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Most movies based on video games have a long and spotty track record that runs the gamut from the terrible (2024’s Borderlands) to the slightly less terrible (2022’s Uncharted). However, movies that take place within a video game as it’s being played by actual players is a genre that, at the moment, consists primarily of 2024’s Knit’s Island and The Remarkable Life of Ibelin. To that short list we can add co-directors Pinny Grylls and Sam Crane’s documentary, Grand Theft Hamlet, a hilarious and even touching Covid-era chronicle that follows two unemployed British actors coping with the loneliness and creative boredom of lockdown by mounting a production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet within the world of Grand Theft Auto Online.

The film whittles down 300 hours of GTA Online gameplay to a tight 91 minutes where Crane and fellow unemployed thespian Mark Oosterveen walk, run, drive, fly, punch, and shoot their...

The awards ceremony of the 14th Taiwan International Documentary Festival (Tidf) took place on May 16. 42 nominated films in the Asian Vision Competition, International Competition, Taiwan Competition and 14 works shortlisted for the Tidf Visionary Award, an award for promoting sinophone documentaries, competed for 11 awards.

The Programme Director Wood Lin says this is his 7th time participating in Tidf's programming since 2010, and a persistent self-pursuit for incarnating the spirit of documentary through curating has made each version more challenging than imagined. He also thanks all the filmmakers at the ceremony for devoting their lives to and fully engaging in filmmaking; their works are wonderful gifts that introduce the complexity and beauty of the world to the audience in Taiwan. He then quoted this year's Outstanding Contribution Award recipient, Chang Chao-tang: “We exist, because people who remember us”, saying that Tidf also exists because all who participate, remembers it.

K-Family Affairs

In Taman-taman (Park) directed by So Yo-hen,...

Museum of the Moving Image is pleased to announce the complete lineup for the 13th edition of First Look, the Museum's festival of new and innovative international cinema, which will take place in person March 13–17, 2024. Each year, First Look offers a diverse slate of major New York premieres, work-in-progress screenings and sessions, gallery installations, and fresh perspectives on the art and process of filmmaking. This year's festival introduces New York audiences to more than three dozen works from around the world. The guiding ethos of First Look is openness, curiosity, and discovery, aiming to expose audiences to new art, artists to new audiences, and everyone to different methods, perspectives, interrogations, and encounters. For five consecutive days the festival takes over MoMI's two theaters, as well as other rooms and galleries throughout the Museum—with in-person appearances and dialogue integral to the experience. Each night concludes with one of five...

The annual Museum of the Moving Image’s First Look Festival has given IndieWire an exclusive “first look” at the lineup.

The 13th annual event, which takes place March 13 through 17 in Astoria, Queens, opens with the New York premiere of Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez’s “Sujo,” which recently took home the Grand Jury Prize, World Cinema Dramatic Competition, at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.

The First Look Festival focuses on emerging talents and international voices, with the fest premiering 46 works, including 20 features that represent 21 countries. Highlights include Farhad Delaram’s “Achilles,” Graham Swon’s “An Evening Song (for three voices), and the U.S. premiere of Lois Patiño’s “Samsara.” Zhang Mengqi’s “Self-Portrait: 47 Km 2020,” which won the Award of Excellence winner at the 2023 Yamagata Documentary Festival, will also screen along with Shoghakat Vardanyan’s 2023 IDFA grand prize winner “1489,” the debut for the filmmaker. Returning First Look directors like Michaël Andrianaly...

2023 was a year of seemingly seismic change for the film industry, as superhero movies (especially Marvel) lost their grip on the box office while more auteur-led efforts such as Oppenheimer and Barbie made serious bank. Audiences seem hungry for a return to thoughtful and engaging efforts, voting for their wallets against a decade of cape-clad hegenomy in favour of more challenging (and visually interesting) cinema. But as with the majority of contemporary film analysis, these are mostly concerns for Hollywood. The international arthouse scene plugs away as usual, providing a diverse range of exciting visions that once again expand the very possibilities of the cinematic form. I went back and forth on this list several times, only coming to a final top ten this very morning. With courtroom drama, oddball romance, epic character study and even outright horror, this year’s selection subverted and expanded genre norms, showing that great cinema,...

The Romanian film festival runs June 9-18.

Transilvania International Film Festival has announced the line-up for its 22nd edition which takes place in Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

The official competition is made up of 12 features while the documentary strand, entitled What’s Up Doc?, will screen 10 titles. All of the films are from first and second-time directors.

Among the competition selection is Ion Bors’ Carbon which premiered in San Sebastian’s New Directors strand last year, having won the festival’s Wip Europa Industry and Wip Europa awards the previous year. The dark comedy, surrounding the Transnistrian conflict of the 1990s, is...