News

Indian auteur Anurag Kashyap has boarded Deepak Rauniyar’s “Pooja, Sir” as an executive producer, while Channel 4 has snapped up the film for the U.K. and Ireland.

The film debuted in the Venice Film Festival‘s Horizons strand competition earlier this year, and has subsequently played Hamburg and Busan, with the Mami Mumbai Film Festival up next. It is inspired by real events which took place in Southern Nepal during the 2015 race protests, involving the Madhesi community. In the film, when two boys are kidnapped in a border town in Nepal, Detective Inspector Pooja is sent from Kathmandu to solve the case. However, upon her arrival, the brewing political unrest and violent protests throw her off course, compelling her to seek help from Mamata, a local Madhesi policewoman. By putting aside systemic discrimination and pushing through everyday misogyny, the women attempt to solve the case.

The cast is...

Five years ago, New York-based filmmaker Jason Goldman was researching a possible documentary about animal sanctuaries and heard about Renee King-Sonnen, who had gone vegan a few years earlier, transformed her husband’s Texas beef cattle ranch into Rowdy Girl Sanctuary, and started advocacy work that received regular national media attention.

In a clip (see below) released in advance of the world premiere of Goldman’s “Rowdy Girl” at Hot Docs this weekend, King-Sonnen succinctly lays out the origin of her life-changing decision to visitors seated at her kitchen table: “I was seeing how my actions were contributing to violence and cruelty … I started having real issues that I was loving some animals and eating others.”

It’s the kind of sit-down-and-get-real conversation she’s been having for more than a decade and that has caught the attention of influential like-minded people such as music innovator Moby, who had previously...

Los Angeles non-profit The Film Collaborative has boarded Swedish director Tove Pils’ debut feature “Labor,” which is competing in the Nordic:Dox section at the Copenhagen Intl. Documentary Film Festival, Cph:dox.

The film follows Hanna, who leaves her family and girlfriend behind in her small Swedish hometown and travels to San Francisco to explore her sexuality in the city’s vibrant queer scene. She soon meets Chloe, a professional dominatrix, and Cyd, a trans man who works as an escort for gay men. Together with her new friends, she embarks on a journey that takes her further and further away from her life in Sweden.

“Labor” was shot over more than a decade, and one of the reasons it took them so long to put the film together was their concern for the protagonists’ anonymity and the effect it might have on their lives, Pils explains to Variety.

“The way people...

Blog Series Part 1 of 4: A Way of Life in Peril Film Festival Distribution in the Age of Covid-19 by Jeffrey WinterPart One: And So It Begins

This series is a must-read for indie filmmakers. It can also be found on The Film Collaborative’s Website which offers many more tools to filmmakers. Start here.

We would Love to hear from you as this Blog Series movies forward. Please email us with any comments or questions at festivals@thefilmcollaborative.org, or respond to the original social media posts on Facebook and Twitter. We will gather responses and plan to post a new blog on this topic every few days in the coming days and weeks.

Jeffrey Winter and Orly Ravid began The Film Collaborative as a non-profit to help indie filmmakers navigate the treacherous waters of distribution and festivals. Since beginning, Orly entered and graduated law school and has hung...