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Podspace announces today that, as part of its growth strategy, it has made three senior hires and is launching an international expansion. Industry veteran Öjje Holt — co-founder of Acast and former CEO of Spotify in the Nordics — joins as Director of Growth. Eeva Ronkainen becomes Country Manager at the newly opened Helsinki office, while Johan Leijonhufvud takes on the role of Senior Client Manager. Both Ronkainen and Leijonhufvud bring extensive experience in audio media, including long employments at Spotify.

Podspace is a podcast platform and marketplace that empowers enterprise publishers with technology, distribution, and monetization solutions. Through strategic partnerships with industry leaders like Bonnier News, Perfect Day Media, and Podme, the company has quickly positioned itself as a dominant force in the Nordic market. Podspace is now significantly strengthening its team with three key hires while simultaneously opening its second office, in Helsinki. Industry veteran and serial entrepreneur Öjje Holt,...

Italy’s TorinoFilmLab, the international film and TV series incubator linked to the Torino Film Festival, has unveiled the nine projects selected for its 2024 SeriesLab workshop dedicated to fostering production of innovative TV shows from around the world.

The projects, which are in the early development stage, hail from 13 different countries: Australia, Belgium, Croatia, Egypt, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Mexico, The Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom and the United States.

For the second year in a row, SeriesLab is being led by Hungarian screenwriter and former HBO Hungary development executive Eszter Angyalosy.

“This year, once again, we selected nine original TV series ideas from passionate creatives with unique points of view,” Angyalosy said in a statement. She added that the projects aim to challenge preconceived notions pertaining to “genre, storytelling tradition and the mindset of their future audiences.”

Angyalosy will be working with tutors Filip Kasperaszek (Poland), Kirsten Ittershagen (Germany), Cyril Tysz...

Though it’s not the only film about grief on the Oscar short film shortlists this year, Lucija Mrzljak and Morten Tsinakov’s Eeva is by far the most immediate and stark, with a darkness to it that the Academy rarely takes on. That it has done to is a tribute to the ideas involved and to the crisp animation with which the story is told. The Best Animated categories have now diversified to the point where it’s difficult to compare films fairly, they’re so differently made, and the excitement of a new technique or the level of polish possible on a big budget can easily distract from the core factors on which a film might be judged, but if we are to value the marriage of the medium with storytelling, Eeva more than pulls its weight.

It begins at a funeral; events imply that it is Eeva’s husband who has died.

The three short film categories can be such a pain to try to predict the nominees for. Don’t worry Derbyites, we are here to help you all. With the shortlist for the 96th Oscars having been released, below we have listed all 15 shortlisted films in the Best Animated Short category along with descriptions of each one. We also have information and links listed for where you can currently watch these finalists.

Among the subjects that are covered in this year’s crop are birds protecting eggs during a volcanic eruption, an overly confident singing cat, a woman attending her husband’s funeral, and an old man appreciating all of the body’s senses.

See Dozens of video interviews with 2024 awards contenders

“Boom” – Two birds that aren’t very bright try to protect their eggs in the midst of a volcano’s eruption. This won the Gold Medal for Animation...

Just in time for the holiday season, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has gifted a slew of films the honor of being included on the 2024 Oscars shortlists in a range of categories.

The annual shortlists for International Feature Film, Documentary, Sound, Original Score, Original Song, Makeup and Hairstyling, Visual Effects, Live-Action Short Film, Documentary Short Subject, and Animated Short Film were unveiled December 21, almost one month exactly before the complete Oscar nominations will be announced.

Anticipated inclusions for Oscar frontrunners like “Barbie,” “Poor Things,” and “Maestro” made the cut in a variety of categories. Ukrainian documentary “20 Days in Mariupol” and Tunisian Isis saga “Four Daughters” are both pulling double duty with shortlist inclusions in the International Feature and Documentary Feature categories.

Academy Award nomination voting runs from January 11 – 16, with the official nominations announced on January 23. Final voting will then run from February 22 – 27, with the 96th annual...

“The Old Young Crow,” an American/Japanese short film directed by Liam LoPinto, took top honors at the Palm Springs International ShortFest, winning the Best of the Festival Award along with a cash prize of $5,000, the festival announced Sunday.

The win makes LoPinto’s film one of five at the festival that now qualify for the 2024 Academy Awards.

Other Oscars-qualifying short films from the Palm Springs ShortFest include: Lithuania’s “Way Better,” the Best Animated Short winner from director Skirmanta Jakaitė; China’s “Will You Look at Me,” director Shuli Huang’s Best Documentary Short winner; the French entry “Sèt Lam,” directed by Vincent Fontano, won Best Live Action Short over 15 minutes; and Spain’s “Mystic Tiger,” winner of Best Live Action Short under 15 minutes by director Marc Martínez.

The winners received a total of $25,000 in prizes in categories judged by industry luminaries, festival organizers and journalists. Read on for the complete list of winners.

This is my fourth time covering the Berlinale Shorts for Directors Notes. Each year I’ve always been struck by the diversity of films on offer – ranging from animation to video art to self-reflexive documentary forms – as well as the wide-ranging filmmaking perspectives the programme brings. Being able to express a self-contained idea in just under 30 minutes, they represent cinema in its purest, most unfiltered form. This year might be the best collection yet, featuring a dazzling array of shorts that seemingly exist in the porous border between dreams and reality, seamlessly moving between different modes of filmmaking expression. Avoiding standard representations and simplistic three-act structures, the Berlinale Shorts show how the short format is unbound by financial expectations or narrative conventionality – allowing the viewer kaleidoscopic insight into the very best of international cinema. Here are our selections for ten films definitely worth putting on your radar.

// Animation & Video Art...