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Far from the bright lights of Bollywood, the indomitable Indian documentary filmmaking industry has been making waves globally.

The recent past has several examples of India’s international success. In 2021, Payal Kapadia’s “A Night of Knowing Nothing” won the Cannes documentary award, while Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh’s “Writing With Fire” won Sundance and was Oscar nominated. In 2022, Kartiki Gonsalves’ “The Elephant Whisperers” won the documentary short Oscar; Shaunak Sen’s “All That Breathes” won both the Sundance and Cannes documentary awards and scored an Oscar nomination, in addition to a plethora of other wins; and Vinay Shukla’s “While We Watched” won awards at Toronto and Busan.

In 2023, Sarvnik Kaur’s “Against the Tide” won a special jury award at Sundance and in 2024, Park City continued to be a happy hunting ground for India with a win for Anirban Dutta and Anupama Srinivasan’s “Nocturnes.” 2024 has continued to bring cheer for India,...

Goa-based Film Bazaar, South Asia’s largest film market, will have a documentary-focused sister edition in Mumbai from June.

The documentary component of the market will now be a full fledged Film Bazaar on its own within the Mumbai International Film Festival for documentary, short fiction and animation (Miff). The Indian government-run Miff, which began in 1990, is separate from the privately managed Jio Mami Mumbai Film Festival.

Like its Goan counterpart, which is a part of the International Film Festival of India (Iffi), the Miff Film Bazaar will have a co-production market, the primary goal of which is to facilitate partnerships between filmmakers and potential producers or co-producers globally. It aims to provide a platform for collaboration, co-productions and funding opportunities for documentary film projects. Filmmakers will be able to pitch their projects and explore avenues for financial support and collaboration both locally and internationally.

Similarly, there will also be...

Cph:Forum, the financing and co-production event on the industry programme of Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival, has selected new projects from the producers of Flee and Cow for its 2024 edition; and has refreshed its industry awards with six prizes.

Danish producer Signe Byrge Sorensen will participate with Freedom (working title), directed by Camilla Nielsson, who previously made Sundance 2021 title President about a challenger in Zimbabwe’s corrupt presidential elections.

Scroll down for the full list of Forum projects

Sorensen is CEO of Danish documentary production house Final Cut For Real, which has made films including The Killing Of A Journalist,...

Cph:forum, the financing and co-production section of the Copenhagen Intl. Documentary Film Festival (also known as Cph:dox), will showcase 32 projects, including new works from producers such as Sidsel Lønvig Siersted, Signe Byrge Sørensen (“Flee”), Diane Becker (“Navalny”) and Mandy Chang, the creative director of Fremantle label Undeniable and former head of BBC documentary strand Storyville, as well as directors Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh (“Writing With Fire”), and Mads Brügger (“Cold Case Hammarskjöld”).

Other projects include those by directors Sky Hopinka (“Kicking the Clouds”), Talal Derki (“Of Fathers and Sons”), and Rachel Leah Jones and Philippe Bellaiche (“Advocat”), and producers Lindsey Dryden (“Trans in America”), Mila Aung-Thwin (“Midwives”) and Kat Mansoor (“Cow”).

Cph:forum will bring together more than 65 filmmakers and producers from 26 countries between March 18-21.

The selected projects will compete for a number of long-standing as well as newly-introduced awards at Cph:Industry, the professional section of the festival.

With final voting complete, the 96th Oscars telecast will be broadcast on Sunday, March 10 and air live on ABC at 8:00 p.m. Et/ 5:00 p.m. Pt. We update predictions through awards season, so keep checking IndieWire for all our 2024 Oscar picks.

The State of the Race

With a fragile theatrical market for non-fiction features and a dwindling number of active documentary buyers, many Sundance 2023 films did not get picked up for distribution. As the top American film festival for docs, Sundance usually supplies as many as four out of the final five Oscar nominees each year.

And usually, by late summer, Oscar promotion is well underway. Last year, three Sundance grads — eventual Oscar nominees “Fire of Love” (Neon), “All that Breathes” (HBO), and the winner, “Navalny” (CNN) — were actively campaigning.

One Sundance World Cinema entry that built a following during the year was Pulitzer Prize winner Mstyslav Chernov...

Doc NYC, America’s largest documentary festival, on Tuesday announced its lineup in the short and feature categories, as well as for its Winner’s Circle category and its new section for 2023 titled Come As You Are.

All shortlisted films will have theatrical screenings at the festival. With Tuesday’s announcement, Doc NYC will present a total of 114 features and 129 short films in its 14th year, including 33 world premieres and 29 U.S. premieres.

The festival will run this year Nov. 8-16 at IFC Center, Sva Theatre and Village East Angelika in New York, and will run online through Nov. 26.

The festival’s new Come As You Are section features films about “people striving to find their place in the world, or in their communities,” according to the festival. The Doc NYC Short List for documentary features was launched in 2012. For 10 of the last 11 years, the festival has screened doc features...

A new wave of Indian documentary makers have risen on the international scene in the last decade, exemplified by the Oscar-nominated titles “All That Breathes” and “Writing with Fire.” An important guiding light for this generation is the trailblazing filmmaker Anand Patwardhan and his rigorous socio-political films such as “Reason,” “Jai Bhim Comrade” and “War and Peace.”

Now, at age 73, Patwardhan is premiering his most personal film “The World Is Family,” profiling his own parents, at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. In celebration of this latest film and his rich career so far, we asked six filmmakers to describe what Patwardhan means to them.

Shaunak Sen (“All That Breathes”)

To hail Anand Patwardhan as a mainstay in the non-fiction constellation of Indian cinema has been something of an oft-trotted cliche, for at least three decades now. Yet there is a reason cliches are what they are: they represent a consensus...

The 2023 Peabody Awards have officially crowned their winners.

The 83rd annual awards ceremony will take place for the first time since the pandemic on Sunday, June 11 at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Los Angeles.

The respective final seasons of “Atlanta” and “Better Call Saul” are among this year’s celebrated series. The Peabody Awards Board of Jurors today announced the 35 winners elected to represent stories released in broadcasting, streaming, and interactive media during 2022. The winners were chosen by a unanimous vote of 32 jurors from over 1,400 entries from television, podcasts/radio and the web/digital in entertainment, news, documentary, arts, children’s/youth, public service and interactive programming. Of the 35 total wins, PBS produced the most with six, followed by Apple TV+ and Disney+ (three each), and HBO Max (two), per the official press statement.

This year’s Peabody Awards also unveiled the first annual Visionary Award, bestowed to Shari Frilot,...

The winners of the 2023 Peabody Awards have been announced and PBS leads the pack with a total of 6 followed by Apple TV+ and Disney+ with 3 a piece and HBO Max with 2 trophies.

“Representing a wide range of mediums, genres, and narrative approaches, this year’s winners continue to advance what it means to craft storytelling that is compelling, powerful, and prescient,” said Jeffrey Jones, executive director of Peabody.

“Whether capturing the lives of teachers in Philadelphia or young women in Afghanistan, these stories are powerful enough to make us laugh, cry, and learn. They are all deserving of this honor, and we are thrilled to shine a light on their amazing achievement. All citizens should seek out, watch, and engage these winners.”

This year’s winners included Atlanta, Better Call Saul, Bad Sisters, Andor and Abbott Elementary.

The winners of the 83rd annual Peabody Awards will be celebrated on Sunday,...

The Peabody Awards today announced the winners in the 35 categories honoring the most compelling and empowering stories released in broadcasting, streaming, and interactive media during 2022.

Notable winners include FX’s Atlanta and AMC’s Better Call Saul, which earned their second Peabody Awards after both series won for their first seasons.

Thematic trends among this year’s winners include projects that focused on environmental issues (Fire of Love, The Territory and The Power of Big Oil), mental health (The Gap: Failure to Treat, Failure to Protect and Life Is Strange: True Colors), reproductive rights (This American Life: The Pink House at the Center of the World and Aftershock) and transgender rights (We’re Here and Contrapoints).

Winners were chosen by a unanimous vote of 32 jurors from over 1,400 entries from television, podcasts/radio and the web/digital in entertainment, news, documentary, arts, children’s/youth, public service and interactive programming. Of the 35 total wins,...

All That Breathes.When Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh decided to mount an Oscar campaign in October 2021 for their film Writing with Fire, they were attempting a historic first. Until then, no Indian documentary feature had ever been on the radar for the Academy Awards. The general assumption has always been that India had only one category to gun for: Best International Feature Film. Every year since 1957, the Film Federation of India (Ffi), an apex body comprising Indian film producers, exhibitors, distributors, and studio owners, has appointed a committee to select the country’s official submission from the year’s releases. These selections have often proved to be arbitrary decisions, rarely standing a chance at even making the shortlist, primarily due to a vague selection process that lacks credibility. In the last six decades, only three Indian submissions—Mother India (1957), Salaam Bombay (1988), and Lagaan (2001)—actually ended up with a nomination.

Netflix and Chicken & Egg Pictures have teamed up on a new $450,000 documentary fund to support seasoned women and non-binary filmmakers working on their next feature-length project. Up to 30 filmmaking teams will receive either a $10,000 research grant or a $20,000 development grant to use towards a docu project.

Recipients of the Chicken & Egg Pictures research and development grant will also have access to peer support, mentorship, and relationship-building within the documentary filmmaking community.

Applications are currently being accepted for the new grant. The deadline for submission is April 24 and recipients will be announced this summer. To be eligible for the new grant, projects must be a feature-length film that is either in the research or the development stage. Additionally, the project must be directed or co-directed by an experienced woman or non-binary filmmaker who has directed at least two feature-length documentary films. Docus covering all types of topics and artistic approaches are welcome to apply.

Director Kartiki Gonsalves and producer Guneet Monga became the first Indian filmmakers to claim competitive Oscars after their short documentary The Elephant Whisperers won the Academy Award tonight.

Gonsalves gave thanks to “my motherland, India,” as she accepted the award.

The Elephant Whisperers revolves around Bomman and Belli, an Indigenous couple and their “large” family – orphaned elephant calves that they help raise in the Theppakadu Elephant camp within the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve in South India. Gonsalves spent five years following this human-elephant blended family for her Netflix documentary.

“I stand here today to speak for the sacred bond between us and our natural world,” Gonsalves said as she began her acceptance speech, “for the respect of Indigenous communities and empathy towards other living beings we share our space with, and finally, for coexistence.”

She added, “Thank you to the Academy for recognizing our film, highlighting Indigenous people and animals, to...

The 2022 Oscars were quite the ride.

In a dramatic ceremony that saw Will Smith hit Chris Rock on stage, sci-fi epic Dune swept the board with the most prizes.

Apple TV+ movie Coda was the surprise Best Film winner, beating off competition from former favourite, Netflix’s The Power of the Dog.

The Eyes of Tammy Faye’s Jessica Chastain took home the gong for Best Actress, and Smith won for King Richard. Watch his tearful acceptance speech here.

Ahead of the 2023 ceremony, find the full list of 2022 Oscar winners below.

Best Picture

Belfast

Coda Winner

Don’t Look Up

Drive My Car

Dune

King Richard

Licorice Pizza

Nightmare Alley

The Power of the Dog

West Side Story

Best Actress in a Leading Role

Jessica Chastain – The Eyes of Tammy Faye Winner

Olivia Colman – The Lost Daughter

Penélope Cruz – Parallel Mothers

Nicole Kidman – Being the Ricardos

Kristen Stewart – Spencer

Best Actor...

MetFilm Distribution has acquired the U.K. and Ireland rights to Vinay Shukla’s multi-award-winning documentary ‘While We Watched’, reports ‘Variety’.

Produced by the UK’s Lono Studio and BritDoc Films, the documentary is a newsroom drama chronicling the working days of former popular Ndtv journalist Ravish Kumar as he navigates a spiralling world of truth and disinformation, ‘Variety’ adds.

A Ramon Magsaysay Award winner, Kumar resigned after controversial billionaire Gautam Adani took over the company.

‘While We Watched’ debuted at Toronto in 2022 where it won the Amplify Voices award, followed by Busan, where it picked up the Cinephile award, according to ‘Variety’. Most recently, the film won the international competition at Helsinki’s DocPoint Festival.

Shukla had previously co-directed the 2016 political documentary ‘An Insignificant Man’ on the rise of Arvind Kejriwal and the Aam Aadmi Party. ‘While We Watched’, Shukla told ‘Variety’, is “my love letter to journalism”.

He...

MetFilm Distribution has acquired U.K. and Ireland rights to Vinay Shukla’s documentary “While We Watched.”

Produced by the U.K.’s Lono Studio and BritDoc Films, the documentary is a newsroom drama intimately chronicling the working days of Indian broadcast journalist Ravish Kumar as he navigates a spiralling world of truth and disinformation. Kumar, a Ramon Magsaysay Award winner, was a senior journalist at Indian news platform Ndtv, who resigned after billionaire Gautam Adani took over the company.

“While We Watched” debuted at Toronto in 2022 where it won the Amplify Voices award, followed by Busan, where it won the Cinephile award. Most recently, the film won the international competition at Helsinki’s DocPoint Festival.

Shukla previously co-directed controversial Indian political documentary “An Insignificant Man.”

Shukla said: “ ‘While We Watched’ is my love letter to journalism. It’s an urgent newsroom horror film — there is a story of hope...

Among the Oscar nominees for Best Documentary Feature are four films that received acclaim across the major nonfiction precursors this year and a fifth that earned its spot after flying under the radar for much of the season. One of these five films will become the documentary branch’s next Oscar winner when the 95th Academy Awards air on March 12. Let’s take a look the road to the ballot for the five nominees and consider which could end up with the statue.

During the season there are four major groups that signal where the documentary feature race is headed. The International Documentary Association (IDA), Cinema Eye Honors (Ceh), the Doc NYC festival shortlist, and the Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards (Ccda) have the strongest recent history of indicating which films will earn a nomination from the academy’s branch. Their track record at matching the academy’s winner is less of a sure thing.

The Sundance Film Festival has often been called one of the world’s most important documentary marketplaces, with 39 of the past 65 Best Documentary Feature contenders (60) either beginning or continuing their road to the Oscars in Park City. Examples include “Summer of Soul,” “Flee,” “Writing With Fire,” “Honeyland,” “The Edge of Democracy,” “American Factory,” “Time,” “The Mole Agent,” “Crip Camp,” “Rbg,” “Of Fathers and Sons,” “Minding the Gap,” and “Hale County This Morning, This Evening.”

See 2023 Sundance Film Festival concludes: Highlights and studio acquisitions include ‘Past Lives,’ ‘A Little Prayer,’ ‘Flora and Son’

Two of those–Questlove’s “Summer of Soul” and Netflix’s joint venture with Barack and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground Productions, “American Factory”–won the award. Four of this season’s honorees —“All That Breathes,” “Fire of Love,” “Navalny,” and “A House Made of Splinters”—played the festival in 2022. Climate change, human rights violations, competitive mariachi, and...

The Sundance Film Festival has often been called one of the world’s most important documentary marketplaces, with 39 of the past 65 Best Documentary Feature contenders (60) either beginning or continuing their road to the Oscars in Park City, Utah. Examples include “Summer of Soul,” “Flee,” “Writing With Fire,” “Honeyland,” “The Edge of Democracy,” “American Factory,” “Time,” “The Mole Agent,” “Crip Camp,” “Rbg,” “Of Fathers and Sons,” “Minding the Gap,” and “Hale County This Morning, This Evening.”

Two of those–Questlove’s “Summer of Soul” and Netflix’s joint venture with Barack and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground Productions, “American Factory”–won the award. Four of this season’s nominees —“All That Breathes,” “Fire of Love,” “Navalny,” and “A House Made of Splinters”—played the festival in 2022. Climate change, human rights violations, competitive mariachi, and manned flight to Mars are only a few of the subjects addressed by this year’s eclectic non-fiction slate.

Updated with reaction from nominee Simon Lereng Wilmont from original 9:04 a.m. story: Only a handful of documentary filmmakers have earned a pair of Oscars during their careers. Laura Poitras could join that august group after earning a nomination this morning for her acclaimed feature All the Beauty and the Bloodshed.

Poitras’ first win came eight years ago for Citizenfour, her film about cyber intelligence whistleblower Edward Snowden. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed focuses on an equally compelling figure, renowned artist Nan Goldin, who has led a campaign to expose the role of the Sackler family – owners of OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma – in the opioid crisis.

Atbatb premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where it became a rare documentary to win the Golden Lion. The film will go up against a quartet of documentary features directed by first-time Oscar nominees: All That Breathes, directed by Shaunak Sen; Fire of Love,...

In the past 55 years in which India has been sending entries for the Best International Feature Film Oscar, it has been on just three occasions that the selected movies, despite some of them being critically acclaimed both in India and abroad, have made it to the nominations shortlist.

A dismal record, if any, calling in question the selection process.

The three films on this rather bald list are the Nargis-Sunil Dutt classic “Mother India” (1957), Mira Nair’s “Salaam Bombay” (1988) and Ashutosh Gowarikar’s Aamir Khan-starrer “Lagaan” (2001).

This year, the official selection — “Chhello Show”, Nalin Kumar Pandya aka Pan Nalin’s Gujarati film — again lost out to a strong field comprising, among others, the German World War I drama “All Quiet on the Western Front” and the Golden Globe winner, “Argentina, 1985” (the historical drama from Argentina around the fight waged by a group of lawyers against the South American’s...

Iran’s Asghar Farhadi, who directed the Oscar winners “A Separation” and “The Salesman,” U.S. producer Christine Vachon, whose credits includes Oscar winner “Boys Don’t Cry,” and Oscar nominees “Far from Heaven” and “Carol,” and Romania’s Alexander Nanau, the director of the Oscar nominated “Collective,” are among the jury members at the 18th edition of the Zurich Film Festival, which takes place from Sept. 22 to Oct. 2.

Farhadi will head the jury for the International Feature Film Competition. He is joined by the U.K.’s Clio Barnard, who directed the BAFTA nominated “The Arbor,” “The Selfish Giant” and “Ali & Ava”; L.A.-based Brazilian Daniel Dreifuss, a producer on the Oscar nominated “No” and “All Quiet on the Western Front,” Germany’s Oscar entry; Swiss/Italian screenwriter and director Petra Volpe, whose credits include Tribeca prizewinner “The Divine Order”; and Sweden’s Peter “Piodor” Gustafsson, the producer of Ali Abbassi’s “Border,...

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Two-time Oscar-winning Iranian director Asghar Farhadi will head up the competition jury for the 2022 Zurich International Film Festival, judging this year’s winners of the Golden Eye honors. Farhadi will oversee the three-person jury, together with Swiss director Petra Volpe (The Divine Order) and producer Daniel Dreifuss (No, Netflix’s All Quiet on the Western Front), Swedish producer Peter Gustafsson (Border), and British director Clio Barnard (The Arbor, Dark River).

Acclaimed Killer Films’ producer Christine Vachon (Boys Don’t Cry, Far From Heaven, I’m Not There) will head up this year’s jury for Zurich’s Focus Competition sidebar. Swiss documentary director Fred Baillif (The Fam), Austrian filmmaker Katharina Mückstein (L’animale), film editor Maria Fantastica Valmori (Once More Unto the Breach) and Swiss journalist and media executive Roger Schawinski, will join Vachon on the Focus jury.

Romanian filmmaker Alexander Nanau, director of...

by Fahmidul Haq

Bollywood is the flag-bearer of South Asian Cinema to the global audience. Bollywood produces films in Hindi language, with its signature song and dance numbers with the aesthetic values of Bhabas and Rasas evident in Bharat Muni’s Natyashastra (see Massey 1992). The industry evolved in the late-1990s with the films like Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995), Kuch Kuch Hota Hay (1998), Taal (1998) and many more. These films are produced in a liberalized and free market, with hybrid cultural values of both Indianness and global, by targeting NRIs as potential spectators (and satisfying the local audience too). The storyline often travels to European or American cities, however the characters always remain Indian by heart. In 1998, the government declared to give movies an ‘industry status’, and foreign equity was allowed up to 100 in production and distribution in 1999. Rajadhaykhsya (2003) describes this whole process as ‘the Bollywoodization’ and he observed that the...

India’s All That Breathes followed up its victory at the Sundance Film Festival by winning top documentary honors in Cannes.

The film directed by Shaunak Sen, which documents a pair of Muslim brothers in Delhi who devote countless hours to restore the health of ailing black kite birds, earned the L’Œil d’or (“Golden Eye”) award in a ceremony on Saturday.

“From their makeshift bird hospital in their tiny basement, the ‘kite brothers’ care for thousands of these mesmeric creatures that drop daily from New Delhi’s smog-choked skies,” notes a description of the documentary. “As environmental toxicity and civil unrest escalate, the relationship between this Muslim family and the neglected kite forms a poetic chronicle of the city’s collapsing ecology and rising social tensions.”

The Golden Eye jury, headed by filmmaker Agnieszka Holland, saluted All That Breathes for reminding “us that every life matters, and every small action matters.

The cream of the current crop of young Indian documentary filmmakers were on fire during the annual Doc Day at the Cannes Film Market, discussing ways of expressing dissent within India’s current political dispensation.

Since 2014, India has been ruled by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. Shaunak Sen’s “All That Breathes” is showing as a special screening at the festival and previously won the documentary grand jury prize at Sundance. It follows Delhi-based Muslim brothers Mohammad Saud and Nadeem Shehzad, who, against the backdrop of the territory’s polluted atmosphere and escalating sectarian violence, devote their lives to saving the black kite bird species.

“I was absolutely certain that this film was not a snapshot of the current political moment; this film’s main interests were ecological and the human-bird relationship,” Sen said. “However, the last couple of years, especially in Delhi, have been chaotic, and it doesn...

Last Year’s Winner: “Boys State”

Still Eligible: No.

Hot Streak: Last year Apple TV+ won its first Emmy in the category, ending a three-year streak HBO had going for it.

Notable Ineligible Series: “Summer of Soul,” “Attica,” and “Writing With Fire” (all of which are ineligible for the Emmys after pursuing Oscars earlier this year)

This article will be updated throughout the season, along with all our predictions, so make sure to keep checking IndieWire for the latest news from the 2022 Emmys race. The nomination round of voting will take place from June 16 to June 27, with the official Emmy nominations to be announced on Tuesday, July 12. The Creative Arts Emmy Awards will be given out over two consecutive nights on Saturday, September 3 and Sunday, September 4, with an edited presentation on the ceremonies to be broadcast on Saturday, Sept. 10, at 8:00 p.m. Et on Fxx. Finally, the 74rd Annual...

“Films didn’t sell for two years so there is a need to cover past costs and expenses.”

Some buyers in the Cannes Marché are being priced out of acquisitions they would normally expect to make while others are talking of asking prices “30-50” higher than before the pandemic.

One leading Scandinavian head of sales said the asking price for the bigger US packages, such as Lionsgate’s Hunger Games prequel was up to twice what it would have been before the pandemic.

Other titles making buyers’ eyes water include Miramax’s latest Jason Statham picture called The Beekeeper (which...

“Films didn’t sell for two years so there is a need to cover past costs and expenses.”

Some buyers in the Cannes Marché are being priced out of acquisitions they would normally expect to make while others are talking of asking prices “30-50” higher than before the pandemic.

One leading Scandinavian head of sales said the asking price for the bigger US packages, such as Lionsgate’s Hunger Games prequel was up to twice what it would have been before the pandemic.

Other titles making buyers’ eyes water include Miramax’s latest Jason Statham picture called The Beekeeper (which...

HBO Documentary Films has bought worldwide television rights for Cannes Special Screenings title “All That Breathes.”

The film is the only Sundance movie to screen as part of Cannes’ Official Selection this year — a feat all the more impressive given Cannes is not known for its documentary programming. In Park City, the film picked up the Grand Jury Prize in the World Cinema Documentary Competition.

Directed by Shaunak Sen (“Cities of Sleep”), “All That Breathes” follows two brothers who run a bird hospital dedicated to rescuing injured black kites, which are a staple in the skies of New Delhi, India.

In one of the world’s most populated cities, where cows, rats, monkeys, frogs and hogs jostle cheek-by-jowl with people, the “kite brothers” care for thousands of these creatures, which fall daily from New Delhi’s smog-choked skies. As environmental toxicity and civil unrest escalate, the relationship between the family...

Eva Vitija’s documentary explores the life of crime novelist Patricia Highsmith.

Austrian documentary specialist Autlook has sold Eva Vitija’s Loving Highsmith, about crime novelist Patricia Highsmith, to multiple territories.

Deals confirmed are to FilmIn (Spain), Edge Entertainment, Madman and Iwonder (Italy).

Filmcoopi is handling the Swiss release, Salzgeber will release in Germany and Polyfilm in Austria, North American rights are under negotiation.

The feature documentary tells Highsmith’s life story using material from family, friends and her recently published private diaries. These testimonies paint a picture of a troubled love life and a lifelong search for identity.

As...

The Cannes Docs sidebar of the Cannes Film Market has announced the lineup of its annual Doc Day, which takes place on May 24.

The day will open with a morning session dedicated to Acid Cannes 2022 title “Polaris,” described by organizers as “a creative and human journey interwoven with uncompromising, gentle and bold filmmaking by a woman filmmaker, set against the backdrop of the Arctic.” Entitled “A Producing Journey,” the session will bring together Marion Schmidt, the co-founder of Cannes Docs partner Dae (Documentary Association of Europe), director Ainara Vera and producers Clara Vuillermoz (Point du Jour – Les Films du Balibari) and Emile Hertling Péronard (Ánorâk Film).

The first half of the day will also feature a discussion between Polish director and screenwriter Agnieszka Holland, president of the 2022 l’Œil d’or Jury and president of the European Film Academy, and Pauline Durand-Vialle, CEO of the Federation of European Film Directors.

At the age of fourteen, Belmaya Nepali had the opportunity to be part of the My World My View photography project, led by Sue Carpenter. It seemed an energizing and uplifting moment for this young woman, though the joy of it was short-lived. The home for girls in Pokhara, where Belmaya lived, took away the camera, and Belmaya sank into a life of struggle, poverty, and abuse. Married young, uneducated, lower caste, with a young daughter and a husband with deeply rooted patriarchal ideas, Belmaya’s life turns into one that is deeply challenging.

But Sue Carpenter re-entered Belmaya’s life, co-directing this inspiring documentary alongside its subject, Belmaya. In 2014, Belmaya had the opportunity to be involved in a filmmaking training course, and Carpenter follows her experience. The film gives us a view of her shots alongside Belmaya’s, allowing viewers to follow Belmaya as she navigates this experience and...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSThe official poster for the the 54th Directors' Fortnight is by multidisciplinary artist Cecilia Paredes. In a statement, the festival points out that Paredes' photo-performance is "both visible and invisible, the artist blends into the image she creates, much like filmmakers do in their films." Following the release of Joel Coen's The Tragedy of Macbeth, Ethan Coen is setting out to make his own solo directorial debut with a still-untitled "lesbian road trip project that Coen and [his wife, Tricia Cooke] initially wrote in the mid-2000s." Gus Van Sant is set to direct the second season of Ryan Murphy's anthology series Feud, which will be based on Laurence Leamer's book Capote’s Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era. Playing one such woman will be Naomi Watts,...

Fremantle’s global head of documentaries Mandy Chang insisted on Thursday that “the golden age of documentary is a cliché” and urged filmmakers to avoid “a two-tier system of haves and have nots,” where independent documentaries are crowded out by splashier commercial projects bankrolled by streaming platforms.

“Mainstream docs are popular, but not all documentaries are popular or given prominence,” Chang said to an audience in Copenhagen. “And success for me is a golden age not just for the mainstream, but for a plethora of smaller, less expensive, but still important and powerful films made by…a much more diverse group of filmmakers.”

The Fremantle executive was speaking during the four-day conference program at the Copenhagen Intl. Documentary Film Festival (Cph:dox), which runs March 23-April 3.

During her address, Chang warned against the influence of global streaming giants such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV Plus, whose deep pockets...

EntertainmentThe 94th Academy Awards ceremony was held at Dolby Theater in Los Angeles on Sunday, March 27. IANSScreengrab/ YouTubeThe coming-of-age comedy-drama Coda and Denis Villeneuve's sci-fi epic Dune emerged as the biggest winners at the recently-concluded 94th Academy Awards held at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles on Sunday, March 27. The event was hosted by Amy Schumer, Regina Hall and Wanda Sykes. Indian documentary Writing With Fire was nominated for Best Documentary but did not win the award. Dune bagged six awards, all in technical categories, while Coda made Oscar history by winning the awards in all three categories it was nominated in. It also became the first film from a major streaming platform -- Apple TV -- to bag the prestigious award of Best Picture, becoming thereby the first official nod from the Academy to the tectonic shift taking place in the entertainment industry because of the rise of...

Coda took home best picture on a night where the big prizes were spread out amongst several titles.

The 94th Academy Awards took place on Sunday (March 27), returning to the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood under tight Covid protocols.

Regina Hall, Amy Schumer and Wanda Sykes co-hosted the event, which marked the first time in four years the show has had a host/s and brought to a close a long awards season in which many ceremonies and events had to be rescheduled during the Omicron surge.

Coda took home best picture on a night where the big prizes were spread out amongst several titles.

Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson went from spinning records at last year’s Oscar ceremony to winning a statuette of his own tonight, for directing Best Documentary Feature champ Summer of Soul.

The acclaimed DJ, music historian, and founding member of the Roots – The Tonight Show’s house band – accepted the award along with producers Joseph Patel, Robert Fyvolent and David Dinerstein. He began his speech by acknowledging the other nominees for Best Documentary Feature — Ascension, Attica, Flee, and Writing With Fire — then became emotional as he referenced the subject of his film: the long-overlooked Harlem Cultural Festival of 1969, a series of concerts that showcased some of the greatest African American musical talent ever assembled on stage. The concerts were filmed at the time, with the intention of packaging them into a TV special, but back then the white-run television networks gave a collective shrug and passed.

See the full list of winners of this year’s Academy Awards below.

Best Picture

Belfast

Coda

Don’t Look Up

Drive My Car

Dune

King Richard

Licorice Pizza

Nightmare Alley

The Power of the Dog

West Side Story

Best Actress in a Leading Role

Jessica Chastain, The Eyes of Tammy Faye

Olivia Colman, The Lost Daughter

Penelope Cruz, Parallel Mothers

Nicole Kidman, Being the Ricardos

Kristen Stewart, Spencer

Best Actor in a Leading Role

Javier Bardem, Being the Ricardos

Benedict Cumberbatch, The Power of the Dog

Andrew Garfield, Tick, Tick Boom

Will Smith, King Richard

Denzel Washington, The Tragedy of Macbeth

Best Director

Kenneth Branagh, Belfast

Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Drive My Car

Paul Thomas Anderson, Licorice Pizza

Jane Campion, The Power of the Dog

Steven Spielberg, West Side Story

Best Original Song

Be Alive, King Richard – Dixson and Beyonce

Dos Oruguitas, Encanto – Lin-Manuel Miranda

Down to Joy, Belfast – Van Morrison

No Time to Die,...

The ceremony starts at 5pm Pt/8pm Et (1am Monday morning UK time) and is expected to run for three hours.

The 94th Academy Awards takes place this evening (March 27) and returns to Dolby Theatre in Hollywood under tight Covid protocols.

The ceremony starts at 5pm Pt/8pm Et (1am Monday morning UK time) and is expected to run for three hours. It will be broadcast live on ABC.

Regina Hall, Amy Schumer and Wanda Sykes are co-hosting the event, which marks the first time in four years since a host graced the stage and brings to a close a...

The ceremony starts at 5pm Pt/8pm Et (1am Monday morning UK time) and is expected to run for three hours.

The 94th Academy Awards takes place this evening (March 27) and returns to Dolby Theatre in Hollywood under tight Covid protocols.

The ceremony starts at 5pm Pt/8pm Et (1am Monday morning UK time) and is expected to run for three hours. It will be broadcast live on ABC.

Regina Hall, Amy Schumer and Wanda Sykes are co-hosting the event, which marks the first time in four years since a host graced the stage and brings to a close a...

The ceremony starts at 5pm Pt/8pm Et (1am Monday morning UK time) and is expected to run for three hours.

The 94th Academy Awards takes place this evening (March 27) and returns to Dolby Theatre in Hollywood under tight Covid protocols.

The ceremony starts at 5pm Pt/8pm Et (1am Monday morning UK time) and is expected to run for three hours. It will be broadcast live on ABC.

Regina Hall, Amy Schumer and Wanda Sykes are co-hosting the event, which marks the first time in four years since a host graced the stage and brings to a close a...

After a long-haul awards season, the 94th annual Academy Awards are finally upon us. Hollywood’s biggest night will see Oscar statues doled out across 24 categories — though eight of those honors will, controversially, be handed out in the hour before the ceremony officially starts at 8 p.m. Pt.

Tonight will mark a moment of redemption for many of the most dogged Oscar campaigners, who’ve been on the awards circuit since the fall of 2021. The telecast this year features three hosts: Wanda Sykes, Regina Hall, and Amy Schumer.

Plus, they’re joined by a variety of musical guests including Beyonce (“King Richard”), Billie Eilish and Finneas (“No Time to Die”), Reba McEntire (“Four Good Days”), and Sebastián Yatra (“Encanto”), among other musical guests. Plus, the Academy has assembled an “all-star band” featuring the likes of blink-182 drummer and “The Kardashians” star Travis Barker, percussionist and singer Sheila E., and genre-spanning pianist Robert Glasper.

One of the Dalit women journalists of Khabar Lahariya (‘Waves of News’), India’s only women-led news outlet, reporting a story, in the Oscar-nominated documentary Writing With Fire. Courtesy of Music Box Films.

Writing With Fire, a nominee for this year’s Best Documentary Oscar, is about India’s only women-run newspaper, a news source that has gone in digital since its founding in 2002, and one that covers stories overlooked by other news outlets, particularly on abuse, rape and corruption, with hard-hitting reporting and high journalistic standards. That is astonishing enough but the fact that all the women are also Dalits, the cast formerly known as untouchables, makes this news source seem nearly miraculous. But this is not fiction: these hard-working female reporters are the real thing.

Writing With Fire is one of two documentaries this past year about small news outlets doing journalism right, covering stories larger outlets won...

Variety's Awards Circuit is home to the official predictions for the upcoming Oscars and Emmys ceremonies from film awards editor Clayton Davis. Following history, buzz, news, reviews and sources, the Oscar and Emmy predictions are updated regularly with the current year's list of contenders in all categories. Variety's Awards Circuit Prediction schedule consists of four phases, running all year long: Draft, Pre-Season, Regular Season and Post Season. The eligibility calendar and dates of awards will determine how long each phase lasts and is subject to change.

To see all the latest predictions, of all the categories, in one place, visit The Oscars Collective

Visit each category, per the individual awards show from The Oscars Hub

Revisit the prediction archive of the 2021 season The Archive

Link to television awards is atTHE Emmys Hub

2022 Oscars Predictions:

Best Documentary Feature

Updated: March 24, 2022

Awards Prediction Commentary:

The race for documentary feature has been Questlove...

Writing With Fire’s Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature wasn’t just a huge achievement for directors Sushmit Ghosh and Rintu Thomas. It was a triumph for all of India.

The married couple became the first Indian filmmakers to earn a nomination in that category.

“The fact that this was the first Indian documentary feature to be nominated became just such big news. It was everywhere,” Thomas tells Deadline. “A billion people sort of erupted in joy because we’re a film-loving nation. We produce a lot of films in the year, but for a documentary — nobody remembers when was the last time the whole country got so excited… The next two days [after the nomination announcement] the phone sort of melted, with in-boxes imploding and everyone wanting a bite, and it was just crazy.”

Thomas says it took a while for the gravity of the nomination to sink in.

“The Academy sent us an e-mail…...

Celebrate this year’s Oscars before, during and after the big night.

From Mindy Kaling to Beyoncé and Jay-Z, celerities and industry bosses will toast the nominees and winners of the 94th Academy Awards.

Pop that bubbly and shine those shoes because the fun is about to begin.

March 22

Emily’s List

9:30 a.m.

This year’s theme is “The Collective Power of Women.” Panelists include Gloria Calderón Kellett, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Robin Theade, U.S. Rep. Karen Bass. Moderated by Yvette Nicole Brown.

Four Seasons Hotel Los Angeles

300 Doheny Dr., Beverly Hills

Oscar Week Events: Shorts

7 p.m.

Hosted by Academy Short Films and Feature Animation Branch Governor Jon Bloom.

Samuel Goldwyn Theater

8949 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills

March 23

South Asian Excellence in Film Party

5-8 p.m.

Hosts Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Mindy Kaling, Kumail Nanjiani, Anjula Acharia, Bela Bajaria, Maneesh K. Goyal and Shruti Ganguly toast “Flee,” “Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom,...

Apple TV+ film boosts prospects ahead of March 27 Oscar ceremony.

(L-r): Daniel Durant, presenter Kristen Stewart and writer-director Sian Heder, producers Fabrice Gianfermi, Patrick Wachsberger and Philippe Rousselet with Marlee Matlin and Troy Kotsur

Coda delivered a surprise win at the 33rd Annual Producers Guild Awards (PGA) on Saturday night (19) and made history as AppleTV+ became the first streamer to claim the guild’s top film prize heading into the final week of awards season.

Sian Heder’s family story upset favourite The Power Of The Dog at rival platform Netflix to win the Darryl F. Zanuck Award for...

“Coda” has been named the best produced film of 2021 at the Producers Guild Awards, throwing the Oscar race for Best Picture into complete turmoil only eight days before that show takes place on March 27.

The win comes at the only awards show besides the Oscars that uses ranked-choice or preferential voting in its best picture category, and it reinforced a feeling that the longtime Oscar favorite, “The Power of the Dog,” might be too divisive to win under a system that looks for a film with broad support.

Coupled with its SAG Awards win for ensemble, a category in which “The Power of the Dog” wasn’t even nominated, “Coda” now has to be considered a very strong Oscar contender and maybe even the new front runner, even though it is missing some of the nominations once thought necessary for a Best Picture winner.

The Oscars will now find PGA...

The 2022 Producers Guild of America Awards took place on Saturday, March 19 at the Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles. So who prevailed? Scroll down for the complete 2022 PGA Awards winners list in all 14 categories.

The PGA represents over 8,000 producers in film, television and new media and, since 2009, both the PGA and the Academy Awards have picked Best Picture with ranked choice voting.The PGA has been one of the most reliable Oscar predictors around, thanks in large part to the fact that both the guild and the academy use the the preferential ballot to determine a Best Picture victor. Since 2009, the PGA has forecast 9 of 12 Oscar champs.

Special honorary awards were also handed out to distinguished guests on Saturday. George Lucas and Kathleen Kennedy received the Milestone Award. Rita Moreno was bestowed the Stanley Kramer Award. Issa Rae took home the Visionary Award. Mary Parent accepted the David O. Selznick...