Lightdox Boards ‘On the Edge,’ Honored With Special Mention at CPH:DOX (EXCLUSIVE)

McKinley Franklin author Paramount+ and CBS Studios have announced an Imax live screening opportunity for the final two episodes of their original series “Star Trek: Picard,” Variety can exclusively reveal. On Wednesday, April 19, ten participating Imax theaters in the U.S. will provide an early screening of the last two episodes of the third and final season, including the series finale, ahead of its Paramount+ debut on Thursday, April 20.  Tickets to the screenings are free and fans can sign up and register at http://startrekpicardfinalescreenings.com on Wednesday, April 12, at 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET. The exclusive screening event will take place at 10 participating Imax theaters in Los Angeles, New York, Phoenix, San Francisco, Seattle, Orlando, Washington, D.C., Atlanta and Dallas.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor World sales agency Impronta Films has boarded “La Ricerca” (“The Quest”) ahead of its world premiere on April 24 at Visions du Reel, a documentary film festival in Switzerland. The film was written, directed, edited and produced by Giuseppe Petruzzellis. Nicolás Jaar composed the original score. The film focuses on the Italian artist Luigi Lineri, who has been working continuously on “The Quest” over the last 60 years. It’s a one-of-a-kind installation made of thousands of stones. Pebbles resembling primitive flint tools and symbolic sculptures illustrate the turning points in humanity’s evolution. Petruzzellis said in a statement: “Luigi’s masterpiece is a formidable tool to investigate universal themes. He has materialized a vast field of anthropological, philosophical and even political topics. Many of these contents are extremely actual and urgent, as, for example, our conflicting relationship with the ecosystem.

the mass school shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville at the 2023 CMT Music Awards.On Sunday, several stars in attendance at the awards show wore black ribbons to honor the victims from Monday's mass shooting at the Nashville, Tennessee private school. The shooting, which marked Tennessee's deadliest mass shooting in history, left three children and three adults dead, in addition to the shooter.«You know why it is important? Today is Psalm Sunday and I'm a very religious person and what better way to honor them and support them,» Lynyrd Skynyrd's Johnny Van Zant tells ET about the band's decision to wear ribbons on the red carpet. «Everybody say prayers for the family.

Brooke Shields is telling her truth and her story.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor “Jackie the Wolf,” which will have its world premiere at Hot Docs in the World Showcase program, has debuted its trailer with Variety (below). Deckert Distribution has boarded the film as its world sales agent. The film is a personal exploration of the life and eventual death of right-to-die activist Jacqueline Jencquel, directed through the lens of her son, filmmaker Tuki Jencquel. “In 2018, my mother announced her assisted suicide plans to the world through a controversial interview with Konbini news, which went on to be seen over 18 million times. I had already been filming my mother on and off for many years, but this interview triggered something urgent in me,” Tuki Jencquel said.

CPH:DOX, the international nonfiction film festival in Copenhagen, isn’t shy about stating its ambitions.

Motherland, a “dark and monumental” film about neo-nationalism in Belarus, earned the top prize tonight at the prestigious CPH:DOX festival in Copenhagen.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Documentary specialist Autlook Filmsales closed a raft of sales at a vibrant market during the Copenhagen documentary festival CPH:DOX. “Subject,” directed by Camilla Hall and Jennifer Tiexiera, got picked up by Sweden’s SVT, Denmark’s DR, Norway’s NRK, Norway’s VGTV, The Netherlands’ VPRO, Israel’s Yes Doc, and Madman for Australia and New Zealand. Dogwoof released the film early this month in the U.K. “Subject” is an examination of the relationship between nonfiction filmmakers and their subjects. It raises important ethical questions during a golden of age for documentaries, when docs are screened by millions of viewers. The film re-visits protagonists of some of the most viewed documentaries of today – “The Staircase,” “The Square,” “Hoop Dreams,” “The Wolfpack” and “Capturing the Friedmans.”

Lise Pedersen The top Dox:Award at CPH:DOX, the Copenhagen documentary festival, has gone to “Motherland” by Ukrainian-Belarussian director Alexander Mihalkovich (“My Granny From Mars”) and Ukrainian director Hanna Badziaka. Described by Variety as “an ominous portrait of the oppressive culture of cruelty in post-Soviet Belarus,” the film follows Svetlana, whose son died during his military service as the result of violent abuse, in her quest to expose and prosecute those responsible for his death. Dedicating the award to “all the Ukrainians fighting Russian aggression and to Belarussian political prisoners,” the directing duo thanked all those who helped them make the film, in particular the protagonists, “who were brave to stand in front of the camera and patient with us as it was a long journey of four years.”

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor GlobeScreen Auditoriums has taken French rights to “Blix Not Bombs,” a documentary about former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix, who was given the task of looking for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, in the period running up to the U.S.-led invasion of the country 20 years ago. The deal was closed by Toronto-based sales agent Syndicado Film Sales, which is also an executive producer on the film. The film had its world premiere at Copenhagen documentary festival CPH:DOX on Monday, the anniversary of the invasion. In the film, Czech-Swedish filmmaker Greta Stocklassa interviews the Swedish diplomatic, now 94 years old, about what happened in the months leading up to war. He describes his meetings with George W. Bush and Tony Blair, his frustration when Colin Powell gave his pivotal speech in the UN Security Council, and his feeling of emptiness when the U.S. started the invasion, despite his reports that his team had found no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

World class climber Jimmy Chin met his future wife, filmmaker Chai Vasarhelyi, over a mountain – of footage.

Addie Morfoot Contributor Three projects pitched at CPH:FORUM – the industry program of CPH:DOX, the Copenhagen-based documentary festival – have been awarded cash prizes. They are Robin Petré’s “Only on Earth,” Iryna Tsilyk’s “Red Zone” and Yegor Troyanovsky’s “Cuba & Alaska.” The filmmakers were awarded at a ceremony in the Danish capital on Thursday. Petré’s “Only on Earth” garnered the Eurimages Co-Production Development Award worth €20,000 for best pitch. The docu, produced by Signe Skov Thomsen, and Malene Flindt Pedersen, depicts a journey deep into one of Europe’s hottest fire zones, Galicia, where wild horses roam the mountains under the watch of local cowboys. These horses are excellent at fire prevention, but now they are vanishing in the clash between humans and nature.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Jimmy O. Yang and Amazon are back in the funny business: The “Crazy Rich Asians,” “Love Hard” and “Silicon Valley” star has lined up his second standup comedy special with streamer Prime Video, titled “Guess How Much?” Set to launch May 2, the event is a followup to Yang’s first Amazon comedy special, “Good Deal,” which launched in August 2020. In his new standup engagement, Yang will poke fun at “love languages, loser friends, and negotiating with his Asian parents,” per Prime Video. Aside from his memorable parts in “Crazy Rich Asians,” Netflix’s “Love Hard” and HBO’s “Silicon Valley,” Yang is best known as the author of “How to American: An Immigrant’s Guide to Disappointing Your Parents,” which chronicles his journey from life as a young Chinese immigrant to becoming a comedian and actor.

Oscar winner and Academy member Roger Ross Williams is saying publicly what many in the documentary community have stewed over privately – that the sums of money being spent on Oscar documentary campaigns has “gotten insane.” And Williams, a former Academy Governor representing the Doc Branch, says something may be done about it.

Addie Morfoot Contributor During a talk at Copenhagen’s CPH:DOX on Wednesday, Oscar-winning director Roger Ross Williams spoke about a wide variety of topics, including his latest documentary, “Love to Love You, Donna Summer,” how insanely expensive it is to garner a doc Oscar nomination, and why the racial reckoning that occurred in the nonfiction community after George Floyd’s murder is over. Despite celebrity-driven docs being all the rage, Williams admitted that he usually rejects them. “I have so many celebrities who come to me about making a documentary (about their life),” the helmer told moderator Thom Powers. “It’s never worked out because if they are a living celebrity, who is very popular, they are all about control. It’s a piece of propaganda about their image and their career. It’s not a documentary.”

Whenever the Iranian regime feels threatened by public protest its reflex is to go after two groups: demonstrators, most assuredly, but also artists – especially filmmakers.

Lise Pedersen Los Angeles non-profit The Film Collaborative has boarded Swedish director Tove Pils’ debut feature “Labor,” which is competing in the Nordic:Dox section at the Copenhagen Intl. Documentary Film Festival, CPH:DOX. The film follows Hanna, who leaves her family and girlfriend behind in her small Swedish hometown and travels to San Francisco to explore her sexuality in the city’s vibrant queer scene. She soon meets Chloe, a professional dominatrix, and Cyd, a trans man who works as an escort for gay men. Together with her new friends, she embarks on a journey that takes her further and further away from her life in Sweden. “Labor” was shot over more than a decade, and one of the reasons it took them so long to put the film together was their concern for the protagonists’ anonymity and the effect it might have on their lives, Pils explains to Variety.

Imagine not only believing the world is coming to an end, but wanting it to happen. Eagerly. Then, take it a step further and imagine people with such a mentality engineering American politics and foreign policy to bring about the very thing they seek — the apocalypse.

EXCLUSIVE: Michael Jordan, Tom Brady, Nick Faldo, and Aaron Judge are among the elite professional athletes who have benefitted from working with a sports psychologist. Now some esports stars are catching onto the idea.

Addie Morfoot Contributor When CPH:DOX shifted from a fall festival to a spring-based fest in 2017, it got out of IDFA’s shadow and grew into one of the most influential documentary events of the year. “It made a big jump in prominence when it moved to March because it fit into the calendar in a more exciting way for a lot of documentary stakeholders,” Thom Powers, lead documentary programmer for Toronto Film Festival, says. “It became a great place for films coming out of Sundance to have a European launch. It’s also become a very significant place for films to make world premieres near the beginning of the year, which can then send them on a circuit, traveling to other festivals like Hot Docs or DOC NYC.”