News

Warner Bros. Discovery has announced the movies, TV shows, and live sports that will be available on the HBO Max streaming service in September. The HBO Max September 2025 lineup includes the drama series Task, a comedy special from Caleb Hearon, and the documentaries Seen & Heard: The History of Black Television, The Devil Is Busy, and Prime Minister.

The schedule also includes the A24 films Friendship and Warfare, as well as more Studio Ghibli and Gkids adult animated and live-action films.

Task Featured Programming

Series

Task (HBO Original Drama Series)

Debuts September 7

The seven-episode season premieres on September 7, and episodes will debut weekly at 9:00 p.m. Et.

Set in the working-class suburbs of Philadelphia,...

NewportFilm Outdoors, which hosts screenings of documentaries on the grounds of some of Newport’s most historic estates and outdoor venues, is unveiling its new summer season. The lineup includes films on a wide array of subjects, ranging from the country’s top teenage speech competitors to mountaineer Emily Harrington to music legend Kenny Loggins.

Screenings will be held at Gilded Age mansions such as Rosecliff (the setting for the Robert Redford and Mia Farrow film version of “The Great Gatsby”), as well as Doris Duke’s Rough Point and Fort Adams, home to the Newport Folk and Jazz Festivals.

The series kicks off on June 26 at Great Friends Meeting House with Cody Sheehy’s “The Last Dive,” which recently premiered in competition at Tribeca Festival. Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine’s “Middletown” will close the festival on Aug. 28 at Marble House. “Middletown” is the latest film from the “Boys State...

Hit Sundance documentary Prime Minister starts an exclusive run at AMC Theaters. Samuel L. Jackson and Pierce Brosnan test out a western in The Unholy Trilogy. Venice-premiering Israeli-Iranian sports drama Tatami, part two of a Norwegian trilogy and a doc on Simple Minds launched during the group’s North American tour populate a lively specialty box office. Neon takes a big jump with Mike Flanagan’s Stephen King adaptation Life Of Chuck starring Tom Hiddleston from 16 screens to 1,075 in week 2.

Magnolia Pictures debuts documentary Prime Minister, Sundance Audience Award Winner in the World Cinema Documentary Competition this year, at 56 AMC theaters in an exclusive weeklong run, expanding to Laemmle and a handful of arthouses in coming weeks.

Directed by Michelle Walshe and Lindsay Utz, the doc follows former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern as she led her nation through the pandemic, balancing the personal and professional in the highest seat of power.

On June 10 at a packed auditorium in Santa Monica, California, the former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern (2017-2023) comforted a room full of anxious Americans by showing them what empathetic leadership looks like. She was answering questions from Rachel Bloom at Live Talks Los Angeles about her new memoir “A Different Kind of Power.” She is also the subject of the Sundance World Cinema audience-award-winning documentary “Prime Minister” (CNN/HBO), which Magnolia opens in theaters June 13.

“Over the course of my time in office,” Ardern told the rapt audience, “we had a domestic terror attack that took the lives of 51 members of our Muslim community. We had a pandemic, we had a volcanic eruption, we had a series of natural disasters. I saw and experienced a lot of difficult moments, and in all of them, I can give you examples of incredible kindness and humanity and generosity. I still fundamentally believe [that is] our natural inclination.

To call Prime Minister a political documentary is to miss the point entirely. It operates instead as an intimate character study, charting the astonishingly rapid ascent of Jacinda Ardern, who at 37 became New Zealand’s leader in 2017 just weeks after taking the helm of her party, all while discovering she was pregnant.

The film frames her subsequent five-year term as an intimate chronicle of relentless trial by fire. A stream of national crises—a terror attack, a natural disaster, a global pandemic—forms the turbulent backdrop to her premiership.

By combining official state archives with startlingly personal footage shot within her own home, the film provides a rare perspective on the immense pressures of governance. It bypasses simple political analysis to ask a more profound question: what does leadership look like when its guiding principle is not ideology or power, but a radical commitment to empathy in a world that seems to have forgotten it?...

Editor’s Note: This review originally ran during the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Magnolia Pictures releases “Prime Minster” in theaters Friday, June 13.

A down-to-earth, compassionate woman who’s spent her entire life building a career in public service is suddenly thrust into the leadership role of her party after the previous occupant is forced to step aside due to bad polling. Oh, and she only has a few weeks to turn things around before the entire country votes on whether or not they want her to assume the top office in the land. Sound familiar?

With “Prime Minister,” filmmakers Michelle Walshe and Lindsey Utz present a compelling what-if to Americans now dealing with another four years under a ruthless tyrant by showcasing the capable leadership and everyday life of former New Zealand Pm Jacinda Ardern during her six-year term, as well as where she is today post-resignation. The documentary acts as...

CNN unveiled a slate of new originals that includes series featuring Eva Longoria and Tony Shalhoub and the renewal of Have I Got News For You.

The lineup was unveiled today as part of the Warner Bros. Discovery upfront presentation.

Eva Longoria: Searching for France, debuting in 2026, will be the latest in the network’s Searching For franchise. This fall, the network will debut the international food and travel series Tony Shalhoub Breaking Bread.

Announced earlier were two new documentary features, I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not and In the Prime of Life, as the network puts new focus on its CNN Films unit. Other highlights: Tom Hanks, Gary Goetzman and Mark Herzog are executive producers of the original series Decades in Sports, while the network will mark the 250th anniversary of the United States with the project tentatively titled This Land Is Your Land, with October Films as producer.

Feature documentary Prime Minister has been set as the opening film for this year’s Sundance Film Festival: Cdmx in Mexico City.

The documentary about former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, directed by Michelle Walshe and Lindsay Utz, won the Audience Award: World Cinema Documentary at this year’s Sundance festival in the US.

Launched last year by Sundance and Latin American exhibition giant Cinepolis, Cdmx will have its second run from May 29 to June 1 at several Cinepolis sites around the city. The line-up will comprise 15 features and a programme of shorts selected from titles that screened at Sundance in the US in January.

Exclusive: The documentary about former New Zealand leader Jacinda Ardern that electrified in its Sundance Film Festival debut has found a home.

Magnolia Pictures, HBO Documentary Films and CNN Films have joined forces to release Prime Minister in theaters on June 13, with special preview screenings featuring a live Q&a with Rt. Honorable Dame Jacinda Ardern on June 8. Windows on HBO and CNN will follow, and the film will be streamed on Max.

The film made its global premiere at January’s Sundance, where it won the Audience Award in the World Cinema Documentary Competition category. The docu provides a view inside the life of former New Zealand Pm, capturing her through five tumultuous years in power as she redefined leadership on the world stage.

When Ardern took the top spot at age 37 to run New Zealand, she quickly discovered she and her mate Clark Gayford were pregnant with their first child.

The documentary streaming boom is officially over, according to Academy Award-winning producer and Impact Partners co-founder Geralyn Dreyfous.

“The market for streamers is not coming back,” Dreyfous said during a panel discussion at Chicago’s Doc10 film festival over the weekend. “To go into these film festivals like Sundance and think that you are going to get a big sale is la la land (thinking). The numbers are just not there. One of 20 films is being bought out of Sundance. When we started Impact Partners, eight out of 10 of our films were being bought. That’s gone. Gone! We have to create new distribution models.”

Dreyfous, whose credits include “The Invisible War,” “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” and “Navalny,” helped launch Jolt, an AI-driven, direct-to-consumer streaming platform, in 2024. Meant to give a literal jolt to indie docs that might have been a success at festivals across the world but have not found traditional distribution,...

The 2025 Nantucket Film Festival has set the feature film lineup, honorees and signature programs for its 30th anniversary edition.

The festival will open with two Sundance Audience Award winners, the Dylan O’Brien-Lauren Graham film Twinless and the documentary Prime Minister about former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, directed by Michelle Walshe and Lindsay Utz. The closing night film is teen orators documentary Speak, directed by Jennifer Tiexiera and Guy Mossman. The centerpiece film is National Geographic’s Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story documentary, providing an authorized look inside the making of Jaws.

“This year’s slate of films continues to celebrate bold and independent voices close to home and across the world,” Nff senior programmer Basil Tsiokos and lead programmer Anita Raswant said in a statement. “We invite our audiences to explore a wide range of work that honors the power of storytelling — and, in turn, our...

Elegance Bratton’s “Move Ya Body: The Birth of House” will open the 10th edition of Chicago’s Doc10 documentary film festival on April 30.

The doc, which premiered at Sundance 2025, charts the rise of house music. The film recounts how the Disco Sucks movement led to the infamous Disco Demolition Night at Chicago’s Comiskey Park, which resulted in thousands of people throwing records, mostly by Black artists, into a bonfire. The doc highlights Vince Lawrence, who was working as an usher at Demolition Night. Lawrence reveals how the event led him to become one of the founding innovators of house music.

Doc10, a five-day fest running April 30-May 4, will feature a selection of 11 of the past year’s most acclaimed feature documentaries. They include Oscar-winning director Davis Guggenheim and Nyle Dimarco’s recent SXSW audience award winner “Deaf President Now!” and Elizabeth Lo’s “Mistress Dispeller,” which premiered at...

The 27th edition of the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, launching on April 3, will feature a lineup of 34 feature documentaries and 15 short docs. The Durham, N.C.-based, four-day doc film fest will kick off with Lindsay Utz and Michelle Walshe’s “Prime Minister, “about the life of former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

“Prime Minister” debuted at Sundance 2025, where it won the World Cinema Documentary Audience Award. The film is one of 16 Sundance feature docs screening at Full Frame this year. Others include U.S. Grand Jury Prize winner “Seeds,” “The Librarians,” “Preditors, “Nat. Geo’s “Sally” and “The Perfect Neighbor,” which Netflix recently acquired.

Often referred to as “a filmmaker’s festival,” Full Frame is not a premiere or market-focused fest. Instead, it’s known within the doc industry as a well-organized, intimate gathering that gives well-received docs out of Sundance, Camden Intl. Film Festival and the...

Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley in ‘Come See Me in the Good Light, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. (Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Brandon Somerhalder)

The 2025 Sundance Film Festival wrapped up with the announcement of the Festival Favorite Award. The documentary Come See Me in the Good Light, directed by Ryan White, was voted by audiences as the best of the feature films screened at the 2025 festival.

“Throughout the Festival we saw audiences moved by Andrea Gibson’s and Megan Falley’s journeys in Come See Me in the Good Light. Festival goers embraced the humor and heartbreak of this intimate documentary directed by Ryan White, as it speaks to art and love and reminds us what it means to be alive as we face mortality,” stated Kim Yutani, Sundance Film Festival Director of Programming.

As the 2025 festival comes to a close, the Sundance Institute announced...

February 2 Update: Ryan White’sCome See Me in the Good Light won theFestival Favorite Award on Sunday, marking the final piece of business for the festival, which endedon February 2.

The US film charts two poets’ “journey through love, life and mortality”.

Original January 31 Report:Sundance Film Festival announced its awards winners on Friday, with grand jury prizes going to Atropia, Seeds, Sabar Bonda (Cactus Pears), and Cutting Through Rocks.

In the audience awards, Twinless, André Is An Idiot, DJ Ahmet, and Prime Minister prevailed.The Next Innovator Award went to Zodiac Killer Project and Next Audience Award was presented to East Of Wall.

Sundance audiences have cast a bright light on Ryan White’s, Come See Me in the Good Light, by delivering a festival favorite prize on the feature film documentary.

Come See Me in the Good Light follows two poets, Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley, as they “go on an unexpectedly funny and poignant journey through love, life and mortality,” per the official festival description, spurred by the former’s incurable cancer diagnosis. The doc’s high profile roster of producers and executive producers includes such names as Tig Notaro, Brandi Carlile, Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach, Kevin Nealon and Sara Bareilles, among others.

“Throughout the festival we saw audiences moved by Andrea Gibson’s and Megan Falley’s journeys in Come See Me in the Good Light. Festival goers embraced the humor and heartbreak of this intimate documentary directed by Ryan White, as it speaks to art and love and reminds...

Come See Me in the Good Light, in the Premieres category, received the Festival Favorite award at the 2025 edition of the Sundance Film Festival, voted for by the audiences from all the new feature films presented. Looking ahead to next year, the fest announced dates for the 2026 edition, taking place in Park City and Salt Lake City, Utah, from Jan. 22 to Feb. 1.

“The past 11 days of the Festival have been a meaningful opportunity to connect as a community in support of independent storytelling,” acting CEO of the Sundance Institute Amanda Kelso said. “We look forward to being reunited with audiences, artists, industry, and press next January for another edition of the Festival.”

Kim Yutani, Sundance Film Festival director of programming, added: “Throughout the Festival we saw audiences moved by Andrea Gibson’s and Megan Falley’s journeys in Come See Me in the Good Light. Festival goers embraced the humor...

The Alabama Solution

Relying heavily on footage shot by inmates on prohibited cellphones, Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman’s powerful and gripping documentary isn’t an easy watch, but it’s a crucial one. The film’s focus is on corruption and abuses of power specific to Alabama’s prisons — and the heroism of the men who have found ways to evolve within a system that has no interest in participating in their rehabilitation and denies their basic humanity in every way. — Daniel Fienberg

Blknws: Terms & Conditions

Before his death in 1963, scholar W.E.B. Du Bois spent decades trying to publish an encyclopedia about people of African descent. That mission propels Kahlil Joseph’s hypnotic debut feature — a kinetic video essay blending Afro-futurist narrative, archival footage and memoir — that’s like an index of Black culture from the past 50 years. Joseph animates the fictional story of a journalist reporting on a transatlantic curatorial project with voiceover,...

The 2025 Sundance Film Festival awards were announced today at The Ray Theatre in Park City, Utah.

See the list of 2025 winners below, and congrats to all the winners.

U.S. Dramatic Competition

Grand Jury Prize

Atropia (USA) – Hailey Gates

Directing Award

Ricky (USA) – Rashad Frett

The Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award

Sorry, Baby (USA) – Eva Victor

Special Jury Award for Acting

Twinless (USA) – Dylan O’Brien

Dylan O’Brien and James Sweeney appear in Twinless by James Sweeney, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Greg Cotten.

Special Jury Award for Best Ensemble

Plainclothes – Carmen Emmi

Audience Award

Twinless – James Sweeney

U.S. Documentary Competition

Grand Jury Prize

Seeds (USA) – Brittany Shyne

Directing Award

The Perfect Neighbor (USA) – Geeta Gandbhir

Special Jury Award

Life After (USA) – Reid Davenport

Special Jury Award for Archival Storytelling

Selena y Los Dinos (USA) – Isabel Castro

Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award...

As the Sundance Film Festival heads into its final weekend, the Park City event handed out trophies this morning to this year’s best. See the full list below.

Hailey Gates’ war satire Atropia took the marquee U.S. Grand Jury Prize for dramatic features. Alia Shawkat stars as an aspiring actress in a military role-playing facility who falls in love with a soldier (Callum Turner) cast as an insurgent, but their unsimulated emotions threaten to derail the performance.

The Audience Award: U.S. Dramatic went to Twinless, James Sweeney’s film about two young men (Dylan O’Brien and Sweeney) who meet in a twin bereavement support group and form an unlikely bromance.

Georgi M. Unkovski’s DJ Ahmet won the Audience Award: World Cinema Dramatic and also nabbed the Special Jury Award for Creative Vision. It follows Ahmet (Arif Jakup), a 15-year-old boy from a remote Yuruk village in...

World leaders have rarely been captured with as much intimacy as in Michelle Walshe and Lindsay Utz’s “Prime Minister.” While the duo — whose credits include “Chasing Great” and “American Factory” respectively — are its ultimate architects, the shape the movie takes is largely owed to Clarke Gayford, partner and eventual husband to the doc’s subject, former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Gayford’s proximity is a double-edged sword, one the rest of the production also wields, in terms of its limited political approach. However, as a portrait of struggles in the seat of power, the film presses all the right emotional buttons.

Ardern was the Prime Minister from 2017 to early 2023 — perhaps the most challenging premiership in New Zealand’s history. The films spans her entire term, plus a few months on either side as bookends, chronicling her tumultuous tenure through the Christchurch mosque shooting in 2019 and the Covid-19 pandemic.

Lindsay Utz, Michelle Walshe and Jacinda Ardern in Park City Photo: Amber Wilkinson

Among the big names attending Sundance yesterday was the former president of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern. She is the subject of Lindsay Utz and Michelle Walshe's thorough documentary, which followed her throughout her premiership.

When asked how she felt about watching the film with an audience, Ardern - whose honesty is a notable trait right through the film - said: "Well, I think everyone knows I'm a bit of a crier." She added: "That was the first time I've seen the final version and it's quite a lot to watch you on a screen. I've had some people from the film team tell me it was brave to put so much of myself and my husband Clarke and our family (in it). But it didn't feel brave to me, , I think, when you're in public service, you...

Prime Minister, premiering in the 2025 Sundance Film Festival’s World Cinema Documentary Competition, is co-director Lindsay Utz and Michelle Walshe’s behind-the-scenes look at Jacinda Ahern’s five years as the Prime Minister of New Zealand. Clarke Gayford, Ahern’s husband and a radio and TV broadcaster, also served as one of the film’s cinematographers. Below, he talks about the challenges of pulling double duty as both a Dp and a supportive husband to a prime minister. See all responses to our annual Sundance cinematographer interviews here. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? What were the […]

The post “I Sometimes Felt Like the Worst Partner in the World”: Dp Clarke Gayford on Prime Minister first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Prime Minister, premiering in the 2025 Sundance Film Festival’s World Cinema Documentary Competition, is co-director Lindsay Utz and Michelle Walshe’s behind-the-scenes look at Jacinda Ahern’s five years as the Prime Minister of New Zealand. Clarke Gayford, Ahern’s husband and a radio and TV broadcaster, also served as one of the film’s cinematographers. Below, he talks about the challenges of pulling double duty as both a Dp and a supportive husband to a prime minister. See all responses to our annual Sundance cinematographer interviews here. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? What were the […]

The post “I Sometimes Felt Like the Worst Partner in the World”: Dp Clarke Gayford on Prime Minister first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

The word kindness comes up over and over in Prime Minister as the key to Jacinda Ardern’s political philosophy. That sounds gooey and naive, but this disarming and intimate documentary about her six years as New Zealand’s head of government shows it to be the effective basis for a career that made her a global political star.

Ardern’s tenure included some head-spinning turns. She was 37 when the leader of the Labour party stepped down and she took over, becoming Prime Minister just seven weeks later. Around that time, she also learned that she was pregnant. She gained worldwide attention and praise for her handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and a shooting at a Christchurch mosque that killed 51 people, and she put progressive programs into place, including serious gun control laws.

Then she stunned the public with her abrupt resignation in 2023, saying, “I no longer have enough in...

Exclusive: Ivan Reitman’s 2014 football movie Draft Day from Lionsgate is being adapted for television with a new twist.

From Lionsgate TV, SpringHill and Madison Wells, the series in development will capture the drama and excitement of watching basketball players get drafted and fulfill their dreams, similar to the film starring Kevin Costner, Jennifer Garner and Chadwick Boseman set in the world of the NFL.

The LeBron James- and Maverick Carter-founded SpringHill will executive produce and Madison Wells, which produced the original film, will produce the TV series. A writer has not been attached.

“If you are going to do a show set in and around the world of basketball, one person comes to mind ahead of all others,” said Scott Herbst, EVP and Head of Scripted Development, Lionsgate Television. “The same passion, drive and commitment to excellence that drove LeBron James to be the best in the...

wide

Red Sparrow [my review]

Jennifer Lawrence stars as a Russian spy who uses manipulation to get what she wants. (male writer and director)

limited

Werewolf [IMDb]

Ashley McKenzie writes and directs this drama about outcast drug addicts, costarring Bhreagh MacNeil.

Oh, Lucy! [IMDb]

Atsuko Hirayanagi cowrites and directs this dramedy about a lonely Tokyo woman, played by Shinobu Terajima.

Chasing Great [IMDb]

Michelle Walshe cowrites and codirects this documentary about a (male) rugby player.

Dance Academy: The Comeback [IMDb]

Samantha Strauss writes this drama following the continuing stories of the gender-balanced ensemble from an Australian television show.

Eat Me [IMDb]

Jacqueline Wright writes and costars in this thriller about a woman and the (male) home invader who saves her mid-suicide attempt. (male director)

The Lullaby [IMDb]

Tarryn-Tanille Prinsloo writes this horror movie about a woman, played by Reine Swart, who is having difficulty as a new mother.

Hondros [IMDb]

Jenny Golden cowrites this documentary about a (male) war photojournalist.

Exclusive: Abramorama has acquired the North American rights to the Michelle Walshe and Justin Pemberton rugby documentary Chasing Great. The film from Augusto follows New Zealand All Blacks rugby superstar Richie McCaw. The exclusive trailer can be seen below. Chasing Great reached a milestone as the top-grossing doc in New Zealand of all time and had the third highest opening weekend in Australia. McCaw is regarded as one of the greatest athletes of all time. He holds…...

The New Zealand Film Commission made conditonal offers for four feature films including a remake of Kiwi classic Goodbye Pork Pie at its last board meeting.

That brings to 16 the total number of feature films invested in during the financial year, the largest number ever supported in a single twelve months.

One Thousand Ropes

Tusi Tamaese's follow-up to The Orator. A traditional Samoan midwife's ordered existence is thrown off balance by the arrival of his bruised daughter seeking his protection. Produced by Catherine Fitzgerald, the Australasian distributor is Transmission and International sales agent Mongrel Media.

Pork Pie

The remake of Geoff Murphy's 1981 road comedy Goodbye Pork Pie is written and will be directed by his son Matt Murphy, produced by Tom Hern (The Dark Horse) and executive produced by Tim White. The action comedy follows a guy who is determined to reconnect with the woman he left at the altar,...