Palm Springs Film Festival Winners Led By ‘Prayers For The Stolen’, ‘A Hero’, ‘Flee’

K.J. Yossman “The Crown” producers Left Bank Pictures are making “Palomino – a new female-led series – for Netflix.The eight-part series revolves around Erin Collantes, a British teacher in Spain who gets caught up in a “brutal” supermarket robbery.

EXCLUSIVE: Netflix has set female-led action adventure series Palomino from Sony-backed The Crown producer Left Bank Pictures, with filming set to get underway later this year in Barcelona.

Megan Thee Stallion has opened up about her experience collaborating and performing with BTS.The American hip-hop artist spoke to Entertainment Tonight about how her collaboration with BTS on her remix of ‘Butter‘ had come about, and what it was like performing the song live with the K-pop group at their ‘Permission To Dance On Stage’ concert in Los Angeles last year.“I love BTS, and I was telling my manager, ‘I really want to do a song with BTS, I don’t know what I can do or what we’re going to do. What song we are going to sing?’”Megan then revealed that the group had actually been the ones to reach out to her first for a project together, saying, “Around that the same time, they wound up reaching out to me and asking me to do the ‘Butter’ remix.

Sundance Film Festival closed its second virtual edition on Sunday, having fielded a few breakout new films and filmmakers, as well as some big sales.With the indie film box office in the doldrums, many of the most aggressive buyers were streaming giants, which have both an insatiable need for content and a desire to generate some awards buzz. While some of the movies received a more muted reception than in past years, when a standing ovation at Park City’s Eccles Theater was enough to trigger an all-night bidding war, there’s been no shortage of headline-making moments.

Dispatches from the Sundance Film Festival are usually accompanied by descriptions of the looming mountains, snowy premieres and frantic bus shuttles. This year's Sundance, which played out entirely virtually due to the COVID-19 surge driven by the omicron variant, meant less evocative screening circumstances: Laptops, digital links and Zooms.But even in reduced form, the films were often hypnotic, thrilling and urgent.

The Sundance Film Festival is revealing award winners for its 2022 edition on Friday afternoon beginning at 2 p.m. PT. Like the rest of this year’s festival, which was forced to go all-virtual because of the recent Omicron surge, the awards ceremony is playing out on Twitter.

John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentHere, it’s the turn ofTatiana Huezo, director of Mexico’s shortlisted entry “Prayers for the Stolen” (“Noche de fuego”), “a poetic, profound portrait of growing up a girl in cartel-land,” Variety said in its review.    What does it mean to you to be shortlisted for the best international feature Oscar? Feeling that my film can touch another person is the greatest value I can aspire to. I think cinema can touch the soul, make us look at each other, bring us closer together.

NASA has revealed plans to improve they way they detect ' doomsday' asteroids capable of wiping out the human race.

The 72nd Berlin International Film Festival has confirmed its various juries, including who will be joining M. Night Shyamalan to award the International Competition prizes.

Wilson Chapman editorThe Miami Film Festival has announced its opening and closing titles for its upcoming 39th edition.The festival, which showcases works from filmmaker’s in the Ibero-American diaspora, will premiere and end with two films listed on the Oscar shortlist for international feature film. “The Good Boss” (El Buen Patrón), a comedy written and directed by Spain’s Fernando León de Aranoa, will open the festival, which will close with “Plaza Catedral,” the sophomore narrative feature of Panamanian director Abner Benaim.“The Good Boss” stars Javier Bardem as Blanco, the owner of a family business up for consideration for a local award for business excellence. Determined to win the award, Blanco begins meddling in the lives of his employees, setting off a chain of events that leads to shocking repercussions.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans EditorThe Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the launch of the new interview series, “Seen.” Nick Barili, an Argentinean-American journalist, director, writer and producer, sits down for one-on-one conversations with some of the most influential artists and filmmakers with Latin-American and Spanish roots. The first season of the web series will include Academy members John Leguizamo, Eva Longoria and Oscar-nominee Edward James Olmos (“Stand and Deliver”), as they discuss their personal journeys, culture and breaking down barriers in filmmaking.Leguizamo will lead the first episode as he explores his beloved New York City and maneuvering through the industry over his long career, also covering the topics of colorism and tokenism.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticHe’s a cha cha real smooth talker. He’s 22, tall and handsome with a beard, but not a scruffy hipster beard — more like a post-millennial, post-ironic traditional beard, which sets off features that are finely chiseled in a Middle American corporate way. (When he grins, he looks like Donny Osmond.) He’s just out of college but has no idea what he wants to do.

Anna Marie de la Fuente Mexico’s Tatiana Huezo and Abner Benaim of Panama, whose respective dramas, “Prayers for the Stolen” and “Plaza Catedral,” made the coveted shortlist in the Oscars’ international feature category, have quite a few things in common. Both have mainly worked in documentary filmmaking, although in the case of Benaim, he made a hit comedy in 2009, “Chance,” before focusing on nonfiction films.Neither are strangers to the Oscar experience.

EXCLUSIVE: Oscar and Emmy winner Kathy Bates (Richard Jewell, American Horror Story), two-time Oscar nominee and Emmy winner John Malkovich (Space Force, The New Pope) and Lewis Pullman (Top Gun: Maverick, Pink Skies Ahead) have signed on to star in Thelma, an indie directed by two-time Emmy nom Ken Kwapis (#BlackAF, The Office).

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentFrench auteur Alain Guiraudie’s political drama “Nobody’s Hero” has been set as the opener of the 2022 Berlin Film Festival’s multifaceted Panorama strand, which has announced its full lineup.The latest feature from Guiraudie, who is best known for his 2016 “Staying Vertical,” takes place in Clermont-Ferrand, central France, where a terrorist attack triggers some paranoid dynamics involving a young homeless man, a middle-aged sex worker and her married lover who have taken refuge in a building. The film’s cast comprises actor-director Noémie Lvovsky, Jean-Charles Clichet and Doria Tillier.The ten-title Panorama Dokumente strand, which runs concurrently with the feature films, comprises previously announced transgender-themed doc “Nel Mio Nome” (“Into My Name”) by Italian director and producer Nicolò Bassetti.

The program announcements continue for the 72nd Berlin International Film Festival this week, with the full Panorama line-up now confirmed.

Gilles Meunier, the international television distribution and programming executive who worked at France’s TF1 and Canal+ and was a mainstay at festivals and conferences from NATPE to Mipcom and the Los Angeles Screenings, has died.