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Exclusive: CAA has signed actor Tyriq Withers for representation.

Most recently, Withers wrapped as the lead opposite Marlon Wayons in Him (formerly Goat), Universal Pictures’ psychological horror film from Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions. The project centers on a promising young athlete who is invited to train with a team’s retiring star. Wayans plays the legendary quarterback, with former college athlete Withers as his protégé.

Justin Tipping (Kicks) directed the pic from a Black List script by Zack Akers and Skip Bronkie. Others in the cast include Julia Fox, Tim Heidecker, comedian Jim Jefferies, and musical artists Guapdad 4000 and Tierra Whack. The film is slated for a wide theatrical release on September 19, 2025.

Prior to Him, Withers was perhaps best known for his role on FX’s Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning comedy series Atlanta, created by and starring Donald Glover. His performance as Aaron, a biracial high school student...

Exclusive: Thomas Doherty (Gossip Girl) is joining season 2 of the Hulu Original Series Tell Me Lies.

Doherty has been cast as Leo, a junior at Baird who returns to campus after studying abroad for a year and finds himself immediately drawn to Lucy (Grace Van Patten). He seems as kind as he is charming, but Lucy isn’t sure whether she can fully trust him. Leo will eventually become entangled in the web created by Lucy and Stephen’s (Jackson White) toxic relationship.

Tell Me Lies follows a tumultuous but intoxicating relationship as it unfolds over the course of eight years and sweeps everyone around it into its dangerous wake. A group of college friends has no idea that one addictive entanglement among them has the power to pull them all into a web of betrayal, sex, and lies that will permanently alter each of their paths forever.

Doherty, who...

Exclusive: Eric Dane (Euphoria), Maia Mitchell (Good Trouble), Tyriq Withers (Atlanta) and Thomas Doherty (Gossip Girl) have been set to star in Family Secrets, a new thriller from Matt Kaplan’s Ace Entertainment.

Currently in production in Montenegro, the film follows a charming young man (Withers) who makes himself part of a destination wedding to exact revenge on the family’s patriarch (Dane) by seducing his affluent goddaughter (Mitchell) and befriending the groom-to-be (Doherty). But as their relationship gets steamier, the truth gets closer to the surface, forcing the question of whether anyone is safe… and who is conning who?

Directing the pic is Malik Vitthal, the filmmaker best known for his law enforcement horror Body Cam starring Mary J. Blige and Nat Wolff, as well as the John Boyega Netflix drama Imperial Dreams, which won the Best of Next! Audience Award at Sundance. Writers of the most recent draft...

The Union Solidarity Coalition — founded over the summer by a group of writer-directors moved to support crewmembers amid the strike — launched an eBay auction last week with lots so unique, it seems they were dreamed up in a writers room. And the bids have been rolling in fast and thick.

A sampling of the offerings and current bids (as of publication time) include dinner with Bob Odenkirk and David Cross ($10,200); the cast of Bob’s Burgers singing a custom song ($7,200); Natasha Lyonne helping solve the New York Times Sunday crossword via Zoom ($6,100); Lena Dunham painting a mural in your home ($5,100); John Lithgow painting a watercolor portrait of your dog ($4,450); a pottery class with Busy Philipps in New York ($3,500); Adam Scott walking your dog in L.A. for one hour ($2,500); a Zoom with Barry Jenkins and Nicholas Britell ($1,250); and a relationship advice squabble over Zoom with Rosemarie Dewitt and Ron Livingston ($1,136).

The...

The Union Solidarity Coalition, a group founded by writers and filmmakers moved by solidarity on the picket lines, has set a fundraising Solidarity Night for Sat. July, 15 to raise money for crew members affected by the ongoing writers’ strike. The event will be held in downtown Los Angeles from 6-10 p.m.

All proceeds from Solidarity Night will go to the Tusc Fund of MPTF, benefitting film crew members who are at risk of losing their healthcare during the work stoppage.

A host committee including Lulu Wang, Boots Riley, Ben Stiller, Jay Roach, Daniel Kwan, Bob Odenkirk, Joe Robert Cole, Natasha Lyonne and many others will welcome attendees to a mixer to underscore Tusc’s mission of inter-union solidarity in the TV and film industry, “creating a space for writers, directors, actors and crew to interact in a casual space where entertainment takes on a different meaning than just a...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

The Fever (Maya Da-Rin)

The Fever, director-cum-visual artist Da-Rin’s first full-length feature project, puts a human face to a statistic that hardly captures the genocide Brazil is suffering. This is not just a wonderfully crafted, superb exercise in filmmaking, a multilayered tale that seesaws between social realism and magic. It is a call to action, an unassuming manifesto hashed in the present tense but reverberating as a plea from a world already past us, a memoir of sorts. – Leonardo G. (full review)

Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel

French New Wave

Dive into one of the most fertile eras of moving pictures with a new massive 45-film series on The Criterion Channel dedicated to the French New Wave. Highlights include Le...

A glum arthouse market may be entering a gateway weekend into happier days after months of distributors — with rare exceptions — pulling out their hair at dismal per-screens averages. That’s because festival buzz is mounting for film after film – from Card Counter, Dune and Spencer, to King Richard and Cyrano.

The Eyes of Tammy Faye and Dear Evan Hansen open in theaters on Sept, 17 and Sept. 24 after Toronto premieres. Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch from Cannes rolls out Oct. 22. Warner Bros’ Sopranos prequel The Many Saints of Newark has an Oct. 1 release date. Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast has a Nov. 12 theatrical date after a world premiere in Toronto (and a glimpse at Telluride.)

It’s like the Marvel Cinematic Universe of arthouses, films set to give a bump to a specialty...

This review of “The Year of the Everlasting Storm” was first published after the film’s July premiere at the Cannes Film Festival.

In a way, Mark Cousins’ “The Story of Film: A New Generation” was the ideal film to be the first screening at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, because the documentary surveyed the most groundbreaking cinema of the 21st century and looked ahead to celebrate the return of moviegoers to theaters as the pandemic receded. But “The Year of the Everlasting Storm,” which premiered days later at Cannes, may be a perfect bookend to come as the festival nears its conclusion.

Whereas “The Story of Film” pointed the way toward the future as we come out of tough times, “Everlasting Storm” uses seven great filmmakers to peer deeply into where we’ve been during the pandemic, and where we may still be today; it’s set in the immediate past,...

While our massive, 50-film fall preview will give you an overview of what we’re looking forward to for the next four months, we’ll still be diving deeper in our monthly previews. While much of September is dedicated to coverage from Venice, TIFF, and NYFF, there’s still plenty of worthwhile new releases to check––including a few from the aforementioned festivals.

14. The Mad Women’s Ball (Mélanie Laurent; Sept. 17 on Amazon Prime)

Along with her impressive acting career, Mélanie Laurent has proven to be a formidable force behind the camera, particularly with Breathe. She’s now back with two features over the next two years and first up is this TIFF premiere. Set in Paris at the end of the 1800s, it concerns an independent woman who is deemed mentally unwell and institutionalized. Once inside, she desperately attempts to escape. The title refers to a year-end ball in...

From the moment this pandemic began, it’s been difficult to totally gauge its toll. It would be easy to say the daily ups and downs have played out like a film, but at least you can often see the end of a film coming before it arrives. It’s the way they follow easy, familiar tracks that makes them so inviting, so comforting.

“The Year of the Everlasting Storm,” From all parts of the globe, seven filmmakers, ranging from David Lowery to Jafar Panahi, helm seven distinct stories, each grappling through their art with the unknowability of the past year-plus. They turn to hyperactive animation, personal and investigative documentary filmmaking, a meditative art installation, and some heartbreaking fictional storytelling to vocalize every facet of this worldwide crisis.

The opening vignette by the subversive Iranian director Panahi (he’s also an executive producer on this project) leans into his proven...

Anthology films like The Year of the Everlasting Storm, wherein a flurry of esteemed directors create short segments tethered to a common theme, lack a strong track record. Take the Cities of Love series, September 11, or To Each His Own Cinema. All have memorable, if not masterful, pieces. But it doesn’t matter how many noteworthy names are involved or how great some shorts might be—the collective feature experience often falls prey to a certain disjointedness endemic to the territory.

It doesn’t help that the joint theme is pandemic isolation––a topic so few filmmakers have been able to tackle effectively in the immediate aftermath of quarantine living. Though this concept has inspired more cringe-worthy art than any thematic culprit, The Year of the Everlasting Storm offers hope.

It shows pandemic art is maturing and substantiates the idea that the more time we have to process, the more...

Neon will donate to Direct Relief and its global Covid-19 relief efforts as part of its release of “The Year of the Everlasting Storm.”

The anthology feature world premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on July 14 as part of the Special Screening section, and will be released theatrically later this year.

News of the distributor’s donation comes as a number of wealthy countries were able to send delegations to the Cannes Film Festival, which ends this weekend, but many more were missing from the Croisette due to an international disparity in vaccine development and distribution.

The Neon donation will support real-time Covid-19 response and assistance through the distribution of funds, tests, supplies and vaccines to the countries and areas that are hardest hit worldwide. Variety has inquired about the sum of the company’s donation, but hasn’t yet heard back.

“The Year of the Everlasting Storm” is helmed...

What did you do during the coronavirus lockdown of 2020? Grow a beard? Make bread? Write the Great American Novel? For creative types cooped up during the pandemic, the pressures to adapt to the moment felt enormous, but so did the limitations.

Premiering at Cannes 2021, “The Year of the Everlasting Storm” springs from those competing and seemingly contradictory reactions — to express oneself, or to retreat inward and wait it out — empowering seven filmmakers from different corners of the globe to do what they do best — to make films — during the historic tsunami of uncertainty and fear that was 2020. While the world was in lockdown, this portmanteau project achieved something remarkable, giving artists ranging from Jafar Panahi to Apichatpong Weerasethakul the opportunity to unlock their imaginations.

Panahi, who came aboard early and also served as an executive producer, is no stranger to shooting in restrictive conditions, having directed a film — 2012’s Cannes-selected...

Neon has partnered with Direct Relief for its upcoming anthology film “The Year of the Everlasting Storm,” and it will donate to the organization’s worldwide Covid-19 relief efforts.

The feature, which will be released theatrically later this year, is making its debut at Cannes Film Festival today as part of the Special Screening section.

With its donation, Neon aims to support real-time Covid-19 direct response through the distribution of funds, tests, supplies and vaccines to countries and areas that have been hit the hardest by the pandemic.

Helmed by filmmakers Jafar Panâhi, Anthony Chen, Malik Vitthal, Laura Poitras, Dominga Sotomayor, David Lowery and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, “The Year of the Everlasting Storm” follows seven stories during an unprecedented time, serving as a love letter to the power of cinema and storytelling. The film is executive produced by Panâhi, Tom Quinn and David Kaplan and produced by Brad Becker-Parton, Andrea Roa,...

Tom Quinn’s Neon is partnering with Direct Relief for its upcoming anthology feature The Year Of The Everlasting Storm, and will donate to the humanitarian organization’s Covid-19 relief efforts. The title, which is one of Neon’s first original productions, is having its World Premiere at the Cannes Film Festival today as part of the fest’s Special Screening section and will be released theatrically later this year.

Neon’s donation will support real-time Covid-10 direct response and assistance through the distribution of funds, tests, supplies and vaccines to the countries and areas that are hardest hit worldwide by the global disparity in how vaccines are being developed and distributed.

The news comes as many of the world’s wealthiest territories have been able to reunite on the Croisette thanks to quicker vaccine rollouts in their home countries.

The Year Of The Everlasting Storm is directed by award-winning filmmakers Jafar Panahi,...

Un Certain Regard looks set to be hailed as The section of this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Cannes has sailed over the half-way mark, with hopes high it won’t be scuttled by another wave entirely. Initially assailed by Covid-19 tests and overcome by sheer delight to be back on the Croisette, critics and buyers are now beginning to realise that while Cannes 74 is a landmark event in many ways, thus far the 24-film Competition itself, stuffed with auteurs and old friends of the festival, is not shaping up to be a vintage year (such as 2019).

Eleven films have yet to show,...

Chilean director Domingo Sotomayor is re-teaming with Sao Paulo-based Rt Features to make her third feature, “Niebla.”

CAA Media Finance arranged the financing and will represent sales rights. The cruise ship-set drama is currently in development and set to shoot in 2022.

Rt Features previously co-produced Sotomayor’s second feature, “Too Late to Die Young,” which saw her become the first woman to win a best director Leopard at Switzerland’s Locarno Festival.

Written by Sotomayor, “Niebla” reprises a scenario sketched in hugely different contexts in “Thursday Till Sunday” and “Too Late to Die Young” of characters on the brink of self-awareness at critical junctures in their lives.

Here, however, the protagonist is an adult, not the children of “Too Late to Die Young” nor the lovelorn adolescent of “Too Late,” and most seem in denial.

“‘Niebla’ takes place on a cruise ship heading towards a distant nondescript coastline. In the middle of the ocean,...

It’s been a while, but for the first time since 2019, the Cannes Film Festival is officially happening on the Croisette. After being canceled in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, the 2021 Cannes Film Festival is happening right now on the French Riviera with a full slate of international features. Here’s everything to know about this year’s Cannes Film Festival, including the full lineup.

What movies are playing at this year’s Cannes Film Festival?

The 2021 lineup at the Cannes Film Festival features new films from Wes Anderson, Sean Baker, Sean Penn, Leo Carax, and Tom McCarthy. But despite the usual vast pedigree of talent at Cannes, awards attention for the films that launch there is uncertain. Only twice have Palme d’Or winners subsequently won Best Picture at the Oscars (1955’s “Marty” and 2019’s “Parasite”) — although that data point could be rendered moot by the coronavirus pandemic. The...

After last year’s Cannes Film Festival was reduced to a press conference announcing the works they would’ve screened, they’re back in full swing for 2021. Forgoing the virtual aspects embraced by many festivals, Cannes kicks off this Tuesday and we’ll be on the ground to cover.

Ahead of the festivities we’ve rounded up what we’re most looking forward to—and while we’re sure many surprises await, per every year, one will find twenty films that should already be on your radar. Check out our picks below and be sure to subscribe to our daily newsletter for the latest updates from the festival.

20. The Year of the Everlasting Storm (Various)

It’s only fitting to kick off with a film that looks to encapsulate our tumultuous year. Featuring contributions from Apichatpong Weerasethakul (who appears a bit later down as well), David Lowery, Jafar Panahi, Laura Poitras,...

Leading German sales company has a record 13 titles in Official Selection.

Michael Weber’s The Match Factory has revealed it is heading into this year’s Cannes Film Festival with an impressive 13 titles in selection – its biggest assortment of features on the Croisette to date.

Screen can reveal that the leading German sales and production company will handle anthology feature The Year Of The Everlasting Storm, selected for Cannes’ Special Screenings strand, and directed by auteurs Jafar Panahi, Anthony Chen, Malik Vitthal, Laura Poitras, Dominga Sotomayor, David Lowery and Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

Also in Special Screenings, the Match Factory will represent...

After a year of skipping screenings, festival president Pierre Lescure and director Thierry Frémaux announced the first list of the Cannes Official Selections 2021 on Thursday. How these films will actually play out is still be to determined. In previous press conferences, Cannes has insisted upon continuing in-person. With the blessing of the city and the French government, the festival pushed back their usual May schedule to early July this year to make accommodations. Should the festival continue in-person in spite of France’s own Covid-19 count, international presence will likely look limited regardless. In any case, this year’s festival is predicted to be a quiet bounce-back from last year’s absence.

Perhaps this explains, then, the more conservative roster. This year welcomes a plethora of returnees, including independent filmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchi, slow cinema master Apitchatpong Weerasethakul (starring Tilda Swinton!), and existential favorite Hong Sang-soo. Despite the prominence of older autuers,...

"The young leaves unfold, flushed with memories in the year of the everlasting storm." Yet another poetic collection of lockdown short films from talented directors (also see Netflix's Homemade). Get a first look at the trailer for an intriguing new pandemic anthology film titled The Year of the Everlasting Storm, made by the distributor Neon. This was just announced as part of the official selection at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival coming up next month in France, playing in the "Special Screenings" section. The anthology, or omnibus film, features seven segments made by a roster of incredibly talented international filmmakers. Jafar Panahi, Anthony Chen, Malik Vitthal, Laura Poitras, Dominga Sotomayor, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, David Lowery each shot personal segments during the pandemic. "The film chronicles this unprecedented moment in time, and is a true love letter to the power of cinema and its storytellers." I'm not the biggest fan of this,...

Memoria won’t be the only Apichatpong Weerasethakul film at Cannes Film Festival. Along with that highly-anticipated Tilda Swinton-led project, the Thai master has contributed to an omnibus film that will also premiere at the festival and will also arrive courtesy of Neon.

Featuring seven stories from seven auteurs from around the world, The Year of the Everlasting Storm chronicles this unprecedented moment in time, and is a true love letter to the power of cinema and its storytellers.

Ahead of the premiere, the first trailer and poster have now arrived. With a few other omnibus films made during this time, Homemade and Erēmīta (Anthologies), we’re curious to see these auteurs provide their personal experience.

Watch below.

The Year of the Everlasting Storm premieres at Cannes.

The post The Year of the Everlasting Storm Trailer: Apichatpong Weerasethakul, David Lowery, Jafar Panahi & More Capture the Pandemic first appeared on The Film Stage.

A sweeping and melancholic first trailer has arrived for Neon’s secret omnibus film project, “The Year of the Everlasting Storm.” Featuring seven stories from seven auteurs from around the world, the film chronicles an unprecedented moment in time, and is a true love letter to the power of cinema and its storytellers. The seven-segment film is set to debut at the Cannes Film Festival this year (re-opening its doors for an in-person event after last year’s cancelled one), alongside two other Neon titles, “Memoria,” directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul (who has a segment in “Everlasting Storm”) and “Titane,” directed by Julia Ducournau.

“The Year of the Everlasting Storm” has been slotted as Special Screening at the Cannes Film Festival this year. (The full lineup for the French festival was just announced on Thursday.) The film features contributions from seven major award-winning directors: Weerasethakul, David Lowery, Laura Poitras, Jafar Panahi,...

Another Cannes Film Festival line-up announcement, another new round of trailers. Now, we’ve got the first look at Neon’s “The Year of the Everlasting Storm,” an anthology feature featuring seven stories told by an internationally acclaimed roster: filmmakers Jafar Panâhi, Anthony Chen, Malik Vitthal, Laura Poitras, Dominga Sotomayor, David Lowery, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

Read More: Sean Baker, Andrea Arnold, Mia Hanson-Love, Asghar Farhadi New Films Announced For 2021 Cannes Film Festival

No real word on who stars in what short, other from what you can glean in the trailer, but here’s the official synopsis:

Read More: Summer 2021 Preview: Over 50 Movies To

Watch

Featuring seven stories from seven auteurs from around the world, the film chronicles this unprecedented moment in time and is a true love letter to the power of cinema and its storytellers.

Continue reading ‘The Year Of The Everlasting Storm’ Trailer: Cannes-Bound Anthology Features 7 Stories Told By Jafar Panahi,...

By HollywoodNews.com On Thursday 3 June at 11am, Pierre Lescure and Thierry Frémaux presented the Official Selection of the 74th Festival de Cannes at the Ugc Normandie in Paris. The Festival de Cannes will be held from July 06 to 17, 2021 . Discover the list of selected films in Competition, Un Certain Regard, Out of Competition, Midnight Screening, Cannes Premières and Special Screenings. Competition “Ahed’s Knee” Nadav Lapid “Annette” Leos Carax – opening film “Benedetta” Paul Verhoeven “Bergman Island” Mia Hansen-Løve “Casablanca Beats” Nabil Ayouch “Compartment No. 6” Juho Kuosmanen “Drive My Car” Ryûsuke Hamaguchi “Everything Went Fine” Francois Ozon “Flag Day” Sean Penn “The French Dispatch” Wes Anderson “A Hero” Asghar Farhadi “La fracture” Catherine Corsini “Lingui” Mahamat-Saleh Haroun “Memoria” Apichatpong Weerasethakul “Nitram” Justin Kurzel “Paris, 13th District” Jacques Audiard “France” Bruno Dumont “Petrov’s Flu” Kirill Serebrennikov “Red Rocket” Sean Baker “The Restless” Joachim Lafosse “The Story of My Wife” Ildikó Enyedi...

The Cannes Film Festival’s 2021 Competition lineup is a mix of established international filmmakers (many of them French) and some newer faces, and on the whole looks promising with something for all tastes.

This is a selection that was about a year and a half in the making given the havoc wrought by the pandemic and includes such previous Palme d’Or winners as Jacques Audiard, Nanni Moretti and Apitchapong Weerasethakul. Among other Cannes veterans are François Ozon and Asghar Farhadi.

Representing the U.S. studios so far is Wes Anderson’s anticipated The French Dispatch (Searchlight) in Competition, and Tom McCarthy with Matt Damon-starrer Stillwater (Focus) running out of competition. (AppleTV+ is bringing Todd Haynes’ out of competition doc The Velvet Underground.)

General Delegate Thierry Frémaux has promised another studio title will be announced, though it is not expected to...

Cannes is back in full force with the announcement of the Official Selection for the film festival’s 74th edition. Taking place in July after having been originally scheduled for May, Cannes is returning with an in-person event after the pandemic forced the festival to cancel in 2020. Spike Lee, who was supposed to head the jury and premiere his “Da 5 Bloods” out of competition last year, is returning to Cannes 2021 as jury president. Films such as Wes Anderson’s “The French Dispatch,” Leos Carax’s “Annette,” and Paul Verhoeven’s “Benedetta” were all supposed to premiere at Cannes 2020 but are now confirmed for Cannes 2021 after waiting a year to be unveiled to the world.

Given this is the first Cannes in the Covid pandemic era, there are as many questions about the event’s safety protocols as there are about the lineup. Cannes general delegate Thierry Frémaux told IndieWire...

Update: The Cannes Film Festival has unveiled its Official Selection lineup for the 2021 event which will run from July 6-17 on the Riviera. Fest President Pierre Lescure and General Delegate Thierry Frémaux made the presentation of 61 titles this morning in Paris, 24 of which are in Competition (four of those are directed by women). Many of the names are familiar including Jacques Audiard, François Ozon, Asghar Farhadi and Nanni Moretti.

Among U.S. filmmakers, we’ll find Wes Anderson and The French Dispatch as expected, along with Sean Penn whose drama Flag Day stars Dylan Penn, Katheryn Winnick, Josh Brolin and Eddie Marsan. There’s also an as-yet unrevealed U.S. studio movie to be screened on the beach while a new section, Cannes Premières, has been created and will feature new works from Andrea Arnold, Hong Sang-soo and Arnaud Desplechin.

As is usual practice, further films will be added in the coming days and weeks.

Competition line-up includes films by Ozon, Farhadi, Ducournau, Weerasethakul, Kurzel, Moretti, Audiard and Hansen-Love.

The Official Selection of the 2021 Cannes Film Festival has been announced.

Scroll down for full line-up

Festival president Pierre Lescure and general delegate Thierry Frémaux revealed the line-up at a press conference at the Normandie Cinema in Paris.

The selection includes films by Nanni Moretti, Julia Ducournau, Asghar Farhadi, François Ozon, Justin Kurzel, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Mia Hansen-Love and Sean Penn. Four of the 24 Competition titles are directed by women.

Frémaux announced a new section for established filmmakers titled Cannes Premieres, which will see the titles get...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSWe announced today in IndieWire the upcoming launch of our new original podcast! Hosted by arts and travel reporter Rico Gagliano, the first season of the Mubi Podcast will focus on films that have great importance in their home country, but are lesser known by international audiences and critics. We begin with Paul Verhoeven's second feature Turkish Delight and its unique significance during the counterculture movement in 1970s Holland. The episode feaures exclusive interviews with Paul Verhoeven, Monique van de Ven, and Jan de Bont. Check out the trailer above and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts here.Filmmaker Milton Moses Ginsberg, best known for his debut feature Coming Apart (1969) and the horror comedy film The Werewolf of Washington (1973), has died. The Tribeca Film Festival has announced that Steven Soderbergh's latest, the...

With the pandemic forcing filmmakers into quarantine it meant many productions and premieres were delayed, leaving creative minds to explore other outlets to produce. We’ve already seen a few results of this with the omnibus films Homemade and Erēmīta (Anthologies)–-both featuring a collection of shorts from world-renowned talent as they were stuck at home––and now another intriguing one has been unveiled.

Screen Daily reports that Apichatpong Weerasethakul, David Lowery, Jafar Panahi, Laura Poitras, Dominga Sotomayor, Anthony Chen, and Malik Vitthal have contributed “personal segments” to the new secretly-shot new feature The Year Of The Everlasting Storm. Produced and financed by Neon, the film is “a love letter to cinemas, and its storytellers.”

Set for a Tba 2021 release, Neon shared the first footage at The Big Screen Is Back event in LA yesterday. With a number of the filmmakers also having their own new features this year––Apichatpong...

After nearly 15 long and bleak months for the movie theater industry, a consortium of the major and independent studios gathered inside an AMC theater in Century City on Wednesday to celebrate — and cheerlead — the return of theatrical exhibition. Part of the industry-wide campaign called “The Big Screen Is Back,” the event showcased over 30 feature films — from massive tentpoles like “Black Widow” and “F9” to indies like Janicza Bravo’s “Zola” and Questlove’s “Summer of Soul” — set to debut in movie theaters through the rest of the year, as introduced by a parade of filmmakers, actors, and executives. Some — including executives from every major studio, as well as filmmakers like Bravo, J.J. Abrams, and Jason Blum — appeared in person; others appeared via pre-recorded messages.

The event started with an in-person speech by one of the industry’s elder statesmen, Arnold Schwarzenegger, about the power and importance of the moviegoing experience.

Anthony Chen, Malik Vitthal, Dominga Sotomayor, David Lowery, Apichatpong Weerasethakul round out contributors.

Neon has shown first footage from its one of its first productions, hitherto secret portmanteau feature The Year Of The Everlasting Storm, at Wednesday’s (May 19) The Big Screen Is Back theatrical showcase event in Los Angeles.

Jafar Panahi, Anthony Chen, Malik Vitthal, Laura Poitras, Dominga Sotomayor, David Lowery, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul each shot personal segments during the pandemic. Neon produced and financed the film, described as a love letter to cinemas, and its storytellers.

The Year Of The Everlasting Storm will get a 2021 release and is...

Anthony Chen, Malik Vitthal, Dominga Sotomayor, David Lowery, Apichatpong Weerasethakul round out contributors.

Neon has shown first footage from its one of its first productions, hitherto secret portmanteau documentary The Year Of The Everlasting Storm, at Wednesday’s (May 19) The Big Screen Is Back theatrical showcase event in Los Angeles.

Jafar Panahi, Anthony Chen, Malik Vitthal, Laura Poitras, Dominga Sotomayor, David Lowery, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul each shot personal segments filmed during the pandemic. Neon produced and financed the film, described as a love letter to cinemas, and its storytellers.

The film will get a 2021 release and is one of the first three productions from Neon,...

Jafar Panahi, Anthony Chen, Malik Vitthal, Laura Poitras, Dominga Sotomayor, David Lowery, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul contribute segments.

Neon has shown first footage from its one of its first productions, hitherto secret portmanteau documentary Year Of The Everlasting Storm, at Wednesday’s (May 19) The Big Screen Is Back theatrical showcase event in Los Angeles.

Jafar Panahi, Anthony Chen, Malik Vitthal, Laura Poitras, Dominga Sotomayor, David Lowery, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul each shot personal segments filmed during the pandemic.

Year Of The Everlasting Storm will get a 2021 release and is one of three early productions from Neon, the others being Ben Wheatley’s...

Sundance Institute has announced its latest class of fellows, a group of 10 young filmmakers selected for the yearlong Sundance Ignite x Adobe fellowship. They’ll participate in a year of mentorship, workshops, and receive other support and will have their films screened at Sundance Film Festival: London in August.

The fellows, who hail from around the world and are between the ages of 18-25, submitted 1- to 15-minute short films as part of their applications, which totaled a record high of 1,600. The fellows kicked off their fellowship year on Monday with the Sundance Ignite Digital Filmmakers Lab on Sundance Co//ab. The week-long lab prepares the fellows for the year ahead, with focuses on presenting one’s artistic self, pitching projects, case studies, and goal-setting.

Earlier this month, Sundance announced a series of layoffs and consolidations in reaction to the financial hits endured during the pandemic. While the organization announce...

Now that coronavirus cases are spiking thanks to states who thought it necessary to prematurely relax their social distancing guidelines, don’t look surprised if the entirety of America finds itself under a second lockdown pretty soon. If that happens, our faith in humanity may be lost indefinitely, but at least we’ve got Netflix to help us drown our sorrows in a sea of content. And, to that end, here are some of the best originals currently available on the platform that you may want to watch this month.

Let’s start with some topical entries first. In light of the recent civil rights protests following the death of George Floyd and other African American victims of police brutality and systematic racism, the streamer got busy acquiring a ton of content by, for and/or about minority cultures in order to foster better understanding in this highly diverse nation.

With readers turning to their home viewing options more than ever, this daily feature provides one new movie each day worth checking out on a major streaming platform.

It’s impossible to watch John Boyega’s impassioned speech at a Black Lives Matter rally in London last week, in support of widespread protests over the killing of George Floyd, and not be moved. “Black lives have always mattered,” Boyega said. “We have always been important. We have always meant something. We have always succeeded regardless. And now is the time.”

Six years prior, before “Star Wars” made him a global star, Boyega made a similar plea with “Imperial Dreams,” a nuanced portrait of poor black people in the America, and a critique of a system that stifles the chances of young black men with troubled pasts.

In “Imperial Dreams,” a 21-year-old reformed gangster and aspiring writer named Bambi (Boyega) is...

Traditionally, the long Memorial Day weekend is the territory where Indiana Jones and Star Wars movies — or else massive tentpoles such as “Mission: Impossible” and “Aladdin” — plant the stake for a blockbuster summer season. But there’s nothing traditional about the release schedule this year. With the coronavirus pandemic still posing a public health threat, Hollywood studios are holding their big offerings for a future date. But there are still a few big-budget movies to watch — including “The Lovebirds” and Mary J. Blige’s “Body Cam” — and no shortage of smaller streaming titles. Here are the week’s new releases, with excerpts from reviews and links to where you can watch them.

High-profile on-demand studio and indie offerings:

Body Cam (Malik Vitthal)

Distributor: Paramount Pictures

Where to Find It: Rent on Amazon, iTunes and other on-demand platforms.

With the ongoing coverage of the killing of Kentucky Emt Breonna Taylor by Louisville police,...

Law enforcement faces off against a supernatural presence in Body Cam, a new horror thriller starring Mary J. Blige and Nat Wolff. Now available for purchase on digital services, I had a chance to catch up with director Malik Vitthal to discuss his first experience with horror movies, working with Mary J. Blige, and creating a modern-day boogeyman:

With Body Cam, you’ve created this modern-day boogeyman that feels really grounded in the current political and social climate. Can you talk about your experience with horror movies growing up? What was your approach to the material as both a horror film and one that’s socially important?

Malik Vitthal: When I was younger, I might have been like eight years old, my cousin locked me in a room when we were watching a movie. That movie was An American Werewolf in London, and when weird stuff started to happen, I...

Mary J. Blige has dropped a new single, “Can’t Be Life,” featured on the soundtrack to the film Body Cam. Blige penned the song with frequent collaborators Denise Rich, Chucky Thompson, Stacy Barthe, Aaron Philips and Jimmy Cozier; it was produced by Chucky Thompson.

“I’ve been torn down like a worn-down, crumbling building/But I’m up now, and I’m up now, and I’m still living,” Blige sings, offering words of encouragement, hope and resilience throughout the track.

Body Cam is available today on streaming and digital download.

A curious mashup of ripped-from-the-headlines cop drama and gory horror just about finds its footing thanks to director Malik Vitthal’s confident hand

In last October’s well-intentioned yet hackneyed action drama Black and Blue, Naomie Harris played a cop caught between allegiance to the force and to the community as she uncovered wrongdoing via her body cam. Cut to seven months later and we’re in eerily similar territory with the unceremoniously dumped Body Cam, a buzzy Paramount project that’s been given a hushed digital launch instead, a response to the ongoing closure of cinemas but also perhaps the underwhelming box office of the aforementioned. While it’s far from the firestarter it could have been, there’s more to this than its release would suggest, an angry, slickly directed thriller that still manages to generate enough of a spark.

Related: The Lovebirds review – wacky Netflix murder-mystery romance

Continue reading.

Ghost Protocol: Vitthal Gets Supernatural with Hot Topic Horror

Genre has always been a formidable platform to explore significant social ills in creative ways, often sidestepping the heavy-handedness of tragedy or melodrama. Such is the aim of director Malik Vitthal’s sophomore film, Body Cam a horror thriller headlined by the Queen of Hip Hop Soul, Mary J. Blige. Six years after his 2014 debut Imperial Dreams, Vitthal teams with scribes Richmond Riedel and Nicholas McCarthy, the latter a director of a number of similar supernatural indie films (The Pact; At the Devil’s Door) for a jam-packed portrait of retribution which plays with so many tangents and elements the film often feels as if it bit off more than it could chew.…...

We have an exclusive clip from Paramount's upcoming supernatural horror Body Cam. The movie stars Mary J. Blige as a veteran police officer who witnesses the shocking murder of her colleagues via glitchy body cam and patrol car footage. The first trailer for the movie was recently released and it gave a tease of what fans can expect, mostly focusing on the acting talents of Blige, who has really carved out an impressive new niche for herself in Hollywood over the last several years. Body Cam will be available to purchase on Digital starting May 19th, 2020 and for rent On Demand June 2nd from Paramount Home Entertainment. The movie will arrive on DVD July 14th.

While the Body Cam trailer teased the supernatural elements, our exclusive clip from the movie goes even deeper, while being careful not to give away too much. We see Mary J. Blige as Renee...

Paramount Home Entertainment is offering up the next at-home horror experience with the release of Body Cam, available for digital purchase tomorrow, May 19th, and for rent on VOD platforms June 2nd. Interestingly, the Malik Vitthal-directed film was penned by Nicholas McCarthy, the filmmaker behind The Prodigy, The Pact, and At the Devil’s Door, with Richmond Riedel. In Body Cam, […]...

With movie theaters still closed across the country, Paramount has decided to release its apparently supernatural action-thriller Body Cam on digital and VOD platforms this month. Mary J. Blige (Mudbound) and Nat Wolff (The Kill Team) star in the film, which Malik Vitthal directed from a script by Richmond Riedel and Nicholas McCarthy. The supporting cast includes David Zayas and Anika Noni Rose. [caption id="attachment_895442" align="alignright" width="360"] Image via Paramount Players/caption] When a routine traffic stop results in the unexplained, grisly death of her colleague, a cop (Blige) realizes footage of the incident will play …...

Law enforcement faces off against a supernatural presence in the official trailer for Body Cam, a new horror thriller starring Mary J. Blige and Nat Wolff.

Directed by Malik Vitthal (Imperial Dreams) from a screenplay by Nicholas McCarthy and Richmond Riedel, Body Cam will be released on Digital beginning May 19th via Paramount Pictures.

"While investigating the bizarre murder of a fellow officer, veteran Renee Lomito (Mary J. Blige) discovers a mysterious figure in their body cam footage. Haunted by visions of the event, she suspects something supernatural is targeting the cops in her unit. Now, in a race against time to find the one person she thinks can stop these killings, Renee uncovers a sinister secret among the police force surrounding the shooting and cover up of an unarmed youth. Nat Wolff also stars in this intense action thriller."



The post Watch the Trailer for Body Cam, Starring Mary J.

Paramount Players has launched a new trailer for the upcoming horror ‘Body Cam’ featuring Mary J. Blige.

While investigating the bizarre murder of a fellow officer, veteran Renee Lomito (Mary J. Blige) discovers a mysterious figure in their body cam footage. Haunted by visions of the event, she suspects something supernatural is targeting the cops in her unit. Now, in a race against time to find the one person she thinks can stop these killings, Renee uncovers a sinister secret among the police force surrounding the shooting and cover-up of an unarmed youth.

Directed by Malik Vitthal, the film also stars Nat Wolff, Anika Noni Rose, Theo Rossi, David Zayas and Demetrius Grosse.

Also in trailers – Elisabeth Moss stars in trailer for ‘Shirley’

The film is released on Digital May 19th.

The post Mary J. Blige stars in trailer for ‘Body Cam’ appeared first on HeyUGuys.

"They found the guy - just leave it alone." Paramount has debuted the first trailer for a supernatural horror thriller titled Body Cam, which is being released direct-to-digital on their new label "Paramount Players". While the title makes this seem like another police drama, it's more than just that. When a routine traffic stop results in the unexplained, grisly death of her colleague, a cop realizes footage of the incident will play for her eyes only. Some strange supernatural force seems to be picking off cops. Mary J. Blige stars, joined by Nat Wolff, Theo Rossi, David Zayas, Anika Noni Rose, Demetrius Grosse, and Sylvia Grace Crim. This definitely looks like straight-to-dvd quality, unfortunately, despite a cool premise. Check it out. Here's the official trailer (+ poster) for Malik Vitthal's Body Cam, direct from Paramount's YouTube: When a routine traffic stop results in the unexplained, grisly death of her colleague,...