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Striving to become a professional actress is a lifestyle choice accompanied by feelings of extreme competitiveness and inadequacy. Each waking hour is a moment you could be attempting to improve your craft or desperately trying to secure more work. As endless auditions make way to too few callbacks, you may begin to reconsider the professional hell you’ve chosen for yourself, being judged as much for your skills as for your facial features and body type. It’s enough to make anyone grow a little bitter. Diamond Tongues, a dark Canadian comedy that premiered at last year’s Slamdance Film Festival, finds its […]...

The independent distributor and streaming service announced at BAMcinemaFest they will partner on the slate.

The companies have partnered on numerous releases since 2012 and this marks their first deal for joint releases.

Fandor will release the films day-and-date via its subscription service with Factory 25 handling theatrically and transactional platforms.

The films are: Todd Rohal’s Uncle Kent 2 (pictured); Charles Poekel’s Christmas, Again; Nathan Silver’s Stinking Heaven; Pavan Moondi and Brian Robertson’s Diamond Tongues; Maximón Monihan’s Voice Of The Voiceless (La Voz De Los Sileciados); Lynn Shelton’s We Go Way Back; and Alexander Rockwell’s Hero.

“Fandor is one of the few like-minded companies that really care about cinema as much as I do,” said Factory 25 founder Matt Grady, who also celebrates the company’s sixth anniversary. “I’m really excited about working together to release this slate of films by some of the most influential voices in independent film right...

Festival hierarchy are beefing up the event with a new programme called Dig, the return of Clementine Leger as festival manager and a greater footprint across the calendar.

Leger (pictured) has rejoined Slamdance after two seasons as programming coordinator for the Florida Film Festival.

She and her team plan to step up programming and support of festival alumni throughout the calendar through initiatives like Arclight Presents Slamdance Cinema Club and the premiere on Hulu of the Slam Collective’s documentary I Want To Be An American.

ArcLight Presents Slamdance Cinema Club June selections include Pavan Moondi and Brian Robertson’s Diamond Tongues and Chris Furbee’s Huntington’s Dance.

New to the roster of events is the Slamdance x Digital Bolex Fearless Filmmaking Competition, a filmmaker partnership with Digital Bolex that will showcase inaugural selections at the Cinegear expo in Los Angeles on June 5 at Paramount Studios.

The Slamdance Digital, Interactive & Gaming...

While critical praise is always appreciated, and something that the forthcoming "Diamond Tongues" has no shortage of, sometimes the sweetest words of appreciation comes from fellow filmmakers. And co-directors Pavan Moondi and Brian Robertson caught the attention of "Results" and "Computer Chess" filmmaker Andrew Bujalski with their film. "A riveting, screen-commanding performance from a fresh face is a rare and magical thing--rarer still is that it lands in the lap of filmmakers who know what to do with it. 'Diamond Tongues' had me start to finish," he said. And today we have the exclusive trailer for the movie so you can get a sense of what Bujalski is raving about. Read More: Watch: Guy Pearce, Cobie Smulders, And Kevin Corrigan Get Fit In The Trailer For 'Results' Led by Leah Goldstein, the movie follows a young woman and aspiring actress who struggles to deal with the success achieved by her.

Sundance. Berlin. Tribeca. Cannes. Venice. Toronto. New York. Once saved for occasional weeks out of any given year, “film festival season” has now become a year-long event. Be it the aforementioned biggest of the big, or the ever growing slate of must-attend smaller festivals like Hot Docs, True/False, Stanley or Telluride, film festivals are cropping up across the globe.

But very few of them are set against a beautiful landscape quite as glorious as the Mammoth Lakes region of California.

Marking their debut this year, the Mammoth Lakes Film Festival will launch their inaugural lineup this week, with a hotly discussed documentary from Alex Gibney leading the way.

Gibney’s Steve Jobs: The Man In The Machine will open the festival this Wednesday. “We are blessed to have gotten such a strong lineup this year,” says Shira Dubrovner, founder of the festival. She, along with veteran programmer Paul Sbrizzi...

Shooting a film and getting it out there is brave business.Considering the number of factors often at stake for the independent filmmaker - personal finances, the time and hard work of a crew devoted to your confidence, and perhaps most vexing, the threat of your dream sucking for all to see - it's a wonder so many artists crave the thrill of putting themselves out there. But for many struck with the bug, come what may, the path is do or die.Diamond Tongues, a film out of Toronto, is one such brave endeavour that goes as far as to choose for its subject the very real fear of giving everything to a dream and still not making the cut. Writer/co-director, Pavan Moondi, and co-director, Brian...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

Edith (Leah Goldstein) is an actor. Or at least so she says. Even though she broke up with her boyfriend Ben (Adam Gurfinkel) in an effort to dedicate time to her career, her investment in the craft is casual. Her most notable stint was in a low-budget feature that didn't get released, and she doesn't have headshots or a reel of her work to give to producers or agents. She's worn the status of a struggling actor like a badge of honor until her lack of success is no longer cute anymore. When acquaintances start getting callbacks for TV shows, and her best friend Clare (Leah Wildman) nabs the lead role in a play, Edith's immature insecurity starts to surface in ugly ways. But things finally snap when she stumbles into an audition for a hilariously poorly named horror movie, "Blood Sausage," only to discover that Ben, who has recently decided to pursue acting himself,...

Not your average manic pixie dream girl, Edith comes off as evil, mean spirited, and bratty; yet in Leah Fay Goldstein's hands, Edith is not entirely unsympathetic. Thanks to Goldstein's soulful and multifaceted performance, we come to understand the reasons for Edith's delusional state; as well as the impatience, insecurity and frustration that she feels. Goldstein, who you might just happen to recognize as the lead singer of July Talk, is an amazing talent, but one can only assume that at least part of the success of this character's development is thanks to the script. At one point, Edith exclaims that writers need actors; but, in the case of Diamond Tongues, it is fairly obvious that Goldstein and the writers shared a mutually symbiotic relationship.

The most extensive previews of this year's Slamdance, opening tonight and running through Thursday, come from Paul Sbrizzi at Hammer to Nail and Twitch. Sbrizzi has notes on Perry Blackshear's They Look Like People, Pavan Moondi and Brian Robertson's Diamond Tongues, Patrick Ryan's Darkness on the Edge of Town, Alexandre Paschoalini's Asco, Johanna Moder's High Performance, Jiyoung Lee's Female Pervert, Gary Walkow's The Trouble with Dot and Harry and Stephen Richter's Birds of Neptune, plus two documentaries, Maurizius Sterkle Drux’s Concrete Love – The Böhm Family and Paul-Julien Robert's My Fathers, My Mother and Me. We'll be collecting full-blown reviews as they appear. » - David Hudson...

The most extensive previews of this year's Slamdance, opening tonight and running through Thursday, come from Paul Sbrizzi at Hammer to Nail and Twitch. Sbrizzi has notes on Perry Blackshear's They Look Like People, Pavan Moondi and Brian Robertson's Diamond Tongues, Patrick Ryan's Darkness on the Edge of Town, Alexandre Paschoalini's Asco, Johanna Moder's High Performance, Jiyoung Lee's Female Pervert, Gary Walkow's The Trouble with Dot and Harry and Stephen Richter's Birds of Neptune, plus two documentaries, Maurizius Sterkle Drux’s Concrete Love – The Böhm Family and Paul-Julien Robert's My Fathers, My Mother and Me. We'll be collecting full-blown reviews as they appear. » - David Hudson...

If you're wondering where you've heard about "Diamond Tongues" before, you might've forgotten that last month we debuted the first trailer for the film. And now with more snow on the ground, and the Slamdance Film Festival premiere of the picture right around the corner, we've got an exclusive clip and a first look look at the poster (designed by Casey Irvin, from a photo by Brooke Wedlock) below. From co-directors Pavan Moondi and Brian Robertson (who also co-founded the film site The Seventh Art with Christopher Heron), and starring Leah Goldstein, comedian/musician Nick Flanagan, Leah Wildman, Adam Gurfinkel, and Noah R. Taylor, "Diamond Tongues" follows Edith Welland, a struggling actress who gets a surprise when she learns her ex-boyfriend has not only taken up the trade but has booked a leading role. And in the clip below, a little hit of acid has some interesting, and very funny,...

While the Sundance Film Festival is the better known film festival located in Utah that runs in January, it is not the only one, as the Slamdance Film Festival has been running in the same place during the same month for over 20 years. The unique aspect of the Slamdance Film Festival, however, is its Narrative Features and Documentary Features program, which restricts its selection to films that are directorial debuts, made for under $1 million, and don’t have Us distribution. The 2015 incarnation of the festival is set to run from January 23rd to the 29th, and ahead of the festival’s premiere next month, organisers have unveiled the lineup for the aforementioned categories. The lineup is as follows.

Narrative Features Program:

Across The Sea (Turkey/USA), making its North American Premiere

Written and Directed by Nisan Dağ and Esra Saydam

Starring Damla Sönmez, Jacob Fishel, Ahmet Rıfat Şungar, Hakan Karsak,...

Festival top brass announced the 19 films that will screen at the Slamdance Film Festival, set to run in Park City, Utah, from January 23-29.

The 11 narrative and eight documentary selections include 13 world premieres. All competition films are feature directorial debuts budgeted below $1m without Us distribution.

“It’s very exciting to bring this dynamic lineup to audiences in Park City,” said festival director Anna Germanidi. “We are proud to help launch these filmmakers’ careers and celebrate the success we all believe these films deserve.”

“Our success in showcasing emerging artists is most obviously linked with American talent, but increasingly at Slamdance, we want to also support new international talent,” said co-founder and president Peter Baxter.

All synopses below provided by Slamdance.

Narrative Features

Across The Sea (Turkey-usa)

Dirs Nisan Dağ, Esra Saydam

Young, beautiful and pregnant, Damla has to confront her first love in a Turkish summer town before she can fully embrace her new life in...

Colin Offland's documentary about Dennis Rodman's hoops diplomacy in North Korea, where he met with dictator Kim Jong Un, will receive a world premiere at the 2015 Slamdance Film Festival, which unveiled its narrative and documentary features competition lineup on Monday. Actors appearing in Slamdance's dramatic competiton films include Pretty Little Liars' star Ashley Benson (Ratter), Helen Rogers and Lauren Molina (both appearing in Body), Alex Karpovsky (Tired Moonlight) and Nick Flanagan (Diamond Tongues). Read more Vice's Shane Smith and Tom Freston on Sending Dennis Rodman to North Korea for HBO  This year's feature film competition has 13 world premieres

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The Sundance Film Festival dominates Park City in late January, but there is also the upstart Slamdance Film Festival. We’ve not really highlighted that fest or its program, but I always stay at Treasure Mountain Inn where Slamdance is headquartered and they’ve kind of grown on me. Last year they brought Christopher Nolan to speak (the fest had the good sense to program his first film) and Joe Mangianello came to vamp his male stripper docu. This year, there’s every chance of seeing Dennis Rodman, the flamboyant former rebounding machine and Bff of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, for the docu Dennis Rodman’s Big Bang In Pyongyang. So let’s all root for an international incident! Here are the films they’ll be playing from January 23-29:

Narrative Features Program

Across the Sea – Directors & Screenwriters: Nisan Dağ, Esra Saydam. (Turkey/USA) North American Premiere.