5 Takeaways From the Sundance Film Festival: From Frozen Indie Markets to Next Year’s Awards Contenders

If you’ve seen the hit Netflix series Dark, then you definitely are a Louis Hofmann fan. If you haven’t, it’s time to catch up!

Matt Donnelly Senior Film WriterActors Sherri Shepherd and Jo Marie Payton have joined the feature film “ImPossible” in key roles.The movie, from executive producer and NFL champ Donald Driver, will weave narrative with Brandon Keith Lewis’ real-life diabetes battle. He will star, direct and co-write the film.

Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) has announced that its 70th anniversary edition in August will include the debut of the annual MIFF Film Competition. Already the Southern Hemisphere’s largest and longest-running film festival, MIFF will now also offer one of the world’s most substantial festival prize pools.Initially comprising three awards, the MIFF Film Competition‘s flagship prize will be the AUD$140,000 (approx.

AFI FEST 2022 has officially announced its dates and call for entries. The 36th edition will take place in Los Angeles, CA, on November 2-6, 2022.  Entries open today and filmmakers are invited to submit fiction, documentary, experimental and animated short films. Once again placing the fest in the heart of awards season AFI Fest is planning to fully return to its usual place in the run up to Oscars, and seems to be returning to some level of normality if Covid cooperates, although today’s announcement didn’t give details on what the fest will look like or if it will be fully in person or partially virtual once again. Netflix’s strong Oscar contender tick,tick…BOOM! opened the 2021 Fest in November.

Directed by Paula Eislet and Tonya Lewis Lee (Spike Lee’s producer and partner), the documentary “Aftershock” chronicles the dismal maternal mortality rate that women of color face in the United States medical system. The statistics are shameful, pointing to a systemic racist indifference, and the documentary chronicles the staggering number of times that expectant mothers entering into hospitals simply do not come out alive due to a lack of care and sensitivity.

TikTok is an undeniable force in our society. It has the power to launch music careers, house the homeless, and unite people worldwide.

Julia Child knew her way around a sauce the way Leonard Bernstein knew his way around a sympathy, the way Patrick Mahomes knows his way through a defense. That is to say, with panache.

Angelique Jackson Netflix has acquired worldwide rights to the Sundance award-winning documentary “Descendant,” by filmmaker Margaret Brown (“The Order of Myths,” “Be Here to Love Me: Townes Van Zandt,” “The Great Invisible”). Higher Ground, President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama’s production company, will present the Participant feature alongside Netflix later this year.The film follows members of Africatown, a small community in Alabama, as they share their personal stories and community history as descendants of the Clotilda, the last known ship carrying enslaved Africans to the United States.

The Sundance Film Festival is revealing award winners for its 2022 edition on Friday afternoon beginning at 2 p.m. PT. Like the rest of this year’s festival, which was forced to go all-virtual because of the recent Omicron surge, the awards ceremony is playing out on Twitter.

poisoned Russian dissident Alexei Navalny premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on Tuesday. Called “Navalny,” it’s a no-holds-barred indictment of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin, and insists that Navalny’s close brush with death was the result of a secret state-run operation to assassinate him.“As I became more and more famous guy, I was totally sure that my life became safer and safer because I am kind of famous guy — and it will be problematic for them just to kill me,” Navalny, 45, says in the film. “I was very wrong.” The doc, heading to HBO Max, was added at the last minute to the Sundance slate just as Putin had stationed more than 100,000 troops along the Ukrainian border.

EXCLUSIVE: Luis Guzmán (Boogie Nights, Code Black) has joined the cast of Miles Away, an upcoming indie from writer, director and producer Jacquelyn Quinones.

At first glance, actor-writer-director Cooper Raiff’s “Cha Cha Real Smooth” might look like your typical cutesy and whimsical Sundance dramedy, about a twenty-something college graduate learning a valuable life lesson and experiencing a bit of a delayed coming of age. While that’s not an inaccurate description of Raiff’s disarmingly lovely film (programmed in this year’s US Dramatic Competition), what feels miraculous about “Cha Cha” is: it doesn’t come with even an ounce of that cringe-inducing Sundance fancifulness, a brand that many love to hate.

The Office on the new film IF.The pair will star together in the project, which is directed by Krasinski, alongside Ryan Reynolds (Deadpool), Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Fleabag), Fiona Shaw (Killing Eve), Alan Kim (Minari), Cailey Fleming (The Walking Dead) and Louis Gossett Jr (An Officer And A Gentlemen).According to Deadline, the story is based on Krasinski’s original idea about a child’s journey to rediscover their imagination. The film was originally called Imaginary Friends, but the title has now been shortened to IF.Announcing the news on Instagram, Krasinski wrote: “Ah, what if one day I could assemble my dream cast? What… IF.”A post shared by John Krasinski (@johnkrasinski)Krasinski will write, direct and produce the project via his company, Sunday Night, through Paramount Pictures.

Joe Biden is back to his old self.

The 72nd Berlin International Film Festival has confirmed its various juries, including who will be joining M. Night Shyamalan to award the International Competition prizes.

The 2022 Sundance Film Festival obviously has so much to offer. Big premieres from indie auteurs, world cinema, documentaries, films for kids, and movies that are receiving so much acclaim right now, you’ll be hearing more from them later in the year upon regular theatrical release.