Sundance Documentary ‘A New Kind of Wilderness’ Tracks Family Whose Dream Life Became a Nightmare

EXCLUSIVE: Ella Hunt, Emily Fairn and Kim Matula have joined Sony Pictures’ SNL 1975, which will be directed by Jason Reitman and is based on the real-life behind-the-scenes accounts of Saturday Night Live‘s opening night. Hunt will play Gilda Radner, Fairn will play Laraine Newman, and Matula will play Jane Curtin. The original screenplay is by Reitman and Gil Kenan.

The Persian Version, a new film coming to cinemas very soon. The film won the Audience Award and the Best Screenplay Award at this years Sundance Film Festival.Coming from two countries at odds with each other, Iranian-American Leila (Layla Mohammadi) strives to find balance and embrace her opposing cultures, while boldly challenging the labels society is so quick to project upon her.

Lil Nas X opened up about his family, sexuality, public image and more in his new documentary Long Live Montero.

Sofia Vergara is perhaps most recognisable as Modern Family's Gloria Delgado-Pritchett - a role that saw her become one of America's highest-paid actresses. Now, she's back as fearsome cartel leader Griselda Blanco for a six-part Netflix series of the same name.

EXCLUSIVE: The Ford Foundation is coming through for documentary filmmakers in a big way.  

The Church of Satan would like to make it clear that members don’t worship the Devil, nor do they believe Satan is real. What they do believe in, and the rituals they practice, emerge in the documentary Realm of Satan, which just premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. 

Sebastian Stan is stepping out for the 2024 Sundance Film Festival!

Love Me,” from filmmaker duo Sam and Andy Zuchero, received the juried feature film prize from Sundance Institute and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s joint Science-in-Film initiative at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. The prize is awarded to a film that focuses on science or technology as a theme or depicts a scientist, engineer or mathematician as a major character.

Many other Republican candidates have suspending their campaigns this cycle, but Florida Governor Ron DeSantis‘ exit inspired some pretty biting and snarky reactions today, coming from other politicos and some celebrities.

Addie Morfoot Contributor In “Union,” documentary filmmakers Brett Story and Stephen Maing follow the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), a group of current and former Amazon workers as they attempt to unionize Amazon employees working at a facility in Staten Island, N.Y. The directing duo chronicles just how excruciatingly hard it is to form a workers’ union in America — especially at Amazon.

An moved and moving River Gallo thanked a full and cheering house for turning out to the premiere of Ponyboi. The intersex actor starred in film, which is both a crime thriller and exploration of gender and identity.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Justice Smith‘s career has taken him to the forefront of major Hollywood tentpoles such as “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves,” “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” and “Pokémon: Detective Pikachu,” but it has never taken him to the Sundance Film Festival until now. The 28-year-old actor was one of five honorees at the Variety & Golden Globes Breakthrough Artists Party presented by Adobe, and earning a breakthrough artist award was “a really warm welcome” to the annual Park City event.

Gregg Goldstein In an election year when civil rights are being threatened, authoritarianism is spreading around the globe and minorities are a popular political target, it’s no wonder that films exploring the U.S. criminal justice system are everywhere you look in the Sundance Film Festival lineup. “There’s so much inequality and injustice in the justice system,” says “God Save Texas: Hometown Prison” director Richard Linklater.

Guy Lodge Film Critic The opening minutes of “A New Kind of Wilderness” promise some kind of documentary advertorial for off-the-grid living. Over idyllic shots of her hippy-hunky husband Nik and their three cherubic children camping, foraging for food and literally hugging trees in verdant Norwegian woodland, photographer Maria Vatne’s voiceover soothingly espouses the liberating virtues of “getting out of the rat race” and “being free and full of love.” It all looks wonderful, like “Swiss Family Robinson” updated for the era of Instagram cottagecore, and a cynic might say that it hardly seems sustainable.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief First-time mainland Chinese director Lin Jianjie (aka JJ Lin) makes a splash this weekend with the premiere of his “Brief History of a Family.” Asking questions about family in the era since the end of China’s ‘One Child Policy,’ while also borrowing genre tropes such as the idea of the intruder and blood, it is a polished and ultra-modern fable that sees a teenage schoolboy ingratiate himself into another boy’s family.Variety spoke to biologist-turned-filmmaker Lin on the eve of his Sundance debut.How did you get from zero to making your first feature?[After graduating in biology] I did two short films at film school. I went to Tisch Asia, which had a campus in Singapore. We also had an exchange program with Tisch in New York.

It all seems so idyllic at first and sensible, too. Mother of four Maria Gros Vatne narrates the opening minutes of “A New Kind of Wilderness” as the documentary shows videos and still photographs of her husband and kids romping through Norway’s unassuming fields, streams, and woods.

Modern Family star Ed O’Neill has recalled how nearly ended up joining the mob before landing his role on the Emmy-winning ABC sitcom.The actor starred as Jay Pritchett on the 11-season series, which ran from 2009 until 2020.Appearing on former co-star Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s Dinner on Me podcast on Tuesday (16 January), O’Neill said that when he cut from the National Football League’s Pittsburgh Steelers in 1969, he didn’t know what to do with his life and could have easily been pushed into organised crime.“Youngstown [Ohio] was not a good place to live for opportunities. Really, there was nothing there for me,” the Married…with Children star said. “The only thing that I had that I could’ve done – and thank God I didn’t – was organised crime because I had friends in organised crime.”O’Neill recalled how his childhood friend Jim took him to a fancy restaurant, where they met with a bartender whom Jim bribed for information on someone he was looking for.“We left and [Jim] said, ‘You can do this kind of stuff for me, you know, I’ll protect you, I’ll give you easy stuff.

BreAnna Bell ABC News Studios has teamed up with Neon and Network Entertainment to announce “Brats,” a feature-length documentary that focuses on the stars who came to be known in the ’80s as the famous Brat Pack. Told with the help of director and former Brat Pack member Andrew McCarthy (“Pretty in Pink,” “St. Elmo’s Fire”), the director hits the road 30 years later, reuniting with several members of the Brat Pack crew including Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, Jon Cryer, Emilio Estevez asking each member what being apart of the Brat Pack meant to them.

FX has set a March 29 premiere date for Spermworld, a documentary feature on the unregulated online marketplace for sperm, produced by The New York Times and Edgeline Films.

Netflix has just added a new true crime documentary that is being referred to as the “real life Gone Girl“.A synopsis for the new three-part series, which became available to stream today (January 17) on Netflix, reads: After a home invasion and abduction, a young couple’s recounting of the events is too far fetched for the police to believe. Why did the victims seem so calm? Was it all a hoax?“From the filmmakers behind The Tinder Swindler, this three-part docuseries unravels the consequences of our cultural rush to judgment, and the damage done when law enforcement decides the truth can’t possibly be true.”The story centres arounds an event in 2015 when an intruder broke into the home of Denise Huskins and her partner Aaron Quinn.