From ‘Encanto’ to ‘Flee,’ Animation Oscar Race Heats Up With Mix of Global Contenders

The two Oscar frontrunners for Best Documentary Feature are safely through to the next round of voting.

Disney films are the ones to beat at the 49th annual Annie Awards, whose nominations were announced this morning. Walt Disney Animation Studios’ Raya and the Last Dragon and Encanto scored a leading 10 and nine noms, respectively, followed by Pixar’s Luca with eight.

The Danish government has responded to growing numbers of Covid in the country by imposing a fresh set of restrictions, including closing cinemas and theatres.

died in a plane crash. He was 38.Flow, whose real name was José Angel Hernandez, along with eight others, died when their private plane crashed near Las Américas International Airport in the Dominican Republic, Helidosa Aviation Group, the company that owned the jet, confirmed on Wednesday.Flow was one of seven passengers on the plane who died.

NEW YORK -- Anne Rice, the novelist whose lush, best-selling gothic tales, including “Interview With the Vampire,” reinvented the blood-drinking immortals as tragic antiheroes, has died. She was 80.Rice died late Saturday due to complications from a stroke, her son Christopher Rice announced on her Facebook page and his Twitter page.“As a writer, she taught me to defy genre boundaries and surrender to my obsessive passions,” Christopher Rice, also an author, wrote.

new video shows the heartwarming transformation of Nala, a badly neglected lion-hybrid cub once owned by seedy “Tiger King” villain Jeff Lowe.The poorly kept, undernourished cat was swarmed by flies that had eaten away her ears, and was limping from numerous fractured bones caused by vitamin deficiencies, when PETA swooped in to take the animal away in September 2020. “I told you don’t point that f–king camera at me,” Lowe says angrily, as the sad scene of Nala’s rescue is recorded.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentJordan’s Royal Film Commission has pulled Egyptian director Mohamed Diab’s drama “Amira” – which was filmed in Jordan and is set in the Palestinian West Bank – as its submission to the 2022 international feature Oscar race following a storm of social media controversy against the film.Pic, which takes its cue from real-life instances of Palestinian children conceived behind bars in Israeli jails with smuggled sperm, has suddenly prompted a rapidly

Guy Lodge Film CriticAfter four consecutive years of losing out to other continents, European cinema reclaimed the international feature Oscar earlier this year with Thomas Vinterberg’s Danish entry “Another Round.” It was a return to form for the region that has traditionally dominated the race, and annually boasts the lion’s share of contenders at the submissions stage.

Jamie Lang Oscar-winning actress Alicia Vikander (“The Danish Girl”), the Goteborg Film Festival and the Sten Olsson Foundation for Research and Culture have teamed on a new, three-year film training program aimed at increasing diversity in film and inspiring promising young talent.

Jacob Roloff is a new dad! The former  star has announced that he and his wife, Isabel Sofia Rock, welcomed their first child together.Roloff took to Twitter to share the news on Monday in a simple post that celebrated the new addition to his family.«My wife is a superhero, my son is an angel and all nurses are saints,» he tweeted.

Scandinavia may well lead this year’s Best International Feature Film field at the Oscars, which begins shortlist voting on Friday, with a slate that includes favorites such as Denmark’s “Flee,” Finland’s “Compartment No.

Naman Ramachandran Studiocanal has sold a raft of global territories on four-part thriller drama series “Ridley Road.” Created by Studiocanal’s Red Production Company, commissioned for BBC One and co-produced with Masterpiece, the series will air in the U.S.

Neon and Participant opened animated documentary Flee to a $25,033 debut in four locations. That makes for a strong per-theater average of $6,258 ahead of a rollout early next year for the much-decorated Danish film ahead of Academy Award nominations Feb. 8.

Jonas Poher Rasmussen joined Deadline’s Contenders Film: New York event Saturday to shed further light on the backstory to his lauded Sundance debut Flee, which is Denmark’s entry for the International Feature Oscar race. The animated documentary from Neon and Participant tells the true story of a man, Amin, on the verge of marriage that compels him to reveal his hidden past for the first time. Amin is also a childhood friend of the director.

The Top 4“Belfast” (Focus)“King Richard” (Warner Bros.)“The Power of the Dog” (Netflix)“West Side Story” (20th Century)“Belfast,” “King Richard” and “The Power of the Dog” were de facto front-runners in September, and they haven’t lost that position.

NEW YORK -- Jonas Poher Rasmussen was 15 when a boy his same age arrived alone in his small Danish town.“He arrived all by himself and stayed with a family just around the corner from where I lived,” says Rasmussen. “We met at the bus stop every morning going to high school and we became very good friends.

The arthouse is awash with well reviewed new offerings from Danish animated doc Flee to Paulo Sorrentino’s Hand of God to IFC’s Benedetta heading into awards season and amid a paucity of new wide releases.