Latest in Festivals

UPDATED with latest: Carey Mulligan will receive the Cinema Vanguard Award next month at the 36th annual Santa Barbara Film Festival, joining the likes of Bill Murray, Amanda Seyfried and Delroy Lindo on the fest’s honorees list this year. Mulligan, who stars in Focus Features’ Promising Young Woman, will be honored…

UPDATED WRITETHRU: The Berlin Film Festival revealed its 2021 awards in a virtual presentation this afternoon with Radu Jude’s Bad Luck Banging Or Loony Porn scooping the top prize Golden Bear. Also among winners are debut filmmaker Dénes Nagy who took the Silver Bear for Best Director with Natural Light. Maria…

The ATX Television Festival will mark its tenth year with an expanded edition. For the second consecutive year, the Austin, TX-based fest will be virtual. It will run for an expanded ten days from Friday, June 11 through Sunday, June 20, 2021 and include interactive events to encourage a shared community…

The two most mature and emotionally insightful 8-year-old girls you've ever encountered in your life are the subjects of Petite Maman. Magnetically attentive to the serious "things of life," as the French put it, Céline Sciamma's 72-minute study of an intense brief friendship between two girls of extraordinary similar…

EXCLUSIVE: Discovery+ continues to ramp up it documentary slate. The fast-growing streamer has acquired rights to Rebel Hearts, the Pedro Kos-directed documentary that premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. It will now get a theatrical release as well as a global bow on the streamer later this year. Rebel Hea…

South Korean filmmaker Hong Sangsoo has been a particular favorite at the Berlin Film Festival for quite some time — he won the Best Director prize there last year for The Woman Who Ran — and he's back again this year with another competition entry, Introduction. A study of indecision and uncertainty in the realms of…

Dan Lindsay and T.J. Martin co-directed the sports documentary Undefeated in 2011, and their Berlin Film Festival Special Gala, Tina, could have shared the same title. While this is set in the world of music, its emphasis is on the resilience, survival and comeback of its subject, singer Tina Turner. Featuring a…

A teacher comes under fire for a sex tape in Bad Luck Banging Or Loony Porn, the Berlin Film Festival competition entry from Romanian writer-director Radu Jude (Aferim!). We first meet Emi (Katia Pascariu) when she is engaged in graphic sex with her husband, who's filming an amateur video. She's wearing a feline eye…

Tides just aches to be a waterborne Blade Runner crossed with Mad Max, but instead emerges as even more waterlogged than Waterworld. A soupy, post-apocalyptic Europudding that needed more action, greater imagination and a star of some magnitude in the leading role, this tale of an investigation into the possibility of…

Two fine actors volley for advantage across 90 minutes in the tastily insidious little melodrama Next Door (Nebenan). Stepping behind the camera for the first time while also remaining in front of it, Daniel Bruhl (Inglourious Basterds, Rush, Captain America: Civil War) shows a sure grip on this mostly two-handed bar…

San Diego Comic-Con, once again, is staying home this year. Like 2020, the comic book/sci-fi/horror/genre confab will take place virtually — this year from July 23-25. However, if you are itching for some in-person cosplay and comic-friendly festivities, SDCC has decided to plan a three-day in-person convention in San…

Director Tony Stone delves into the world of "Unabomber" Ted Kaczynski in Ted K, premiering in the Panorama strand of the Berlin Film Festival. More of a mood piece than a biopic, it stars an understated Sharlto Copley as the former math professor, who's living off grid in the Montana mountains, fostering a burgeoning…