utah, launching the first major festival of the year and one of the biggest markets for film. Sundance is, of course, home to a slew of independent films seeking distribution. It’s where movies like “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” “Call Me by Your Name,” “Fruitvale Station” and “Palm Springs” got their start, and this year’s lineup is chock-full of true indies looking for a home.

Below, TheWrap rounded up some of the buzziest titles for sale at this year’s festival.

Tonatiuh and Diego Luna appear in Kiss of the Spider Woman by Bill Condon (Sundance) “Kiss of the Spider-Woman”

Valentín, a political prisoner, shares a cell with Molina, a window dresser convicted of public indecency. The two form an unlikely bond as Molina recounts the plot of a Hollywood musical starring his favorite silver screen diva,...

New films from Richard Linklater, Michel Franco and Hong Sang-soo are among the competition highlights for the 75th Berlin International Film Festival, the world’s largest public film festival, which unveiled it full lineup today.

Linklater’s Blue Moon, a period drama about the final days of Lorenz Hart, half of the Rodgers & Hart songwriting team, will have its world premiere at the Berlinale, marking Linklater’s fourth time in Berlin competition. At his last go-around, with Boyhood in 2014, he walked away with the Silver Bear for best director. The feature, starring Ethan Hawke, Margaret Qualley, Bobby Cannavale and Andrew Scott, will be released worldwide by Sony Pictures Classics.

Berlinale regular, and four-time Silver Bear winner Hong Sang-soo returns with his latest intimate drama, What Does That Nature Say to You?; and Norwegian director Dag Johan Haugerud, whose feature Sex was an audience favorite at Berlin last year, is back with Dreams,...

The Berlin Film Festival’s 2025 Panorama section will launch with Welcome Home Baby, a psychological horror film from Austrian director Andreas Prochaska, leading a lineup of 34 films from 28 countries. The section head Michael Stütz unveiled the full program that addresses societal fractures, health systems, and democratic instability on Thursday.

Prochaska’s film reimagines the homeland horror genre as a response to 1950s German-language cinema. The selection continues its genre focus with the Norwegian body horror The Ugly Stepsister, Turkish political thriller Confidante, and Taiwanese gangster narrative Silent Sparks.

German productions hold a significant presence this year with six films. Mehmet Akif Büyükatalay presents the conspiracy thriller Hysteria, while five female directors bring new works. Debut features come from Nele Mueller-Stöfen with Delicious and Sarah Miro Fischer with The Good Sister. Ina Weisse reunites with Nina Hoss for Cicadas.

The documentary selections include Martina Priessner’s The Moelln Letters, examining the 1993 racist arson attacks in Mölln,...

The 2025 edition of the Sundance Film Festival is a little over a week away and it’s time for us to talk about movies that will be the talk of Sundance, movies that push the envelope of imagination and reality, movies that should not be missed and lastly underrated movies that are a must watch as well. The list below is not comprehensive and the goal is not to rank order any of the movies in this list. From films by critically acclaimed directors like Ira Sachs and Richard Linklater to actors like Benedict Cumberbatch, Diego Luna, Olivia Coleman, Dev Patel, Jennifer Lopez and Rose Bryne, the list also focuses on independent films by new exciting directors and filmmakers to look out for in the future. In no particular order, we are listing 25 feature films that are a must watch if you are planning to check out the festival.

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As cinema continues to evolve, 2025 is set to bring a diverse slate of films from acclaimed directors and exciting franchises. From Danny Boyle’s return to the 28 Days Later saga to Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, and Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme to Yorgos Lanthimos’ Bugonia, this year promises an eclectic mix of stories hitting theaters and streaming platforms.

Below is a comprehensive release calendar for 2025. While dates are always subject to change, we’ll keep this list updated with the latest information to make sure you don’t miss any of the biggest releases.

January

January 26 Rebuilding

Director: Max Walker-Silverman

Cast: Josh O’Connor, Meghann Fahy

After wildfires destroy his ranch, a cowboy named Dusty winds up in a Fema camp, where he reconnects with his daughter and ex-wife, finding a sense of community amid the tragedy.

January 27 Peter Hujar’s Day

Director: Ira Sachs

Cast: Ben Whishaw,...

There was a moment when “The Brutalist” could have gone into theaters unrated. It’s not like it hasn’t happened before this year — thank you, “Terrifier 3,” for opening in more than 2,500 theaters unrated and ultimately grossing over $53 million stateside — and the choice only would have fueled the publicity around the Brady Corbet-directed movie, were it to enter theaters sans the MPA imprimatur. Or, the theatrical kiss of death, an Nc-17, eliminating play from most major exhibition chains.

An unrated release looked possible, at least, when the full trailer premiered online December 10, less than two weeks out from opening, without the MPA seal. Sources told IndieWire that A24 was prepared to release the film unrated, while another said that the MPA just hadn’t screened the film until late last week. “The Brutalist,” IndieWire can confirm, ultimately received an R rating this week for “strong sexual content, graphic nudity,...

Dubai-based sales company Mad World has acquired worldwide rights to Maja Ajmia Zellama’s Têtes Brûlées, ahead of its world premiere at the Berlinale.

Parent company Mad Solutions has also taken distribution rights for the Middle East and North Africa on the film, which will play in the Generation 14plus strand of the festival in February.

The Belgian film centres on a 12-year-old girl named Eya who has to face the sudden death of her older brother Younès, with whom share shared an inseparable bond. As she grieves, Eya’s draws on her creativity, resilience and the support of Younès...

RadicalMedia and Dirty Dozen Productions are partnering on a documentary film about the Titan submersible disaster. Currently in post-production, the film is being directed and produced by Aron Arngrimsson.

The disaster occurred in June 2023, when a submersible on an expedition to view the wreck of the Titanic imploded, killing all five occupants.

The producers plan to release the film next year, with festival screenings to be followed by distribution across major platforms.

Dirty Dozen director Arngrimsson was present when the Titan set out on its last voyage. Arngrimsson, Stacey Reiss, Antti Apunen and Geoff Creighton are producing the film, with Louie Psihoyos,...

Tull Stories has picked up UK-Ireland rights to Victoria Mapplebeck’s documentary Motherboard from Autlook Filmsales.

Filmed over 20 years, Motherboard charts Mapplebeck from her surprise pregnancy through to her relationship with her son and her breast cancer diagnosis. Large portions of the film were shot on an iPhone.

The film had its world premiere at Cph:dox and later screened at the BFI London Film Festival.

Tull Stories is eyeing a summer 2025 release.

Mapplebeck previously won a Bafta TV award in 2019 in short form programme for Missed A Call, a documentary shot entirely on an iPhone and also chronicling her relationship with her son.

The Berlin Film Festival forges a new path next year with the first year under new artistic director Tricia Tuttle, who succeeds Carlo Chatrian and brings a background as a journalist and curator to the annual German showcase. This year’s festival runs February 13-23, and also in new positions this year are Jacqueline Lyanga and Michael Stütz, both serving as co-directors of programming.

With bigger announcements to come, the Berlinale unveiled its first wave of titles across the Panorama and Berlinale Special gala lineups on Tuesday. As previously announced, Tom Tykwer’s “The Light” is opening this coming 75th edition. Filmmakers getting a boost from today’s announcement include Denis Côté, Michel Gondry, and Ira Sachs, all bringing new films to the festival.

In the Berlinale Special lineup, German director Jan-Ole Gerster debuts the neo-noir thriller “Islands,” starring Sam Riley and Stacy Martin. Per the festival synopsis, in the film,...

The Berlin Film Festival has named the first dozen titles for its 2025 Panorama lineup, Berlin’s main sidebar, and there are a few familiar faces in the mix.

Berlinale regular Ira Sachs will return with Peter Hujar’s Day, starring Ben Wishaw and Rebecca Hall, a feature based on a 1974 conversation between photographer Hujar and his friend Linda Rosenkrantz, offering insight into the New York art scene. Canadian filmmaker and fellow Berlinale alum Denis Côté is back in Panorama with Paul, a documentary on a cleaner who uses his job cleaning homes and sharing his routines on social media to help combat depression and social anxiety.

Other Panorama titles announced Tuesday include Emilie Blichfeldt’s Danish horror feature Den stygge stesøsteren (The Ugly Stepsister), a dark twisted fairy tale, which will premiere in Sundance; Frelle Petersen’s Hjem kaere hjem, a social realist drama on the life of an elder...

Michel Gondry and Ira Sachs are among the headline filmmakers set to debut new feature works within the sidebar competitions at next year’s Berlin Film Festival.

The German festival announced the pair this afternoon as part of its first crop of confirmed titles.

Gondry will screen Maya, Give Me a Title in Berlin’s Generation sidebar. The festival’s website describes the film as Gondry’s “stop-motion love letter to his daughter Maya brings to life a poetic and amusing journey that invites you to dream and laugh.”

Also set for the Generation competition is Our Wildest Days (I Agries Meres Mas) by Greek filmmaker Vasilis Kekatos who is best known for his 2019 short film The Distance Between Us and the Sky, which won the Short Film Palme d’Or at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival. He also created the popular Greek series Milky Way.

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The Belin Film Festival has unveiled its Panorama lineup, including new works by Denis Côté, Ira Sachs, Michel Gondry and Shatara Michelle Ford, among others.

Sachs’ movie, “Peter Hujar’s Day,” stars Ben Wishaw and Rebecca Hall. Set for an international premiere in Berlin, the film portrays a 1974 conversation between photographer Peter Hujar and his friend Linda Rosenkrantz, set against the backdrop of the New York art scene of the time.

Côté’s film, “Paul,” is a documentary about a man struggling with depression and social anxiety who found refuge in serving women who invite him to clean their homes.

Gondry’s “Maya, Give Me a Title” is described by the festival as a “stop-motion love letter to his daughter Maya brings to life a poetic and amusing journey that invites you to dream and laugh.” It features the voice of “The Count of Monte-Cristo” star Pierre Niney.

Ford’s “Dreams in Nightmares,...

Rebecca Hall already has a busy 2025, with roles in new films for Ira Sachs and Peter J. Brooksd . But now Variety reports the actress adds a TV role to her upcoming projects, this one with Ryan Murphy. Hall will stars in Murphy’s new FX series “The Beauty” alongside the previously cast Evan Peters, Ashton Kutcher, Anthony Ramos, and Jeremy Pope.

Continue reading ‘The Beauty’: Rebecca Hall Joins The Cast Of Ryan Murphy’s Upcoming FX Series at The Playlist.