Sundance Institute Selects Caroline Monnet As 2023 Merata Mita Fellow

EXCLUSIVE: Johannes Roberts — the filmmaker behind the shark thrillers 47 Meters Down (2017) and 47 Meters Down: Uncaged (2019) — is reteaming with Byron Allen’s Allen Media Group Motion Pictures on a new film in the genre titled The Red Triangle.

Belgian directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, French filmmaker Alice Diop and Romanian director Cristian Mungiu have demanded that Iran’s Fajr International Film Festival remove their films from the line-up of its current edition, running from February 1 to 11.

The American Film Institute has announced that the 37th edition of AFI Fest will take place in-person at Hollywood’s historic TCL Chinese Theatre from October 25-29. 

The American Film Institute (AFI) announced on Thursday the dates for AFI Fest 2023.The 37th edition of the Institute’s annual festival will take place exclusively in person on Oct. 25-29 2023 at the TCL Chinese Theatre.

One of the most delightfully warming and comically offbeat films at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Babak Jalali’s “Fremont” tells the story of Donya, a former Afghan translator for the U.S. government who’s felt adrift in the titular California city since resettling there to evade the Taliban.  READ MORE: ‘Fremont’ Review: An Afghan Insomniac Tries To Find Purpose In A Refreshingly Unique & Jarmuschian-Esque Indie Dramedy [Sundance] Living in an apartment complex alongside other Afghan immigrants, working at a Chinese-American fortune cookie factory in San Francisco, and spending evenings alone at a local restaurant that plays Afghan soap operas, Donya — portrayed, in a captivating debut performance, by real-life Afghan refugee Anaita Wali Zada —longs for companionship.

EXCLUSIVE: ColorCreative, the management and production company founded by Issa Rae and Deniese Davis, has signed first-generation Liberian-Nigerian filmmaker Tari Wariebi for representation.

EXCLUSIVE: The Sundance Institute and Peter Luo’s Stars Collective (Crazy Rich Asians, Midway, Marshall, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark) have partnered on the new Imagination Award that grants $25,000 each to three metaverse-based projects that show innovation “in a rapidly evolving mediascape.”

“Shortcomings” begins with a magic trick of a scene: we see an emotional Asian American audience applaud when the end-credits of a film (modeled clearly on “Crazy Rich Asians”) start rolling at an Asian American film festival. Outside the screening, more Asian Americans celebrate the significance of the moment — an Asian American-led romantic comedy becoming a blockbuster hit.

In Montana’s Big Sky Country, a black cloud hangs over the state’s expansive horizon. It looms above the indigenous residents of the Crow and Northern Cheyenne Reservations and nearby towns in Big Horn County most of all.

The thorny, complicated history between the United States and Iran is infinitely more complex for those of the Persian diaspora living in America. It’s this nuanced tension trickling down to identity — between being too much this and not enough that in either homeland — that writer-director-producer Maryam Keshavarz (“Circumstance”) explores in her third film, “The Persian Version,” a decades and generation-spanning dramedy.

Over the past few years, it’s thankfully become more common to find screenings with closed captioning at your local multiplex. Not just theaters that hand out closed captioning devices — which often require another layer of artifice between the audience and the movie — but actual onscreen captions.

Sundance U.S. dramatic competition jury members — including Marlee Matlin– chose to leave after the festival fell short of providing proper captioning for deaf and hearing impaired audience members during the Eccles Theatre premiere of Magazine Dreams last night.

EXCLUSIVE: Screen Media has acquired North American rights to the crime thriller Devil’s Peak, starring Academy Award winner Billy Bob Thornton (The Gray Man), Golden Globe winner Robin Wright (Wonder Woman 1984), Hopper Penn (War Machine) and Academy Award nominee Jackie Earle Haley (Watchmen).

EXCLUSIVE: New Yorker video producer Christopher Hwisu Kim will be heading to the Sundance Film Festival this week as an all-expenses paid guest of The Black List and Cassian Elwes.

EXCLUSIVE: Roadside Attractions, Grindstone Entertainment, and Lionsgate have picked up North American distribution for Charlie Day’s feature directorial debut Fool’s Paradise.

EXCLUSIVE: Cristo Fernández (Ted Lasso, Spiderman: No Way Home) has wrapped on the comedy Sisters, written by and starring Marta Cross (Criminal Minds), Valeria Maldonado (Coco), and Virginia Novello (Gone). Fernández executive produces and stars in the film via his Espectro MX Films banner. An exclusive trailer for Sisters can be viewed above.

The Palace intrigue continues: Martha Plimpton (The Good Wife) has joined the cast of the HBO limited series that stars Kate Winslet, Matthias Schoenaerts, Andrea Riseborough and Hugh Grant.

A big win! Cheryl Burke is celebrating after officially earning custody of dog Ysabella following her split from Matthew Lawrence.