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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...

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...

The 63rd New York Film Festival’s Main Slate will include new films from Noah Baumbach, Jafar Panahi, Kathryn Bigelow, Park Chan-wook and more. Film at Lincoln center announced the 34 Main Slate films Tuesday.

The movies come from 26 countries and include two world, eight North American and 13 U.S. premieres. Some titles will first debut at other festivals. Baumbach’s “Jay Kelly,” Bigelow’s “A House of Dynamite,” Park’s “No Other Choice” and Kent Jones’ “Late Fame” are all playing the 82nd Venice Film Festival before crossing the Atlantic to New York City.

Cannes winners in the Main Slate include Jafar Panahi’s Palme d’Or winner “It Was Just an Accident”; Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value,” which took the Grand Prix; Jury Prize winners Oliver Laxe’s “Sirât” and Mascha Schilinski’s “Sound of Falling”; Best Director- and Best Actor-winning “The Secret Agent” from Kleber Mendonça Filho; and Bi Gan’s “Resurrection,...

Early Tuesday morning, the Venice Film Festival announced the lineup for its 82nd edition featuring a range of films set to make waves internationally the rest of the year. While many of the competition titles were predicted by IndieWire and others ahead of the official announcement on the morning of July 22, the overall list of films and filmmakers in attendance still offered plenty of surprises.

Below, we dive into what stood out about the lineup, whether it was which films and studios are not participating this time around, to the ways in which this group of Venice entries differs from the ones from last year.

No Warner Bros. Pictures

While there are other studios that are not taking some expected features to Venice, like Focus Features with “Hamnet” or Sony with “Klara and the Sun,” the studio most noticeably absent from any part of the Venice schedule is Warner Bros.

The Venice Film Festival is back on the Lido for its 82nd edition, kicking off August 27-September 6. The packed lineup of auteur premieres heading to Italy include new films from Olivier Assayas, Guillermo del Toro, Mona Fastvold, Kathryn Bigelow, Noah Baumbach, Yorgos Lanthimos, Benny Safdie, Jim Jarmusch, Park Chan-wook, László Nemes, François Ozon, Pietro Marcello, and many more in competition.

Out of competition, we’ll see new films from Luca Guadagnino (“After the Hunt”), Werner Herzog (“Ghost Elephants”), Sofia Coppola (Marc Jacobs documentary “Marc by Sofia”), Charlie Kaufman (the short “How to Shoot a Ghost”), Julian Schnabel (“In the Hand of Dante”), Gus Van Sant (“Dead Man’s Wire”), Laura Poitras (“Cover-Up”), Lucrecia Martel (“Nuestra Tierra”), and Tsai Ming-liang (“Back Home”)

Artistic director Alberto Barbera’s programmers had already unveiled a wave of announcements before Tuesday’s lineup: Alexander Payne heads up the jury, Paolo Sorrentino’s “La Grazia” opens the festival Italian-style,...

“The Lost Women Spies” continues its exploration of the courageous women who served as Britain’s first female agents during World War II. This episode, “Cover-Up,” looks into the murky aftermath of a key Nazi’s capture, revealing shocking realities and uncomfortable truths. Spymistress Vera Atkins and her team find themselves swimming in treacherous waters as demands […]

The Lost Women Spies: Cover-Up...

Anonymous Content España, backed by Anonymous Content and Spain’s Morena Films, is teaming with Alea Media to produce a series based on Spain’s 1981 Toxic Oil Syndrome, one of – if not the – deadliest case of food poisoning in modern-day Europe.

The still-to-be-titled series is the first project announced by Anonymous Content España, underscoring its ambition to “elevate local stories into premium television pieces that have a local impact with an international reach,” said its Managing Director Beatriz Campos.

To achieve that, Alea Media is an excellent partner. It rates as one of Spain’s most successful and versatile of TV companies which has scored hits ranging from HBO Europe reconciliation tale “Patria” to Mediaset España war vet vs. drug gang drama-thriller “Wrong Side of the Tracks,” which ranked No. 1 in Netflix global non-English language charts over Feb. 26-March 3, and “Yo Adicto,” a Disney+ Spain addiction survival drama.

Led by ex-Studiocanal executive Campos,...

Bloody Disgusting has learned this evening that Emmy winning writer/producer/director Manny Coto has passed away at the age of 62 after a battle with pancreatic cancer.

THR reports, “Coto, whose childhood love of Star Trek and Super-8 moviemaking led to a 40-year career in film and television, died Sunday at his home in Pasadena after a 13-month battle with pancreatic cancer, a family spokesperson announced.”

Here in the horror world, Manny Coto is known for directing the 1992 slasher movie Dr. Giggles, which recently found new life thanks to a Blu-ray release from Scream Factory.

Manny Coto co-wrote the script and directed the 1990s horror movie, which starred the late Larry Drake as the title character, a night-prowling surgical psychopath.

Drew Dietsch shared his love for Dr. Giggles here on Bd a few years back, writing: “It’s easy to see why Dr. Giggles didn’t click with audiences at the time.

Manny Coto, the Cuban-born writer and producer who received an Emmy for his work on 24 and spent four seasons on American Horror Story and two more on American Horror Stories, has died. He was 62.

Coto, whose childhood love of Star Trek and Super-8 moviemaking led to a 40-year career in film and television, died Sunday at his home in Pasadena after a 13-month battle with pancreatic cancer, a family spokesperson announced.

Coto also worked on the final two seasons of Upn’s Star Trek: Enterprise (2003-05) and on the final three seasons of Showtime’s Dexter (2010-13). Taking the reins on the former as showrunner in season four, he was called an unsung hero, creating a run of episodes that returned classic elements to his beloved franchise.

His “love of Star Trek permeated his life and his worldview,” his family noted. “In addition to being well-known for a spot-on William Shatner...