Deadline’s Contenders Film: International Ready For Kickoff With 26 Awards-Season Titles In Spotlight

Suddenly it’s The Season: Major films are opening, the machinery of hype is heating up, the screening schedules are intense — even the DVD screeners are piling up.

I’m more than halfway into my stay in Saudi Arabia for the Red Sea International Film Festival and what is becoming more apparent with each day that passes is that what this first-time event lacks in experience and organization, it makes up for in ambition.

Deadline has launched the streaming site for Contenders Film: New York, its movie awards-season showcase that took place Saturday at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens. A total of 23 Oscar-buzzed films were on display across the day of panel presentations, a one-stop shop for Academy and guild voters as they sort out their ballots.

Deadline’s Contenders Film returns to New York this morning with a hybrid in-person and livestreamed showcase at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, and a lineup of 23 films spotlighting the best motion pictures this awards season has to offer. The in-person event kicks off with a breakfast sponsored by United Artists Releasing at 8 a.m. ET, with panels and livestream coverage kicking off at 9:30 a.m.

The New York Film Critics Circle has kicked off its voting Friday morning for its 2021 awards, with the group taking its customary place as an early barometer of the movie-kudos season.

Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz are one powerhouse acting duo, and the two are each other's biggest supporters.The couple and Oscar winners are known for making the awards season rounds, and as Bardem told ET's Nischelle Turner, «it helps» to have his lady love around to navigate the craziness of it all.«I'm very proud of her.

In 1999, 240 people disappeared when Serbian forces descended on the village of Krusha e Madhe in Kosovo, shot or captured the men and burned the residents out. According to the end-titles in Blerta Basholli’s triple Sundance-award winning Hive, there are still 64 missing.

William Earl Creators and stars will gather for Variety’s two-day virtual FYC Fest featuring panels on film and television. Variety FYC Fest will be held on Dec. 14 and 15, and include panels with the top contending writers in the original screenplay and adapted screenplay categories, along with the top animation directors and producers.

A scene from I Am Samuel, the closing night film

Deadline has launched the streaming site for Contenders Film: Documentary, featuring all 25 panels from our Sunday event showcasing the filmmakers behind the buzziest nonfiction feature films of the awards season.

Deadline has launched the stand-alone streaming site for Contenders Film: International, featuring the 26 panels from Saturday’s all-day virtual showcase of key titles entered into the International Feature Oscar race. This year’s panel lineup included appearances by the likes of Javier Bardem, Noomi Rapace, Asghar Farhadi, Dan Stevens, Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Agathe Rousselle discussing their buzzy projects as the movie-awards season heats up.

The First Wave director Matthew Heineman said his Covid documentary was both frightening and inspiring. Heineman followed medical personnel at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in the Queens borough of New York for four months in 2020. He spoke with Deadline’s Matthew Carey about the experience.

Deadline’s Contenders Film: Documentary awards-season event, our virtual showcase of the year’s leading nonfiction, gets underway Sunday beginning at 9 a.m. PT. This year’s lineup of 25 movies reflects the growing availability of documentary content across a variety of platforms: Showtime and HBO, streamers HBO Max, Netflix, Discovery+, Hulu, Amazon Studios, and Apple TV+, as well as theatrical distributors Neon, Focus Features, Searchlight Pictures and Sony Pictures Classics.

When Kosovan writer-director Blerta Basholli met war widow Fahrije Hoti, the subject of her new feature film Hive, she was immediately struck by her strength of character and personality, which helped shape how she would approach making a feature film based on the story of Hoti’s life after the Kosovo War.

EXCLUSIVE: For those awards voters looking for a centralized place where they can find information about contender screenings going on around town, now there’s finally a destination. Independent film producer Ryland Aldrich has launched the ultimate app for awards season, FYCit, which tracks all the awards season screenings and events from major studios and distributors.

Clayton Davis “Don’t Look Up” is the last shoe to drop for Netflix this awards season, and there’s a 50/50 chance of it making a seismic impact (pun intended).Director Adam McKay assembles a sprawling ensemble that includes Oscar-winners Leonardo DiCaprio (“The Revenant”), Jennifer Lawrence (“Silver Linings Playbook”), Meryl Streep (“Kramer vs.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentLeading French documentary production and distribution banner ZED has signed a deal with Curiosity, the U.S. non-fiction company headed by Discovery Channel founder John Hendricks, to deliver 10 exclusive programs by the end of 2022.They will premiere across Curiosity’s subscription-based platform, and its linear channel.

Continuing with the Fall series of Contenders Film events that have already taken place in London and  Los Angeles, and will be offering Virtual presentations this weekend for both Documentary and International movies,  Deadline is bringing an in-person Contenders event back to New York , but with a twist.  Like LA and London it will be hybrid on Saturday December 4 from 8AM ET to 5PM ET live, and also presented virtually between 9:30AM ET and 3:30PM ET.  It also will be in a brand new venue,

Deadline has launched the streaming site for Contenders Film: Los Angeles, featuring the full panels from all 31 buzzy awards-season movies that made up Sunday’s all-day showcase at the DGA Theater.