Three of the films in the US Dramatic Competition at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival find writers directing their own scripts engaging with socially urgent issues that feel destined to be conversation starters.
When the Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF) launched in 1989, it was part of a concerted plan to provide a launching pad for international cinema.
This review contains some mild spoilers
Writer/director Rian Johnson would like you to know that very wealthy people are generally awful, exhausting, and immoral.
In 2020, German actress Maria Schrader made her directorial debut with the Netflix miniseries “Unorthodox”, the first Netflix series to be primarily in Yiddish.
Last month, the publicity team for Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans”, a semi-autobiographical account of the filmmaker’s life from 1952 to the mid-1960s, revealed that Michelle Williams would be campaigning for awards attention as Lead Actress rather than Supporting Actress.
It feels important that “Catherine Called Birdy” and “On the Come Up”, both films about girls coming of age in ambivalent circumstances, are directed by actresses turned directors.
At its world premiere at TIFF in September, “The Greatest Beer Run Ever” director Peter Farrelly introduced the film to audiences by giving a brief account of its journey to the screen.
It feels important that “Catherine Called Birdy” and “On the Come Up”, both films about girls coming of age in ambivalent circumstances, are directed by actresses turned directors.
Olivia Wilde’s new film, a “psychological thriller” about a woman in an idyllic 1950s suburb who begins to realise that something is very wrong is a far cry from her directorial debut, the teen comedy “Booksmart”, but the two have more in common than you would think.
Darren Aronofsky’s latest film, which had its North American premiere at TIFF after resounding success at its world-premiere at the Venice Film Festival, is based on a 2012 Drama Desk winning play of the same name.
In a way, Gina Prince-Bythewood’s “The Woman King” follows a traditional path: a well budgeted Hollywood epic, loosely based on events in history, which creates a high-energy action story driven by human emotion.
The wide range of films screened at the Toronto International Film Festival each year often means that debut filmmakers are sometimes more established ones, sometimes even exploring similar things thematically.