One hundred seventy features have been submitted for consideration in the Documentary Feature category for the 90th Academy Awards. That’s 25 more than 2016. Assuming they all book their qualifying runs in New York and Los Angeles, the members of the documentary branch have just a few more weeks to see as many films as possible and file their votes for the shortlist of 15 to be announced in December. They’re each supposed to watch an assigned list of about 20 films, plus as many more as they can.
Read More:2018 Oscar Predictions: Best Documentary Feature
It’s possible for documentaries to also vie for Best Picture, although it is rare. Among this year’s most lauded features are “City of Ghosts,” “Faces Places,” “Jane,” “Kedi” and “One of Us.”
The submitted features, listed in alphabetical order, are:
“Abacus: Small Enough to Jail”
“Aida’s Secrets”
“Al Di Qua”
“All the Rage...
Read More:2018 Oscar Predictions: Best Documentary Feature
It’s possible for documentaries to also vie for Best Picture, although it is rare. Among this year’s most lauded features are “City of Ghosts,” “Faces Places,” “Jane,” “Kedi” and “One of Us.”
The submitted features, listed in alphabetical order, are:
“Abacus: Small Enough to Jail”
“Aida’s Secrets”
“Al Di Qua”
“All the Rage...
- 10/27/2017
- by Anne Thompson
- Thompson on Hollywood
One hundred seventy features have been submitted for consideration in the Documentary Feature category for the 90th Academy Awards. That’s 25 more than 2016. Assuming they all book their qualifying runs in New York and Los Angeles, the members of the documentary branch have just a few more weeks to see as many films as possible and file their votes for the shortlist of 15 to be announced in December. They’re each supposed to watch an assigned list of about 20 films, plus as many more as they can.
Read More:2018 Oscar Predictions: Best Documentary Feature
It’s possible for documentaries to also vie for Best Picture, although it is rare. Among this year’s most lauded features are “City of Ghosts,” “Faces Places,” “Jane,” “Kedi” and “One of Us.”
The submitted features, listed in alphabetical order, are:
“Abacus: Small Enough to Jail”
“Aida’s Secrets”
“Al Di Qua”
“All the Rage...
Read More:2018 Oscar Predictions: Best Documentary Feature
It’s possible for documentaries to also vie for Best Picture, although it is rare. Among this year’s most lauded features are “City of Ghosts,” “Faces Places,” “Jane,” “Kedi” and “One of Us.”
The submitted features, listed in alphabetical order, are:
“Abacus: Small Enough to Jail”
“Aida’s Secrets”
“Al Di Qua”
“All the Rage...
- 10/27/2017
- by Anne Thompson
- Indiewire
No reason has been given for the change in opening film.
Danish director Bille August’s The Chinese Widow will open this year’s Shanghai International Film Festival (Siff, June 17-26), replacing Ann Hui’s Our Time Will Come, which was previously announced as the opening film.
However, Our Time Will Come will still play in the Golden Goblet competition at Siff. No reason was given for the change by either the festival or the film’s producer Bona Film Group.
Both films are set in China during the Second World War. Starring Emile Hirsch and Yu Nan, The Chinese Widow tells the story of an American pilot who is shot down and saved by Chinese villagers. It remains unclear if the film has been made under the recently signed Danish-Chinese co-production treaty. August recently served as jury president at the Beijing International Film Festival.
Our Time Will Come, which stars Zhou Xun and Eddie Peng, revolves...
Danish director Bille August’s The Chinese Widow will open this year’s Shanghai International Film Festival (Siff, June 17-26), replacing Ann Hui’s Our Time Will Come, which was previously announced as the opening film.
However, Our Time Will Come will still play in the Golden Goblet competition at Siff. No reason was given for the change by either the festival or the film’s producer Bona Film Group.
Both films are set in China during the Second World War. Starring Emile Hirsch and Yu Nan, The Chinese Widow tells the story of an American pilot who is shot down and saved by Chinese villagers. It remains unclear if the film has been made under the recently signed Danish-Chinese co-production treaty. August recently served as jury president at the Beijing International Film Festival.
Our Time Will Come, which stars Zhou Xun and Eddie Peng, revolves...
- 6/12/2017
- by lizshackleton@gmail.com (Liz Shackleton)
- ScreenDaily
The petite nonagenarian at the center of Big Sonia would be a compelling film subject under any circumstances. With her bright lipstick and penchant for animal prints (“They never go out of style”), Sonia Warshawski is as vibrant as she is diligent, single-handedly running a six-day-a-week tailor shop. That it’s the only thriving business in a moribund Kansas City mall is itself a story; so, too, is the jolt of Old World glamor she brings to a suburban Midwestern setting.
But for Sonia, the importance of keeping busy is no simple response to widowhood or means of fending off the...
But for Sonia, the importance of keeping busy is no simple response to widowhood or means of fending off the...
- 11/22/2016
- by Sheri Linden
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Kicking off last week and continuing through this Thursday, Doc NYC is a utopia for the year’s best documentaries. One of the most promising will have a premiere tomorrow and today we’re pleased to premiere an exclusive clip. Big Sonia follows one of the last remaining survivors of the Holocaust, the 90-year-old Sonia, who is faced with an eviction notice after running her late husband’s tailoring business.
“There are many sides to Sonia – she’s a tiny, dynamic woman – who never stops trying to make an impact in her own small ways,” co-director Leah Warshawski, and Sonia’s granddaughter, tells us. “She’s the only survivor in the Kansas City area who speaks regularly about her experience during the Holocaust to students, prisoners, and anyone who will listen. This clip is from one of our first trips to see her speak at a middle school, and we...
“There are many sides to Sonia – she’s a tiny, dynamic woman – who never stops trying to make an impact in her own small ways,” co-director Leah Warshawski, and Sonia’s granddaughter, tells us. “She’s the only survivor in the Kansas City area who speaks regularly about her experience during the Holocaust to students, prisoners, and anyone who will listen. This clip is from one of our first trips to see her speak at a middle school, and we...
- 11/14/2016
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
The two feature-length documentaries, both of which focus on subjects over the age of 80, are the beneficiaries of a three-year pledge from True Productions founder Dwayne Clark and his wife, Terese. The Seattle-based film, theater, and media production company will award one $50,000 grant annually during that time — though the competition was so strong in this, the program's inaugural year, that Clark tapped Aegis Living, the retirement, assisted living, and Alzheimer's care company of which he's CEO, to support a second $50,000 grant. Leah Warshawski and Todd Soliday's "Big Sonia" depicts 90-year-old Holocaust survivor Sonia Warshawski — who stands at a not-so-big 4'8" — struggling with retirement and imparting life lessons after she's served an eviction notice for John's Tailoring, the last shop left in a dying suburban mall. Kate Dandel's "Gold Balls," filmed at four locations around the country, depicts the competitors in the tennis...
- 1/26/2016
- by Matt Brennan
- Thompson on Hollywood
It’s been a couple months since the last edition of What’s Up Doc? placed Michael Moore’s surprise world premiere of Where To Invade Next at the top of this list and in the meantime much shuffling has taken place and much time has been spent on various new endeavors (namely my Buffalo-based film series, Cultivate Cinema Circle). Finally taking its rightful place at the top, D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hagedus’ Unlocking the Cage is in the midst of being scored by composer James Lavino, according to Lavino’s own personal site. Though the project has been taking shape at its own leisurely pace, I’d expect to see the film making its festival debut in early 2016.
Right behind, the American direct cinema masters is a Texan soon to make his non-fiction debut with Voyage of Time. Just two weeks ago indieWIRE reported that Ennio Morricone, who scored...
Right behind, the American direct cinema masters is a Texan soon to make his non-fiction debut with Voyage of Time. Just two weeks ago indieWIRE reported that Ennio Morricone, who scored...
- 11/5/2015
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
Plus… La Film Festival announces partnership with ArcLight Cinemas for 2016; Lakeshore, Phantom Four partner on Miles, Seattle grant finalists; Davoli and Davids merge firms.Samuel Goldwyn Films has acquired worldwide rights from Submarine Entertainment and Rosalind Lichter to Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt’s Havana Motor Club (pictured) about underground drag racers in Cuba. The film premiered in Tribeca and will open in 2016.The La Film Festival produced by Film Independent has announced a partnership with ArcLight Cinemas that will see the 22nd edition of the La Film Festival take place at ArcLight Cinemas across the city next summer from June 1-9.Paramount Television has closed a two-year overall television deal with Beasts Of No Nation director Cary Fukunaga and his production company Parliament Of Owls. Fukunaga is collaborating with Paramount Television as director and executive producer of The Alienist for TNT. Benicio del Toro, an awards season contender for Sicario, will take place in an on-stage conversation about his career...
- 11/3/2015
- by jeremykay67@gmail.com (Jeremy Kay)
- ScreenDaily
The fall festival rush is upon us. Locarno is currently ramping up. Venice has released their line-up and Thom Powers and the Toronto International Film Festival team have dropped a bomb with a previously unannounced new feature from powerhouse docu-provocateur Michael Moore. It is truly a miracle that the production of a film such as Moore’s upcoming Where To Invade Next (see still above) managed to go completely undetected by the filmmaking community until it was literally announced to world premiere at one of the largest film festivals in the world. Programmed as a one of the key films in the Special Presentations section at Tiff, the film sees Moore telling “the Pentagon to ‘stand down’ — he will do the invading for America from now on.” Also announced to premiere at Tiff was Avi Lewis’ This Changes Everything, which has slowly been rising up this list, as well as...
- 8/7/2015
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
It’s been a surprisingly interesting month of moving and shaking in terms of doc development. Just a month after making his first public funding pitch at Toronto’s Hot Docs Forum, legendary doc filmmaker Frederick Wiseman took to Kickstarter to help cover the remaining expenses for his 40th feature film In Jackson Heights (see the film’s first trailer below). Unrelentingly rigorous in his determination to capture the American institutional landscape on film, his latest continues down this thematic rabbit hole, taking on the immensely diverse New York City neighborhood of Jackson Heights as his latest subject. According to the Kickstarter page, Wiseman is currently editing the 120 hours of rushes he shot with hopes of having the film ready for a fall festival premiere (my guess would be Tiff, where both National Gallery and At Berkeley made their North American debut), though he’s currently quite a ways away from his $75,000 goal.
- 7/6/2015
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
Well folks, after a rather long and brutal winter (at least for me here in Buffalo), we are finally heading into the wonderful warmth of summer, but with that blast of sunshine and steamy humidity comes the mid-year drought of major film fests. After the Sheffield Doc/Fest concludes on June 10th and AFI Docs wraps on June 21st, we likely won’t see any major influx in our charts until Locarno, Venice, Telluride and Tiff announce their line-ups in rapid succession. In the meantime, we can look forward to the intriguing onslaught of films making their debut in Sheffield, including Brian Hill’s intriguing examination of Sweden’s most notorious serial killer, The Confessions of Thomas Quick, and Sean McAllister’s film for which he himself was jailed in the process of making, A Syrian Love Story, the only two films world premiering in the festival’s main competition.
- 6/1/2015
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
It should come as no surprise that Cannes Film Festival will play host to Kent Jones’s doc on the touchstone of filmmaking interview tomes, Hitchcock/Truffaut (see photo above). The film has been floating near the top of this list since it was announced last year as in development, while Jones himself has a history with the festival, having co-written both Arnaud Desplechin’s Jimmy P. and Martin Scorsese’s My Voyage To Italy, both of which premiered in Cannes. The film is scheduled to screen as part of the Cannes Classics sidebar alongside the likes of Stig Björkman’s Ingrid Bergman, in Her Own Words, which will play as part of the festival’s tribute to the late starlet, and Gabriel Clarke and John McKenna’s Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans (see trailer below). As someone who grew up watching road races with my dad in Watkins Glen,...
- 5/1/2015
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
Here's your daily dose of an indie film in progress -- at the end of the week, you'll have the chance to vote for your favorite. In the meantime: Is this a movie you’d want to see? Tell us in the comments. Big Sonia Tweetable Logline: Big Sonia profiles 89-year old Diva and Holocaust survivor Sonia Warshawski. Deeply rooted in the past and completely relevant Now. Elevator Pitch: Big Sonia is a feature documentary about 89-year old, 4'8" Sonia Warshawski - Diva, businesswoman, and Holocaust survivor living in suburban Kansas City. She still drives herself to work every day at her late husband's tailor shop - John's Tailoring - in the corner of a giant dead mall. Sonia can barely see over the steering wheel of her giant pink Buick, but customers come from far and wide just to be in her presence. And she just so happens to be my grandmother.
- 1/21/2015
- by Indiewire Staff
- Indiewire
Four years after my original guest post “Navigating Rejection With Grace” (May 10, 2011) we’re still navigating plenty of rejection (c’mon, does that really ever end!?) but also proud to share some “wins” – seven years in-the-making! Our doc Finding Hillywood (www.findinghillywood.com) has screened at more than 60 festivals around the world, and is available on iTunes (and a myriad of other digital platforms) this month!
I remember being knee-deep in production and fundraising just to finish our film. Grant-writing, crowd-funding, trying to stay positive, constant highs and lows… it all takes a toll. But then you premiere in front of a packed theater with friends and family who give you an emotional standing ovation, and it feels pretty damn good. Things can only get easier from here, right? We made an inspiring film about the universal power of story and the power of art to heal – themes that should resonate globally.
I remember being knee-deep in production and fundraising just to finish our film. Grant-writing, crowd-funding, trying to stay positive, constant highs and lows… it all takes a toll. But then you premiere in front of a packed theater with friends and family who give you an emotional standing ovation, and it feels pretty damn good. Things can only get easier from here, right? We made an inspiring film about the universal power of story and the power of art to heal – themes that should resonate globally.
- 10/7/2014
- by Leah Warshawski
- Hope for Film
On the heels of the 39th edition of the Toronto Int. Film Festival (Sept 4-14), Ifp’s Independent Film Week is where a plethora of fiction, non-fiction and new this year, web-based series from the likes of Desiree Akhavan and Calvin Reeder find future coin. Sectioned off as projects at the very beginning of financing to those that are nearing completion, there happens to be tons of Sundance alumni in the names below. Among those that caught our attention we have Medicine for Melancholy‘s Barry Jenkins’ sophomore feature, produced by Bad Milo!‘s Adele Romanski, Moonlight is about “two Miami boys navigate the temptations of the drug trade and their burgeoning sexuality in this triptych drama about black queer youth”. Concussion‘s Stacie Passon digs into the thriller genre with Strange Things Started Happening. Produced by vet Mary Jane Skalski (Mysterious Skin), this is about “a woman who has...
- 7/24/2014
- by Eric Lavallee
- IONCINEMA.com
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