‘Taipei Suicide Story’ Sweeps Top Awards At Slamdance Film Festival

Spike Lee, who was set to lead last year’s jury for the Cannes Film Festival that was ultimately cancelled by the pandemic, will preside over this year’s jury instead.

Spike Lee will head up this year's competition jury for the Cannes International Film Festival, organizers announced on Tuesday. He had been tapped to head up the jury for the 2020 festival, which ended up getting canceled due to the pandemic.

The Cannes Film Festival said Tuesday that Spike Lee will be its jury president in 2021, one year after he was due to preside over the festival but couldn’t due to its cancellation.

It is truly beginning to feel like we’re in a time loop. It was only a year ago when the Cannes Film Festival announced that Spike Lee would be the Jury President for the film festival.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentSpike Lee is set to preside over the 74th edition of the Cannes Film Festival, which is expected to take place July 6-17. The director and activist will be the first Black president of the festival’s jury.Lee was on track to preside over last year’s festival which was canceled due to the pandemic, and had vowed to return to the French Rivera-set festival if the health situation allowed for it.

The Balkan war drama Quo Vadis, Aida? by director Jasmila Žbanić picked up the top jury prize and the critics award at the 38th edition of the Miami Film Festival, which handed out trophies on Sunday. The film about the 1995 genocide in Srebrenica as seen through the eyes of a courageous UN interpreter, Aida, earned the juried Knight MARIMBAS Award.

Haley Bosselman editorJasmila Žbanić’s film based on the true events of the Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia, “Quo Vadis, Aida?,” took home the top prize at the Miami Film Festival.The Balkan war drama earned the $25,000 Knight Marimbas Award for its richness and resonance for cinema’s future, in addition to the Rene Rodriguez Critics Award.

Cannonballing down through the sky with a virtual gleam in its eye, the 12th annual TCM Classic Film Festival will run May 6-9 on TCM and HBO Max, kicking off with a 60th anniversary screening of West Side Story, it was announced Wednesday. "It is sure to be a memorable weekend, packed with everything you have come to love about the TCM Classic Film Festival, and we all get to experience it from the comfort of our home," TCM host Ben Mankiewicz says.

TheHong Kong International Film Festival, running April 1-12 this year as joint online/in-person event, will open with the premiere of two high-profile local features: Philip Yung's Where the Wind Blows, starring Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Aaron Kwok, and Septet: The Story of Hong Kong, an omnibus film co-helmed by seven acclaimed Hong Kong directors including Sammo Hung, Ann Hui, Patrick Tam, Yuen Woo-ping, Johnnie To, Ringo Lam and Tsui Hark.

UPDATED with latest: Carey Mulligan will receive the Cinema Vanguard Award next month at the 36th annual Santa Barbara Film Festival, joining the likes of Bill Murray, Amanda Seyfried and Delroy Lindo on the fest’s honorees list this year.

Refresh for latest…: The Berlin Film Festival is unveiling its Competition winners this afternoon following five days of virtual screenings. Given the ongoing pandemic, this year was a hybrid event that included the European Film Market and the competition films being made available only to industry delegates and the international jury from March 1-5.

EXCLUSIVE: Gravitas Ventures has acquired North American rights to Giants Being Lonely, the coming-of-age drama that had its world premiere at the 2019 Venice Film Festival. The pic, which marked the feature debut for mixed media artist Grear Patterson, will now bow April 6 day-and-day in theaters and on demand.

La Mif (The Fam), a coming-of-age drama from Swiss director Fred Bailif, has won the top prize for best film in the Generation 14Plus sidebar of the 2021 Berlin International Film Festival. Bailif'sfictional look inside a residential care facility housing teenage girls "pulls you in, never lets you go, and hits straight to the heart," according to the Generation jury.

The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival said Thursday that its 2021 edition is being postponed until late August amid the coronavirus pandemic. Organizers said the new dates are Aug.

Naman Ramachandran The 55th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival has moved from early July, and will now take place Aug. 20-28, as the Czech Republic fights a surge in coronavirus infections.The festival was due to take place July 2-10, but the alarming COVID-19 situation has forced organizers to delay.

This year’s 55th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival has been postponed from early July to August 20-28, 2021.

Jon Burlingame It was definitely an evening of “soul” at the second annual Society of Composers & Lyricists Awards, as the Pixar film “Soul” and the Latvian film “Blizzard of Souls” took the top prizes for outstanding original scores for 2020 films.The “Soul” composing trio of Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross and Jon Batiste won for outstanding original score for a studio film, their second such prize in 48 hours after winning the Golden Globe Sunday night.

There is a long list of films that were turned down by one major film festival only to have a breakout moment at another. For example, Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood” ended up going to Sundance after Cannes passed and Lena Dunham’s “Tiny Furniture” went to SXSW after Sundance passed.

EXCLUSIVE: New York-based distributor FilmRise has struck a deal with sales firm WaZabi Films for U.S. rights to TIFF 2020 and Berlin 2021 drama Beans.

The Tokyo International Film Festival has announced the dates for the 34th edition of the festival as well as dates for TIFFCOM, the film and television market. Japan's flagship festival is set to run for 10 days from Oct.