James Gray Gets Up Close and Personal at Lumière Film Festival

Psychological thriller The Beasts, directed by Spain’s Rodrigo Sorogoyen, won three awards at this year’s Tokyo International Film Festival, including the Tokyo Grand Prix, best director and best actor for Denis Menochet. 

Filmmaker James Gray has arguably been trying to avoid himself and his past these last few years, perhaps in order to create something new. A filmmaker who has spent much of his time exploring America and his roots in New York, with humanistic, moral, and family stories about class within the genre of crime (“Little Odessa,” “The Yards,” “We Own The Night”), in the last few years of his filmmaking career, Gray has seemingly gone as far away from New York as possible, into the jungles of the amazon for “The Lost City Of Z” (2014) and into the far reaches of outer space for “Ad Astra” (2019).  And while those films have expanded the palette of his preoccupation, “Ada Astra” in particular tackling ideas of American exceptionalism and its myths, perhaps both films—still centered on class, family, fatherhood and more— demonstrated, as far as he travels, the filmmaker cannot escape himself or his human obsessions and concerns.

Filmmaker James Gray’s “Armageddon Time” opens in limited release this weekend, Friday, October 28. A soulful, melancholy drama about family, friendship, loss, privilege, and more, it’s also a movie, like many of Gray’s films about class and America, and how its 1980s-set Ronald Regan-era echoes back to where we are today.

James Gray‘s “Armageddon Time” finally hits theaters today after its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival this past May. And the film, Gray’s follow-up to 2019’s “Ad Astra,” has a great deal of buzz surrounding it, with near-unanimous critical support.

Filmmaker James Gray’s “Armageddon Time” opens in limited theaters on October 28. The drama, a 1980s period piece, sees Gray return to his roots in New York.

James Gray is an incredibly talented filmmaker. That much is really not up for debate.

Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical, coming-of-age drama The Fabelmans has been announced as the opening film of 44th Cairo International Film Festival, running from November 13 to 22.

Is there a better way to prove the virtue of the cinematic experience than to get 5,000 people on their feet giving a film a standing ovation?  Cannes Film Festival chief Thierry Fremaux did just that on the opening night of his 14th Lumière Film Festival in Lyon with Louis Garrel’s romantic comedy “The Innocent.”  The movie played in the jam-packed Halle Tony Garnier before a star-studded crowd, including Garrel and his cast, Noémie Merlant and Roschdy Zem, as well as Sebastián Lelio, Costa Gavras, Leila Bekhti, Marina Fois, Lee Chang-dong, Nicole Garcia, Sabine Azema and Damien Bonnard. 

Antonio Ferme editor James Gray’s “Armageddon Time” explores the complexity of the American Dream — the idea that every citizen should have an equal opportunity to achieve success through hard work and initiative — from the perspective of a Jewish family in 1980. “In some ways,” according to star Anne Hathaway, the status of this idealistic pursuit has remained “very similar” over the years. At the same time, the actor pinpointed a notable societal change that she hopes continues to persist. “If there’s one thing that I really do hope that we keep coming to a different place about because it keeps coming up at such an impossibly high cost, is that we’re more willing to see ourselves as a part of the problem,” Hathaway told Variety on Wednesday night at the “Armaggedon Time” New York Film Festival premiere. “Not in a fragile way, but in a way that we can affect change by changing ourselves.”

While your future planning probably only extends to Thanksgiving, the Sundance Film Festival is already thinking ahead to January, the 2023 edition of their festival. Today,  the nonprofit Sundance Institute announced today the first two films in the lineup for the 2023 Sundance Film Festival and they are the 25th Anniversary and digital restoration screening of “SLAM” and the uncensored director’s cut and restoration of “The Doom Generation.” Directed by Marc Levin and written by Levin, Saul Williams, Sonja Sohn, and Richard Stratton, “SLAM” was first introduced to audiences at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival, where it premiered in the U.S.

Hamptons International Film Festival is underway in full swing and has already seen a host of famous faces in attendance.The Long Island-based fest runs from Oct. 7 until Oct.

Japanese director Naomi Kawase will preside over the international jury of the 44th edition of the Cairo International Film Festival, running November 13 to 22.

Naman Ramachandran Oscar and Venice-winning filmmaker Laura Poitras (“Citizenfour,” “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed”) and fellow filmmakers Georgia Oakley (“Blue Jean”), Roberto Minervini (“What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire?”) and Ondi Timoner (“Last Flight Home”) were among those who protested against the imprisonment of Iranian filmmakers and other incarcerated artists around the world, and to demonstrate support for the tenacious women of Iran who are challenging for their freedom at the BFI London Film Festival on Monday. They joined festival director Tricia Tuttle, producer Madeleine Molyneaux (“Gospel Hill”); actors Aurélia Petit (“Saint Omer”) and Taki Mumladze (“A Room of My Own”); actor and writer Mariam Khundadze (“To Batumi and every single memory”); writer Morgan M. Page (“Framing Agnes”); industry leaders Tabitha Jackson, Clare Binns and Jason Wood; and other festival delegates in a moment of solidarity and reflection.

On Saturday during the BFI London Film Festival, Deadline hosted an industry party at The Twenty Two.

Italian producer Lorenzo Mieli gave a spirited and often humorous rundown of his career as a producer working with directors such as Luca Guadagnino and Paolo Sorrentino during a keynote talk at the London Film Festival Monday.

Katie Reul editor The annual Reykjavík International Film Festival (RIFF) came to a close Saturday evening, concluding an 11-day event by screening the year’s top honorees at Háskólabíó alongside the award-winning Austrian drama “Vera.” Victors in the New Visions category, which exclusively features debut and sophomore films from filmmakers, are among the works which earned an on-screen reprisal. Winners include Golden Puffin recipient “Rodeo,” continuing the film’s early success in the awards circuit at festivals like Cannes and Champs-Élysées. “I spent five years writing what became ‘Rodeo,'” director Lola Quivoron previously told Varietyin regard to her feature debut. “I wanted to create a true fiction tale and weave in elements of genre, gangsterism and a bit of western. The idea was to make a film that had an aesthetic and a cinematic dimension.”