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“Peter Hujar’s Day,” which premiered at this year’s Sundance, has sold to Sideshow and Janus Films. It’s one of the few projects to land a buyer out of the festival so far.

Written and directed by Ira Sachs, “Peter Hujar’s Day” is set over a 24-hour period in December 1974 and centers on one conversation between photographer Peter Hujar (Ben Whishaw) and his close friend, writer Linda Rosenkrantz (Rebecca Hall), who recorded their talk for an art project. Hujar, who died of AIDS in 1987, only became celebrated as an artist after his death.

The film debuted in Park City to positive reviews, with Variety’s Owen Gleiberman calling it a “magical 1974 time capsule of a movie.” In his review, he wrote that “in its tiny-scaled staged-documentary way, ‘Peter Hujar’s Day’ is exquisitely done and arresting to watch.”

“Peter Hujar’s Day” will screen at the Berlin Film Festival before Sideshow...

Sundance 2025 will be remembered as what’s probably the penultimate year that film festival calls Park City home, as well as the edition that gave us a body-horror rom-com (Irl couple Alison Brie and Dave Franco’s gloriously disgusting Together), an introduction to a major new triple-threat talent (Eva Victor’s Sorry, Baby), a pastoral look at the stoic 20th century everymen who made our country (Train Dreams), and a whole lotta music docs. But for us, this Sundance will always be the one where we got to eavesdrop on...

Ben Whishaw again proves himself as the brilliant actor we all knew he was, if we were looking closely enough, in Ira Sachs’ “Peter Hujar’s Day.” The film, set in 1974 New York City, is an intimate two-hander starring just Whishaw and Rebecca Hall as gay photographer Peter Hujar and writer Linda Rosenkrantz, respectively. They gathered, it’s true, on a cold day in December, where Hujar recounts all the events of the previous one, which involved photo opportunities with Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs, and a lot of quotidian nothingness. But those small moments of a day grow profound as Peter’s winding monologue wears on. Writer/director Sachs’ extraordinary new movie never breaks from the pair, and at times becomes like a documentary about the greatness of the actors themselves, Mozart possessing the soundtrack as Sachs and cinematographer Alex Ashe take longing, lingering B-roll of the performers.

In the ever-shifting world of the biopic, a biopic can be many different things. It can be like a novel (if it covers someone’s entire life). It can have the more concentrated quality of a short story (if it’s set during one key period). On that score, you might say that “Peter Hujar’s Day” is the biopic as sonnet. The entire film takes place in one day — but more than that, it consists entirely of Peter Hujar (Ben Whishaw), the noted New York photographer of the 1970s and ’80s, having a rambling conversation with his friend, Linda Rosenkrantz (Rebecca Hall), in which he recounts everything he did the day before.

It seems that the two were collaborating on a project. Rosenkrantz instructed Hujar to write down everything that happened to him on Dec. 18, 1974, and to show up the following day at her apartment on 94th St. in Manhattan,...

Mickey Cottrell, the PR executive who specialized in the indie film business and worked both as an actor and a producer, died on New Year’s Day at the Motion Picture & Television Fund in Woodland Hills. He was 79.

His death was confirmed by his sister, Suzie Cottrell-Smith, who told Deadline he suffered from Parkinson’s disease. Cottrell experienced a stroke in 2016 and had gone to live with his sister in Arkansas before returning to Los Angeles in 2019.

Cottrell was born September 4, 1944, in Springfield, Il, and spent part of his childhood in Monroe, LA. At age 8, he moved with his family to Little Rock, Ar, where he grew up. He attended the University of Arkansas and spent more than 30 years in the film and PR industries, co-owning multiple firms including most recently Inclusive PR, repping pics including Bill Cunningham: New York, Stones in Exile, Ballets Russes, Down to the Bone,...

Mickey Cottrell, a veteran publicist for independent films known as a champion of filmmakers and actors, died Monday at the Motion Picture Hospital in Woodland Hills, his sister Suzy Cottrell confirmed. He was 79.

Cottrell had returned to Los Angeles in 2019 after living with his sister in Arkansas while he recovered from a stroke he suffered in 2016.

His sister remembered him on Facebook, writing, “My adorable, fun, critical, foodie, particular, brilliant, loving brother passed on to the next life early on New Year’s Day. He was smiling when he died. Mickey Cottrell will be missed by many.”

A fixture at film festivals, he was remembered by friends on Facebook as a generous and sassy raconteur, a devoted mentor, the “life of the party” who threw star-studded Sundance parties in the 1990s and an expert on gay Hollywood history.

Cottrell also acted in numerous small roles over the years, including turns...

When I was a student at Bard, I spent a lot of time looking at a poster taped to Ed Halter’s office door for Matt Wolf’s 2008 film Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell, about the composer, country-folk singer, disco trailblazer and avant-garde pioneer who passed away in 1992 of AIDS. Sometime later, I hosted a screening of Keep The Lights On by Ira Sachs, which is full of Russell’s beautiful music. Ira told me afterward that he had discovered the artist through Wild Combination, a film that introduced a lot of people to Russell but which also introduced […]

The post Archive Fever: The Films of Matt Wolf first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

When I was a student at Bard, I spent a lot of time looking at a poster taped to Ed Halter’s office door for Matt Wolf’s 2008 film Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell, about the composer, country-folk singer, disco trailblazer and avant-garde pioneer who passed away in 1992 of AIDS. Sometime later, I hosted a screening of Keep The Lights On by Ira Sachs, which is full of Russell’s beautiful music. Ira told me afterward that he had discovered the artist through Wild Combination, a film that introduced a lot of people to Russell but which also introduced […]

The post Archive Fever: The Films of Matt Wolf first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Variety has partnered with brand and culture consultancy Bsbp to curate a series of exclusive Q&a screenings in London of some of the industry’s most anticipated films. The screenings, which are targeted at BAFTA and AMPAS voters as well as key players in the showbiz community in the U.K., will take place at London’s The Cinema at Selfridges.

Variety and Bsbp have teamed with film distributor, global streaming service and production company Mubi for the first screening in the series, which will be for “Passages,” written and directed by Ira Sachs. The screening will be accompanied by a Q&a conducted by Variety critic Guy Lodge with Sachs and leading actor Franz Rogowski.

The sexually frank relationship drama, about a polysexual Parisian love triangle, also stars Ben Whishaw and Adele Exarchopoulos, and premiered to great acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival, also playing at the Berlinale.

When the companies behind Ira Sachs’ new drama about the shifting currents of intimacy in a troubled love triangle submitted Passages to the Motion Picture Association ratings board, they probably anticipated an R.

But the MPA came back with an Nc-17 rating, forcing the distributor to release the film (which premiered at Sundance earlier this year) unrated rather than risk commercial marginalization or impose cuts that would diminish its intensity. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Sachs painted the MPA as an outmoded relic of the 1950s, detecting a strong whiff of dangerous cultural censorship and possible homophobia behind the seldom issued Nc-17.

Let’s be clear: Passages — which Mubi opened Aug. 4 in Los Angeles and New York before expanding to other cities in the weeks to come — is a movie with a generous amount of sex, both gay and straight. But it’s neither particularly explicit nor remotely gratuitous,...

When it comes to “Passages,” Ira Sachs’ witty, wise and very sexy Parisian drama, it all started with Franz Rogowski, who plays the film’s self-absorbed film director, Tomas. “I had seen Michael Haneke’s “Happy End” starring Franz,” remembers Sachs, the auteur of richly textured, grown-up gems such as “Love is Strange,” “Little Men” and “Keep the Lights On,” recently joining me for an interview about his latest, opening in theaters this week.

Continue reading ‘Passages’: Ira Sachs On His New Film’s Nc-17 Rating, The Movie’s Intimate Sex Scenes & Finding Pleasure In Men Behaving Badly [Interview] at The Playlist.

You can find hundreds of egotistical monsters who’ve graced movie screens (don’t get us started on the ones working behind the scenes; that’s a whole other piece), but few of them can compare to Tomas Freiburg. A renowned filmmaker who’s a tyrant on set — his volatile Rainer Werner Fassbinder vibe is strong, and he will scream at an extra to walk down stairs and swing his hands the exact right way until He. Gets. What. He. Wants! — Tomas is a genuine terror when it comes to his personal relationships.

Filmmaker Ira Sachs has spoken out against the Motion Picture Association’s Nc-17 rating of his Sundance film “Passages,” slamming the ratings board as “anti-progress” and saying that he will not recut his film to earn an R rating and will instead release the film unrated with distributor Mubi.

“There’s no untangling the film from what it is,” Sachs told The Los Angeles Times. “It is a film that is very open about the place of sexual experience in our lives. And to shift that now would be to create a very different movie.”

“Passages,” which premiered at Sundance this year, follows a same-sex couple, Tomas and Martin (Franz Rogowski and Ben Whishaw), whose relationship is upended when Tomas has an affair with a woman named Agathe (Adèle Exarchapoulos). The film shows how those relationships change through a series of sex scenes both gay and heterosexual, including one that...

Our review from Sundance put it perfectly in its opening line. Filmmaker “Ira Sachs prefers relationships of the doomed variety.” Throughout the indie writer/director’s career, Sachs has— in films like “Love Is Strange,” “Little Men,” “Keep the Lights On” and especially in his debut, “The Delta”—explored the difficulties and traumas of love and how the best intentions can go sour.

Continue reading ‘Passages’ Trailer: Ira Sachs New Love Triangle Stars Adèle Exarchopoulos, Franz Rogowski & Ben Whishaw at The Playlist.

With the Cannes Film Festival kicking off next weekend, all eyes in the indie film world are currently on the Croisette. But while most of the buzzy Cannes premieres won’t be making their way stateside for several months, we’re finally approaching the window where breakouts from Sundance begin to open in theaters.

One such hit is “Passages,” Ira Sachs’ haunting eighth feature about a filmmaker who abandons his husband for a woman he meets in Paris. The film, which stars Frank Rogowski, Ben Whishaw, and Adèle Exarchopoulos, was praised by many as a throwback to the kinds of intense character studies that Mike Nichols cut his teeth on in the 1960s and ’70s.

The film earned strong reviews at Sundance, with IndieWire’s David Ehrlich writing, “A signature new drama from a director whose best work is at once both generously tender in its brutality and unsparingly brutal in its tenderness,...

Picturehouse and the non-profit Sundance Institute have announced the lineup of feature fiction and documentary films, a specially curated programme of UK-produced short

films and a Gregg Araki retrospective for the 10th edition of Sundance Film Festival: London 2023, taking place from 6 to 9 July at Picturehouse Central.

The Festival will present 11 feature films that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Salt Lake City, and the Sundance Resort in January, specially curated for London by the Sundance Institute programming team in collaboration with Picturehouse. The festival will close on 9 July with the UK premiere of You Hurt My Feelings, from acclaimed filmmaker Nicole Holofcener. The Brooklyn-set comedy-drama stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Tobias Menzies (The Crown) as a couple whose marriage is suddenly upended when she overhears his honest

reaction to her latest book.

The Festival previously announced that it will open on 6 July with the UK premiere of Scrapper,...

In his third feature outing with ascendant genre filmmaker Ari Aster on Beau Is Afraid, Lars Knudsen produced the duo’s most ambitious, thought-provoking and outlandish work yet — a nightmare comedy of staggeringly detailed vision that is sure to engender conversation.

A nearly-three-hour epic reuniting the pair with A24, this deeply unsettling and quite funny feature burrows into the psyche of Beau (Joaquin Phoenix), a man-child riddled with anxiety who exists in a world in which each of his worst fears is bound to come true. The film bears the framework of a Grimm’s fairy tale à la Hansel and Gretel, watching as Beau finds himself in increasingly surreal scenarios while on a journey on foot to his mother’s house.

For Aster and Knudsen, Beau Is Afraid comes on the heels of Midsommar, an astonishingly dark folk horror starring Florence Pugh, which the former insists is “a joke.

Ira Sachs’ romantic drama “Passages” has been acquired by Mubi out of the film’s premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. The distributor will bring the film to the Berlin Film Festival’s panorama section for an international premiere in February; additionally, it has set a theatrical release for later in 2023.

WME Independent and Sbs International led talks for the final deal with Mubi.

The film, starring Ben Whishaw, Franz Rogowski and Adèle Exarchopoulos, marks Sachs’ sixth feature film and his first since 2019’s “Frankie,” starring Isabelle Huppert. Sachs rose to prominence as an independent filmmaker at Sundance in 1997, debuting his first feature “The Delta” at the festival.

“For me to find a home with a company and a group of people who love this film as much as they do — and maybe even more importantly, love the kind of cinema that has been most important to me in my...

With “Passages,” American indie darling Ira Sachs (“Love Is Strange”) makes his first film in France, a brutally honest portrait of a train-wreck relationship, in which an openly gay director sabotages his marriage — and maybe his life — by falling for a woman. Affairs happen, that’s nothing new. But this one proves unusually destructive, giving three stellar international actors — German actor Franz Rogowski (“Great Freedom”), Ben Whishaw (“The Lobster”) and Adèle Exarchopoulos (“Blue Is the Warmest Color”) — a chance to tear one another’s hearts to shreds. Domestic interest will be limited, as it always is with Sachs’ shoestring heart-tuggers, but having his last movie, “Frankie,” selected for Cannes should give “Passages” a certain entrée in Europe.

Like a less-tyrannical, latter-day Fassbinder, queer auteur Tomas (Rogowski) is used to calling the shots. On set, the cast and crew put up with his tantrums. At home, longtime partner Martin (Whishaw) humors his needy husband’s caprices.

There are unlikable protagonists, and then there’s Tomas, the tragicomically insufferable narcissist at the center of Ira Sachs’ Passages. A German film director living in Paris, Tomas is, to borrow an overused term, “toxic” — a guy who lies and leeches, connives and cajoles, fucks and finagles his way through the world, his talent and impish, overcaffeinated magnetism clearing the path.

The most endearing thing about Tomas is how utterly decipherable his awfulness is. The fragility of his ego and his insatiable need to be not just desired, but revered, coddled, stimulated — you name it — are so evident as to be almost touching. (If it wasn’t clear: Folks who require niceness in a main character, this one’s not for you.)

Played by a sensational Franz Rogowski (Transit, Great Freedom), Tomas is also an undeniable force of nature. That goes a long way toward explaining the grip he has...

Ira Sachs prefers relationships of the doomed variety — tempestuous passions torn asunder, sometimes by external forces like capitalism, which complicated the search for a home through New York’s cutthroat real estate market in “Love Is Strange” and “Little Men.” His latest film — the sexy, frustrating, loose-yet-compact, altogether irresistible three-hander “Passages” — also concerns property contracts and a homeless protagonist. However, this one’s got nobody but himself to blame for that predicament, fluent as he is in the same toxic strain of amour fou that previously perfumed the air in “Keep the Lights On” and especially Sachs’ debut, “The Delta.” As in that film — also pitched at the admirably humble quotidian scale Sachs hasn’t felt the need to exceed in more than a quarter decade — “Passages” follows a bisexual chaos agent so wrapped up in his own narcissism that he can’t see where his self-exploration ends and insensitivity to those around him begins.

Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Mubi releases the film in limited theaters on Friday, August 4, with expansion to follow.

Not long into Ira Sachs’ “Passages” — sometime all too shortly after a restless, self-involved filmmaker (Franz Rogowski) leaves his much softer husband (Ben Whishaw) for the earthy and new woman (Adèle Exarchopoulos) he meets at a dance club after a stressful day of shooting — Tomas launches into a post-coital chat by telling Agathe that he’s fallen in love with her. “I bet you say that a lot,” she replies, bluntly sniffing out his bullshit in a way that suggests this Parisian school teacher doesn’t understand how far most artists would go to convince their audience of an emotional truth. “I say it when I mean it,” Tomas counters. “You say it when it works for you,” Agathe volleys back. They’re both right,...

Fusion Entertainment has signed filmmaker Ira Sachs, actor Mya Taylor and writer-director-actor Jude Dry. The management company, which was founded this year by Chris Evans and Adam Kersh, hails the signings as an important step in bolstering their roster of LGBTQ+ talent.

Kersh and Sachs have had a long association, having worked together for a decade. Kersh helped spearhead the publicity campaigns for the Sachs’ queer-positive NYC triptych “Keep the Lights On” (2012), “Love Is Strange” (2014), and “Little Men” (2016). Sachs recently finished filming his latest feature “Passages,” which follows a gay couple living in Paris whose relationship is disrupted when one of them begins seeing a much younger woman. “Passages” stars Franz Rogowski, Ben Whishaw and Adèle Exarchopoulos.

Kersh also has a long history with Taylor, having been the chief architect of the publicity campaign for Sean Baker’s “Tangerine,” which served as Taylor’s film debut. Kersh also spearheaded the Oscar campaign for Taylor,...

Passages

Entering his third decade in filmmaking, Ira Sachs has moved into what we can call the Euro portion of his filmmaking career setting his narratives in culturally more diverse setting and having back to back projects being produced by Saïd Ben Saïd (Frankie). Announced during Cannes, Passages went into production in October with the likes of Ben Whishaw, Franz Rogowski and Adèle Exarchopoulos.

Gist: This is about two men who’ve been together for more than a decade, and one of them has an affair with a woman (Exarchopoulos).…...

A version of this story about “Master of None” first appeared in the Comedy & Drama Series issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine.

If you have seen any of the third season of Netflix’s Emmy-winning “Master of None,” it’s readily apparent that it looks quite different from other seasons, almost to the point of wondering if you clicked on the right series from your onscreen menu. Not only is series lead Aziz Ansari’s Dev largely absent, but the focus is on Dev’s best friend Denise (series co-writer Lena Waithe) and her unpredictable marriage to Alicia (Naomi Ackie). But the boldest nuance is the show’s lush new appearance: shifting from digital to old-fashioned film stock, with the newly-cool-again 4:3 ratio more often seen in modern arthouse films.

“Aziz had known for the start that he wanted to shoot this on film”, says cinematographer Thimios Bakatakis, best known for his bold,...

Through such feature films as “The Lodge,” “The Lobster” and “Keep the Lights On,” cinematographer Thimios Bakatakis has become known for artistically depicting the tension of complicated familial and romantic relationships, often in isolated settings. Stepping into the third season of “Master of None” continued the trend in his career as the season focuses on the day-to-day nuances of Denise (Lena Waithe) and Alicia’s (Naomi Ackie) crumbling marriage and takes place almost entirely in their farmhouse.

Aziz Ansari co-wrote the episodes and also directed, so he obviously had a very specific vision for the season. What drew you to that vision and what was your collaboration like once you were working together?

Actually it was really easy once we met and decided we were doing this together. When I got the call from my agent, I hadn’t seen “Master of None” and I didn’t know Aziz, but...

Isabelle Huppert with her Mrs. Hyde (Madame Hyde) director Serge Bozon Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

The first time I talked with Isabelle Huppert at length was in Paris in 2006, when Serge Toubiana introduced us at the Cinémathèque Française (which had then recently opened in the Frank Gehry building at 51 rue de Bercy) private reception for Le Roman D’isabelle, La Femme Mystère. Over the years Isabelle and I have had conversations on her work with Catherine Breillat for Abuse Of Weakness, Guillaume Nicloux’s Valley Of Love with Gérard Depardieu, and Serge Bozon’s Mrs. Hyde (Madame Hyde). In October of last year, I met with Isabelle Huppert in one of the suites of the Four Seasons for a conversation on her starring role in Ira Sachs' Frankie, co-written with longtime collaborator Mauricio Zacharias.

Ilene (Marisa Tomei) with Frankie (Isabelle Huppert)

Patrice Chéreau’s Joseph Conrad adaptation Gabrielle...

Ira Sachs overflows with knowledge about all the great filmmakers known and forgotten — Maurice Pialat, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Eric Rohmer. Sachs’ own kind of slow, patient-to-dissolve cinema belongs exactly in his forebears’ camp, where actors and performance come before style.

But that filmmaking comes with its own challenges, and his latest hasn’t been the easiest ride. Nevertheless, in an interview in Los Angeles last week, Sachs said that with his new film “Frankie,” the film’s tepid reception at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival actually benefited the movie as he came to grips with his specific profile as a filmmaker.

Screen icon Isabelle Huppert shines in the lead role, a woman with terminal cancer who has chosen to spend her final hours assembling friends and family, estranged or not, at a Portuguese villa in the doomed hopes of resolving their individual life crises.

Directed in a static-camera, theatrical style heavy...

"People seldom say 'no' to Frankie." Sony Classics has debuted the new full-length trailer for Frankie, the latest film from acclaimed American indie filmmaker Ira Sachs. This premiered at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, and they originally put out a teaser trailer just before that festival to build up some buzz. Frankie is set in the lovely town of Sintra, Portugal outside of Lisbon, where a number of palaces and castles are nestled on a hillside. The story follows three generations grappling with a life-changing experience during one day of a vacation. Starring Isabelle Huppert, along with Brendan Gleeson, Marisa Tomei, Greg Kinnear, Jérémie Renier, Vinette Robinson, with Carloto Cotta, Ariyon Bakare, and Sennia Nanua. I very much like the way this film looks and feels, so light and fresh yet it's so deeply moving and tough in its heart. This one is worth a watch. Here's the...

Everyone knows gay entertainment fiends love a character actress, and it turns out the feeling is mutual. Molly Shannon earned an Independent Spirit Award for playing the dying mother to a gay son in “Other People,” longtime Lgbt activist Kathy Najimy graced the “BearCity” trilogy with her presence, and now Patricia Richardson is following suit. The former “Home Improvement” star is lending her talents to “Cubby,” a quirky coming-of-age comedy about a gay man whose best friend is the 6-year-old boy he nannies.

“Cubby” boasts David France (“How to Survive a Plague”) and Henry van Ameringen (“Love Is Strange”) as executive producers, and premieres at Outfest Los Angeles this weekend. IndieWire debuts the exclusive trailer below.

An official synopsis reads: “Mark, a misanthropic 26-year-old gay man, had been living in his mother’s garage in Indiana and working on his sexually explicit — and Bdsm-themed — artwork. After moving to New York,...

Film sales heated up on the Croisette as the Cannes Film Festival entered its second week.

On Monday, Fox Searchlight snapped up the U.S. rights, along with some international rights, to Terrence Malick’s “A Hidden Life,” selling for $14 million, according to THR.

The deal is one of the largest of the festival so far, and it was a result of a heated bidding war that also included Netflix and Paramount, according to an individual with knowledge.

In Monday’s report, we mentioned that the film was heralded as a beautiful, poetic return to form for Malick, who is back at Cannes after winning the Palme d’Or for “The Tree of Life” back in 2011. August Diehl stars in the film about a World War II conscientious objector in Austria who refused to fight for the Nazis. The film is told in English and German, and Matthias Schoenaerts, Valerie Pachner,...

“Frankie,” by the American writer-director Ira Sachs, is a tiny little trinket of a film. It’s like an elegant bracelet that’s modest enough to go unnoticed, but nevertheless reveals a quietly exquisite beauty to those who are willing to lean in and look closer (even if they have to squint). In other words, it’s an Ira Sachs movie, only more so. But in this one, that bracelet is being worn by Isabelle Huppert, and it fits on her wrist like a second skin.

Sachs has always been a storyteller who doesn’t create his characters so much as he observes them from a safe but intimate distance — watching them the way you might catch yourself staring at a stranger on a crowded subway train — and his recent movies have earned him a reputation for making gentle human dramas that seem more like snapshots than full-sized portraits; even...

As a filmmaker, Ira Sachs, the director of “Love Is Strange,” “Little Men,” and (his masterpiece) “Keep the Lights On,” is like a flower that keeps sprouting new tendrils, growing ever more beautiful and complicated and delicate. His new movie, “Frankie,” may the closest that anyone has come to making an American version of an Eric Rohmer film. I say that having long compared Richard Linklater’s “Before Sunrise” and its sequels to Rohmer (and make no mistake: all three of the “Before” films are marvelous). But “Frankie,” even more exactingly, re-creates the deceptively casual and meandering but pinpoint Rohmeresque sensation of a small handful of characters wandering around, not doing much of anything but revealing, through conversation and (occasionally) through action, who they are and how, almost imperceptibly, over the course of one movie, they might change.

“Frankie” is a film made with immaculate craftsmanship (and one non-Rohmer element:...

"My mother thinks she knows everything..." Sbs Distribution has debuted the first official trailer, more of a teaser trailer / sizzle reel, for the film Frankie, the latest from acclaimed American filmmaker Ira Sachs. This is premiering at the Cannes Film Festival playing In Competition later this month, and it looks incredibly promising. Easily one of my most anticipated films of the festival. Frankie is set in the lovely town of Sintra, Portugal outside of Lisbon, where a number of palaces and castles are nestled on a hillside. The story follows three generations grappling with a life-changing experience during one day of a vacation. Starring Isabelle Huppert, along with Brendan Gleeson, Marisa Tomei, Greg Kinnear, Jérémie Renier, Vinette Robinson, with Carloto Cotta, Ariyon Bakare, and Sennia Nanua. This is such gorgeous footage, I have a very good feeling about this. Here's the first official trailer (+ poster) for Ira ...

The 2019 Cannes Film Festival lineup has arrived, and with it, the most exciting crop of cinema unveiled so far this year. For over seven decades, Cannes has been the most anticipated film event on the calendar for a reason: No other gathering of cinephiles puts the art form on such a dazzling pedestal, with thousands of discerning members of the media and industry scrutinizing the contents of its program from every possible angle. The latest edition is no exception.

While film festivals have proliferated around the globe, Cannes has maintained its status as the most discerning of highbrow movie havens. Over the years, the festival’s stature has been threatened by a number of complications, as American studios have grown wary of the risk involved in subjecting a movie to Cannes hype, and Oscar hopefuls tend to hold out for fall slots at Venice and Telluride. Cannes has also contended with the changing entertainment landscape,...

Frankie

Ira Sachs‘ first production outside North America managed to lasso the likes of Isabelle Huppert, Marisa Tomei, Greg Kinnear, Jérémie Renier and Brendan Gleeson for an October shoot in Portugal. Frankie, his seventh feature film, replaces generic titles of Switzerland and A Family Vacation, and could tonally resemble some of his previous dramas starting way back in 1996’s The Delta, 2005’s Forty Shades of Blue, 2012’s Keep the Lights On or 2014’s Love Is Strange. Saïd Ben Saïd and Michel Merkt produce.

Gist: Written by Sachs and Mauricio Zacharias, this is about three generations grappling with a life-changing experience during one day of a vacation in Sintra, Portugal, a historic town known for its dense gardens and fairy-tale villas and palaces.…...

Company adds The Cleaning Lady, Central Park, and Framed.

UK genre specialists Jinga Films has added three titles to its Cannes slate ahead of next month’s market.

The Cleaning Lady stars Alexis Kendra (Valentine’s Day) in the story of a lonely woman who finds companionship with her cleaning lady who was disfigured in a childhood accident. As the relationship develops, she learns the tragic truth behind the scars and becomes embroiled in an act of revenge. The film was directed by Jon Knautz (Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer).

Central Park stars Justin A Davis (Catfight), Grace Van Patten (Tramps...

For his seventh feature, beloved American auteur Ira Sachs is taking his gig on the road. Sachs’ newest film, “A Family Vacation,” will start production this October in Portugal, and the “Love Is Strange” and “Little Men” filmmaker has lined up a cast of old favorites and new collaborators for the new drama. The film will star Academy Award nominee Isabelle Huppert, Jérémie Renier (“Saint Laurent,” “Summer Hours”), Academy Award winner Marisa Tomei, Academy Award nominee Greg Kinnear, and André Wilms (Aki Kaurismaki’s “Le Havre” and “La Vie de Boheme”).

Billed as a family drama, and written by Sachs and his longtime co-writer Mauricio Zacharias (“Love is Strange,” “Little Men”), the feature is “about three generations of a family grappling with a life-changing experience during one day of a vacation in Sintra, Portugal, a historic town known for its dense gardens and fairy-tale villas and palaces.”

Sachs previously worked...

As much as we all love a stunning tracking shot or an impeccably stylized thriller, even the most discerning cinephiles have to admit: Sometimes, you just want a good cry. Often it’s the most gut-wrenching movies that remain in our collective cultural memory the longest; “Sophie’s Choice,” “Terms of Endearment,” and “Schindler’s List,” to name just a few. Even in an age when auteur-driven driven sci-fi and superhero franchises reign supreme, Hollywood will always love a good old-fashioned tearjerker. Which is why we thought it necessary to single out some of the saddest movies of the century — so far.

Read More:The 20 Scariest Movie Scenes of the 21st Century

Though it might sound trite, one doesn’t have to give up gorgeous cinematography or a tightly-wound script in order to be moved. Not only do the films on this list find beauty in the most heartbreaking of human experiences,...

With his devilish smirk and playful demeanor, Alan Cumming has always been a charmer. Exuding an uncommon blend of boyishness and gravitas in high-profile roles like “Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion” and “The Good Wife,” to his tour-de-force one-man “Macbeth” on Broadway, Cumming has built a reputation as one of the most versatile, provocative, and charismatic actors working today. Which is why it’s unsettling to see him play a character who is, as he put it, “kind of not very nice.”

The film is “After Louie,” and the role is Sam Cooper, a prickly visual artist who spends his days paying for sex with younger men and sifting through archival footage of a friend who died of AIDS. Based on the experiences of writer/director Vincent Gagliostro, Sam is one of the lucky few survivors who lived through the AIDS epidemic and came out the other side.

Keep the lights on or Freddy, Foxy, and Springtrap will come for you! Funko's newest line of Five Nights at Freddy's Pop! vinyl figures are exclusive to specific stores, so read on for the full story. Also: Aliens: Defiance trade paperback, Spell on Wheels #4 artwork, and Pieces of Madness Kickstarter details.

New Five Nights at Freddy's Pop! Vinyl Figures: From Funko: "Four new Fnaf exclusives are headed to stores soon!

Glow-in-the-Dark Nightmare Freddy Pop! (Walmart exclusive)

Available early February!

Glow-in-the-Dark Toy Freddy Pop! (Fye exclusive)

Available early February!

Glow-in-the-Dark Foxy the Pirate Pop! (Toys"R"Us exclusive)

Available mid-February!

Phantom Foxy Pop! (Target exclusive)

Available mid-February!

And don't forget...

Flocked Springtrap Pop! (GameStop exclusive)

In stores now!"

Images from Funko:

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Aliens: Defiance Paperback Release Details: From Dark Horse Comics: "Battling demons from her past while fighting for her life, Colonial Marine Private First Class Zula Hendricks, in the company of Weyland-Yutani synthetics,...

Ira Sachs & Mauricio Zacharias received an Independent Spirit Award nomination for their “Little Men” screenplay yesterday, and it wasn’t their first time: The pair earned the same nod in 2014 for “Love Is Strange” and in 2012 for “Keep the Lights On.” Magnolia Pictures has shared the shooting script for “Little Men” exclusively with Indiewire, and you can read it in its entirety below.

Read More: 2017 Independent Spirit Award Nominations: ‘Moonlight,’ ‘American Honey’ and ‘Jackie’ Lead the Way

The film stars Greg Kinnear, Paulina García (who also received an Indie Spirit nod) and Jennifer Ehle alongside Theo Taplitz and Michael Barbieri as two 13-year-olds who form a unique bond after moving into the same New York apartment building. As with “Love Is Strange,” it first premiered at Sundance and has earned favorable reviews.

Read More: ‘Little Men’: President Obama Wants To Watch Ira Sachs’ Passion Project Over Vacation

The script...

Chicago – When meeting an interview subject for the third time, and remembering him as the first professional interview I ever did, results in a comfortable familiarity. Director Ira Sachs is the subject, and his latest film is “Little Men.” Taking on adolescent friendship, adult passive-aggressiveness and gentrification all in one film, it also spotlights the expansiveness of this talented filmmaker.

“Little Men” features Greg Kinnear in one of his best performances, as a guilty and conflicted property inheritor named Brian who now lives in Brooklyn, in the midst of the hottest real estate markets in America. His late father owned the property, which included a dressmaker’s shop run by Leonor (Paulina García), who cared for her landlord more than his heirs. Meanwhile, Brian’s son Jake (Theo Taplitz), has found a friend and fellow traveler in Tony (Michael Barbieri), who happens to be Leonor’s son. Property, negotiations and...

At one point in Ira Sachs’ Little Men, the young Jake (Theo Taplitz) explains to his parents (played by Greg Kinnear and Jennifer Ehle) how they can avoid evicting their tenant, Leonor (Paulina García), from the store she’d been renting from his late grandfather for years. Jake’s simple economic plan makes the heart ache because of how perfect it is: it calls for empathy, equality, and, without being completely naive, proposes something that could be achievable within the right political system. But his plan is even more heartbreaking because he knows it’s his last chance to salvage his friendship with Tony (Michael Barbieri), Leonor’s adolescent son, who’s become his closest, dearest friend. As the adults stand in disbelief of Jake’s plea, is he addressing their inner child or are they merely getting a preview of the troublesome teenage years ahead? Sachs makes us wonder...

“Suicide Squad” (Warner Bros./DC Comics) will push the summer box office way ahead. The last two weeks have seen a strong rebound after a summer down over 20% from last year’s record-setter. And “Suicide Squad,” despite weak reviews, won’t disappoint.

With projections approaching $150 million at the high end ($120 million at the low), “Squad” will even in adjusted numbers outperform any previous August release. (The record in raw numbers is “Guardians of the Galaxy” at $94 million, adjusted $101 million; “Rush Hour 2” adjusted is $103 million).

That returns the 2016 box office to the record levels of February and March set by Marvel’s “Deadpool” and DC’s “Batman v Superman.” Year to date remains slightly up (2.6%). “Squad” will increase that number.

The weekend one year ago saw the debut of “Straight Outta Compton” and a Top Ten of $113 million, less than the gross “Squad” will likely accomplish on its own.

Though...

Want to see two young actors give breakthrough performances? Then watch in Little Men, an intimate gem of a film directed by Ira Sachs, which means they're in the best of caring hands. What Sachs (The Delta, Forty Shades of Blue) and cowriter Mauricio Zacharias, who collaborated with the filmmaker on the gay-themed dramas Keep the Lights On and Love Is Strange, conjure up here is a serious pleasure, filled with messily human characters whose thoughts and feelings don't necessarily emerge from the words they speak. You have to lean in and pay attention.

by Daniel Crooke

When mulling over Ira Sachs’ last handful of films – the intimately sketched, ephemeral epics of the heart, body, and soul, Keep The Lights On and Love is Strange, as well as his upcoming Little Men – a jokey poke from David Wain’s They Came Together immediately pops to mind: New York, a common setting between Sachs’ three aforementioned stories, “it’s almost like another character in the movie!”

After chronicling the city through a queer lens from the 1990s until now, Sachs will join forces with Cary Fukunaga to wind the clock back another decade to bring Christodora to the small screen – a interlocking character drama set in a 1980s East Village apartment building, built around devastation and communal connection in the midst of the AIDS crisis. Props to Sachs, for his New York stories always incorporate the city into the narrative in a way that isn...

It takes 12 minutes and 23 seconds to run from Jake’s apartment to Tony’s, but there’s an entire world in the space between their two Brooklyn homes. Thirteen-year-old Jake (a sensitive and severely empathetic Theo Taplitz) is a white fourth or fifth generation American kid whose grandfather — the longtime owner of a small apartment building — has just passed away. Tony (Michael Barbieri, a pint-sized Robert De Niro) is the son of a Chilean immigrant, and his mother — a sharp seamstress played by “Gloria” star Paulina García — has rented the retail space on the ground floor of that same apartment building for as long as anyone can remember.

For years, the two families of these new friends have lived in harmony, but the times they are a-changin.’ And when Jake’s father (Greg Kinnear), a struggling actor, inherits the real estate and insists that his tenants actually begin paying their full rent,...

Before all else, Ira Sachs is a humanist filmmaker. Of course, most films are about people in one way or another, so perhaps that description fits anyone who steps behind the camera. But there’s something unexpectedly candid about the way Sachs presents human beings to his audience, in tenderly rendered but unsentimental movies like Keep The Lights On and Love Is Strange. In the milieus of Ira Sachs (typically New York City), characters find themselves in a safe space to be both who they are and who they’d like to become.

This approach carries over in his most recent film, Little Men, a drama that subtly depicts the wave of gentrification plaguing our country’s largest cities. The film also focuses on two preteens whose burgeoning friendship is tested when their respective parents are at odds over the renewal of a dress-shop lease. Sachs sat down with The...

Ira Sachs was shooting a chase scene. This should come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the delicate, understated dramas that have become Sachs’ trademark ever since his first feature, a tale of closeted gay youth called “The Delta,” 20 years ago. Sachs’ Sundance-winning “Forty Shades of Blue” tracked intimate familial complications of a music producer past his prime, while his last two features, “Keep the Lights On” and “Love Is Strange,” delivered measured looks at queer urban identity against the backdrop of modern gentrification. Only 2007’s “Married Life” included the hints of a thriller, but it was something of a red herring in the context of a plot about well-to-do couples scheming against each other. But this chase scene was a different story — evidence that Sachs wanted to try something different.

Read More: Ira Sachs’ Touching New Dramedy ‘Little Men’ Stares You Down in Exclusive Poster

It was August...