PBS Documentary Series ‘Independent Lens’ Reveals Fall Slate of Films (EXCLUSIVE)

Jonathan Glazer’s Cannes-winning Holocaust drama The Zone Of Interest has been selected as the UK’s entry for the Best International Feature Film category at the 2024 Oscars.

EXCLUSIVE: Netflix has set a Halloween global premiere for Ralph Barbosa: Cowabunga, its first special from rising star comic Barbosa, which was shot in August as part of his ongoing North American tour. The hour-long special, taped at The Kessler Theater in Barbosa’s hometown of Dallas, TX, premieres globally on Tuesday, October 31st.

EXCLUSIVE: The Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival announced the lineup for the 32nd edition of North America’s longest-running all doc festival, a slate that includes several world premieres and a slew of Academy Award-contending films. In addition, Hot Springs announced Oscar-winning actress Mary Steenburgen, an Arkansas native, will serve as honorary chair of the event in the resort town located in the scenic Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas.

A Scots journalist behind the bombshell Russell Brand documentary has told how her team exposed allegations of rape and sexual assault against the comic.

EXCLUSIVE: Byron Allen’s Freestyle Digital Media has acquired North American VOD rights to Our Words Collide, a poetry-themed documentary executive produced by Rosario Dawson that will be released in early 2024. 

Oscar-winning filmmaker Roger Ross Williams has much to celebrate this weekend. His first narrative/fiction film, Cassandro, opens theatrically today. And he has just been named the recipient of the Critics Choice Impact Award from the Critics Choice Association.

Steven Gaydos Executive VP of Content When first-time documentary director Leonard Manzella premieres his award-winning “Shoe Shine Caddie” at the Portobello Film Festival in London on September 16, it will represent a kind of return to the former actor’s roots in the international film scene. A professional family therapist for the past 30 years in California, Manzella’s earlier career began when the native Angeleno left Los Angeles for Rome in 1968 “when everything was burning.” In his early 20s and armed with “no contacts and about $50 bucks in my pocket,” a fortuitous introduction to American actor Brett Halsey got Manzella into movies, first as an extra and eventually as a leading man.

Naman Ramachandran Blue Finch Films has boarded worldwide sales on horror-thriller, “Last Straw,” set to have its world premiere at the Sitges Film Festival before making its way to Beyond Fest next month. Written by Taylor Sardoni, “Last Straw” pays homage to the pressure cooker genre films of the past and aims to present a raw and unrelenting twist on the home-invasion thriller. The story revolves around a young waitress working the late shift alone at a rural roadside diner.

The late-night power players behind the new “Strike Force Five” podcast are temporarily losing two members for a special live on-stage event.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic The first thing to say about Alex Gibney’s “In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon” is that it’s three-and-a-half hours long. Normally I wouldn’t lead with that daunting fact, especially since the film is mostly marvelous: a documentary that every Paul Simon fan on earth should want to see and experience. But will they? I raise the issue only because “In Restless Dreams” has come into the Toronto Film Festival without a distributor, and let’s just be honest: The 209-minute running time, when you hear about it, doesn’t exactly sound…user-friendly.

Michael Schneider Variety Editor at Large Three of the “Strike Force Five” are taking their show on the road. Late night hosts Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel will host a one-night-only event, dubbed “Strike Force Three,” at the Dolby Live at Park MGM in Las Vegas on Saturday, September 23 — marking the first time the trio have been on stage together at the same time. Colbert, Fallon, Kimmel, John Oliver and Seth Meyers recently launched the podcast “Strike Force Five,” as a way to help support the staffs of their respective shows.

Ariana Madix and Charity Lawson for Season 32 of “Dancing With the Stars.” Other high-profile stars who are ready to hit the ballroom include “The Brady Bunch’s” Barry Williams, Oscar winner Mira Sorvino and “American Pie” actress Alyson Hannigan.This upcoming season — which is set to air on Sept. 26 — will be judged by Derek Hough, Carrie Ann Inaba and Bruno Tonioli following the death of ballroom dancing legend Len Goodman, who died in April at age 78.

Fall Out Boy and Metro Boomin have been added to the list of performers for next week’s 2023 MTV Video Music Awards.The ceremony will take place at the Prudential Centre in Newark, New Jersey on September 12, and will also feature the recently-announced Olivia Rodrigo.Others to perform at the 2023 VMAs will be Måneskin, Doja Cat and more, alongside the newly announced Peso Pluma. It will be Fall Out Boy’s first performance on the show since 2007.Taylor Swift, Doja Cat and SZA lead the list of nominations, which was revealed last month.Swift is leading the way with eight nominations, SZA earned six and Doja Cat, Kim Petras, Miley Cyrus, Nicki Minaj and Sam Smith have all earned five each.

Fall Out Boy is planning on creating a few more Mmrs.The pop-punk rockers are heading out on the second North American leg of their ‘The So Much for (2our) Dust’ tour with special guest Jimmy Eat World starting on Feb. 28.Along the way, the ’00 icons will stop into New York City’s Madison Square Garden on Friday, March 22 and Albany’s MVP Arena on Sunday, March 24.But wait! There’s more!On select dates, fan favorite acts like The Maine, Hot Mulligan, Daisy Grenade, Games We Play and Carr on select dates will serve as the opening acts for the co-headliners.Plus, if you’re overseas, you can catch FOB perform a handful of international shows later this year.

Fall Out Boy and Jimmy Eat World have announced plans for a joint US tour in 2024.The former shared a teaser video in which they contemplate who they should take with them on the second leg of their ‘So Much For (Tour) Dust’ tour before they eventually settle on Jimmy Eat World. You can watch the teaser below.The ‘So Much For (2our) Dust’ tour will kick off on February 28 in Portland, with further stops planned in Seattle, Austin, Orlando, Baltimore, New York, Nashville, Milwaukee, and more, before wrapping up on April 6 in Minneapolis.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer NBCUniversal Entertainment has tapped Universal Television Alternative Studio exec Christine Cowan as its new senior vice president of casting and talent. In her new role, Cowan will head up casting and talent management for scripted and unscripted shows, with a particular focus on unscripted, across the NBCUniversal Entertainment brands NBC, Bravo, E!, Oxygen True Crime, SYFY, USA Network, Universal Kids and Peacock.

“Keep your crayons sharp.”

In principle, using the rainy-day, kitchen-sink post-rock of Manchester band The Smiths so prominently in a film like The Killer seems incredibly perverse, given that it’s an exotic, globe-trotting thriller about an American assassin. But in reality, it’s actually very sound choice indeed: legend has it that the band’s singer, Morrissey, had two reasons for naming his band so, the first being that “Smith” is one of the most common and thus unremarkable surnames in the world. The second, and much more subversive theory, suggests that it’s also a reference to David and Maureen Smith, brother-in-law and sister of ’60s serial killer Myra Hindley, the snappily dressed couple whose testimony blew open the Moors Murderers case and whose beatnik likenesses adorn the cover of Sonic Youth’s 1990 album “Goo”.

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor How much longer will the Oscars wait? That is, wait to embrace the quality and sheer brilliance of documentary filmmaking in a significant way, meaning nominating one in the best picture category? Matthew Heineman’s deeply moving “American Symphony,” which follows Oscar and Grammy-winning composer Jon Batiste as he prepares for his performance at Carnegie Hall, is yet another home run for the filmmaker behind “Cartel Land” and “City of Ghosts,” not to mention a singular love story. Batiste’s larger-than-life personality was on full display following the Telluride screening of the documentary, when he led a band down to the main street of Telluride.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic “Be kind, because everyone you meet is fighting a great battle” — that popular maxim (or some variation thereof) is often brought up in the context of remembering to have some sympathy for jerks. But it could also be applied to people whose lives seem too charmed to be true.