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Peter Sarsgaard, the veteran character actor who has received some of the best notices of his career this year for his performance on the Apple TV+ drama series Presumed Innocent and in the Paramount film September 5, will receive the Newport Beach Film Festival’s Film Performance of the Year Award and record an episode of The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast live in front of a festival audience, Nbff announced on Tuesday.

Sarsgaard’s award presentation and podcast recording will take place on Wednesday, Oct. 23, during the 25th edition of Nbff, which will run Oct. 17-24.

The fest also announced its film lineup, which includes 112 films from 19 countries, including 16 world premieres, 10 U.S. premieres, 16 North American premieres, 13 West Coast premieres and 10 Southern California Premieres

This year’s Nbff will open on Oct. 17 with the world premiere of Simon West’s Old Guy, with West and star Chrostoph Waltz in attendance,...

Several alternate realities, none of them remotely acquainted with ours, exist side-by-side in “Sew Torn,” a high-concept crime farce that pits guns against haberdashery, innocence against culpability, and genre grit against fruit-loop fantasy. Even as it nakedly steals its structural conceit from Tom Tykwer’s Nineties trendsetter “Run Lola Run” — a film made before 24-year-old writer-director-editor Freddy Macdonald was born — this is a debut feature strange and singular enough to attract its own keen following, with its blend of folksy small-town hijinks, nasty neo-noir tension and literally crafty comedy, centered around a heroine who calls to mind MacGyver with a pocket sewing kit. Some will thrill to the film’s silliness, others may find it a joke stretched beyond elasticity, but it’ll have many putting a pin in Macdonald’s name.

Eye-catching if hardly substantial, “Sew Torn” is quite obviously expanded from Macdonald’s 2019 short of the same title:...

The Locarno Film Festival, taking place in the picturesque town in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland, always shines a light on arthouse voices, whether new or established. And it showcases Swiss films worth audiences’ attention.

That will be the case again during Locarno77, taking place Aug. 7-17, soon after Switzerland also took center stage at the 2024 Cannes Film Market where the Alpine nation was the country of honor.

Among the Swiss fare featured at Locarno this year are such Cannes hits as Laetitia Dosch’s Dog on Trial, and Swiss animator Claude Barras’ Savages, which are screening in the Piazza Grande lineup along with the world premiere of Swiss director Simon Jaquemet’s Electric Child, the international premiere of U.S.-Swiss filmmaker Freddy Macdonald’s Sew Torn and the Swiss premiere of Swiss-Peruvian filmmaker Klaudia Reynicke’s Reinas.

Meanwhile, Locarno’s international competition includes the Swiss entry Der Spatz im Kamin...

Taking place August 7-17, the official selection for the 77th Locarno Film Festival has been unveiled, featuring a stellar-looking slate of highly anticipated films. Highlights include Hong Sangsoo’s second feature of the year, By the Stream, starring Kim Minhee, Kwon Haehyo, and Cho Yunhee; Ramon Zürcher’s The Sparrow in the Chimney, Wang Bing’s second part of his Youth trilogy, Youth (Hard Times), as well as new films by Radu Jude, Bertrand Mandico, Courtney Stephens, Ben Rivers, Gürcan Keltek, Denis Côté, Kevin Jerome Everson, Fabrice Du Welz (featuring Abel Ferrara!), and many more. Also of particular note is the world premiere of Tarsem Singh’s restored cut of The Fall, which features a slightly different edit as he recently noted.

Giona A. Nazzaro, Artistic Director of the Locarno Film Festival said, “We are very excited and happy with our selection for Locarno’s 77th edition, which we believe...

Switzerland’s Locarno Film Festival will debut 17 world premieres, including new works by Hong Sang-soo and Wang Bing, as part of its 2024 competition program. This year’s event runs from August 7 – 17.

The festival announced its competition lineups this morning. The Hong Sang-soo feature is titled Suyoocheon (By The Stream) and stars Kim Minhee, Kwon Haehyo, and Cho Yunhee. The Wang Bing feature is a France, Luxembourg, and Netherlands co-production titled Hard Times. Scroll down to see the full Locarno competition lineup, which also includes new titles from Ben Rivers, Mar Coll, and Christoph Hochhäusler.

The festival today also announced that French acting veterans Mélanie Laurent and Guillaume Canet will receive the event’s honorary Excellence Award Davide Campari at the opening ceremony on August 7. Previous recipients of the award include Riz Ahmed and Aaron Taylor Johnson.

Locarno’s separate Piazza Grande lineup features 18 titles, including Mohammad Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig,...

The phrase, “a change of heart,” would forever alter the course of Freddy Macdonald’s life.

Last month, the 23-year-old wunderkind’s feature directorial debut, Sew Torn, premiered at South by Southwest to glowing reviews, capping an extraordinary five-plus years for the young filmmaker. As a high school senior, Macdonald — whose American family had relocated to Switzerland a handful of years earlier — started applying to film schools, and he decided to take a lofty crack at the American Film Institute’s (AFI) graduate program. As part of the application process, Macdonald had to make a short film that told a story involving the aforementioned idiom, “a change of heart,” and so he started trading ideas with his father, Fred Macdonald.

The father-son duo soon found themselves in the oeuvre of the Coen brothers, specifically No Country for Old Men. The inciting incident of the Coens’ best picturing-winning neo-Western involves Josh Brolin...

“Choices, choices…,” says the narrator, a young seamstress, in this strange and striking debut from Freddy Macdonald. A neo-noir in the early Coens tradition, Sew Torn also features a bold tri-part structure in which the heroine, Barbara (Eve Connolly) — like Lola before her in Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run — gets three standalone chances to pursue a different destiny after stumbling on the bloody aftermath of a drug deal gone wrong on a quiet country road.

It begins with image of a reel of red cotton, a briefcase and a dead body. This is Barbara, who wonders what we’ll make of her story. Macdonald’s film then loops back to explain who Barbara got here, a tale of chance and coincidence that reshuffles its characters in a way that always surprises,...

A struggling seamstress plays a dangerous real life choose-your-own-adventure game in Freddy Macdonald’s debut feature, the whimsical comedic thriller Sew Torn. Barbara Duggen’s (Eve Connolly) sewing shop in an idyllic hamlet in the picturesque Swiss Alps is on the rocks. Having recently lost her mother, the business is on it’s way out with Barbara struggling to make ends meet by operating mostly as an emergency mobile seamstress. When the high maintenance client at her latest gig pops a button, Barbara must rush back to her shop to replace it, but what she encounters on the way could potentially change her life, but only if she plays it just right. While rushing back through mostly empty mountain roads, she comes across a drug deal gone bad....

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Freddy Macdonald’s Sew Torn is a high-stakes crime thriller for everyone that grew up obsessed with choose-your-own-adventure novels. Working through three wildly different timelines, the story follows a mobile seamstress presented with a (truly) life-changing opportunity. After stumbling across a drug deal gone wrong, Barbara (Eve Connolly) is faced with a choice: commit the perfect crime, call the police, or simply drive away. Which would you choose?

Luckily, you’re not left with any lingering questions about what would have happened in either of the three scenarios, because you’re gifted the chance to witness them all! Following the threads of each decision, Sew Torn is divided into nice clean chapters that make for a series of very unfortunate events. In fact, the film opens on the aftermath of each possible timeline, and none look especially promising. It seems each choice leads to ruin but it isn’t the destination that counts,...

AFI and NYU won gold medals at the 2023 Student Academy Awards, which took place on Tuesday evening at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in the Academy’s headquarters in Beverly Hills.

The other two gold medals went to international schools, the École des Nouvelles Images in France and Filmakademie Wien in Austria.

Awards were given out in four categories, with up to three winners in each category being revealed ahead of time but the medal placement kept secret until the ceremony. Presenters included “Super Mario Bros. Movie” directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic, Student Academy Awards committee chair Peggy Rajski and past Student Oscar winners Brad Bailey, Sujin Kim, Ken Kwapis, Freddy Macdonald, Olivia Peace and Kevin Wilson Jr.

In the Alternative/Experimental category, the gold medal went to AFI student Leo Behrens’ “Skin,” with no silver or bronze medals handed out.

In the animation category, all three winners were from...

Students at USC, NYU, Griffith Film School in Australia and the University of Television and Film Munich in Germany have won the gold medals at the 2022 Student Academy Awards, which took place on Thursday night in the David Geffen Theater at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.

The in-person ceremony was the first since 2019, with the last two Student Oscars taking place virtually because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

It was also the first under new rules, revealed exclusively by TheWrap in April, that found U.S. and international film schools competing head-to-head in all categories. Previously, film schools outside the United States competed in separate international categories.

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“We’re a global organization and we’re reflecting a global film industry,” AMPAS VP of Talent Development and Inclusion Programs Kendra Carter told TheWrap. “We wanted to...

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences honored student winners from colleges and universities around the world at the 49th Student Academy Awards ceremony, which took place during an in-person ceremony at its David Geffen Theater in Los Angeles. The Gold, Silver and Bronze Medal awards were presented during the Academy’s first in-person ceremony since 2019. The evening was hosted by actor and producer Terrence Jenkins.

This year’s competition received a total of 1,796 entries from 614 colleges and universities around the world. The 2022 winners join the ranks of such past Student Academy Award winners including Patricia Cardoso, Pete Docter, Spike Lee, Patricia Riggen and Robert Zemeckis, among others. Included in this year’s winners are first-time honors being awarded to France’s Pôle 3D Digital & Creative School.

The 2022 Student Academy Award medalists are as follows:

Alternative/Experimental

Gold: “Against Reality,” Olivia Peace, University of Southern California

Animation

Gold: “An...

And the Student Academy Awards go to …

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has named 14 filmmakers as winners of its 49th student competition. See the list below.

All of the winning films are eligible to compete for 2022 Oscars in the Animated Short Film, Live Action Short Film or Documentary Short Film category.

The winners will be honored during an October 20 ceremony at the David Geffen Theater in Los Angeles, where the medal placements – gold, silver and bronze – in the four award categories will be announced. The gala will be held in-person for the first time since 2019.

The competition received nearly 1,800 entries from 614 colleges and universities around the world. In a change from previous years, the Student Academy Awards no longer distinguish between U.S.-based and international schools for categories. All eligible submissions now qualify for the competition category the filmmaker selected in their submission application.

The Student...

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has revealed the winners of the Student Academy Awards, all of which are now eligible to compete for 2022 Oscars.

In the first edition of the ceremony to not distinguish between domestic and international submissions, five of the winning films hailed from schools based in the U.S., while the other half came from other countries.

The 14 winners were selected from a pool of 1,796 entries that came from 614 colleges and universities around the world. Previous Student Academy Award winners include Patricia Cardoso, Pete Docter, Spike Lee, Patricia Riggen and Robert Zemeckis.

The winning films qualify to compete in the Animated Short Film, Live Action Short Film and Documentary Short Film categories at next year’s Oscars ceremony. In the past, Student Academy winners have gone on to earn 65 nominations and 14 wins.

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Exclusive: United Talent Agency (UTA) announced today that they have signed 18-year-old writer and director Freddy Macdonald in all areas.

Based in Zurich, Macdonald is known for writing and directing many short films — one a year since he moved to Switzerland in 2015 to be exact. Recently, his short Sew Torn, which was executive produced by Peter Spears was acquired by Fox Searchlight.

His other credits include The Father of Art (2017), The Coachmen (2018) and I’m Good (2019). His film Gifted: Thanksgiving Post Mortem (2016) screened at numerous festivals including Newport Beach Film Festival, La Film Festival, National Film Festival For Talented Youth, and London International Festival of Science Fiction and Fantastic Film. He was also honored with the Best Young Filmmaker award at the Tmc London Film Festival and the Calcutta International Cult Film Festival.

Macdonald has also directed the three most recent music videos for...

Studio will promote on social media channels.

Fox Searchlight has snapped up rights to another short film, acquiring Sew Torn written and directed by 18-year-old filmmaker Freddy Macdonald.

The film will be made available on Fox Searchlight’s social media channels. Sew Torn tells of a seamstress, her thread, and a deal gone bad.

Dagna Litzenberger-Vinet stars with Cor Boersma, and Thomas Douglas in the film, which Searchlight said combined a “surprising blend of American cinema starring European actors in Swiss locales”.

The Zurich-based, Los Angeles-born Macdonald produced the film and Call Me By Your Name producer Peter Spears is the executive producer.

Fox Searchlight Pictures has acquired Sew Torn, the new short film by 18-year-old writer-director Freddy Macdonald. The short is Macdonald’s fifth, and will be made available on Fox Searchlight social media channels.

“Freddy Macdonald is a very promising filmmaker with a fresh and confident storytelling style. We’re thrilled to get this short film in front of audiences worldwide,” said Fox Searchlight Pictures’ Chairmen Nancy Utley and Stephen Gilula.

The Zurich-based, Los Angeles-born Macdonald, said Fox Searchlight, “combines a unique and surprising blend of American cinema starring European actors in Swiss locales.” Sew Torn is a tale of a seamstress, her thread, and a deal gone bad. The film stars Dagna Litzenberger-Vinet, Cor Boersma, and Thomas Douglas.

The film was produced by Macdonald and executive produced by Peter Spears (Call Me By Your Name).

“Having worked with Dagna, Cor, and Thomas, and my cinematographer Sebastian Klinger on a number...