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The 56th edition of Nyon-based Swiss documentary festival Visions du Réel (April 4-13) is to open with the world premiere of Blame.Billed as “part investigation, part thriller,”Swiss director Christian Frei’s film is about three scientists battling the Covid pandemic and misinformation around it.

This will be preceded by a “pre-opening” screening the night before of Irish director Gar O’Rourke’s Sanatorium, a documentary set in a largely deserted health spa near Odesa in Ukraine where people come for health and fertility treatment as war rages nearby.

A record 57 countries are represented in this year’s selection across 154 films,...

Last week the Sffilm Rainin Grant announced the recipients of much-needed coin support (see the complete list of finalists), and today we learn the identity of this year’s 2024 Rathaus Film Grant recipient: Arrielle Sadé Mock. The coin will go towards developing Mock’s short film. Founded by Madeleine Askwith, Alexandra Byer, Shabier Kirchner, and Kevin Steen, Rathaus is a production company based in Brooklyn and Detroit who’ve helped produced films such as Tim Sutton’s Dark Night and this year’s big Venice Film Festival winner in Sarah Friedland’s Familiar Touch. More info available here.

From the jury:

“Arrielle represents the very best of Detroit’s artistic spirit—a powerful blend of creativity and activism that has been woven into the city’s history for generations.…...

Batman is one of the most well-known heroes in the DC Universe. It's difficult to go anywhere in Gotham City without hearing his name, which is why it's so surprising that this isn't the first superhero identity that Bruce Wayne took on for himself. A long time ago, during his years of training, Bruce Wayne was known as something very different.

The first secret identity of Bruce Wayne was revealed during a flashback in Batman Confidential #54 by Marc Guggenheim and Jerry Bingham. This story revolves around the first superhero team that Batman ever joined, long before he was Batman. They were known as The Zhuguan, which roughly translates to "The League", and Bruce Wayne was convinced to join them in their war against a brutal warlord.

While Bruce Wayne was a certainly skilled fighter, he was far from his peak, and he wasn't quite capable of matching the strength of this warlord.

Warning: Potential Spoilers for Absolute Batman #2!From his cowl to his Batmobile, Batman is known for using larger-than-life symbols that strike fear into the hearts of criminals, so its no surprise that Absolute Batman has started his crime-fighting career with a literal symbolic bang. In a preview of Absolute Batman #2, Absolute Batman creates an explosive moment in comic book history, one that puts his other iterations acts of vigilantism to shame.

Aipt released a preview of Absolute Batman #2 written by Scott Snyder, with art by Nick Dragotta in which Batman and the Party Animals Gang have a showdown atop a skyscraper. In a blaze of glory, Batman detonates the top of the building in the shape of his iconic visage, an epic moment that symbolizes the dawn of a new Batman with a new sense of justice.

The scene echoes Christopher Nolans The Dark Knight Rises film, but takes the message to a new level,...

The activist and music production non-profit Red Hot have announced TRAИƧA, a new 46-song compilation of both originals and covers serving as a celebration of trans and non-binary people. The full project is out November 22nd, but Red Hot has already released TRAИƧA’s first single: Prince’s “I Would Die 4 U,” reimagined by Wendy & Lisa of Prince’s band The Revolution alongside London-based singer Lauren Auder.

The three-and-a-half hour tracklist is broken up eight chapters, and the project as a whole features over 100 contributing artists. In addition to a new song from Sade Adu titled “Young Lion” — serving as her first new song in six years — the compilation features contributions from André 3000, Jeff Tweedy, Faye Webster, Clairo Beverly Glenn-Copeland, Perfume Genius, Alan Sparhawk, Bartees Strange, Adrianne Lenker, Fleet Foxes, Julien Baker, Sam Smith, Laura Jane Grace, Moses Sumney, Kelela, Kara Jackson, L’Rain, Julie Byrne, Teddy Geiger, Frankie Cosmos,...

Bloody Ishq, directed by Vikram Bhatt and Manish P. Chavan, is one of those films that leaves you befuddled not because of its complicated narrative but because you don’t understand why it was made in the first place. Bloody Ishq has nothing to offer in terms of writing and performances. The writing is weak, there is no authenticity in the story, and the performers are also helpless, and they can’t do much when you get this kind of script. But still, please allow me to make some sense out of the narrative and try to figure out what was happening in the film.

Spoiler Alert

What was happening with Neha?

Neha met with an accident, and after that, she lost her memory. She didn’t remember anything from her past life, and because of this, she was feeling very restless from within. She didn’t know who to trust,...

There have been some rumored projects that seem to be on the horizon for James Gunn’s Dcu, according to the internet. There are some IPs that are said to be working their way towards the Dcu’s official lineup, and it includes teams like Justice League International, The Terrifics, and Justice League Dark.

The Terrifics | DC Comics

The Terrifics is a team that was created more recently in the comics, specifically to explore the Dark Multiverse that was introduced in the Dark Nights: Metal crossover event in the DC Universe. The rumor about this team beating part of the lineup for James Gunn’s Dcu indicates that the Guardians of the Galaxy director might be looking to adapt the Dark Night: Metal story as the overarching narrative for the Dcu.

James Gunn could do Dark Nights: Metal, but that would require a lot of groundwork Dark Nights: Metal...

Christopher Nolan is defending the role of franchises in Hollywood, saying they are a crucial part of the film industry ecosystem.

In a recent interview with the Associated Press, the “Oppenheimer” and “Dark Night” director weighed in on the debate over how superhero franchises are affecting Hollywood. While Nolan stressed the importance of originality in filmmaking, he also believes there is a need for these blockbusters based on pre-existing IP.

“There’s always a balance in Hollywood between established titles that can assure a return in audience and give people more of what they want,” Nolan said. “That’s always been a big part of the economics of Hollywood, and it pays for a lot of other types of films to be made and distributed.”

“But there also always has to be respect for the audience’s desire for something new. That’s one of the big thrills of going to the movies is,...

Michael Caine is ready to move on from acting.

The 90-year-old Interstellar star’s announcement comes roughly a month after he said he considers himself “sort of” retired.

Keep reading to find out more…

In an interview published on Saturday (October 14), Michael told BBC Radio 4, “I keep saying I’m going to retire. Well, I am now.”

He continued, “I’ve figured, I’ve had a picture where I’ve played the lead and it’s got incredible reviews. The only parts I’m likely to get now are old men, and I thought, well I might as well leave with all this — what have I got to do to beat this?”

As it stands, Michael‘s final movie will be The Great Escaper, which released on October 6.

Michael is widely considered an acting legend, having won two Academy Awards, and three Golden Globe Awards since the start of his career in the 1950s.

Who knew Spider-Man's Doc Ock would make for a cute middle-school girl?

As per Crunchyroll, Doc Ock, the villain in the Spider-Man comics whose name derives from the mechanical tentacles erupting from his back, makes his Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse manga debut, but he looks a little different from his original comic book designs. Titled Spider-Man: Octopus Girl, the spinoff manga follows Doc Ock's isekai journey when he wakes up from his coma in the body of a middle school girl named Otoha Okutamiya. Written by the My Hero Academia: Vigilantes' writer Hideyuki Furuhashi and illustrator Betten Court, the manga launches on the digital Shonen Jump+ platform on June 20.

Related: Across the Spider-Verse Will Debut The Spot - But He Appeared on TV Much Earlier

Manga Spinoffs of American Comics

There have been numerous manga spinoffs of American comics over the past few years. In the DC universe, the Joker...

Everyone knows the deal with 1997's "Batman & Robin" by now. We don't need to rehash the abject disappointment that accompanied its release and its legacy of having nearly killed off the Batman franchise — though, that might be fun ... but let's focus, here. In the wake of Joel Schumacher's second and final Batman movie, Warner Bros. was sent scrambling, lurching from one attempt to reboot the Dark Knight to another.

This went on for some years, with multiple projects being considered and developed before being scrapped. One such project, "Batman: DarKnight," would have been the complete opposite to "Batman & Robin," telling a dark tale that would see Dick Grayson used as a test subject in Dr. Jonathan Crane, Aka Scarecrow's twisted experiments. Of course, we all know how the story plays out, with Warners nixing that movie in favor of Christopher Nolan's origin tale "Batman Begins.

After the Blue Beetle trailer accused Batman of being a fascist, the internet went wild while people criticized or praised the controversial line. From the trailer alone, it seems like Blue Beetle will drop the line as a joke, nodding to the existence of the Dark Night in the same universe as Xolo Maridueña’s Jamie Reyes. However, the joke only echoes a question comic book fans have been discussing for years. That’s because, while the Dark Knight is the hero of his stories and one of the most-beloved vigilantes in history, his methods can’t always be justified. Even so, is it fair to say Batman is a fascist? The answer is more complicated than a simple yes or no.

Following the world premiere of “My Neighbor Adolf” on the Piazza Grande in Locarno, Beta Cinema has sold the dark comedy to Vendetta Films, which will bring the Udo Kier and David Hayman starrer to cinemas across Australia and New Zealand in the first quarter of next year.

Prior to Locarno, Beta Cinema sold the film to Hungary (Cinetel) and Switzerland (Praesens Film), while deals for North America (Cohen Media Group), U.K. and Ireland (Signature Entertainment), Italy (I Wonder), South Korea (Lumix Media) and Japan (Tohokushinsha Film) had been revealed before.

The film is set in Colombia in 1960, just a few days after the Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann was caught by Mossad agents in Argentina. Polsky, played by Hayman, is a lonely and grumpy old man, living in the remote Colombian countryside. He is a survivor of the Holocaust. He spends his days playing chess and tending his beloved rosebushes.

One of the most defining scenes in Todd Phillips’ “Joker” takes place right after Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) murders three Wall Street workers who have taunted him on a subway ride. Arthur runs into a disgusting bathroom and begins cleansing himself by dancing alone. The disturbing dance movements come to define the Joker’s emergence, but they’re not the reaction Phillips originally scripted with his co-writer Scott Silver. A new video from Screenplayed puts Phillips’ commentary over the bathroom scene as it appeared in the script, revealing the written sequence was entirely tossed out during filming.

“In the script, Arthur was to come into the bathroom, hide his gun, wash off his makeup, staring at himself in the mirror and saying, ‘What have I done?'” Phillips said. “When we got to the set on the day, Joaquin and I stood around and this didn’t seem very much like Arthur.

I am the absolute last person to defend an attempt of a Hollywood studio, a superhero movie, or a director and actor so privileged they have the industry and all of its riches at their feet. The budgets of my four completed films range from $40,000 to $5,000,000 — and the budget of my current project hovers somewhere in between. I believe tentpoles have ruined American cinema and the glut of mediocre content in episodic television has made scrolling through titles often as interesting as watching the actual shows.

But I thought “Joker” was a near-masterpiece, an opera of raw, gritty emotion, a stunningly dark and artful gaze into the rich delusion of tragedy. It is not a perfect film, and — as some critics have said — it is dangerous, but it is entirely more dangerous to label it as some kind of call to arms for white rage in this country, or to...

When the Dark Night returns to the big screen, it will be Robert Pattinson who dons the cape and cowl for director Matt Reeves' The Batman. News of Pattinson's casting rocked the Bat-community back in May, with many fans calling for Ben Affleck to continue his role as the World's Greatest Detective. Alas, Affleck had officially parted ways with the character back…...

Oscar-nominated cinematographer Greig Fraser, known for his grounded approach and broad range, has signed on to shoot Matt Reeves’ upcoming Batman installment.

“The Batman,” planned for a 2021 release by Warner Bros., will be Fraser’s second Reeves movie, a studio spokeswoman confirmed. He was Dp on the acclaimed 2010 “Let Me In,” a remake of the Swedish vampire hit “Let the Right One In.”

Fraser earned an Oscar nomination for “Lion,” one of six nods for the 2016 drama.

The Australian has also been lauded by critics for his work on Jane Campion’s 2009 John Keats biopic “Bright Star,” the 2012 crime film “Killing Them Softly,” “Zero Dark Thirty,” and “Rogue One.” He recently photographed “Vice” and is the Dp on the Denis Villeneuve-helmed “Dune” remake.

Blog posts last week incorrectly claimed Robert Richardson had signed on to shoot “The Batman.” The “Kill Bill” and “Hugo” cinematographer Richardson was previously involved in...

Tom Hardy's etching his name in Royal Marine lore as a real life-ish action hero ... all for a great cause. The 'Dark Knight Rises' villain is now immortalized as a Royal Marine action figure back home in his native Great Britain. The camo-clad doll is being sold to support the Reorg Jiu-Jitsu Foundation ... a nonprofit launched in association with The Royal Marines Charity. Last December, Reorg named Hardy its head ambassador ... and he's been...

“Donnybrook,” Tim Sutton’s poetic adaptation of Frank Bill’s novel, is a brutal movie with a soft touch. Orchestral music swells over the image of an empty fighting cage, and a few minutes later, the punches land hard. Sutton, whose mesmerizing docu-thriller “Dark Night” imagined the sleepy routines leading up to a mass shooting, excels at punctuating quiet lyricism with pain. This time, however, the observational textures have been stuffed into the mold of a pulpy survival story against the backdrop of an unforgiving rural landscape. The characters hail from familiar archetypes of impoverished loners, but their world exudes a haunting sense of loss.

The first time we see Jarhead Earl (a grim Jamie Bell), he’s coasting along a foggy river, dwarfed by murky green hills. That image epitomizes the atmosphere of desolation to come, as Earl gears up for a cage match with a $100,000 buy-in. His family...

The first trailer for Donnybrook, from Memphis and Dark Night director Tim Sutton, promises a film that will be an explosive and staggering condemnation of the American Dream. The drama conveys the story of two men, played by Frank Grillo and Jamie Bell, who prepare to compete in an all-out bare-knuckle fight for the coveted prize of $100,000. The cast is rounded out by Margaret Qualley and James Badge Dale. Following a world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival and ahead of a release in February, the trailer has now arrived.

Tim Sutton spoke about the violence in the film with its inherent connection to America and its cinema in an interview at Tiff, saying “But you accept giant Armageddon-like movies for 20 years, and then you’re shocked when someone blows up a building. And the Ufc—the cage fighting on TV—is more popular than boxing, which I think is barbaric too.

From the start, few mistook Michael Caine for typical movie-star material. “I had a thick Cockney accent and I was a tall, skinny guy,” Caine recalls.

The situation was compounded during the filming of one of his first hits, 1965’s spy thriller The Ipcress File: “I wore glasses, and during the movie I tried to seduce a woman by cooking a meal for her in my kitchen. We got a note back from Hollywood saying, ‘Leading man looks gay — wears glasses, cooks and shops in groceries.’”

Yet Caine went...

Best known as the kid from an English coal-mining town who wanted to dance, one-time “Billy Elliot” star Jamie Bell has grown rugged with age. In director Tim Sutton’s dark, bruise-inducingly poetic “Donnybrook,” he plays Jarhead Earl, a former U.S. Marine who’s stuck in comparably grim economic circumstances. Eighteen long years have turned the actor’s once-angelic features tough. Disappearing into the role, instead of beaming with hope and possibility, his face reveals a man who’s seen rock bottom. He’s a fighter in the most literal sense — a scrappy, slightly runty pugilist who knows no other way to escape his trailer-park existence than to go up against the county’s most dangerous thugs in the death match that gives this haunting, slow-burn thriller its name.

Actually, the Donnybrook might be a death match. Even by the end of the film, one can’t be too sure what the well-kept secret is,...

With Donnybrook, writer-director Tim Sutton returns to the forgotten America that informed his three previous features, Pavilion (2012), Memphis (2013) and Dark Night (2016), though whatever vision those films had (and it tended to be of a very minor sort) is absent here. This is a movie to which the term "derivative" entirely applies, a repellent mixture of Malick-like dreaminess, Scorsese-esque brutality and the lurid shock/schlock of William Faulkner in Sanctuary mode (just replace corncob rape with the grisly seduction-murder of an orgasming, pallid-skinned meth dealer).

At the story's heart are two men on separate, occasionally converging ...

With Donnybrook, writer-director Tim Sutton returns to the forgotten America that informed his three previous features, Pavilion (2012), Memphis (2013) and Dark Night (2016), though whatever vision those films had (and it tended to be of a very minor sort) is absent here. This is a movie to which the term "derivative" entirely applies, a repellent mixture of Malick-like dreaminess, Scorsese-esque brutality and the lurid shock/schlock of William Faulkner in Sanctuary mode (just replace corncob rape with the grisly seduction-murder of an orgasming, pallid-skinned meth dealer).

At the story's heart are two men on separate, occasionally converging ...

The Toronto International Film Festival’s Platform program has announced the fourth edition of Platform, a director-driven section that aims to showcase original names in international cinema. This year, Platform will play home to a dozen feature films, including new features from Karyn Kusama (her star-studded cult drama “Destroyer” is her first film since “The Invitation”), Alex Ross Perry (again teaming with his “Queen of Earth” star Elisabeth Moss for the rock drama “Her Smell”), and Tim Sutton’s “Dark Night” followup.

This year’s Platform lineup also includes four features (30%) directed or co-directed by women, and seven titles that feature strong women in leading roles. The wide-ranging slate features films from the Americas, Europe, and Asia, and all but two of the titles will be making their World Premiere at the festival.

“This year’s Platform selection stands out for the assured and precise directing on display,” said Tiff...

Unlike most filmmakers who retire, Béla Tarr has actually stuck to this word. 2011’s “The Turin Horse” was indeed the Hungarian luminary’s final work, and a fitting swan song for a decades-long career that spawned several masterworks. At the top of that list is “Sátántangó,” Tarr’s 432-minute opus, which remains difficult to see 24 years after it was first released and has never been released on Blu-ray.

Until now, that is: Arbelos Films is working on a 4K restoration of the film, which will be re-released in theaters early next year with a Blu-ray/VOD release to follow. A boutique film distributor and digital restoration company, the Los Angeles–based Arbelos is also working on a 4K update of Dennis Hopper’s “The Last Movie.”

Read More:Bela Tarr Speaks: The Retired Hungarian Director Explains Why He Shut Down His Film School Project

Set in a remote Hungarian village whose...

Little insight is gained into the 2012 Aurora cineplex tragedy in this fragmented drama

This low-budget Us drama from Tim Sutton is inspired by the 2012 cineplex shooting in Aurora, Colorado; in the week after Charlottesville, this studiously arty investigation of the Us plague of social rage comes across as well-meaning but ineffectual. Its fragmented series of vignettes shows a selection of characters – skateboarders and other affectless kids, an Iraq veteran, a fitness-obsessed young woman – drifting towards what we know will be a shocking conclusion. This frustrating piece says at once too little and too much – withholding basic information while constantly gesturing at a familiar anaesthesised soul-of-America message. The glacial beauty of the images by Hélène Louvart, cinematographer for Agnès Varda and Wim Wenders, makes for elegantly detached video art – by way of Gus Van Sant, Michael Haneke and Larry Clark – but Dark Night offers nothing in the way of revelation, social or aesthetic.

Organisers introduce Ifp Direct Access & Meet the Decision Makers.

This year’s Ifp Week (September 17-21) in Brooklyn is set to include public screenings, talks, meeings, and exhibitions focused on independent content for the big screen, small screen, and internet.

Anticipated highlights includes kick-off event Filmmaker Magazine Talks @ Bric, when Moonlight director Barry Jenkins and producer Adele Romanski (pictured), Mudbound director Dee Rees, and the Safdie brothers are expected to take part in on-stage conversations.

The Ifp Screen Forward Conference @ Made in NY Media Center by Ifp comprises three days of conversations with storytellers and industry leaders, including Cenk Uygur, Julie Klausner, and Mark Douglas.

Ifp Direct Access & Meet the Decision Makers @ Made in NY Media Center by Ifp is new to Ifp Week, and offers advice from industry leaders through small workshops on how to launch narrative features, documentaries, and serialised content.

The ‘Meet the Decision Makers’ track offers face-time with prominent companies such as [link...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options — not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves — we’ve taken it upon ourselves to highlight the titles that have recently hit platforms. Every week, one will be able to see the cream of the crop (or perhaps some simply interesting picks) of streaming titles (new and old) across platforms such as Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, and more (note: U.S. only). Check out our rundown for this week’s selections below.

Adaptation (Spike Jonze)

It’s almost depressing to rewatch Adaptation in 2016, because it’s a reminder of how strong an actor Nicolas Cage is when he actually invests himself in good projects. It was soon after this that his career went off the rails, but he’s remarkably impressive here, playing the dual roles of Charlie Kaufman and his fictional twin brother, Donald. As much a mind-fuck as any other Kaufman screenplay,...

You may not have liked going to school as a kid, but you probably didn’t hate it as much as Edwin. In his opening narration, the eighth-grader, played by an impressive Arman Darbo, refers to his school as the reason he can’t sleep at night, a clique-filled nightmare and a “big shit-pile floating downstream.” At the bottom of that stream, caught in the wake and crashing against the rocks, he and his best friend are trying — and failing — to make it through each day undisturbed.

Read More: Laff 2017: 10 Festival Picks, from ‘My Friend Dahmer’ to ‘Everything Beautiful Is Far Away’

A coming-of-age drama about kids who may never actually come of age, “And Then I Go” reads as a less abrasive “We Need to Talk About Kevin.” Vincent Grashaw’s adaptation of Jim Shepard’s 2004 novel “Project X” isn’t about red flags and warning signs so much as the toxic combination of angst, detachment and alienation that makes terrible decisions seem like the only recourse to kids who don’t know — or don’t believe — that the problems they’re facing will one day seem insignificant.

“Kids like you used to get their butts kicked when I was a kid,” Edwin’s kind-but-exhausted principal (Tony Hale, living up to the tradition of comic TV actors going serious for the indies) tells him after one especially sarcastic visit to the office. “They still do,” responds the troubled youth, who’s as quick-witted as he is confused. Cut to: Edwin and his best friend Flake getting their asses kicked by a couple of soccer players.

It takes all of 15 minutes to glean that this film’s narrative trajectory probably isn’t leaning toward reconciliation and catharsis. Edwin doesn’t seem likely to emerge from his adolescent ordeals changed for the better, and his parents (Melanie Lynskey and Justin Long) aren’t going to have an aha moment where they realize how to connect with their son. No, this movie’s arc is signaled by a question Flake asks Edwin: “Wanna see my dad’s guns?”

Rather than try to remake Gus Van Sant’s “Elephant,” as Tim Sutton did in “Dark Night,” Grashaw has crafted an intimate, sympathetic character study. The focus is on Edwin rather than what he may or may not eventually do, which is largely at the behest of his angry bestie. They’re making a list and checking it twice, but it’s clear all along that Flake (real name Roddy) is more committed to the idea than our wayward protagonist. Will they or won’t they?

Read More: As the Los Angeles Film Festival Struggles for Relevancy, a New Director Has Big Ideas For Change

Grashaw keeps us guessing. “And Then I Go” isn’t elegiac or fatalistic, nor is it a dread-filled slog toward an inevitable conclusion. There are glimmers of hope along the way, and a group art project goes surprisingly well — Edwin’s parents suggest taking a trip to the lake they used to visit every summer — and suggestions that the boy will find a way to weather this storm. By the time the end arrives, we’re as surprised as Edwin and Flake want their classmates to be.

Grade: B

“And Then I Go” premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival. It is currently seeking distribution.

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With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options — not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves — we’ve taken it upon ourselves to highlight the titles that have recently hit platforms. Every week, one will be able to see the cream of the crop (or perhaps some simply interesting picks) of streaming titles (new and old) across platforms such as Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, and more (note: U.S. only). Check out our rundown for this week’s selections below.

Blow Out (Brian De Palma)

In a career fixated on the machinations of filmmaking presented through both a carnal and political eye, Brian De Palma’s fascinations converged idyllically with Blow Out. In his ode to the conceit of Blow Up — Michelangelo Antonioni’s deeply influential English-language debut, released 15 years prior — as well as the aural intrigue of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation, De Palma constructs a conspiracy...

Dark Night screens Friday March 3rd through Sunday March 5th at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium (470 East Lockwood). The movie starts at 7:30 all three evenings.

A haunting, artfully understated critique of American gun culture, Tim Sutton’s third feature is loosely based around the 2012 massacre in Aurora, Colorado that took place during a multiplex screening of “The Dark Knight Rises.” Employing a mesmerizing documentary-style technique and a cast of non-professional actors, Dark Night follows the activities of six strangers over the course of one day, from sunrise to midnight, the shooter among them. Shot in Sarasota, Florida and lensed by veteran French Dp Hélène Louvart (Pina, The Beaches Of Agnes), the dream-like visuals articulate both Sutton’s carefully crafted landscapes and the characters’ sense of alienation and suburban malaise. Winner of the Lanterna Magica Award at the Venice Film Festival following its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, Dark Night is essential viewing,...

Brooklyn-based writer-director Tim Sutton makes challenging, daring and experimental films often culled together from micro-budgets. His debut, “Pavilion“, is a coming-of age statement and his follow up, “Memphis”, is a poetically fragmented look at a musician’s drifting life. In his latest movie, “Dark Night,” Sutton continues to prove he’s one of the most fascinating, on-the-rise indie filmmakers working today.

Thought-provoking and unsettling, “Dark Night” is loosely based on “The Dark Knight Rises” movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado in 2014.

Continue reading The Movies That Changed My Life: ‘Dark Night’ Director Tim Sutton at The Playlist.

Night of Your Life: Sutton Explores Tragedy as Intersecting Connective Tissue

The sentiment behind Paul Haggis’ 2005 Best Picture Winner Crash, in which various disparate denizens of Los Angeles manage to find meaning amongst the ruins following violent, aggressive interactions, is similar to what is more successfully achieved in Tim Sutton’s third feature, docudrama Dark Night.

Continue reading...

Tim Sutton is a filmmaker with a distinct visual style, which he brings into the heart of the gun control debate with Dark Night, an entrancing, terrifying exploration of the moments before a horrible event. Following multiple characters living in a Florida town, Sutton paints an American portrait that feels doubly relevant following last year’s election and everything that’s come since. The Film Stage had an earnest conversation with the writer/director about the the business of indie film, how politics affect art and how one casts a film so it feels authentic to the story being told.

The Film Stage: When you jump into a project like this, what’s the research process like?

Tim Sutton: So, research-wise I really tried to limit myself. People have asked if I’ve talked to a lot of people in Aurora or in Denver, and I did not. The work is purely fiction,...

On July 20, 2012, James Eagan Holmes entered a theater for a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises, and subsequently took the lives of 12 men and women, injuring another 70. Shattering the community of Aurora, Colorado, this event in turn helped spark yet another debate over gun violence, America’s gun culture, and the inability for governmental leaders to truly make headway with common sense gun reform.

But how does a filmmaker capture this event on screen? Does someone go the fictional route like Gus Van Sant’s Elephant? Or does the documentary route fit better, as with something like the superlative 2016 documentary Newtown? Well, for director Tim Sutton, the grey area between the two appears to fit best.

Sutton’s third film, Dark Night, is loosely based on the events that took place that horrific day in 2012, and more specifically looks at the fictionalized moments leading up to it in the...

Following major festival accolades and a short qualifying run, Magnolia Pictures’ Oscar-nominated documentary I Am Not Your Negro heads to more than two dozen cities this weekend. The film is the final title in the documentary category to begin its regular theatrical run. On the other end of the spectrum, Sony Pictures Classics will open Robert De Niro starrer The Comedian, which also features Leslie Mann, Danny DeVito and Edie Falco. The film will bow Friday in about 800 theaters. Filmmaker Tim Sutton’s Dark Night, a ‘pseudo-doc’ film loosely based on the massacre at a multiplex in Aurora, Co during a showing of The Dark Knight Rises will also begin its limited run via Cinelicious Pics, while Vertical Entertainment will launch thriller Eloise, directed by Oscar-winning Visual Effects artist, Robert Legato.

Among other films opening in limited release are Janus Films’ Polish genre-bender The Lure, which opened in NY only...

The first shot of Tim Sutton’s Dark Night is genius. We see a silent close-up of a woman’s eyes, smears of primary colored light flashing over them. It’s natural to assume she’s our reflection; a cinemagoer drinking in the big screen luminescence. Gradually, the sounds of sirens fade in and the light playing over the woman’s face is contextualized as the metronomic flash of emergency response vehicles. The camera pulls out to show an unfocused fuzz of activity around a traumatized woman. Mundanity has flipped into atrocity.

The root of the film is the 2012 mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado during a screening of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises. But Sutton isn’t specifically dramatizing that massacre (we see the news footage of the trial of Aurora shooter James Holmes in the background of a scene, leaving this as an imagined copycat killing), but...

How soon is too soon? It’s a question that hovers around any movie that mines horrifying headlines for material. Back in 2003, Gus Van Sant risked hasty exploitation with Elephant, shaping the details of the Columbine massacre into a controlled, unsettling meditation on violence; the film provoked plenty of heated debate about representation, partially because it arrived when the atrocity it evokes was still fresh in the national consciousness. Now comes Dark Night, another enigmatic art movie being released about four years after the mass shooting that inspired it. One could certainly accuse writer-director Tim Sutton of too quickly depicting the events of July 20, 2012, when a gunman opened fire on a packed crowd at an Aurora, Colorado movie theater, killing 12 people and injuring many more. But the very concept of respectful distance has been hopelessly complicated in the years since Columbine. Simply put, mass shootings happen ...

Halloween apparently comes early this year — February offers a quartet of promising horror movies, not to mention the latest chapter in the Fifty Shades erotic saga (which is its own sort of horror). Add to that a rare appearance from An-Actually-Trying-and-Not-Phoning-It-In Robert De Niro, a pair of extremely promising sequels, an experimental indie about a mass murderer and an Oscar-nominated documentary, and the next four weeks starts to look a bounty no matter your taste. Here's what coming soon to a theater near you in the next month.

A Cure For Wellness (Feb.

Sundance Survival Guides are a tradition here at Filmmaker. Producer and Contributing Editor Alicia Van Couvering wrote one in 2009 and again in 2012, and producer Mynette Louie offered her advice in ’15. This year, producer Alexandra Byer (Dark Night) remembers her own rituals for making it safely through the Park City gauntlet. Ignore these at your own peril. — Editor 1. Dress warmly, leave the heels at home. You are headed to the snowy mountains of Utah! Most people traveling to Park City in the winter months are headed to ski or snowboard, but you are just planning to […]...

The Sundance Film Festival premieres numerous films in and out of competition across many different sections — U.S. Dramatic, World Documentary, Next, etc. — but the one section that features films that defy convenient genre trappings is the Midnight section. This year, the Midnight section will feature new work from Annie Clark (a.k.a St. Vincent), Jeff Baena and the first feature-length film from Chris Baugh entitled “Bad Day for the Cut.”

Read More: 10 Surprises and Hidden Gems from the 2017 Sundance Lineup

The film follows Donal (Nigel O’Neill), a quiet, content farmer who still lives at home in a little Irish village with his mother Florence (Stella McCusker). But when Florence is killed in an apparent home invasion, Donal sets off for Belfast looking to avenge her death and discovers a secret for revenge about his mother that will shake him to his core. The film co-stars Susan Lynch...

The 2017 Sundance Film Festival runs from January 19 through 29 in Park City, Utah and will feature plenty of premieres from acclaimed directors like Michael Almereyda (“Experimenter”), Alex Ross Perry (“Listen Up Philip”), Marti Noxon (“UnREAL”) and more. However, the festival will also premiere plenty of documentaries from around the globe, including Ramona S. Diaz’s latest film “Motherland,” a vérité portrait of the world’s busiest maternity hospital in the Philippines. Throughout the film, we see hectic birthing rooms, pass through overcrowded hallways bursting with life and witness the circle of life. But despite the harsh circumstances, a supportive community of women makes this world thrive and provide expecting mothers with the necessary strength to soldier on. Watch an exclusive trailer for the film below.

Read More: 10 Surprises and Hidden Gems from the 2017 Sundance Lineup

Diaz is an award-winning Asian American filmmaker best known for directing the films “Spirits Rising,” “Imelda,...

On July 20, 2012, James Eagan Holmes entered a Century 16 movie theater in Aurora, Colorado and opened fire during a midnight screening of “The Dark Knight Rises,” killing 12 people and injuring 70 more. At the time, the Aurora massacre featured the largest number of casualties in a shooting in the United States and continued the neverending debate over gun control and gun violence in America.

Now, four years later, Tim Sutton’s third film “Dark Night” tackles the massacre as well as the national gun culture. The film follows the lives of six strangers over the course of one day, the shooter included, as their lives intersect at a suburban movie theater which will become the site of a massacre. Watch an exclusive clip from the film below.

Read More: ‘Dark Night’ Trailer and Poster: Tim Sutton’s Dreamlike Film About Gun Violence Arrives in Theaters Next Month

The film premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival.

A24, the studio which brought us indie favorites like “The Lobster,” “Room” and “20th Century Women,” has released a teaser trailer for an upcoming mysterious “Untitled” sci-fi film. The movie’s title is unknown and the video’s description on YouTube only says “in our near future.”

Featuring unrecognizable actors, the one-minute clip begins with the words “Beyond Reality, Realize Feeling, Feel Bare,” and more. Each scene is different and features a teenager, a couple and futuristic technology, among other things.

Nothing is known about the project and it doesn’t appear on the studio’s website either. Though, The Playlist noted that when the trailer was first uploaded it had the title “Tor Tsr Witness.” We’re not sure if it’s a film, a short or even a television series, but check out the teaser for yourself below.

Read More: ‘A Ghost Story’: David Lowery’s Sundance...

Last year it was announced that Joseph Fiennes would be portraying Michael Jackson in an upcoming British project, which led to accusation of “whitewashing.” Now, almost a year later, the actor makes his debut as the King of Pop in the trailer for Sky Art’s comedy series “Urban Myths.”

The satirical half-hour show retells supposed events in the lives of public figures, including the urban legend about a post-9/11 road trip between Jackson, Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor, which was written about in a 2011 Vanity Fair article. The recently released clip recreates the event with Stockard Channing as the “Cleopatra” actress and Brian Cox as Brando.

It also features many other well-known people including Eddie Marsan as Bob Dylan, Ben Chaplin as Cary Grant, Iwan Rheon as Adolf Hitler and Rupert Grint as “Hitler’s Friend.”

Read More: ‘Kushuthara: Pattern of Love’ Exclusive Trailer: A Western Journalist Falls For...

A year after premiering at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, Tim Sutton’s “Dark Night” is set to arrive in theaters courtesy of Cinelicious Pics. An elliptical quasi-documentary, the film brings to mind Gus Van Sant’s “Elephant” (and, for that matter, Alan Clarke’s “Elephant”) as it explores the day leading up to a tragedy that’s modeled in part after the mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado of 2012. Find the film’s trailer and poster below.

Read More: Sundance Review: ‘Dark Night’ is a Gorgeous Look at an American Tragedy

The trailer offers glimpses of the nonprofessional actors who make up Sutton’s cast and keeps viewers guessing as to who among them might be plotting violence as day slowly turns into night. Hélène Louvart (“Pina,” “The Beaches of Agnes”) shot “Dark Night,” and her cinematography is its most distinctive, arresting element — all mood and atmosphere, the film relies on...

Cinelicious Pics has debuted an official trailer for a super low budget indie drama titled Dark Night, from New York-based director Tim Sutton. The film premiered at last year's Sundance Film Festival in the low budget Next category, and is opening in limited theaters this February. It follows a troubled kid planning a mass shooting, loosely based around The Dark Knight Rises shooting a few years ago, even though it's not the same story (turned into a film). Starring Robert Jumper, Anna Rose Hopkins, Karina Macias. I saw this film at Sundance last year and it's definitely not for me: oh so boring, not much of a plot, really not impressive in any way. Of course, that's just my opinion, other critics found more to appreciate. Have a look. Here's the official trailer (+ poster) for Tim Sutton's Dark Night, direct from YouTube: A haunting, artfully understated critique of American gun culture,...

Based loosely on the events of the Auroa shooting, Dark Night, Tim Sutton’s third feature is an elegiac work of expertly expressed cinematic artistry that looks at America as it is today, in the midst of a rising tide of isolationism and acute loneliness. In my year-end reflections on cinema, I declared it to be the best non-documentary American film of 2016. Afer a year on the festival circuitl, from Sundance to Venice, and beyond, Cinelicious Pics will be bringing the film to U.S. theaters starting February 3rd at NYC's IFC Center. In anticipation of that, they've cut together a moody, impressionistic trailer. Have a look below. ...

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One of the most controversial and haunting films of last year’s Sundance Film Festival line-up was Tim Sutton‘s follow-up to Memphis, Dark Night. An impressionistic feature loosely based on the horrific 2012 shooting in Aurora, Colorado which left 12 people died, the first trailer has now arrived ahead of a release next month. Featuring a portrait of a suburban community before hinting at the terror to come, it looks to be one of the year’s essential films.

We said in our review, “In many ways, writer-director Tim Sutton‘s third feature, Dark Night, exists in the same world as his first two films, Pavilion and Memphis. As we follow a collection of young men and women drifting through a long day in the American suburbs, many of the themes from his earlier work shine through — boredom as punctuated by anger, lust, and artistic ambition, to name a few. Where...