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The 69th BFI London Film Festival (Lff), in partnership with American Express, has unveiled its full programme for 2025, promising an extraordinary celebration of world cinema from Wednesday 8 October to Sunday 19 October.

This year’s Festival opens with the International Premiere of Rian Johnson’s Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery and closes with the UK Premiere of Julia Jackman’s 100 Nights of Hero, cementing two of the year’s most talked-about titles as major Lff highlights.

Galas and Special Premieres

Among this year’s prestigious Gala presentations:

American Express Gala – Rental Family by Hikari, starring Brendan Fraser (UK Premiere).

Cunard Gala – Jay Kelly, Noah Baumbach’s star-studded...

The Toronto Film Festival gets underway Thursday with a couple of world premiere documentaries: John Candy: I Like Me, directed by Colin Hanks, and The Eyes of Ghana, directed by two-time Oscar winner Ben Proudfoot.

This is the 50th edition of TIFF, and it’s a big anniversary too for documentary programmer Thom Powers, who is celebrating his 20th anniversary with the festival. On the new episode of Deadline’s Doc Talk podcast, we welcome Powers for an in-depth discussion of the TIFF nonfiction lineup. A contingent of Oscar-winning and Oscar-nominated filmmakers will unveil new work at the festival – along with Proudfoot, there’s Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin with Love+War; Laura Poitras with Cover-Up, the film she co-directed with Mark Obenhaus about investigative journalist Seymour Hersh; Raoul Peck, who brings his Orwell: 2+2=5 to Toronto after a Cannes world premiere; Tamara Kotevska heads to TIFF for the North American...

The Amazon does not merely exist; it consumes. Aerial shots present it as an impenetrable green carpet, a static ocean of canopy that swallows light, sound, and wreckage with equal indifference. Into this primordial setting, Lost in the Jungle drops its audience without ceremony. The film documents the aftermath of a May 2023 Cessna crash deep within Colombian territory, an event that instantly erases three adults from existence.

The sole survivors are four Huitoto siblings, the eldest a girl of thirteen, the youngest an infant. What follows is not a simple story of being found. It is a chronicle of a 40-day ordeal, a meticulous account of the sprawling search operation,...

Real-life drama doesn’t get much more harrowing, or much more inspiring, than the story at the heart of Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin and Juan Camilo Cruz’s new documentary Lost in the Jungle, which showed at Telluride ahead of its September premiere on National Geographic.

In 2023, Indigenous Colombian Lesly Jacobombaire Mucutuy (aged 13 at the time) and siblings Soleiny (9 at the time), Tien (5) and Cristin (under a year) were on a plane headed to Bogota. It crashed somewhere in the Amazon, killing their mother and two other passengers, but the kids were Ok. Relatively.

The Colombian military sent a unit of commandos into the jungle, while regional tribes sent their own search party, all certain that even if the children hadn’t died in the crash, they would be unable to last for very long on their own.

Forty days later, Lesly and her siblings were found, alive. How had they survived?...

"I hope they're coming to rescue us..." National Geographic has debuted an official trailer for a fascinating rescue documentary film titled Lost in the Jungle, telling a remarkable true story just like the other doc The Rescue before. After a deadly plane crash strands 4 young siblings deep in the Colombian rainforest, a dramatic rescue mission unfolds, uniting Indigenous trackers and the military in a race against time. Four Indigenous siblings survived 40 days in Colombia's jungle after a plane crash in May 2023. The film shows their story through footage, recreations, and animation, highlighting Indigenous-military cooperation and traditional knowledge. This was also turned in the Netflix doc series The Lost Children already...

The four Indigenous children who survived a plane crash and endured 40 days alone in the Colombian Amazon are sharing their story for the first time in the new National Geographic documentary, Lost In The Jungle. The film comes from the Oscar-winning duo Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin (Free Solo) and Colombian filmmaker Juan Camilo […]

Children Who Survived 40 Days in Amazon Tell Their Story in Nat Geo’s Lost in the Jungle...

National Geographic Documentary Films’ Lost in the Jungle dives into the incredible rescue of children forced to survive on their own following a plane crash. Directed by Free Solo‘s Oscar-winning team Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin and BAFTA winner Juan Camilo Cruz (Venezuela: Country of Lost Children), Lost in the Jungle will stream on National Geographic on September 12, 2025 and on Disney+ beginning September 13.

National Geographic offers this synopsis: “After a deadly plane crash strands four young siblings deep within the Amazon, a dramatic rescue mission unfolds, uniting Indigenous trackers and the Colombian military in a race against time. For the first time ever, Lost in the Jungle offers the...

Today, National Geographic Documentary Films released the trailer and key art for Lost in the Jungle, from the award-winning directing and producing team of Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, and Emmy and BAFTA Award-winning filmmaker Juan Camilo Cruz.

For the first time, the four Indigenous children who survived the Colombian plane crash on May 1, 2023—and then endured 40 days alone in the jungle—share their extraordinary story of survival, told in their own words.

Award-winning producers Simon Chinn and Jonathan Chinn of Lightbox are producers alongside Guillermo Galdos of Pacha Films, Anna Barnes of Little Monster Films, and Mark Grieco.

Following its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival this weekend,...

Exclusive: One of the greatest stories of survival ever told will premiere at the Telluride Film Festival this weekend.

Lost in the Jungle, directed by Oscar winners Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, and Juan Camilo Cruz, will bow at the 52nd edition of Telluride before debuting on National Geographic on September 12, streaming on Disney+ the following day.

The documentary explores the incredible ordeal of four Indigenous siblings – ages 13, 9, 5, and the youngest just 11 months old – who went down in the crash of a Cessna aircraft in a dense and remote section of Colombia’s jungle in May 2023. The accident claimed the lives of their mother and the pilot, leaving the children to fend for themselves in an environment teeming with wild animals – predators included.

We have your first look at the film in the trailer above.

National Geographic

“I’m...

Telluride has announced its annual selection of films to play in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains and they include Noah Baumbach’s Venice entry Jay Kelly, as well as Cannes picks Urchin from Harris Dickinson, and Joachim Trier’s grand prize winner Sentimental Value.

The festival also brings first looks from Chloé Zhao’s TIFF-bound Hamnet with Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal,Aneil Karia’s Hamlet starring Riz Ahmed, Mary Bronstein’s Sundance hit If I Had Legs I’d Kick You featuring a career-best performance from Rose Byrne, and both Richard Linklater’s 2025 films Blue Moon from Berlinand Nouvelle Vague from Cannes.

Chloé Zhao’s “Hamnet,” Edward Berger’s “Ballad of a Small Player” and Scott Cooper’s “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere” are among the films that will premiere at the 2025 Telluride Film Festival, organizers announced on Thursday.

The festival begins on Friday in the Colorado mountain town, with the lineup traditionally kept under wraps until the day before screenings begin.

Documentaries screening at the festival include the premieres of two music-oriented docs — Morgan Neville’s “Man on the Run,” which chronicles the first decade of Paul McCartney’s post-Beatles career, and Ethan Hawke’s “Highway 99: A Double Album,” a three-hour-plus exploration of pioneering country singer, Merle Haggard. Ivy Meeropol’s “Ask E.

Exclusive: Some of the greatest documentary talents in the world will be descending on coastal Maine for the 21st edition of the Camden International Film Festival.

Ciff announced its lineup today ahead of the event running September 11-14, a roster featuring new work from Oscar winners Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin (Love+War); a masterclass with Oscar winner Alex Gibney and Oscar nominee Raoul Peck pegged to their collaboration on Orwell: 2+2=5, which Peck directed and Gibney produced; Nuestra Tierra, the first documentary feature from acclaimed Argentinian director Lucrecia Martel; the world premiere of Sama Waham’s multimedia personal essay Ki-Bé -Giš; the world premiere of Robert and June (and all the time in the world), a short directed by Jem Cohen, and much more. Scroll for the full lineup.

Andrea Gibson (left) and Meg Falley in ‘Come See Me in the Good Light’ Apple TV+

Ciff officially opens with the...

The Toronto International Film Festival unveiled the full documentary slate for the 50th edition of the festival, which will take place from Sept. 4-14.

The TIFF 50 Docs program features new films from highly acclaimed filmmakers, including Academy Award winners Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin (Free Solo), Ben Proudfoot (The Last Repair Shop), and Laura Poitras (Citizenfour), and Academy Award nominee Raoul Peck (I Am Not Your Negro).

The program will open with Proudfoot’s The Eyes of Ghana, which profiles influential Ghanian filmmaker Chris Hesse and is executive-produced by Barack and Michelle Obama. World premieres coming to TIFF as sales titles include: The Balloonists, directed by John Dower, capturing adventurers who set out to circle the globe in a balloon; A Life Illuminated, directed by Tasha Van Zandt, following marine biologist Dr. Edie Widder on a stunning journey to the ocean depths; Whistle, directed by Christopher Nelius, portraying a competition of champion whistlers; Nuns vs.

Updated to correct that The Eyes of Ghana is directed by Ben Proudfoot and produced by Proudfoot, Moses Bwayo and others. Earlier: Restaurateur and former Food Network queen Paula Deen could use a bit of good news right about now, and she’s getting it from the Toronto International Film Festival.

Little more than a day after Deen announced the abrupt closure of two of her restaurants – including her flagship The Lady & Sons venue in Savannah, Ga – TIFF announced it will host the world premiere of a new documentary about her, Canceled: The Paula Deen Story. The film directed by Billy Corben is expected to reevaluate the chef and entrepreneur, who saw her fortunes tumble over a decade ago when she admitted in a legal deposition that she had used a racial slur.

Paula Deen signs books during the 2015 Food Network & Cooking Channel South Beach Wine & Food Festival on February 22, 2015 in Miami Beach,...

World premieres of Free Solo co-directors Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s profile of photojournalist Lynsey Addario in Love+War and Tasha Van Zandt’s feature A Life Illuminated about oceanographer Edith Widder are among the TIFF Docs line-up announced on Wednesday.

The programme brings first looks of John Dower’s The Balloonists about circumnavigating adventurers, Lorena Luciano’s account of Catholic Church abuse in Nuns vs. The Vatican with Mariska Hargitay on board as executive producer, and Canadian filmmaker Nicole Bazuin’s sex industry film Modern Whore.

TIFF Docs will open with Canadian director Ben Proudfoot’s The Eyes Of Ghana,...

Twenty-three documentaries, including new works from the Oscar-winning directors Ben Proudfoot, Laura Poitras and Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, have been added to the lineup of the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival, TIFF organizers announced on Wednesday.

The TIFF Docs program will include 16 world premieres, beginning with “The Eyes of Ghana,” directed by Proudfoot, who has won Oscars for his short docs “The Queen of Basketball” and “The Last Repair Shop.” The film is executive produced by Barack and Michelle Obama. Other world premieres include “Love+War” from Vasarhelyi and Chin, who won the doc-feature Oscar for 2019’s “Free Solo”; “Nuns vs. the Vatican,” an examination of new abuse allegations inside the Catholic Church that was directed by Lorena Luciano and executive produced by Mariska Hargitay; “Canceled: The Paula Deen Story,” directed by Billy Corben; and “Whistle,” a Christopher Nelius film about a whistling competition.

“Cover-Up,” a film about investigative reporter...

Documentaries about journalists Seymour Hersh, Lynsey Addario, and the late Fatma Hassona are heading to the 50th edition of the Toronto Intl. Film Festival.

TIFF‘s Docs program gets underway Sept. 4 and will feature 23 feature docs from 18 countries. The program will open with the world premiere of two-time Oscar-winning filmmaker Ben Proudfoot’s “The Eyes of Ghana,” about 93-year-old Chris Hesse, a cinematographer who served as the personal filmmaker for Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah. Barack and Michelle Obama-led shingle Higher Ground executive produced the doc.

“The film is a love letter to filmmaking and the efforts of Chris Hesse to not only document a chapter of history, but also his work to preserve that footage,” said Thom Powers, lead TIFF documentary programmer.

Oscar-winning filmmaker Laura Poitras and co-director Mark Obenhaus’s “Cover Up,” about investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, will make its Canadian premiere at TIFF after a...

This year’s slate of 23 documentaries from 18 countries at the 50th Toronto International Film Festival is a melange of newsy subjects, rising directors, and potential Oscar contenders covering explorers, journalists, sex workers, activists, soldiers, and champion whistlers.

The TIFF Documentary Selection will open with two-time short documentary Oscar-winner Ben Proudfoot’s “The Eyes of Ghana,” a sales title which profiles the Ghanaian filmmaker Chris Hesse and is backed by executive producers Barack and Michelle Obama. “It is a celebration of the power of cinema,” TIFF documentary programmer Thom Powers told IndieWire via Zoom. “For 60 years, Hesse, who’s still alive in his nineties and documented the early days of the Africa’s independence movement, has helped to maintain the archive of his footage from all that time.”

This year’s nonfiction lineup, culled from a record 1,000 submissions, includes 16 world premieres, many of which are sales titles. Two high-profile docs are...

Oscar-winning director Ben Proudfoot’s The Eyes of Ghana, executive produced by Barack and Michelle Obama, is set to open the Toronto Film Festival’s Doc sidebar, organizers said Wednesday.

Nova Scotia-raised and L.A.-based Proudfoot won his two Academy Awards for his short documentary films The Queen of Basketball and The Last Repair Shop that impressed Oscar voters with their cinematic poetry and craft.

Now it has taken the Obamas’ Higher Ground Productions and Oscar-nominated documentary maker Moses Bwayo to convince Proudfoot to bring his emotional and immersive storytelling to the feature documentary with a portrait of Chris Hesse, the personal cinematographer for Kwame Nkrumah who reveals a vast library of lost films about the legendary African leader to modern audiences.

There’s no word on whether the Obamas will be in Toronto for the world premiere of The Eyes of Ghana, which also recounts the rise and fall of Nkrumah,...

Eruption, a volcano thriller from the late Michael Crichton, is moving at Sony Pictures with new screenwriters now hired.

The weekend box office of Jurassic World Rebirth suggests there’s a hell of a lot of life in dinosaurs yet. And just as the success of 1993’s Jurassic Park had Hollywood studios looking at some of the author’s other work, so history is repeating itself.

In the 1990s, following Jurassic Park, the mighty Congo finally lumbered out of development hell, and the movie Rising Sun came along as well. This time, Michael Crichton is no longer with us, but the book Eruption is one of several that’s been finished posthumously. James Patterson finished the story off, and the book was released last year.

It was just over a year ago that people began to circle the film rights, and Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarheyl (the pair who...

Author Michael Crichton passed away in 2008, but several of his novels have been published years after his death. Pirate Latitudes came along in 2009, Micro (which was completed by Richard Preston) followed in 2011, Dragon Teeth (originally written in 1974) was published in 2017, and last year brought the best-seller Eruption, which was completed by James Patterson. The book reached store shelves in June of 2024, and by the end of the month an Eruption film adaptation was set up at Sony, which secured the rights in a competitive auction, making a seven-figure deal. Free Solo directors Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi were on board to take the helm of the film – but now, Deadline reports that Chin and Vasarhelyi are no longer involved with the project. While the studio searches for a new director, Kaz Firpo and Ryan Firpo have been hired to write the screenplay.

Eruption follows a history-making volcano explosion that...

Exclusive: Following Jurassic World Rebirth‘s $322 million-plus global opening weekend, Sony has hired writers Kaz Firpo and Ryan Firpo to adapt Eruption, the No. 1 New York Times bestseller from Michael Crichton and James Patterson.

At the same time, we understand that the project, which Sony won in a competitive auction last summer in a major deal, is now an open directing assignment with Free Solo filmmakers Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi having exited.

Eruption, which Crichton started writing before his death in 2008 and which was completed by Patterson, follows a history-making volcano explosion that is about to wipe away the big island of Hawaii. However, a secret held for decades by the U.S. military is far more terrifying than any volcano. The two blockbuster authors have combined worldwide sales of more than 700 million books.

Eruption is being produced by Sherri Crichton, Patterson, and Shane Salerno and The Story Factory.

We are rolling out some of our past Project Involve shorts to view online! These Project Involve shorts can now be seen on our Film Independent YouTube channel and are featuring them here on the blog with exclusive talks with the filmmakers. Applications for next year’s Project Involve are now open. This week we’re featuring Dear Mama… , executive produced by 2021 Project Involve Fellow Jordan Hart.

A cultural icon is someone who transcends mere talent, becoming a symbol that inspires, influences, and shapes how we understand music, art, and even ourselves. They capture the spirit of their time, reflecting social and political issues, and becoming role models and catalysts for change. Many of us have a cultural icon who inspires us.

But what happens when they die?

This idea intrigued Jordan Hart, 2021 Project Involve Creative Executive Fellow and Executive Producer of the short film Dear Mama… .

In the film,...

Sphere and Warner Bros Discovery have unveiled more details of their collaboration onThe Wizard Of Ozthat uses AI to create an immersive version of the 1939 Hollywood classic.

The adaptation will open at the Las Vegas venue on August 28 and took more than a year to reformat in partnership with Google Cloud and immersive experiences specialist Magnopus. Tribeca Festival co-founder Jane Rosenthal is the producer.

The creators of The Wizard Of Oz At Sphere adapted the original shot for a 4:3 screen to fill Sphere’s wraparound 160,000 sq ft interior display and remastered original songs to transmit through Sphere Immersive Sound’s 167,000 speakers.

Exclusive: On a Tuesday morning in August 2023, a group of kids set off for school, climbing into a makeshift cable car for the journey across a mountain pass in northwest Pakistan. What happened next would make headlines around the world.

Suddenly, 900 feet above the ground, two cables snapped, putting the teenagers in mortal danger. The story of the dramatic attempt to rescue the kids and two adults trapped in the cable car will be told in a new documentary now in production from EverWonder Studio and Mindhouse Productions. Emmy-nominated director Mohammed Ali Naqvi will preview exclusive footage from Hanging By a Wire at Cannes Docs Week, part of the Marché du Film.

A helicopter aids in the rescue of kids stranded on a dangling cable car

“Hanging By A Wire will take viewers on an edge-of-your-seat journey through the harrowing 15+ hour rescue,” notes a release, “with never before seen footage...

Michel Franco’s timely drama “Dreams,” starring Oscar winner Jessica Chastain and celebrated ballet dancer Isaac Hernández, has been bought by Greenwich Entertainment for North American rights. The movie world premiered in competition at the Berlin Film Festival where it was warmly received.

Greenwich Entertainment will release “Dreams” during the awards season this fall. The film sees Hernandez play a ballet dancer from Mexico who dreams international fame and life in the United States. Believing that his lover (Chastain), a socialite and philanthropist, will support him, he leaves everything behind and narrowly escapes death crossing the border. However, his arrival disrupts her carefully curated world and she will do anything to protect their future together – and the life she has built for herself.

“I’m happy that ‘Dreams’ will be released by Greenwich in North America,” says Franco. “It was a joy to work with Jessica Chastain a second time,...

Greenwich Entertainment has acquired North American distribution rights to “Islands,” following the thriller’s premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival.

The film was co-written and directed by Jan-Ole Gerster, whose previous credits include “A Coffee in Berlin” and “Lara.” It was co-written by Blaz Kutin and Lawrie Doran, and stars Sam Riley (“Control”), Stacy Martin (“The Brutalist”) and Jack Farthing (“Spencer”). The film received four nominations at the prestigious Lola Awards — the German equivalent of the Oscars — including Best Picture, Best Leading Actor, Best Original Music and Best Sound.

The film also scored strong critical notices at its debut in Berlinale with Variety’s Peter Debruge calling it “mesmerizing” and many reviewers highlighting Martin and Riley’s lead performances.

The film follows Tom, (Riley) a tennis coach at a luxurious island hotel, filling the time between lessons and one-night stands. The arrival of a mysterious family pulls Tom out...

Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s Little Monster Films and Sandbox Films have signed on to executive produce “Terminal,” a documentary about the fight currently being waged to save Utah’s Great Salt Lake.

Directed by Abby Ellis (“Flint’s Deadly Water”), the doc, currently in production, follows scientists and politicians from both sides of the aisle who are battling to save the Great Salt Lake – the largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere – as it rapidly vanishes. Beneath the drying lakebed of Great Salt Lake lies a toxic reservoir of heavy metals – arsenic, lead, mercury, and more – poised to become airborne, endangering the millions of people living in the metropolitan region of Utah called the Wasatch Front.

“We often tell stories about environmental crises after they have unfolded,” says Ellis. “What makes this film unique is that, here in Utah, there’s still time to change course.”

In addition to Vasarhelyi and Chin,...

A new, immersive version of The Wizard of Oz is headed for the Sphere in Las Vegas this summer.

Sphere Entertainment said the updated presentation of the 1939 classic will be shown on August 28. A new film, From the Edge, directed by E. Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin (Oscar winners for Free Solo), is slated for 2026. Both titles are productions of Sphere Studios.

Collaborating on the new Wizard of Oz are Warner Bros. Discovery, Google and design studio Magnopus. The Wizard of Oz at Sphere will “maintain the integrity of the original,” a press release emphasized, “while pushing the boundaries of Sphere’s experiential medium.”

The creative team behind the updated Wizard includes producer Jane Rosenthal; visual effects specialist Ben Grossmann (an Oscar winner for Hugo), editor Jennifer Lame (an Oscar winner for Oppenheimer) and Zack Winokur, a director and producer who is also creative director of New York’s “Little Island.

There’s no place like … Las Vegas? This summer, the globular entertainment dome known as the Sphere will transform into Oz when it presents the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz as an immersive picture. The movie will have its spherical premiere on Aug. 28.

The team behind the Sphere are promising that all the sepia-toned tornadoes, dastardly winged monkeys, and sparkling ruby slippers that moviegoers have adored for decades will translate well to Sphere’s curved screen. More precisely, they say, “The Wizard of Oz at Sphere will maintain the integrity...

The Las Vegas Sphere has announced its next slate of immersive screenings, which includes an adaptation of the classic 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz.

Made in collaboration with Warner Bros. Discovery, Google, and Magnopus, The Wizard of Oz at Sphere is set to open on August 28th, 2025. The creative team includes producer Jane Rosenthal (The Irishman), visual effects specialist Ben Grossmann (Hugo), editor Jennifer Lame (Oppenheimer), and creative director Zack Winokur.

There’s also an action documentary titled From the Edge, which is set for a 2026 debut. Directed by E. Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin (Free Solo), it will follow five extreme sports athletes and use Sphere Entertainment’s proprietary camera system, Big Sky.

Filming is underway in Jordan, Dubai, Switzerland, the Bahamas, Austin, Las Vegas, and Maui, with free diver Alenka Artnik, skier Markus Eder, rock climber Alex Honnold, Base jumper Katie Hansen Lajeunesse, and surfer Kai Lenny.

“Our...

Oz is officially coming to Las Vegas later this summer.

Sphere Entertainment, the company behind the Las Vegas Sphere, says that it will launch a “fully immersive” version of the 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz beginning in August.

The company says it worked with Warner Bros. Discovery, Google and Magnopus to develop a version of The Wizard of Oz that “will maintain the integrity of the original while pushing the boundaries of Sphere’s experiential medium.”

And the company’s Sphere Studios division also says that it is developing a new documentary project called From the Edge, directed by Free Solo Academy Award winners E. Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin. From the Edge will follow five extreme athletes: free diver Alenka Artnik, skier Markus Eder, rock climber Alex Honnold, Base jumper Katie Hansen Lajeunesse and surfer Kai Lenny, using proprietary camera technology.

From the Edge will debut in 2026.

Both The Wizard of Oz...

“The Wizard of Oz” is taking the Yellow Brick Road to the Sphere in Las Vegas.

Sphere Entertainment Co. has announced two new projects — “The Wizard of Oz at Sphere” and “From the Edge” — currently in production from Sphere Studios. Both productions are part of Sphere’s slate of original immersive content called The Sphere Experience.

“Our goal for The Sphere Experience is a diverse slate that leverages Sphere’s power as an experiential medium. ‘The Wizard of Oz at Sphere’ and ‘From the Edge’ will push that vision forward in different ways,” said Jim Dolan, executive chairman and CEO of Sphere Entertainment.

The 1939 original “Wizard of Oz,” starring Judy Garland as the iconic character Dorothy, will be presented as a fully immersive experience for Sphere, in collaboration with Warner Bros. Discovery, Google and Magnopus. The Sphere will use “cutting edge technologies to enhance the film” and the production “will...

Miami Beach city commission meetings typically don’t generate national and international news, but that could happen Wednesday.

The commission is due to take up a resolution spearheaded by Mayor Steven Meiner that would cancel the city’s lease with a movie theater showing the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land. The mayor declared the film, which shows what life is like for Palestinians in the West Bank under Israeli military rule, to be antisemitic, and he moved to punish O Cinema after it refused his demand to yank the documentary.

Leading members of the documentary community will be watching the vote closely. More than 600 of them, including Oscar winners Alex Gibney, Laura Poitras, Barbara Kopple, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin and Dan Cogan, signed a letter that declares the resolution an attack on freedom of expression.

On the new episode of Deadline’s Doc Talk podcast, hosts John Ridley and...

The blowback continues over the Miami Beach mayor’s threat to close a movie theater over its screening of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land. More than 600 people including several Oscar winners have signed an open letter to the city decrying the potential shutdown of indie theater O Cinema as “an attack on freedom of expression, the right of artists to tell their stories, and a violation of the First Amendment.”

See the letter and its signatories — including Academy Award winners Alex Gibney, Laura Poitras, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin, Ezra Edelman, Dan Cogan, Barbara Kopple and Barry Jenkins — below.

Last week, Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner issued a draft resolution calling for termination of a lease agreement with the 300-seat O Cinema, located at Old City Hall, a property owned by the city. The resolution, which will be debated at a city commission meeting Wednesday, also would eliminate about...

Michael Bay is in Miami, which seems right. He also doesn’t exactly love strictly scheduled interviews, and instead just calls when he’s ready to chat, which also seems right. Today, the director of tentpole blockbusters like The Rock and the Transformers franchise is calling to talk about his new parkour documentary, We Are Storror, which is debuting at the 2025 South by Southwest Film Festival this weekend.

Interviewing Bay feels like watching one of his summer tentpole hits. He’s energetic, upbeat and full of boyish humor (and plenty of f-bombs). He’s now 60, but thankfully still sounds like how you expect Michael Bay to sound — like a guy who is still ready to blow some shit up (“Oh, you live in Austin?” he asks, “I burned down a house there once!”).

Interestingly, this idea — can we maintain our playfulness as we age? — is a major theme in We Are Storror.

There have already been a few cinematic looks at the famed 2018 Tham Luang cave rescue that saved 12 young Thai soccer players and their coach. First, “Free Solo” Oscar winners Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin helmed National Geographic documentary “The Rescue.” Then, Ron Howard directed the 2022 biographical drama “Thirteen Lives,” starring Viggo Mortensen, Colin Farrell, and Joel Edgerton.

Now, another documentary about what happened to one of the heroes after the media storm of 2018 enters the fray.

“Deeper,” which will premiere at the 2025 SXSW Film & TV Festival in the Documentary Spotlight section, centers on anesthetist Dr. Richard Harris, whose technique was key to extracting the stranded teen soccer players one by one. (Harris was portrayed by Joel Edgerton in “Thirteen Lives.”)

Jennifer Peedom writes and directs the documentary, with Alex Barry co-directing. “Deeper” is produced by Blayke Hoffman. Subject Harris executive produces the film and is credited as the underwater...

Miles Teller has landed the lead role in the upcoming biopic ‘Bartali,’ which is centered on the Italian cycling champion and WWII hero Gino Bartali.

Gino Bartali was a renowned Italian athlete and the country’s most famous cyclist before World War II. He had won both the Giro d’Italia and the Tour de France. During the war, he used his fame to carry messages for the Italian Resistance and helped protect Jews who the Nazis were persecuting. In 2010, it was revealed that he had hidden a Jewish family in his cellar, thus saving their lives. Bartali passed away in 2020 and had won the Giro d’Italia and the Tour de France again after the war.

Also in news – Barry Keoghan & Riley Keough eyed for drama ‘Butterfly Jam’

The movie comes from directing duo E. Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, who won an Oscar for their documentary ‘Free Solo.

Miles Teller has landed another lead role.

The “Whiplash” and “Top Gun: Maverick” star is set to play Italian cycling champion and WWII hero Gino Bartali in upcoming biopic “Bartali.” The hot project will be directed by E. Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, who won an Oscar for their documentary “Free Solo” and made their first scripted splash with “Nyad” (which landed Oscar nominations for Annette Bening and Jodie Foster).

north.five.six — formerly known as Mossbank — is launching the package at the EFM in Berlin alongside CAA Media Finance, which reps for North America. The film comes from the producing team of Leslie Holleran (“Chocolat”) for Harmony Road Prods / Holleran Company, alongside Tenkhoff (“The Motorcycle Diaries”) for wayward creative, Vasarhelyi and Chin and their Little Monster Films banner and Teller.

Bartali was a renowned Italian athlete and Italy’s most famous cyclist before WWII, having won both the Giro...

Exclusive: Top Gun and Whiplash star Miles Teller is set to play feted Italian cyclist turned WWII hero Gino Bartali in the biopic Bartali, which should be a strong proposition for buyers at this week’s EFM in Berlin.

Oscar-winning Free Solo and Nyad filmmakers E. Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin are aboard to direct the feature, which will tell the impressive true story of Bartali, who became a national hero after winning the Tour de France in 1938 but whose career was put on hold for a decade following the outbreak of World War II. In 1948, ten years past his prime, he would attempt to reclaim his title despite years without competitive racing.

What’s even more remarkable – and came to light only after his death – is that during the war, Bartali joined the underground resistance, cycling across northern Italy to transport counterfeit identity documents, stuffed into the handlebars and seat posts of his bike.

Exclusive: Greenwich Entertainment has acquired North American rights to UnBroken, the award-winning documentary that tells an extraordinary story of survival from Nazi Germany.

The distributor plans a February 21 theatrical release of the film from first-time director Beth Lane (watch the film’s trailer below). UnBroken bowed at the Heartland Film Festival in 2023 where it won Best Premiere Documentary Feature, going on to screen at Doc NYC and other festivals across the U.S. It won audience awards at RiverRun International Film Festival in North Carolina, Julien Dubuque International Film Festival in Iowa, and Berkshire International Film Festival in Massachusetts.

An animated sequence in ‘UnBroken’

The Weber siblings — Alfons, Senta, Ruth, Gertrude, Renee, Judith and Bela — faced incredible danger as World War II erupted and the Nazis implemented their hideous plan to exterminate all Jews. After their mother was seized and sent to Auschwitz where she was killed, their father made...

“Endurance” is an interesting video that tells the story of two amazing trips to Antarctica that happened more than one hundred years apart. At its core, the movie tells the story of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s famous 1914 expedition, a scary tale of survival that has caught people’s imaginations for generations. It compares it to the mission in 2022 to find the wreckage of his ship.

The documentary “Free Solo” was directed by the renowned team of Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin, and Natalie Hewit. The film is an interesting look at how people can be strong and how technology can change things. These directors are known for making movies that push the limits of what people can endure, and “Endurance” continues this powerful story of history.

The documentary cleverly mixes old footage from the original trip, which has been amazingly preserved and is now digitally colorized, with scenes from the...

The fabled expedition of Ernest Shackleton, the Anglo-Irish explorer who led 27 men on a voyage to Antarctica in 1914 aboard the three-masted barquentine schooner Endurance, only to see his ship sink and to spend the next 500 days trying to survive and get back to civilization, sounds like something you read about in history books — or maybe a storybook. It’s a saga so removed from our time, so rooted in a pre-technological world, that the idea that you could actually see it as it’s happening seems wondrous.

Yet Shackleton, who had an early 20th-century showman’s flair for publicity, took a filmmaker along with him as part of the crew — the photographer and cinematographer Frank Hurley, who shot the whole journey. So even as Shackleton and his men were stranded at the bottom of the earth, trapped in an endless stretching expanse of pack ice, their daily routines, their research,...

In the new National Geographic Documentary Films project “Endurance” a camera crew led by BAFTA nominee Natalie Hewit and Oscar-winning documentarian duo Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi follow antarctic expert John Shields as his team sets out to find the remains of the ship iconic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton sunk near Antarctica in 1915, leading to one of the greatest survival stories of all time.

In the exclusive clip above, obtained by IndieWire, Shields and his peers reveal the deeper connection between him and Shackleton, proving why he is the right man for the task at hand. “I think this is my 25th expedition to Antarctica. Going to Antarctica is very addictive,” said the explorer. “It’s something that once you’ve seen it, you’ve got this drive to always go back. And Shackleton, he also had this drive to go back to Antarctica.”

Not only was Shields the...

Disney+ is often regarded as the most popular streaming service after Netflix and Prime Video, with a subscriber base of 153.6 million as of March 2024. Having introduced many timeless classics from Walt Disney and other third-party sources, the streaming platform has also become a home for many Star Wars and Marvel fans, bringing in new movies and TV series from these well-known franchises. Titles may vary depending on your region, but if you live in the United States, you have access to an almost endless number of films. Especially given the streaming platform's efforts to add new content to its collection every month, there is almost always something fresh for everyone to enjoy.

In October 2024, for example, Disney+ added various unique films on its platform, such as Spookiz: The Movie, The Devil's Climb, and Lego Marvel Avengers: Mission Demolition. Similarly, we have numerous more intriguing films to look forward to in November,...

When the crew aboard the S.A. Agulhas II set out in early 2022 to search for the Endurance shipwreck, it seemed nearly impossible.

“It’s the holy grail,” Nico Vincent, the sub-sea manager on the expedition, tells Variety. “It’s the most complicated one. Just being able to reach the field and dive three kilometers beneath the ice, it’s the level of complexity of walking on the moon.”

The Endurance, commanded by explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton on an expedition to traverse Antarctica from one coast to another, sank in the Weddell Sea in November 1915 as its 27-member crew looked on. Over the next 308 days, the men faced starvation and frostbite as Shackleton recruited five crew members to make the treacherous journey in a lifeboat to seek help on the South Atlantic island of South Georgia. Miraculously, when Shackleton returned to save the remaining men, he found all of them still alive.

Married filmmakers Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi specialize in stories about human tenacity against the forces of nature, putting them out at the indefatigable pace of about a film a year — a feat of endurance in itself.

Filmmakers Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin hosted a friends and family screening of their National Geographic film Endurance in October in Manhattan.

Chin and Vasarhelyi have chronicled vertiginous, record-setting ascents in Meru and the Academy Award–winning documentary Free Solo; the daring mission to save the junior soccer team stranded in Thailand’s Tham Luang Nang Non cave system in The Rescue; and Diana Nyad’s real-life 110 mile swim from Cuba to Florida in last year’s Oscar-nominated scripted feature Nyad. And then there are Chin’s own death-defying expeditions, including his latest summiting of Everest in which his party happened to make a momentous discovery. (More on that below.)

All of...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Across the River and Into the Trees (Paula Ortiz)

Hemingway’s work across novels and short stories has been adapted for film countless times over, yet Across the River and Into the Trees has never properly been rendered onscreen. Until now. Written by Peter Flannery and directed by Paula Ortiz, here is a handsome film that is decidedly modest in its endeavor. The best thing going for it is Liev Schreiber as Colonel Richard Cantwell, the lead of the picture. Schreiber is one of those actors who has somehow always been underrated, despite being capable of playing nearly any kind of part. A kind boyfriend thrust into an impossible familial situation (The Daytrippers)? Check. Tough-but-fractured fixer living on the edge (Ray Donovan)? Check.

Exclusive: Amazon MGM Studios just won a battle for Love of Your Life, a spec by Nyad scribe Julia Cox, Deadline hears. Love of Your Life has been the talk of town this Halloween, and sources said the result is one of the biggest spec script deals in recent memory, landing in the $2 million range. Ryan Gosling is attached to produce with new producing partner Jessie Henderson at General Admission.

Numerous bids were proffered when CAA dropped the spec on the town, and one of the most intriguing bids came from Taylor Sheridan and Temple Hill’s Marty Bowen, who were ready to pay $2 million with a greenlight and a theatrical release. David Ellison’s Skydance got in the game with them, assuming the bid so they could keep their money in their pockets. That film would have gone through Paramount. No specifics yet on how Amazon MGM sees how...

When you think of famous 20th century shipwrecks, 1912’s Titanic is usually top of mind. But don’t overlook the incredible story of the exploration ship Endurance, which sank three and a half years later in Antarctica, and offers a mind-blowing survival epic. It gets its due in Endurance, a gripping film directed by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin (Free Solo) and Natalie Hewit. The story charts two narratives — one re-creating the past, the other documenting more recent developments. In 1914, Sir Ernest Shackleton aimed to be the first to cross Antarctica’s icy terrain, setting sail from England with a crew of 27 men. During the voyage, the Endurance got trapped in pack ice for months. After, the sailors were forced to abandon ship, and it eventually sank in 1915. They ate penguins, seals and boiled seaweed. Four attempted rescue missions later, the full crew was saved. In 2022, an expedition team...