Oscar Winner Laura Poitras Bashes Toronto, Venice For Programming Hillary Clinton Docs, Accuses Festivals Of “Kind Of Whitewashing” Clinton’s Record

Matt Donnelly Senior Film Writer If it’s possible to pull off solemn conversations about the stakes for women around the world and also have a fantastic party that toasts their remarkable achievements, Variety did just that on Wednesday in Beverly Hills. In a sprawling takeover of the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, heavy-hitting executives, producers, writers, talent and glitterati convened to celebrate the annual event and magazine feature. Cover stars Hillary and Chelsea Clinton, Oprah Winfrey and Ava DuVernay, activist icon Malala Yousafzai, and actor Elizabeth Olsen were all in attendance to speak on behalf of causes important to each – as well as a path forward to equity in a time of unrest for women and other marginalized communities in the U.S.. 

Variety‘s Power of Women dinner on Wednesday, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton spoke, and the former secretary of state took the Iranian government to task. “I could not stand up here tonight without also recognizing the brave women in Iran who are standing up for their rights, their freedom against a horrific regime who stays in power in large measure because they oppress women,” Clinton said. “And I could not stand here without thinking about the women in Afghanistan who are being deprived of education, or the women on the front lines in Ukraine who are trying to defend their country against the barbarity of Putin’s invasion.” “So we have a lot of work to do,” she continued. “It’s work in our own country to keep our progress going and not let the clock be turned back, and it’s also caring about the rest of the world.”

Hillary and Chelsea Clinton are two of creative leaders honored for Variety’s 2022 Power of Women presented by Lifetime. For more, click here. Hillary Clinton is in an ebullient mood, and for good reason. Clinton, though she remains an avid observer of political trends, is out of the crucible of hunting for votes. And at this latest stop on a tour that has included visits to the Venice and Toronto film festivals, she and her daughter, Chelsea Clinton, are seeking something new: your eyeballs. HiddenLight Prods., which the pair launched with Sam Branson (son of Richard Branson, of the Virgin brand), has launched its first series, “Gutsy.” The Apple TV+ documentary is based on the Clintons’ 2019 “Book of Gutsy Women: Favorite Stories of Courage and Resilience,” and in the film, the former secretary of state and the Oxford Ph.D. kibitz with Kim Kardashian and Megan Thee Stallion, as well as feminist icon Gloria Steinem and labor activist Dolores Huerta.

On Thursday’s “The Tonight Show,” host Jimmy Fallon had a string of jokes that showed just how baffling a claim it is that Donald Trump could declassify documents just by thinking about it, as the former president told Sean Hannity in a now-viral interview Wednesday. Fallon also joked that such a gaff will only help Florida governor Ron DeSantis’ presidential prospects for 2024.

Randy Jackson and Jennifer Hudson are together again!

Addie Morfoot Contributor “In Her Hands,” a Netflix documentary produced by Hillary and Chelsea Clinton, has won the 18th Camden Intl. Film Festival’s audience award. While the in-person component of the Maine-based festival ended on Sept.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor U.S. director-producer Laura Poitras, who won an Oscar and an Emmy with Edward Snowden film “Citizenfour,” and recently took the Golden Lion at Venice with opioid epidemic pic “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,” will be the Guest of Honor at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. The 35th edition of the festival takes place from Nov. 9 to 20. Poitras will be honored at IDFA with the Retrospective and Top 10 programs, in which she curates 10 films. The Top 10 program includes reflections on political imprisonment (“Hunger” by Steve McQueen; “This Is Not a Film” by Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb), incarceration and psychiatry (Frederick Wiseman’s “Titicut Follies”), and genocide (Claude Lanzmann’s “Shoah”). As part of the Top 10, Poitras will be in conversation with several of her selected filmmakers during the festival’s public talks program.

Oscar-winning director Laura Poitras will be guest of honor at the 35th International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), running from November 9 to 20.

The People’s Choice Award from the just wrapped 2022 Toronto International Film Festival has gone to Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans.  First Runner Up is Canada’s own Sarah Polley’s Women Talking. And Second Runner Up was Rian Johnson’s Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. The Documentary Award went to Black Ice, and the Midnight Madness winner was Weird: The Al Yankovich Story             .

Hillary Clinton wanted to "show a different side" to Kim Kardashian on her Apple TV+ series 'Gutsy'. The former US Secretary of State's new eight-part documentary sees the polarizing politician and her daughter Chelsea Clinton celebrate the "gutsy" women who have inspired them. And the 'Kardashians' star is one of the women featured for her influence and Hillary wanted to highlight her prison reform work.

EJ Panaligan editor NewFest, a New York-based LGBTQ+ film festival, has announced the full lineup for its 34th iteration. The 2022 edition will run from Oct. 13 to Oct. 25. With world, North American, U.S. and New York premieres for more than 130 films from 23 countries, the festival will be headlined by the world premiere of HBO documentary “Mama’s Boy” from Laurent Bouzereau as the opening night screening. Additionally, the festival will hold an advance screening for the Season 2 premiere of popular HBO series “The White Lotus.” Other high-profile screenings through the festival’s run include Michael Grandage’s love triangle film “My Policeman,” starring Harry Styles and Emma Corrin, and the stop-motion horror comedy “Wendell & Wild,” from writer-director Henry Selick. Jordan Peele co-writes, while also featuring in a lead voice role. Keegan-Michael Key inhabits the film’s other lead voice role, marking a “Key & Peele” reunion on the animated stage between the two longtime collaborators.

Adam Benzine Guest Contributor Oscar-winning documentarian Laura Poitras slammed the heads of the Venice and Toronto film festivals for “engaging in a kind of whitewashing” by programming glossy documentaries from the Clinton family. Her comments come as TIFF this week hosted the Canadian premiere of Poitras’s “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,” a documentary about the artist and activist Nan Goldin, and just days after the film won Venice’s top prize, the Golden Lion. It is the rare doc to land slots at the superfecta of Venice, Telluride, Toronto and New York, and Poitras said she thought “long and hard” about whether or not to voice criticism at the same venues feting her latest work. Nevertheless, she said, “journalists need to ask hard questions.”

Kelly Clarkson is joined by some special guests as she returns for a star-studded season 4 “Kelly Clarkson Show” premiere on Monday.

Megan Thee Stallion has spoken to Hillary Clinton about the song ‘WAP‘ in the latter’s new docuseries Gutsy.The rapper, who featured on the 2020 Cardi B song that celebrates female sexuality, said to the former US politician that her life’s mission is to “make sure that I am unapologetically me” and that’s why she was happy to make such an explicit statement in the collaboration.In preview clips shared to promote the show that premiered on Friday (September 9),  Clinton admits that she only was introduced to Megan’s music via ‘WAP’.Speaking with People ahead of the series debut, Clinton said that her initial reaction to the song was admiration.Hillary Clinton and her daughter Chelsea Clinton talk about “WAP” with Megan thee Stallion. #GUTSY pic.twitter.com/lwMJO2Gtrp— BU Media (@bu_media) September 10, 2022“I didn’t know what to think, because I’m of a much different generation, but I admired the audacity and the kind of agency that both of those young women were exhibiting, ‘Here I am.

Clayton Davis Almost 30 years after “The Nightmare Before Christmas” (1993), Henry Selick returns with “Wendell & Wild,” another stop-motion animated sensation that’s sure to generate acclaim throughout the industry. Co-written by Oscar-winning screenwriter Jordan Peele, the Netflix feature film debuted at the Toronto Film Festival and may have asserted itself as the new frontrunner for best animated feature. Based on Selick and Clay McLeod Chapman’s unpublished book of the same name, the film tells the story of two scheming demon brothers, Wendell (Keegan-Michael Key) and Wild (Peele), who enlist the aid of a 13-year-old Kat (Lyric Ross) to summon them to the Land of the Living. It also features the voice talents of Angela Bassett, James Hong and Ving Rhames.

HBO Documentary Films has acquired U.S. television and streaming rights to Oscar winner Laura Poitras’s film All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, fresh from its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival and sneak preview at Telluride.

On an abnormally hot summer day in Oslo, a strange electric field surrounds the city as a collective migraine spreads across town. TVs, lightbulbs, and electronics go haywire, the chaos reaching a debilitating crescendo when suddenly, it’s over.

Neon has acquired North American and UK rights to the horror-drama Handling the Undead, marking the narrative feature debut of Thea Hvistendahl, who previously directed the documentary Adjø Montebello and several short films, including the SXSW Grand Jury Award-nominated Virgins4lyfe. The project reteams the distributor with Renate Reinsve and Anders Danielsen Lie, who starred in its Oscar-nominated romantic drama The Worst Person in the World, directed by Joachim Trier.

Hillary Clinton had a confession to make on Tuesday’s “Tonight Show”.