Sundance Embraces Elevated Nonfiction Fare as Oscar Voters Expand Definition of Excellence in Filmmaking

Jessica Chastain has built a résumé of portraying strong-willed women, but playing Tammy Faye Bakker was the first time she felt “exposed.” Believe it or not, she’s been working on bringing The Eyes of Tammy Faye to life since her most recent Best Actress nomination in 2012’s Zero Dark Thirty.

Beginning with our review coverage all the way back to the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, through Cannes in July, Venice and Telluride in the late summer, and finally to late-breaking holiday-season releases that qualified just under the gun for Oscar eligibility, Deadline has been on the front lines of opinion for this year’s eventual 10 nominees for Oscar Best Picture.

Chadwick Boseman once again.During Tuesday's live-streamed announcement of the 2022 Oscar nominees, Phylicia Rashad and students at Howard University's newly-renamed Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts helped announced the Best Actor category, in which Boseman was nominated just last year, for his performance in «All of our students here are so inspired by Chadwick Boseman, a Howard grad who was so committed to this university,» Rashad said.

Zack Sharf The 2022 Oscar nominees have been revealed, but it’s one name missing from the best actress race that’s generating the most conversation online. Fans were shocked when Lady Gaga failed to earn a nomination for her performance in “House of Gucci.” The nom would’ve been Gaga’s second best actress bid, following her nominated turn in “A Star Is Born,” for which she won an Oscar for original song.

EXCLUSIVE: CBS has given a pilot green light to Cal Fire, a drama from SEAL Team star Max Thieriot, Grey’s Anatomy alums Tony Phelan and Joan Rater, Jerry Bruckheimer Television and CBS Studios where the company is based. This is CBS’ second in-cycle drama pilot this season, joining a mother-and-son legal drama from Scott Prendergast and Dr. Phil McGraw.

Jordan Moreau The 2022 Oscar nominations are nearly here, and on Thursday morning the Academy announced that actors Tracee Ellis Ross and Leslie Jordan will be on hand to announce the nominees next week.Ross (“Black-ish,” “The High Note”) and Jordan (“Will & Grace,” “The Help”) will host a live presentation of the 2022 Oscar nominations on Tuesday, Feb. 8, beginning at 5:18 a.m.

a limited-edition NFT of the “Charlie’s Angels” star’s iconic red swimsuit poster. The famous pin-up shot from 1976 showed the actress, then just 29, posing in a bathing suit. A poster of the image went on to sell more than 12 million copies.

Guy Fieri’s allegiances are a bit torn when it comes to Super Bowl LVI. Fieri is a passionate Las Vegas Raiders fan who was born in Columbus, Ohio, just over 100 miles away from where the Cincinnati Bengals call home.The Bengals beat the Raiders on their way to a Super Bowl appearance, which Fieri admitted to Fox News Digital was painful to see. Guy Fieri looks on before the game between the Indianapolis Colts and the New England Patriots Gillette Stadium on Oct.

Farrah Abraham is reportedly leaving California following her recent arrest at a nightclub in Los Angeles.  A representative for the Los Angeles Police Department previously confirmed to Fox News Digital that Abraham was the subject of a private person's arrest earlier this month, after allegedly slapping a security guard who told her to leave the club following an altercation with another guest.  Abraham is seeking legal action against the employees of the club and claims the incident has had a very negative impact on her.  Speaking to TMZ on Saturday in Hollywood, where she was reportedly packing her things into a U-Haul, she explained she is leaving the state entirely because she is upset over the arrest and the physical altercation that took place.  The reality star also reportedly claimed that she has lost body function on her upper right side and that she currently fears going out in public due to the trauma she experienced from the event.  Farrah Abraham is reportedly leaving California. (Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File) In a statement from her lawyer previously provided to Fox News Digital, Abraham asserted that she was unlawfully placed under a citizen’s arrest and was the victim of excessive physical force by the security at Grandmaster Records in Los Angeles.  "Our preliminary investigation appears to indicate that Ms.

EXCLUSIVE: Lysa Heslov, the filmmaker best known for her award-winning 2017 documentary Served Like A Girl, has signed with Gersh for representation.

Directed by Paula Eislet and Tonya Lewis Lee (Spike Lee’s producer and partner), the documentary “Aftershock” chronicles the dismal maternal mortality rate that women of color face in the United States medical system. The statistics are shameful, pointing to a systemic racist indifference, and the documentary chronicles the staggering number of times that expectant mothers entering into hospitals simply do not come out alive due to a lack of care and sensitivity.

TikTok is an undeniable force in our society. It has the power to launch music careers, house the homeless, and unite people worldwide.

Julia Child knew her way around a sauce the way Leonard Bernstein knew his way around a sympathy, the way Patrick Mahomes knows his way through a defense. That is to say, with panache.

Angelique Jackson Netflix has acquired worldwide rights to the Sundance award-winning documentary “Descendant,” by filmmaker Margaret Brown (“The Order of Myths,” “Be Here to Love Me: Townes Van Zandt,” “The Great Invisible”). Higher Ground, President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama’s production company, will present the Participant feature alongside Netflix later this year.The film follows members of Africatown, a small community in Alabama, as they share their personal stories and community history as descendants of the Clotilda, the last known ship carrying enslaved Africans to the United States.

shortlist.Turner’s “Lynching Postcards: Token of a Great Day” looks back at the history of lynching in America through the ways they’ve been documented on souvenir postcards from 1880 to 1968.Turner described how photographers would take pictures of the lynchings and create postcards of the imagery that people would then send to their friends and family. She says that while the imagery was “graphic,” she tried to focus viewers’ eyes on the amount of people attending the lynchings and the fact that families were there, rather than the lynching itself, to properly contextualize the point in time.“We’re going beyond the brutality of the body itself, but that is also part of what I want viewers to confront,” she said.

In one of Syrian-born artist Mohamad Hafez’s stunning 3D pieces, a figurine of the Virgin Mary stands before an ornate portal, her hands joined in prayer. The building around her, rendered in plaster, paint, rusted metal and found objects, is blasted to ruins.

poisoned Russian dissident Alexei Navalny premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on Tuesday. Called “Navalny,” it’s a no-holds-barred indictment of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin, and insists that Navalny’s close brush with death was the result of a secret state-run operation to assassinate him.“As I became more and more famous guy, I was totally sure that my life became safer and safer because I am kind of famous guy — and it will be problematic for them just to kill me,” Navalny, 45, says in the film. “I was very wrong.” The doc, heading to HBO Max, was added at the last minute to the Sundance slate just as Putin had stationed more than 100,000 troops along the Ukrainian border.

Directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead go way down the rabbit hole in their new film, “Something In The Dirt,” one of the big standout films from the Sundance Film Festival. A pandemic brainchild of necessity—what can we shoot during the pandemic which is relatively inexpensive but still doable, so we don’t lose our marbles and can stay artistic—“Something In The Dirt” is a trippy, DIY, sci-fi-ish film about a pair of loser (played by the two filmmakers themselves) dudes in dystopic Los Angeles who stumble upon the unexplainable.

At first glance, actor-writer-director Cooper Raiff’s “Cha Cha Real Smooth” might look like your typical cutesy and whimsical Sundance dramedy, about a twenty-something college graduate learning a valuable life lesson and experiencing a bit of a delayed coming of age. While that’s not an inaccurate description of Raiff’s disarmingly lovely film (programmed in this year’s US Dramatic Competition), what feels miraculous about “Cha Cha” is: it doesn’t come with even an ounce of that cringe-inducing Sundance fancifulness, a brand that many love to hate.

The 2022 Sundance Film Festival obviously has so much to offer. Big premieres from indie auteurs, world cinema, documentaries, films for kids, and movies that are receiving so much acclaim right now, you’ll be hearing more from them later in the year upon regular theatrical release.