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My Mom Jayne, Mariska Hargitay’s documentary about her late mom Jayne Mansfield, which dropped on HBO on June 27, became the talk of the town in recent days as people caught up with it over the July 4 weekend. And Hargitay’s film directorial debut is likely to remain a topic of conversation over the coming months because, The Hollywood Reporter can report, it received an Oscar-qualifying theatrical run the week before it hit cable — quietly screening at the Laemmle NoHo 7 in North Hollywood from June 20-26, and thereby meeting the Academy’s documentary feature Oscar eligibility requirement of a one-week run in at least one of several major cities — and Hargitay and Co. are committed to giving it a real grassroots push this awards season.

The Academy’s 693-member documentary branch, which solely determines the best documentary feature Oscar shortlist and nominees, has, in recent years, demonstrated an aversion to...

It all begins with a broken bone—a tailbone, to be exact. It is that of May, an older woman from Norway who’s visiting one of her sisters, Kari, in Gullspång, Sweden. The accident strands May at Kari’s house, to the point that she decides to buy an apartment of her own in the same town. This all may seem like too banal of an affair to merit a documentary. Yet this is the allure of director Maria Fredriksson’s unpredictable The Gullspång Miracle, which skillfully unfolds what initially seems like an ordinary tale of lives being lived by the most ordinary of people, little by little, into a dramatic tale of mythological proportions.

May finds the apartment that she’s looking for, only for things to take a strange turn when she bumps into the seller, Olaug, at the notary’s office. May insists that Olaug looks...

Sarah Polley, the actor famous for her roles in horror features like Dawn of the Dead and Splice, and her work as a director in Stories We Tell and Women Talking, has revealed the truth about her involvement with an upcoming adaptation of Bambi. Polley had always been reported to be involved as a director, but she now confirmed that she was never "officially attached" to the project that would see a live-action remake of the Disney classic, in the same vein as movies like The Lion King and Snow White.

Polley is currently promoting her return to acting, albeit in a show where she plays herself. Speaking with Vanity Fair, she talks about participating in Seth Rogen's meta experiment for Apple TV+ The Studio, the new comedy series that goes deep into the Hollywood grinding machine. Polley was skeptical at first about standing in front of the camera...

It was arguably the most engaging film at this year’s Cannes (Thierry Frémaux might have included it in the competition if not for Caught by the Tides shoring up), and I believe, it stands as the most groundbreaking piece of contemporary cinema dealing with the profound anxiety felt during the pandemic. Similarly, this docu-fiction exemplifies what was at stake when Covid-19 disrupted the entire system: the flow of creativity, freedom, and the indispensable role of the auteur. A Special Screenings selection, I hadn’t experienced such a level of second-guessing what I was watching since my first viewing of Sarah Polley’s flawlessly told Stories We Tell (2012).…...

When Arte Germany CEO Wolfgang Bergmann approached Toronto director Larry Weinstein in January 2023 about making a documentary to mark the 200th anniversary of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the filmmaker didn’t exactly break into a chorus of “Ode to Joy.”

Nor could he have anticipated that his film “Beethoven’s Nine: Ode to Humanity,” which premieres in Toronto at Hot Docs on April 28, would be not only his first to break the fourth wall but also his most personal to date.

A prolific director-producer since his early years with Canada’s Rhombus Films, Weinstein has made numerous acclaimed creative music docs, including “Beethoven’s Hair,” a 2005 forensic adventure exploring the composer’s physical and psychic woes. The prospect of making a second Beethoven film, especially with several “Ninth films” already in circulation, seemed dim.

“There wasn’t a lot of time to come up with a big idea,” he told Variety in early April.

Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck and Canadian cinematographer Iris Ng will be honoured at the 25th edition of Canada’s documentary festival Hot Docs (April 30 – May 1).

Peck, best known for the Oscar-nominated documentary I Am Not Your Negro, will be presented with the outstanding achievement award. His other credits include Lumumba, HBO miniseries Exterminate All The Brutes and most recently Silver Dollar Road.

A selection of Peck’s work will be shown at the festival where the director will participate in several post-screening Q&a’s.

Previous recipients of the outstanding achievement award include Werner Herzog, Patricio Guzmán and Tony Palmer.

Sarah Polley is in talks to direct a live-action remake of Walt Disney’s “Bambi,” TheWrap has learned. Details on the project are scarce, but she will work off a recent screenplay draft penned by Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster and the film will be a musical featuring music from Kacey Musgraves.

The news comes as Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” is lighting up the box office and could follow in the footsteps of the photoreal CG-filled “The Lion King” and “The Jungle Book.” While those films were blockbusters, it has not been confirmed as to whether this seemingly less epic offering will be intended for theaters or, as we saw with “Pinocchio,” “Lady and the Tramp” and “Peter Pan and Wendy,” Disney+.

Sarah Polley is coming off an Oscar win for Best Adapted Screenplay for the critically acclaimed “Women Talking,” which was her first directorial effort in over a...

Still fresh off her Academy Award for Best Screenplay for 2022’s “Women Talking,” (which was also nominated for Best Picture), Canadian writer/director Sarah Polley may have found her next gig. However, it’ll be one that surprises and possibly shocks some. Polley will be writing and directing a live-action adaptation of the animated “Bambi” story for Disney.

The move may surprise those that know Polley for her indie and dramatic work, films like “Take This Waltz,” the documentary “Stories We Tell,” last year’s aforementioned “Women Talking,” and the Academy Award-nominated “Away From Her.”

Read More: ‘Women Talking’ Director Sarah Polley Developing A Film Inspired By Her Awards Season Run

You could call it the Barry Jenkins “get that bag” move if you’re cynical (he’s gone from beloved indies to directing a—presumably highly-lucrative— live-action prequel adaptation of Disney’s “The Lion King.

Continue reading ‘Bambi’:...

The gears are turning on a live-action Bambi movie at Disney, as a director is getting locked down for the project. Deadline reports that Sarah Polley, who won an Oscar this year for her Women Talking screenplay, is now in talks to direct the Bambi remake. Disney previously addressed plans to give Bambi the live-action treatment, and it would seem that the project is finally making some traction with these new plans to place Polley in the director's chair. Back in 2020, it was reported that Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Lindsey Beer would be co-writing the screenplay, but given the passage of time and the ongoing writers strike, it's unclear if they're still on board.

Before writing and directing Women Talking, Polley had also helmed the feature film Away from Her, which was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay at the Oscars in 2008. She also wrote and directed Take This Waltz and Stories We Tell,...

Exclusive: After winning the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for Women Talking, Sarah Polley is on to the most epic undertaking of her filmmaking career thus far, as Deadline understands that the filmmaker is in talks to helm a live-action take on Bambi in very early development at Disney.

Multiple sources tell Deadline that the project is a musical to feature music from six-time Grammy-winning country star Kacey Musgraves. Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster (Transparent) wrote the most recent draft of the script, and Chris and Paul Weitz’s Depth of Field will produce.

The studio first signaled its intention to adapt Bambi for live-action back in early 2020, bringing Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Lindsey Beer aboard as writers and Depth of Field to produce in January of that year. No word yet on when the project might be put in motion, given unpredictable strike conditions, for starters.

The film is of course the coming-of-age story of Bambi,...

Sarah Polley is already working on her next project.

On Sunday night, the Canadian director won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for “Women Talking”, and apparently the whole awards season has inspired her.

Read More: Toronto’s Sarah Polley Wins Her First-Ever Oscar For ‘Women Talking’

“I’ve been developing a project based on my experiences going through awards season — I’m not kidding,” she told Deadline on the red carpet. “I know all of your names and I have all of your numbers, you will be hearing from me.”

Polley added, “I’ve had basically a hotline with all the filmmakers and writers in the race, who text and email me things as they happen all night long — I have this informal writers room which has been amazing.”

Read More: Radical Dialogue And Open Roads In Sarah Polley’s ‘Women Talking’

This wasn’t Polley’s first awards season experience,...

Last week, we learned that the documentary Living with Chucky, which was directed and conceived by Kyra Elise Gardner, the daughter of Tony Gardner, the chief puppeteer for a large portion of the Chucky franchise (from Seed of Chucky on), will be released through Cinedigm’s Screambox streaming service on April 4th, and will be getting a digital release in North America that same day. Now it has come to our attention that Living with Chucky will not only be getting a digital release on April 24th in the UK and Ireland, but also a Blu-ray release courtesy of Lightbulb Film Distribution! The trailer for the documentary can be seen in the embed above.

Living with Chucky is said to explore the iconic Child’s Play franchise through a personal and social perspective. The documentary feature utilizes new and archival interview footage to expose the series’ cultural impact over the years,...

There is a utopian dream at the heart of Sarah Polley’s Best Picture nominee “Women Talking.” It’s right there in the title, sort of.

“The most exciting thing are the reports I’m getting about people having to be kicked out of the theater because a bunch of strangers talk to each other,” Polley told IndieWire during a recent interview when asked about the responses to the film she’s enjoyed the most. “It’s literally the utopian dream for me, that this film would make people talk to each other who either didn’t know each other or didn’t agree on things.”

Not just women talking, people talking. But, yes, she does realize that the film’s title — the same title of as the Miriam Toews novel that Polley adapted for the screen; her screenplay is also nominated for an Oscar — might sound a little confrontational.

A few months ago, we learned that the documentary Living with Chucky, which was directed and conceived by Kyra Elise Gardner, the daughter of Tony Gardner, the chief puppeteer for the majority of the Chucky franchise, will be released through Cinedigm’s Screambox streaming service (which is headed up by our friends at Bloody Disgusting) in 2023. Now we know the exact release date: Living with Chucky will be getting its Screambox and digital release on April 4th – and along with the release date information comes the unveiling of a trailer. Collider got the exclusive first look at the trailer, and you can check it out in the embed above.

Living with Chucky is said to explore the iconic Child’s Play franchise through a personal and social perspective. The documentary feature utilizes new and archival interview footage to expose the series’ cultural impact over the years, with principal cast, crew members including Don Mancini,...

Content Warning: This article contains discussions of physical abuse and sexual violence.

Women Talking was one of the most critically acclaimed drama films of 2022. Directed by Sarah Polley (known for the films Stories We Tell and Take This Waltz), the film is adapted from the 2018 novel by Miriam Toews. Women Talking has been nominated for the 2023 Academy Award for Best Picture and the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Sarah Polley.

The movie has a notable ensemble cast of acclaimed, primarily female actors. These include three-time Academy Award winner Frances McDormand, Academy Award Nominees Jessie Buckley and Rooney Mara, as well as Emmy Winner Claire Foy. The film follows a community of women from the real-life Mennonite community in Manitoba Colony, Bolivia. Women Talking had a limited theatrical release in December 2022. Now, the film is available in theaters as part of a wider, international release in the run-up to the Academy Awards.

“ I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet.”

– 1 Timothy 2:12

Numerous explanations have been given for the Apostle Paul’s harsh teaching. Some scholars feel he was responding to cultural concerns in a patriarchal society. Others believe he was addressing a conflict inside local churches. It’s also possible he was simply a raging misogynist. Whatever his intentions, it’s undeniable that this verse and interpretations of it have caused irreparable harm and devastation, creating cultures where women are seen as unequal to men and excusing horrendous abuse.

It’s a verse that the characters of Women Talking would know quite well, although they’ve never read it with their own eyes. Raised in a strict Mennonite community, they’re not permitted to read or write, and they have no voice in governing their small village. Although Paul...

Photo: 'Women Talking'

The headline "women-directed" drama migth be jarring, but absolutely necessary. Sarah Polley has been a well-known actress that has made her mark in the acting world. She has been a child actress by appearing in the show ‘Road to Avonlea.’ As she got older, she was recognized in movies such as ‘Dawn of the Dead’ (2004). Around 2006, she released her debut film ‘Away From Her.’ Around 2011, she made her second film ‘Take This Waltz,’ which features Michelle Williams as a suburban housewife who is bored from her marriage to a loving but neglecting husband (played by Seth Rogen). A year later, she made her first documentary ‘Stories We Tell,’ which focuses on the enigmatic tales of her enigmatic mother which have been told by her friends and family members that knew her the best. Ten years later, she returned to the director’s chair by making ‘Women Talking,...

From the very opening of Women Talking, the first film from Sarah Polley since 2012’s Stories We Tell, it’s clear the world of this movie isn’t right. The colors are muted, almost faded, like a memory half-remembered. During a screening of the film at TIFF, Polley stated that the powerful cinematography from Luc Montpellier represented a time long past, almost like the movie we’re about to see is already a memory. But as we watch this story of women trying to decide how to handle their futures, their faith, and their freedoms going forward, this palette almost reminds us that these women won’t see the true beauty of the world until they are equal and free from the world that has held them down for so long.

by Matt St Clair

After the masterful Stories We Tell (2012), the wait for Sarah Polley’s follow-up directorial picture has been agonizing. She’s long since proven herself a gifted actress, but watching her expertly blur the line between fact and fiction in that acclaimed docudrama begged the question of when, and how, she would wow us againwith her directorial skills. Thankfully, she not only has finally made a follow-up project, but one that is more than worth the wait...

The Telluride Film Festival wrapped on Labor Day, with many of the season’s mystery films getting a first look from critics, journalists and festivalgoers. But what did we learn from the four-day fest? Do we have an Oscar frontrunner?

Four narrative films world premiered in the Colorado mountains – “Women Talking” from MGM/Uar, “Empire of Light” from Searchlight Pictures and “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” and “The Wonder” from Netflix. Other Venice titles also made their North American debuts such as Netflix’s “Bardo” and Focus Features’ “Tar.”

Here are five things we learned at Telluride.

Polley Want an Oscar?

Writer, actor and director Sarah Polley received a tribute at the top of the festival, with her film “Women Talking” making its debut. Clips of her acting performances were part of the montage. Featured more prominently were her three films as a director – the documentary “Stories We Tell” and her two indie gems,...

The women in question here belong to a secluded rural religious order on unidentified prairieland and the talking they do throughout Sarah Polley’s immaculately made, intellectually adventurous and politically incisive new film consists of an ongoing debate that will determine the futures of these mostly young women.

Of course, Polley is really addressing all women—and men as well—who are on board with the considerable political and societal changes that have taken place over the past few years and only show signs of accelerating. Engaging an array of excellent actors to portray women in different phases of life, the writer-director draws upon egregious attitudes and behavior of the past and present to envision a significantly altered future, one that can already be glimpsed if you squint your eyes and stand in the right direction–or, as a young Black New York filmmaker hoped for and envisioned more than three decades ago,...

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If we have learned, or been reminded, of anything from recent Oscar races in which The King’s Speech defeated The Social Network, Green Book defeated Roma and Coda defeated The Power of the Dog, it is that the tastes of Academy members are completely separate and apart from the tastes of critics — and that Academy members actually tend to double down on their feelings about a film when they are told that they are not “getting” something that critics “got.”

I bring this up because the early critical reactions to Sarah Polley’s Women Talking, which had its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival’s Palm Theatre on Friday evening following a tribute to Polley, and which Uar will release on Dec. 2, have been utterly glowing — but my Spidey sense, honed over many years of studying and covering the Academy, is that...

“Women Talking” premiered at the Telluride Film Festival on Friday immediately after a warm tribute to director Sarah Polley, and the response confirmed its Oscar bonafides. However, Polley’s riveting look at a group of Mennonite women who mobilize against the rapists in their community presents a challenge for distributor UA/MGM as its busy ensemble could end up competing with itself.

From the moment that nine actresses from “Women Talking” crowded the stage before the movie’s premiere, it was clear that the movie offered up a wide array of performances. Polley’s absorbing, stripped-down adaptation of Miriam Toews’ novel almost exclusively unfolds in the confines of a barn, where the women in question gather to discuss their options. Having discovered that men in their community have been drugging and raping them in their sleep, they’ve already managed to get a few of them arrested — while the rest...

With a title like “Women Talking,” audacious actor-turned-helmer Sarah Polley’s fourth feature makes clear that it will be one of those rare films capable of passing the Bechdel test. That barometer, for those who may not know, poses three seemingly easy-to-meet criteria: (1) The movie has to have at least two women in it, (2) who talk to each other, (3) about something other than a man. It’s astonishing how many movies fail.

Even Polley’s film, which consists of women talking for most of its 97 minutes, is a complicated exception, since most of the conversation — an urgent meeting among the wives, mothers and daughters of an ultraconservative religious colony — concerns the men. But even then, there’s no denying that “Women Talking” is unlike any film you’ve seen before, which is exactly what you’d want from the director of 2012’s astonishingly personal, format-shattering meta-documentary “Stories We Tell.” A decade later,...

Following the early promise of her exceptional directorial debut, Away From Her, the mature complexity of her sophomore feature, Take This Waltz, and the raw power of her third feature, the intimate and personal documentary, Stories We Tell, moviegoers have spent a long time wondering when actress-turned-filmmaker Sarah Polley would return to the director's chair. It's been a long decade since her work has been on the silver screen. While she has kept herself active with a few projects, including Netflix's mini-series, Alias Grace, and the Canadian web series, Hey Lady!, Polley has notably been absent in the film scene, and her fourth feature has been long overdue. Thankfully, the time has come for Polley's much-awaited return. She's back with Women Talking, a surely-sterling adaptation of Miriam Toews' 2018 novel of the same name, and it's expected to be a big awards contender. It's rapidly approaching its Telluride Film Festival premiere,...

Cate Blanchett will receive a tribute for her performance in “Tár.” Ten actors, including Rooney Mara and Claire Foy, will fill the stage for the premiere of Sarah Polley’s “Women Talking.” Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu and Sam Mendes will salute the art of cinema with their new movies, “Bardo” and “Empire of Light,” while Robert Downey Jr. will emerge from his post-“Avengers” retreat to promote a new documentary about his late filmmaker father.

These are some of the potential highlights of the 49th Telluride Film Festival, which announced its lineup today with the usual blend of awards season hopefuls, festival favorites, and cinephile treats. The Labor Day weekend event returned to form last year after its 2020 cancellation by launching future Oscar winners “The Power of the Dog” and “Belfast,” and that success has injected renewed optimism in the festival’s impact.

“This year, there are some real ass-kicking films,...

Writer/director Sarah Polley peels back the layers of covered-up assaults in organized religion.

Adapted from Miriam Toews’ acclaimed novel of the same name, “Women Talking” stars Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Frances McDormand, Ben Whishaw, and Judith Ivey. The film is set to make its international premiere at 2022 TIFF, followed by appearing in the NYFF Spotlight section.

“Women Talking” centers on a group of women in an isolated religious colony who reconcile with their faith after a string of sexual assaults are committed by the colony’s men. The generations of abuse come to light along with the hypocrisy of power in the name of Christ. Sheila McCarthy, August Winter, Michelle McLeod, Will Bowes, and Kira Guloien also star in the film, in theaters December 2.

Oscar-nominated screenwriter Polley, whose past features include “Away From Her” and “Stories We Tell,” previously opened up about her troubling experience as a...

Writer/director Sarah Polley peels back the layers of covered-up assaults in organized religion.

Adapted from Miriam Toews’ acclaimed novel of the same name, “Women Talking” stars Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Frances McDormand, Ben Whishaw, and Judith Ivey. The film is set to make its world premiere at 2022 TIFF, followed by appearing in the NYFF Spotlight section.

“Women Talking” centers on a group of women in an isolated religious colony who reconcile with their faith after a string of sexual assaults are committed by the colony’s men. The generations of abuse come to light along with the hypocrisy of power in the name of Christ. Sheila McCarthy, August Winter, Michelle McLeod, Will Bowes, and Kira Guloien also star in the film, in theaters December 2.

Oscar-nominated screenwriter Polley, whose past features include “Away From Her” and “Stories We Tell,” previously opened up about her troubling experience as a...

While we’re looking forward to season 2 of the Chucky TV series, which will premiere on Syfy and USA Network on October 5th, Yellow Veil Pictures has announced that they’ve picked up the worldwide sales rights to another Chucky project: the documentary Living with Chucky, which is currently making the festival rounds.

Directed and conceived by Kyra Elise Gardner, who is the daughter of Tony Gardner, the chief puppeteer for the majority of the franchise, Living with Chucky

explores the iconic Child’s Play franchise through a personal and social perspective. The documentary feature utilizes new and archival interview footage to expose the series’ cultural impact over the years, with principal cast, crew members including Don Mancini, Brad Dourif, Jennifer Tilly, Tony Gardner, and David Kirshner, alongside fans of the franchise like Marlon Wayans, John Waters, and Abigail Breslin.

Yellow Veil Pictures’ Joe Yanick had this to say:

Living With Chucky...

For the past 25 years, Variety editors and staff have compiled annual lists of industry talent to look out for, stretching various capacities, including directors, writers, producers, cinematographers, and comics. When looking back on the lists from each year, it’s striking to see how many impactful names have blossomed with hugely successful careers within Hollywood, and with some of the individuals taking a surprising route to stardom. It also underscores the innate ability of the Variety team to discover and take early note of the many talented people who have become entertainment icons over several generations.

The first 10 Actors to Watch list was released in 1998, with Luke Wilson (“Rushmore”), Sarah Polley (“Go!”), Adrien Brody (“The Thin Red Line”), Patricia Clarkson (“High Art”), Larenz Tate (“Why Do Fools Fall in Love?”), and Samantha Morton (“Under the Skin”) finding inclusion. It’s interesting to note that Polley would later be selected for...

Film lovers roll up. Here’s our annual list of movies that could have festivals drooling in 2022.

Our list kicked off last year with The Power of the Dog and The Tragedy of Macbeth and also included the likes of Belfast, Benedetta, The Hand of God and A Hero. Fair to say those films all hit their mark in 2021.

With Covid disruption continuing, a number of anticipated movies on last year’s list have yet to see the light of day so some will be included again this year as their releases come into view. Most of the titles below are in post-production, a few are still filming, and some are done. None has yet to start principal photography, and none has been declared for a festival so far.

Festival organizers will have another bumper crop to choose from in 2022 — that is if their physical events are able to go ahead,...

If 2021 has been a calvacade of bad decisions, dashed hopes, and warning signs for cinema’s strength, the Criterion Channel’s monthly programming has at least buttressed our hopes for something like a better tomorrow. Anyway. The Channel will let us ride out distended (holi)days in the family home with an extensive Alfred Hitchcock series to bring the family together—from the established Rear Window and Vertigo to the (let’s just guess) lesser-seen Downhill and Young and Innocent—Johnnie To’s Throw Down and Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons in their Criterion editions, and some streaming premieres: Ste. Anne, Lydia Lunch: The War is Never Over, and The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love.

Special notice to Yvonne Rainer’s brain-expanding Film About a Woman Who . . .—debuting in “Female Gaze: Women Directors + Women Cinematographers,” a series that does as it says on the tin—and a Joseph Cotten retro boasting Ambersons,...

After a string of stellar films with Away from Her, Take This Waltz, and Stories We Tell, actor-turned-director Sarah Polley stepped away from movie-making for nearly a decade. The Canadian artist will now be making a triumphant return with a major project, an adaptation of Miriam Toews’ bestseller Women Talking that has assembled quite a cast.

Led by Frances McDormand, the rest of the ensemble has been unveiled with Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Judith Ivey, Sheila McCarthy, Michelle McLeod, Ben Whishaw, and newcomers August Winter, Liv McNeil, Kate Hallett, Deadline reports. Backed by MGM’s Orion Pictures and Plan B Entertainment, the film follows a group of women in an isolated religious colony as they struggle to reconcile their faith with a series of sexual assaults committed by the colony’s men.

Check out the novel’s official synopsis below and pick up the book here.

One evening,...

“Women Talking,” the drama from director Sarah Polley that stars Frances McDormand, has rounded out its cast, assembling an impressive group that includes Rooney Mara, Claire Foy and Jessie Buckley, an individual with knowledge of the project told TheWrap.

Also joining the cast of “Women Talking” are Judith Ivey, Sheila McCarthy, Michelle McLeod and Ben Whishaw. August Winter, Liv McNeil and Kate Hallett, all in their feature film debuts, are on board as well.

The film, which is based on a novel by Miriam Toews, is set up at MGM’s Orion Pictures and is being produced by Plan B. McDormand is also producing via her Hear/Say Productions.

Women Talking Full Cast: Line 1 L-r: Frances McDormand (Alison Rosa), Rooney Mara (Thomas Whiteside), Claire Foy (Charlotte Hadden), Jessie Buckley (Charlotte Hadden); Line 2 L-r: Judith Ivey (Tess Steinkolk), Sheila McCarthy (Peg McCarthy), Michelle McLeod (Kristina Ruddick), Ben Whishaw (Tomo Brejc); Line 3 L-r:...

Participant has promoted veteran executive Laura Kim to executive vice president of marketing, the company announced on Tuesday.

Kim, who first joined Participant in 2014, will focus on independent and international films and series, reporting to Christina Kounelias, Participant’s president of worldwide marketing.

“Laura has become a good friend and trusted colleague for the past five years that we have worked closely together,” Kounelias said in a statement. “Her vast knowledge and deep expertise in independent, specialty and international films is second-to-none, contributing greatly to the success of our films. Her strategic thinking, great devotion to mentorship and genuine passion for impact and the issues match Participant’s core values, and on behalf of everyone at the company, we are thrilled to recognize her numerous contributions with this promotion.”

“I am excited to be working on films and series that move me and that challenge us to try harder and do better,...

Marketing and publicity veteran Laura Kim has been elevated to EVP of Marketing at Participant.

In her new position, Kim will assume broadened executive responsibilities, with a focus on independent and foreign films and series.

Kim first joined Participant as SVP of Film Marketing in 2014. During her tenure, she’s been key in working on the company’s specialty features, including such Oscar-winning films as American Factory, A Fantastic Woman, Spotlight, and Citizenfour, as well as Monos, Human Flow, and the Oscar-nominated films The Look of Silence and Rbg, the latter of which went on to become a documentary box office hit in 2018 with over $14M. Recent marketing efforts include two-time Oscar-nominated Collective, and the upcoming Final Account and My Name Is Pauli Murray, which had its world premiere this year at the Sundance Film Festival.

Prior to joining Participant, Kim was principal and founder of Inside Job, a motion picture marketing,...

Imagine thinking you’re diverse because your 87-person exclusive club has a few people from Bangladesh, the Philippines, Japan and a smattering of other countries. That’s what the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s defense for their lack of members of color has been until very recently. You might as well just say you’re not racist because you have a “Black friend.” According to HFPA member Jenny Cooney in an interview with Australia’s Today Show earlier this month, the lack of Black journalists was “not anything we focused on.”

Following an avalanche of scrutiny regarding the complete lack of Black members since at least 2002, HFPA members have continued to put their Golden feet in their mouths. The last known Black member of the HFPA was Lowell Staine, a native of Belize who died in February 1998, and no evidence has emerged to suggest any other Black members belonged to the group before that time.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s decision to shut out Michaela Coel’s acclaimed “I May Destroy You” from the 2021 Golden Globe nominations has stirred outrage in Hollywood, more so than any other nominations snub in recent memory. Deborah Copaken, a writer on the Golden Globe-nominated comedy series “Emily in Paris,” published an op-ep in The Guardian railing against the HFPA for omitting “I May Destroy You” in the limited series categories. Copaken wrote she was “stunned” how “Destroy You” was shut out when “Emily in Paris,” which was mostly mocked and lambasted by television critics, made the cut.

“I tried to avoid reading its criticism, but I don’t live under a rock. It never occurred to me that our show would be nominated,” Copaken writes, acknowledging that a show about “a white American selling luxury whiteness, in a pre-pandemic Paris scrubbed free of its vibrant African and Muslim communities” was bound to rankle.

The motion picture academy has announced the animated, documentary and international features eligible for Oscar consideration. Some of the animated and documentary contenders have not yet had their required qualifying release. Each of them must fulfill the requirement to advance in the voting process.

In the documentary feature realm, a record 238 docs are among the contenders, crushing the record of 170 submissions from 2017. Among the pics is Amazon Studios’ “Time,” which won the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, National Board of Review and New York Film Critics Circle awards for best documentary. It’s the first film since Sarah Polley’s “Stories We Tell” (2012) to win the big three critics’ prizes. However, Polley’s movie failed to get an Academy Awards nomination. This also begs the question raised in our most recent round of documentary feature predictions. Is it time for the branch to expand its nominations from five to 10, as...

After unveiling the discs that will be arriving in April, including Bong Joon Ho’s Memories of Murder, Olivier Assayas’ Irma Vep, and more, Criterion has now announced what will be coming to their streaming channel next month.

Highlights include retrospectives dedicated to Guy Maddin, Ruby Dee, Lana Turner, and Gordon Parks, plus selections from Marlene Dietrich & Josef von Sternberg’s stellar box set. They will also present the exclusive streaming premieres of Bill Duke’s The Killing Floor, William Greaves’s Nationtime, Kevin Jerome Everson’s Park Lanes, and more.

Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, which recently arrived on the collection, will be landing on the channel as well, along with a special “Lovers on the Run” series including film noir (They Live by Night) to New Hollywood (Badlands) to the French New Wave (Pierrot le fou) to Blaxploitation (Thomasine & Bushrod) and beyond. Also...

The latest documentary miniseries to tap into the neverending streaming craze around history’s most brutal crimes, “The Ripper” charts the carnage wrought by a serial killer of women in Yorkshire, England, in the 1970s. But there was another misogynistic element in play as revealed in this four-part series, and that turned out to be the police launching the investigation who spent half a decade chasing a slayer who constantly outsmarted them.

For fans of the HBO series “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark” and even the podcast “Sword and Scale,” both unsparing their detailing of grisly crimes, “The Ripper” is an endlessly grim source of fascination. It also effectively flays a procedural breakdown within the police force, showing that the pile-up of misinformation surrounding the deaths of 13 women could be as maddening as the murders themselves.

Directed by Jesse Vile and Ellena Wood, “The Ripper” weaves present-day talking heads with impressively edited,...

Frances McDormand has lined up her newest starring role – and it sounds like it could be a pretty harrowing one. McDormand is set to star in Women Talking, the latest film from Away From Her and Stories We Tell director Sarah Polley. The movie is about a group of […]

The post ‘Women Talking’: Frances McDormand to Star in Drama for Director Sarah Polley appeared first on /Film.

It’s been eight years since filmmaker and Academy Award-nominee Sarah Polley made a feature-length film. To be fair, she wrote and executive-produced 2017’s mini-series “Alias Grace“ and finally resurfaced this year directing episodes of CBC Comedy short series “Hey Lady!” But she’s back for real in the feature space and teaming up with a bevy of talent.

Continue reading Frances McDormand Teams With Director Sarah Polley For ‘Women Talking’ Film at The Playlist.

Frances McDormand is producing and starring in a film adaptation of the novel “Women Talking,” with Sarah Polley directing for MGM’s recently relaunched Orion Pictures.

Orion and Plan B announced the project on Thursday. Polley will direct from her own script, based on Miriam Toews’ bestselling novel. McDormand is producing via her Hear/Say Productions. She brought the project initially to Plan B after acquiring the rights.

“Women Talking,” which was published in 2018, follows a group of women in an isolated Mennonite religious colony in Bolivia as they struggle to reconcile their faith with a series of sexual assaults committed by the colony’s men. The book was named to several best-of-2018 lists, including those by The New York Times Book Review, NPR, The Washington Post and The New York Times.

McDormand stars in Chloe Zhao’s “Nomadland,” a top contender for awards in the coming months. It’s the...

Exlcusive: MGM’s Orion Pictures and Plan B has set Academy Award-nominee Sarah Polley to write and direct a feature adaptation of Miriam Toews’ bestselling novel Women Talking, with Academy Award-winner Frances McDormand to star and produce via her Hear/Say productions. McDormand brought the project initially to Plan B after acquiring the rights.

“We are thrilled to continue our relationship with Plan B with Women Talking. Sarah and Frances collaborating to bring this incredible book to life on the big screen is something we are excited to be part of,” said Michael De Luca, MGM’s Film Group Chairman, Pamela Abdy, MGM’s Film Group President, and Alana Mayo, Orion Pictures’ President jointly.

The novel follows a group of women in an isolated religious colony as they struggle to reconcile their faith with a series of sexual assaults committed by the colony’s men. Published in 2018, the novel was...

Assembled from a single couple’s trove of home movies—50 reels, nearly 30 hours, of 16mm footage captured at home and on vacation from the 1940s to the 1960s—My Mexican Bretzel is another challenge to a couple of bad, but lingering assumptions. First, that Generations Y & Z are uniquely prone to self-documentation; and second, that the quality of consumer-grade photographic equipment has meaningfully improved over the last, oh, 75 years. This is one of those photographic reveries that immerses you in a past at once tinglingly present-tense and poignantly conscious of posterity.

The couple in question are, we’re told, Vivian and Léon Barrett, Swiss and childless. In her headscarf and sunglasses she looks like Isabella Rossellini; he, it must be said, is something of a Hoskins-chested zaddy in the copious footage of them skimming across the continent’s waterways in a wood-paneled cabin cruiser. Camera-buff Léon, who takes some ambitious aerial shots,...

If you’re going to make an experimental film, you may as well swing big. That seems to be the motivation behind “Socks on Fire,” a detailed excavation of filmmaker Bo McGuire’s small family drama, which is at times . Yet another entry into the genre-pushing category known as “documentary/narrative hybrid,” McGuire stitches unremarkable archival footage with more florid staged recreations, hiring actors to play various family members.

Since the triumphs of “Stories We Tell” and “The Act of Killing,” hybrid film has threatened to take over the documentary world, with seemingly every other festival title bearing some trait of the highly disputed label. While “Socks on Fire” deserves praise for nursing artistic ambitions beyond conventional non-fiction storytelling, it gets overly mired in its own lyricism. Lacking a truly compelling story, McGuire turns to florid experimentation to keep his film afloat. The result is an admirable first effort that contains flashes of cinematic beauty,...

Rachel Mason’s mother never thought her art would go anywhere. No matter how many galleries and museums showed her work she would always be a failure, her career so far underground it may as well be six feet under. How beautifully ironic, then, that a film about her mother is the very thing bringing Mason’s work mainstream in a major way, since it just debuted on Netflix under Ryan Murphy’s oversight.

“Circus of Books” takes its name from the gay porn bookstore Karen and Barry Mason owned, overseeing two locations in Los Angeles for over thirty years. Not only is “Circus of Books” a lively and entertaining record of a vital piece of Lgbtq history, the film is also a deeply personal story about faith, living honestly, familial wounds, and the creative process. Mason turns the camera on her family in brave and often painful ways, lovingly...

Walls of cock rings, porn star Jeff Stryker, Larry Flynt, and a kindly married Jewish couple: One of these things is not like the other. They all come together in perfect if unexpected harmony in “Circus of Books,” the delightful new documentary premiering on Netflix next week which just released a trailer. Deeply personal and wildly entertaining, “Circus of Books” is the feature debut of performance artist Rachel Mason, who turns the camera on her own parents, at one point the largest distributors of gay porn in the United States. Their story, lovingly rendered without smoothing over its complexities, turns out to be a vital piece of Lgbtq history.

Here’s the official synopsis:

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For 35-plus years, the gay porn shop Circus...

IndieWire recently named Barry Jenkins’ “Moonlight” the best movie of the decade, but what film would the writer-director name as the standout of the 21st Century? The answer can be found in a filmmaker survey published by The Guardian in which several of the world’s best working directors make their pick for the best movie of the 21st Century. For Jenkins, it’s Carlos Reygadas’ 2007 Cannes-winner “Silent Light.”

“The purest cinema,” Jenkins said of the film. “Thinking of it gives me the same feeling I had when the credits rolled on my first viewing of it over a decade ago. I wonder how many other films on this list were in competition at the 2007 Cannes? What an astounding year for cinema.”

Reygadas’ drama won the Jury Prize at Cannes and is indeed far from the only Cannes winner on the list. Terrence Malick’s Palme d’Or winner “The Tree of Life...