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The Last Dance, one of the most ambitious sports documentaries to come from ESPN since the birth of its 30 for 30 series 11 years ago, is set to air its first two episodes at 9 p.m. Et Sunday, April 19 on the network and its streaming platform.

Over the next five Sundays, the 10-hour miniseries from director Jason Hehir will tell the story of Michael Jordan’s final NBA championship run with the Chicago Bulls during the 1997-98 season. That runtime eclipses even the Worldwide Leader’s lengthy Academy Award-winning marathon doc by more than two hours.

The 30 for 30 franchise and its related endeavors from ESPN Films have produced scores of enthralling feature films, shorts, and podcasts since 2009. For those looking to fill this time without live sports, it’s hard to go wrong by simply picking something at random from the back catalog of sports documentaries available through an ESPN+ subscription.

But...

13 Bulgarian productions and co-productions are about to compete for the festival's awards. Thirteen features and 17 short films will screen in the official competition of the 37th edition of the Golden Rose Film Festival, a true who's who of Bulgarian cinema organised by the country's National Film Center. The competing features are Svetla Tsotsorkova's Sister (Bulgaria/Qatar), Lachezar Avramov's A Picture with Yuki (Bulgaria/Japan), Stanislav Donchev's Letters from Antarctica (Bulgaria), Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov's The Father (Bulgaria/Greece), Dragomir Sholev's The Pig (Bulgaria/Romania), Marian Valev's Bad Girl (Bulgaria), Borislav Mihailovski's Love, Boyden (Bulgaria), Stephan Komandarev's Rounds (Bulgaria/Serbia), Radoslav Iliev's Action (Bulgaria), Anri Koulev's Once Upon a War (Bulgaria/Monaco), Mina Mileva and Vesela Kazakova's Cat in the Wall (Bulgaria/UK/France), Iliya Kostov's A Travelling Cinema (Bulgaria) and one minority co-production, Mahmut Fazil Coşkun's The Announcement...

The Prishtina International Film Festival has wrapped its 11th edition, which ran from 16-21 July and screened over 70 films, with an awards ceremony held at the National Theatre. The winner of the Balkan film competition at the 11th Prishtina International Film Festival, a strand also known as the “Honey and Blood” programme, was Albanian director Robert Budina’s feature A Shelter Among the Clouds, as decreed by jury members Karin Dix, Daniel Mulloy and Eponine Momenceau. Furthermore, the film’s leading actors, who both originate from Kosovo, Arben Bajraktaraj and Irena Cahani, snagged the Best Actor and Best Actress Awards, respectively. The jury bestowed the Best Director Award upon Turkey’s Mahmut Fazıl Coşkun for his film The Announcement, which also picked up the Fipresci Jury Award. The international jury for PriFest’s European competition, comprising Claudia Landsberger, Armond Morina and Vladimir Anastasov, handed first-time Slovenian director-screenwriter Darko Štante’s Consequences.

Turkish film ‘The Announcement’ picked up two awards.

Robert Budina’s mountain-set family drama A Shelter Among The Clouds was the key winner at Kosovo’s PriFest in Pristina on Sunday (July 21), taking home three prizes including the best Balkan film award.

The Albania-Romania co-production also received the best actor and actress prizes for Kosovan actors Arben Bajraktari and Irena Cahani respectively.

It centres on the religious divisions between an extended family in an Albanian mountain community.

The film premiered at Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival in Estonia in November 2018, where Screen’s review described it as “visually arresting…evocatively...

Political turbulence is making it tough for filmmakers in Turkey with ambitions to make movies that can travel globally. But despite many impediments, Turkish auteurs are still managing to maintain a significant presence on the festival circuit.

The past year has seen auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan back at Cannes with “The Wild Pear Tree”; newcomer Omar Atay’s “Brothers” bowed to positive reviews at Karlovy Vary; Tolga Karacelik’s “Butterfiles” make a splash at Sundance, where it won the Grand Jury prize; and Mahmout Fazil Coskun’s biting “The Announcement,” about a failed 1963 Turkish army coup, scooped the Special Jury nod in Venice’s Horizons section, among other outings.

Kicking off 2019 with an auspicious start is Emin Alper’s third feature, “A Tale of Three Sisters,” competing for a Berlin Golden Bear. Alper’s politically charged drama “Frenzy,” set in a dystopian Istanbul, won Venice’s Jury Special Prize in...

Turkish film festival celebrated 25th edition this year.

Directorial duo Cagla Zencirci and Guillaume Giovanetti’s drama Sibel and Tolga Karacelik’s quirky road movie Butterflies were among the top winners at the Adana International Film Festival (Sept 22-30) over the weekend.

Sibel – revolving around an ostracised, mute young woman living in a mountain village whose life is transformed when she helps an injured fugitive in hiding - won the festival’s Golden Boll for best film in the national competition focused on Turkish cinema.

Damla Sönmez won best actress for her performance as the titular Sibel, while Emin Gürsoy...

A handful of men in 1963 Istanbul try to get to Istanbul Radio headquarters to announce a successful military coup in Ankara in the austerely staged tragicomedy The Announcement (Anons), the third feature from talented Turkish director Mahmut Fazil Coskun (Yozgat Blues). Nothing goes according to plan and yet this film, co-written by the director and actor turned screenwriter Ercan Kesal, is at least very loosely inspired by true events. Playing like an unholy mix of bone-dry comedy and a deadly serious meditation on the transience of those in power, this is a precision-tooled little gem that might nonetheless be a ...

A handful of men in 1963 Istanbul try to get to Istanbul Radio headquarters to announce a successful military coup in Ankara in the austerely staged tragicomedy The Announcement (Anons), the third feature from talented Turkish director Mahmut Fazil Coskun (Yozgat Blues). Nothing goes according to plan and yet this film, co-written by the director and actor turned screenwriter Ercan Kesal, is at least very loosely inspired by true events. Playing like an unholy mix of bone-dry comedy and a deadly serious meditation on the transience of those in power, this is a precision-tooled little gem that might nonetheless be a ...