‘Bob Trevino Likes It,’ ‘Grand Theft Hamlet’ Lead SXSW Film & TV Festival Awards

EXCLUSIVE: This year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF) will unspool in close collaboration with Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the Scottish capital’s historic performing arts event, under a new expansive partnership confirmed today by the two organizations. 

K.J. Yossman Diane Guerrero is set to lead horror movie “The Whistler” alongside Juan Pablo Raba. The film, which has started shooting in Cali, Colombia, tells the story of grieving parents Nicole and Sebastian.

Switzerland’s Locarno Film Festival will celebrate the centennial of Columbia Pictures with an expansive retrospective titled The Lady with the Torch, mounted in collaboration with the studio’s parent company, Sony. 

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Switzerland’s Locarno Film Festival is set to celebrate the centennial of Columbia Pictures with a retrospective featuring classic titles spawned by the Hollywood studio between the dawn of sound and the late 1950s. The Locarno retro, titled “The Lady With the Torch –– The Centenary of Columbia Pictures,” is being curated by Ehsan Khoshbakht, co-director of Italy’s Il Cinema Ritrovato festival, which is dedicated to cinematic treasures of the past and organized in partnership with Switzerland’s Cinémathèque Suisse.

The Sudanese drama Goodbye Julia is continuing its impressive awards run, earning the Grand Jury Award for Best Narrative Feature over the weekend at the Sonoma International Film Festival in California.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer “We Were Dangerous” is a surprisingly funny film for a movie that’s central conflict is the sterilization of a group of young women on the fringes of society in 1950s New Zealand. Knowing the project, which debuted at SXSW in Austin March 8, is executive-produced by from Taika Waititi and Carthew Neal’s Piki Films certainly informs how the film approaches its troubling topic — much like the production company’s Holocaust-set “Jojo Rabbit” — with such levity, the majority of the credit for the heartfelt tone goes to a trio of women: writer Maddie Dai, director Josephine Stewart-Te Whiu and producer Morgan Waru.

EXCLUSIVE: Level 33 Entertainment has taken domestic on H.P. Mendoza’s The Secret Art of Human Flight, which made its world premiere at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival. A July theatrical release has been set followed by a debut on digital platforms.

It’s been less than two months since the end of the 2024 edition, but this morning the Sundance Institute revealed the dates for the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. This year’s event will run from Thursday, January 23 through Sunday, February 2nd.

Sundance Film Festival 2025 is set to take place on Jan. 23-Feb. 2 in Park City and Salt Lake City, Utah.

SXSW organizers on Monday announced the Audience Award winners for the festival’s recently wrapped 31st edition.

William Earl Variety will present Tom Hiddleston with the Variety Virtuoso Award at the Miami Film Festival on Tuesday, April 9. The award will be for his career achievements across film, theater and television. “From screens large and small to the Broadway stage, Tom Hiddleston is one of our most versatile and engaging actors,” said Jenelle Riley, Variety Focus Awards and Features Editor.

Addie Morfoot Contributor After a year-long hiatus the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival has unveiled the lineup for its 25th edition, which will take place in Durham, N.C., from April 4-7. The festival will kick things off with “Girls State,” the Apple Original docu that premiered at Sundance earlier this year. It’s been five years since Full Frame, often referred to as “a filmmaker’s festival,” was held as an in-person event.

Nominations are out for the 21st Irish Film & Television Awards with Lisa Mulcahy’s thriller Lies We Tell leading the pack on the feature side at 13, and crime drama Kin heading up the TV fields with 11 (scroll down for the ful list of nominees). The Irish Film & Television Academy (IFTA) will hand out its prizes on April 20 in Dublin.

William Earl Variety will honor Molly Ringwald with the Variety Creative Vanguard Award at the Miami Film Festival on Saturday, April 6. The award will be for her outstanding career achievements, earning acclaim from critics and audiences alike.

For the most recent precedent for Grand Theft Hamlet, you’d probably have to go back nearly 20 years, to a 2006 episode of South Park. Titled “Make Love, Not Warcraft,” it found Cartman marshalling his friends to take on a super-advanced rogue player with a posse of killer crabs who has taken to killing everyone in his path in the Tolkienesque greenfields of Azeroth. This virtual psychopath sends shivers down the spines of the programmers at WoW’s corporate HQ (“Gentleman, we are dealing with someone who has absolutely no life…”).

Naman Ramachandran India premieres of France’s “The Taste of Things” and Korea’s “Exhuma” will open and close respectively the first edition of India’s Cinevesture International Film Festival. Tran Anh Hung won best director at Cannes 2023 for “The Taste of Things,” which was subsequently submitted as France’s official entry to the Oscars’ international feature category.

Selome Hailu Writer-director Tracie Laymon has a lot of Bobs in her life. First, there was Bob Laymon, her father. “In 2012, I was looking for my dad,” she says.

Hannah Einbinder was moved to tears. Nick Thune was moved to sing. John Leguizamo shared hard truths.

The 2024 SXSW Film Festival kicked off March 8 in Austin with the opening-night world premiere screening of Doug Liman’s Road House remake starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Conor McGregor. It started nine days of debuts including for movies starring Rooney Mara, Isabelle Huppert, Gael García Bernal, Kristen Stewart and more. The Anne Hathaway romantic dramedy The Idea of You from SXSW stalwart Michael Showalter will close the fest.

Naman Ramachandran Chloe Pirrie (“The Queen’s Gambit’) headlines psycho-thriller “Kryptic,” which will have its world premiere at SXSW‘s Midnighter strand. A first clip has been unveiled for the film. The film follows Kay (Pirrie), who is in trouble.