Locarno Film Festival to Introduce Gender-Neutral Acting Awards in 2023

Jenelle Riley Deputy Awards, Features Editor The Newport Beach Film Festival has announced it’s 2022 Festival Honors, which includes Oscar winners Ron Howard and Eddie Redmayne and actors from Jonathan Majors and Patton Oswalt to Keke Palmer and Colson Baker (aka Machine Gun Kelly.) The artists will be honored at a brunch in conjunction with Variety’s 10 Actors to Watch taking place on Oct. 16 at Balboa Bay Resort. Howard is receiving the Variety Legends and Groundbreakers Award for his creative leadership. After starting as an actor in such classics as “The Andy Griffith Show” and “Happy Days,” Howard became an Oscar-winning filmmaker whose movies as director include “A Beautiful Mind” and “Apollo 13.” Most recently he directed “Thirteen Lives,” the true story of the rescue of a soccer team and their coach from a cave in Thailand. “Thirteen Lives” is available on Amazon Prime.

The American Cinema Editors has stitched together a date for its 2023 ACE Eddie Awards. The 73rd annual gala is set for Sunday, March 5, at UCLA’s Royce Hall in Westwood.

Rebel Wilson is having a blast on the red carpet!

Eddie Redmayne chills out with some fans at the premiere of The Good Nurse during the 2022 Zurich Film Festival at Kongresshaus on Sunday (September 25) in Zurich, Switzerland.

When September rolls around, it means one thing for many of the top filmmakers in the world – time to hit the road. Venice, Telluride and Toronto come in rapid succession, to the point of overlapping. But for documentary filmmakers eager to showcase their work, there’s another important stop to make in September: the Camden International Film Festival in mid-coast Maine.

Smashing Pumpkins brought their new single to the TV this weekend (September 23) – watch them perform ‘Beguiled’ on Fallon below.‘Beguiled’ was released last week as the first taster of the band’s new three-part “rock opera” album, ‘ATUM’. Following on from 2020’s ‘CYR’, the forthcoming 33-song album serves as a sequel to the band’s classic double records ‘Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness’ (1995) and ‘Machina/The Machines Of God’ (2000).Another new song from the album, ‘Empires’, was debuted live at the band’s recent intimate gig in Chicago.Speaking to NME this month, Billy Corgan explained how ‘Beguiled’ had emerged from around “80 ideas” that eventually turned into “a bunch of different demos; a riff here, a chord change, a little vocal melody”.“And then you’d go through and say, ‘OK, these are the ones that are gonna work and seem to fit together’,” he recalled.“I do love the song; we’ve been practising it in rehearsal ’cause we’re about to do a show in a couple of days.

Ed Meza @edmezavar “Becoming an Astronaut,” an ambitious documentary that will focus on four new astronauts who will be announced by the European Space Agency (ESA) this November, has won the Focal Audience & Market Strategies pitching event at the Zurich Film Festival. Organized by Focal, the Lausanne-based foundation for film and audiovisual media training, Audience & Market Strategies is a three-part training program that helps producers promote their projects at an early stage. This year’s event showcased eight Swiss projects in various states of development. The program culminated with the pitching event, in which the producers presented their projects to sales company representatives, industry experts and an international jury comprising Stephen Kelliher of Bankside Films, Netflix’s Lars Wiebe, Olivier Tournaud of Cinephil, Sven Wälti, head of film at Swiss pubcaster SRG SSR, and Deadline’s Diana Lodderhose.

Clayton Davis “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Story,” “White Noise” and “The Whale” are among the first films announced for this year’s Middleburg Film Festival in Virginia, celebrating its tenth anniversary. “Everything Everywhere All at Once” breakout star Stephanie Hsu will be given the Rising Star Award, for her incredible performance in The Daniels’ critically-acclaimed dramedy, which has generated awards buzz. The fest will also hold a special screening of the movie after its huge success, becoming A24’s first film to surpass $100 million. The entire festival will be held in person with screenings, conversations and events from Oct. 13-16. Opening the fest on Thursday is Netflix’s “White Noise” starring Adam Driver. Writer and director Noah Baumbach will return after bringing “Marriage Story” (2019), to accept the 10th Anniversary Spotlight Filmmaker Award.

The Rome Film Festival has unveiled its first line-up under the new management team of former Rai executive Paola Malanga as artistic director and Cineteca di Bologna director Gian Luca Farinelli as president, who were both appointed to their roles last March.

The Sundance Institute has unveiled key details for the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, with regard to ticketing, on-sale dates and venues.

Park City, UT -Thursday, January 19 to Sunday, January 29Salt Lake City, UT - Friday, January 20 to Sunday, January 29Sundance, UT – Friday, January 20 to Sunday, January 29Additional information can be found at https://festival.sundance.org.

The 18thCamden International Film Festival on Maine’s mid-coast – an increasingly important destination for documentary filmmakers – wrapped its in-person portion Sunday after announcing a handful of awards.

Olivia Wilde is looking stunning on the red carpet!

Asghar Farhadi will preside over the jury for the International Feature Film Competition at this year’s Zurich Film Festival.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Iran’s Asghar Farhadi, who directed the Oscar winners “A Separation” and “The Salesman,” U.S. producer Christine Vachon, whose credits includes Oscar winner “Boys Don’t Cry,” and Oscar nominees “Far from Heaven” and “Carol,” and Romania’s Alexander Nanau, the director of the Oscar nominated “Collective,” are among the jury members at the 18th edition of the Zurich Film Festival, which takes place from Sept. 22 to Oct. 2.  Farhadi will head the jury for the International Feature Film Competition. He is joined by the U.K.’s Clio Barnard, who directed the BAFTA nominated “The Arbor,” “The Selfish Giant” and “Ali & Ava”; L.A.-based Brazilian Daniel Dreifuss, a producer on the Oscar nominated “No” and “All Quiet on the Western Front,” Germany’s Oscar entry; Swiss/Italian screenwriter and director Petra Volpe, whose credits include Tribeca prizewinner “The Divine Order”; and  Sweden’s Peter “Piodor” Gustafsson, the producer of Ali Abbassi’s “Border,” which won the main award in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent The Locarno Film Festival is switching to gender-neutral categories starting from next year’s 2023 edition. The prominent Swiss fest dedicated to global indie cinema is following in the footsteps of the Berlin Film Festival, which in 2021 awarded its first gender neutral acting prize. Unlike Berlin, however, Locarno will hand out two gender-neutral prizes for best performance in both the fest’s main competition and its Cineasti del Presente competition for first and second works. When Berlin did away with awards for the best actor and actress it subbed them with single gender neutral prizes for best leading performance and best supporting performance.

The Locarno film festival will shift to gender-neutral acting categories with its 76th edition set to run August 2-12, 2023.

Liberation reports that people close to the Franco-Swiss director have confirmed that he died today (September 13).The filmmaker is known for movies including Breathless (1960) and Contempt (1963), which pushed cinematic boundaries.Godard’s films showcased handheld camera work, jump cuts and existential dialogue that revolutionised French cinema and filmmaking in the 1960s.As Reuters writes, Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs filmmaker Quentin Tarantino is often cited as one of a more recent generation of pioneering directors who were initiated by Godard and his Paris-based contemporaries.Godard was born into a Franco-Swiss family on December 3, 1930 in Paris’s plush Seventh Arrondissement. His father was a doctor, his mother the daughter of a Swiss man who founded Banque Paribas, then an illustrious investment bank.Edgar Wright (Hot Fuzz, Baby Driver) has paid tribute the late filmmaker, saying that he was “one of the most influential, iconoclastic film-makers of them all”.“It was ironic that he himself revered the Hollywood studio film-making system, as perhaps no other director inspired as many people to just pick up a camera and start shooting.”RIP Jean-Luc Godard, one of the most influential, iconoclastic film-makers of them all.

Brent Lang Executive Editor It was supposed to be all about the movies. But even here at the Toronto International Film Festival, an ocean away from the United Kingdom, the death of 96-year-old Queen Elizabeth II has loomed large. It has provided an opportunity for festival organizers, filmmakers and talent to reflect on the life and legacy of a monarch whose 70-year reign ranks as the longest in her country’s history. That’s partly due to Canada’s status as a member of the British Commonwealth, but it’s also because the festival is such an international A-list affair, one that attracts movie stars and directors who have often had personal encounters with the queen.