News

Exclusive: The Manhattan Alien Abduction producer Story Films is expanding its team in the U.S. and UK.

The All3Media-backed indie has created a VP Development post in New York and brought in International Emmy-nominee Adnan Mohammed. As well as leading the development of all unscripted projects, Mohammed will spearhead further growth into the streamer market, focusing on limited series, feature documentaries and co-pro opportunities. He was recently development boss at October Films in the U.S. and was International Emmy-nominated for Waiting for Jasmin.

In the UK, Story has upped Executive Producer Unscripted Adam Hopkins to Head of Factual, overseeing the docs production slate and seeking to find crossover in the docs and drama teams, while Netflix’s Hell Camp: Teen Nightmare director Liza Williams has joined as EP. Williams won a BAFTA for The Yorkshire Ripper Files- A Very British Crime Story and worked with Story on Hell Camp.

“The Kitchen” co-director and co-writer Daniel Kaluuya and “Polite Society” writer-director Nida Manzoor are among the emerging talents recognized at the British Independent Film Awards’ (BIFA) New Talent categories.

Both have been longlisted twice, in the debut director and debut screenwriter categories. In all, 20 fiction and 15 documentary features have been longlisted in the four debut filmmaking categories. Nineteen first-time fiction feature directors, 17 first-time feature documentary directors, 17 first-time writers and 24 breakthrough producers have been recognized by BIFA voters this year.

BIFA Springboard, an annual program supporting second-time feature filmmakers will launch in early 2024. BIFA will reveal the Netflix-sponsored 2023 breakthrough performance longlist, which highlights British acting talent in their first significant role in a British feature film, on Oct. 24. The final five nominations in each category will be unveiled on Nov. 2. Winners will be revealed at the 26th BIFA ceremony on Dec. 3.

The Douglas Hickox Award (Best Debut Director) Sponsored By...

Eight films listed in three of the four categories.

Charlotte Regan’s Scrapper, Raine Allen-Miller’s Rye Lane and Molly Manning Walker’s How To Have Sex are among the 35 features on the British Independent Film Awards (BIFA) Filmmaker New Talent longlists for 2023.

The ceremony has released longlists for four awards: the Douglas Hickox Award (Best Debut Director), Best Debut Screenwriter, Best Debut Director – Feature Documentary (a new award for this year) and Breakthrough Producer.

Scroll down for the full New Talent longlists

Eight films have been longlisted in three of the four categories: Earth Mama, Femme, In Camera, Pretty Red Dress,...

The SXSW Sydney festival has set a 75-film screening schedule for its first edition. The selection skews heavily towards music, but is also distinctly international.

Headline titles include re-edited Talking Heads concert film “Stop Making Sense,” “Hot Potato: The Story of The Wiggles,” an exploration of iconic Australian musical act The Wiggles; drill rap documentary “Onefour: Against All Odds,” directed by Gabriel Gasparinatos; and the widely-acclaimed “Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus,” directed by Neo Sora.

“The first ever SXSW Sydney Screen Festival aims to platform the most exciting new voices, new forms and new ways of creating on screen. We hope to inspire our audiences and industry, by unwrapping the future of screen innovation as it emerges,” said Ghita Loebenstein, the festival’s head of screen. “Like our Austin counterparts, our festival presents global programming from leading creators, and our unique offer is this distinctive Asia Pacific lens. We also thematically lean...

“Accidents are very important,” the artist Peter Beard says, perusing a book of his photographs and collages during the opening shots of “That Summer.” He’s referring to a double-exposed Polaroid of Andy Warhol, but the same applies to “That Summer,” not to mention its mammoth predecessor, “Grey Gardens.” Fans of the now-iconic 1975 documentary by Albert and David Maysles will recall the Beales, otherwise known as Big Edie and Little Edie, the outsized mother-daughter duo with ties to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. “Grey Gardens” does not bother with the precise nature of that relationship, nor does it make clear how the Maysles gained access to the Beales in the first place, despite having a friendly rapport with their subjects.

It should not be surprising, then, to learn that the idea to film the Beales of Grey Gardens came from none other than Lee Radziwill, niece to Big Edie and kid sister to Jackie O.

“Grey Gardens,” the 1975 documentary about “Big Edie” and “Little Edie” Beale, two reclusive relatives of Jacqueline Kennedy, has become an uneasy sort of classic, spawning both a 2006 Broadway musical and a 2009 TV movie.

Albert and David Maysles, who directed “Grey Gardens,” had originally been hired as technicians by Lee Radziwill, Jacqueline Kennedy’s sister, who sought to make a film about memories of her father, “Black Jack” Bouvier. Radziwill wanted to interview Big Edie and Little Edie about Bouvier, and they shot four reels of footage before the project was abandoned and the Maysles brothers took over.

“That Summer” unearths or exhumes that original footage, and it is padded out by a prologue and conclusion with the artist Peter Beard, who had accompanied Radziwill on her initial trips to Grey Gardens, the crumbling estate that Big and Little Edie had occupied in isolation for 25 years.

Also Read: 'Grey Gardens...