Sundance: Rebecca Hall, Robin Wright, Rita Moreno Join Virtual Panel, Talks Lineup

You don't find subjects much more disarming than Rita Moreno, whose seven-decade career on stage and screen is described in Mariem Pérez Riera's celebratory documentary as both the essence of the American Dream and the tenacious attainment of it despite dispiriting obstacles. "You must never really believe anything about your fame and all that kind of bullshit," says Moreno with characteristic unfiltered charm.

Also Read: Why Tessa Thompson Was 'Really Terrified' of Playing Irene in 'Passing' (Video)But Wright said she “had definitely been in the shopping mode for something to direct” after her Netflix series “House of Cards” ended and the script by Jesse Chatham and Erin Dignam spoke to her about an epidemic of real-world tragedies.“It was resonating with me so much because it was during the time of these random shootings that were going on in our country almost biweekly and I just kept thinking every

Rebecca Hall came across Nella Larsen’s novel “Passing” at a time when she was grappling with her own family history.She’d become aware that her maternal grandfather was “white passing,” and it might have gone back even further. Then someone handed her this book, from 1929, about two light-skinned Black women, Clare and Irene, who live on opposite sides of the color line.

Take the nomad out of “Nomadland,” and you’re left with “Land,” Robin Wright‘s feature-directing debut (she previously directed 10 episodes of “House of Cards“), in which she also stars, as a grieving woman who, somewhat ironically given the film bows in the era of mandatory isolation, moves way up into the mountains “to get away from people.” Problem is, take the nomadic element out of “Nomadland” (she moves only once and has done with it) and you’re also left with a less interesting, much more

Rita Moreno made history at the 1962 Academy Awards, becoming the first Latina to win an Oscar for her groundbreaking role as Anita in West Side Story, she was so overwhelmed that her acceptance speech was a mere 11 words: “I can’t believe it. Good lord.

Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticRobin Wright spends most of “Land” alone, but that’s not how her character Edee sees it. Newly widowed and raw with sorrow for reasons left (mostly) unsaid, Edee abandons nearly everything about her old life and buys a cabin on the side of a mountain in Wyoming — barely a shack, really, with no running water or electricity, surrounded by wilderness.

Exquisite performances from Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga provide the pulsing, emotionally heightened center to Passing, Rebecca Hall's assured move behind the camera, adapted with great sensitivity from the 1929 novel by Harlem Renaissance author Nella Larsen. "We're all of us passing for something or other, aren't we?" muses Thompson's melancholy character Irene Redfield.

After directing numerous episodes of “House of Cards”, Robin Wright makes her big-screen directorial debut as a director with “Land”.

Sundance Film Festival Cinema Café talk on Sunday with Rebecca Hall. “Everybody was a judge and there was so much bullying going on.

Jessica Kiang It starts in sweltering heat; it ends in freezing weather. And in between, as the temperature gradually drops, Rebecca Hall’s “Passing,” based on Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel, calmly brings the diffuse racial landscape of prohibition-era New York City into crystalline, gorgeously shot focus.

After a renowned career of nearly four decades in both film and TV, actor Robin Wright makes a confident feature directorial debut with “Land,” screening this year as part of Sundance Film Festival’s Premieres line-up.

Irene (Tessa Thompson) rarely passes for white. She fears for her safety too much to do so.

The presumed dead-and-buried practice of racial passing by light-skinned blacks in the United States decades ago is returned to center-stage in Passing, a delicate, sensitive, intentionally claustrophobic and not entirely limber directorial debut from the protean British stage performer Rebecca Hall.

See Photos: 14 Buzziest Sundance Movies for Sale in 2021, From Questlove's 'Summer of Soul' to Rebecca Hall's 'Passing'As conflicted Irene, Thompson delivers her finest work to date, reminiscent of her turn in the recent period piece “Sylvie’s Love” but with greater substance.

There is a moment in Robin Wright's directorial debut, Land, where a hunter — played by a bearded Demián Bichir — arrives at the door of a rustic cabin, where Wright's character is suffering through a dangerous winter, to bring her a case of ramen noodles. It's a simple gesture of decency Wright wanted to see onscreen.

Sundance Film Festival on Saturday, Moreno, 89, opened up about her early years in Hollywood and Gene Kelly’s request to cut her hair for her role as Zelda Zanders in the 1952 film “Singin’ in the Rain.”“I did something that is so Latina because I was the shyest person on earth, and I said no,” Moreno, who is the subject of the documentary “Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It.”“And he really was taken aback because nobody ever said no to Gene Kelly, and I got scared to death having

Also Read: 'Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It' Film Review: Documentary Honors a Showbiz LegendMoreno, an Academy Award winner for Best Supporting Actress for playing Anita in 1961’s “West Side Story” as well as a rare EGOT winner for additional work on TV, theater and music, was joined by director Mariem Perez Riera, and producers Brent Miller and Ilia Velez.The film covers such painful subjects from Moreno’s past, including a sexual assault by her agent, and the heartbreak of

Robin Wright is using her extra time at home amid the pandemic to brush up on her film knowledge. “I think my guilty pleasure of releasing the days is getting in bed and watching a movie on Criterion Channel,” Wright, 54, said during The Cut’s “How I Get It Done” virtual panel at the Sundance Film Festival on Friday.

Also Read: 'One Day at a Time' Star Rita Moreno on the 'Odd Resistance' to Latinx Representation on TVNonetheless, Pérez Riera smartly tames the endearing adulation and expounds the reach of the project, with honest conversations on gender violence and ethnic discrimination as they relate to Moreno’s experiences.