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Netflix produced its first non-documentary feature in 2015. It was called Beasts of No Nation, and it was fine. However, the film did not get nominated for an Academy Award. Lots has changed in the last decade.

Your favorite streamer often gets nominated for major awards each year. 2025 is no different. Emilia Pérez has 13 nominations alone, including one for Best Picture. So far, Netflix has yet to get a win in that category, and Emilia Pérez is not the favorite this year, either.

In fact, Netflix has also almost been entirely shut out of wins in the acting categories. Only Laura Dern won, and that was for Best Supporting Actress in 2020. But the streamer does do well in some other categories. Those might not be part of the Big 6, but when it comes to documentaries, Netflix knows what it is doing. Just see below, and you'll know.

The 2025 Oscars will be held on Sunday,...

When the Donald Trump-Roy Cohn buddy movie The Apprentice finally makes it to U.S. movie theaters Friday after a rocky journey, it will be thanks in part to a man who has been shepherding controversial films since Trump was just another New York tycoon on the make.

Tom Ortenberg, the 64-year-old founder of indie distributor Briarcliff Entertainment, closed a deal for the domestic rights to The Apprentice on Aug. 30, just barely in time to get the movie into theaters before the election. Despite a successful Cannes premiere, Ortenberg was the only serious bidder on The Apprentice, and he waited months as producers bought out one of the movie’s financiers, billionaire investor and Trump friend Dan Snyder, who objected to the former president’s portrayal. In The Apprentice — a villain’s origin story directed by Ali Abbasi and written by journalist Gabriel Sherman — Sebastian Stan plays Trump...

Today’s release of the trailer for The Final War showcases the gripping new podcast that uncovers the shadowy world of global espionage and cyber warfare to surveil everyone, from ordinary American citizens to influential individuals in Hollywood. The podcast follows Max Lebow, a former assistant to Oscar-winning filmmaker Bryan Fogel, as he finds himself at the center of a dangerous web spun by a mysterious group of foreign hackers.

Hosted by Max Lebow, The Final War tells how he became the unwitting target of foreign hacking. Lebow’s association with Bryan Fogel, known for his hard-hitting documentaries like Icarus, made him a person of interest to the hackers. Specifically, operatives sought information about Fogel and Lebow’s volunteer work during the Covid-19 pandemic. What begins as a shocking intrusion into Lebow's digital life quickly spirals into a high-stakes battle for survival.

As Max is coerced into providing information to the hackers under blackmail threats,...

Is the Saudi-Hollywood love affair back on?

Judging by the third edition of the Red Sea International Film Festival, which wrapped on Dec. 9, the answer is yes. A parade of stars including Will Smith, Michelle Williams, Chris Hemsworth, Johnny Depp and Halle Berry made the pilgrimage to Jeddah even as the Israel-Hamas conflict raged just 700 miles north.

This year’s guest list signals a dramatic reversal in relations from five years ago, when Hollywood’s outrage campaign was in full swing following the murder of The Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the hands of Saudi government agents. In the aftermath, WME’s Ari Emanuel cut ties with the kingdom, returning its $400 million investment just six months after courting Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman during his visit to Los Angeles.

While enticing big-name talent this year generated positive publicity, the real Saudi mandate is to diversify the country’s economy beyond oil,...

Oscar-winning documentarian Bryan Fogel has signed for representation with Range Media Partners.

Fogel is best known for his 2018 film “Icarus,” which exposed Russia’s state-sponsored doping program and the whistleblower at its center. The Netflix title won the Academy Award for best documentary, the first such prize for the streamer. Prior to its crowning moment on the Dolby stage, the film sold for $5 million out of the Sundance Film Festival.

Additional laurels for “Icarus” included the special jury prize at that year’s Sundance, the Edward R. Murrow Award for Journalism, and nominations from BAFTA, the television academy and the Directors Guild of America.

Fogel followed “Icarus” with the nonfiction thriller “The Dissident,” about the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018. “The Dissident” premiered at Sundance 2020 to near-unanimous critical acclaim and sold distribution rights to Briarcliff Entertainment. In his review for Variety,...

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Bryan Fogel’s work was cut out for him when he chose to direct a follow-up to Icarus, his 2017 deep dive into sports doping and the elaborate system of cheating among Russian Olympians. That film closed with a cliff-hanger. Having turned whistleblower mid-film, Grigory Rodchenkov, the architect of the state-sanctioned doping program, fled Russia and was in hiding stateside. To continue to tell his story, the challenge for Fogel lay not just in the artistic shadow cast by his vividly told Oscar winner. Complicating the making of a sequel was a crucial constraint: To protect the safety of the documentary’s central figure, Fogel wouldn’t be able to interact with him directly.

The solution was to embed a single cameraperson, producer Jake Swantko, with Rodchenkov and his security team. Tracking his life on the lam for nearly five years, Icarus: The Aftermath...

The public-facing festival runs September 8-18.

For the first time since 2019, the international industry is looking forward to getting back to a fully in-person TIFF where there will be plenty to discuss with old friends besides the invigorating roster of premieres.

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The public-facing festival (September 8-18) is many things and one of them is a conveyor belt of awards season premieres. These get scrutinised by the many awards strategists, buyers and sellers in attendance, who will want to know can these films survive at the box office, and can they sustain box office at times...

Most of the time, documentaries don’t get sequels, which is strange. Unlike their scripted fiction counterparts, the story doesn’t end when the cameras stop rolling. If you’ve ever attended a filmmaker Q&a after the screening of a great documentary, you know the first question from the audience is almost inevitably either “What’s happened since?” or “Where are they now?” Bryan Fogel must have heard that more times than he can count in the five years since his game-changing Russian sports doping doc “Icarus” won the Academy Award. “Icarus: The Aftermath” is his response, a daring and sure-to-be-divisive movie that’s even more shocking than the 2017 original, even if the big news is already out of the bag.

“The Aftermath” follows Russian whistleblower Grigory Rodchenkov — former head of the Russian anti-doping agency Rusada — for five years, embedding itself in the paranoid new reality that awaits him...

For all its discussion of weighty topics such as morality, espionage, and whistleblowing, Bryan Fogel’s Oscar-winning documentary “Icarus” was, at its heart, a buddy comedy. Existential and, at times, terrifying? Sure. But, the oddball relationship between Fogel and Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov — the head of Russia’s anti-doping agency and also the man behind Russia’s vast doping conspiracy — drove the first film all the way to the Academy podium in 2017.

Continue reading ‘Icarus: The Aftermath’ Review: Bryan Fogel’s Follow-Up to His Oscar-Winning Documentary Is An Ambitious Thriller [Telluride] at The Playlist.

Vladimir Putin demands absolute fealty to the Russian state, and woe to anyone who defies him.

Oil executive Ravil Maganov, whose company had criticized the Russian invasion of Ukraine, took a fatal nosedive earlier this week from the window of a Moscow hospital, in what – charitably – has been termed mysterious circumstances.

Was Maganov’s name engraved on a Kremlin enemies list? Maybe so, maybe not. But one man who can be certain the Kremlin would like him dead is the Russian chemist Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, who used to run his nation’s athletics anti-doping laboratory. As documented in the 2018 Oscar-winning film Icarus, Rodchenkov blew the whistle on Russia’s elaborate scheme to cheat on drug tests before Olympic and other world sporting competitions, a devious system that the chemist himself had implemented.

Rodchenkov fled to the United States and went into hiding in the midst of making the documentary directed by Bryan Fogel.

Five years ago, Bryan Fogel stumbled into a story that would change his life and help transform the world of international athletics. “Icarus” started as Fogel’s attempt to document whether he could use illegal doping to improve his results as an amateur cyclist. But it turned into something very different when the scientist he went to for advice on how to not be caught, Grigory Rodchenkov, turned out to be a key figure in Russia’s extensive, state-sponsored doping program.

“Icarus” won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, and by the time it came out, Rodchenkov was in hiding in the U.S. and Russia was under investigation by international doping authorities who would ban the country from the 2018 Winter Olympics and subsequent Olympic games (though the band would contain enormous loopholes).

But the story didn’t end there, and Fogel unveiled a sequel, “Icarus: The Aftermath,” on the...

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Thanks for checking out the first installment of The Hollywood Reporter’s Weekend Awards Brief! This Friday week-in-review newsletter will be prepared by THR’s awards team and will feature a rundown of (a) key pieces we’ve written; (b) memorable things we’ve attended; (c) interesting rumblings we’ve heard; (d) things we encourage you to check out; and (e) things we’d like to know.

The authors of each item are identified by the following initials: awards editor Tyler Coates [Tc], executive editor of awards Scott Feinberg [Sf], film writer Mia Galuppo [Mg], senior staff writer Chris Gardner [CGa], tech editor Carolyn Giardina [CGi], senior editor of film Rebecca Keegan [Rk] and deputy awards editor Beatrice Verhoeven [Bv].

* * *

What we’re producing…

A rundown of key pieces we’ve written

TV Academy encouraging nominees to pre-submit thank-you names to appear on-screen —Sf Hollywood Critics Association in turmoil as numerous members resign,...

You could, rightly, characterize director Bryan Fogel’s Academy Award-winning documentary “Icarus” as the product of dumb luck. It began as one film — a “Super Size Me”-type concept whereby Fogel, a cycling enthusiast, attempted to expose the ease of illegal doping by injecting himself with steroids — that became an arresting investigation into Russia’s decades-long use of performance-enhancing drugs, with the colorful Grigory Rodchenkov, head of the country’s anti-doping laboratory, as the primary whistleblower. With Rodchenkov’s testimony, Fogel made the pervasive rot of Russian sports into an enthralling piece of storytelling.

And yet, despite its envelope-pushing search for the truth, “Icarus” ended as almost all documentaries do: The audience’s eyes are opened and the subject who did the revealing fades into the background. Toward the end of the film, Rodchenkov’s lawyer, Jim Walden, appears to explain that his client is now in hiding, dodging the Russian government’s hit squads.

The Telluride Film Festival’s emphasis on documentary has not wavered in recent years. But the prominence of nonfiction fare at the 49th edition has arguably made this year’s Telluride the autumn Sundance, where some of the biggest buzz is for docs.

The lineup, kept under wraps until the eve of the fest’s opening on Sept. 2, includes 16 docs from novice and veteran documentarians, including Steve James (“A Compassionate Spy”), Matthew Heineman (“Retrograde”), Chris Smith (“Sr.”) Ondi Timoner (“Last Flight Home”) and Ryan White (“Good Night Oppy”). (Additional “secret” screenings have yet to be announced.)

The rising level of documentaries at the Colorado fest is largely due to the influence of Telluride executive director Julie Huntsinger.

“This year, there is almost parity with the narrative features in the [main feature] program,” says Huntsinger, who co-directs Telluride with Tom Luddy. “It’s not us actively seeking it. For lack of a better word,...

The US festival runs from September 2-5,

Telluride Film Festival (Tff) has unveiled the programme for its 49th edition, with the US festival running from tomorrow (September 2) to September 5.

Ahead of its play at Toronto and BFI London Film Festival, Sam Mendes’ Empire Of Light will world premiere. Set in an English seaside town during the 1980s, the film follows a love story and an old cinema. Olivia Colman and Colin Firth star, alongside Screen Star of Tomorrow 2020 Micheal Ward, Toby Jones, Tanya Moodie, Tom Brooke and Crystal Clarke. It is produced by Mendes and Pippa Harris’ Neal Street Productions in association with Searchlight.

The 49th annual Telluride Film Festival will host the world premiere screenings of Sarah Polley’s “Women Talking,” Sam Mendes’ “Empire of Light,” and Sebastian Lelio’s “The Wonder” – as well as North American premieres of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s “Bardo,” Luca Guadagnino’s “Bones and All,” Todd Field’s “Tar,” James Gray’s “Armageddon Time,” and Hirokazu Kore-eda’s “Broker” among other top fall titles.

In keeping with the Telluride Film Festival’s famously late-breaking announcement process, the 2022 lineup was revealed on Thursday morning, just one day before the prestigious festival kicks off.

Due to the nuances of how the Toronto International Film Festival positioned some of its debuts as well as the roster of features debuting at the Venice Film Festival this week, industry observers had long expected many of the 2022 titles to screen in the Colorado town. But that doesn’t make the Telluride list any less impressive in its variety.

As customary, Telluride Film Festival has unveiled its lineup on the eve of its kickoff. For its 49th edition, taking place from September 2-5, the festival features new work by James Gray, Luca Guadagnino, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Hlynur Pálmason, Todd Field, the Dardennes, Sarah Polley, Mia Hansen-Løve, Werner Herzog, and more, as well as a robust section of classics and filmmaker-related docs.

The 49th Telluride Film Festival is proud to present the following new feature films to play in its main program, the Show:

• Armageddon Time (d. James Gray, U.S., 2022) In person: James Gray, Jeremy Strong, Anne Hathaway

• Bardo, False Chronicle Of A Handful Of Truths (d. Alejandro González Iñárritu, Mexico-u.S., 2022) In person: Alejandro González Iñárritu, Daniel Giménez Cacho, Griselda Siciliani, Ximena Lamadrid, Íker Sánchez Solano

• Bobi Wine, Ghetto President (d. Christopher Sharp and Moses Bwayo, Uganda-u.K., 2022) In person: Christopher Sharp, Moses Bwayo, Bobi Wine, Barbie Kyagulanyi

• Bones And All (d.

The world premieres of Sam Mendes’ “Empire of Light,” Sarah Polley’s “Women Talking” and Sebastian Lelio’s “The Wonder” will take place at the 2022 Telluride Film Festival, which announced its lineup on Thursday, one day before the festival begins.

Other notable films in the Telluride lineup include Alejandro G. Inarritu’s “Bardo,” Luca Guadagnino’s “Bones and All,” Todd Field’s “TÁR” and James Gray’s “Armageddon Time,” which are making their North American debuts after premiering at European festivals.

Among the documentaries heading to Telluride, premieres are Steve James’ “A Compassionate Spy,” Anton Corbijn’s “Squaring the Circle,” Ryan White’s “Good Night Oppy,” Mary McCartney’s “If These Walls Could Sing” and Eva Webber’s “Merkel.”

Also Read:

TIFF 2022 Lineup: Films From Tyler Perry, Peter Farrelly, Sam Mendes and Catherine Hardwicke to Premiere

Documentary director and film historian Mark Cousins will have two films at the festival,...

The 49th Telluride Film Festival opens Friday in a much-awaited edition that is set to feature world premieres of Searchlight’s Oscar hopeful Empire of Light from director Sam Mendes, starring Olivia Coleman and Colin Firth; Women Talking from director Sarah Polley, starring Rooney Mara and Frances McDormand in the ensemble; Sebastian Lelio’s The Wonder, starring Florence Pugh; and Sony/Netflix’s sizzling new version of D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover with Emma Corrin and Jack O’Connell; among other films.

Considered a must stop on the awards circuit, Telluride also will feature Silver Medallion tributes to Cate Blanchett, docu filmmaker Mark Cousins and Polley. Netflix, Searchlight, Sony Pictures Classics, Amazon and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are among those also throwing dinners and parties over the Labor Day weekend event, which runs September 2-5 in the Colorado Rockies town.

In addition to the world premieres,...

Telluride Film Festival’s official 2022 lineup has been announced, revealing world premieres of Sam Mendes’ “Empire of Light,” Sarah Polley’s “Women Talking,” Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre’s “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” and Sebastián Lelio’s “The Wonder.”

In its 49th year, the festival will pay tribute to two-time Oscar-winner Cate Blanchett, whose new film “TÁR,” from director Todd Field, will debut stateside after premiering at the Venice Film Festival.

In addition, the festival will also tribute Academy Award nominee Polley (adapted screenplay for 2006’s “Away from Her”) and acclaimed documentarian Marc Cousins, who has two films dropping at the fest. One is “My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock,” which is based on a fictional monologue between Cousins and the master of suspense. The other is “The March on Rome,” depicting the ascent of fascism in Europe during the 1930s.

Other Venice bows heading over to the Colorado Mountains are Luca Guadagnino’s...

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A tribute to Cate Blanchett, a Sam Mendes romance set in a cinema house and a bumper crop of documentaries are on the agenda at the 49th edition of the Telluride Film Festival, which kicks off Friday in the Rockies and runs through Monday.

The intimate Colorado event serves as the unofficial stateside kickoff of awards season, but Telluride may be most notable this year for the arguments its movies start, says festival executive director Julie Huntsinger.

“There’s so many more divisive films,” says Huntsinger, who programs Telluride together with the festival’s sr. consultant, Tom Luddy. “There’s so much more angst. There’s just tumult and upheaval in the world, and it’s reflected in the films. People will fight about movies this year more than they ever have.”

Among the movies screening at Telluride that may spark furious debates...

‘Bodies Bodies Bodies’ played as a surprise film.

Jim Archer’s comedy Brian And Charles won the audience award at Sundance Film Festival: London on Sunday, June 12.

Archer was present to accept the award at Picturehouse Central, presented by Clare Binns, managing director at Picturehouse.

Brian And Charles is a comedy about a man who builds and befriends a robot. It is sold by Bankside Films, with Focus Features having acquired global rights following its Sundance premiere in January.

Brian And Charles director Jim Archer on why he hopes the UK is poised for a comedy film revival

The four-day...

HBO is developing Londongrad, a limited series based on Alan Cowell’s book The Terminal Spy, about poisoned Kbg agent Alexander Litvinenko, with Benedict Cumberbatch set to star as Litvinenko, Deadline has confirmed. Cumberbatch also will executive produce the project via his Sunnymarch production banner.

Written by David Scarpa, Londongrad tells the true story of Alexander Litvinenko, played by Cumberbatch, the former Kgb agent poisoned by the radioactive isotope Polonium-210 in 2006 in England.

Scarpa will executive produce with Cumberbatch. Bryan Fogel will direct and executive produce via Orwell Productions. Len Amato of Crash&Salvage also will executive produce alongside Adam Ackland and Claire Marshall of Sunnymarch.

On the television side, Cumberbatch received Emmy and BAFTA award nominations for his role as detective Sherlock Holmes in BBC’s Sherlock. He also recently starred as the title character in Showtime limited series Patrick Melrose. Cumberbatch received a leading actor Oscar nomination for his...

Benedict Cumberbatch is set to star in the limited series “Londongrad” currently in development at HBO, Variety has learned exclusively.

Based on the book “The Terminal Spy” by Alan Cowell, the series tells the true story of Alexander Litvinenko, the Kgb agent and later defector killed by poisoning with the radioactive isotope polonium-210 in 2006 in England. Cumberbatch will star as Litvinenko and will also serve as an executive producer on the project under his Sunnymarch banner.

David Scarpa is writing “Londongrad” and will also executive produce. Bryan Fogel will direct and executive produce via Orwell Productions. Len Amato of Crash&Salvage will executive produce as well alongside Adam Ackland and Claire Marshall of Sunnymarch.

Cumberbatch has held multiple highly-regarded TV roles during his career. Perhaps most famously, he played the legendary detective Sherlock Holmes in the BBC series “Sherlock,” for which he earned multiple Emmy and BAFTA nominations. He also recently...

Guild will announce nominees on January 27 2022.

The 74th annual Writers Guild Awards will take place on March 20 2022 honouring film and TV among other categories.

Submissions opened for all categories today (September 7) and the deadline for the three film categories is December 17.

Online voting for features runs from January 12-26 2022 and the WGA will announce the nominees on January 27. The deadline for final online voting on the feature categories is February 16.

In order to be eligible, films must screen in a cinema in Los Angeles for one week from March 1-December 31 2021. Documentary contenders may screen in Los Angeles or New York.

After making its debut on the Croisette in 2018, Saudi Arabia is back in Cannes.

The kingdom has a national pavilion promoting the launch of a high-profile film festival on the Red Sea, and is looking to lure more international productions to come shoot in AlUla, a sprawling area of desert and giant boulders that boasts an ancient city.

Since Saudi Arabia lifted its 35-year-old religion-related ban on cinema in 2017, the kingdom has experienced a boom in all aspects of film industry activity, recently becoming the Middle East’s top-grossing territory in terms of theatrical box office returns.

But Saudi’s ambitions to build a film industry have been hindered by the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and reports that appear to implicate Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the assassination that prompted media companies from the U.S. and elsewhere to clam up.

Is that changing? The Saudi presence at...

More than half of invitees hail from 49 countries outside the US.

The UK’s Oscar-winning Promising Young Woman filmmaker Emerald Fennell and One Night In Miami star Kingsley Ben-Adir and Bulgarian Borat 2 breakout Maria Bakalova are among a new class of 395 talent and executives invited to join the Academy.

The new intake announced on Thursday (July 1) comprises 46% women, 39% from underrepresented ethnic/racial communities, and more than half (53%) of invitees hailing from 49 countries outside the US.

Besides Promising Young Woman writer-director Fennell and Ben-Adir, UK talent includes the upcoming star of The Batman, Robert Pattinson, as well as Borat 2...

Climate protection, the growing threats to ocean life, the FBI’s smear campaign against Martin Luther King Jr. and the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi by a Saudi death squad are just some of the wide-ranging topics examined at this year’s Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival (Cph:Dox), which kicks off Wednesday.

Since its establishment in 2003, the fest has straddled the sectors of film, politics, art and science like few others.

Among this year’s highlights are Phie Ambo’s opening film “70/30,” an up-close look at the combined efforts to pass Denmark’s landmark climate law, and fellow Danish filmmaker Robin Petré’s “From the Wild Sea,” which follows a team of volunteers in northern Europe struggling to save animals suffering from human-made catastrophes, from oil-covered swans and stranded whales to starving seals with stomachs full of plastic.

Also screening is Bryan Fogel’s acclaimed work on Khashoggi’s barbaric assassination,...

Major corporations, celebrities and other prominent figures signed on to a two-page ad opposing “any discriminatory legislation or measures” that restrict eligible voters from having “an equal and fair opportunity to cast a ballot.”

Netflix, UTA, CAA and ViacomCBS were among the media and entertainment companies to sign the ad, which comes amid concerns over the impact of voting legislation in Georgia, Texas and other states. Also signing were tech companies including Amazon, Alphabet, Apple, Facebook, Pinterest, Reddit and Salesforce, as well as live event businesses Live Nation Entertainment and Jazz Lincoln Center.

The ad featured the headline, “We stand for democracy.” “Voting is the lifeblood of our democracy and we call upon all Americans to join us in taking a nonpartisan stand for this most basic and fundamental right of all Americans.”

Among the individuals who signed the ad was James Murdoch, the CEO of Lupa Systems. His brother,...

It’s been a strange year, but cinema endures. The 2021 British Academy Film and Television Awards took place at the Royal Albert Hall on the 11th of April, 2021. In a first in BAFTA history, four women have been nominated in the Director category, including Nomadland director Chloe Zhao, Sarah Gavron for Rocks, and Shannon Murphy for Babyteeth. Other notable nominees include Promising Young Woman, The Trial of the Chicago 7, The Father, Saint Maud and Minari. It is a diverse line up, and a very unusual time but the red carpets are rolling out, even if they are in living rooms around the world.

Yesterday director Ang Lee was entered into the BAFTA Fellowship, and Noel Clarke was awarded the Outstanding British Contribution to cinema. This evening Edith Bowman and Dermot O’Leary hosted the awards and it was a delight to see Yun-Jung Youn’s incredible win for her role in Minari.

Today’s show is being broadcast with a time delay on BBC One at 19:00 UK time.

The Bafta Film Awards 2021 main show is taking place today (April 11) from London’s Royal Albert Hall.

Scroll down for latest winners

An audience will not be present and winners will receive their awards virtually due to ongoing Covid-19 restrictions.

For the first time, the awards are being handed out across two nights. Saturday’s ceremony (April 10) focused on the craft awards.

Today’s show started at 16:15pm UK time, and is being broadcast with a time delay on BBC One starting...

After being branded as “the enemy of the people” in recent years, both here and in some other countries, journalists may be surprised to find themselves portrayed as heroes in a number of recent documentaries, including an Oscar-contending film.

Collective, the Romanian film nominated for Best Documentary Feature and Best International Film, centers in large part on reporter Catalin Tolontan, who exposed a shocking corruption scandal precipitated by a deadly fire at a Bucharest nightclub. Tolontan and his colleagues got to the bottom of why burn victims kept mysteriously dying in Romanian hospitals in the weeks and months after the blaze.

“These journalists,” notes director Alexander Nanau, “were the only ones who started to investigate all the lies and the manipulation within the health care system and the political class.”

Tolontan’s investigation uncovered a scheme by a pharmaceutical company to sell secretly diluted disinfectant to hospitals. The weakened cleaning...

New Delhi, March 27 (Ians) The Dharamshala International Film Festival (Diff) will launch its year-round programme for 2021 online with the 'Diff Virtual Viewing Room: Films from the Oscar Season' for one week from April 2 to April 8 in collaboration with Gratitude Films Inc.

This selection of six films, curated by Anu Rangachar, are the official entries to the 2021 Oscars with some of them being shortlisted and nominated.

The lineup includes 'Apples', 'Atlantis', 'The Dissident', 'Night of the Kings', 'Quo Vadis, Aida?', and 'Two of Us'.

The question and answer sessions will include a conversation between journalist Rana Ayyub and Oscar winning director Bryan Fogel, writer and film critic Aseem Chhabra in conversation with Greek director Christos Nikou.

Talking about the collaboration, Rangachar, who launched her company during the pandemic, said, "I am excited to be collaborating towards this programme of the Diff Virtual Viewing Room...

Another guild award is in the books, ladies and gentlemen. The Writers Guild Awards are in the rearview mirror now, with some definite Oscar implications. For one thing, it does really now seem like Emerald Fennell is headed towards an Academy Award for her Promising Young Woman screenplay. She’s almost undoubtedly taken a strong lead over Aaron Sorkin and his script for The Trial of the Chicago 7. On the flip-side, Kemp Powers’ hopes to upset Chloe Zhao’s Nomadland in Best Adapted Screenplay took a hit when One Night in Miami… lost at WGA to Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. Could they be in line for another upset? We shall see… Here are all of the winners from the Writers Guild Awards: Film Original Screenplay “Judas and the Black Messiah” (Warner Bros) – Screenplay by Will Berson & Shaka King, Story by Will Berson & Shaka King and Kenny Lucas & Keith Lucas “Palm Springs...

This year’s Writers Guild Awards were an efficient pre-taped affair (with the two coasts united in one show) perfunctorily hosted by new member Kal Penn. A smattering of Oscar contenders such as Riz Ahmed, Sacha Baron Cohen, Leslie Odom Jr., and Andra Day joined other celebrities from Daveed Diggs to Jimmy Fallon to present this year’s film and television winners. (You can read the full list of winners here.)

Every year, because the WGA always leaves out non-wga signatories in its award nominations — among them Oscar-contending screenplays — it’s not always as Oscar-predictive as the other Guilds. Last year’s WGA award winners, Taika Waititi and Bong Joon Ho did go on to repeat at the Oscars. Bong won in a category for which Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” wasn’t eligible. (He never joined the WGA.)

This year, there were three ineligible movies...

This year’s Writers Guild Awards were an efficient pre-taped affair (with the two coasts united in one show) perfunctorily hosted by new member Kal Penn. A smattering of Oscar contenders such as Riz Ahmed, Sacha Baron Cohen, Leslie Odom Jr., and Andra Day joined other celebrities from Daveed Diggs to Jimmy Fallon to present this year’s film and television winners. (You can read the full list of winners here.)

Every year, because the WGA always leaves out non-wga signatories in its award nominations — among them Oscar-contending screenplays — it’s not always as Oscar-predictive as the other Guilds. Last year’s WGA award winners, Taika Waititi and Bong Joon Ho did go on to repeat at the Oscars. Bong won in a category for which Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” wasn’t eligible. (He never joined the WGA.)

This year, there were three ineligible movies...

Virtual ceremony took place on Sunday evening (March 21).

In the latest boost to ascendant campaigns, Emerald Fennell and Sacha Baron Cohen have won top honours at the Writers Guild Of America’s (WGA) awards.

Promising Young Woman writer-director Fennell took the original screenplay award at the virtual 73rd Writers Guild Awards on Sunday (March 21), less than a week after the Focus Features release earned five Oscar nominations including recognition in writing and directing categories.

Baron Cohen led the writing team on Amazon Studios’ Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, whose WGA adapted screenplay win follows Oscar nods for that category and supporting actress.

“Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” and “Promising Young Woman” took top narrative film honors on Sunday at the 73rd annual Writers Guild of America Awards.

Kal Penn hosted the virtual presentation that cemented “Borat” and “Promising Young Woman” as among the frontrunners for Oscar screenplay wins next month.

Amazon Studios’ “Borat” prevailed for adapted screenplay for a large contingent of scribes led by star and director Sacha Baron Cohen. Focus Features’ “Promising Young Woman” was recognized for original screenplay with the win for writer-director Emerald Fennell.

Fennell is on a white-hot streak as a writer, director and actor known for her role as Camilla Parker-Bowles on “The Crown,” which won the trophy for drama series. She made a point of noting the importance of the WGA to her career.

Speaking from what she described as her “bleak writer’s room in London,” Fennell told the crowd, “It’s such a big deal...

“Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” and “Promising Young Woman” were named the best adapted original screenplays of 2021 at the Writers Guild Awards, which took place in a virtual ceremony on Sunday.

While “Promising Young Woman” went into the show with a slight edge over “The Trial of the Chicago 7’ for the original-screenplay award,”Borat” was a decided dark horse in the adapted-screenplay category, whose nominees also included “One Night in Miami,” “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” “News of the World’ and “The White Tiger.”

Writers Guild winners in the screenplay categories go on to win Oscars almost two-thirds of the time, although the two awards sometimes differ because the WGA is an award strictly for screenplays for movies that were made under the terms of the guild’s Minimum Basic Agreement, or similar agreements from a number of international guilds.

This year, those restrictions disqualified three Oscar-nominated screenplays: “Minari” in the Original...

Before the Indie Spirits, before the Oscars, there are the guilds, and as Hollywood inches its way through a protracted awards season, it’s up to each voting body to dole out their own accolades. On Sunday night, it was time for the writers to shine, as the Writers Guild of America presented their awards for film, television, news, and more, all voted on by fellow writers. For writers, by writers!

As IndieWire’s own Anne Thompson has noted, the WGA’s film nominees are less predictive than an indication of what’s losing and gaining heat, from the missing early 2020 releases “I’m Thinking of Ending Things,” “The King of Staten Island,” and “Da 5 Bloods,” to such surging movies as “Judas and the Black Messiah,” “Sound of Metal,” and “Promising Young Woman,” all of which recently earned Best Picture nods from the Academy.

At the Sunday night event, Emerald Fennell...

The Writers Guild of America Awards were handed during a virtual ceremony on Sunday, March 21. But don’t base your Oscar predictions on these kudos. Every year a slew of Oscar-nominated scripts are deemed ineligible for consideration here due to guild guidelines. Indeed, over the past 12 years only 80 of the Writers Guild of America Awards nominees have numbered among the 120 screenplays that reaped Academy Awards bids. Scroll down for the 2021 Writers Guild of America Awards winners list.

Our odds predict that “Nomadland” will win Best Adapted Screenplay winner at the Oscars but it was not allowed to compete at the WGA Awards. Neither was another Oscar contender in that category: “The Father.” The guild did match the academy three-for-five in this category, with “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm,” “One Night in Miami” and “The White Tiger” competing at both. “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” and “News of the World” round out the guild nominees.

The documentary film community gathered virtually on Facebook Tuesday night to chat and cheer each other on at the annual Cinema Eye Honors Awards. Oscar ballots are due Wednesday at 5pm Pt, and many documentary branch voters were on the livestream.

At the start of the evening, as we waited for the pre-taped presentation to begin, “Crip Camp” nominee Jim Lebrecht congratulated “The Dissident” director Bryan Fogel for his BAFTA nomination that morning. International Documentary Association chief Simon Kilmurry was on the chat, along with Sundance artistic director Tabitha Jackson and Kirsten (Kj) Johnson.

She took home the directing prize for “Dick Johnson is Dead,” one of nine Netflix films nominated and among three winners for the streamer, including “Rolling Thunder Revue” and non-fiction short “Love Song for Latasha.”

Many filmmakers sent in videos introducing themselves, from Martin Scorsese in New York (“Rolling Thunder Revue” won an editing award) and...

The documentary film community gathered virtually on Facebook Tuesday night to chat and cheer each other on at the annual Cinema Eye Honors Awards. Oscar ballots are due Wednesday at 5pm Pt, and many documentary branch voters were on the livestream.

At the start of the evening, as we waited for the pre-taped presentation to begin, “Crip Camp” nominee Jim Lebrecht congratulated “The Dissident” director Bryan Fogel for his BAFTA nomination that morning. International Documentary Association chief Simon Kilmurry was on the chat, along with Sundance artistic director Tabitha Jackson and Kirsten (Kj) Johnson.

She took home the directing prize for “Dick Johnson is Dead,” one of nine Netflix films nominated and among three winners for the streamer, including “Rolling Thunder Revue” and non-fiction short “Love Song for Latasha.”

Many filmmakers sent in videos introducing themselves, from Martin Scorsese in New York (“Rolling Thunder Revue” won an editing award) and...

Shannon Murphy has been nominated for the BAFTA Award for best direction for her debut feature, Babyteeth.

Murphy is in good company, with fellow nominees for the prize including Thomas Vinterberg for Another Round; Lee Issac Chung for Minari; Chloé Zhao for Nomadland; Jasmila Žbanić for Quo Vadis, Aida? and Sarah Gavron for Rocks.

It is the first time in BAFTA history that four women have been nominated in the director category.

These are the first edition of nominations to follow BAFTA’s seven-month diversity review, which came about after it faced significant backlash one year ago for a lack of diversity among nominees – including an all-male director category. Three of the nominated directors are also up for best film not in the English language.

The BAFTA nod is yet another accolade for Babyteeth and Murphy’s work, following on from the film’s premiere in competition at the Venice Film Festival in 2019. There,...

Today, at the Royal Albert Hall, Aisling Bea and Susan Wokoma, on behalf of The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), announced the nominations for the Ee British Academy Film Awards in 2021, celebrating the very best in film of the past year.

In a first in BAFTA history, four women have been nominated in the Director category, including ‘Nomadland’ director Chloe Zhao, Sarah Gavron for ‘Rocks’, and Shannon Murphy for ‘Babyteeth’. In all, ‘Nomadland’ and ‘Rocks’ received seven nominations each.

‘The Father’, ‘Mank’, ‘Minari’ and ‘Promising Young Woman’ all received a total of six nominations while ‘The Dig’ and ‘The Mauritanian’ received five.

Supporting new talent is at the heart of BAFTA’s remit and four of the five nominated films in Outstanding Debut are also nominated across other categories. This year, first-time nominees account for four of the six nominated Directors and 21 of the 24 nominees in the performance categories.

‘The Father’, ‘Mank’, ‘Minari’, ‘Promising Young Woman’ also score well.

Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland and UK teenage drama Rocks led the 2021 Bafta film awards nominations, which were announced today (March 9).

Both titles received seven nominations, including for directors Zhao and Sarah Gavron, and for Frances McDormand and Bukky Bakray in leading actress respectively.

Scroll down for full list of nominations

Four titles received six nominations each: UK titles The Father and Promising Young Woman, plus Minari and Mank from the US.

In the first Bafta film awards since widespread criticism over the lack of diversity in the 2020 nominations, four out...

Exclusive: Vertical Entertainment said Monday that it has acquired North American rights to Every Breath You Take, a psychological thriller directed by Vaughn Stein that stars Casey Affleck, Sam Claflin, Michelle Monaghan, Veronica Ferres and India Eisley. The pic will now get a U.S. theatrical release and Premium VOD bow on April 2.

Every Breath You Take centers on a psychiatrist (Affleck) whose career is thrown into jeopardy when his patient takes her own life. When he invites his patient’s surviving brother (Claflin) into his home to meet his wife (Monaghan) and daughter (Eisley), his family life is suddenly torn apart.

The deal marks a reunion of sorts for Vertical, Stein and producer Richard Barton Lewis of Southpaw Entertainment. Vertical last year acquired the Stein-directed and Lewis-produced Inheritance, the thriller that starred Lily Collins and Simon Pegg.

“With its genuinely gripping plot that unfolds masterfully as each twist is revealed,...

What to do about Saudi Arabia and this nasty Jamal Khashoggi problem?

On Friday, the White House released a report by U.S. intelligence that confirmed what journalists, documentarians and members of Congress already understood: that Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohamed Bin Salman approved the savage operation to murder and dismember dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a U.S. resident at the time of his death at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, in 2018.

It’s a sticky situation. Now that it’s official that the 35-year-old de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia was responsible for this heinous act, the United States needs to decide how to act. And so do the rest of us.

So much damage over the four years of the Trump presidency needs to be undone. And one of those critical areas is in reestablishing our values abroad after our government allowed dictators to slide...

Bryan Fogel shocked viewers (and himself) when he unravelled a scandal that proved to be one of the biggest in the history of sport. The actor, who has a history in comedy, has now turned his head to political, investigative journalism and activism, and his sophomore doc The Dissident proves just that, as he digs into the murder of Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

We had the pleasure of interviewing Fogel to mark the film’s release, though it was the limited nature of the release which came up during the conversation, for the filmmaker admits to being disappointed that no major distributor touched his film, despite its strong reviews from critics, which he believes to be down to the content of the material. He discusses with us also his unwavering commitment to reporting the truth, whether he is ever fearful for his own safety, and tells us how Icarus completely changed his life.

This is an important documentary that has been avoided for too long. In recounting the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, The Dissident presents a biography of the man, his association with Saudi Arabia, and a thorough overview of the geopolitical forces that caused his tragic death. Directed by Bryan Fogel, it is a very worthy successor to his debut film Icarus, which won Netflix its first Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature back in 2018. Why, then, did this truth-seeking film get ignored?

Fogel had hoped for a distribution deal with one of the streaming giants at Sundance 2020, yet he left Park City empty handed. This was despite an audience that included Hillary Clinton, Alec Baldwin and Reed Hastings, the Netflix chief executive. Clearly, Saudi Arabia’s murder of Jamal Khashoggi was just too hot for the major platforms, whose leaders were more interested in the bottom line than standing up for human rights.